Chinook Down

Kabul, Afghanistan: United States and Afghan troops today reached the site of a downed military helicopter that crashed in a mountainous area this week. The United States military said Wednesday that the aircraft appeared to have been brought down by hostile fire.

Keep the fallen heroes and their families in your prayers.

The milbloggers have full coverage of the crash and the 16 brave troops whose bodies have been recovered.

Matthew Heidt, a Navy SEAL, has details on the crew. Writes Heidt: This is a very sad day for the Naval Special Warfare Community, and I would ask that those of you who are able, will donate to the Naval Special Warfare Foundation and the Special Operations Warrior Foundation for the benefit of these families.

Done. (by Michelle Malkin)

Hugh Hewitt interviewed a number of milbloggers on today's show, including FroggyRuminations, Col. Bay, Smash, Blackfive as well as regulars Mark Steyn, Lileks and, from Baghdad, Michael Yon.

Hugh urged the audience to contribute to the United Warrior Survivor Foundation which is "dedicated to the surviving spouses of Special Operations military personnel killed in the line of duty since 9/11. UWSF offers Survivor Transition Assistance to surviving spouses, along with educational counseling, financial guidance, investment planning, and other programs." You can contribute here.

Hugh asked civilian bloggers to post a link to the Foundation. The url is easy to remember: www.frogfriends.com.

SoldiersAngels can also use as many sponsors as there are out there.

Done.

God Bless America and Her Fallen Heroes.

Lessons of September 11th

Last night the President addressed the nation from a military town in the heart of the North Carolina. About 9,300 soldiers and airmen from Fort Bragg and the adjacent Pope Air Force Base are deployed to Iraq, and 89 have been killed there or in Afghanistan. Johnny Walton of the 82nd Airborne Wolfpack Division, our grandson returned from Iraq, was there.

Before his speech, President Bush met privately with 90 relatives of slain service members. Crystal Owen, a third-grade teacher, asked the president to wear a metal bracelet memorializing her deceased husband, Staff Sgt. Mike Owen, and Cpl. John Santos, both of whom were killed in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The President was visibly moved and spoke sincerely: "Like most Americans, I see the images of violence and bloodshed. Every picture is horrifying, and the suffering is real. Amid all this violence, I know Americans ask the question: Is the sacrifice worth it? It is worth it, and it is vital to the future security of our country."

The media critics and the Democrats wasted no time rallying around our troops and our commander. Instead, Kerry, Kennedy, Durbin, Pelosi, Reed and the rest of the weak kneed crowd immediately began yammering their old saws about quagmire, dredged up from the Viet Nam playbook. The president should know he hit the sweet spot during his speech because all the right people are angry.

They had the gall to accuse the President of using the 9/11 tragedy to drum up support for the war. Just imagine if President Roosevelt, during WWII, was prohibited from talking about the attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Dem’s argue that the war on terror is unconnected to the Iraq war, since everyone knows that Saddam had nothing to do with 9/11. They want America to believe that our soldiers are fighting and dying for nothing much. One even said "what if we do win, what would it be worth?"

On the first point they ought to read the fine article by liberal writer Nicholas Lemann in the liberal New Yorker magazine's February 17/24, 2003 issue, "After Iraq: The Plan to Remake the Middle East". Here's what Lemann wrote following the State of the Union address and 6 weeks before we invaded Iraq:

" Has a war ever been as elaborately justified in advance as the coming war with Iraq? In his State of the Union address, President Bush offered at least four justifications, none of them overlapping: the cruelty of Saddam against his own people; his flouting of treaties and United Nations Security Council resolutions; the military threat that he poses to his neighbors; and his ties to terrorists in general and to Al Qaeda in particular. In addition, Bush hinted at the possibility that Saddam might attack the United States or enable someone else to do so."

Note there was no mention of Saddam tied to the 9/11 attack.

On the second point, it is truly appalling that they fail to see the enormous importance of this war. Do the Dems ask themselves what Zarqawi and his merry band of cut throats would be doing if we did not have them occupied and dying in Iraq? Could it be they might be blowing up trains in Spain, or killing the pope or committing some atrocity at Euro Disney or Yankee Stadium?

When the Japanese attacked Hawaii, we did not pull back to the West Coast and hope that they would go away. No, we invaded the South Pacific, fought on Guam and Midway and ultimately dropped atomic bombs on Japan. We took the fight to the Japanese, and never again had to fight on US soil.

One of the most ludicrous Demo accusations is that we have no “exit strategy.” Since when did we ever fight a war with an exit strategy? Unless by that you mean unconditional surrender. A war with an exit strategy is a war you intend to lose.

The President was having none of that: "We will stay in Iraq as long as we are needed and not a day longer." He added, "Our strategy can be summed up this way: As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down."

It was good to hear the commander-in-chief remind people that this is still the war against Islamo-fascists who slaughtered 3000 Americans on 9/11 and who spent the eight years before those atrocities murdering and promising to murder Americans.

President Bush asked all Americans to pray for our brave soldiers and to let them know how much we appreciate their service. He mentioned a web site for just that purpose at America Supports You. Go there and do your duty. Also visit the mil blog Soldiers Angels where you can “adopt” a soldier. Every classroom in the country should do that.

New, New Math

In the 1970s a band was formed in my hometown of Rochester, New York to celebrate freedom from the multiplication tables. The New Math rock band was “whatever you wanted it to be” for the occasion. I thought its music was incoherent, but then I didn’t like the Beetles either. The New Math big hit was “Die Trying.” R.I.P.

Meanwhile, our daughter Carolynne was struggling with the new math in grammar school. New Math emphasized abstract concepts like set theory and number bases other than 10, rather than arithmetic and the multiplication tables. This new focus was frequently dogmatic. In some cases first-graders were taught axiomatic set theory. Poor Carolynne.

Many parents and teachers complained that the new curriculum was far too abstract and essentailly worthless if it took the place of traditional math training. In the end it was concluded that the experiment was not working, and New Math fell out of favor. Too late for Carolynne but not for John.

Tom Leyher wrote a satirical song named New Math, making fun of the more absurd aspects of the subject: "...in the new approach, as you know, the important thing is to understand what you're doing, rather than to get the right answer."

New Math was a disaster for a generation of kids. Now we have a new, new math, also called “Ethnomath” that is truly appalling.

In the 1990s, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics issued standards that disparaged basic skills like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, since all of these could be easily performed on a calculator. The council preferred real-life problem solving, using everyday situations.

To get an idea of what’s involved take a look at the index of an Ethnomath textbook. Under “F” you find “families (in poverty data), fast food nutrition data, fat in fast food, feasibility study, feeding tours, ferris wheel, fish, fishing, flags, flight, floor plan, flower beds, food, football, Ford Mustang, franchises and fund-raising carnival.

Now math is being used as a political tool by educators who call themselves "critical theorists" to advance social justice. A new textbook, "Rethinking Mathematics: Teaching Social Justice by the Numbers," shows how problem solving, ethnomath and political action can be merged. Among its topics are: "Sweatshop Accounting," with units on poverty, globalization and the unequal distribution of wealth.

Note to parents: The countries that regularly beat our students in tests of mathematics do not use the subject to steer students into political action. (Diane Ravitch, Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution.)

Message from John

Hey Dad,

I am hoping Condi Rice is our presidential candidate for 2008. I have a feeling that, if she were to run, Republicans would rally around her big time. I also think that this would put the NAACP in the amazing position of not endorsing the first black presidential candidate!

So here is a t-shirt idea if this scenario comes to be:

N ational
A ssociation for the
A dvancement of
C aucasian
P oliticians

Let's see, a black PhD, Stanford Chancelor and professor, Russian military specialist, classical pianist, balerina, author, National Security Advisor to the President, Secretary of State....vs....Hillary......what a mismatch!

Subject: Brooks Army Medical Center

Denzel Washington and his family visited the troops at Brook Army Medical Center (BAMC) in San Antonio, Texas the other day. This is where soldiers who have been evacuated from Germany come to be hospitalized in the States, especially burn victims.

They have buildings at BAMC called Fisher Houses where soldiers' families can stay, for little or no charge, while their soldier is staying in the hospital. BAMC has quite a few of these houses on base but, as you can imagine, they are almost completely filled most of the time. While Denzel Washington was visiting BAMC, they gave him a tour of one of the Fisher Houses. He asked how much one of them would cost to build. He took his check book out and wrote a check for the full amount right there on the spot.

The soldiers overseas were amazed to hear this story and want to get the word out to the American public, because it warmed their hearts to hear it.

Why do Alec Baldwin, Modonna, Michael Moore, Sean Penn and other Hollywood types make front page news with their anti-everything-America crap and this doesn't even make page 3 in the Metro section of any newspaper except the base newspaper in San Antonio.

PASS THE WORD. This needs as wide a distribution as we can create.

Mythical Protectionism

On the 75th anniversary of the infamous Smoot-Hawley tariff bill that helped trigger the Great Depression, Senators Chuck Shumer (D-NY) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) proposed a 27.5% tariff on Chinese imports … and the stock market plunged. Will they ever learn?

It is instructive to recount the history of that earlier economic calamity. Thanks to the interventionism (meddling) of Republican President Herbert Hoover and Democratic President Franklin Roosevelt, the American and worldwide economies were critically wounded and kept on life support for over a decade. Furthermore the economic depression exacerbated the frustrations of the German and Japanese peoples that led to the Second World War

The commonly accepted story about the Great Depression of the 1930s is that it was caused by an unavoidable breakdown of capitalism. The popular myth is that the laissez-faire policies of President Hoover permitted the excesses of economic freedom that led to the 1929 stock market crash and the subsequent depression. The corollary is that it took government intervention (tax increases, wage and price controls, business regulation, massive government spending programs) enacted by the great FDR to bring us out of the Great Depression and save capitalism from itself. Such is the history as taught in the schools. Too bad it’s just a myth and precisely the opposite of the truth.

In actual fact, Hoover was anything but laissez-faire. As Secretary of Commerce in the 1920s, he adopted the Russian central planning model and embarked on an ambitious plan to eliminate poverty and transform American society. Hoover believed that “human manipulation could triumph over any alleged law of economics.”

Hoover thought that there was too much “destructive competition” in business that led to “economic waste.” So he installed government planners to oversee industries and limit competition, effectively creating government sanctioned cartels. Of course the reality is that the process of competition is what reveals the best way to do business. (Friedrick Hayek)

Hoover believed that maintaining the purchasing power of labor through high wages, even above what was justified by labor productivity, was the key to prosperity. This made him very popular with organized labor. Of course the inflated wages made workers too expensive to keep and companies had to reduce employment or fail. At the height of the Great Depression the unemployment rate was 25%.

He subsidized farmers, the largest segment of the economy, in order to control surpluses and bolster food prices. Farmers were paid not to grow food, people went hungry and farm laborers were let go.

Perhaps Hoover’s greatest mistake was his advocacy of the “scientific management of the money supply,” having the Federal Reserve create money to lower the cost of credit. From 1921 – 1929 the government increased the money supply by 62%. This caused businesses to borrow for unwarranted capital expenditures and led to the overproduction of goods. The inevitable oversupply of products could not be consumed, prices plummeted and businesses failed. Economist Ludwig von Mises predicted that this policy would cause a crash, in the middle of the 1920s boom.

Having injected money into the private sector, Hoover then took it out in the form of greatly increased taxes to finance massive public works programs (13% of government spending in 1929). As a result, private sector spending decreased just when it was needed to reinvigorate the economy.

Hoover’s biggest sin was to favor high protectionist tariffs that benefited the manufacturers who supported the Republican Party. In 1930, President Hoover signed into law the Smoot-Hawley Tariff over the protest of more than one thousand economists, and the stock market plummeted that same day. The average tariff soared to 59% and the resulting trade wars caused a meltdown of world trade that contributed to the Great Depression.

Hoover’s hyper-interventionism turned a recession that could have been ended simply by allowing the capital markets to work freely, into the Great Depression. Roosevelt was an even greater interventionist and his policies made the Great Depression longer and more severe than it had to be. In retirement Hoover saw the error of his ways. Roosevelt never did and the Democratic Party is still clueless to this day. (Thomas DiLorenzo, How Capitalism Saved America)

Fast forward to 2005: China bashing Senators Schumer and Graham seem to be angry at a rising bilateral trade deficit resulting from Chinese imports to the U.S. But so what? In the last couple of years the U.S. has created about 3.5 million new jobs, the unemployment rate is only 5.1%, and the nation’s GDP is expanding at a 4.5% pace. Meanwhile, China’s economy climbs near a 10% rate, raising the Chinese population from the depths of poverty.

History has taught us that free trade is part of the solution – it’s not the problem. (Lawrence Kudlow)

Crisis of Culture

Before he became pope, Cardinal Ratzinger was famous for his scathing commentaries, known affectionately to his young followers as “Rat-Zingers.” In the last post (“The Fall of the West”) I quoted from one of his essays about the decline of faith and morality in Europe. Now, Pope Benedict XVI has released a book written when he was still Cardinal that expands greatly on the subject. In "The Europe of (Saint) Benedict: In the crisis of cultures," the pope focuses on the role of Christianity in Europe and the need to respect life from conception to its natural death.

Pope Benedict takes as the starting point of his book the European Union leader’s decision to exclude any reference to Europe's Christian roots from the preamble of the proposed EU constitution (properly rejected by French and Dutch voters in recent referenda). The Vatican campaigned for the reference as part of its attempt to stem the tide of increasingly empty churches in a continent that is often hostile to religion.

"Europe has developed a culture which, in a way never before known to humanity, excludes God from public conscience," Benedict writes.

The EU Constitution does contain arcane pronouncements on social rights such as those of Sardinian farmers to sell cheese containing worms, but is silent on the cultural and religious underpinnings of the European continent.

Pope Benedict XVI rightly criticizes a Europe that has failed to protect its "youngest and weakest" and parents who think their rights to freedom and leisure trump the rights of the unborn child: "They become blind to the right to life of another, of the youngest and weakest who don't have a voice."

He issues a sober warning that we in America should also heed: "Accepting that the rights of the weakest can be violated means that you accept also that the right of force prevails over the force of rights."

The Cantagalli publishing house has said there were no immediate plans to translate Benedict's book from Italian into other languages. Let’s request an English edition from Amazon or directly from Cantagalli if you speak Italian.

Fall of the West

Italian author and journalist Oriana Fallaci, in her 70s and stricken with a cancer, faces jail for"vilipendio" of a “religion admitted by the state." Ms. Fallaci, it seems, vilified Islam in a book she wrote last year called "The Force of Reason." It’s thesis is that the Old Continent is on the verge of becoming a dominion of Islam.

Fallaci explains that "Europe is no longer Europe, it is 'Eurabia,' a colony of Islam, where the Islamic invasion does not proceed only in a physical sense, but also in a mental and cultural sense. Servility to the invaders has poisoned democracy, with obvious consequences for the freedom of thought, and for the concept itself of liberty."

The impending Fall of the West torments Ms. Fallaci because of it’s self-inflicted nature. "Look at the school system of the West today. Students do not know history! They don't, for Christ's sake. They don't know who Churchill was! In Italy, they don't even know who Cavour was!"

In the schools they teach multi-culturism, the lefty theory that all cultures are equally good – so no one is taught, and no one is allowed to say, that the radical strain of Islam is a nihilistic culture and a danger to the civilized world. It is a matter of life and death.

"You cannot survive if you do not know the past. We know why all the other civilizations have collapsed--from an excess of decadence, of richness and from lack of morality, of spirituality. The moment you give up your principles, and your values . . . the moment you laugh at those principles, and those values, you are dead, your culture is dead, your civilization is dead. Period."

Fallaci worries about the lack of moral leaders in the West. George Bush, she concedes, has "vigor" and is "obstinate" (a compliment) and "gutsy”. . . . Nobody obliged him to do anything about Terri Schiavo, or to take a stand on stem cells. But he did."

But is there any European leader whom she admires? "I feel less alone when I read the books of Ratzinger." It is "Ratzinger" (as she insists on calling the pope) who is her soulmate.

As a cardinal, Pope Benedict XVI wrote frequently on the European condition. Last year, he wrote an essay titled "If Europe Hates Itself," which contains the stark assessment: "The West reveals . . . a hatred of itself, which is strange and can only be considered pathological; the West . . . no longer loves itself; in its own history, it now sees only what is deplorable and destructive, while it is no longer able to perceive what is great and pure."

The historian Arnold Toynbee wrote that "Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder." Moral and cultural decay, relativism and weakness are the chosen methods of European suicide. Let’s make sure that America does not follow that path.

A fuller account of the interview with Ms. Fallaci upon which this post was based is found in “Prophet of Decline” by Tunku Varadarajan, The Opinion Journal, June 23, 2005.

The Establishment Clause

Last night I attended the Saint John Fisher parish Moral Decisions meeting and introduced friend Sue Morgan to the group. Our leader, Pat Hart, reported that he asked Notre Dame Law Professor Gerard Bradley for a transcript of his First Amendment speeches that we are studying but found that they were never transcribed. Prof. Bradley said that he would send some related papers and we might also look on the First Things magazine web site for them. I went to the site after the meeting and found a very good set of papers on a symposium called Religion and the Court 1995.

In Rosenberger v. the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia, the Supreme Court reviewed a decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals which had held that the Establishment Clause of the Constitution forbade the University (a state entity) from funding a journal of opinion that advocated Christian religious views. The Appeals court admitted that this denial of funding burdened the freedom of speech of the students who published the religious journal, but said that enforcement of the Establishment Clause was a superior interest to be protected.

The Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals, holding that the University had violated the Constitution through "viewpoint discrimination" and that funding the journal did not violate the Establishment Clause.

Professor Bradley wrote:

When the New York Times, the sergeant-at-arms of the "naked public square," said that the Supreme Court "had blown a hole in the wall of separation," I knew the justices had done something right.

But a careful reading of the decisions makes clear that blowing "a hole in the wall" of separation won't do. We need to raze the whole structure and lay a new foundation or, better, go back to that laid by the Founders.

Rosenberger, as the Court analyzed it, was basically a free speech case. The question was how much worse does the Establishment Clause allow (or require) states to treat believers than nonbelievers? The question, put differently by Justice Scalia, is whether piety is on a par with pornography, whether (in my words) the Madonna is on a par with Madonna.

A solid majority of the Supreme Court holds that the Constitution not only permits but sometimes requires that piety be treated worse than pornography. Breyer subscribes (with O'Connor, Ginsburg, Souter, and Stevens) to the so-called "endorsement" test for the compatibility of religion and public life. The endorsement test is the master principle of all church/state jurisprudence. It is lethal stuff, indeed.

The endorsement test holds that public authority may do nothing that might be construed as a sign that religion is a good thing, that religion is a component of human flourishing. This neutrality is an instance of a broader neutrality about the good life that the justices, since around 1970, have brazenly but falsely proclaimed to be our constitutional ideal. The broad neutrality brought us abortion-on-demand and will, in all likelihood, soon christen assisted suicide and homosexual marriage as constitutional rights.

The majority served up in Rosenberger the same junk history that Justice Hugo Black served up in Everson, the first Establishment Clause case, back in 1947. The key move here is not to talk about the First Amendment at all, but to talk instead about something James Madison wrote in a Virginia political contest several years earlier.

Madison's "Memorial and Remonstrance" was a petition circulated in 1785 against a proposed tax to fund teachers of the Christian religion. In Rosenberger the Supreme Court held that Memorial and Remonstrance framed the debate upon which the Religion Clauses stand.

But the experience of all times shows Religion to be the guardian of morals and that avarice is accomplishing the destruction of religion. The declaration of rights [in the Virginia Constitution], it seems to me, rather contends against forcing modes of faith and forms of worship, than against compelling contribution for the support of religion in general.

The distinction between state acts that force acts of worship on people and those that mandate general support of religion is the indispensable core of any understanding of what the Founders were up to. It is central, I would argue, to any sound approach to church-state questions in our day. The distinction is completely lost on the current Court.

I have provided only a brief synopsis of Professor Bradley's opinion. Read the rest on the First Things web site. I'll close with Bradley's punch line: The courts are systematically dismantling the concept of public morality in favor of the "autonomous self." The president's judicial appointments could not be more important to fate of religion and society.

Intelligent Design Is

The headlines in the main stream media have been rhetorical:

“Not Intelligent and Surely Not Science”

“Devolution: Why Intelligent Design Isn’t”

“Catching up with the Past on Evolution”

The statements in the articles border on hysterical:

“Our fingertip grip on the 21st century is already slipping. We could tumble into the 18th century before you can say macroevolution.”

“Intelligent Design advocates have much to answer for. They are retarding the spirit of scientific inquiry among our youth.”

“Intelligent Design is creationism in a cheap tuxedo.”

Such hyperbola has been accompanied by a series of lawsuits over the teaching of Intelligent Design (ID) in the public schools. In Oct. 2004, the Dover, Penn. school board decreed that “students will be made aware of gaps/problems in Darwin’s theory and of other theories of evolution including, but not limited to, intelligent design.” Then all hell broke loose.

It appears that there is considerably more heat than light being shed on this controversy. Today I found out that even the Starbucks intelligentsias are confused. I was moved to blog!

For an authoritative description of ID let’s turn to one of the scientists who have proposed design as an explanation for biological systems, biochemistry professor Michael Behe.

First, what it isn't: ID is not a religiously based idea; it says nothing about the religious concept of a creator. It is certainly not Biblical literalism or what used to be called creationism. Nor does it reject Darwin’s theory of evolution, the process whereby life arose from non-living matter and subsequently developed entirely by natural means.

Rather, the contemporary argument for ID is based on physical evidence and a straightforward application of logic. The argument for ID consists of four linked claims:

1. We can often recognize the effects of design in nature. This is uncontroversial.

2. The physical marks of design are visible in aspects of biology. This, too, is uncontroversial.

3. We have no good explanation for the foundation of life that doesn't involve intelligence. Here is where thoughtful people may part company.

4. In the absence of any convincing non-design explanation, we are justified in thinking that real intelligent design was involved in life.

In order to evaluate these last two claims we need to look at the physical evidence, at the molecular biology. However we should not overlook design simply because it is so obvious.

The principle claim is that there are things in the world, most notably life, that cannot be accounted for by known natural causes and show features that one would attribute to intelligence. Living organisms are too complex to be explained by any natural, mindless process.

In “Darwin’s Black Box” Behe argues that cells are complex not just in degree but in kind. Cells contain structures that are “irreducibly complex.” This means that if you remove any single part from such a structure, the structure no longer functions. Thus the first rediculously complex cell had to be made in one step, a near mathematical impossibility if governed by random chance. Behe speculates that the “designer” might have assembled the first cell, essentially solving the problem of irreducible complexity, after which evolution might well have proceeded by more or less conventional means.

Furthermore, scientists now know that life is based on incredibly complex machines made of molecules. Can all of life be fit into Darwin’s evolution model?

Darwin himself understood the challenge:

“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”

A few months ago, Nobel Prize-winning physicist and laser inventor Charles Townes was awarded the $1.5 million Templeton Prize. “Religion,” Townes said, “is aimed at understanding the purpose and meaning of our universe, including our own lives. If the universe has a purpose and meaning, this must be reflected in its structure and functioning, and hence in science.”

Opinion polls show that the public “overwhelmingly, and sensibly, thinks that life was designed. And so do many scientists (myself included) who see roles for both the messiness of evolution and the elegance of design.”

Was the war worth it?

It is an American political myth, often voiced by the Democrats, that America goes to war only when there is no question about the necessity of going to war. Of course the left wing of the Party has more than a little angst about the Vietnam War, since it was begun and largely prosecuted by Democratic presidents. Still, they like to proclaim that the Iraq war is the only one where the necessity was in question. That’s a myth; there's always a question. (See the War of 1812, the Spanish-American War, World War I, the Korean War, the Persian Gulf War, etc.)

Thus, the real question about Iraq is, “was it worth it”?

One must examine the alternative. What if we had not invaded Iraq? What is the likely outcome? Arms inspectors David Kay and Charles Duelfer both concluded that Saddam Hussein remained committed to acquiring weapons of mass destruction, that he maintained secret weapons programs right up until the day of the invasion, and that he was waiting for the international community to lose interest or stamina so that he could resume his arms programs unfettered. Countries like France, Germany, Russia, and China that benefited from the “Oil for Food” Program were pushing for a suspension of the arms inspection process, playing right into Hussein’s hands. So would we have been able to contain Hussein indefinitely?

Let’s turn to a high level US administration official for an authoritative opinion.

"Iraqi defiance, followed by force mobilization on our part, followed by Iraqi capitulation," had left "the international community vulnerable to manipulation by Saddam." The longer the standoff continued "the harder it will be to maintain" international support for containing Hussein. "Saddam's history of aggression and his recent record of deception and defiance, leave no doubt that he would resume his drive for regional domination if he had the chance." In other words, containment was not "sustainable over the long run." As long as Hussein remained "in power and in confrontation with the world," Iraq would remain "a source of potential conflict in the region and a source of inspiration for those who equate violence with power and compromise with surrender."

These words were not spoken by Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice or Donald Rumsfield. These warnings were not issued by George Bush or Dick Cheney. No, this was the opinion of Sandy Berger, Democratic national security advisor to Democratic President Bill Clinton, in 1998.

Containment of Saddam Hussein was not a long term solution and military confrontation was inevitable. This was the mess that George Bush inherited and we can only be thankful that he dealt with it.

For a fuller discussion of this topic see the article by Robert Kagan in the 6/19/05 Washington Post.

Club Gitmo

Bhagdad, Iraq: At the bazaar in Sadr City, check out the T-Shirts advertising the tropical paradise in Cuba where every check-in gets a brand new Koran and a prayer rug. (Also at Club Gitmo 4 Kids, but not available to American kids who are not allowed to pray at camp.)

A typical T-shirt sports a Club Gitmo logo on the front pocket and a catchy saying on the back. A jihadi kid favorite is “My Mullah went to Club Gitmo and all I got was this Lousy T-Shirt.”

In the US, Club Gitmo gear is available exclusively at RushLimbaugh.com.

Washington, DC: Senator Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, took the Senate floor and likened US servicemen at Guantanamo Bay to the Nazis:

“Let me read to you what one FBI agent saw. And I quote from his report:”

‘On one occasion, the air conditioning had been turned down so far and the temperature was so cold in the room, that the barefooted detainee was shaking with cold. . . . On another occasion, not only was the temperature unbearably hot, but extremely loud rap music was being played in the room.’

Durbin again:
“If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime--Pol Pot or others--that had no concern for human beings.”

A little rough treatment of terrorists, who would gladly incinerate American men, women and children, in order to garner critical information that could save American lives is the same as Nazi behavior to Dick Durbin, that moral idiot.

Then there was the statement of Democratic Senator Joe Biden: "I think more Americans are in jeopardy as a consequence of the perception that exists worldwide with its existence than if there were no Gitmo."

Annie Coulter hit the nail on the Democratic head: “So if people around the world believe that if they try to kill Americans they might go to a bad, scary place called Guantanamo, that will make them more likely to kill Americans? Let's also pause to ponder the image of the middle-of-the-road, 'centrist' jihadist who could be 'recruited' to jihad by reports about abuse at Guantanamo. You know – the kind of guy who just watches al-Jazeera for the sports and hits the mute button whenever they start in about the Jews again. Liberals want us to believe such a person exists.”

Dick Durbin, Joe Biden, Ted Kennedy, Hillary Clinton and all the rest of the Democrats who compare Gitmo to a gulag and worry about opinion in the Muslim street are almost the definition of moral idiots.

Ralph Peters in the New York Post provides a rationale:

“From our ailing domestic left to overseas America haters, no one really cares about the fate of Mustapha the Murderer or Ahmed the Assassin. The lies told about Gitmo are meant to undercut U.S. foreign policy and embarrass America. The Gitmo controversy is about jealousy of the United States and outrage that we refuse to fail and residual anger that we won the Cold War and exploded the left's great fantasy of a dictatorship of the intellectuals. But the one thing the protests aren't about is human rights. Except, of course, as a means to slam the United States.”

Yep, that’s the ticket: leftist, jealous, intellectual, anti-American … moral idiots.

USC Dean calls us "Christers"

I noted in the last post that moral idiocy is a rich vein of the purest gold for conservative bloggers like moi. I’m reminded of Democratic Party leader/screamer Howard Dean, the gift that keeps on giving to the Republican Party.

I had planned to blog next on the Amnesty International idiots who called Gitmo a gulag. Then I walked Cookie and listened to Hugh Hewitt talk about an amazing example of moral idiocy here in LA at the University of Southern California.
I couldn’t resist.

In the current issue of Los Angeles Weekly is an article called "The New Blacklist," which deals in part with a Christian boycott of products from companies sponsoring pro-gay or salacious entertainment. The objectionable programs include Will & Grace, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, Desperate Housewives, South Park, and the 2006 Gay Games in Chicago.

In the article, "Martin Kaplan, director of the Norman Lear Center at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC, calls the new Christer offensive a drive toward 'theocratic oligopoly. The drumbeat of religious fascism has never been as troubling as it is now in this country"

For Hugh’s "Pittsburgh Steelers fans," I’ll translate: Kaplan calls us Christers, ie. followers of Christ, which would make him an anti-Christer.

He claims that we are driving toward a "theocratic oligopoly." Now an oligopoly is a market that is dominated by a small number of sellers (oligopolists). The word is derived from the Greek for few sellers. I guess Kaplan is saying that only a few businesses will survive the boycott, those that have a moral outlook.

Kaplan is really troubled by the drumbeat of religious fascism. Of course, Fascism (in Italian, fascismo) refers to the authoritarian political movement which ruled Italy from 1922 to 1943. Fascism spread across Europe between WWI and WWII. The term now refers to any totalitarian worldview regardless of its political ideology, including Hitler’s Nazism and Stalin’s Communism.

Fascism is a philosophy of government that assigns to the state control over every aspect of national life. The state is absolute in its methods and unlimited by law in its control and direction of its citizens. For example, both Hitler and Stalin committed mass murder of millions of their country's civilians who did not fit in with their plans.

Now you see that Martin Kaplan is truly a “moral idiot.” Christians who are merely exercising their free speech rights to petition public companies that sponsor programs that undermine the moral fabric of society are compared by Kaplan to mass murderers.

USC grads, let the school know your thoughts on their moral idiot Dean.

Moral Idiots

Thanks to Maggie for her heartfelt comments on my last post (“Not Guilty???”):

“It's a sad day when we don't listen to our children. I see children every day who have severe problems due to emotional, physical, and sexual abuse by adults. Their biggest fear is that no one will believe them … so they keep the secret and the innocence of childhood is gone forever.” (Maggie)

My conclusion on the Jackson travesty was that fans and jurors who could excuse his behavior must be “moral idiots.” Sadly, I fear there is an overabundance of “moral idiots” in Western civilization, many in America. Indeed, the subject of moral idiocy is a treasure trove of material for a blogger. And the insidious and dangerous impact of moral idiots on civilized society is worth our attention.

Take, for one example, the sexual liberation movement in America that has devolved from the “Sex and the City” gals to the lower levels of grade school. Following are two typical cases.

1. Public schools in Massachusetts administer an explicit sex survey to sixth-graders that solicits answers to such questions as "How old were you when you had sexual intercourse for the first time?" and "The last time you had sexual intercourse, did you or your partner use a condom?" Parents were not allowed to view copies of the survey because the school committee felt parents would "misinterpret" the questions.

According to an outraged parent: "In the 6th grade – these are children 11 or 12 years old – they are being asked if they have ever engaged in oral sex, when was the first time that they engaged in oral sex, with how many different people have they engaged in oral sex?”

Another sex survey being administered to eighth-graders asks students to identify themselves as heterosexual, gay or lesbian, or bisexual.

2. A sex education manual for children aged 13 to 16, published by Britain's Family Planning Association, describes how to perform various sexual acts including anal and oral sex, and includes a chapter titled, "How can I be good at sex?" One example explains, "No-one is born sexually experienced, and most of the fun is learning. Talk to your partner. Ask what they like. Be aware of their feelings as well as your own pleasure."

The booklet encourages children to explore their homosexual attractions, and contains details on masturbation. And the value of sex-ed for children: The UK has Europe's highest teen pregnancy rate, along with a skyrocketing incidence of sexually transmitted disease.

Meanwhile, the abstinance approach to teen sexuality is ridiculed and suppressed by organizations including Planned Parenthood, NOW and public school administrations. Yet the data show that the faith based approach works.

The Best Friends program is among the most effective of these according to a recent study by Dr. Robert Lerner published in the peer-reviewed journal Adolescent & Family Health. Lerner’s study found that students who took part in Best Friends are:

> 6 ½ times more likely to remain sexually abstinent.
> Nearly twice as likely to abstain from drinking alcohol.
> Eight times more likely to abstain from drug use.
> More than twice as likely to refrain from smoking.

One would think that these results would cause lawmakers to rethink how government deals with destructive teen behavior. One would be wrong. The government continues to spend $12 on “safe sex” and contraception promotion for every $1 it spends on abstinence. This doesn’t stop groups such as the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS) from attempting to eliminate abstinence programs and replace them with “comprehensive” sex education devoted to promoting contraception among teens. (Melissa Pardue, The Heritage Foundation).

Not Guilty ???

O.J.Simpson: Not Guilty, of insider trading.

Robert Blake: Not Guilty, of child molestation.

Michael Jackson: Not Guilty, of murder.

That's the only way I can figure it out.

Wait, there is one other possibility. Could it be that the jury pool in California is loaded with moral idiots?

Rumor has it that Saddam Hussein's lawyer has filed for a change of venue from Bhagdad to Santa Barbara. Jacques Chirac and other French fans are preparing a trip to SoCal in order to support their guy.

Jacko has invited the French youngsters to visit Neverland. Only the boys are allowed to sleep over.

The Arrogance of Values

Part 13: Secularism and the Meaningless Life

Most irreligious individuals, quite understandably, do not like to acknowledge the inevitable and logical consequence of their irreligiosity -- that life is ultimately purposeless. If there is no God who designed the universe and who cares about His creations, life is a meaningless random event. You and I are no more significant, our existence has no more meaning, than that of a rock on Mars. While secular individuals can believe that their own lives have meaning, secularism by definition denies that life has meaning. The consequences have been devastating to mental health and to social order. In government, secularism is a blessing; but most everywhere else it is not.

Part 14: The Arrogance of Values

Judeo-Christian values -- as developed and expressed specifically in America -- constitute the finest value system in the world. If you care about goodness, justice and compassion prevailing in an often evil, unjust and cruel world, you should hope that Judeo-Christian values predominate on earth. Is such an attitude, that there is a best value system, arrogant -- or even chauvinistic or racist? All people are equal, but that does not mean that all values are equal. The statement, "All people are equal," is itself a value, one which holds that human equality is superior to any value that demeans or denies the intrinsic worth of other human beings. Those who adhere to Judeo-Christian values must carry them with genuine humility. There are wonderful people in every religion and wonderful people who are atheists, and there are awful people in Judaism and Christianity. But it is simply intellectual cowardice to deny that one's value system implies anything but its superiority to some or all other values.

Moral Absolutes

Part 11: Moral Absolutes

In the Judeo-Christian value system, God is the source of moral values and therefore what is moral and immoral transcends personal or societal opinion. Without God, each society or individual makes up its or his/her moral standards. But once individuals or societies become the source of right and wrong, these are merely adjectives describing one's preferences. This is known as moral relativism, and it is the dominant attitude toward morality in modern secular society. That is why our culture has so venerated the Ten Commandments -- it is a fixed set of God-given moral laws and principles. But that is also why opponents of America remaining a Judeo-Christian country, people who advocate moral relativism, want the Ten Commandments removed from all public buildings. The Ten Commandments represents objective, i.e., God-based morality.

Part 12: The Jews Have a Mission Too

Ask believing Christians what their mission as Christians is, and it is likely they will answer, "to bring people to Christ" or "spread the Gospel." The Jews' mission is as it always has been -- to bring the world to ethical monotheism. Ethical monotheism means there is one God and therefore one moral standard that He has revealed, and He holds all humans accountable to it. This is the point of Jewish chosenness. Were Jews true to their mission, they would stand alongside Christians who work to bring the Torah's values to the world. Jews should therefore be in the forefront of those spreading Judeo-Christian values. Some are, but most, religious and secular, are not.

Values and Life vs Chaos

Part 8: Values larger than Judaism or Christianity

The combination of Jewish Scripture (the Old Testament) and Christian thought and activism has forged something larger and more universally applicable than either Judaism or Christianity alone. American Christians chose a Torah verse – “Proclaim liberty throughout the land” – for their Liberty Bell; learned and taught Hebrew; adopted the Jewish notion of being chosen to be a light unto the nations; saw their leaving Europe as a second exodus. While the Jews provided the text, the Christians brought the text and its values into the world at large and applied them to a society composed of Jews, Christians, atheists, and members of other religions. Those Judeo Christian values have made America the greatest experiment in human progress and liberty and the greatest force for good in history.

Part 9: Choose Life

There are good people on both sides of the Terri Schiavo tragedy, but chances are that if you affirm Judeo-Christian values, you have opposed pulling the feeding tubes from the severely brain damaged woman's body. Why? Because if there is anything that Judeo-Christian values stand for, it is choosing life and rejecting death. As the Torah puts it, "I have put before you today life and death, and you shall choose life." Egyptian civilization was steeped in death. One of the greatest insights of Sigmund Freud was that human beings have a Death Instinct, a death wish that is as strong as the Life Instinct. The biblical and Judeo-Christian transformation of human thinking from death- to life- orientation has been a staggering accomplishment.

Part 10: Chaos

It is difficult to overstate the depth of the differences between the Judeo-Christian view of the world and that of its opponents, most particularly the Left. For example, it involves the very question of whether there is order to the world. Basic to the biblical worldview is the proposition that God made order out of chaos -- order expressed largely through separation and differences. God separated light from dark and created day and night; separated the waters and created land; and so on. Differences reflect the divine order, while attempts to abolish those differences represent a denial of that order and a yearning for primeval chaos, moral and otherwise.

Feelings and Evil

Part 6: Feelings

With the decline of the authority of Judeo-Christian values in the West, many people stopped looking to external sources of moral standards in order to decide what is right and wrong. For many millions in the twentieth century, those guidelines were provided by Marxism, Communism, Fascism or Nazism. For many millions today, those guidelines are … feelings. The "self-esteem movement" -- now conceded to have been a great producer of mediocrity and narcissism -- was entirely a liberal invention based on feelings for kids. The liberal preoccupation with whether America is loved or hated is also entirely feelings-based. The Left wants to be loved; the conservative wants to do what is right and deems world opinion fickle at best and immoral at worst.

Part 7: Do You Hate Evil?

Much of humanity doesn't. But if you embrace Judeo-Christian values, you must. A core value of the Bible is hatred of evil. "Those who love God -- you must hate evil," the Psalms tell us. In much of the Arab and Muslim world, "face," "shame" and "honor" define moral norms, not standards of good and evil. In the contemporary Western world, most people who identify with the Left hate war, corporations, pollution, Christian fundamentalists, economic inequality, tobacco and conservatives. But they rarely hate the greatest evils of their day, if by evil we are talking about the deliberate infliction of cruelty -- mass murder, rape, torture, genocide and totalitarianism.

What are Judeo Christian Values?

Part 4: Your Dog or a Stranger?

Would you first save the dog you love or a stranger if both were drowning? The answer depends on your value system. One of the most obvious and significant differences between secular and Judeo-Christian values concerns human worth. One of the great ironies of secular humanism is that it devalues the worth of human beings. The Nazis, the cruelest group in modern history, were also the most pro-animal rights group prior to the contemporary period. They outlawed experimentation on animals and legalized experimentation on human beings.

Part 5: What are Judeo-Christian Values?

How can there be such a thing as Judeo-Christian values when Judaism and Christianity have different, sometimes mutually exclusive, beliefs? The most important answer is that beliefs and values are not the same things. Both religions are based on the Old Testament, which Judaism and Christianity hold to be divine or divinely inspired. Judeo-Christian values combine the two religions' strengths -- the Jewish emphasis on moral works in this world with the Christian emphasis on keeping God at the center of one's values and works.

Moral Relativism and the Age of Reason

Part 2: Moral Relativism

For those who subscribe to Judeo-Christian values, right and wrong, good and evil, are derived from God, not from reason alone, nor from the human heart, the state or through majority rule. Yet most Americans rarely hear the case for God's morality because the secular outlook that pervades modern education and the media promotes moral relativism -- "What I think is right is right for me, what you think is right is right for you." A major reason for the left's loathing of George W. Bush is his use of absolute moral language -- such as in his widely condemned description of the regimes of North Korea, Iran and Iraq as an "axis of evil."


Part 3: The Age of Reason

Those who do not believe that moral values must come from the Bible or be based upon God's moral instruction argue that they have a better source for values: human reason. In fact, the era that began the modern Western assault on Judeo-Christian values is known as the Age of Reason or the “Enlightenment." As it happened, the era following the decline of religion in Europe led not to unprecedented moral greatness, but to unprecedented cruelty, superstition, mass murder and genocide. There are four primary problems with reason divorced from God as a guide to morality. The first is that reason is amoral; second, we are incapable of morally functioning on the basis of reason alone; third, it is based on an irrational belief -- that people are basically good; fourth, even when reason does lead to a moral conclusion, it in no way compels acting on that conclusion.

Judeo Christian Values

The great Dennis Prager has been writing the first draft of his new book on line. The first 14 chapters of "The Case for Judeo Christian Values" are available to all on the DennisPrager web site under "Written by Dennis." Please check them out.

For my own benefit and for my bloggies, I have decided to exerpt highlights of the 14 chapters.

The first describes The Epic Battle:

An epic battle taking place in the world over what value system humanity will embrace. There are essentially three competitors: European secularism, American Judeo-Christianity and Islam. In America too, values based on God and the Bible are being replaced by secular values. The result of secularism was predicted by the British thinker G.K. Chesterton: "When people stop believing in God, they don't believe in nothing -- they believe in anything." Chesterton was right. The collapse of Christianity in Europe led to the horrors of Nazism and Communism.

Now, it is time to make the case for Judeo-Christian, specifically biblical, values.

Janice Rogers Brown

The black daughter of Alabama sharecroppers, Janice Rogers Brown worked her way through college and law school as a single mother after the death of her husband. Yesterday Justice Rogers Brown was confirmed by the Senate to the federal appeals court in Washington.

Why was her confirmation delayed for over two years by Democrats who tried to label Rogers Brown a "judicial extremist?" Why would the Party of the minority groups oppose a qualified black woman with such vitriol? Could it be that Janice Rogers Brown is a black female conservative and an independent thinker?

In Rogers Brown’s speeches she often invokes slavery in describing what she sees as the perils of American liberalism.

"We no longer find slavery abhorrent," she told the Federalist Society a few years ago. "If we can invoke no ultimate limits on the power of government, a democracy is inevitably transformed into a kleptocracy - a license to steal, a warrant for oppression."

She has argued that society and the courts have departed from the founders' emphasis on personal responsibility, turning toward a culture of government regulation and dependency that threatens our fundamental freedoms.

In another speech to the Federalist Society: “Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible.”

Her friend Steve Merksamer notes: "She believes, as I do, that some things are, in fact, right and some things are, in fact, wrong. Segregation - even though the courts had sustained it for a hundred years - was morally indefensible and legally indefensible and yet it was the law of the land. She brings that philosophy to her legal work."

So why did Democrats fight so vociferously against the nomination of Janice Rogers Brown? Unlimited government threatens democracy. Personal responsibility is favorable to government dependency. When government takes over community retreats and morals decline. There really is a scale of right and wrong.

Could it be that here was yet another “uppity” black, in the tradition of Martin Luther King, Clarence Thomas, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice, who refused to be confined in “Uncle Sam’s Plantation?”

Midlife Education Begins

In a previous post, Liberal Education is a Waste (6/4/05), I posed the thesis that what kids really need is a strong foundation in the basics (reading, writing, arithmetic and science), morals and civics (the bible and Judeo-Christian values, Western Civilization and American history, the United States Constitution) followed by professional training in your chosen field.

I suggested that the traditional Liberal Arts courses, while fun, added little of value to the education that is needed for job success.

On the other hand, I truly believe that liberal studies can be remarkably enriching when you have the time to learn for the fun of it.

When I retired at age 59, I did not appreciate this point of view and wondered what I was going to do with myself. For a while I cleaned the garage and my office. But when I began rearranging the kitchen cabinets and drawers, Lee put her foot down and kicked me out of the house. So I joined a docent training course just to have something to do.

The Los Serenos de Point Vicente docents are a Rancho Palos Verdes volunteer group that runs a marvelous little museum at Point Vicente and takes thousands of kids on hikes to the tide pools and canyons. I joined the new class in January, 2002 and was immediately captivated by the course material.

One requirement was a piece of research and a report on some aspect of Palos Verdes environment, history, culture or wildlife. Since I knew nothing about geology and was entranced by the Palos Verdes physical beauty, I chose the shape of the hills as my subject. My report was called Palos Verdes Geomorphology: The Shape of Beauty. It is available in the Local History Room at the Peninsula Center Library or in electronic form; just send me an email.

Approaching Palos Verdes from any direction, you are struck by its great natural beauty. Any view of the Palos Verdes Peninsula, with its 18 miles of spectacular coastline, is breathtaking. One is amazed by the natural variation, from the rolling hills, to the rugged canyons, broad terraces, steep ocean cliffs, rocky beaches and tidepools. You can’t help but wonder about the foundation of all this varied natural beauty. What were the forces that gave rise to the gentle terraces and the rugged crevices and the shoreline cliffs as high as 300 feet? How has the surface topography changed over time and has the change been rapid or gradual?

The story of Palos Verdes is short on the geologic time scale, only 20 million years or so, less than 1% of the time since the earth was formed. What’s more, the rate of change is still quite rapid. About 20 million years ago (MYA), the Palos Verdes Fault was formed (roughly parallel to and between Pacific Coast Highway and Palos Verdes Drive North). Motion relative to this fault has governed much of the geologic history of the Peninsula. Around 3 MYA, slips along the fault raised the sea floor into a pronounced undersea knoll, the Palos Verdes knoll. Then around 2 MYA the vertical slips on the fault raised the knoll above sea level and the Palos Verdes Island first emerged.

It is believed that the Hill has been rising at an average rate of 0.4 mm/yr (0.016 inch/yr). At that rate, Palos Verdes achieved its present elevation (1480 feet above sea level) in about 1 MY. During that time the 13 marine terraces (currently from 50 to 1300 feet in elevation) that are prominent features of the Palos Verdes terrain were formed by wave action. Around 100 KYA, sedimentary filling of the LA basin was sufficient to reach sea level and the island became the Palos Verdes Peninsula.

The rest of my report dealt with earthquakes, “… the beauty-making love-beats of Nature’s heart” (John Muir 1912); landslides including the 1999 disaster at the Ocean Trails golf course (now called Trump National at LA) where a million cubic foot mass of earth slipped 50 feet and fell into the ocean; and the geomorphic future of the Peninsula (that in 100,000 years will slip along its fault by about 1700 feet toward Redondo Beach, accompanied by an uplift of about 130 feet, so that the current shore becomes the 14th marine terrace).

That docent course and research was my initiation to midlife education. What great fun! There’s no looking back now.

"An Ode to America"

We hear so much about how the Old Europeans dislike America, much like the leftists in America who yearn to be European. But the Eastern Europeans appreciate America and yearn to be like us. Many thanks to Dave McCarthy for this article from a Romanian newspaper:

Why are Americans so united? They would not resemble one another even if you painted them all one color! They speak all the languages of the world and form an astonishing mixture of civilizations and religious beliefs.

Still, the American tragedy turned three hundred million people into a hand put on the heart. Nobody rushed to accuse the White House, the army, and the secret services that they are only a bunch of losers. Nobody rushed to empty their bank accounts. Nobody rushed out onto the streets nearby to gape about.

The Americans volunteered to donate blood and to give a helping hand. After the first moments of panic, they raised their flag over the smoking ruins, putting on T-shirts, caps and ties in the colors of the national flag. They placed flags on buildings and cars as if in every place and on every car a government official or the president was passing. On every occasion, they started singing their traditional song:"God Bless America!"

I watched the live broadcast and rerun after rerun for hours listening to the story of the guy who went down one hundred floors with a woman in a wheelchair without knowing who she was, or of the Californian hockey player, who gave his life fighting with the terrorists and prevented the plane from hitting a target that could have killed other hundreds or thousands of people. How on earth were they able to respond united as one human being?

Imperceptibly, with every word and musical note, the memory of some turned into a modern myth of tragic heroes. And with every phone call, millions and millions of dollars were put in a collection aimed at rewarding not a man or a family, but a spirit, which no money can buy. What on earth can unite the Americans in such a way? Their land? Their galloping history? Their economic Power? Money? I tried for hours tofind an answer, humming songs and murmuring phrases with the risk of sounding commonplace.

I thought things over, but I reached only one conclusion . . Only freedom can work such miracles.

Cornel Nistorescu

Romanian newspaper: "Evenimentul Zilei"

Liberals Talk Funny

Bush, The Spoiled Man-Child by Mark Morford, SF Chronicle:

This is the hilarious thing. This is the appalling thing. How can this man remain so blindly, staggeringly resolute? How can he be so appallingly ignorant of fact, of truth, of evidence, of deep thought? In short, what the hell is wrong with George W. Bush?

Apparently this Morford thinks that President Bush is ignorant. The Democrats said that a lot during the election campaign. John Kerry was the candidate portrayed as intellectual and complex, while George Bush was the populist who mangled his sentences. Now we find that Kerry averaged 76 for his four years at Yale, according to a transcript that Kerry sent to the Navy (just recently released). He received four D's in his freshman year out of 10 courses. His top scores were 79 in political science and 77 in French, a language he already spoke. Bush also went to Yale and he received one D in his four years, a 69 in astronomy. Bush has said he was a C student. But Kerry was a genius! Now back to Morford.

Bush is, to be sure and in a word, unyielding. Determined! Immovable! Also, deeply confused! Myopic as hell! Frighteningly narrow minded! Childish in a way that would make any good parent seriously question whether it might be time to get their child some Ritalin and an emetic.

I guess that a leader with principles that he actually believes and acts upon is “unyielding” and in need of an emetic. Nothing like Kerry or Clinton, moral relativists who never met a dissemblance they did not like. I mean it all depends on the meaning of “is.”

But Morford doesn’t feel sufficiently satisfied by insulting his President; he also has a need to insult the 52+ % of Americans who chose him to be their President.

Bush is able to speak only at one level, to one level. The level of a child. The level of a simpleton. Bush is, of course, speaking to children. He is speaking to babies. It is a decidedly shallow and hollow and oddly deflated type of language that offers not a single nutritious or substantive thought to the political or cultural dialogue.

Bush supporters: children, babies even! But Morford reaches his intellectual pinnacle when addressing the subject of foreign policy.

It's all merely a crayon drawing, an intellectual wading pool, a big messy cartoon world populated by manly white good guys and fanged dark evil guys and we are good and they are evil and that's all there is to it so please stop asking weird tricky polysyllabic questions. After all, we are, by and large, a nation that refuses to grow up, refuses to take responsibility for our gluttony and its global effects. The U.S. still behaves, when all is said and done, like one of those scared wild monkeys, clinging desperately to a shiny object, unable to let go of this old, silly, faux-cowboy mentality of boom boom kill kill God is your daddy now sit down and shut up.

See what I mean by “talking funny.” But Liberals think this sort of blather is the cat’s meow of postmodern multicultural internationalism. See, I can do it too.

Liberal Education is a Waste

Like many in my generation, I graduated from basic training to professional training to work. There may have been a few liberal artsy fartsy courses in the mix, but they had little effect on me or my career.

Basic training began at Sacred Heart Cathedral School where I learned reading, writing and arithmetic, largely because the nuns believed in rote memorization and discipline. Religion was used to teach right from wrong and values, both moral and civic. And the nuns believed in competition, marking with a sharp red pencil and awarding gold stars only for perfect tests.

Basic training continued at McQuaid Jesuit High where we were taught Latin, logic and patriotism. Oh, and discipline, this time in the form of “JUG” (Justice Under God) for any infraction of the code, some of which was known only to the Fathers. The Jesuits also believed in competition and they taught us teamwork by individually taking on the whole class. We never won.

At the University of Rochester I was professionally trained in math and physics, sufficient to earn the PhD in physics after too many years. That training prepared me for teaching in college and research in industry, a career combination I choose to maximize our cash flow. We had two children by then and Lee needed to go to college.

But I suffered from my lack of liberal arts courses. I’m sure that I could have been a better conversationalist at dinner parties, though the bar is fairly low for physicists. Psychology might have made me a better manager. But compared to what a large number of kids learn today, I’m glad that my education was basic and professional.

That is not to say that the Liberal Arts are uninteresting. It’s just wasted on the young. The best time to learn literature, history, philosophy, language, art and cosmology is when you have the time to enjoy them, when you’re secure in your job and on into retirement. You can check out my midlife educational adventure in the next post.

RIP and a Warning

OK, I admit that the French voter’s rebuff of President Jacques “Iraq” Chirac was a real treat. Following upon Gerhard Schroeder’s congressional defeat in Germany, the two primary European ingrate-backstabbers have received a well deserved thrashing from their own peoples. And the Franco-German vision of an EU powerhouse to rival America, economically and politically, has proven to be a socialist’s pipe dream.

The worrying thing about the European mess is that socialism is so well entrenched in the unions and the government bureaucracy that the needed Thatcher-like reforms are doomed. Instead, “European nations penalize work and subsidize non-work, and, no surprise, they have gotten a lot of the latter and far too little of the former.” When they most need labor and welfare reforms, tax cuts and deregulation, what they voted for was more socialism.

Furthermore Europe has lost the moral will as well as the military capacity to face down new threats at home and abroad to the freedoms it cherishes. And egged on by intellectual elites, Europeans are encouraged to embrace moral relativism and despise the civilization that nurtured them.

A decade ago intellectual elites in the US trumpeted the European socio-economic model and urged America to follow. Amazingly the left in America is still trying to expand the social safety net to parity with the Europeans. In Congress today there is a bill to provide virtually every social welfare benefit that Europe now offers. And the Congressional Budget Office predicts that if America's federal entitlement programs are not reined in, by 2030 government's share of the U.S. economy will close in on 50% of GDP, or even more than Europe's share today.

Warning: These liberal morons are incapable of learning from history even when it is only days old.

The Failed Liberal Experiment

The last post (Non Polish Plumbers) concluded in an apparent contradiction. While the French people rejected the European Union constitution because they feared the influx of cheap Eastern labor and the decline of their welfare benefits, I saw the EU defeat as a triumph for Anglo-Saxon liberal economics and a fatal blow to the European social model.

Now, only three days after French voters rejected the document, the Netherlands voted “nee” by 63 per cent to 37 against the constitution. Dutch voters are upset about the price increases following the introduction of the euro. They fear that the admission of Turkey will worsen relations between Dutch Muslims and the Dutch majority, a mixed salad of cultural values nothing like the American melting pot. The Dutch people, the most liberal in Europe, worry that a sovereign EU could weaken their cherished liberal social policies tolerating marijuana use, prostitution and euthanasia.

It seems that the grand EU model of progressive socialism and multiculturalism is falling apart. New York Times columnist David Brooks relates the European experience to the dreams of American liberals. Most of the policy ideas advocated by American liberals have already been enacted in Europe: generous welfare measures, ample labor protections, highly progressive tax rates, single-payer health care systems, zoning restrictions to limit big retailers, and cradle-to-grave middle-class subsidies supporting everything from child care to pension security. And yet far from thriving, continental Europe has endured a lost decade of relative decline.

Western Europe’s standard of living is about 33% lower than the American standard of living, and it's sliding. European output per capita is less than that of 46 of the 50 American states and about on par with Arkansas. Moreover demographic trends make even the current conditions unsustainable. Europe's population is aging and shrinking. By 2040, public spending on retirees will have to grow by a third, sending Europe into a vicious spiral of higher taxes and less growth.

The liberal project of the postwar era has bred a stultifying conservatism, a fear of dynamic flexibility, a greater concern for guarding what exists than for creating what doesn't.

The paradox is that the European political elites, including Chirac, Schroeder and Berlusconi, are right in saying that free-market reforms and competition comprise the only path toward rejuvenation, more jobs, prosperous futures. In a land of negative population growth, immigration is necessary to sustain even a limited social welfare system. Yet multiculturalism, another liberal ideal, has led to Muslim isolation and mutual fear in Western Europe.

Thus the failed European experiment is a lesson in the futility of old liberal ideals. A governmental superstructure guaranteeing unsustainable social benefits while regulating free trade and suppressing immigration is doomed to endless decline.

Non Polish Plumbers

How could anyone be against a constitution with 448 glorious articles that contain a jumble of pieties, giving canonical status to sentiments such as "the physical and moral integrity of sportsmen and sportswomen." It establishes, among many other rights, a right to "social and housing assistance" sufficient for a "decent existence" as well as the right of children to "express their views fully."

Yet, on May 28, the country that has been the driving force behind European integration since 1957 rejected this marvelous document. Yes, the French people said a loud non to a constitution authored by former French president Valéry Giscard d'Estaing and poli-elitists from the other Old Europe countries. The opposition included a broad coalition of "sovereignist" right-wingers who refused to relinquish French authority to an unelected elite class and disgruntled leftists who feared the competition of Eastern Europeans who are happy to work harder for lower wages. In France the socialist cry was Non to the Polish plumbers!

The people of Old Europe are generally unhappy about their economic decline since the early 1990s — especially in Germany, Italy, Netherlands and France. In continental Europe unemployment has been stuck between 8 and 11 per cent since 1991 and GDP growth has reached 3 per cent only once in those 14 years.

But there is also a visceral unease among the people that the “European project” has gone too far and that political elites have overreached themselves, losing touch with the ordinary people. Their resentment about the loss of national political control to the unaccountable “Eurocrats” of Brussels has finally boiled over.

So, a couple of days before the French vote, Jean-Claude Juncker from Luxembourg, the "president" of the European Union, let French and Dutch voters know how much he values their opinion: "If at the end of the ratification process, we do not manage to solve the problems, the countries that would have said No, would have to ask themselves the question again."
How do you say elite in French, or Dutch?

One interesting aspect of the referendum is the extent to which France's electoral map resembles that of the U.S.--a sea of red (ie NO) with a few urban islands of blue, like Paris and Lyon, which would seem to correspond reasonably well to American "liberalism." The remarkable map is available on the 5/29 post at Powerline blog.

The French voters had their own objections but to my mind the EU constitution’s defeat is a triumph for Anglo-Saxon liberal economics and a fatal blow to the European social model. More on that apparent contradiction in the next post.