Liberals and Violence

What is it about liberals and violence?

There's been a myth circulating in our society for as long as I can remember that goes something like this: Conservatives are mean and violent while liberals are gentle and peaceful. The myth has been foisted on the public by liberals in the media and elsewhere ever since the 60s, but it's in fact a fraud belied by a ton of evidence.

For example, not only have most political assassins, successful or not, in the last sixty years been people on the left, but so much of the violent rhetoric on social media today emanates from liberals and progressives.

Here are just a few of many examples which could be cited:

• A writer at GQ magazine tweeted recently that he wants to beat to death Pat Smith, the mother of an American slain in Benghazi, because she publicly blames Hillary Clinton for her son's death.
• A university professor called for people to murder the staff of the NRA at their offices.
• A man actually did try to assassinate Donald Trump at a public appearance during the primaries.
• The editor of the Detroit Free Press called for the murder of GOP lawmakers.
• A writer at Vox called for riots at Trump rallies.
• A HuffPo writer argued that violence is necessary to stop Trump because his rhetoric incites violence and some of his supporters are violent people.

And these examples don't include all of the calls to murder white cops that we've heard in the last month.

Liberals have a problem. Thoughtful people often find liberal solutions and arguments unpersuasive, which is why so much of the liberal agenda has to be imposed by the courts and through executive orders, circumventing the will of the people.

But when circumvention doesn't work folks on the left seem to be increasingly resorting to calls for violence, hoping, presumably, that intimidation and social upheaval will accomplish what more peaceful strong-arm tactics could not.

Unfortunately, the liberal media, which wets its collective pants when Tea-Partiers wave Don't Tread on Me flags, rarely utter so much as a peep when their friends call for killing those with whom they disagree.

Genesis of Islamic Terrorism

We live in a time when stories of terrorist attacks by Islamic fanatics monopolize our daily news, a fact which prompts question like, where did this fanaticism come from? Why now?

Strategy Page has a brief history of the genesis of modern Islamic terror that will repay the ten minutes or so it'll take to read. Here's the opening:

Where exactly did the current crop of Islamic terrorists come from? Basically, they came from oil rich Arabia, mainly Saudi Arabia. The Wahhabi sect of Islam had always been among the most strict and intolerant and it comes from Arabia. The Saud family owed their power, in large part, to a 19th century alliance with the Wahhabi sect.

Holy Warriors from the Wahhabi tribes provided the crucial muscle that enabled the Sauds to conquer Saudi Arabia and establish their kingdom 70 years ago. But the Sauds realized that the more reactionary attitudes of the Wahhabis would hurt the kingdom in the long run. For example, many Wahhabi clerics were opposed to modern technology (unless it was a weapon). Radio, automobiles, and all manner of gadgets were resisted. The Sauds were constantly haggling with the Wahhabi clerics.

Finally, in the 1970s, after a serious outbreak of Islamic terrorism, the Sauds made a fatal deal with the Wahhabi clerics. The Wahabbis could control education in the kingdom, and have their own "lifestyle police" to enforce proper Islamic standards on Saudis, in return for keeping Islamic terrorism under control.

Then came the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. The Wahhabi clerics saw this as an assault by communist atheists (which is what Islamic conservatives considered the Soviets) on an Islamic state. The Wahhabi declared jihad (holy war, although a more appropriate translation would be “crusade”) against Russia. Billions of dollars and thousands of Arabs (most of them Saudis) went off to help the Afghans fight the Russians.

The Pakistanis cooperated because, at about the same time, the generals running Pakistan had seized on Islamic conservatism as a cure for the corruption that was making the country ungovernable and bankrupt. The Wahhabis, and their money, were welcomed. The Americans were there as well, as the "Afghan Freedom Fighters" were popular in the United States. The Americans provided some high tech weapons, intelligence, and trainers but most of the aid, and weapons, came from the Saudis.

In addition to guns, the Saudis also brought in Wahhabi preachers to set up religious schools for the millions of Afghan refugees. Pakistanis were allowed to attend these schools as well. The result was that some of the Pushtun tribes on both sides of the Afghan border were radicalized with Wahabbi beliefs. At this point Saudi Arabia was also exporting billions of dollars, and thousands of Wahhabi preachers, to many other Islamic countries in Asia and Africa. Some of that money went to Moslem communities in Europe and the Americas as well.

The article brings the state of affairs closer to the present day and concludes with this:

So how do you fight Islamic terrorism these days? Can't use the old ("kill 'em all") methods, so all you can do is keep the killers out of your own territory and wait for the madness to die out naturally, as it has done many times before....Another nasty aspect of Islamic terrorism is that, while only a small percentage of Moslems are willing to become Islamic terrorists, a larger percentage (ten percent or more, even among Moslems in the West) will support the Islamic terrorists and a majority of Moslems will, if asked, say they believe Islamic terrorism is justified when used to “defend Islam.”

Unless the Arab world reforms itself, the terrorism will keep returning until it does because the appeal of Islamic terrorism has, for over a thousand years, continually inspired young Moslem men to step up and kill for the cause. Because the victim populations, especially non-Moslem ones, will not stop fighting back, it’s either Islamic reform or continued mayhem.

Saudi Arabia made a bargain with the devil and has been exporting Wahabbism for thirty years. The world has been paying the price ever since.

Who Are the Racists?

The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals recently struck down a North Carolina law that would have required voters to present an identification at the polls in order to vote. This doesn't seem to be an onerous requirement since ID is required for almost everything else we do in our public life, but the three judges hearing the case discerned the scent of racism in the law and struck it down. You can read about their decision here.

Interestingly but not surprisingly, the decision was praised by the left and criticized by the right. Some might say that this is all to be expected since conservatives are racists anyway, but is that really true?

Suppose you were asked this question: "Among which group of people, conservatives or liberals, is racism most likely to be found today?" How would you answer?

This brief video looks at three issues - affirmative action, voter ID, and school choice - and asks whether the conservative or liberal position is most harmful to blacks who are usually thought to be the chief victims of racism in America.

If racism is an attitide of behavior harmful to the interests of the victims why is it that so many African Americans fail to see the implicit racism in the condescension of liberal attempts to thwart measures that actually treat blacks as capable, responsible members of society?

Why do so many blacks reject those who want to treat them like adults while remaining loyal to the party that treats them like children?

Good Without God

Jerry A. Coyne is a professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution at The University of Chicago. He's also a prominent atheist who has written a book titled Faith Vs. Fact in which he tries to explain why theism is false.

A few years ago he wrote a column for USA Today in which he argued that belief in God is not necessary for one to live a moral life. He complains that:

As a biologist, I see belief in God-given morality as American's biggest impediment to accepting the fact of evolution. "Evolution," many argue, "could never have given us feelings of kindness, altruism and morality. For if we were merely evolved beasts, we would act like beasts. Surely our good behavior, and the moral sentiments that promote it, reflect impulses that God instilled in our soul."

There are three things wrong with this. First, "God-given morality" is not incompatible with evolution. God could be the ground both of moral value and of evolutionary change. The incompatibility is between "God-given morality" and naturalism, the belief that the natural world is all there is.

Second, no one argues that evolution could not, at least in theory, have given us the sentiments Coyne lists. The problem is that if evolution is the source of these impulses then it's also the source of avarice, bigotry, cruelty, etc. Given that evolution has produced all human behavioral tendencies, on what basis do we say that one set of behaviors is good and the other bad? Are we not assuming a standard above and beyond nature by which we adjudicate between behaviors to determine which are right and which are wrong?

Third, if an impersonal, mindless, random process is the ultimate source of these behaviors it can't in any moral sense be wrong to act contrary to them. If moral sentiments are the product of chance chemical happenstance and natural selection there is no non-arbitrary moral value to anything. Right and wrong reduce to subjective likes and dislikes.

Coyne continues his argument:

But though both moral and immoral behaviors can be promoted by religions, morality itself — either in individual behavior or social codes — simply cannot come from the will or commands of a God. This has been recognized by philosophers since the time of Plato.

Religious people can appreciate this by considering Plato's question: Do actions become moral simply because they're dictated by God, or are they dictated by God because they are moral? It doesn't take much thought to see that the right answer is the second one. Why? Because if God commanded us to do something obviously immoral, such as kill our children or steal, it wouldn't automatically become OK.

Of course, you can argue that God would never sanction something like that because he's a completely moral being, but then you're still using some idea of morality that is independent of God. Either way, it's clear that even for the faithful, God cannot be the source of morality but at best a transmitter of some human-generated morality.

Coyne here adverts to the classic Euthyphro dilemma which has been discredited by philosophers for centuries (see here, and here). It's unfortunate that Coyne is unaware of this, but it illustrates the hazard of experts in one field speaking dogmatically on matters in other disciplines.

There's more:

So where does morality come from, if not from God? Two places: evolution and secular reasoning. Despite the notion that beasts behave bestially, scientists studying our primate relatives, such as chimpanzees, see evolutionary rudiments of morality: behaviors that look for all the world like altruism, sympathy, moral disapproval, sharing — even notions of fairness. This is exactly what we'd expect if human morality, like many other behaviors, is built partly on the genes of our ancestors.

Assuming this is correct what makes these behaviors moral or right? If a chimp acted contrary to these tendencies would we think the chimp immoral? Would we call its actions evil or wicked? Why, then, is it evil - if we're nothing more than hairless apes - to torture people or abuse children? We have an aversion to such things, to be sure, but aversion doesn't make something wrong.

And the conditions under which humans evolved are precisely those that would favor the evolution of moral codes: small social groups of big-brained animals. When individuals in a group can get to know, recognize and remember each other, this gives an advantage to genes that make you behave nicely towards others in the group, reward those who cooperate and punish those who cheat. That's how natural selection can build morality.

In other words we should be nice because we've evolved to be nice. This is fallacious. Because we have evolved a certain tendency, if indeed we have, it doesn't follow that we should express that tendency. As mentioned above, we've also evolved the tendency to be selfish and mean and a host of other like behavioral traits. Are these behaviors right just because they've evolved? Should we consider cruelty good because it's an evolved behavior?

Coyne concludes with this thought:

Secular reason adds another layer atop these evolved behaviors, helping us extend our moral sentiments far beyond our small group of friends and relatives — even to animals.

This is silly. Secular reason says no such thing. What secular reason dictates is that I should look out for my own interests, I should put myself first, and, pace Kant, use others to promote my own well-being and happiness. That may entail that I give people the impression that I care about them in order to get them to assist me in my own pursuit of happiness, but people who are of no use to me are of no value to me. Thus, it'd be foolish of me to sacrifice my comforts to help some starving child in some other part of the world who will never be of any use to me. Why, on Coyne's view, is it wrong to refuse such aid to victims of starvation? Atheistic philosopher Kai Nielson stresses this very point:

We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view or that all really rational persons unhoodwinked by myth or ideology need not be individual egoists or amoralists. Reason doesn't decide here. The picture I have painted is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me...pure reason...will not take you to morality.

Secular reason and evolution have no answer to the question why we should help those who are in no position to help us, at least none that doesn't reduce to the claim that helping others just makes us feel good. It's an ugly fact about naturalism that its logic entails such conclusions and either Coyne knows it's ugly and doesn't want his readers to know it, or he has no idea. In either case he should stick to biology.

The Laffer Curve

Sometimes we hear acquaintances or political commentators on television scoff at the notion that decreasing taxes can actually increase the revenue taken in by the federal government. Indeed, superficially it does seem counter-intuitive to suggest that if the government reduces the taxes it assesses taxpayers it will actually reap more money for the treasury. Yet, to a point, it's true. There's a rate on the tax rate scale above which tax revenue diminishes and below which it increases.

The concept is based on something called the Laffer Curve, named for economist Art Laffer who first brought it to public attention back in the 80s. This short video explains the idea. As stated in the clip, if you're a liberal who wants big government then, as strange as it may sound to you, you should be in favor of lowering, not raising, taxes:

The Laffer Curve is one reason why conservatives have long favored modest tax rates, and why they think the liberal tendency to call for raising taxes, sometimes as high as 70% or more, is counterproductive and foolish.

Millenials and Capitalism

A poll taken last spring reveals that a majority of young people do not support capitalism, according to a story in the Washington Post, and fully one third of them favor socialism.

It's not clear whether their disenchantment is a result of a principled opposition to market economies, a failure to understand what capitalism is, or a consequence of the young feeling frustrated at the shrinking job market.

In any case, it seems clear that what many of the people surveyed are discounting is that the free market has brought more well-being to more people in more parts of the world than any other economic system in history. Even the world's poor are much better off as recipients of aid from countries where there's an abundance of wealth created by dynamic economies than they would be had those economies not been the engines of wealth creation they've heretofore been.

As this video shows, pace Bernie's supporters, socialism is neither a just nor a desirable alternative. The video addresses one aspect of the socialism/capitalism distinction, i.e. taxation, but it's also a good general illustration of socialist and capitalist approaches:

True But Irrelevant

Media talking heads, intent on mocking Trump, point out that curtailing Muslim immigration wouldn't have prevented the Orlando massacre because the shooter was an American born citizen. This is as irrelevant as it is true.

The problem of violence is not with Muslim immigrants (unless they're terrorist infiltrators). The problem is with their children and grandchildren who seem to be especially vulnerable to the seductions of jihad. In fact, according to the Washington Times second generation Muslim Americans account for half of deadly terrorist attacks in the U.S.

An article at Breitbart amplifies this thesis:

For instance, Anwar al-Awlaki, the New Mexico-born jihad propagandist and “spiritual advisor” to 9/11 terrorists was the son of migrants from Yemen; Syed Farook, the Chicago-born San Bernardino terrorist was the son of Pakistani migrants; Nidal Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter was the son of a woman who emigrated from Palestine; and Muhammed Youssef Abdulazees, the Chattanooga shooter who murdered four U.S. Marines was an immigrant from Kuwait, who naturalized at the age of 6.

In a December letter to the Obama administration demanding the release of the immigration histories of those connected to terrorism, Senator Jeff Sessions wrote: “We are dealing with an enemy that has shown it is not only capable of bypassing U.S. screening but of recruiting and radicalizing Muslim migrants after their entry to the United States. The recruitment of terrorists in the U.S. is not limited to adult migrants, but to their young children and to their U.S.-born children – which is why family immigration history is necessary to understand the nature of the threat.”

“It’s an unpleasant but unavoidable fact that bringing in large unassimilated flows of migrants from the Muslim world creates the conditions possible for radicalization and extremism to take hold, just like they’re seeing in Europe,” Sessions said on the Senate floor.

Trump may have been characteristically hyperbolic when he declared that all Muslim immigration be stopped, but that's not to say that he's not right when he says we have a serious problem that needs to be vigorously addressed. Unfortunately, there appears to be zero inclination on the part of the federal government under this administration to address it.

Thought Experiments

A thought experiment is a mental exercise in which the thinker constructs a scenario that perhaps does not or could not actually exist in the physical world but which helps one to visualize some problem. For example, you might be asked to imagine what the world would be like for someone who lacked the sense of sight and hearing. Or, what would things look like to a person travelling faster than the speed of light?

Philosophers and scientists use thought experiments all the time as they're very useful heuristic tools.

New Scientist has an article in which they discuss seven of the most famous thought experiments in science and philosophy. Here's their lede and three of their examples. I've added the videos:

If you imagined that thought experiments were mere mental gymnastics meant to bamboozle the uninitiated, think again. Take Schrödinger’s cat, perhaps the most famous example, which involves a cat that is simultaneously alive and dead. It seems bizarre – and that’s the point. It was designed as a slap on the wrist for quantum theorists, to show that a theory that predicts such nonsense must be missing something. Current thinking is that perhaps nothing is missing, and quantum theory really is as weird as it seems.

But other thought experiments have forced us to reformulate the laws that describe nature. Take Maxwell’s demon, which appears to break the laws of thermodynamics. It showed us that thermodynamics really was missing something (see “Matter, energy… knowledge: How to harness physics’ demonic power“).

Newton’s cannon

Take one gigantic cannon, put it on top of a mountain so high it reaches above the atmosphere, and fire horizontally. Irresponsible, perhaps, but instructive. If the cannonball is fired at a low speed, gravity will soon drag it down to the ground along a tightly curving arc. If you add more gunpowder, the ball will go faster and its arc will be more gradual, taking it further around the curve of the Earth. Fire it fast enough and the cannonball’s path will not meet the ground at all – it will fly all the way around and hit you in the back of the head.

This thought experiment helped Newton show that gravity is a universal force: the force we see pulling cannonballs and apples to Earth can also explain the orbit of the moon around Earth, and Earth around the sun.

We are used to the idea of universal forces now. We know that nuclear reactions fuel the distant stars, and that exoplanets can be magnetic. But before Newton there was no expectation that the celestial realm should have the same rules as Earth. His cannonball blew a big hole in such heavenly pretentions.

Achilles and the tortoise

Two-and-a-half millennia ago, the Greek philosopher Zeno of Elea apparently proved that motion is an illusion. One of his paradoxes sets fleet-of-foot Achilles to chase a tortoise that has a small head start. Achilles can never catch the tortoise, argued Zeno, because first he must reach the point where the tortoise started, but by then the tortoise has moved on to a new position. So then Achilles must run there – by which time the tortoise has moved on again. The “dichotomy paradox” is more general: to cover any distance, you must first cover half that distance, then half of what’s left, then half of what’s left, and so on for ever. It seems that you can never get there, no matter what the original distance or how fast you move.

Since then, mathematicians have pointed out that although these arguments take an infinite amount of time to pan out, real motion doesn’t have to. We know for instance that that an infinite series of terms can add up to something finite. If you add an infinite series of fractions starting with ½ and halving in value with each new term (½ + ¼ +1/8…), the infinite sum is equal to 1. You can use maths like this to represent the distance traveled or the time taken in Zeno’s paradox, so — phew – motion is possible after all. That said, Zeno’s paradox may manifest itself for real in the quantum world.

The Chinese room

Can a computer be conscious? In an attempt to disprove this idea of “strong artificial intelligence”, John Searle, a philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, imagined himself inside a room of dictionaries and rule books that hold instructions for translating Chinese to English and vice versa. Someone posts a question through the door written in Chinese, and using his rule books Searle works out an appropriate answer. To the questioner it would seem there is a mind in the room that understands Chinese, even though there isn’t. Searle claims that a hypothetical rule-bound computer designed to speak Chinese would be the same — a mere machine with no understanding.

There are many objections to this thought experiment. Some argue that although Searle does not understand Chinese, he is part of a larger system, including the rule books, that does. You might balk at the idea that a mind could be made from a person plus some books, but it’s only a very dim mind, taking perhaps years or millennia to respond to one question.

Another interpretation is that Searle’s idea merely highlights the mystery of “other minds”: that you can’t know whether a computer, a penguin or the person next door is conscious in the same way as you are. If the Chinese room doesn’t disprove strong AI, thinking about it could help us to find out what’s missing from our understanding of consciousness.

Read the others. They're fascinating.

Presuppositions Shape Politics

Yesterday I posted a primer on distinguishing some of the ideological differences between left and right. That post limned those distinctions with broad, general strokes, but, of course, there are many other ways to understand liberalism and conservatism.

One way is to examine their respective views of what it is to be human - what it is, in the metaphysical sense, to be man. What follows is not true of all conservatives nor of all liberals, but I think it's fair to say that it is true of a great many, perhaps the majority, of both.

Perhaps the most fundamental difference in the anthropology of conservatives and liberals is that conservatives tend to see man as bearing the image of God, possessing immortal souls, and loved by God. This is significant because from this starting point conservatives,

• See human rights as divinely ordained and based in the will of God, and thus objective and inalienable.
• See man as fallen from his original estate and prone to sin. Thus follows the conservative skepticism of governmental power and the need for institutional checks and balances.
• See history as both meaningful, because it is the outworking of a Divine plan, and replete with lessons for the present because human nature doesn't change much.
• See science as a fruitful means of making sense of the world because the world was created by a rational being and yields its secrets to rational inquiry.
• See morality as rooted in a personal, transcendent moral authority who promulgates an unchanging moral law to which each of us is held accountable.

On the other hand, many liberals tend to see man as the product of the blind, impersonal, random process of evolution. For many liberals, particularly secular liberals, which perhaps comprise the majority, God plays little to no role in either the creation of the world or in human affairs. From this starting point, then, liberals often,

• See human rights as the product of a consensus of enlightened thinkers.
• See man as basically good and malleable, and evolving toward ever greater capacities and perfections.
• See history as an indecipherable, meaningless flux of events about which we can know little and learn less, since humanity is constantly evolving and changing.
• See science as the only trustworthy source of knowledge and the pronouncements of scientists as authoritative, if not infallible.
• See morality as an arbitrary, relativistic set of arbitrary norms which have evolved to help us get along with each other. There are no objective moral absolutes and probably no accountability for how we live in this life.

These disparate worldviews have profound consequences. One's starting point largely determines where one winds up.

If, for instance, human rights are simply a human invention then they're grounded in little more than the will and whims of those in power. They're just words on paper. They have no objective existence and can be discarded or changed whenever someone has the power and desire to do so. Indeed, to accuse a government of violating the human rights of its citizens makes no sense if those rights are simply whatever the government decides they are.

Likewise, if human nature can be altered and molded then the temptation to use government to compel people to conform to the image decided upon by the elites becomes irresistable. Since there is no objective right to liberty the government can and should do whatever's necessary to create the utopian society. That, of course, leads to Orwellian dystopias.

Ideas have consequences and the bigger the idea the more far-reaching the consequences.

Taxonomy of Political Ideology

This is an updated version of a post I originally wrote last February. With political campaigns getting into high gear for November I thought it might be useful to run it again:

Probably one reason why a lot of people steer clear of politics is that they find the ideological labels (as well as words like ideological) to be very confusing. Terms like left, right, liberal, conservative, progressive, libertarian, fascism, socialism, and communism are thrown around a lot by our punditry and they're rarely accompanied by any explanation of what they mean. This post will try to supply that lack so that as we roll deeper into the campaign season readers might have a bit better understanding of what they're hearing.

For starters, a political ideology is the set of principles which guide and inform one's social, economic, and foreign policies. All the terms listed in the previous paragraph denote various political ideologies.

The following diagram will give us a frame of reference to talk about these terms:

Let's start on the right side of the spectrum and define the terms going right to left. Each of them expresses a different view of the role of government in our lives and a different view of what rights citizens have vis a vis the state. I have one quibble, though, with the diagram. I personally don't think either anarchy or mob rule belong on it since neither is a stable ideology. They both either evaporate, like Occupy Wall Street did, or they morph into communism or fascism. With that said, let's consider the remaining elements of the spectrum:

Libertarianism: This is the view that the role of government should be limited largely to protecting our borders and constitutional rights. Libertarians believe that government should, except to protect citizens, stay out of our personal lives and out of the marketplace. They are also very reluctant to get involved in foreign conflicts. Former New Mexico governor Gary Johnson who is a candidate for president this year, is a well-known contemporary libertarian politician. Ayn Rand (who wrote Atlas Shrugged) is the most well-known libertarian writer.

Conservatism: Conservatives tend to be libertarians, but see a somewhat more expansive role for government. The emphasis among conservatives is on preserving traditional values and the Constitution and also upon diffusing governmental authority from the central, federal government and giving it back to the states and localities. They're reluctant to change unless it can be shown that the change is both necessary and has a good chance of improving the problem the change is supposed to solve.

Conservatives take a strict view of the Constitution, interpreting it to mean pretty much precisely what it says, and oppose attempts to alter it by judicial fiat. They also oppose government interference in the market by over-regulation and oppose high tax rates as being counter-productive. They strongly oppose illegal immigration and believe in a strong national defense, but, though more willing than libertarians to use force abroad when our interests can be shown to be threatened, are nevertheless leery of foreign adventures. Ted Cruz is perhaps the most well-known contemporary conservative politician.

Moderates: Moderates tend to be conservative on some issues and liberal on others. They see themselves as pragmatists, willing to do whatever works to make things better. They see themselves as non-ideological (although their opponents often see them as unprincipled). President George W. Bush was a moderate politician.

Most Republicans are in one of these first three categories.

Liberalism: Liberals see a more expansive role for government. They take a loose view of the Constitution, interpreting it according to what they think the founders would say if they wrote the document today. They tend to think that traditional values shackle us to the past and that modern times and problems require us to throw off those shackles. They agree with libertarians that government should stay out of our personal lives, but they believe that government must regulate business and tax the rich and middle classes to subsidize the poor. They tend to hold a very strong faith in the power of government to solve our problems, a faith that conservatives and libertarians think is entirely unwarranted by experience. Former President Bill Clinton might be an example of a liberal politician.

Progressivism: Progressivism can be thought of as hyper-caffeinated liberalism. Most prominent members of today's Democratic party are progressives as are many in the mainstream media and on cable networks like MSNBC. Progressives tend to see the Constitution as an obstacle to progress. Whereas conservatives view the Constitution as a document which protects individual rights, progressives see it as an archaic limitation on the ability of government to promote social and economic justice. They tend to be indifferent to, or even disdainful of, traditional values and institutions such as marriage, family, and religion.

Progressives are essentially socialists who are reluctant, for whatever reason, to call themselves that. A humorous depiction of progressivism can be found here. President Barack Obama and Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton are progressives.

Socialism: As stated in the previous paragraph, socialists are progressives by another name. Both progressives and socialists desire that power be located in a strong central government (they're sometimes for this reason referred to by their opponents as "statists.") and both wish for government to be involved in our lives "from cradle to the grave" (see this ad which ran in the last presidential campaign). They favor very high tax rates by which they hope to reduce the disparity in income between rich and poor. Perhaps one difference between socialists and progressives is that though both would allow corporations and banks to be privately owned, socialists would impose more governmental control over these institutions than progressives might. Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is an example of a contemporary socialist.

Most Democrats are liberals, progressives, or socialists.

Fascism: Typically fascism is considered an ideology of the right, but this is a mistake. Fascism, like communism, is a form of totalitarian socialism. Indeed, the German Nazis as well as the Italian fascists of the 1930s were socialists (The Nazis called themselves the National Socialist Party). Fascism is socialist in that fascists permit private ownership of property and businesses, but the state has ultimate control over them. Fascism is usually militaristic, nationalistic, and xenophobic. It is totalitarian in that there is usually only one party, and citizens have few rights. There is no right to dissent or free speech, and fascists are prone to the use of violence to suppress those who do not conform. Those on the far left on campus who shout down speakers and professors whose messages they don't like are adopting fascistic methods.

Communism: Like fascism, communism is totalitarian and socialist, but it's a more extreme socialism. Under communism there is no private ownership. The state owns everything. Moreover, communism differs from fascism in that it is internationalist rather than nationalist, and it doesn't promote a militaristic culture, although it certainly doesn't shy from the use of military force and violence to further its goals. Like fascism, however, communism does not permit free speech, and those who dissent are executed or cruelly imprisoned.

Few completely communist nations remain today though throughout much of the twentieth century the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China, Cuba and many other Asian and African states were communist. Today North Korea is probably the only truly communist nation. Scarcely any contemporary politicians would admit to being communists though some of President Obama's close associates and friends over the years, such as Bill Ayers and his wife, Bernardine Dohrn, Van Jones, and mentor Frank Marshall Davis are, or were, communists.

I didn't place Republican nominee Donald Trump in any of these categories because he doesn't seem to be guided by any principles beyond a kind of pragmatism, i.e. doing whatever he thinks will work to "Make America Great Again." Listening to his speeches and considering his life, he seems libertarian in some respects, conservative in others, and liberal in still others. He's often all over the ideological map. Perhaps a clearer picture of where he stands will unfold as the campaign season rolls on.

I hope this cursory treatment will be helpful as you seek to make sense of what the various commentators and candidates aspiring to elective office are saying to us over the next couple of months.

Did the Russians Do It?

The Democratic National Committee and others have blamed the Russians for the hack of their embarrassing emails which Wikileaks released just before the convention. They've tried to blame this on Vladimir Putin's alleged desire to influence the election in Donald Trump's favor.

Our intelligence agencies, however, aren't playing along. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said this week that he's not ready to conclude that the Russians were behind the hack, and Debkafile offered four reasons why they conclude that it was "almost certainly not carried out by the GRU's cyber warfare branch, contrary to assertions by senior DNC officials who fix the blame on Russian intelligence."

Here are Debkafile's four. Readers can judge for themselves how persuasive they are:

1. Russia’s cyber warfare system is still mostly a "black hole" for the West. Although it is highly effective, very little is known about its methods of operation, organizational structures, scale of cooperation with counterparts in other countries, and the tools and resources at its disposal.
   Had any branch of Russian intelligence been responsible for hacking the Democratic party’s servers, no obvious signatures, such as the terms "Fancy Bear" and “Cozy Bear” that were discovered, would have been left behind for investigators to find.
2. Intelligence organizations, including those of Russia, are usually fully focused on seeking security, strategic and economic data. It is hard to see Russian military intelligence, whose resources are stretched, expending time and manpower on digging out the DNC's views of Bernie Sanders’ religiosity.
3. Then, too, CrowdStrike’s claim to have cracked the case in two hours is hardly credible. Getting to the bottom of an APT (Advanced Persistent Threat) calls for extra-powerful computers, working in conjunction with the internet service provider (ISP), and consuming weeks, if not months of analysis.
4. Attributing the hacking attack to the Russians provided US agencies with a convenient reminder that the most notorious leaker of classified US documents, Edward Snowden, still lives safe from prosecution in Russian exile, and that WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, remains in asylum at the Ecuadorean embassy in Britain.

They conclude that the emails may even have been leaked by a party source:

The true identity of the hacker that sent the cat among the Democratic party pigeons, at the most damaging moment for Hillary Clinton, remains the subject of conjecture for lack of firm proof. The leading suspects may well be one or more of her party opponents.

In any case, Wikileaks has claimed that there are more revelations on the way. It should make for an interesting August.

Three Questions for Moderate Muslims

A story in The Guardian relates how the family of Adel Kermiche, the young man who recently slit the throat of a French priest who was saying mass, had struggled to keep him from jihad. Kermiche had twice been stopped trying to get to Syria to join ISIS and had been placed in prison, but he had persuaded a gullible French judge that he was a moderate Muslim and no threat. The judge, against the recommendation of prosecutors who knew better, released him from jail. Now a priest is horribly murdered and others are seriously injured as a result.

Moderate Muslims insist after these incidents that we must not blame Islam, that Kermiche was psychologically troubled and that, despite the testimony of his schoolmates and others who said he talked religion all the time, it wasn't his religion which drove him to commit his terrible crime.

David Wood is a man who seeks to engage Muslims to examine what the Qu'ran and Hadiths teach about violence. It may seem presumptuous for a non-Muslim to undertake such a mission, but apparently many Muslims, like many Christians, don't really know what their holy books actually say.

In any case, Wood poses three questions in this short video to those who consider themselves moderate Muslims. His questions are intended to highlight the overall question why it is deemed racist or bigoted to be concerned about the spread of a religion that seems to spawn such horrific acts of violence as has Islam.

So, is he missing something?

Phony Hysteria and Dumb Lyrics

Yesterday's Democratic Convention performances were overshadowed by news that Donald Trump had committed treason, or at least you might think that were you to listen to some of the media talking heads on television.

Trump had announced that if the Russians had in fact hacked the DNC, as the Democrats are alleging, he hoped they'd also be able to locate the 30,000 emails that Hillary Clinton deleted from her server. This sent the media into outrage overdrive. Trump was encouraging a foreign nation to meddle in our elections by hacking into Mrs. Clinton's server. This is nonsense, of course, since the FBI is in possession of Mrs. Clinton's server and it's no longer operable, but facts don't matter to the media when they catch a whiff of blood in the water.

Anyway, Mollie Hemmingway dispenses with this phony hysteria in an article at The Federalist in the course of which she makes this interesting observation:

If the media had been even a fraction as outraged by Hillary Clinton’s server, her shady lies, her foundation’s solicitation of funds from oligarchs and dictatorships while she served as secretary of State, the revelation that foreign governments had almost certainly hacked her information, this freakout by the media would come off very differently.

If the media had not spent 2012 mocking Mitt Romney for his “gaffe” of saying that Russia was our biggest geopolitical threat, if they had cared when Ted Kennedy asked the Soviets to intervene in the 1984 Democratic primary, if they briefly interrupted worship at Barack Obama’s feet when he made hot-mic promises to Russians, and so on and so forth, this would be a different story.

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Some people just listen to the music of a song, some also listen to the lyrics. Sometimes the music is great but the lyrics are banal nonsense. Speeches are like that. If you just listen to the music of Barack Obama's speeches you could get carried away by it, but if you also listen to the lyrics you have to wonder what in the world he's talking about.

For example he made much of his grandparents' teaching him the importance of telling the truth. You would think he'd have been embarrassed to mention this since the signature achievement of his administration, Obamacare, was founded on claims that were patently untrue. He told us repeatedly that under the Affordable Care Act people would be able to keep their doctors and that their insurance would be cheaper. He had to have known at the time that neither of these promises was true.

He also told us that the Benghazi murderers were motivated by an insulting video made by some guy in California. He knew that that wasn't true as well.

One reason we should always tell the truth is that as soon as we're discovered to have lied the person who discovers it will find it very hard to ever trust or believe us again. Perhaps that's why it's so hard to trust either Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton. Indeed, the President also insisted in his speech that Hillary Clinton was the best qualified woman or man ever to be nominated for the presidency.

Maybe it depends on what his definition of "qualified" is, but his claim is, on the face of it, absurd. He was correct, it can be granted, to acknowledge that she's more qualified than he was, he being perhaps the least qualified presidential candidate of the last century in 2008, but it takes an astonishing ignorance of recent political history to declare that no one has been better qualified than Hillary Clinton.

Indeed, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush were both better qualified. Reagan was a successful two-term governor of California, a state that's bigger than most countries, and George H.W. Bush had a resume that included combat pilot in WWII, as well as stints as Congressman, Chairman of the Republican National Committee, Envoy to China, Ambassador to the U.N., C.I.A. Director, and Vice-President. Mrs. Clinton, by contrast, was a one-term senator with no real accomplishments, and an ineffective Secretary of State.

I understand why people don't listen to the lyrics of these speeches. In some cases, their silliness and obvious mendacity ruins the excitement and mood set by the music. Just turn off your mind and rock on.

Political Correctness

Political Correctness is the rather clumsy appellation given to the idea that certain political or social sentiments or actions are necessarily to be treated as taboos, the violation of which brings censure and other punishments upon the violator.

Simply put, it's a form of coercion by popular opinion. It's an exercise in macroaggression by a minority against a majority and often works somewhat like a pack of hyenas isolating a single animal from the herd, pouncing upon it, and tearing it to pieces. A hapless student, faculty member, businessman, or public figure who has transgressed in word or deed the small-minded orthodoxies of the pack of thought-predators staffing our media outlets and roaming the halls of our universities and government agencies is targeted, isolated, pounced upon, and devoured.

This is the fate which crushed Aaron and Melissa Klein, the owners of a now closed family bakery, who were ordered to pay out $135,000 for refusing to participate in a lesbian wedding. It's the judgment imposed upon a clerk in Kentucky named Kimberly Davis who refused to sign marriage certificates for gays because doing so violated her religious beliefs, and it has damaged the lives of a host of others. These simple folk were publicly humiliated and/or financially ruined in order to punish them for their insolence in standing on the First Amendment and pour encourager les autres

Professors have been denied tenure and students threatened with dismissal from their colleges for voicing opinions which deviate from the "approved" views on race, religion, evolution, or sexuality. Yet, had they been engaged in speech or deeds acceptable to the left, speech that called for the deaths of white police officers, for instance, they'd be feted this week at the Democratic National Convention.

The larger herd stands apart as the unfortunate victim is mauled by the hyenas. The herd's angry, perhaps, but helpless, unable to do much of anything to aid their stricken member but exhaling in relief that it's not them who was chosen to be dinner.

They're helpless because they don't realize that if they would band together, lower their horns, and charge at the hyenas they'd send them scampering for their lives. Likewise, Americans, if they could bestir themselves, could lower their rhetorical and electoral horns and put the media and university thought-police and inquisitors to flight. We can't stand by dumbly, like the herd, waiting for someone else to speak out against the hyenas. We can start by working to elect people to office this November who believe in freedom of speech and individual justice.

Every American would do well to commit to memory the words of philosopher Bertrand Russell who wrote that,

One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny.

Indeed, anything that goes beyond this is the herd standing by while it's numbers slowly diminish under the tyranny of ideological predators and bullies.

Ruminations on Yesterday

Yesterday's political events stirred up a number of thoughts and questions in my mind, the answers to which may be obvious to those readers with more bountiful intellectual gifts than I possess, but I'll share them anyway.

• How could people listen to some of the speeches last night and not laugh out loud? There, for instance, was Michelle Obama lecturing her audience to not let anyone tell them this country isn't great. This despite the fact that her husband has for his entire life been telling us that this country needs to be fundamentally transformed.
  
  It's her husband who has been telling us that America is racist, that we're going to suffer a self-inflicted eco-catastrophe soon, that the principles on which it was founded need to be revised. This is the woman, moreover, who eight years ago told us that until her husband had been nominated she had never been proud of this country, and now she's telling us this is a great country?



• Then there were Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren who have spent most of their lives condemning the wealthy 1%, economic inequality, crony capitalism, the political corruption big money fosters, and calling for government regulation or even a takeover of the financial sector, throwing their support behind a woman who is the embodiment of all of the things they despise.
  
  Bernie Sanders, the man who for a year and a half has led a "revolution" that would wrest control of the country from the hands of the wealthy, who was undercut by the supposedly neutral Democratic National Committee (DNC), surely with the knowledge, if not the connivance, of Ms Clinton, now comes out and asks his supporters, who invested so much time, energy, treasure, and hope in his cause, to vote for the very woman who is the antithesis of everything he stands for. It's breathtaking.



• Why is it that now, whenever there's a terrorist attack, the news media keeps asking whether ISIS was behind it? To repeat a famous question, what difference, at this point, does it make? Why the fascination with ISIS? It's as if the people reporting on these things somehow think the victims are less dead if ISIS wasn't involved. Or is it that they think that if the terrorists aren't affiliated with, or influenced by, ISIS then there's no reason to think that their religion had anything to do with their crimes.
  
  Perhaps by focusing on whether the perpetrator was associated in some way with ISIS they can elide mention of the things these terrorists all have in common. They're all relatively young Muslim males. Whether they're influenced by ISIS or not is irrelevant.



• Why are the Democrats and their media spokespersons so eager to implant the idea in the national consciousness that the DNC emails were hacked by the Russians? A tranche of emails were released by Wikileaks a few days ago showing collusion between the DNC and the media to sabotage the Sanders campaign. It would seem that the salient questions would not be who hacked them but what they say and whether the emails were genuine, which no one is disputing and which is why Debbie Wasserman Schultz was ousted as the chair of the party.
  
  For some reason, though, the media seems to want us to focus on the fact that it was the big, bad Russians who hacked them, probably to help Trump, they're saying, instead of having us focus on the corruption in the Democratic party and in some precincts of the media which, according to the emails, are populated by servile lackeys of the Democratic party.

A couple of concluding thoughts. Why isn't the media focusing on this question: Do we really want to put in charge of our nation's security people who can't be bothered to secure their own email communications? Shouldn't we be having that conversation, especially in light of Clinton's reckless use of electronic communications? I hope our CIA is as good at hacking the emails of our adversaries as the Russians apparently are and as the Chinese doubtless are, but I doubt that either the Russians or the Chinese are as complacent about security as the Democrats have shown themselves to be.

Pro-Life Nation

We're sometimes told that a majority of people in the country favor a woman having the right to choose whether to continue a pregnancy or to terminate it via abortion.

The claim is a little misleading. Pro-choice advocates use it to defend the policy of allowing a woman to tend a pregnancy at any time until just prior to birth, and as is the case with extremists like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, while the baby is being born and even after the baby has emerged completely from the mother.

This is not, however, how many pro-choicers understand their position.

A recent Marist survey of 1,009 adults conducted July 5-12 found that 62 percent of people who identify themselves as pro-choice want to limit abortion to the first three months. Kathryn Lopez at National Review summarizes the results:

Though 51 percent of Americans say they are pro-choice, about 8 in 10 Americans support substantial restrictions on abortion (78 percent), and would limit it to, at most, the first three months of pregnancy. This number includes 62 percent of those who identify as pro-choice, 85 percent of African Americans and 84 percent of Latinos.

Clearly, there's a disconnect between the average pro-choice individual and groups like Planned Parenthood which want no restrictions at all placed on when an abortion can be obtained. Among other findings of the poll, according to Lopez, were these:

Taxpayer funding for abortion is opposed by 62 percent of Americans. This includes 65 percent of African Americans, 61 percent of Latinos, and 45 percent of those who say they are pro-choice, as well as 84 percent of Republicans, 61 percent of Independents and 44 percent of Democrats.

Concerning the recent Supreme Court decision, Nearly 8 in 10 Americans (78 percent) want abortion clinics to be held to the same standards as other outpatient surgery centers. This includes 77 percent of African Americans and 82 percent of Latinos, as well as 77 percent of women, and 84 percent of millennials. About three quarters of those who identify as pro-choice (74 percent) agree, as do strong majorities regardless of party affiliation.

In addition, 70 percent of Americans want doctors who perform abortions to be required to have hospital admitting privileges. This includes 71 percent of women, 77 percent of millennials, and 78 percent of Latinos, Pro-life and pro-choice adherents are also equally likely to support such a requirement at a rate of 7 in 10 for each group (71 percent).

And by almost 20 points, a majority of Americans (56 percent to 37 percent) do not believe that healthcare providers should be forced to perform abortions against their conscience or religious beliefs. This includes 6 in 10 Latinos (61 percent) and 4 in 10 who identify as pro-choice (41 percent).

Maybe the Marist poll is inaccurate, or maybe the numbers have always looked like this, but if not, there seems to be a tectonic shift in attitudes taking place in this country concerning the practice of abortion, and folks like the Democrat party elites and Planned Parenthood look like extremists occupying the nether fringes of mainstream public opinion.

Maybe it's time to redefine what we mean by "pro-choice" and reevaluate what it means to be "pro-life."

The Choice

Jonah Goldberg, who I think is currently America's most brilliant writer on politics, has written a column in the wake of the Republican convention that struck a chord with me. Jonah is a conservative who finds Mr. Trump to be totally unsatisfactory as presidential timber and at one point he laments the fact that many of his fellow conservatives seem contemptuous of anyone who refuses to support Mr. Trump. He writes:

I hate what I’ve learned about my side. I hate thinking the worst of people I once respected — sometimes unfairly and sometimes with adamantine certitude. I hate watching TV and seeing people slowly bend to the alleged new necessities.

Every few minutes another e-mailer or Twitter follower claims that my only option is to board the bandwagon, get with the program, or see the writing on the wall — as if such hectoring were an argument rooted in some kind of principle other than the fascistic glorification of the mob and a new right-wing version of The Right Side of History. The party barge is leaving the dock for Wales and one must jump aboard or be painted the party-pooper or the traitor.

I hate discovering that so many people are disappointed in me for not playing my part in a racket.

Every day, if not every hour, I am told that my true motives are in reality desires, goals, and ambitions that have never once entered my mind. I want Hillary Clinton to be president of the United States as much as I want to be a patient of a narcoleptic proctologist (“Oh, I’m sorry, did I leave that in there all that time?”). I want the Supreme Court to be handed to the Left as much as I want a lap dance from Chris Christie.

I hate that after 20 years of fighting what I believe to be the good fight, so many can’t muster the good will or generosity to consider that I’m doing what I think is right. I’m entirely open to the argument that my analysis and judgment is wrong. But I am resentful, furious and, most of all, contemptuous of the lazy and self-justifying assumption that my motives are malign.

I have nothing but sympathy for those who feel they must vote against Hillary Clinton. But I have scorn for those who think that requires lying about Trump. If you’re a true-believer in Trump, that’s fine. I think you’re making the same mistake that the Left’s 2008 true believers made about Obama. There are no saviors in politics. But when millions of people think there can be, those of us in the Remnant of doubt get treated like heretics.

That’s fine. Indeed, despite my obvious fatigue and anger, I’m actually far more hopeful than you might think. In Cleveland, I met scores of fellow heretics. We didn’t meet in catacombs. But we plotted and planned all the same. We are the anti-establishment now.

We stand opposed to two parties united behind two different facets of statism and identity politics. We are the new rebel alliance fighting against the narrative of a new empire. We aren’t as many as I would like, but we are far from few. We may not win, but one thing is for sure: It’s more fun to be the rebel.

You can read his entire column at the link as well as subscribe to his G-File which is emailed once a week.

From my point of view, among all the reasons why Trump should be viewed with deep suspicion, the fact that Sean Hannity has a man-crush on him is not the least, and among the reasons why it may be necessary to vote for Trump is that as bad as he is, his opponent is much worse.

Indeed, Trump is a cornucopia of vices and faults, but almost any flaw one could find in him could also be discovered without hardly looking in Hillary and/or her husband, who would surely be co-president should she be elected.

I deeply resent that the two major parties have forced us to make a choice between a man who has the emotional maturity of a sixth-grader and a woman who corrupts everything she touches, who is a stranger to the concept of integrity, who puts her own convenience and personal secrets ahead of the national security, and who has given the appearance, at the very least, of influence peddling - not just to American banks but also to foreign governments.

I question the moral judgment, wisdom and intellectual consistency of those who are enthusiastic about either Trump or Clinton. How can one be enthusiastic about the prospect of being led either by a towering narcissist or a felonious incompetent?

On the other hand, I reluctantly disagree with those who argue we should withhold our vote. This came up in an e-conversation with a friend this morning as we talked about Jonah's column and the anguish many conservatives are feeling this election cycle at having no one they can be excited about. Here's an edited version of what I said to him: Trump's candidacy has managed to split conservatives into two factions: Those who place principles above expediency and those who are willing to subordinate their principles to a Nietzschean ressentiment or hostility toward the source of their resentments. The shame of it is that the latter group, in which we find people like Sean Hannity and Ann Coulter, are showing open contempt for those in the former group like the National Review crowd and Ted Cruz.

For my own part, though I sympathize with the more principled folks among the #NeverTrumpers, I think we have to vote for the least bad candidate. If we don't we're sure to get the worst possible candidate.

Everything people despise in Trump's character, and there's much to dislike, we'd get in at least equal measure in Hillary and/or her husband. But worse than that we'd also get someone who has been proven to be as cavalier about the truth as she is about the safety of American diplomats, someone who has been reckless with national security and shown terrible judgment in Libya, Russia, and Iran, someone who has prostituted herself to the big financial institutions she claims she'll rein in, someone who has never created a business or a job, and who has no significant positive accomplishments to show for her years in public office.

Equally as troubling, in my mind, is that Ms. Clinton embraces the progressive social agenda on abortion, open borders and open bathrooms. Indeed, I think she'd be even more radical on some of these matters than she indicates.

In any case, whether or not I'm right in holding the belief I mentioned in that last sentence, two issues are paramount for me in this election: Illegal immigration and the Supreme Court. On both of these I think it necessary to gamble that Trump would do better than Clinton. Indeed, from a conservative point of view, it's hard to imagine him doing worse, but I'm very far from being enthusiastic.

Saving Lives in Iraq

Last month I did a post on an aid agency called Preemptive Love Coalition (PLC) and the work they're doing in Fallujah, Iraq to save the lives of Iraqi refugees from the horror of ISIS and the turmoil of war.

PLC has recently sent out an update which presents a summary of what they've accomplished in the last couple of months. It's an inspiring account. Here's an overview:

• Since May 26, you've given more than $751,047.
• We've spent $421,000 providing lifesaving food, water, and more, as of July 18.
• Displaced families have received more than 611,000 pounds of food.
• We're delivering 52,000 liters of water daily.
• We've provided 1.5 million liters of water total.
• We've served approximately 43,000 people.
• Fallujah families are expected to be kept in camps for 3-6 months. Currently we have enough funds on hand to help for one more month.

Over the last several weeks, you’ve helped bring truckloads of food—rice, lentils, beans, cooking oil, sugar, tea, and milk. Each food pack you provide is large enough to feed a family for a month. You’ve also delivered hundreds of portable cooking stoves, tanks to provide a daily supply of clean water,bars of soap, hygiene kits, and more.

These families survived bullets and bombs. Thanks to you, they have a good chance of surviving the desert, too.

You can read more about their work at the link.

PLC is not political, they're not affiliated with any government agency, their work is funded completely by donations, and as of now they're the only international aid group working inside the militarized zone. The need is great and will grow greater as the Iraqi government moves on in another month or so to liberate Mosul from ISIS.

What Sharia Is and Isn't

Despite the title of his recent column in the New York Times, What Sharia Is and Isn't, Noah Feldman doesn't really tell us much about what sharia is and isn't.

He explains the difference between sharia and fiqh (Sharia is the will of God revealed in the Quran and in the life of Mohammed. Fiqh is the interpretation of God's will by scholars applying their reason), but he doesn't say anything about the question to which people attach the most importance nowadays, to wit: What, exactly, is the content of sharia? What is it that most Muslims - not the "radicals," but average devout Muslims who wish to live according to sharia - believe that the Quran teaches?

One thing I think we can say about sharia is that it's not what Westerners would call "moderate."

Suppose you found yourself among a group of people which, it eventually became clear to you:

• held approximately the same views about gays as the Westboro Baptists, only worse.
• held approximately the same views about women as Jim Crow era southerners held about blacks.
• held approximately the same views about Jews as did the Nazis.
• held approximately the same views about freedom of religion as medieval inquisitors.
• held approximately the same views about freedom of speech as the North Korean government
• held approximately the same views about human equality as advocates of the Hindu caste system.

Would you call the group "moderate"? Yet these are views held by large numbers of mainstream Muslims, not just in Saudi Arabia or Pakistan, but in Europe and the U.S. A Pew poll found that a majority of American Muslims prefer sharia, and one in four accepts the use of violence against other Americans who give offense to Islam, for instance, by caricaturing Mohammed.

One reason why it seems so easy to radicalize young Muslim men and turn them into murderous terrorists may well be that for a great many young Muslim men the ideological distance they must travel from mainstream beliefs to radicalization is not really all that far.

The Creation of the Internet

Al Gore has for eighteen years been saddled with the accusation that he once absurdly implied that he was responsible for the creation of the internet. His defenders, on the other hand, have for as long complained that Mr. Gore has been unjustly maligned by ungenerous critics who misinterpret his words, and that he never intended to suggest that he invented anything.

I'm no fan of Mr. Gore, but I tend to agree with his defenders on this one. Here's part of the interview he gave in 1999 which led to so much merrymaking among his detractors:

A fair interpretation of his words and their context is that he's asserting that he was among the legislative leaders responsible for funding the development of the network, not that he invented it.

Whatever the case with Mr. Gore, though, Ben Tarnoff at The Guardian relates an interesting account of some of the genuinely seminal steps in the evolution of the internet, and, justly or unjustly, Mr. Gore's name doesn't appear in it even once.

Tarnoff's genesis account puts the creation event in a beer garden, of all places, near Palo Alto, California in 1976:

In the kingdom of apps and unicorns, Rossotti’s is a rarity. This beer garden in the heart of Silicon Valley has been standing on the same spot since 1852. It isn’t disruptive; it doesn’t scale. But for more than 150 years, it has done one thing and done it well: it has given Californians a good place to get drunk.

During the course of its long existence, Rossotti’s has been a frontier saloon, a gold rush gambling den, and a Hells Angels hangout. These days it is called the Alpine Inn Beer Garden, and the clientele remains as motley as ever. On the patio out back, there are cyclists in spandex and bikers in leather. There is a wild-haired man who might be a professor or a lunatic or a CEO, scribbling into a notebook. In the parking lot is a Harley, a Maserati, and a horse.

It doesn’t seem a likely spot for a major act of innovation. But 40 years ago this August, a small team of scientists set up a computer terminal at one of its picnic tables and conducted an extraordinary experiment. Over plastic cups of beer, they proved that a strange idea called the internet could work.

You can read the fascinating details at the link. The article dove-tailed, strangely, with something I read in a book I'm currently rereading. It's a biography of Erasmus of Rotterdam, the Christian humanist scholar and reformer who was born about 1466. The biography was written in 1924 by historian John Huizinga who makes this statement:

Erasmus belonged to the generation which had grown up together with the youthful art of printing. To the world of those days it was like a newly acquired organ; people felt rich, powerful, happy in the possession of this 'almost divine implement.' ...What would Erasmus have been without the printing press? To broadcast the ancient documents, to purify and restore them, was his life's passion. The certainty that the printed book places exactly the same text in the hands of thousands of readers, was to him a consolation that former generations had lacked.

As I read this I thought that the computer - and the internet and social media to which it has given rise - is in many ways analogous to the printing press. Just as the Protestant reformation and so much else could never have happened prior to the printing and circulation of thousands of copies of books and pamphlets, so, too, could so much that happens in our world today never have come to pass without the internet and social media. The Arab Spring is perhaps a salient example.

At any rate, check out the article at the link if you're interested in the history of this world-changing innovation.