Mr. Obama's Political Opponents

Every president has supporters and opponents of his policies. Some opponents separate the man from his policies, liking the former but rejecting the latter. Columnist Peggy Noonan writes about people like this in a much remarked upon essay in the Wall Street Journal.

Her contention is that the affection and respect of those of Mr. Obama's political opponents who were nevertheless disposed to like him personally have recently begun to chill. The whole column is an interesting read. Here's how it begins:

Something's happening to President Obama's relationship with those who are inclined not to like his policies. They are now inclined not to like him. His supporters would say, "Nothing new there," but actually I think there is. I'm referring to the broad, stable, nonradical, non-birther right. Among them the level of dislike for the president has ratcheted up sharply the past few months.

It's not due to the election, and it's not because the Republican candidates are so compelling and making such brilliant cases against him. That, actually, isn't happening.

What is happening is that the president is coming across more and more as a trimmer, as an operator who's not operating in good faith. This is hardening positions and leading to increased political bitterness. And it's his fault, too. As an increase in polarization is a bad thing, it's a big fault.

The shift started on Jan. 20, with the mandate that agencies of the Catholic Church would have to provide birth-control services the church finds morally repugnant. The public reaction? "You're kidding me. That's not just bad judgment and a lack of civic tact, it's not even constitutional!"

Faced with the blowback, the president offered a so-called accommodation that even its supporters recognized as devious. Not ill-advised, devious. Then his operatives flooded the airwaves with dishonest — not wrongheaded, dishonest — charges that those who defend the church's religious liberties are trying to take away your contraceptives.

Noonan goes on to describe the open mic incident with Russian president Medvedev, Mr. Obama's reaction to the Trayvon Martin case, and last week's Supreme Court hearings on the individual mandate as adding to the perception that the president has agendas that he's trying to hide from the American people.

I'm not sure I agree with Noonan on the timing of this disaffection. I suspect it started with the way Mr. Obama criticized Mr. Bush's policies, promising to change them, and then pretty much continuing them. If not then, perhaps it began with the way the administration and its congressional allies handled the debate over the Affordable Care Act and the subsequent demonization or humiliation of any and all who stand in the president's way or appear to be a political threat to him. At any rate Noonan continues:

All these things have hardened lines of opposition, and left opponents with an aversion that will not go away. I am not saying that the president has a terrible relationship with the American people. I'm only saying he's made his relationship with those who oppose him worse.

In terms of the broad electorate, I'm not sure he really has a relationship. A president only gets a year or two to forge real bonds with the American people. In that time a crucial thing he must establish is that what is on his mind is what is on their mind. This is especially true during a crisis.

From the day Mr. Obama was sworn in, what was on the mind of the American people was financial calamity — unemployment, declining home values, foreclosures. These issues came within a context of some overarching questions: Can America survive its spending, its taxing, its regulating, is America over, can we turn it around?

The president had his mind on health care. And, to be fair-minded, health care was part of the economic story. But only a part! And not the most urgent part. Not the most frightening, distressing, immediate part. Not the "Is America over?" part.

Machiavelli writes in The Prince that a ruler must never make himself despicable. By this he means that the ruler should never do anything that would cost him the respect of the people. He loses their respect, Machiavelli says, by being thought irresolute, changeable, and timid, and we might add, disingenuous. There are those who have opposed President Obama's policies from the beginning but who nevertheless resolved to respect him. I think the number of people in that category has shrunk considerably in the last few years as Mr. Obama has given the impression that he acts more from expediency than from principle.

Noonan concludes by opining that:

If you jumped into a time machine to the day after the election, in November, 2012, and saw a headline saying "Obama Loses," do you imagine that would be followed by widespread sadness, pain and a rending of garments? You do not. Even his own supporters will not be that sad.

It's hard to imagine people running around in 2014 saying, "If only Obama were president!" Including Mr. Obama, who is said by all who know him to be deeply competitive, but who doesn't seem to like his job that much. As a former president he'd be quiet, detached, aloof. He'd make speeches and write a memoir laced with a certain high-toned bitterness. It was the Republicans' fault. They didn't want to work with him.

Mr. Obama has a largely nonexistent relationship with many, and a worsening relationship with some.

Really, he cannot win the coming election. But the Republicans, still, can lose it. At this point in the column we usually sigh.

Candidate Obama presented himself to America as a post-racial uniter. He has proven himself to be otherwise. He presented himself as a man who had the answers to our economic woes. He has shown himself to in fact have none. He presented himself as a man who would win the respect of foreign nations, but he has antagonized and alienated our friends and earned no respect from our foes. Noonan may not be correct about when the disaffection set in, or what caused it, but she's certainly correct that it's happening.

Why the Liberal Media Has So Little Credibility

A lot of people are exploiting the Trayvon Martin case to push their social or political agendas and to reinforce their assumptions about race in America. Some of what has been done by people like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson in the wake of the shooting is sheer demogoguery and some of what has been done by the media is willfully dishonest. Both are reprehensible. NBC's Today show falls into the latter category.

They apparently edited the exchange between the shooter, George Zimmerman, and the police dispatcher to make it appear that Zimmerman was racially profiling the Martin boy. As Erik Wemple reports:

NBC told this blog today that it would investigate its handling of a piece on the Today show that ham-handedly abridged the conversation between George Zimmerman and a dispatcher in the moments before the death of Trayvon Martin. NBC issued the following statement:

“We have launched an internal investigation into the editorial process surrounding this particular story.”

Wemple goes on to say that Fox News and the media watchdog site NewsBusters were the first to expose how the Today segment edited the tape of Zimmerman's call to the dispatcher to say this:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black.

But here’s the actual conversation:

Zimmerman: This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.

Dispatcher: OK, and this guy — is he black, white or Hispanic?

Zimmerman: He looks black.

In the Today version, Zimmerman volunteered that this person “looks black,” a sequence of events that would more readily paint Zimmerman as a racial profiler. In reality’s version, Zimmerman simply answered a question about the race of the person he was reporting to the police.

One has to remember that when one reads or hears something in the mainstream liberal media, there's a very good chance that one is not reading or hearing the truth. When everyone just knows that a "white Hispanic" is ipso facto a racist then squeezing the facts to fit the narrative is completely justifiable. Just ask Dan Rather who bequeathed to us the concept of "fake but true."

In a postmodern world truth is fluid, it's subjective, it's whatever feels right to someone. All that matters is whether the "facts" conform to one's understanding of the way the world is. If they do then they're "true", if they don't then they're "false".

I hope when all of the tension and controversy over this tragedy subsides that Zimmerman, if his account of what happened is in fact true, sues NBC for defamation. I also hope that whoever was responsible for the edit of this tape, unless they have a very good reason for it, is fired. They've only succeeded in fanning the flames of racial animosity and misunderstanding.

Cultural Superiority

Our post Different Strokes attracted a bit of disagreement from readers who took exception to my claim that the West is exceptional. What was particularly objected to were these graphs:

Even after all we've learned in the last couple of decades about how people in the rest of the world live their lives, there are still some liberal-minded folk who like to tell us that we in the West shouldn't think that our way of life is superior to that of people living elsewhere around the globe. All cultures and ways of life are equally worthy of celebration, the multiculturalists and cultural relativists insist, we're all patches in the brightly colored quilt of human expression and no patch is of better quality or more importance than another.

This sentiment makes for warm feelings in university faculty lounges and classrooms and may prompt us to break into a treacly chorus or two of Up with People or We Are the World, but it's an awfully hard belief to maintain once we start looking at how so many of the world's people actually live.

Since several readers wrote to say that indeed they don't think we should think Western culture is superior to that of people elsewhere around the globe I thought I should amplify a little bit.

What follows applies not just to cultures construed as different nations or global regions but also to sub-cultures within a country or region. Also, by the term "superior culture" I mean a way, or view, of life which promotes human flourishing to a greater extent than do other ways of life.

Thus, I want to insist that:

• A culture which produces a Bach, a Shakespeare, or an Einstein is a superior culture to one that never has.
• A culture which can invent and build jetliners is superior to a culture that can't build indoor plumbing.
• A culture which values hard work and education is superior to one which fosters indolence and ignorance.
• A culture which treats women with dignity and respect is superior to one which treats them as property and with contempt.
• A culture which values basic human freedoms such as the freedom of speech, opinion, and religion is superior to one which kills those who deviate from orthodoxy.
• A culture which values the rule of law and suppresses the resort to violence and individual vengeance is superior to one which doesn't.
• A culture in which men are expected to nurture and provide for their families is superior to one in which they're seen as little more than sperm donors.
• A culture which sends food, medicine, and people abroad to help others is superior to the culture to which they go.
• A culture which develops pain-killers and cures for disease is superior to a culture which is helpless against pain and disease.

In short, a culture which produces great art, music, architecture, technology, and literature, a culture which can harness nature or at least mitigate the damage it wreaks, and which is animated by humanitarian impulses, is superior to a culture which cannot do, or does not choose to do, any of this.

No culture is perfect, of course, but some are much less perfect than others. Every culture has flaws, but to the extent a culture is flawed it's usually because its people have adopted one or more of the traits of inferior cultures.

For more on this I invite the interested reader to read In Defense of Elitism, a Viewpoint post from 2010 on a similar topic.

Correction

In a couple of recent posts on the Trayvon Martin killing I referred to the shooter as George Williams. His name is George Zimmerman. I regret the confusion it doubtless caused to see both names given to the same man in the same post.

I also thank those readers who took the trouble to point my error out to me.

Who's Happy?

Dennis Prager is a radio host who has written and lectured extensively on the subject of "happiness". In a recent column he talks about who the people who are most happy with their lives. He lists eleven traits of genuinely happy people and writes a sentence or two of explanation of each. Here's his list:

Happy people are people who:

• control themselves.
• are given little and earn what they have.
• do not see themselves or their group as victims.
• rarely complain.
• have close friends.
• are in a good marriage.
• act happy.
• aren't envious.
• don't have high self-esteem.
• have few expectations.
• are grateful.

It really is worthwhile to go to the link and read Prager's discussion of these. He packs a lot of wisdom into just a few sentences.

Demographic Twilight

Japan is facing a demographic crisis and there doesn't seem to be much chance that it will be able to avoid it, argues Pat Buchanan in a recent column. The facts he amasses in support of his conclusion, if they are indeed facts, paint a pretty hopeless picture for the Land of the Rising Sun. Here are some excerpts:

A week before the anniversary of 3/11 [the date of the devastating earthquake/tsunami], buried in a story about Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s effort to rally support for a doubling of the 5 percent consumption tax, to preserve Japan’s social security system, was this startling statement: “We’re faced with an aging society and a declining birth rate unprecedented in the history of mankind.”

.....the prime minister’s statement is rooted in numbers that may fairly be called a demography of death.

By 2055, according to government data, 40 percent of the country’s population will be 65 or older. Just 8 percent will be younger than 15. According to U.N. figures, [although] Japan’s population [will] reach 127 million in 2010, the number of Japanese will shrink to just above 101 million by 2050. Every year between now and 2050, the number of deaths over births in Japan will average two-thirds of a million, with the population shrinkage accelerating each decade.

The median age of a Japanese, 22 years old in 1950, reached 45 in 2010 and will exceed 55 by mid-century. What kind of future can there be for a nation, even one with the high quality human capital of Japan, when there are two Japanese 65 years old or older for every Japanese 24 years of age or younger? When Japan became the world’s No. 2 economy in 1960, seizing the crown from Germany to hold for 40 years, Japanese 24 years old and younger outnumbered the population 65 or older eight to one.

Japan’s fertility rate, the number of births per woman, has been below zero population growth for 40 years and has plunged to where Japanese woman are having only two-thirds of the children needed to replace the present population. Not only has the birth rate per woman fallen, the percentage of Japanese women aged 15-49 — 56 percent in the 1960s — is expected to plunge to 31 by midcentury.

Every new Japanese generation is one-third to one-half smaller than the one that came before. Japan’s high school graduation class has fallen by more than one-third in just 30 years.

This is all pretty ominous and Buchanan has more to say about Japan's predicament, and what caused it, at the link, but it's not just Japan. Similar collapses are occurring across much of the globe. Russia, Europe, and, to a lesser extent, the United States are all facing crises of their own.

This raises two very urgent questions: How will these countries provide for their elderly when there are no longer enough workers to pay into the support system, and how will nations which have lost their economic and demographic dynamism stave off the masses of people languishing in the Muslim world, China, and much of the southern hemisphere who look with covetous eyes on the lands and resources to their north and west?

One hopes that more people than just Pat Buchanan are giving these questions serious attention.

More on the Reason Rally

The atheist "Reason Rally" held last weekend in Washington, D.C. drew between 10,000 and 30,000 participants and was touted as an event whose purpose was not to bash belief or believers but to present a positive image of unbelief.

Unfortunately, some of the participants just couldn't help themselves, as Lashawn Barber notes in a column at WorldMag.com. Barber writes specifically about a speech given by über atheist Richard Dawkins:

Rather than trashing religion, the Reason Rally was supposed to be a “positive experience” to celebrate “secular values” and motivate atheists to “become more active.” While that might sound reasonable, if you listen to Dawkins’s speech, you’d get a different impression.

Dawkins called on atheists and agnostics to “ridicule and show contempt” for the religious and their doctrines. The example he used was the Roman Catholic belief that the bread and wine of communion turns into the actual body and blood of Christ. He encouraged atheists to mock and ridicule the religious in public.

Rabbi Moshe Averick observes that this sort of arrogance is fueled by a conviction that atheists are just smarter and more reasonable than are believers. He also thinks they're quite mistaken about that:

What fuels the hubris of writers like Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Sam Harris, Jerry Coyne, P.Z. Myers, etc. is their belief that Science unequivocally supports their godless view of reality. An honest, open-minded investigation will reveal, however, that Science offers close to nothing in support of atheism.

A prodigious leap of faith is required to believe such a notion; a leap that rivals any that might be demanded by a particular religion. At every critical point of contention between believers and non-believers, scientific evidence is at the very least, inconclusive, and at best, supports belief in God and the spiritual.

What sorts of evidence does the rabbi have in mind when he makes this claim? He offers three examples:

Origin of Life – Much to the chagrin of chemists and molecular biologists, the “dirty little secret” of origin of life research – as Dr. Eugene Koonin put it – is that Science has, until now, utterly failed in its quest to discover a plausible naturalistic explanation for the origin of the astoundingly complex molecular machinery and information systems found in the earliest life on our planet. It is these same super-sophisticated machines and genetic information systems that would allow Darwinian evolution – conceding its truth for argument’s sake – to take place. The origin of these systems is a complete mystery. Perhaps the reason is because there is no naturalistic explanation. Perhaps, Darwin forbid, there is a Creator.

Human Consciousness and our unique sense of Identity – Neuroscientists are absolutely baffled when asked to explain the phenomena of human consciousness and self-awareness. Dr. Jerry Fodor, a non-believing cognitive scientist, has put it this way: “Nobody has the slightest idea how anything material could be conscious. Nobody even knows what it would be like to have the slightest idea about how anything material could be conscious.” Nobel-Prize winning biologist George Wald has stated: “Consciousness seems wholly impervious to science.” Anyone ready to consider a non-material soul?

Man’s Relentless Search for Meaning and Abstract Moral Values – The Darwinian psychologist grasps at straws trying to understand why every other form of life on the planet does not seem to be bothered at all by the aforementioned issues and lives and thrives quite successfully without them, while human beings are obsessed with “meaning” and “moral values” and cannot live without them. The painful conundrum this raises in the atheist position is expressed by the French philosopher Jean Paul Sartre: “That God does not exist I cannot deny, that my whole being cries out for God, I cannot forget.” Is there anyone out there open-minded enough to consider that perhaps human beings are radically and qualitatively different than all other forms of life?

He could have offered more, of course, but these three happen to coincide nicely with the argument that we've been making here at VP for eight years about the existential poverty of the naturalistic worldview and its impotence in trying to explain large swaths of human experience.

Averick concludes by saying that:

In my opinion, the most revealing moment of the “Reason Rally” was a headline performance by Australian entertainer, Tim Minchin. While the audience – many with young children in tow – clapped and bounced along with the rhythm, Mr. Minchin attempted to claim his place in the Guinness Book of Records by saying the word mother****er as many times as is humanly possible during a 3-minute “song.” The enthusiastic reaction of these “brights” to Mr. Minchin’s antics tells us much more about the true state of modern atheism than any science textbook ever will.

Actually, just as much as Minchin's squalid performance, the comment thread to Averick's post itself reveals a great deal about the state of modern atheism. Some of the commenters seem to believe that one wins an argument by lobbing more irrelevant invective at the other guy than he lobs back at you. It never seems to occur to them that they should be seeking to show that Averick is wrong, if they believe that he is, and not just be pounding him with lame insults.

The commenters make themselves sound like a bunch of high school kids. If that's what modern atheism looks like then no wonder it appeals to so few.

Do the Right Thing, Spike

What words can one use to describe Spike Lee, a wealthy filmmaker who, in his hubris, has no concern whatsoever for ordinary people?

In an attempt to avenge the death of Trayvon Martin Mr. Lee tweeted to his followers the address of the man he thought was the shooter, but it turns out he had the wrong address:

It was the address of an elderly Florida couple whose son... William George Zimmerman (no relation to shooter) - lived briefly there in 1995. Now the 70-year-old school cafeteria lunch lady with a heart condition and her 72-year-old husband have been forced to move out of danger into a hotel temporarily after receiving hate mail, threats, harassing visits from reporters and fearful inquiries from neighbors.

The woman’s other son Chip Humble told the Orlando Sentinel, "It's scary because there are people who aren't mentally right and will take this information and run with it. To endanger people who are innocent because people are angry is not the answer. That's not how we're going to heal. It's not [going] to help the Martin family for someone else to be hurt."

The O’Reilly Factor contacted Spike Lee’s production company “40 Acres and a Mule.” Instead of issuing a statement or an apology, the executive office told Factor producer Jesse Watters that Spike Lee had “no comment.” That’s it.

Apologize? When you're Spike Lee there's no need to apologize. If your irresponsible actions cause innocent people to have to flee their home why, that's just collateral damage in the war against white injustice. Lee's decision to tweet their address was reckless and unconscionable, and his subsequent refusal to apologize is odious.

Meanwhile, no word yet if any charges will be brought by the Department of Justice or the Florida State Attorney General against the New Black Panthers for offering a reward for the kidnapping of the real George Zimmerman and the forcible transfer of the man to the leaders of the NBP Party. How this cannot be illegal is beyond my ability to comprehend. That the Obama DOJ refuses to take action against the NBP despite their threat to Zimmerman's civil rights is deplorable.

UPDATE: Lee finally did the right thing and apologized to the elderly couple he made refugees from their own home.

Nothing New about Global Warming

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has argued that a period of warming that occurred between 500 and 1000 years ago, called the Medieval Warm Period (MWP), was a local phenomenon confined to Europe, and that the global temperature increases we’re experiencing now are man-made.

A new study just released throws all of that into question, however, by producing compelling evidence that the MWP was actually a world-wide event. The Daily Mail has the story. Here's an excerpt:

A team of scientists led by geochemist Zunli Lu from Syracuse University in New York state, has found that contrary to the ‘consensus’, the ‘Medieval Warm Period’ approximately 500 to 1,000 years ago wasn’t just confined to Europe. In fact, it extended all the way down to Antarctica – which means that the Earth has already experienced global warming without the aid of human CO2 emissions.

At present the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) argues that the Medieval Warm Period was confined to Europe – and that therefore the warming we’re experiencing now is a man-made phenomenon. However, Professor Lu has shown that this isn’t true – and the evidence lies with a rare mineral called ikaite, which forms in cold waters.

The article goes on to describe how Lu and his team used ikaite to ascertain the temperatures which prevailed in Antarctica during the MWP. You can find the technical details at the link. The take home message, though, is that a severe period of global warming lasted for several centuries and then naturally diminished, and none of it was the result of human activity.

Perhaps the current upward trend in global temperatures is indeed caused by increased greenhouse gasses generated by human activity, but there appears to be historical precedent for temperature surges that are unrelated to industrialization and CO2 emissions so it would seem very premature to assume that something similar is not happening today.

Free Will and Determinism

Graham Lawton, deputy magazine editor at New Scientist offers a brief review of atheistic philosopher and materialist neuroscientist Sam Harris' new book on free will.

Harris argues that free will doesn't exist, a claim which, it seems to me, gets him entangled in a number snares, but I'll let Lawton explain:

Free will touches everything we value - law, politics, relationships, morality and more. And yet it is an illusion (according to Harris). We either live in a deterministic universe where the future is set, or an indeterminate one where thoughts and actions happen at random. Neither is compatible with free will.

Having laid this out, Harris tries to salvage something from the wreckage. In the process he ends up rowing back to a position not unlike the "compatibilists" who argue that free will can be reconciled with the laws of physics, a notion he has earlier attacked.

Harris starts his rescue mission by pointing out that, even in the absence of free will, there is still a distinction between voluntary action and mere accidents. Imagine, he says, that while he is writing his book somebody outside fires up a leaf blower. He ignores the sound by attending to his work. The decision feels like the exercise of free will, but isn't.

Even so, the choice still matters because it leads to outcomes in the real world. "If I had not decided to write this book, it would not have written itself." His choice "was unquestionably the cause of it coming into being". But that choice came out of the "darkness of prior causes" that Harris has no control over. As he puts it: "You can do what you decide to do, but you cannot decide what you will decide to do."

To me that sounds like a bit of sophistry. Harris shatters the illusion of free will and tries to numb the pain with an argument that it is all OK because our actions have consequences. But even if we can make choices that make a difference, does that make them any more our own? Does that take us anywhere new? I'm not sure.

Regardless, Harris presses on to explain how this version of not having free will plays out in the real world. At the very least, his argument provides a refreshing antidote to the nihilism that the debate tends to produce.

Yes, Harris chose to write the book, but the choice was determined for him, just as his belief in determinism was determined for him, by those dark prior causes. At least Harris himself must believe that, but that being so, why should anyone think that his belief in determinism is the product of rational reflection? Why should he think that the reader's rejection of his arguments has anything to do with the cogency of those arguments?

What we choose to believe, if determinism is actually the case, is the result of a host of factors most of which we are unaware of and none of which have anything much to do with what's reasonable or true. The belief in determinism, if determinism is true, is simply the inevitable consequence of millions of chance events throughout our lives and even before our lives, as well as the genetic endowment we've inherited from a long skein of ancestors.

Indeed, in a deterministic world I'm not even sure what it means to talk of a "reasonable" belief. Reason is just another illusion like free will.

Given all this, I don't know how Harris can possibly avoid nihilism, as Lawton suggests he does, without taking an irrational leap, i.e. choosing to live as if he were free when, in fact, he knows that he's not. People who do this should not, however, pat themselves on the back for being exemplars of rational living.

Something from Nothing

Lawrence Krauss is a well-known cosmologist and popular-science writer who apparently wishes to be numbered among the ranks of those who write science in order to disprove the existence of God. Krauss has a new book out in which he aspires to demonstrate that the universe could have arisen out of nothing, or almost nothing, and that a Creator isn't necessary to explain cosmogeny. The book is titled A Universe from Nothing: Why There Is Something Rather Than Nothing and it received a rather derisory review in the New York Times from Columbia philosopher of science David Albert, author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience.

Krauss argues that the laws of quantum mechanics working in the quantum vacuum (Krauss' "nothing") could have produced a "fluctuation" that produced the universe. In this view, which is not particularly new, the universe is seen as the debris from an inopportune quantum belch, as it were. Albert, not to put too fine a point on it, thinks this is rather ridiculous:

Where, for starters, are the laws of quantum mechanics themselves supposed to have come from? Krauss is more or less upfront, as it turns out, about not having a clue about that. He acknowledges (albeit in a parenthesis, and just a few pages before the end of the book) that every­thing he has been talking about simply takes the basic principles of quantum mechanics for granted.

So, there must have been something, the laws of quantum mechanics, which produced the universe, but where did these laws come from? Were they just floating about in .... in what? It couldn't have been space because space and time didn't exist before there was a universe so where exactly were the laws which generated the cosmos. The most likely candidate, the mind of God, is exactly what Krauss is trying to show didn't exist, so that's not a plausible option for him.

Albert explores for several paragraphs the cul de sac Krauss has constructed for himself. The problem is that what Krauss is calling "nothing" isn't really nothing. To argue that the universe's origin out of the quantum vacuum is an origin ex nihilo is like arguing that a fist popping into existence where no fist was before is the creation of a fist out of nothing:

Relativistic-quantum-field-theoretical vacuum states — no less than giraffes or refrigerators or solar systems — are particular arrangements of elementary physical stuff. The true relativistic-quantum-field-­theoretical equivalent to there not being any physical stuff at all isn’t this or that particular arrangement of the fields — what it is (obviously, and ineluctably, and on the contrary) is the simple absence of the fields!

The fact that some arrangements of fields happen to correspond to the existence of particles and some don’t is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that some of the possible arrangements of my fingers happen to correspond to the existence of a fist and some don’t. And the fact that particles can pop in and out of existence, over time, as those fields rearrange themselves, is not a whit more mysterious than the fact that fists can pop in and out of existence, over time, as my fingers rearrange themselves. And none of these poppings — if you look at them aright — amount to anything even remotely in the neighborhood of a creation from nothing.

There's more to Albert's review of Krauss at the link. Put simply, Krauss wants to say that the universe could have come from nothing, but what he calls "nothing" is really not nothing in the sense that most people construe the word. And if that's true, if Krauss' "nothing" is really a vast congeries of forces, fields, and elementary particles with the inherent potential to burst into a space-time, mass-energy universe then where did all that "nothingness" come from?

Muslim Tolerance

Lawrence Haas wonders why, given the extraordinary levels of violence against Christians in the Muslim world, most of the major media outlets in the U.S. seem to have no interest in discussing it:

Did you read about Sheik Abdul Aziz bin Abdullah, the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, and his call this month to "destroy all the churches of the region?"

You might think that’s big news – big enough to garner some attention from America’s leading media – especially because the Grand Mufti is among the Muslim world’s leading authorities. He is President of the Supreme Council of Ulema [Islamic scholars] and Chairman of the Standing Committee for Scientific Research and Issuing of Fatwas, according to the Middle East Forum’s Raymond Ibrahim.

A Kuwaiti delegation had asked the Grand Mufti about a Kuwaiti parliament member’s call for the "removal" of churches in his country, later clarified to a ban on new ones. In response, the Grand Mufti called it "necessary to destroy all the churches of the region." He reportedly relied on the famous tradition, or "hadith," that the Prophet Mohammed ruled on his deathbed, "There are not to be two religions in the [Arabian] Peninsula."

But, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today apparently didn’t find it newsworthy. It was relegated to conservative media (e.g., Washington Times, FOX online), Muslim-focused websites, and lots of blogs.

However appalling, mainstream media reticence to cover that news is understandable in one sense. Its coverage would force public discussion of dicey issues that challenge the political correctness that all-too-often pervades our thinking about relations between the West and the Muslim world.

We’d have to ask the inconvenient question of whether the Grand Mufti’s call is but one element of a "war on Christians" across the Muslim world.

And if we did that, we’d have to ask whether such intolerance, and the violence against Christians that has swept Muslim-dominated nations in recent months, reflects a fringe element or more mainstream attitudes.

The murders and persecutions are so widespread it's hard to believe that they're just the work of fringe elements. The following is just a partial list of the crimes perpetrated against Christians by members of the religion of peace:

"Half of Iraq’s indigenous Christians are gone due to the unleashed forces of jihad," he wrote. Many fled to Syria where, alas, "Christians are experiencing a level of persecution unprecedented in the nation’s modern history."

Meanwhile, 100,000 Christian Copts have fled Egypt since Hosni Mubarak’s downfall unleashed Islamic forces, while 95 percent of Christians have left northern Nigeria where the Islamist group Boko Haram has been slaughtering them. The group announced recently that it’s planning a "war on Christians" in the coming weeks to, a spokesman said, "end the Christian presence in our push to have a proper Islamic state."

Elsewhere of late, a dozen armed Muslim men stormed a church in Pakistan, seriously wounding several Christians; armed men ransacked a church in Algeria after threatening and attacking the pastor and his wife repeatedly since 2007; and 50 Palestinian Muslims stoned Christian tourists on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount.

Muslims attacked one pastor with acid and shot another in Uganda; Al-Shababb Muslims beheaded a Muslim convert to Christianity in Somalia (marking the third such beheading there in recent months); and Iran sentenced a Christian convert to two years in prison, arrested as many as 10 others while they met to worship at a home, and is preparing to execute a pastor for refusing to renounce Christianity.

There's more at the link. When one looks at the sweep of Muslim history going back to Mohammed one would have to be an incarnation of Voltaire's character Candide to think that Islam isn't inherently intolerant and violent. It's tragic that so few voices in the West, either in the media or in the more moderate Muslim community, see fit to speak out against the barbarism.

Race and Justice in America

In case you haven't been keeping up there's a good summary of developments in the Trayvon Martin tragedy in the Orlando Sentinel. Here is some of the more pertinent info:

With a single punch, Trayvon Martin decked the Neighborhood Watch volunteer who eventually shot and killed the unarmed 17-year-old, then Trayvon climbed on top of George Zimmerman and slammed his head into the sidewalk several times, leaving him bloody and battered, authorities have revealed to the Orlando Sentinel.

That is the account Zimmerman gave police, and much of it has been corroborated by witnesses, authorities say.

Zimmerman has not spoken publicly about what happened, but that night, Feb. 26, and in later meetings he described and re-enacted for police what he says happened.

In his version of events, he had turned around and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from behind, the two exchanged words then Trayvon punched him in the nose, sending him to the ground, and began beating him.

Zimmerman told police he shot the teenager in self-defense.

Civil rights leaders and thousands of others have demanded Zimmerman's arrest, calling Trayvon a victim of racial profiling and Zimmerman a vigilante.

Trayvon was an unarmed black teenager who had committed no crime, they say, who was gunned down while walking back from a 7-Eleven with nothing more sinister than a package of Skittles and can of Arizona iced tea.

Supporters have held rallies in Sanford, Miami, New York and Tallahassee, calling the case a tragic miscarriage of injustice.

Activist Al Sharpton headlined a rally in Sanford Thursday that drew an estimated 8,000 people. The Rev. Jesse Jackson yesterday spoke at an Eatonville church, where he called Trayvon a martyr.

Zimmerman has gone into hiding. A fringe group, the New Black Panthers, have offered a $10,000 reward for his capture.

Police have been reluctant to provide details about all their evidence, but this is what they've disclosed to the Sentinel:

Zimmerman was on his way to the grocery store when he spotted Trayvon walking through his gated community.

Trayvon was visiting his father's fiancée, who lived there. He had been suspended from school in Miami after being found with an empty marijuana baggie. Miami schools have a zero-tolerance policy for drug possession.

On Feb. 26, when Zimmerman first spotted Trayvon, he called police and reported a suspicious person, describing Trayvon as black, acting strangely and perhaps on drugs.

Zimmerman got out of his SUV to follow Trayvon on foot. When a dispatch employee asked Zimmerman if he was following the 17-year-old, Zimmerman said yes. The dispatcher told Zimmerman he did not need to do that.

There is about a one-minute gap during which police say they're not sure what happened.

Zimmerman told them he lost sight of Trayvon and was walking back to his SUV when Trayvon approached him from the left rear, and they exchanged words.

Trayvon asked Zimmerman if he had a problem. Zimmerman said no and reached for his cell phone, he told police.

Trayvon then said, "Well, you do now" or something similar and punched Zimmerman in the nose.

Zimmerman fell to the ground and Trayvon got on top of him and began slamming his head into the sidewalk, he told police. Zimmerman began yelling for help.

Several witnesses heard those cries, and there's been a dispute about from whom they came: Zimmerman or Trayvon. Lawyers for Trayvon's family say it was Trayvon, but police say their evidence indicates it was Zimmerman.

One witness, who has since talked to local television news reporters, told police he saw Zimmerman on the ground with Trayvon on top, pounding him and was unequivocal that it was Zimmerman who was crying for help.

Zimmerman then shot Trayvon once in the chest from very close range, according to authorities.

When police arrived less than two minutes later, Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose, had a swollen lip and had bloody lacerations to the back of his head. Paramedics gave him first aid, but he said no to going to the hospital. He got medical care the next day.

The Department of Justice last week opened a civil rights investigation into what happened, and Gov. Rick Scott appointed a special prosecutor.

It's not clear whether the special prosecutor, Angela Corey, the state attorney for Duval, Clay and Nassau counties, will have Zimmerman arrested. She announced that there's not enough evidence to file a manslaughter charge or present evidence to a grand jury.

If - and I emphasize the if - this is all true then why is there a lynch mob out there waiting to string Zimmerman up both figuratively and literally? Why are people demanding that the police chief be fired and that Zimmerman be arrested? Since when is it a crime to shoot someone who's smashing your head against the pavement? Perhaps there's more to the story, but no one knows that, least of all Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson.

And since when does a private group of citizens, The New Black Panther Party in this case, have the right to put out a reward for the "capture" of another citizen who is not charged with a crime and who is not a fugitive? Try to imagine the KKK offering a reward for, say, O.J. Simpson to anyone willing to fetch him from the golf course where he was busily searching for his wife's "real" killers and drag him to the Klan's leaders. There would be national apoplexy. The Department of Justice would be beside itself, issuing summonses and arrest warrants faster than Mrs. Obama can pack for her next vacation, but our Department of Justice is run by perhaps the most incompetent individual ever to serve as Attorney General, and so nothing is said or done about this outrage.

I also wonder why the photo of Trayvon Martin that the media keep showing us appears to have been taken when he was about ten years old. He was 17 and 6'3" tall. Do the media not want us to know that?

Elsewhere in the news, three black men broke into the dorm room of a 21 year-old white Mississippi State student named John Sanderson over the weekend and shot him to death. Can we expect the New Black Panthers to post a reward for the apprehension of his killers? Will the Reverends Jackson and Sharpton be leading demonstrations and demanding justice for young Mr. Sanderson? Will President Obama be giving a statement to the press grieving for this student's murder?

I doubt it. The young man was the wrong color. Mr. Obama has empathy for shooting victims who look like him, but for those who don't, apparently, not so much.

Three Reasons to Ditch PPAC

The Supreme Court is hearing oral arguments today pro et contra the constitutionality of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act sometimes known as Obamacare. Their ruling is expected to be released in June.

Reason TV's Nick Gillespie gives three quick reasons why we should hope that the Supreme Court overturns the act before it goes into effect.

For more commentary on the problems with PPAC read Ed Morrissey's comments at Hot Air. The short version is that should PPAC stand there will be nothing the government can't tell you you must do or must buy. It'll be the end of individual freedom in America. Read why at the link.

Freud and the Rabbi

Rabbi Moshe Averick takes on Sigmund Freud's claim that the chances of a normal, wholesome life are improved when one is freed from the constraints of religion. Here's the rabbi's opening:

The other day, while scrolling through a site for non-believers on Facebook, I came across a post which featured a picture of Sigmund Freud and the following quotation: “When man is freed of religion, he has a better chance to live a normal and wholesome life.” For any thinking person, such an assertion immediately raises a number of thorny questions: Which religion/s was Freud talking about? What parts of the religion? (“Love your neighbor as yourself?” “You shall not ill-treat any widow or orphan?”) What exactly is Freud’s definition of a “religion”?

Atheistic propagandist, Bill Maher once opined that the atheistic ideology of Communism was a “state religion.” Does that mean that any ideology, including atheism, is a type of religion? What exactly does Freud mean by a “normal and wholesome life?”

Of course Freud didn't expect that he'd actually have to answer these questions. He expected, I suppose, that he would be allowed to fire off a witty aphorism and his devoted fans would all sagely nod in agreement. Averick thinks differently. Here's his question for those who agree with Freud:

Sigmund Freud also wrote that “the moment a man questions the meaning and value of life he is sick, since objectively neither has any existence.” Human life then, in reality, has no meaning and no value; is that a good basis for a normal and wholesome life?

Hmmm. Good question. Many people who really believe that their life is meaningless and valueless suffer depression and a host of other ills. It's hard to imagine that the realization of the utter pointlessness of existence conduces to a "normal and wholesome life".

Averick goes on to point out that in a universe in which there's nothing other than material stuff there can be no objective meaning or value. He then mentions a reply to this claim. The respondent wrote:

Life has no objective meaning? How will I ever live a normal and wholesome life? Sorry, but some things are subjective. I don’t need to invent a sky daddy as an invisible means of support to deal with the fact that the meaning of life is one of them.

Averick points out the sheer silliness of this claim:

In other words, [the respondent] agreed with Freud and me on the essential point. There is no objective meaning to our existence and of course no objective value to life either. He then goes on to mock belief in God as an artificially manufactured solution to the problem of finding purpose and value in life: “I don’t need to invent a sky daddy…to deal with [this] fact...” What is most telling here is not only the glaring contradiction contained in his reply, but the inescapable absurdity that is reflected in every attempt to form some sort of worldview based on non-belief. Please allow me to elaborate.

“Sorry, but some things are subjective.” – This concept is echoed by humanistic philosopher Paul Kurtz: “Human life has no meaning independent of itself…the meaning of life is what we choose to give it.” Jean Paul Sartre follows suit: “Life has no meaning a priori...it’s up to you to give it meaning, and value is nothing else but the meaning you choose…” Before going any further it is instructive to define clearly what subjective means: “Proceeding from or taking place in a person’s mind rather than the external world…existing only within the experiencer’s mind…existing only in the mind, illusory.” (American Heritage Dictionary)

The idea of creating our own subjective meaning and purpose may sound very profound in the university lecture hall, but when stripped of its philosophical camouflage it really means the following: Make something up out of your own head that gives your life purpose and meaning and pretend that it’s real. In other words, create a comforting fiction to avoid getting “sick,” as Freud described it.

Well then, if we must create some illusory construct to give our lives meaning and value, what’s wrong with the “God construct” or “sky-daddy” as this gentleman called it; if it makes me feel good, why not? It’s no more artificial and illusory than say humanism, utilitarianism, communism, speciesism, etc., ad nauseum. This highlights the absurdity of the atheist position. On the one hand the atheistic philosopher bids us to create an illusory meaning and value for life and on the other hand mocks religion for being illusory.

You can read the rest of Averick's post at the link. It's ironic that the atheist wants to claim that belief in God is belief in an illusion even as he conjures up a host of illusions that he himself can believe in in order to avoid the despair that follows from rejecting belief in God. And then he insists that it's the believer who's being irrational.

Rush to Judgment

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting much of the media joined the public outcry in the black community and beyond demanding that the shooter, a Hispanic named George Zimmerman, be arrested. The police, however, have not arrested the man and, not being a member of the media or the black community, I wondered why.

The simple-minded answer is that the cops are racist, but that strikes me as ridiculous. Even if it were true why would even a racist police force, in the face of such enormous public pressure, still not arrest the man if they knew he was guilty of a crime? To refuse to arrest a man who shot a teenager just because the teen was black goes beyond racism to professional suicide.

It seemed to me that there was more to the story, something that would give credence to Zimmerman's account of what happened, and it turns out that according to a Tampa news broadcast there is. Fox News Tampa Bay is reporting there was an eye-witness to part of the events that transpired that night and the witness' story corroborates Zimmerman's claim that he was assaulted by Martin. Here's an excerpt:

[O]ne man's testimony could be key for the police.

"The guy on the bottom who had a red sweater on was yelling to me: 'help, help…and I told him to stop and I was calling 911," he said.

Trayvon Martin was in a hoodie; Zimmerman was in red.

The witness only wanted to be identified as "John," and didn't not want to be shown on camera.

His statements to police were instrumental, because police backed up Zimmerman's claims, saying those screams on the 911 call are those of Zimmerman.

"When I got upstairs and looked down, the guy who was on top beating up the other guy, was the one laying in the grass, and I believe he was dead at that point," John said.

Zimmerman says the shooting was self defense. According to information released on the Sanford city website, Zimmerman said he was going back to his SUV when he was attacked by the teen.

Sanford police say Zimmerman was bloody in his face and head, and the back of his shirt was wet and had grass stains, indicating a struggle took place before the shooting.

I don't know how this episode is going to play out, but if it should happen that Zimmerman's story is at least largely true I hope those who've been demagoguing this tragedy will be as disgraced as they deserve to be. I also hope that the people in the media, especially some of the usual suspects at MSNBC will have enough class to admit that they were swept up in a mob-like rush to judgment and to resolve the next time something like this happens to wait until the evidence is all in and the police have explained themselves before they sound off about how the whole thing smacks of racism.

Normal People, Bullies, and Totalitarians

Philosopher Stephen J. Heaney draws some interesting and useful distinctions in a piece at The Public Discourse. On every issue, it seems, there are three types of people on a particular side - "normal" people, bullies, and totalitarians. Our public controversies and the will of the people are often thwarted, distorted, and vitiated by the fact that there are too many bullies and totalitarians and not enough normal people populating the public square and occupying positions of power in government.

Here's part of his essay:

The normal person who wants to use contraceptives is glad he can purchase them and use them without interference. The bully smears the name of those who oppose contraceptive use by impugning their moral integrity or calling their thinking outdated. The totalitarian insists that even people and institutions opposed in conscience to the use of contraceptives must purchase them.

The normal person who claims to be pro-choice is glad that abortion rights have been obtained. The bully rallies the troops to force charitable organizations to donate money to abortion providers, threatening the charity’s very existence if it does not comply. The totalitarian insists that every OB/GYN perform abortions, or get out of the profession.

The normal person who approves same-sex marriage is glad that same-sex marriage is available. The bully tries to silence his opponents by calling them bigots, and trying to shut down their businesses. The totalitarian insists that government officials, and ministers of various faiths who oppose same-sex marriage, must nonetheless open up their facilities to such ceremonies, and even perform these ceremonies, or face the consequences of the law.

The normal person who approves of same-sex marriage, or abortion, or contraceptive use is only too happy that, if he desires, he can provide charitable services to others in the manner he thinks best, and is content to let others provide those same services in the manner they think best. The bully will shut off funding to those who refuse, for moral reasons, to provide the full range of services he would like to see. The totalitarian will make it illegal to fail to provide this full range of services, even though far fewer people are now served, because many charitable providers have been driven out of business.

Heaney also distinguishes between "good" and "bad" totalitarians:

The typical totalitarian fails to make, or even disdains, certain distinctions concerning conscience. One such distinction is that between what I must (or must never) do, and what I may do but am not required to do.

Let us say, for example, that a law is put in place saying that no one may eat peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I like PBJs, and prefer to eat them occasionally, though I am not morally bound to eat them. We would probably say that this law is unreasonable, unfair, and a serious economic blow to the makers of peanut butter and jelly and all their related industries. However, it would make little sense to say that it violates my conscience.

If, on the other hand, my beliefs prohibit me from ever eating PBJs, then a law that demanded that I eat them would be a gross violation of my conscience.

The “bad” totalitarian is often acutely aware of the difference between these situations. In fact, he often knows that what he is doing is wrong, and is counting on getting others to do it as well, so as to cover for his own evil.

The “good” totalitarian, however, is unable or unwilling to make a distinction between these situations. All he sees is that I don’t want to do what he wants me to do. It makes no difference to him whether I don’t want to eat the sandwiches, or I don’t want to stop eating them.

The totalitarian apparently figures that, if it was reasonable for the law to stop him from doing what his conscience permitted — say, buying contraceptives — because his position was not reflected in the law, then it is equally reasonable for the law to make you do what your conscience does not permit — say, buying contraceptives — because he is in power. Since his position is so clearly good, he reasons, it must be accepted by all.

The totalitarian doesn't care about your conscience. He cares only about your compliance.

One conscience, one will: this is the demand of such a regime. The individual must become absolutely one with the totality. The normal person will respect your human rights. The bully will run roughshod over your human rights. The totalitarian needs you to repudiate your human rights.

Nor will such tactics end with one or two violations. Operatio sequitur esse: a thing can only act according to what it is. The totalitarians of this world are not petty thugs. They are intellectuals with a vision, and they will see their vision enacted, no matter who they have to run over, because they are certain it is good for you.

Read the rest of his column at the link. I leave it to the reader to decide where President Obama and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius would fit in Heaney's taxonomy.

Different Strokes

Even after all we've learned in the last couple of decades about how people in the rest of the world live their lives, there are still some liberal-minded folk who like to tell us that we in the West shouldn't think that our way of life is superior to that of people living elsewhere around the globe. All cultures and ways of life are equally worthy of celebration, the multiculturalists and cultural relativists insist, we're all patches in the brightly colored quilt of human expression and no patch is of better quality or more importance than another.

This sentiment makes for warm feelings in university faculty lounges and classrooms and may prompt us to break into a treacly chorus or two of Up with People or We Are the World, but it's an awfully hard belief to maintain once we start looking at how so many of the world's people actually live.

We've spoken on numerous occasions here at Viewpoint, for instance, about honor killings, a practice that occurs throughout the Arab/Muslim world. Women who've in some way "dishonored" their families, usually by seeing men of whom the family disapproves, are murdered, often in brutal fashion and with the tacit consent of the community, by male relatives.

Recently Al Arabiya reported that there were almost 1000 such murders in Pakistan alone last year. This tally is up from almost 900 in 2010. Here are some "highlights" from the Al Arabiya story:

At least 943 Pakistani women and girls were murdered last year for allegedly defaming their family’s honor, the country’s leading human rights group said Thursday. The statistics highlight the growing scale of violence suffered by many women in conservative Muslim Pakistan, where they are frequently treated as second-class citizens and there is no law against domestic violence.

Despite progress on better protecting women’s rights, activists say the government needs to do more to prosecute murderers in cases largely dismissed by police as private, family affairs. “At least 943 women were killed in the name of honor, of which 93 were minors,” wrote the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan in its annual report.

Seven Christian and two Hindu women were among the victims.

The Commission reported 791 “honor killings” in 2010. Around 595 of the women killed in 2011 were accused of having “illicit relations” and 219 of marrying without permission. Some victims were raped or gang raped before being killed. Most of the women were killed by their brothers and husbands.

Only 20 of 943 killed were reported to have been provided medical aid before they died.

Contra the multicultis, we need to affirm that in fact some ways of life really are better than others and some cultures are quite simply degenerate. A society which treats the rape, torture, and murder of its young women as nothing more than a private domestic squabble is, not to put too fine a point on it, depraved.

I urge anyone still in the grip of the multicultural fantasy to rent the movie The Stoning of Soroya M. which is based on a true story. Watch the film and then see if you still think it's all just a matter of "different strokes for different folks".

Botched Job

Sunday was the anniversary of the Obama administration's decision to intervene in Libya under the guise of protecting Libyan citizens from Col. Qaddafi's threats to destroy them. The anniversary passed with little comment from the president's spokespersons and for good reason, I suppose.

This intervention followed hard upon our political intervention in Egypt taking the side of those who wished to depose Hosni Mubarak. That intervention followed our refusal to intervene to help the pro-democracy demonstrators in Iran who were being shot in the streets by thugs loyal to Mahmoud Ahmedinejad. All of these preceded (still with me?) our refusal to intervene in Syria where yet another tyrant is slaughtering his people by the thousands.

Perhaps there's a coherent foreign policy here, but if so it's difficult to say what it might be. What are the principles which govern Mr. Obama's decisions about whom to help and whom to let die? Why did we have a "Responsibility to Protect" Libyan civilians but no such responsibility vis a vis Syrian civilians?

Where we did intervene, of course, we made a mess of things. Egypt is now being ruled by Islamists who are hostile to both their own Coptic Christians and the Israelis. They're merrily murdering the Copts, burning their churches, and threatening to murder the Israelis.

Libya is governed, if one can call it that, by rival militias who've smuggled guns and other weaponry to Islamic insurgents in Mali, a country on Libya's southern border which had been a firm ally of ours in the war on terror. Now the military has deposed the government in a coup, and soldiers and others are plundering the capital. A relatively stable African country is in chaos largely as a consequence of our intervention in Libya.

Remember how the Democrats derided George Bush for commending his FEMA director for a job well done in the wake of Hurricane Katrina when by all appearances the director had botched the job? The mockery went on for years. When will the Democrats start deriding the Obama administration for a feckless, helter skelter foreign policy that has botched North Africa far worse than anything FEMA ever did?

Spring Break

I don't know if President Obama will win in November or not, but whichever turns out to be the case it doesn't look like he'll have a lock on the Spring Break college crowd this time around.

I hope the parents of these kids don't see this video. It'd be terribly depressing to consider how much money they're spending to send their offspring off to school to have them learn so little about the world.