Bill and I wish all of our readers here at Viewpoint a great 2005! We thank you for spending time with us in 2004, and we hope that you include visiting with us on a regular basis among your New Year's resolutions.

God Bless you and your loved ones,

RLC

The death toll is at 120,000 and still rising. It is, as far as we know, the greatest natural disaster ever to befall humanity in a single day. A friend, Steve M., directs us to Andrew Sullivan's blog which has a short piece linking the reader to Martin Kettle at the Guardian and Stephen Bainbridge at Mirror of Justice who raise the inevitable and vexing question: How could a good and all-powerful God allow this incomprehensible tragedy to happen? It's the same question with which Voltaire skewered the believers of his day after an earthquake killed fifty thousand residents of the city of Lisbon in 1755.

Kettle closes his column with these words:

Mirror of Justice writes this:

It would take astonishing chutzpah to think that one can offer a convincing answer to these challenges, and so close to the catastrophe one is loath to even discuss it for fear that it may seem as though the pain and grief hundreds of thousands are experiencing are something abstract and unreal. Even so, the questions are being raised and to refrain from attempting an answer might seem like ducking the issue. So we offer the following, fully aware that no argument, no matter how successful, does anything to console the grieving or to alleviate their pain. Arguments and explanations are for the observers of suffering, not those who are immersed in it.

Nor are we presumptuous enough to think that the answer we suggest resolves all the questions, but we do think that it lies in the direction any theist who seeks an answer to these enormously difficult matters needs to tread.

We start by noting that much evil in the world is the result of human volition, and ever since Augustine the free-will defense of God's goodness has been, if not trouble free, at least serviceable. One problem with it, however, is that it only addresses the problem of moral evil. It does not help us answer those who ask how a good God could allow suffering caused by natural calamities such as storms, accidents, famine, and disease. Or earthquakes. Whatever the reason God may have for permitting moral evil, wouldn't a perfectly good and all-powerful creator have designed a world in which there was no natural evil?

Before going further, we should stipulate that although we hold that God is powerful enough to create universes, we do not hold that His power is unbounded. God's capabilities are constrained by, inter alia, His own nature, and one aspect of that nature is that it is rational and logical. God cannot act irrationally or illogically since to do so would be to put Himself in conflict with Himself. Thus God's power is such that He can do anything that is logically possible to do, i.e. God can do anything that does not entail a contradiction or a logically inconceivable state of affairs. For example, it is not within God's power to create a world in which it would be true to say that God did not create it. Nor is it within God's power today to create a state of affairs in which it would be true to say that the reader of these words never existed.

Perhaps one way to answer the question, then, is to suggest that it may not be possible, even for God, to create a world governed by physical laws in which there is no potential for harm. For example, any world governed by gravity and the law of momentum is going to contain within it the potential for people to fall and suffer injury. Thus the laws of gravity and momentum are not compossible with a world free of the potential for injury. Once God decided to create a world governed by laws, those laws entailed the possibility of harm.

For instance, as Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee explain in their wonderful book Rare Earth, it appears that a planet suitable for life must have plate tectonics, and so, if God is going to create a habitable planet it must have the potential for earthquakes and thus injury and death.

It might be objected, of course, that many theists hold that God creates heaven and that heaven is a world in which there is no natural evil, so it must be possible for a world governed by laws of some kind to exist without there being any human suffering. If God could create heaven, why wouldn't He, if He was perfectly good, create this world like that one?

Perhaps the answer is that God did create this world like that. Maybe the reason that there is no natural evil in heaven is that God's presence suffuses that world, fills every nook and cranny, and acts as a governor, an override, on the laws which might otherwise result in harm to beings which exist there. The skeptic might rejoin that even were he to grant that God's presence in heaven is superordinate to the laws which govern that world, that doesn't help the theist because there's no reason why God couldn't do something similar here in this world as well. Since He obviously doesn't, He must not be perfectly good.

This is, however, exactly what Christian theology says that God did, in fact, do. The account goes something like this: God created a world regulated by the laws of physics and indwelt that world with man, his presence suppressing or negating any harmful effects the expression of those laws may have had. Although the potential for harm existed, there was no disease, suffering, accident, or even death.

At some point, however, man betrayed the idyllic relationship that existed between himself and God. In an act of cosmic infidelity, man chose to use his freedom in a way, the only way, apparently, that God had forbidden in order to assert his autonomy and independence from God.

It was as if a good and faithful husband returned home to discover the love of his life in bed with his worst enemy. If, as "open theists" suggest, God did not foresee this crushing blow coming, it must have broken his heart, metaphorically speaking. Man had made a choice to treat with contempt the wishes of his Creator. He had implicitly demanded that he be completely free to do as he pleased, and God would not force him to do otherwise. Grief-stricken at the rejection He suffered at the hands of His beloved, God withdrew his presence from the world, leaving man, in his self-imposed, self-chosen alienation and estrangement, to fend for himself against the laws and forces which govern the universe.

From time to time that estrangement has terrible consequences. Usually those consequences are drawn out over months or years, like famines or epidemics of influenza or plague. Once in a while, though, they are compressed into relatively brief intervals of time, and it is human to wonder at such moments, where is God? Perhaps God is right at hand, weeping for a world which rejects and excludes Him one moment while blaming Him for not intervening to prevent our suffering the next.

Maybe someone has a better answer. Maybe there is no answer. But this, at least, is our answer.

RLC

This site has a list of the contributions of all donor nations and organizations on record as having pledged disaster relief to nations hit by the Indian Ocean tsunami. Two things are noteworthy: All the oil-besotted Muslim nations combined (Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Kuwait, and U.A.E.)will send to their Islamic brethren a little more than half of what Australia, England, or the United States have pledged individually, and France's contribution is not much more than the value of my house.

RLC

Go here for animation of the propagation of the tsunami across the Indian Ocean and other information on the catastrophe. Thanks to Belmont Club for the tip.

Meanwhile Keith Olberman at MSNBC is determined to find some way to make the administration look bad in this terrible event. The man is obsessed with blaming someone, preferably Republicans, for every bad thing, whether great or small, that happens in the world. We expect him to announce soon that there is evidence that the earthquake was most certainly a result of Bush's environmental indifference, and that there is no reason not to think that Halliburton played some nefarious role.

RLC

The Barna Group, a Christian polling organization, has compiled a summary of their findings for the year 2004. Their results are very interesting:

Here are just a few of their findings. Explanations of these and the rest of their results can be found at the link:

Read the whole report, especially if you're interested in the state of the Christian church and faith in America.

RLC

Evangelical Outpost offers links to some sites where readers can contribute to relief for tsunami victims. "Stingy" Americans may disregard this post.

RLC

If you knew that an American was going to help defend a murderous tyrant in a court of law who would you guess the American lawyer to be? You would probably try to think of someone who has spent much of his life defending murderous thugs of one sort or another and you would probably think of someone who has spent his life working to undo whatever good the United States has accomplished in the world, a sort of lawyerly Noam Chomsky.

William Kunstler would be a good guess, but he's dead. Did we hear you say Ramsey Clark? Congratulations! That's the correct answer. We admit that it was a little obvious, though, once we said that the mystery lawyer had spent his life defending tyrants and opposing American efforts to neutralize them.

RLC

Go here for animation and information on the Sumatra quake. Thanks to Belmont Club for the tip.

Meanwhile Keith Olberman at MSNBC is determined to find some way to make the administration look bad in this terrible event. The man is obsessed with blaming someone, preferably Republicans, for every bad thing that happens in the world. We expect him to announce soon that there is evidence that the earthquake was a result of Bush policies, and that there is no reason not to think that Halliburton played a role.

RLC

Adam Nagourney has a column in the New York Times (free subscription) in which he quotes a number of leading Democrats offering thoughts on where the Party needs to go on the issue of abortion. Some of the quotes are revealing. Others are amusing, and some are just incoherent.

So, a liberal Democrat is acknowledging that being pro-choice on abortion and in favor of gay marriage are extremist positions. And here we had been given to believe during the campaign that the traditionalists were the extremists.

The right kind of pro-life person for Dr. Dean is one who goes along with the Democrats' position that there should be no restrictions on a woman's right to have an abortion. In other words, the right kind of pro-lifer is really a pro-choicer.

Ms Keenan needs to check with Ms Brazille about who the extremists are on this issue.

In other words, let's change the subject so that no one sees how incoherent we are on the issue of abortion.

So there! You are! No, you are!

Mr. Wolfson needs to confer with Sen. Feinstein. Repeat ten times: Democrats are not the party of abortion on demand and to say that they are couldn't be further from the truth.

Or, more simply, if the rank and file Democrats really knew where both parties stood on the main cultural issues of our time they would abandon the Democratic party in droves.

RLC

The Churchill historian and biographer Sir Martin Gilbert writes a column in The Observer guaranteed to ruin the Liberals' day:

Read the rest of Gilbert's rationale for ranking Bush/Blair with Roosevelt/Churchill here.

RLC

One of the most ridiculous aspects of the aftermath of the Indian Ocean tsunami calamity is the criticism which has been levelled at President Bush by United Nations officials and the Washington Post for a) Not coming forward immediately with a public statement and b) Not committing more immediate relief aid to the region.

The carping is typical of people like Washington Post columnists and U.N. types who think that rushing to the cameras to say how much we feel other peoples' pain makes a horrible situation somehow better. It's also typical of people who are complete ingrates.

The aid we render is what matters, not who was first out of the gate to offer condolences to the suffering. The contributions of the American government will, we predict, exceed those of the entire EU combined. They are also only a fraction of the total contribution that will be made by Americans through private charities and corporations. We suspect that the U.N. knows this but they felt they couldn't pass up the chance to slap the U.S. when they thought they had a good opportunity.

We recommend, by the way, that Sri Lanka, which declined an offer of assistance from the Israeli government, get none of our aid. If they are so disdainful of the Israelis that they will not accept help from that is accompanied by military personnel then let them get their aid from the beneficent and humanitarian Islamic world, or from those magnanimous philanthropists, the French, or from the exceedingly generous and compassionate Communist Chinese.

The Washington Post reports that the United Nations' Jan Egeland complained on Monday that each of the richest nations gives less than 1 percent of its gross national product for foreign assistance, and many give 0.1 percent. "It is beyond me why we are so stingy, really," he told reporters.

The Post went on to say that among the world's two dozen wealthiest countries, the United States often is among the lowest in donors per capita for official development assistance worldwide, even though the totals are larger. According to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development of 30 wealthy nations, the United States gives the least -- at 0.14 percent of its gross national product, compared with Norway, which gives the most at 0.92 percent.

In other words, the U.S. is reluctant to give much development assistance through perhaps the most corrupt organization in the world, the U.N., and we're supposed to think this is "stingy"? We think that assistance should go to the people who need it and not to line the pockets of petty tyrants, thugs, and Kojo Annan, and we're criticized for this? How much development assistance has the rest of the world poured into Afghanistan and Iraq compared to what the U.S. has contributed? How much assistance has the rest of the world contributed to fighting AIDS or hunger in Africa?

Where do world wide charities like World Vision, Save the Children, the International Red Cross, and the smaller Christian charities get their major support? Norway?

Maybe we would give as much aid as the noble Norwegians if we hadn't had to pay for defending their sorry selves against the Soviet Union for forty of the last fifty five years and for protecting them against Islamo-fascism for the next forty.

In her novel Atlas Shrugged Ayn Rand asks us to imagine a world in which those who produce the world's wealth get fed up with the carping, criticism, corruption, and parasitism of those who benefit from it and decide to just quit. Maybe that's what the U.S. ought to do. Perhaps we should follow the recommendations of Pat Buchanan and others and just withdraw from the world, seal our borders to keep out those who wish to avail themselves of the advantages of living here and those who wish to destroy us here, and tell the rest of the world to fend for themselves.

Within a year the globe would be engulfed in war and economic chaos. It's only the United States, after all, that keeps it from happening now, but low-amperage cogitators such as Mr. Egeland think that no matter what America does, it's never enough.

It's past time to have some tugboats pull the U.N. building out to the mid-Atlantic and sink it.

RLC

Ohio has completed the recount demanded by the Green and the Libertarian parties who were determined to prove that Republicans had stolen, or attempted to steal, the November Presidential election. Left-wing web sites like TruthOut.org and television talking heads like MSNBC's Keith Olberman repeatedly hinted at nefarious doings among Ohio Republicans that whose machinations would be exposed by the recount. Well, they were right. The recount showed that Bush's 118,775 vote victory margin was actually 328 votes too high. Bush only defeated Kerry in Ohio by 118, 457 votes.

No doubt the Greens and Libertarians are celebrating their spectacular political achievement this morning, but unfortunately uncovering this massive fraud cost the taxpayers of Ohio $1.5 million of which the Greens and the Libertarians ponied up only $113 thousand.

Some are still not satisfied, of course. According to an AP article by John Seewer:

Viewpoint says, Let's count 'em again and get it right. Who cares how much it'll cost the good people of Ohio. We're not paying for it.

RLC

A couple of amateur videos taken of the Indian Ocean tsunami can be found here. The one taken at Patong Beach is especially tragic since it shows the crowd of bathers on the beach just before the waves hit. We don't know if anyone on that beach survived, but we don't see how they could have.

RLC

Even Nicholas Kristoff, the New York Times southpaw, is starting to "get" a phenomenon which is at least thirty five years old. The phenomenon of which we speak is the transformation of each of the political parties into what had been the stereotype of the other. Kristoff notes in so many words that if you want to find people concerned about the poor, oppressed, and abused today you should look among those on the political Right.

Kristoff finds this unsettling, but it's been fairly obvious to anyone immune to being snookered by Democratic rhetoric that it has been largely true for decades now. We would go further than Kristoff and add that if you want to find people in bed with fat cat corporate and other exploiters and corrupters of our culture, look on the Left. Here's Kristoff's essay from the Times which is otherwise available by free subscription at the link:

Mr. Kristoff seems surprised that Evangelical Christians and conservative Republicans care for the poor and downtrodden, but of course he shouldn't be unless he's just woken up from a decades long nap. To be sure there is much in this, as in any essay by Mr. Kristoff, that is regrettable, but his main point is important. Now that Kristoff has called attention to a fact that the entire Left has been at pains to ignore since the Reagan era, it will be interesting to see how those who would have been perfectly content to have left fifty million Afghans and Iraqis in chains and who are still stifling yawns over the Sudanese genocide will respond. Doubtless there will be high dudgeon across the land.

RLC

Susan Sontag, the writer who once proclaimed that "the white race is the cancer of human history", is dead at the age of 71. Sontag was much better known for her various far-Left political causes and criticism of all things American than she was for her writing, and acquired a fame for the former disproportionate to either their merits or her perspicacity. A brief retrospective of her life can be found here.

RLC

Don Feder, a Jew, catalogues the evidence of a contemporary assault on Christianity and declares his solidarity with Christians in this outstanding essay. Here are a few excerpts:

Feder is, we think, correct when he discerns an arrant contempt in the West, even in America, for Christianity. Signs of it have appeared throughout the last two decades in the disdain with which Christianity has been treated by the entertainment industry and particularly in the recent astonishing hostility toward Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. It bubbled briefly to the surface in the weeks following the election, subsiding briefly only to reemerge in this year's controversies over Christmas displays and celebrations.

We fear the antagonism of non-believers will become especially bitter in the following three cultural/social battlegrounds: Confirmation hearings for President Bush's judicial nominations, Christian opposition to gay marriage and abortion on demand, and increasing attempts by believers to roll back the secular monopoly on public education, particularly in the areas of prayer in schools, holiday celebrations, sex education, and intelligent design versus metaphysical naturalism.

We also suspect that one tactic secularists will employ is to attempt to conflate in peoples' minds the horrors of Islamo-fascism with any and all monotheistic belief systems, particularly conservative Christianity. In other words, there will be an effort to convince people that the only reason Christians don't behave like the Taliban is that they lack the power to do so and that America will do well to see that they are never permitted to exert significant influence in the culture again.

Here is a Viewpoint prediction for 2005 which we hope proves wrong: Anti-Christians will become increasingly more vocal, virulent, and intolerant as clashes in the aforementioned arenas become more frequent, more prominent, and more intense.

RLC

Most readers will have heard of the Shroud of Turin. It is a sheet of fabric which had traditionally been believed to have been the burial shroud of Jesus. It has impressed upon its surface a scorched image, the details of which are uncannily congruent with the image made by a man who had been scourged and crucified. The amazing thing about the shroud was that there was believed to be no way that a medieval fabricator could have created such an image.

However, in 1988 the shroud was subjected to a C-14 analysis which dated it to the 13th or 14th century, and that seemed to end the controversy over its authenticity. The radiocarbon tests were regarded by most experts as dispositive. A cloth produced over a thousand years after Jesus' death obviously couldn't have been used to bury him, but lately more questions have been raised.

So much about the shroud indicated a Middle Eastern provenience and a much earlier date of manufacture that some scholars refused to submit to the conclusions of the carbon dating analysis. The image on the shroud was just too difficult to explain in terms of a late medieval forgery and there is now some reason to think that the sample from which the radiocarbon was taken was obtained from a piece of fabric which had been used to patch or repair the shroud about six centuries ago.

Whatever the case, the debate over the shroud's authenticity seems to have been (ahem) resurrected. You can read more about it here.

President Bush has refused to give up the fight to seat qualified jurists on the Bench despite the Democrats' strenuous efforts to keep them off. Daring the Democrats to employ their obstructionist tactics in this session as they have in the past, the president has resubmitted the names of twenty of thirty four candidates who were filibustered by the Democrats in recent sessions of Congress:

By "extreme", Senator Reid means that these judges would likely not rule as he would want them to. They may be squarely in the mainstream of public opinion but since their decisions may offend Senate liberals they are placed out on the "fringe" of our political culture.

In fact, however, these are men and women committed to interpreting the constitution and the law according to what it says and not according to the political fashion of the times, and that's what the Left finds so troublesome. Unable to get their agenda enacted through the legislature, the Left has over the last four decades resorted more and more frequently to the courts to impose their ideological preferences on the rest of society. A conservative court would jeopardize this strategy, which has worked so effectively for the Left, and must, in their view, be prevented at all costs.

Tom Daschle led the filibuster of judical nominees over the last four years and paid for it on November 2nd. There are a number of Senate Democrats from states that went strongly for Bush upon whom the lesson was not lost. They will be torn between their own political futures and blocking the president's appointments. George Bush, like "Dirty Harry", is telling the obstructionists to "Go ahead. Make my day."

RLC

Is secularism a religion? David Klinghoffer thinks so:

There's more at the link. Klinghoffer might also have mentioned that secularism has a de facto clergy comprised of university scientists, a dogmatic adherence to faith in naturalism and Reason, and a creed (e.g. The Secular Humanist Statement of Principles).

RLC

Earlier this month, RLC posted an article entitled Fighting Back in which he lamented what has become of Christmas.

I was so taken by his post that I thought it worthwhile to make a further contribution to the subject. To me, it's no exaggeration to state that the birth of Christ is the single most important event in the history of the world yet the celebration of it has deteriorated into something much, much less that what it should be. It seems that it has become more of a time where the true meaning has been displaced by a time of frenzy and greed and commercialism that inclines people to believe that the significance of the event is in the gifts they get or give and somehow this will make them whole. The true meaning of Christmas has been displaced with a sleight of hand that would make David Copperfield look like an amateur.

Sure, we can blame the liberals, the ACLU and their ilk for protesting a Nativity scene in front of a town hall, and all those with commercial interests that see only an opportunity for massive profits during the Christmas season, but the problem is actually much closer to home.

The problem is that too many people today simply don't understand, or appreciate, or believe what has actually occurred. I can't help but think that if they fully grasped the significance of the birth of Jesus Christ, things would be very much different. To acknowledge that Christmas celebrates the birth of the historical Jesus is one thing. Even atheists could accept that. To believe in all that the birth of Christ implies is a very different thing. This passage from chapter 2 of the book of Philippians sums it up for me:

There is substantial material presented in the Bible regarding the birth of Christ that should give any thinking person cause to pause and contemplate, especially during the Christmas season. I'd like to share some information that presents this special event from a different perspective - the first fulfillment of prophecy from the Old Testament that appears in the New Testament.

The prophecy is regarding the birth of Jesus Christ as given in the book of Isaiah chapter 7. Note that this was probably written about 650 BC.

And now, the fulfillment of this prophecy in Matthew chapter 1:

So the take home message is: God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.(John 3:16).

And it appears this was all prophesied 650 years before it happened!

Merry Christmas,

WSC

P.S.If you're inclined to delve further into the subject of the fulfillment of the first prophecy in the New Testament, check out E.W. Bullenger's The Companion Bible, especially Appendix 103, page 147.

Here's an article by Steve Milloy at Fox News with some hopeful news for those who find the quality of their lives much improved by anti-inflammatory drugs but who are concerned about recent reports of increased incidence of heart attack and stroke among those who use them:

Those who have not yet reached the stage in life where arthritis makes even the simplest tasks a painful endurance test may find it hard to imagine how much of a difference these drugs can make in one's life. Let's hope that further tests show their risks to be minimal.

RLC

The task of keeping up with the stupefying stupidity of school administrators has become daunting this Christmas season, but we're still at it. Our latest exhibit is a Mr. Muscara, a principal at Hampton Junior High School (location unknown). Mr. Muscara distinguishes himself in a crowded field of dunderheads this season by making not only one ridiculous judgment but by following it up in quick succession with two or three more:

Viewpoint pauses to try to control our mirth and to wonder if this is the sort of man the Hampton school board really wants setting the academic tone at their school. Somone needs to instruct Mr. Muscara in the basics of Christian theology and how to distinguish religious symbols from cultural icons. The story continues:

Perhaps Mr. Lafond is himself a graduate of Hampton Junior High. We can think of no other explanation for how one could almost understand Mr. Muscara's decision to turn away a 7th grade boy in a Santa suit. But it gets worse, or better, depending upon your point of view:

Mr. Lafond is here erring on the side of kindness. Scrooge is not the character who comes immediately to our minds. Scrooge, despite his faults, was no dunce.

Indeed. This man needs to spend some in-service time at a refresher course on professional ethics. The concern he expresses, however, should not be ill-founded given his maladroit handling of this situation from beginning to end and what it tells us about his competence to supervise children.

This can be translated from school-board speak to "Mr. Muscara has demonstrated extremely poor judgment, and we're not yet sure how we're going to be able to pull his fat out of the fire."

The story can be found here. It'd be a hoot if it weren't so sad.

RLC

Last week Viewpoint discussed the book by philosopher Victor Reppert titled C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea. Reppert examines the corrosive effect that metaphysical naturalism, if true, has on the status of Reason. Reppert's basic argument is an elaboration of an argument employed by C.S.Lewis, but Reppert expands it and addresses several objections raised by critics.

His contention is that if matter, energy, and physical forces like gravity are all there is then everything is ultimately reducible to material, non-rational particles. If so, our beliefs are just brain states that can be completely explained in terms of non-rational physical forces. But any belief that is fully explicable in terms of non-rational causes cannot itself be rationally grounded. Therefore, if materialism is true, none of our beliefs are rationally grounded, Reason itself is a non-rational illusion, and both truth and the reliability of scientific invetsigation are chimerical. Thus the materialist has no rational grounds for believing that materialism is true or that anything is true.

Whatever the eventual verdict on this argument and its several derivatives is, one of the things the author does which is hard to gainsay is show that the atheists' claim to intellectual superiority based upon the rationality of their beliefs is something of a self-delusion. It intimidates the unsophisticated and unsuspecting perhaps, like suddenly encountering a bloated puffer fish, but there's nothing there to be particularly fearful of.

Reppert quotes two well-known intellectuals, one a leading materialist scientist and the other a philosopher, who inadvertantly reveal that whatever role reason plays in their professional lives, it has little to do with their ultimate commitments and that some of Reason's most eminent proponents are perfectly willing to abandon it when it suits their purpose. The first passage is from Richard Lewontin:

This is an extraordinary expression of dogmatic faith in naturalism, and it's not just non-rational, it's anti-rational. To see how, Reppert asks us to imagine the reaction of a materialist to a similar claim made by a Biblical theist:

Any Christian who wrote something like this would be laughed to scorn by skeptics, including, no doubt, Lewontin himself, yet a scientist of his stature writes almost exactly this, and his colleagues merely nod sagely and think nothing of it.

The second quote is from philosopher Thomas Nagel and his book The Last Word:

And Freudians accuse believers of engaging in irrational wish-fulfillment. Nagel's atheism is based upon a hope that there is no God, which is itself based upon a subjective preference for a Godless universe. The point here is that neither Lewontin nor Nagel is ultimately basing his anti-theism on anything rational. Even if the evidence went against them they would not yield in their adamantine refusal to accept the existence of God. Their ultimate commitments are founded primarily upon an aesthetic predilection for one kind of reality as opposed to another. The much vaunted role of Reason in the rejection by atheists of belief in God is shown, in these two men at least, to be quite irrelevant.

RLC

There's a good retrospective on Rwanda at The Fourth Rail. It examines the failure of the U.N. and the Clinton administration to do anything at all to stop the slaughter of 800,000 Tutsis and draws a parallel or two with our situation in Iraq.

Meanwhile, Belmont Club raises some pointed questions about how an AP photographer who captured the execution of Iraqi election workers in Baghdad found himself in just the right spot to catch it all on film:

It is astonishing, now that Wretchard calls our attention to the matter, that this intrepid photographer was in just the right place, at the right time, with camera ready for action. It's also remarkable that he evidently stood tall amidst the gunfire to get the angle he did, when the normal human tendency would've been to call as little attention to oneself as possible. How did the photographer know that the killers weren't just grabbing people at random to be murdered? Why did he think that he would not be a target? He's either very brave and lucky, or he was tipped off. We wonder if anyone is questioning him about this.

RLC

Don't miss the 16th installment of Arthur Chrenkoff's Good News From Iraq. The scale of ungoing work in Iraq is staggering and Chrenkoff's summaries of what we have accomplished there are extremely gratifying. Yet none of this ever makes it's way onto our evening news. All we ever hear about is the violence, and even that is amplified by the media megaphone to seem far more consequential than it really is. The MSM tunnel vision about developments in Iraq irritates this clergyman:

The good news encompasses every aspect of Iraqi life: economic, social, political, and military. Here are just a couple of items related to the security situation:

There is so much more at Chrenkoff's site, and it's an excellent antidote to the incessant pessimism, negativism, and defeatism of the MSM. We say this not to minimize tragedies like the recent suicide bombing of the mess hall in Mosul, but to bring perspective to the overall trajectory of the task we have undertaken in the Middle East. That trajectory is leading to success and the horrors of Mosul will not deflect it, any more than the enormous losses at Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge altered the outcome of that conflict. The only thing that can prevent us from achieving the democratization of Iraq and radically altering the political landscape of the Middle East is a lack of will.

RLC

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit directs us to this site maintained by a chaplain named Lewis who was involved in the recent attack on the dining hall and hospital in Mosul. His account is as riveting as it is heart-breaking. Our hearts go out to the victims of these criminal attacks. Here are a couple of excerpts:

A deliberate attack on a hospital, after having planned it for maximum casualties, is heinous. These are the sort of people whose "rights" the Left has been so concerned about protecting. When a young Marine, scared for his life, shot one he believed was feigning death in order to draw the Marine closer so as to kill him, the Left wanted to hang the kid from the nearest tree. Their reaction to attacks like the one in Mosul is essentially to demand that we pull out of Iraq and let the orcs butcher the entire population. God help the Iraqi people if the Left ever gets its way, and thank God for men in the service like Chaplain Lewis.

RLC

In our Feedback Forum D.S. asks:

One answer to this question we came across in the news is that Hanukkah celebrates an historical event whereas Christmas is religious, and thus taboo. This answer speaks volumes about how school administrators view Christianity. It assumes that the birth of Jesus is ahistorical, i.e. that Jesus is really a figure of myth and legend and had no objective existence. How else is the reply to be understood? Christians don't celebrate "religion" on Christmas, they celebrate a birth, a religiously significant birth to be sure, but an historical event nonetheless.

Perhaps the superintendent in the news report meant to justify permitting Hanukkah music, but not traditional Christmas music in school assemblies, by reasoning that historical events can be celebrated but only if they have no religious significance. The difficulty with this interpretation is that, if it is indeed what the superintendent was thinking, it makes him look a little uninformed. Hanukkah is laden with religious significance. It is a celebration of the rededication of the Temple in Jerusalem after the miraculous victory God granted the Macabees over the Syrians several centuries before Christ and is characterized by lighting the Menorah, a candelabrum used in Synagogues around the world during religious services.

One can only conclude that the people making these decisions and employing these justifications are exceptionally dim-witted or that they are deliberately privileging some religious observances over others. Or perhaps both.

The irony in allowing Hanukkah songs while excluding Christmas music, if considered dispassionately, is as much to be savored as is the dopiness of the rationale being offered for it. It seems that, deliberately or not, some public school administrators are turning Christmas into a Jewish holiday.

RLC

Powerline posts this note from the father of a Marine in Iraq writing about the Don Rumsfeld/Autopen tempest in the MSM teapot:

Part of what's going on with Rumsfeld is this: The media knows they can't get Bush, as much as they'd like to, so they're trying to wound him by tearing to pieces anyone associated with the administration whom they think is vulnerable, whether the victim really deserves it or not. The media circles Rumsfeld like hyenas working a wounded bull, every so often sallying forth to take a nip at a haunch, hoping to bleed him until they can safely pounce. It's a manifestation of human depravity, we suppose, but they are liberal journalists, after all.

The other thing that's happening is that some in the Congress see Rumsfeld's problems with the media as an opportunity to promote themselves with the public. Nothing makes a man feel as self-important as denouncing someone of even greater importance than himself. To sucker punch a big guy publicly, especially when you know that he won't fight back, is cost-free for a politician. It allows him to preen and strut around the ring as if he's done something noble, and it requires neither courage nor wit.

RLC

Brother Bill passes along a link to this site which lists the following fascinating facts about the debt incurred by individual Americans:

The first step on the road to recovery from credit card addiction is to hold one's credit cards in one hand and a pair of scissors in the other....

RLC

The Christian Science Monitor reports on the recovering stock market and gives several reasons for being bullish on 2005 in this column:

The article also cautions against excessive optimism, however, and gives several reasons why the rebound is still a little weaker than has historically been the case with recoveries. Nevertheless, the overall prognosis is good.

RLC

The Fourth Rail offers an interesting picture of the defendants in the criminal trials of Saddam's henchmen taking place in Iraq:

These are truly evil men, and their utter banality in their present condition, as Hannah Arendt reminded us about the Nazis, should not diminish our assessment of their evil. They deserve far worse than they are likely to get, a fact for which they should be exceedingly grateful.

RLC

Here's a contrarian take on the cultural Christmas wars by Jeff Jarvis. He makes several interesting points, but he's stirred up a bit of reaction in the blogosphere. He writes, for instance, that:

If Jarvis is correct we wonder why it is that in many schools students get in more trouble for wearing a shirt with the words Jesus Loves You emblazoned across it than they do for using Jesus Christ as a profane exclamation.

For a much different point of view from Jarvis' see this column by Ralph Hallow in the Washington Times. Hallow starts off talking about how a Republican candidate for governor of New Jersey is going to lead a hymn sing at a New Jersey public school which has scrubbed all sacred music from its "Holiday" concert.

Indeed. So the religious content of the music isn't the problem. It is joining the music to the holiday that we must be vigilant against. We may assume, then, that it would be alright with Mr. O'Leary for the orchestra to perform Handel's Messiah or Silent Night for the student body as long as it was at, say, the Homecoming dance.

The rest of the article discusses some other attempts to bleach any genuine significance out of the season. It's very much worth reading in toto.

Here in our little corner of the world our district superintendent has decreed that there will be no Santa Claus at the Christmas (oops, holiday) assembly nor any music which celebrates anything other than winter (Jingle Bells, Let it Snow). Hanukah music, we're told, is permitted, but nothing even faintly redolent of Christianity will be allowed. If this is true it certainly smacks of religious bigotry, but that is only bad, we are left to suppose, when bigotry is directed by a majority against a minority. Otherwise it's perfectly acceptable.

RLC

Much has been written about the Democrats' use of the filibuster to block President Bush's judicial nominees and of Republican options for preventing similar tactics in 2005. Robert Novak lays it all out and puts it in perspective in a column in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Our view is that the President has the right to have his nominees voted up or down. It is a circumvention of the rights of the people to have the nominees stonewalled simply because they are not pro-choice - which is, when we get right down to it, the sole reason why any of these nominees have been filibustered. We hope that Senator Frist and the Republicans will do whatever has to be done to prevent the minority from exercising a persistent veto over the majority. Otherwise, what use is there in being the majority party.

RLC

The Intelligent Design controversy at Dover School District in central Pennsylvania has taken a turn against the proponents of ID. The Discovery Institute, the foremost organization in the country promoting Intelligent Design, has come out with an statement critical of Dover's approach:

If the Discovery Institute is not behind Dover's board in their attempt to insert ID into the high school science curriculum, indeed, if they're actually recommending that the policy be withdrawn, it's hard to imagine a court ruling sympathetically when the case comes to trial.

There have always been two issues at play in this controversy. One is the nature of ID and its suitability for public school classrooms and the other is the strategy and motives of the Dover school board. Viewpoint has argued that these should be considered separately, but unfortunately few observers and commentators have done this. We believe Dover's intentions are appropriate and commendable, but they would have done well to have secured advice from people who have some experience with the scientific and philosophical issues involved before formulating their policy statement. This document suffers from a regrettable lack of precision and coherence and shows all the signs of having been patched together from recommendations by several disparate groups.

Whether the board will continue to stick to their plans to implement the new policy despite the Discovery Institute's recommendations remains to be seen, but whatever course they follow they would help themselves by revising the policy statement before embarking upon it.

Thanks to Byron Borger for drawing our attention to a couple of the above-cited articles.

RLC

Victor Davis Hanson has a must-read column at National Review Online for anyone interested in the moral decline and increasing irrelevancy of the left both at home and in Europe. The temptation is to post the whole piece but for the sake of brevity we'll offer only a part of it:

This is great stuff and there's much, much more of it at the link. The left has made itself irrelevant because of its moral inanity, its proclivity for seeing evil only in the U.S. and its allies, and its alacrity in blaming America for all the world's ills. It has discredited itself by sacrificing truth on the altar of political advantage and by following, supporting, or defending a burgeoning array of mountebanks, charlatans, thugs, tyrants, and thieves. The left believes themselves to be ascending the slope of a new and glorious future when in fact their climb is leading them to the crest of the ash heap of history.

RLC

Readers will doubtless suppose that the following account is a fiction, a fabrication. No one, the reader will think, can be as blockheaded as the administrators in this school district must be. Yet it is true. This is not a fabrication. It pains us to post it because we believe that too often teachers and administrators are unfairly criticized, but there are some in the employ of our communities who are not criticized enough, and apparently the supervisors in this district are among them.

On December 7th an announcement was made in a nearby elementary school (which, for reasons which will be explained later, will remain unnamed) to the effect that students will not be able to access books on hunting (!), Christmas, or Christianity from the school library. These books, some 35 to 40 titles, were going to be removed from the shelves.

One child at the school told her mother about the announcement, and the mother decided to check it out for herself. She called the elementary supervisor who explained to her that the books needed to be reviewed because they had religious content, and the district didn't want books in the library which were too evangelical. Besides, the supervisor went on, there was an imbalance between books partial to Christianity and those of other religions.

The mother asked which titles would be pulled and was refused an answer. She indicated that she would like to go to the school to find out, and was told not to do that. She went anyway, obtained a visitor's pass, and found the books piled on a table in the library. She began copying the titles, and was confronted by the building principal who asked her to desist and leave the building. The banned books included the "Touched By an Angel" books as well as Lisa Biemer's "Let's Roll", written in honor of her husband who died a hero on 9/11. No books involving mention of any religion other than Christianity were in the stack.

In the course of her discussion with the principal she was told that there can be no religious symbols in the school and that even the cross she wore on her necklace would not be permitted on a faculty member. Evidently, there was a fear that youngsters might be unduly influenced by a respected teacher's choice in jewelry to favor what that teacher implicitly favors, and that would be somehow unconstitutional. This suggests that these administrators would also object if teachers were overtly instructing their children not to hit or make fun of others, and not to cheat, lie, steal, exclude others from games, or be intolerant of their classmates because these behaviors are morally wrong. Surely the inculcation of moral values derived from a teacher's religious convictions is even more unacceptable to the district than wearing a piece of jewelry which may or may not express a teacher's endorsement of some vague religious belief. It would be interesting to discover how often teachers are admonished in this district for explicitly imposing their morality upon their students.

The mother was told by the principle that the hunting books were being pulled because a young boy might learn from them how to kill animals with a gun and then use that information to shoot people. This statement all by itself should be enough to promote this principle to dunderhead first class except that would seem too much like a Boy Scout award and Boy Scout literature is certainly next to be committed to the flames in this district.

A day or so later the superintendent called the mother's home and informed her husband that the books would be available to students but would not be displayed. Clever. Third through fifth graders would be able to read the books but only if they knew the secret procedure for accessing them. This reveals what the superintendent thinks of Christianity. He wishes to treat it like stores treat pornography.

The couple then called school board members to complain of the censorship and the religious discrimination in the district in which they pay taxes. The board members, being board members, were somewhat non-committal, reluctant to step on the administrative prerogatives of their staff. Even so, by Thursday evening the superintendent had called back to tell them that the books were going to be reshelved the next day and that he thought they should now halt their campaign. He was obviously concerned that the couple was on the verge of taking this story to the newspapers and local talk radio, and the thought of that kind of publicity evidently softened the district's stance.

Since the couple now had a promise from the superintendent that the books would not be removed, they decided it would be improper to go through with making their concerns public, and so Viewpoint is not divulging which district or district personnel were involved either. However, the only reason that the district relented was because they had been caught. If the announcement hadn't been made to the children last Tuesday, or if this mother/taxpayer had not decided that she was going to check the matter out for herself, the authorities would have removed the books and no one would have been the wiser. So, if the district is later found to have gone back on its word then such courtesies as the couple (and Viewpoint) are presently extending them will be set aside.

This whole episode raises the question of how many other schools in the district, or indeed in the state, have quietly purged their collections of any books which present any mention of Christianity (or hunting!). Is there a surreptitious effort among public school personnel in our local school districts to censor religious reading material? This is a question to which an answer would be easy to find simply by e-mailing or calling your school's librarian. If anyone does learn of other instances of this we invite you to let us know about it through our Feedback Forum.

RLC

Bill Roggio The Fourth Rail has a very perceptive piece of analysis of the increasingly likely conflict with Iran from the Iranians' point of view. It's based on an article written by a University of Tehran professor of political science who writes about how Iran would fight a military invader. Roggio replies by saying:

Roggio notes that the American military squeeze on Iran is having serious economic consequences and he concludes that the mullahs can't endure this situation indefinitely:

The longer we are tied down in Iraq the more time Tehran has to put together a nuclear deterrent. This is one of the main reasons why Iran is working so hard to prevent Iraq from stabilizing. The mullahs prefer to see Iraq descend into chaos for several reasons but chief among them is that it will keep the United states occupied and deter them from getting involved in similar adventures in Iran.

RLC

Time magazine has bestowed their Man of the Year award upon the only person they could have without making themselves risible: George W. Bush. Whether you love him or hate him, no one man has had more of an impact on the world in the past year than has President Bush. Indeed no one has had more impact on the world for the last three years than has George Bush. He has liberated from tyranny 50 million people in Afghanistan and Iraq, and brought hope for peace to a hopeless part of the world. He has ushered us out of a recession compounded by 9/11, restored dignity and professionalism to the White House, and has remained resolute in the face of tremendous difficulties and personal invective, never once responding to his critics in kind.

If the trends of the last three years continue for the next four, if Iraq becomes secure, social security and medicare are reformed, Iran and North Korea step back from the nuclear brink, and terrorism continues to be attrited, he will go down in history as a truly great president. He is the proper choice for Time magazine and the whining of dissenters just makes them look terribly small.

RLC

In February of 2001, Dallas Federal Reserve President Robert McTeer said:


Back in February of this year, Alan Greenspan, Chairman of the Federal Reserve suggested that people consider adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs). At the time I thought this was peculiar for two reasons: (1.) It was inappropriate for the Fed Chairman to be advising people regarding interest rates which he has some degree of control over. And (2.) given that interest rates were at the lowest in 25 years the upside potential was far, far greater than any further decline.

Today, about 20% to 30% of all mortgages are ARMs. There's no telling what impact Greenspan's recommendation had on these figures but one thing is for sure - since February, the Federal Reserve has raised interest rates five times.

Given the increase in the cost of gasoline since February 2001 and the increase in interest rates over the last year, those that responded to the advice of Mr. McTeer and Mr. Greenspan are not only way "under water", they have been financially decimated. Who has benefited? The bankers. And who is the banker's banker? Alan Greenspan and his lackey McTeer.

I can't help but wonder if this has anything to do with the fact that for the last year, I have been seeing notices of foreclosure announcements in the classified section of my Sunday newspaper. Every week I see an entire page of these notices which means these people are losing their homes. And not only do they lose their homes, they lose all of the equity they have in them. All of the interest they have paid and all of the principle they have paid...gone. What are these families going to do? Where are they going to go?

So why would Greenspan and McTeer offer such bad advice? The answer is actually quite simple.

Thomas Jefferson, declared "If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered."

Of the two scenarios, deflation is feared much more so than inflation by our monetary masters. Inflation, at least, enables debt to be repaid albeit in inflated dollars but deflation means default and the lender (the banks) suffer the loss. Therefore, I believe we will see every effort by the powers that be to encourage an outcome of inflation.

From Richard Russell:

The problem is that any system based on a fiat currency is, by definition, a system that is dependent on the inflation of that currency.

While you may have doubts about which way the economy is going, one thing is for certain, one can't trust the government to show you the way.

Govern yourself accordingly.

WSC

Charles Krauthammer has an excellent op/ed that captures precisely the feelings of a large majority of Americans about the left's attempt to debase Christmas and empty it of meaning. Bear in mind as you read his essay that he himself is Jewish. Here are a few nuggets from his column:

Krauthammer's essay is excellent, but we wonder if the dominant motive behind the relentless effort to reduce Christmas to a bland orgy of consumption and meaningless blather about "good will to all" is not religious insecurity but something a little different. We suspect that the primary impetus behind the move to reduce Christmas to a secular "holiday" is envy and its bitter offspring, contempt.

Envy arises from the fact that no other tradition in this country, religious or otherwise, has anything that compares with the beauty, magic, wonder, and mystery of Christmas. Contempt is the child of envy and impels those who despise Christianity to wish to see it extinguished root and branch. People whose hearts fester with envy and contempt wish to destroy for others that which they cannot have for themselves.

The irony is that those most determined to devitalize Christmas seem to be those most in need of it.

RLC

Reuel Marc Gerecht of the American Enterprise Institute gives readers an excellent insight into the dynamics of the Iraqi/Iranian relationship:

It is hard to overestimate the importance for the world of American success in Iraq. Failure is unthinkable, which makes those on the left in both Europe and at home who lead the cheers for our enemies in Iraq all the more despicable.

RLC

Another apparent success in the use of stem cells to produce medical marvels:

Hmm. The stem cells were taken from fat removed from the girl's body? They weren't embryonic stem cells? There must be some mistake.

RLC

Peggy Noonan tells the Democrats how they can turn their political fortunes around overnight. It could bring millions of voters back to the party of their ancestors and wouldn't cost the Democrats a dime. It's a "can't lose" suggestion:

Like we said, it's a can't lose recommendation. Problem is, as Ms Noonan surely knows, it'll never happen.

RLC

Nearby Dover Area School District in Pennsylvania has made the national news and is being discussed on all the talk shows because of a decision by it's school board to require biology teachers to mention the concept of Intelligent Design (ID) in their classrooms when they discuss evolution. They are currently being sued in Federal Court by the ACLU, representing eleven parents in the district, for allegedly trying to smuggle religion into the science classroom. This is the first time ID has been the subject of a Federal Court case so there is a lot of attention being paid to the proceedings.

There are two separate questions in this case, as we see it. The first has to do with the nature of ID, and the second has to do with the motives of its proponents. We hope that the Court considers these separately. The first question hinges on whether ID is essentially a religious construct or whether it is philosophy of science. This is the crucial question before the Court because the answer the jurists come up with will determine the legitimacy of ID as a topic for inclusion in science curricula all across the country.

This post addresses the question of whether ID, irrespective of the intentions of some of its supporters, should be taught in public schools. Is ID a religious hypothesis, and, if not, are the implications of ID any more religious than the implications of Darwinian materialism?

We have weighed in on this issue in the local papers and on this blog several times in recent months (See here, here, and here) and have chosen to pick up the cudgels once again by reworking a post from last week and submitting it for publication in the paper. Whether it will be printed or not we don't know yet, but we've decided to run it again on Viewpoint so that our readers can comment upon it if they wish. The letter follows:

Recent statements by people on both sides of the controversy over the teaching of intelligent design in public schools suggest a lot of misunderstanding about what exactly ID is.

Intelligent Design starts from the simple fact that human beings are able to recognize design. For the most part that recognition is intuitive. One important aspect of ID is the elucidation of the criteria we employ to distinguish purposely designed objects from those which may be the products of random, purposeless processes. ID theorists seek to codify how it is that we manage to distinguish intelligent agency from the work of mindless forces.

Once the criteria of design recognition are established, at least in broad outline, they may be turned toward living organisms and the structures found in those organisms. Everyone involved in the controversy agrees that biological structures are designed. The question at issue is whether the designer is mindless chance and physical law or whether it is some form of intelligent mind.

ID theorists conclude that complex, specified arrangements or patterns are the hallmark of intelligent provenience and that organisms possess these qualities in abundance down to the tiniest microscopic bio-machines which cram living cells. They claim that it is therefore at least as plausible that these structures are somehow the result of intelligence as that they are not.

ID advocates argue that public schools shouldn't implicitly foreclose the possibility of an intelligent agent being responsible for nature's architecture by refusing to acknowledge that possibility to their students while at the same time teaching them a view that explicitly denies that possibility. This certainly seems reasonable, but, nevertheless, there is opposition.

The resistance stems in some measure from the possibility that if ID is accepted it might lead to certain philosophical conclusions about the ultimate nature of reality which are unpalatable to philosophical materialists. There is thus a major effort to prohibit such instruction by those who fear that in any fair consideration of the evidence the hypothesis that natural processes are perfectly adequate to account for the myriad of molecular machines we observe in our microscopes will look pale in comparison to the alternative.

Consequently, in order to prevent such comparisons, strenuous efforts are made, whenever the spectre of Intelligent Design looms large, to characterize it as religion while simultaneously packaging the materialist hypothesis as science. The fact is, of course, that materialism is not science and ID is not religion. They are both philosophical or metaphysical hypotheses which rely upon empirical data for their conclusions.

Consider a few ways in which ID has been mischaracterized in the Dover school board controversy:

1) It's been argued that ID should not be taught in public schools because the Supreme Court has prohibited it. This, though, is not true. The relevant ruling, Edwards v. Aguillard, was not about ID, it was about creationism, and the Supreme Court explicitly said that teachers are free to teach creationism if they wish. The Court merely prohibited state legislatures from mandating it. Creationism has a strong religious component, depending as it does upon the Bible. ID has no such component, so if teachers are free to teach creationism they would certainly be free to teach ID. One of the issues that a court case will have to address is whether a school board can mandate ID, and that decision will probably pivot upon whether ID is seen as essentially religious.

2) ID is philosophical, and philosophical concepts have no place in the science classroom. This objection belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of philosophy in science. The two are very nearly inseparable. If science teachers cannot introduce philosophical concepts into their classrooms then they cannot talk about what science is, the scientific method, the basic principle of cause and effect, the principle of sufficient cause, the principle of uniformity, the law of parsimony, the criteria of a good scientific theory, the laws of logic, the trustworthiness of reason and rational inquiry, and so on. All of these, and much more that might come up in an intellectually vivacious science class, are philosophical topics. It's very strange that all manner of philosophical questions are admitted into our classrooms without raising alarm, yet the notion that there might be an intelligence responsible for the basic structure of life sends half the population into a panic.

3) ID lends support to the belief that there is a God. This is true, but it's irrelevant. We don't prohibit teaching Darwinian evolution on the grounds that it lends support to the belief that there is no God. Simply because a field of study has implications for religious belief it does not follow that the study is itself religious.

Moreover, though ID is compatible with belief in the God of traditional monotheism, it doesn't require it. It claims only that life possesses the stamp of purposive, intentional organization. The organizer may be the God of Judeo-Christian tradition or it may be the God of Jeffersonian deism, or it may be extra-galactic beings which somehow seeded life on this planet, as some non-theistic scientists have suggested. Anyone who takes the design inference beyond the conclusion that life exhibits the impress of intelligent manufacture is making a philosophical leap that ID neither sanctions nor opposes.

This is why the allegation that ID is just a form of creationism is misinformed. Creationism says explicitly that the God of the Bible created everything in the space-time universe. Some forms of creationism go even further and claim that God created the major forms of life pretty much as we see them today, and that He did this relatively recently and very quickly.

ID makes no such claims. Some of its local proponents and adversaries notwithstanding, ID does not affirm that the world is created by God, it asserts nothing about how the world or life were created nor how quickly or long ago. Some ID theorists are, in fact, evolutionists (though not Darwinian evolutionists). They believe that life has descended from primitive ancestors pretty much the way Darwinians claim, but they depart from Darwinism by rejecting the notion that natural processes alone are sufficient to explain it.

The basic claim of ID is that however life came to be as it is, intelligent input must have been a factor at some point or points in the process. Life did not originate nor diversify solely by the action of physical or material causes. If people wish to see support in this for a belief in God, that is their decision, just as it is their decision if they find support in Darwinism for their belief that there is no God.

4) ID is religious and religion has no place in a science classroom. The latter part of this is true, but the first part is not. What is a religion? How do we recognize one? Not one person in a hundred who voices this objection can give a compelling definition of what "religion" is. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy acknowledges that religion eludes definition. Some religions have a god, some don't. Some religions involve worship of their deity, some don't. Some religions have a moral code, some don't. Some religions have a clerical hierarchy, some don't. Given the inability to specify exactly what characteristics a religion possesses it seems a little absurd to say that ID possesses them.

ID neither entails the existence of a god nor does it prescribe worship of one. Doubtless many ID adherents are religious as individuals and would like to see ID used as a means to point others to the Judeo-Christian God, but then many Darwinians are atheistic and see Darwinism as a useful tool for turning people toward materialism or naturalism. No one who has read Richard Dawkins or Daniel Dennett, just to mention two prominent Darwinian writers, could miss the atheistic proselytism in their books. Should we keep texts and articles written by such authors from our students simply because they have a strong bias toward atheistic materialism?

5) ID is a Trojan horse for sneaking religion into schools. Even if it were true that ID is somehow religious, it should nevertheless be asked why Darwinism enjoys immunity against the same charge. Why should it not be seen as a Trojan horse for sneaking atheism into schools? Why are the alleged aims of one illicit while those of the other are deemed acceptable? Darwinism states that the universe, life, the diversity of life, and human consciousness were all fashioned by unguided, unintelligent, purposeless and purely natural forces. It asserts that no God is necessary to account for anything that exists, and it insists that the universe is closed to any non-natural intervention.

These are all essential philosophical assumptions of the Darwinian paradigm, and they have profound religious implications. They are in overt conflict with the basic tenets of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. They also implicitly entail atheism since they render God superfluous, and there is no rational justification for believing in a superfluous, unnecessary, metaphysical entity which serves no unique function. It is possible to teach evolution without discussing these assumptions and implications, but it's not possible to teach Darwinian evolution without discussing them.

Intelligent Design logically entails no deity, it enjoins no worship, it promotes no sacraments, it possesses no scriptures, it teaches no dogma, it maintains no clergy, and it is affiliated with no church. Contrary to the hopes of some and the fears of others, intelligent design is not a stalking horse for Christianity, and shouldn't be used as one. It is simply not a religious hypothesis. Its critics point to the fact that many of its proponents are theists or deists and claim that this demonstrates the religious underpinnings of ID, but the fact that there are many theists among the ID ranks no more disqualifies it as a legitimate topic of discussion in a science classroom than the fact that so many Darwinians are atheists disqualifies materialistic versions of evolution from being presented to our students.

Biology teachers should seek to instill in their students a sense of awe at the wonders of the natural world, from the thousands of tiny molecular machines that carry out the myriad tasks of life within every cell to the marvels of the human immune system or the human brain. They might then point out that there are two ways of thinking about how those wonders came to be. They are either the result of eons of random chance and purposeless physical forces or they are the product of a superintending intelligence acting in concert with the laws of nature. There is nothing objectionable about teaching our students the beauty and complexity of the biological world, presenting them with the competing metaphysical explanations of random chance or intelligent purpose, and letting them decide for themselves which they accept. To teach one alternative, however, while suppressing the other is the very definition of indoctrination.

RLC

Hugh Hewitt credits the blogosphere with a sound debunking of Jon Meacham's attempted debunking of the story of the first Christmas in the December 13 issue of Newsweek. Actually Hewitt gets a lot of the credit for mobilizing bloggers to analyze Meacham's rather silly effort. His symposium on the article resulted in a condign thrashing of Meacham's limp attempt to undermine the credibility of both the gospels and Christian tradition.

In any event, here's part of what Hewitt says about it in his Weekly Standard Online column:

We're a little miffed that Hugh didn't mention Viewpoint's humble contribution to the symposium as among his favorites, but, nevertheless, if any of our readers missed it they can check it out here.

RLC

President Bush has taken a lot of criticism for refusing to sign the Kyoto Protocol on global greenhouse gas emissions. Now, according to Nick Shulz at National Review Online, it appears that the president's decision is being validated by events:

The rest of the article explains who the players are and how and why enthusiasm for the Kyoto treaty appears to be waning.

RLC

Michael Moore quotes from a woman who has it all figured out as to why the Democrats lost in November:

This unfortunate lady goes on to offer advice on how to break this awful cycle of abuse visited upon the poor, defenseless Dems by those horrid, cruel Republicans. The politics of victimhood. That'll be a winner in 2008, we're sure.

Meanwhile, the Republican batterers must be in a beer-soaked rage in the south. The GOP now holds 22 of the 26 Senate seats in 13 Southern states. Before Bush took office in 2000 the GOP had 18. The GOP has now won the last 10 open-seat Senate races in the South. In the House, the GOP had 27 seats before Bush took office in 2000, now they have 40.

Gosh. Isn't there a hotline or something that terrorized victims of Republican violence can call? Isn't there a shelter or refuge somewhere for abused Democrats to which they can flee to escape the brutality of Karl Rove's minions stomping across the land in their mindless fury? Our hearts go out to these people.

RLC

This may be of interest to readers over 50. After a recent physical exam turned up cholesterol levels in President Bush's blood work that were well within acceptable limits he was nevertheless prescribed a statin. The article talks about why.

RLC

Robert Spencer has a piece at FrontPageMag.com that no one who wishes to understand Islamism should forego. The article discusses a Muslim rally in Dearborn, Michigan last Friday that was essentially an anti-American, anti-Israeli demonstration and focuses on the teaching of one hero of the Faith, the Ayatollah Khomeini. Here are some excerpts:

That should give us an idea of what sort of men are lionized by the Muslim community in our midst. If putative Christians were to march through a large city carrying placards with Adolf Hitler's visage the MSM would be apoplectic, and rightly so. So where is the outrage over Dearborn? Why do Muslims get a pass from the MSM when they all but worship bloodthirsty perverts?

Included in Spencer's essay is this very revealing paragraph:

Human rights derive from a Judeo-Christian world-view, and Islam repudiates the very concept. There is a profound admission here that needs to be more fully explored. It needs to be addressed by those in Europe who may be voting to admit Turkey into the EU, and it needs to be given serious consideration as we move further down the road toward democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan. If this view of human rights really is the Muslim view, will Muslims ever be able to live in, and among, truly democratic governments? Will they be willing to abjure some of their Islamic convictions in order to hoist themselves into the twenty first century?

It seems to us that the West has four choices if it wishes to survive the Islamic threat: We can try to persuade them to modify their view of human rights (and much else) as we teach them the ways of democracy and freedom; we can quarantine them by placing a military-political-economic cordon around the Middle-East and keeping Muslims out of our own countries; or we can engage them in endless war for the next three or four generations until one side or the other lies exhausted on the field; or we can simply annihilate them with nuclear weapons.

The last is unthinkable, the third is unacceptable, the second is impractical, and the first is what President Bush is trying to achieve. He deserves our prayers, especially because the future peace of the world, and perhaps its very survival, depends upon his success.

RLC

The next time the President decides to award presidential medals of freedom he ought to give one to these two guys. They get our vote for heroes of the week:

Viewpoint also nominates Mr. Tabor, the cretin with whom they tussled, for an award. We nominate him for the human slug trophy. The trophy is, fittingly enough, a giant gastropod slathered in slime, given to that individual who best exemplifies the worst traits of a human being.

RLC

It must be as cold a day in hell today as it is in central Pennsylvania, because Viewpoint finds itself agreeing with Michael Moore who writes that:

We agree with much of what Moore says in this last paragraph, but we would decline to say that our fear of terrorism was somehow "manipulated". We would also add that not only was the campaign flawed, so was the candidate. He had a suspect military record about which he obviously lied, he spent twenty years in the senate without a major accomplishment to his credit, and he projected the image of a vacillator unable to take a stand. He appeared to be a man with no deep convictions.

Even so, he almost won, and we think Moore is right that there is a leftward flow in the country. The whole ideological spectrum is shifting leftward, so that people who would have been considered centrists a generation ago are today labeled conservatives. George Bush is a good example. President Bush holds views on many issues not much different than FDR, but the left has drifted so far toward the nether regions of the solar system that Bush appears conservative by comparison. Confirmation of this drift can be found in the names gracing the current Republican Hall of Heroes: John McCain, Rudy Guiliani, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. Not a particularly conservative bunch.

What this shift augurs for the future of the U.S. is not hard to discern. All we need do is look at Europe.

RLC

Thanks to Little Green Footballs for directing us to this glimpse of the beauties of Islamic justice:

Just makes you wish we were all under Shari'a law, doesn't it? We've been listening carefully for howls of outrage from the human rights advocates who were so much in evidence before Operation Iraqi Freedom, but we haven't heard much. Maybe we can persuade some of those human shields who went to Iraq to deter American bombs to go to Iran and plant themselves outside their courtrooms to deter Islamic judges from hanging eight year-old girls. Or maybe not. Maybe some of the cultural relativists who are forever celebrating diversity and extolling the equal validity of all cultures, ethnicities, and religions will come forward and instruct us on how what the Iranian courts did is really no different than a California court sentencing Scott Peterson to death. It's all relative, after all.

RLC

Pastor, theologian, and author Mark Roberts has undertaken a thorough response to the current Christmas cover stories in Time and Newsweek. Both magazines feature stories which attempt to discredit the traditional Christmas story, and both of them are plagued by shoddy scholarship, sloppy reasoning, and indefensible assumptions.

Viewpoint weighed in on Newsweek's article, written by John Meacham,a week and a half ago, but Roberts' defense of the traditional view, and his critique of the Meacham essay, are much more complete and scholarly than our modest effort. His analysis is posted in five easy to read installments, and there are more to come. They are very much worth reading.

RLC

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost has summarized what is becoming a popular philosophical argument against naturalism or, more precisely, against physicalism (the belief that all that exists is comprised solely of matter, energy and physical force).

One version of the argument is essentially this: If we are naturalists, i.e. we believe that physical nature is all there is, what do we base this belief upon? Most naturalists would reply that they believe it based upon the dictates of their reason. But what is reason? It might be replied that it is the ability to draw conclusions or inferences from facts. But how do we know we can trust this faculty of reason to give us truth? At this point the naturalist would offer some argument or another in support of the general trustworthiness of reason, but in so doing he must use reason to demonstrate the trustworthiness of reason. In other words, he must assume the truth of the very thing he seeks to demonstrate the truth of. This is called begging the question, and it's logically fallacious.

This is perhaps not necessarily fatal to naturalism since lots of beliefs, if taken far enough, have the same problem. The special difficulty it presents for naturalism, however, is that naturalism offers itself as a more rational or reasonable alternative to theism. Naturalism, we are told, dispenses with irrational constructs like faith, but this is manifestly not true. Naturalism places a great deal of confidence in the reliability of reason, a reliability it is unable to rationally demonstrate and which must therefore be accepted on faith.

Philosopher Victor Reppart has written a book titled C.S.Lewis's Dangerous Idea upon which Carter relies for his post. Reppart, following Lewis's argument in his classic work Miracles, asks where our faculty of reason comes from. The physicalist replies that it comes from non-rational matter, energy, and forces which over time produce brains that possess the ability to draw inferences from facts. This means that all of our beliefs (inferences), including our belief that naturalism is true, are ultimately the product of non-rational causes.

However, Reppart argues, no belief that is fully explained in terms of non-rational causes can be rationally arrived at. Thus, if physicalism is true, none of our beliefs are rational. They may be true by coincidence, but they're not rationally justified. Any thesis that entails the conclusion that no belief is rationally justified is self-referentially incoherent, i.e. it refutes itself, and should be rejected. Therefore, physicalism, Reppart concludes, should be rejected.

Reppart is not alone in his "Argument from Reason", of course, since Alvin Plantinga and others have offered similar arguments in recent years, but he draws out the implications of Lewis's thinking in a way that is devastating to naturalism. There's much more to his argument than what we can discuss here. To get a fuller picture go here and scroll down to the post titled C.S.Lewis's Dangerous Idea: Physicalism and the Argument from Reason then work your way up. Carter has six brief posts on the argument elucidating six different aspects of it.

Readers who are interested in Reppart's thinking might also wish to go here to read an interview with him.

RLC

It is astonishing that teachers would put children in this position but apparently Washington has somewhat looser requirements for those exercising responsibility and oversight of children than one might have hoped:

Indeed. We look forward to hearing the official administrative explication of the underlying pedagogical theory being applied here. We're sure there is one. By the way, if this occurred at an assembly, where were the building principals?

RLC

The incomparable Charles Krauthammer at the Washington Post notes the MSM's utter lack of enthusiasm for giving President Bush credit for the successes occurring in Afghanistan. Indeed, the only time we hear mention of Afghanistan in the media is when there are casualties to report or when we're informed of the difficulties Hamid Karzai faces in governing this wild land. Afghanistan is a miracle, says Krauthammer, and the media can only manage a disinterested yawn:

Don't expect the MSM to give Bush any credit for anything. When the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union broke up it was all because of Michal Gorbachev, we were told. Ronald Reagan was relegated to the role of bystander even though the collapse of communism occurred largely due to Reagan's courage and leadership and to a lesser extent because of the courage and efforts of people like Lech Walesa and Pope John Paul II. To ignore Reagan's role in the collapse of the Soviet Union or George Bush's role in the Afghan success while crediting the Afghan people is like ignoring the role of George Washington in defeating the British while crediting the troops in the Continental Army.

RLC

The Strategy Page has an interesting feature on suicide bombers in Iraq:

RLC

Bill posts an excellent piece by way of reply to the article titled The Falling Dollar posted on Saturday. Bill's essay is very informative and rather disturbing. Readers are urged to check it out in our Feedback Forum.

RLC

It's now official. Yushchenko was poisoned with dioxin. Word is that MoveOn.Org will soon reveal proof implicating the nefarious Bush administration in this attempt on the Ukrainian's life.

RLC

Joe Carter at Evangelical Outpost poses this question: If a scientist were able to produce an organism from scratch in the laboratory how could other scientists tell that it had been designed by an intelligent agent rather than by nature? There must be some distinctive characteristics of naturally designed organisms, Carter argues, which distinguish them from artificially designed objects. How else, he wonders, can Darwinians justify their certainty that organisms are only fashioned by natural processes and never intelligent ones?

His question points up a crucial element in the current controversy between Intelligent Design (ID) theorists and Darwinians. How do we recognize intelligently designed structures whenever we encounter them? How, if we didn't otherwise know, could we be certain that Mt. Rushmore was the product of intelligent artisans whereas we might not arrive at that same conclusion about The Old Man in the Mountain?

Intelligent Design theorists like William Dembski are attempting to remove design recognition from the realm of the intuitive and to ascertain exactly what it is that enables us to distinguish purposely designed objects from those which may be the products of random, purposeless processes. They are seeking to discover how it is that we manage to distinguish intelligent agency from the work of mindless forces.

Once the criteria of design recognition are established, at least in broad outline, they may be turned toward living organisms and the structures found in those organisms. No one denies that biological structures are designed. The question at issue is whether the designer is mindless chance and physical law or whether it is some form of intelligent mind.

ID theorists conclude that complex, specified arrangements or patterns are the hallmark of intelligent provenience and that organisms possess these qualities in abundance down to the tiniest microscopic bio-machines which cram living cells. They conclude that it is therefore at least as plausible that these structures are somehow the result of intelligence as that they are not.

ID advocates go on to argue that public schools shouldn't implicitly foreclose the possibility of an intelligent agent being responsible for nature's architecture by refusing to acknowledge that possibility to their students. This certainly seems reasonable, but, nevertheless, there is opposition.

The resistance stems from the fact that if ID is correct then it leads to certain philosophical conclusions about the ultimate nature of reality which are unpalatable to scientific materialists. Thus there is a major effort to prohibit such instruction by those who fear that in any fair consideration of the evidence the hypothesis that natural processes are perfectly adequate to account for the myriad of molecular machines we observe in our microscopes will look pale in comparison to the alternative.

Consequently, in order to prevent such comparisons, strenuous efforts are made, whenever the spectre of Intelligent Design looms up, to characterize it as religion while simultaneously packaging the materialist hypothesis as science. The fact is, of course, that materialism is not science and ID is not religion. They are both philosophical or metaphysical hypotheses which rely upon empirical data for their conclusions.

Consider a few ways in which ID has been mischaracterized:

1) It's argued that ID should not be taught in public schools because the Supreme Court has prohibited it, but this is not true. In Edwards v. Aguillera the Supreme Court explicitly said that teachers are free to teach creationism if they wish. The Court merely prohibited state legislatures from mandating it. Creationism has a strong religious component, depending as it does upon the Bible. ID has no such component, so if teachers are free to teach creationism they would certainly be free to teach ID.

2) ID is philosophical, and philosophical concepts have no place in the science classroom. This objection belies a fundamental misunderstanding of the role of philosophy in science. The two are very nearly inseparable. If science teachers cannot introduce philosophical concepts into their classrooms then they cannot talk about what science is, the scientific method, the basic assumptions of cause and effect, the principle of sufficient cause, the principle of uniformity, the law of parsimony, the criteria of a good scientific theory, the laws of logic, and so on. All of these, and much more that might come up in an intellectually vivacious science class, are philosophical topics. It's very strange that all manner of philosophy is admitted into our classrooms without raising alarm, yet the notion that there might be an Intelligence responsible for the structure of the universe sends half the population into a panic.

3) If ID is correct then it lends support to the belief that there is a God. This is true, but it's irrelevant. We don't prohibit teaching Darwinian evolution on the grounds that it lends support to the belief that there is no God. Simply because a field of study has implications for religious belief it does not follow that the study is itself religious.

Moreover, though ID is compatible with belief in the God of traditional monotheism, it doesn't require it. It claims only that life is the product of intelligence. That intelligence may be the God of Judeo-Christian tradition or it may be the God of jeffersonian deism, or it may be extra-galactic beings which somehow seeded life on this planet, as some scientists have suggested. Anyone who takes the design inference beyond the conclusion that life exhibits the impress of intelligent manufacture is making a philosophical leap that ID neither sanctions nor opposes.

This is why the allegation that ID is just a form of creationism is misinformed. Creationism says explicitly that the God of the Bible created everything in the space-time universe. Some forms of creationism go even further and claim that God created the major taxa pretty much as we see them today and that He did this relatively recently and very quickly.

ID makes no such claims. It does not affirm that the world is created by God, it asserts nothing about how the world or life were created nor how quickly or long ago. Some ID theorists are evolutionists (though not Darwinian evolutionists). They believe that life has descended from primitive ancestors pretty much the way Darwinians claim, but they reject the notion that natural processes alone are sufficient to explain it.

The basic claim of ID is that however life came to be as it is, it must have involved intelligent input. It did not happen by the action of purely physical or material causes. If people wish to see support in this for a belief in God, that is their decision, just as it is their decision if they find support in Darwinism for their belief that there is no God.

4) Similarly, the claim that ID is religious is frequently raised, but how do we know it is religious? What is a religion? How do we recognize one? Not one person in a hundred who voices this objection can give a compelling definition of what "religion" is. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy acknowledges that religion eludes definition. Some religions have a moral code, some don't. Some religions have a god, some don't. Some religions involve worship of their deity, some don't. Given the inability to specify exactly what characteristics a religion possesses it seems a little absurd to say that ID possesses them. ID neither entails the existence of a god nor does it prescribe worship of one. Doubtless many ID adherents are religious as individuals and would like to see ID used as a means to point others to the Judeo-Christian God, but then many Darwinians are atheistic and see Darwinism as a useful tool for turning people toward materialism or naturalism.

5) ID is a Trojan horse for sneaking religion into schools. Even if it were true that ID is somehow religion, it should nevertheless be asked why Darwinism enjoys immunity against the same charge. Why should it not be seen as a Trojan horse for sneaking atheism into schools? Why are the alleged aims of one illicit while those of the other are deemed acceptable? Darwinism states that the universe, life, and the diversity of life are all solely the product of unguided, unintelligent, purposeless and purely natural forces. No God is necessary to account for anything that exists, and indeed Darwinism insists that the universe is closed to any non-natural intervention. Such a view has profound religious implications. It is an explicit denial of the basic tenets of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and it implicitly endorses atheism since there is no point in believing in any metaphysical entity which serves no unique function. Even if one could salvage from the periphery of the Darwinian world-view a minimal divinity of some sort, it clearly remains a view of reality fraught with religious implications, since it denies the existence of the God of most monotheisms.

Intelligent Design entails no deity, it enjoins no worship, it promotes no sacraments, it possesses no scriptures, it teaches no dogma, and it is affiliated with no church. It is not a religious hypothesis. Its critics point to the fact that many of its advocates are theists or deists and claim that this demonstrates the religious underpinnings of ID, but the fact that there are many theists among the ID ranks no more disqualifies it as a legitimate topic of discussion in a science classroom than the fact that so many Darwinians are atheists disqualifies it from being taught.

Biology teachers, when they talk about cell biology, for instance, should seek to instill in their students a sense of awe at the wonders of the natural world. They should then point out that there are two ways of thinking about how those wonders came to be. They are either the result of eons of random chance and physical forces or they are the product of a superintending intelligence acting in concert with those forces. Let's teach our students the beauty and complexity of the biological world, present them with the competing metaphysical explanations of random chance or intelligent purpose, and let them decide for themselves.

For more on this topic see several essays from the Viewpoint archive, specifically this one, this one, and this one.

This article in the New York Times(subscription may be required)instructs us in the negative consequences of a falling dollar:

There's lots more analysis at the link, and reading the whole piece really is an education in macroeconomics.

RLC

When we wrote yesterday (see here) that the question with which Secretary Rumsfeld was confronted the other day was a good one and shouldn't be dismissed because of the devious way it came to be asked, we noted that there may be a good answer to the query but that, if so, Mr. Rumsfeld didn't give it.

Now a reader, Loren K., writes to advise us to check out this site (caution: strong language) for an answer to the armor on the Humvees question as well as answers to some of other puzzlements which have popped up along the way. The blogger is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom and certainly knows what he's talking about. His account of the Humvee armor situation is very good, but his explanation as to why we don't have more troops in Iraq is even better (scroll up to find it). He doesn't absolve the administration completely on the matter of troop levels, but he does explain the difficulty with simply committing all available troops to the theater. We wonder why the administration can't find people who can explain these things as clearly. They could save themselves a lot of trouble if they did.

RLC

The Democratic Party continues its long march leftward, ensuring its permanent irrelevance.

MoveOn.Org, angry with the current party leadership which displays every now and then a vestige of moderation, has pronounced its ownership of the Democratic Party. They bought it, they own it, and they're taking it back.

Republicans are doubtless delighted at the news.

RLC

Every year for the last twenty, secularizers have been busy sucking the life out of the celebration of Christmas until, in its public expression, it has become little more than an empty shell of what it was for generations past. Like a debased paper currency with no precious commodity to support it, it has been inflated in importance but has no longer any real value. It is devoid of content, context, and meaning. If all the Christmas season signifies is a time for retailers to balance their books then what's really the point? What is it, exactly, that we celebrate? The winter solstice? Tim Allen movies? Christmas in the twenty first century is little more than Santa Claus, pretty lights, and Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer, and if the trend toward removing all public traces of spiritual meaning continues there will be no public Christmas fifty years hence. A celebration which is a perversion of the thing celebrated will eventually whither and die.

The religious awe formerly inspired by the Christmas story has moved generations of Christians to create beautiful art, beautiful music, and beautiful lives. The secular world view has nothing to compare to it, and as they continue to denature this magical, mystical eve and day, they're succeeding in doing what they always do, they're turning something beautiful and wonderful into something tawdry, garish, and banal.

Secularism possesses the Midas touch in reverse. It turns what is priceless into dust and sand. It's little wonder that many people are fed up with the whole Christmas experience. Attaching no particular religious meaning to the day, they come to realize that the season is an obscene orgy of gratuitous consumption and synthetic joy. Indeed, it is dawning, perhaps, on some Americans that in the absence of the birth of the Savior there really is nothing to be joyful about.

Christians, however, are beginning to rebel. They're made as hell, and they're not going to take it any more. Or so it would seem from a couple of recent news reports, one from New Jersey and one from Colorado.

The "uproar" has spread to Denver, Colorado where the proletarian masses revolted at an annual "holiday" parade which had banned all religious trappings. The crowd lining the streets had the temerity to defy the town fathers by conducting a hymn sing and talking about the fact that Christmas means nothing at all if it doesn't celebrate God becoming man and dwelling among us to share in our humanity and ultimately dying for our sins so that we may have eternal life. That is, of course, the meaning of Christmas, the only meaning that can inspire genuine joy and wonder. It's a meaning that's a bit more worth celebrating, we should think, than that Santa was able to cajole Rudolph into guiding his sleigh onto every rooftop before dawn.

Even so, the process of reeducating a public which has forgotten the essence of Christmas promises to be long and arduous. Consider the sentiments expressed by Lori Brocesky at the Denver parade:

Surely this is a start, but we can't help wonder what satisfaction one can take in the Christmas tradition unless that tradition emphasizes its religious heritage. But never mind. We're gratified that the proles are finally sticking their thumb in the eyes of the religiophobes at the ACLU, the officious bureaucrats on their town councils, and pusillanimous school administrators everywhere and are beginning to demand that they be given back the country in which they grew up.

RLC

Rush made a big deal today about the fact that the National Guardsman who posed the question to Secretary Rumsfeld about the lack of properly armored humvees in Iraq was put up to it by a journalist, and Sean Hannity, as is his wont, followed the big guy's lead. We think they're wrong on this one.

Granted that it was not exactly admirable conduct on the part of the journalist, the fact is the journalist's ethics are of only minor concern. The important point, the one that we wish the talk radio guys would have stressed, is that the question itself was a very good one.

It's difficult to understand why all of our humvees haven't been armored by this time to give them at least some protection from IEDs and RPGs. There may be a good reason why they haven't, but Secretary Rumsfeld didn't give it, and we're glad the question was asked, regardless of the machinations behind it. Certainly anyone with a son in Iraq must appreciate that the military and our civilian leadership are having their feet held to the fire on this matter of life or death importance.

RLC

Antony Flew, the renown British philosopher and outspoken atheist, has publicly embraced deism. There are several things interesting about this. First, Flew is 81 years old which is pretty far along to be undergoing a world-view shift. Second, he has gone from atheism to deism which is the reverse of the normal flow of traffic, and third, he seems to have been influenced to change his mind by the overwhelming evidence of design in the universe and the difficulty of trying to imagine a naturalistic origin of life:

Huh. No wonder secularists are fighting so hard to keep Intelligent Design out of public schools. Bad enough that an 81 year-old philosopher at the end of his career is astonished by the remarkable, awe-inspiring fine-tuning of the universe and the specified complexity of living cells. We certainly don't want to be exposing impressionable youngsters to the possibility that there's more at work here than just atoms spinning aimlessly in the void.

Well, that's a relief to atheists, we assume, although one wonders what comfort they can take in one of their most prominent members rejecting their most fundamental conviction, i.e. that there is no God, minimal or otherwise.

RLC

Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail discusses the strategic importance of our military presence in Iraq> His key points:

The American military is slowly and inexorably, like an encoiling python, wrapping itself around the chief Middle-East malefactors and will soon, perhaps, begin to squeeze the life out of the rats who foment hatred and subsidize terror in these savage lands. The squeeze will probably not be anything so noisy as overt military action, but rather a silent and subtle constriction of the ability of the thugs to brutalize their people. As the masses of Syria and Iran see the fruits of freedom in Afghanistan and Iraq they will ardently wish the same for themselves.

The presence of the American military so close to their borders will give pause to those tyrants who might otherwise counsel suppression of the people through armed force. They will find themselves between a rock and a hard place, unwilling to yield to the demands of the pro-democracy populace and unable to suppress their protests without risking a punishing blow from the American air force or a special ops surgical strike against their nuclear facilities. Let's hope that the Mullahs in Tehran and the Baathists in Damascus fall victim to the popular will before any serious application of American power is warranted.

RLC

Would you like to do something truly helpful and kind this Christmas season for the young men and women who've suffered wounds in the fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq? Hugh Hewitt has a great suggestion:

We think this is a wonderful idea and we hope that our readers do, too.

RLC

Gregory Djerejian at The Belgravia Dispatch argues that we just don't have enough troops in Iraq to do the job we have to do as effectively as we could be doing it. Part of his argument is this:

The mystery to us is why there is so much resistance in the White House to sending more troops to Iraq. The opinion that there are too few seems almost universal. Everyone seems to share it except Don Rumsfeld and George Bush, the only two who matter. Why can't the troops stationed in Germany, or South Korea, or Okinawa, or wherever be sent to Iraq? We never seem to get any answer to this question except a vague demurral that they're not needed. Isn't it better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them?

RLC

David Brooks offers a fascinating account of natalism in the U.S.A. By this he means the trend among many families to actually wish to produce and cherish children. It is, to be sure, an odd sociological development in our narcissistic times, but evidently there are substantial numbers of folk out there, mostly in red states, who actually embrace this way of life. Here's how Brooks describes them:

There's much more about this strange and exotic species of American in Brooks' essay. Although Brooks doesn't mention it, there is implicit in his column a real danger that if this trend catches on, all of the good work of the radical feminists over the last thirty years in persuading women that children are an encumbrance will unravel. Perhaps it is time to send out the call to once again, uh, man the barricades.

RLC

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) has catalogued reaction by Arabs throughout the Middle East to the Global Antisemitism Review Act of 2004 signed by President Bush in October. Under this act, the U.S. will "continue to strongly support efforts to combat antisemitism worldwide through bilateral relationships and interaction with international organizations such as the Organization of Security and Cooperation in Europe, the European Union, and the United Nations." In addition, the State Department is directed to appoint a special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism around the world.

MEMRI notes that the preface to the law states that it has been observed that "acts of antisemitism in countries throughout the world, including some of the world's strongest democracies, have increased significantly in frequency and scope over the last several years, and the sharp rise in antisemitic violence has caused international organizations ... to elevate and bring renewed focus to the issue." So the act is not singling out Arab nations for censure.

The MEMRI summary goes on to explain that:

As expected Arab reaction was largely, but not entirely, unfavorable. Typical of the critics is Egyptian journalist Hassan Abu Taleb, editor of the Arab Strategic Report, who criticized the act in the Saudi daily Al-Watan, claiming that the U.S. is trying to force its values upon the world:

There you have it. America passes a law that calls for monitoring and publicizing acts of antisemitic violence and hatred, and some Muslims interpret this as an assault on Islam. Islam, the esteemed editor of the Arab Strategic Report suggests, should be immune from criticism when it announces its fatwahs and imprecations upon the Jews, when it proclaims that the Jews must be killed wherever they are found, and that they must ultimately be driven out of Palestine.

Abu Taleb complains that America is seeking to force its values upon the rest of the world. Let's hope he's right.

RLC

How do Iraqi Shi'a feel about the pending election? The Washington Post has this report on how Shi'a leaders are trying to educate and mobilize the vote. Here are a few excerpts:

RLC

A wit suggests that we can save the Iraqis a lot of trouble as they embark upon the task of drafting a constitution. He asks, "Why don't we just give them ours? It was written by a lot of really smart guys, it's worked for over 200 years, and we're not using it anymore."

A friend e-mails to tell us that the real reason that we can't have the Ten Commandments in a courthouse is that you cannot post "Thou shalt not steal," "Thou shalt not commit adultery" and "Thou shalt not bear false witness" in a building full of lawyers, judges, and politicians. It creates a hostile work environment.

RLC

According to a recent article in The Weekly Standard Putin loses no matter who wins in the Ukraine. Interesting analysis.

RLC

Our apologies to those readers who tried without success to access Viewpoint this afternoon. We regret the world-wide panic which doubtless ensued when millions found themselves unable to receive their daily dose of wit and wisdom. An electrical storm in North Carolina knocked out our server until Bill was able to administer first aid.

RLC

Those who might be looking for charitable organizations to which they might contribute this Christmas season, or places to do their Christmas shopping, might find this article at Religious News Service helpful. Bob Knight, director of the Culture and Family Institute, has eliminated the United Way from his gift list and Target stores from his shopping spots. He explains that his decision to stop giving to United Way is due to the charity's refusal to fund the Boy Scouts of America while openly supporting numerous pro-homosexual groups with its money. Here are some excerpts from the article:

Knight is certainly correct in assuming that if people are going to effect change in our society we have to do more than bemoan the cultural deterioration we are witnessing and actually use what tools we have to bring pressure to bear on those who would hasten the slide. One of those tools, perhaps the most effective, is how we spend our money.

Maybe it would be instructive, not only for United Way and Target, but also for those other charities and businesses which are looking on, to see how much of an impact popular dissatisfaction makes at Target's cash registers and United Way's mailbox. If Target takes a hit this year, you can bet that the Salvation Army will be welcome at their competitor's stores and will probably be back at Target next year. As for the United Way, who needs them? It's as easy, and more efficient, to write a check directly to the recipient as it is to go through the middle man.

RLC

Here's some good news from the front of the war on cancer, specifically Leukemia. Leukemia occurs as a result of blood cells, usually white blood cells, mutating and reproducing out of control and crowding other cells to the point that they can't function properly. Treatment often consists of using a drug called Gleevec which binds with an enzyme in cancerous cells thereby interfering with their growth and proliferation. Unfortunately, some of the cancerous leukocytes mutate so fast that the Gleevec can't wipe them out.

Now a new drug has been developed which is able to attach to many of the cells that Gleevec misses:

This is a good illustration of why government must not take the profit out of drug R&D by imposing onerous regulations and unreasonable caps. Companies like Bristol-Myers have to have the economic incentive to create these products or else they'll simply stop working on them. It would be nice if we lived in a world where everyone was motivated by love and research had no cost associated with it, but we don't. So perhaps we can live in a world where lawyers can't sue drug manufacturers out of business or cause the manufacturer's insurance premiums to go so high that the average person can't buy the drugs or can't buy their own insurance to pay for the drugs.

RLC

Evangelical Outpost points us to a blog called Prosthesis where the question whether God can do the logically impossible is entertained. The answer, apparently, is yes and no.

All this is based upon the assumption that God created the laws of logic which are therefore contingent upon Him and which He can therefore transcend. However, were He to do so, we could not discern what was happening since we cannot conceptualize outside the framework provided by those laws and would be unaware of any phenomena occurring extra-logically. So God can transcend logic, but we couldn't know He was doing it.

What if the laws of logic are not discretionary, however, but rather are ingrained, like Love and Goodness, into the very nature of God? What if logical laws, like the moral law, are infused into the created order such that any world God creates would be governed by the same logical principles? If God suffuses the creation with his own nature then the laws of logic could not be other than what they are, nor can God violate them without somehow transcending His own nature. It might, then, be quite impossible for God to create a square circle or to create a world in which it would be true to say that God did not create it.

Theologians who maintain that logic is a contingent set of rules created by God generally wish to hold on to a very high view of omnipotence. They wish to be able to say that there are no limits of any kind constraining what God can do. This may be the case, but if God is the sort of Being who can do anything at all theology would seem to be pointless. After all, how can one talk about whether God exists when one of His attributes would be that He can both be and not be at the same time?

RLC

William Kristol writes in The Weekly Standard that American success in Iraq is and will continue to ramify all across the Middle East and the Arab world:

If the Iraqi experiment with democracy is successful what will be the consequences in Iran? Iran is a Shi'a nation living under the cruel dictatorship of the Shi'a mullahs. What will the Iranian masses think and do if and when they see their next door Shi'a brethren breathing in the bracing air of freedom? The very prospect gives the mullahs anxiety attacks. This is why we are witnessing the paradox of Iranian Shi'a assisting the Sunni and Baathist insurgents, who were instrumental in killing a million Iranians in the 1980s, fight against Shi'a Iraqis. The Iranian oppressors are already nervous that there is a free Afghanistan on one border. Place a free Iraq on the other and the chances that they would be able to sustain their crushing theocracy would diminish to almost zero.

Moreover, if Iran liberalizes, Syria will be politically and militarily isolated, and the Baathists there would doubtless be overthrown by a people sick of their cruelty and corruption. A more liberal Saudi Arabia and Egypt would then follow almost inevitably. Freedom, as the President likes to say, is on the march. The despots, tyrants, and other losers know this, and that's why they're fighting with all they have to stop it.

It all hinges on American will in Iraq, but if we are successful, and we will be if we stick with it, the world will be transformed.

RLC

Today Viewpoint passed the 10,000 hit mark on our traffic counter. This is a very gratifying milestone for us, and Bill and I wish to thank all of our readers for visiting with us and for linking us to your friends. We started this blog last May having no idea how it would fare and have been both surprised and gratified in equal measure with the response.

We know that some of the big blogs get 10,000 hits in a day so we have plenty of room for growth, and we're going to keep working to make our site worth visiting. It's our ambition to post something worth reading every day and we're delighted that so many of you apparently feel that we're succeeding.

Your support means a lot to us and so we extend our sincere thanks to each of you.

Bill and Dick

" 'Tis the season," Richard Neuhaus writes in First Things (subscription required), "to once again complain about the season," and so it is. Neuhaus has in mind specifically complaints about the consumerization and secularization of Christmas which are indeed at once both tedious and moronic. But there's another aspect of the Christmas season which has become as wearisome as it is dependable - the debunking of the Christmas story. It is fashionable in certain quarters to point out this or that difficulty with the Biblical record in order to justify the sneers of urban sophisticates and to discredit the celebrations of those dopey Christians. Rather than focus on the significance of the incarnation of a transcendent God, why He did it and what it means for us today, we're treated instead every Christmas to the semi-scholarly pontifications of journalists and academics who are convinced that it didn't really happen.

Sometimes efforts to cast a shadow over a particular Christian tradition like Christmas are more subtle than others. John Meacham of Newsweek authors an account of the debate over the historicity of the events surrounding Christ's birth which is more respectful of the tradition than some others, but he still seems to make assumptions that irritate.

He seems to assume, for example, that if an event, like the virgin birth, is an article of faith then that excludes it from being historical fact. Meacham states that:

This sounds as if Meacham believes that the virgin birth can only be one or the other, fact or article of faith, but there's no obvious reason why Christians cannot believe something occurred which did, in fact, occur. Faith which is not a belief in facts is delusion.

He also writes throughout the piece as if what Matthew and Luke were doing in writing their accounts of Jesus' life was composing a good story rather than compiling accurate history. They were concerned, he implies, with presenting a narrative that would make Jesus appear divine in order to persuade people to embrace the new religion begun by his followers. Here are a few examples:

This is a dangerous way to look at the Gospels for if it is true that the writers were more concerned with salesmanship than historical accuracy then nothing in the Gospels is reliable, and if that's the case Christianity is worthless. There is, however, no reason to accept the view that the Evangelists weren't trying to faithfully record history except the a priori assumption by some scholars that the events they chronicle never really happened.

Meacham also offers arguments from some scholars which are embarrassingly fallacious. An example is this:

Meier's dismissal of Jesus as a source is a fallacy logicians call an argument from silence. Because the Gospels don't mention Jesus talking about the circumstances surrounding his birth, the reasoning goes, it's therefore safe to assume that he's not the source of this information. This is silly.

Moreover, how Meier can conclude that Mary is unlikely to have been a direct source is not explained, but one would certainly like to know why she should be ruled out. She was probably in her late teens when Jesus was born and thus in her late forties when he died. She may well have lived another thirty years or more after his death and would have had ample opportunity to discuss with others her memories of Jesus' conception, birth, and childhood. Why discount her?

Meacham finds it strange that there's not more made of the virgin birth in the New Testament:

Yet it's mentioned by both Matthew and Luke and the latter is the author of the book of Acts. Luke doesn't mention Mary's virginity there, perhaps, because that book was a history of the early church, not a biography of Christ. Why the Gospel writers should have emphasized the unique circumstances of Jesus' conception more than they did is left unexplained. How often does Meacham think it should have been mentioned, anyway? How many mentions would have been sufficient to satisfy him? He goes on to say that:

Contrary to the interpretation Meacham puts on the apparent surprise Mary and the disciples continually experienced at Jesus' words and deeds, these stories strike our ear as profoundly true to human nature and experience. It's often the case that even though we know something is true we're surprised when we encounter evidence of it, and the evidence is often not even recognized as such until well after the event.

It may be that when the angel announced to Mary that she had been chosen by God to bear a son that she neither recognized this being as an angel at the time nor understood at the time the full significance of what she was being told. She may have thought in her youthful naivete that she'd been visited by a prophet and never really grasped the astonishing import of his words until much later, if at all. Even when she found herself inexplicably pregnant she might have never realized that the child she was carrying was the Son of God. It would've been easy to push all these things to the back of her mind as the years went by and the daily issues of life pressed upon her, especially if subsequent events never gave her any reason to recall them.

Meacham also seems to accept the unfortunate opinion of skeptics that:

We don't profess to be Biblical archeologists, but we have to wonder how Meacham and Brown handle the scholarship which suggests that there was indeed a census about 6 or 7 B.C., the time period when most conservative scholars place Jesus' birth. To say, moreover, that Augustine conducted no global census is a bit of a red herring. The wording in the gospels would have referred to the Roman empire, not the globe, and it is known from Josephus, the ancient Jewish/Roman historian, that such a census was indeed conducted around 6 or 7 A.D. and that these counts occurred about every fourteen years. That would have placed an earlier enumeration at around 6 or 7 B.C. or just about the time that Luke suggests.

As Viewpoint has discussed in earlier posts (see here for example), the problem that scholars have with the virgin birth is really a problem that they have with miracles in general. They just can't bring themselves to believe either that God works that way or that there even is a God to perform a miracle in the first place.

If the latter belief is true, of course, then there is no point in talking about Christmas at all, and if the former position is true, that God doesn't intervene in human history, then not only was there no virgin birth, but there was also no Resurrection. If neither of these events actually occurred then the Bible is completely untrustworthy, and we have no particular reason to think that God cares how we live nor any reason to think that there is life after death.

The significance of Christmas, and of the Virgin birth, is that if these momentous events really did happen then there is a basis for a wonderful hope that life has meaning and that we are not all alone in the cosmos. There is reason to believe that love is better than hate, that altruism is better than egoism, that might does not make right, and that each of us is cherished beyond measure. Christmas means that God cared enough to join us in our existential predicament so that we may ultimately enjoy Him forever. This means that we are not just dust in the wind but rather that we are truly important, that we have dignity and value in the eyes of God.

We don't wish to sound as though we're critical of the entire Newsweek article. There are sections where Meacham is to be applauded. His conclusion, for instance, is excellent:

Just so, but the only faith which will lead us through the darkness is one based upon truth and upon something beyond ourselves and our world. Take away the truth of the Gospel accounts of Jesus' birth and death and all that is left is darkness...forever.

RLC

Much has been written about the intellectual and ideological monoculture of today's universities. Academia is eager to celebrate diversity in all things save political opinion. University faculties are overwhelmingly liberal and the professoriat sees it as their professional responsibility to do all they can to proselytize their students.

A recent article in The Economist has some interesting things to say about this state of affairs.

It's worth reading the entire piece.

RLC

PowerLine casts a suspicious eye at the recent fluctuation of oil prices and asks cui bono. Their suspicions are understandable. Prior to the election the price of oil rose steadily from $35 a barrel last spring to over $55 a barrel at just around the time of the election. Since the election the price rise has reversed course and is now at about $43. What's causing this fluctuation which seems to be timed so closely to our election? Power Line considers two suspects:

It's not likely. If the otherwise supine MSM is going to put their nose to the trail they'll have to first suspect that somehow George Bush is implicated in some hanky-panky here. Otherwise, they're not interested. If there were even a whiff of suspicion of Bush, however, the media would be thrown into a frenzy, elbowing each other in the ribs in their rush to "get to the bottom of the story". Even old Dan Rather would be mustered back into the lists and soon be hot on the scent. That is, just as soon as he could get back from Texas where he's been busy proving that those National Guard memos were true in what they allege even if they were complete fabrications.

RLC

The collapse of European multiculturalism is proceeding apace. This article from Times Online in the United Kingdom makes it clear that all the old verities of liberal tolerance and the need to celebrate ethnic and religious diversity are crumbling like dry mud under the pressures of an unassimilated Islamic population which bids fair to transform once Christian Europe into Eurabia within a generation.

Richard John Neuhaus in the current edition of First Things (subscription required) quotes Islamic scholar Bernard Lewis as saying that by the end of this century, if not before, Europe will be part of the Arab West. Former European Union commissioner Frits Bolkstein of the Netherlands states that if Lewis is right "the liberation of Vienna in 1683 (from invading Turks) will have been in vain". Within a decade several major European cities will be majority Muslim, and if they are still democratic they will doubtless be governed by Muslims. What Islam couldn't accomplish in 1683 by the sword it will succeed in accomplishing through immigration and fecundity.

One might be a little less distressed by the prospect of an Islamic Europe if one could find some evidence somewhere in history that Islamic rule would be good for Europeans, and that an Islamic Europe would be good for America. Unfortunately, Muslims have a run up a pretty dismal record of governance over the centuries, and one is inclined to think that the future under a Muslim caliphate in Europe would be an unmitigated disaster for the world.

There are perhaps several ironies in all of this, but surely one is that in its eagerness to repudiate the fervent Christianity of an earlier age and to embrace the sophisticated secularism of modernity, Europeans are falling like overripe fruit into the hands of the most fanatical religionists on the face of earth. The world, it appears, abhors a religious vacuum. Sweep one set of dogmas out of the house and another will immediately rush in to fill the void. The last one hundred years have seen this process repeated several times. First, Christianity died of spiritual inanition and was replaced by communism and fascism. These were defeated in WW II and were replaced by an already effete secular materialism which lacks the moral will to withstand the contemporary onslaughts of a vigorous Islamism that believes itself to be in the ascendent.

Perhaps the entire future of Europe will be determined by how it reacts to this challenge in the next few years.

RLC

Peter Beinart, writing for The New Republic Online, offers us what may be one of the most important post-election analyses of the Democrat Party's future. His essay is a rich pastiche of history, prescription, and prognostication. Distilled to its essence, Beinart's argument is that Michael Moore and MoveOn.org not only do not represent the Democratic Party but have exerted a powerfully dysgenic influence upon it and need to be marginalized. Following are just a few excerpts from part I of a two-part article:

After the defeats of 1994, 2000, 2002, and 2004 it may be appropriate to wonder whether the Democratic Party is headed the way of the passenger pigeon. A lot of people are asking what the party has to do to recover. Beinart's article is a good place to begin coming up with an answer. He closes with this:

The problem for the Democrats is that much of their energy and funding flow from their anti-war base. If the Democrats follow Beinart's advice they'll alienate a large segment of the people who give the party its distinctiveness. It would be as if Republicans suddenly became a pro-choice party.

Moreover, if the Democrats dress up like Republicans what incentive would there be for voters to elect them rather than Republicans? This is the root of the debate that's beginning in the Democratic party in the wake of November 2nd. Should they move further to the left and emphasize their differences with Republicans so that the voters have a clear choice, or should they move toward the right and blurr their differences so that elections become little more than popularity or beauty contests, like campaigns for student council president or Homecoming Queen?

The Democrats are in a tough spot, but so are conservative voters. If the Democrats move leftward that would be good for the Republican party since it would marginalize the Democrats with the American electorate, but it would be bad for conservatives because a Democrat shift to the nether regions of the left would create a vacuum in the center that Republicans would rush to fill in order to seize the political territory being abandoned by their opponents. Republicans would not only secure their hold on power for the next two generations, much like the Democrats did from FDR to LBJ, but the party would inevitably become more liberal.

Indeed, a pro-military, pro-choice, big government Republican party would be pretty much indistinguishable from the Harry Truman, Scoop Jackson, John Kennedy Democrats of the 1950s and 1960s. If the Democrats continue to make love with Michael Moore, George Soros, and MoveOn.org look for Rudy Giuliani, or someone like him, to be the Republican nominee in 2008.

RLC

Deroy Murdock at NRO has an excellent column that captures in a brief space the essence of the nature of the struggle we are in against the Islamist menace. Murdock amasses the evidence for viewing this conflict as a world war (although he himself doesn't use the term) and closes with this:

We are indeed engaged in World War III and the sooner our European and Democratic brethren rouse themselves from their liberal slumbers the sooner we may turn the corner in the battle.

RLC

Eruptions of the pathological hatred endemic to North America's left-wing continue to suppurate on our body politic. Several of the signs touted recently by Canadian protestors in Ottawa sicken the stomach. Go here and click on the photos to enlarge.

By the way, is the sign that shows Bush in the cross-hairs being carried by a Muslim? Just asking.

RLC

Strategy Page gives us this take on the fighting in Mosul:

Meanwhile the defeatist MSM concentrates on the downside as though that were the only side there was to report. Even when they do report a success they invariably follow it with a "but...". No one wants to be so optimistic as to be blinded to reality, but neither do most people want the media to behave as if the dark side is all there is, especially when there is so much good occurring in both Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pessimism is the mindset of losers and failures and it is particularly common in the American media. Negativism is a corrosive acid that eats away at a group or a nation demoralizing them and sapping their confidence. No athletic coach, no businessman, no general, no president, and no nation ever accomplished anything great by constantly reminding themselves of the reasons why something couldn't be done. Lots of people, however, have failed because they were fixated on the obstacles, because they couldn't, or wouldn't, envison success.

RLC

Last Sunday's Meet the Press featured a panel of prominent Christian spokesmen discussing religion in America. It was a bit surprising that the panel included Al Sharpton, and it was a bit disappointing that Jerry Falwell was more overbearing and combative than he needed to be. The others on Tim Russert's panel, Jim Wallis of Sojourners and Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, comported themselves well, but Falwell and Sharpton were, each in his own way, less than what one would have hoped. I wondered why, given all of the outstanding evangelical thinkers out there, the networks always seem to draw on the same cast of characters when they want someone to speak on behalf of Christianity.

Apparently, David Brooks of the New York Times thought the same thing. He has a remarkable piece on the evangelical he would most like to see on television instead of the usual lineup of Falwellians and Robertsonians, and various clergy who are in one way or another controversial or disaffected. You'll probably think his column (free subscription required) is the more remarkable because Brooks himself is Jewish.

Since our readers may not have the time to fill out the subscription form we offer the Brooks column to you here:

It may be years before we again get to see such a positive piece about an evangelical Christian theologian in the pages of the New York Times. Indeed, we wonder how many Times readers will be canceling their subscriptions because such an overtly sympathetic essay about such a manifestly fine Christian was allowed to grace its op/ed page.

RLC

Interested in the status of the Ohio vote count? Rich Lowery has a good article at National Review Online. Here's part of it:

It's still possible, believe it or not, that John Kerry could win the election. We'll know by next week. I can't imagine anything, short of another 9/11, that would rock this country more than Ohio finding that John Kerry actually garnered more votes than George Bush. For one thing, all those Hollywood types who moved abroad in the wake of November 2nd would all be coming back again. That prospect alone should be enough to stop the count.

RLC

The normally lucid philosopher John Searle gets himself turned all cattywumpus when it comes to God:

"For us", he writes in Mind, Language and Society, "if it should turn out that God exists, that would have to be a fact of nature like any other. To the four basic forces in the universe--gravity, electromagnetism, weak and strong nuclear forces--we would add a fifth, the divine force. Or more likely, we would see the other forces as forms of the divine force. But it would still be all physics, albeit divine physics. If the supernatural existed, it too would have to be natural."

Among the attributes which comprise our concept of God is transcendence. God is the creator of physics, not a part of it. Searle is saying, in effect, that if a transcendent being exists then that being is not transcendent. This is what both philosophers and laymen call nonsense.

Searle is in a tough spot. He cannot bring himself to admit the possibility that the universe is the created product of an intelligent being which exists apart from that which He created, but neither can he deny the possibility that God exists. So he's reduced to announcing that should God exist, He wouldn't really be God. This is the sort of claim that gives philosophy a bad reputation.

Thanks to The Philosophers' Magazine Online's Daily Philosophical Quotation for the tip.

RLC

There's a good overview of the ongoing battle in the "Triangle of Death" by W. Thomas Smith, Jr. at National Review Online. Smith updates us on what's happening in this region south of Baghdad and how this assault differs from the battle for Fallujah.

RLC

Here's anInteresting article on who, exactly, is getting the contracts for rebuilding Fallujah and the rest of Iraq. Two clues. The answer will disappoint the left, and it's not Halliburton:

Similar efforts, the article goes on to say, are beginning now in Fallujah. Iraq is being rebuilt largely by Iraqis who are getting the jobs and receiving the paychecks.

Our question, however, is how did the evil Dick Cheney allow these contracts to slip from the grasping fingers of his cronies at Halliburton? Maybe this story is just another Karl Rove-inspired sham to cover-up the real plot to enrich friends of the administration at the expense of the American taxpayers and the poor Iraqis. We hear MoveOn.org will be on the case as soon as they're finished exposing how Bush stole the election in Ohio.

RLC

Andrew Sullivan mentions, in somewhat disapproving tones, articles by Chuck Colson and Pat Buchanan who address two different aspects of the war Islam is waging upon the West. Colson believes that our decadent culture with its obsessions with sex, both hetero and homo, does nothing so much as inspire the Islamists to redouble their efforts to slaughter us and to convince them that they are pleasing Allah by doing so. Colson states that:

Like Colson's, the column by Pat Buchanan should be read in its entirety. It includes some interesting information about Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh and his murder and concludes with this:

There's one crucial thing Americans and Europeans must understand about the Islamists but evidently not all of us do. They are not going to be mollified by tossing a little foreign aid their way or even by a revival of traditional sexual morality. There is a deep, chronic hatred for the West ingrained in the Muslim psyche and in Arab culture. The hatred grows firstly out of their conviction that God Himself despises us for our cultural depravity and that He is eager for us to be expunged from the face of the earth. They detest us secondly because of our support for the Israeli people whom they hate with more ferocity than they can summon even for us. Thirdly, they loathe us because of their jealousy. When they reflect that they, a once great and proud people who adhere fervently to the one true religion, are living in abject misery and impotence while the wicked infidels skip happily from one success to the next, disdaining God and his prophet, it drives them to acts of horrific violence and madness.

Their spokesmen have been boldly declaring for decades that they will never stop hating or killing us until they have succeeded in destroying both Israel and Western culture and have subjected all non-Muslims either to the sword or to dhimmitude (second class subservience to Islamic law).

We have three alternatives which might mitigate this intolerable state of affairs. We can commit national suicide by every one of us taking a draught of cyanide-laced kool-aid. Or we can commit genocide by bombing the Muslim world forward into the stone age. Or we can do what President Bush is attempting to do and drag the Muslim world kicking and screaming into the modern era. The first option is rather unattractive, the second is morally repugnant, and the third is not guaranteed success. Indeed, the left in this country is working hard to insure that it doesn't succeed. Yet, it is our only viable hope for avoiding endless war and endless terror.

RLC

Hugh Hewitt tips us to the ongoing erosion of the right to life. The Netherlands is currently debating whether it should soon be permissible for doctors to arrogate to themselves the legal right to kill children up to the age of twelve if they deem them to be in terrible pain and terminally ill. Parents' wishes will, of course, be considered, but the ultimate decision rests with doctors. Previously, Dutch law only allowed for euthanasia of patients older than twelve.

The following is the first part of an article describing the Groningen Protocol, a set of guidelines for an experimental policy allowing child euthanasia.

Hewitt asserts that, "There are three kinds of people in the world: Those who will react with horror and alarm to this story; those who will applaud it; and those who will shrug it off as of no interest to them. I am uncertain which of the latter two groups is in worse moral condition."

The crucial question here is what safeguards are in place to insure that the policy won't gradually evolve to eventually permit euthanasia of children born to poor families or emotionally distraught mothers or children whose prospects are otherwise bleak? How will doctors be prevented from killing children whose lives they simply deem to be insufficiently pleasant?

The trend here is very disturbing, not less so because the motives for legalizing child euthanasia seem so compassionate.

RLC

Captain Ed deconstructs Bill O'Reilly's recent editorial defending Dan Rather here. O'Reilly sometimes gives the impression of a man who takes bizarre positions simply to make himself noticed. The utter vacuity of his defense of Rather leaves little room for any other conclusion. Excerpts from O'Reilly are in italics:

Viewpoint would add only this: In stating that "Dan Rather is [only] guilty of not being skeptical enough about a story that was politically loaded" O'Reilly demonstrates a marvelous facility for missing the point. The problem with Rather's use of fraudulent documents wasn't his lack of skepticism so much as the reason for that lack. Why did Rather suspend his skepticism? Why did he run with these documents even after having been cautioned against it? The only answer that makes any sense isn't very flattering. Rather wanted so badly to crucify George Bush that he threw caution to the wind, believed what he most earnestly wanted to be the truth about the memos, and then refused to face the facts when they became so apparent that only an obsessed partisan zealot could have failed to see it.

It's this reckless betrayal of journalistic standards in Rather's Ahab-like pursuit of the President that makes his conduct so reprehensible. For O'Reilly to be unable to see this strikes us as peculiar. Might he have been using the treatment Rather received over this affair as a surrogate for the treatment he feels he unjustly received when the sexual harassment suit was filed against him? Just wondering.

RLC

Here's a good column by Jonah Goldberg at National Review Online on the use of the labels conservative and liberal. The heart of the piece:

Good stuff.

RLC

The Chicago Sun-Times has a sad article by Mary Laney about Steve Gardner. Gardner was a swift vet who served on under John Kerry in Vietnam and who spoke out vigorously against the prospect of having Senator Kerry elected Commander-In-Chief. Now this father of three finds himself in very difficult straits under very suspicious circumstances. Here are some excerpts from Laney's column:

We're reluctant to be too quick to conclude that this was a political hit job by despicable low-lifes who would rob a man of his livelihood and jeopardize his family in order to gain revenge on him for exercising his rights and duty as a citizen. It may actually be a coincidence that all this happened to him when it did and in the manner that it did.

And maybe there really is a tooth fairy.

RLC