America’s myth of convenience is that the “new Europe” is on her side, while America is being deserted by “old Europe” that the US alienated by saving it repeatedly.
Let this begin with an admission. The subject pains the writer and therefore, he would prefer not to have to write the essay. Generally a topic one elaborates elicits pleasure as it takes shape. In this case the sensation is vinegary. Thus only the intellectual commitment to causes that by definition transcend personal preferences, furnish the energy to proceed.
The recent experience that triggered this piece had its venue in Hungary. In many ways the locale is not decisive in determining the content and the conclusions that issue from it. What happened could have occurred anywhere in the “West’s” new “East.” Here the term “Europe” has been consciously avoided. In what most Americans still mean under the word, namely Western Europe, the barbs connected to the arguments reconstructed would have been more poisonous and the arrows carrying them laden with supplementary energy.
Let us begin with what the title refers to as the “myth.” America’s myth of convenience is that the “new Europe” is on her side while the country is being deserted by “old Europe” that the US alienated by saving it repeatedly. While it would be comforting if it would be so, the sad fact is that on the whole, the “new Europe” is not so inclined when the going gets tough with the US. This gap between the desired and the actual is no accident. The “filter of reality” is, therefore, essential.
For the purpose of a discussion, a (science) Ph.D. friend, who lives in the West, brought a group together in his vacation home. The truly native participants need introduction. They consisted of another science Ph.D. and of a Professor, who is a hospital director and heart specialist of repute. Both share the honor of membership in the National Academy. The latter’s wife, an MD, also participated. The Ph.D. had extensive living experience abroad. It began when as an eleven-year-old he was a POW in US custody. Then he spent years outside the “Socialist Block,” for he was delegated to serve as an expert, mainly in Geneva, in an UN-affiliated body. Describing the MD it is to be noted that the man is strongly religious.
Triggered by the crisis of her Red-Green coalition, the foreseen topic was Germany. Within seconds this subject got side-lined and the focus fell on the USA. That was the point where I chose to become a silent observer intent to suck up uncensored views for subsequent use. It is to be assumed that only my host -- who shares my world-view and knows my vocation -- understood the strategic concept behind my tactical comportment as a grey mouse.
In some ways the surprising thing about the lively exchange of perceptions was that there was no overriding local color to it. Except for a few asides and referrals to past events, the very cosmopolitan “locals” -- interrupted by the skeptical questions of my host -- sounded much like the fashionable America-bashers of Western Europe. This should be something of a surprise. What used to be the Outer Empire of the USSR was, except for geography, in everything that determines life, further from “Europe” than Tasmania is geographically. Nothing is revenged more vociferously than good deeds. However, Hungary’s region never got American help. One would, therefore, assume it not to have developed the resentment that fuels the desire to retaliate as in the case of the French after ‘45 and lately the Germans.
The prejudices voiced were “standard.” That suited them for evaluation without needing reconstruction prior to an evaluation. Only one outrageous point departed from the mold cast by local PC. It came from the MD who revealed, with others seconding her that, she would have voted for Kerry. For this the reason given was that he had a European background which furnished a civilizing influence. His ancestors’ recent immigration makes him “sympathetic” and could be taken as a sign of culture lacked by Bush the bloke. This was the point where I briefly fell out of my role. I proved to be unable to withhold that by this standard Szálasi, Hungary’s Hitler, should also find approval, having been of (Armenian) immigrant stock.
Such views my reader might take as pertaining to a marginal issue that inadvertently degenerates into the ridiculous. Let me submit that, while we are talking about marginal symptoms, these harken back to roots that are significant.
The distorted image depicting the US has several sources. One issues from the current weakness of Europe. Originally the feebleness was only military to which, currently, an economic dimension is being added. Europe is not only wanting in power-terms, the reaction to the new economy of globalization is equally feeble. Overcoming these gaps is currently unlikely, as the will to do so is lacking. Therefore American successes are not an example to follow, but due to their accomplishments, a humiliating provocation. A further component of the hostility is that, instead of making the effort to cope with the US by catching up to surpass her, hammering America into the ground gains favor. In Hungary and her likes, the very fact of the US’ leading position is, regardless of all the evidence to the contrary, a proof of an intent to dominate and to exploit. The fact-defying assumption finds support in a very real but subjectively interpreted past. The small countries of the zone in which Hungary is located have during the past been under the domination of major powers. All have used their muscle to squeeze the peoples that fell in their sphere of influence. This activates a Pavlovian reflex. The US, being “top nation,” is in a position to do whatever the Germans and the Russians have done. In the light of local experience, if the Americans can oppress they must be bullies, because all others powers in a comparable position have been oppressors.
Thus, ignoring experience, it is no surprise that in both Europes the view that the US (and Israel) is the major threat to world peace prevails. No change in American foreign policy will make this impression fade. Europe happens to find the thesis of America’s threat to global security a convenient dogma. Accepting the notion enables her to see threats, such as North Korea and a nuclear Iran, through the filter of equivalency. These regimes might be up to no good. But so is America in case it undertakes to mobilize against them, while it rates as unreliable if it desists from acting. Naturally, should containment fail, the US’ ineffectiveness will be the cause. The pleasant upshot: Europe needs to do nothing. Take the case of the EU’s own mild sanctions in 2003 against Cuba for its hard line towards its dissidents. Socialist Spain removed Europe from even appearing to be close to the US in the firefight between Castro and Washington by suspending the implementation of her sanctions in the interest of a “constructive dialogue.” Since then -- what a shock! -- persecution continues. So does the suspension. No surprise. All considered, not a bad situation: nothing is done and the independence from cowboy America is maintained.
Listening to Europeans it quickly dawns on you that much of the problem is compounded by ignorance of the US’ modus operandi and by a tendency to misinterpret much that is connected to her. A case in point came about when the group voiced the idea that America’s barefootedness is natural as it is a young country. Whether a long history and wise, proper and decent comportment on the world scene correlate, is open to debate. As a secret observer the writer refrained from provoking it. The same is true regarding the consideration that if you take measures by comparing unbroken political traditions, the US wins easily. She happens to have, since the acceptance of her constitution, by far the oldest system of them all.
Misunderstanding -- being a category separate from “not knowing” -- reinforces pre-conceived images. When the discussion shifted to America’s desire to grab the world’s resources, the former pre-teen POW found confirmation in the American soldiers’ who took his cap. You and I might surmise that the motive was not pecuniary gain but the collection of memorabilia. Within that category, parts of a child’s adult uniform are likely to score high. Also from this Gent came the observation that at the UN, by innuendo due to Washington’s efforts, there are too many Americans. Here obviously a Soviet block effort, to infiltrate with politically screened personnel, who de facto represented the Kremlin’s interests, is applied, assuming equivalence, to the US. What a field-day it would be for the media from the NYT to PBS, if Washington’s efforts to inject its agents in the world organization’s civil service could be unmasked! A society contributing 22% of the UN’s budget and generating about a quarter of global GNP, and one that also produces excellent post-graduates, is naturally likely to fill a lot of slots without its government’s octopus arms heaving its citizens into openings. Actually, America’s threat to the UN is not kidnapping it to be used as an instrument, but in abandoning it.
As disappointing as opinions such as those regurgitated here might be, their main impact on American and Atlantic security does not end with the current shaky state of the alliance. Assuredly, the matter is serious, it acts as a brake on the conduct of foreign affairs, and it demands that those relationships that by now have only tradition to recommend them, be reassessed. However, the thought that emerged in the course of the discussion took a turn in an entirely different direction. My insight had been that the main problem is not the tone and the content of talks such as the one I was involved in. Ultimately, the efficacy of US policy serving the national interest and protecting the freer part of the world is decided on her home front. That is why I imagined the presence of a largely apolitical American at the table. How would he react? The US must be doing something perennially and knowingly wrong to provoke hostile reactions. This is also the wide-spread logic behind the idea that the outrage of 9/11 must have its roots in an even greater inequity. “Cleaning up America’s act,” stroking those who snap at her hand might just be the solution. Precisely this “Europeanizing” of US policy constitutes the major danger. America can easily overbid Europe with concessions aimed at buying cooperation. If, however, the reaction is contempt -- as in Pyongyang’s armament program -- the threatening question is this: who will defend the US the way America is ultimately likely to cover her allies, once conciliation leads to confrontation?
Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said the plan was an “inappropriate” use of federal funds, one that “is blatantly designed to foster one religion’s point of view.”
Our press release on this is-sue was picked up by the Washington Times. Here is what it said:
“The taxpayers are forced to fork over a quarter-billion dollars of federal funds each year to support Planned Parenthood’s agenda. But all of a sudden the officials at the so-called pro-choice organization feel threatened by some Catholic nuns and want to deny federal workers freedom of choice. So much for truth in advertising.
“Planned Parenthood is afraid the OSF HealthPlans initiative might catch on, which is why they’d like to kill it now. Having just lost to President Bush—Planned Parenthood Action Fund supported Senator Kerry—the abortion-friendly group fears the country is turning against them. It is. This is one ‘Sister Act’ all Catholics can savor.”
Howard Dean’s acceptance speech upon assuming the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), February 12, 2005:
“We are definitely going to do religious outreach.”
Howard Dean’s speech in San Francisco, June 6, 2005:
“It’s [the Republican Party] pretty much a white, Christian party.”
Dean’s comment in San Francisco was the kind of snide remark that we would expect from someone who regards white Christians as the enemy—not from someone who is the titular leader of the Democratic Party. Precisely how Dean expects to do religious outreach when he writes off the majority of the nation is not known, but it is a sure bet that if his counterpart in the Republican Party were to refer to the Democrats as the party of blacks and secularists, he’d be canned.
This is not the first time Dean, or the DNC, has insulted Christians, especially Catholics. When Dean sought the nomination for president in the Democratic Party, he drew support from the nation’s largest anti-Catholic group, Catholics for a Free Choice.
The DNC, under Terry McAuliffe, offended Catholics for years by keeping a link on its website to this bigoted organization; it was dropped after a lengthy protest against the DNC. Furthermore, the Catholic League was responsible for having the Kerry campaign silence its religious outreach advisor, and for pressuring the DNC’s religious outreach director to resign (both were way out of the mainstream).
Catholics are about evenly split between the two parties, but that could change. Why either party would allow its leader to offend people of faith is beyond belief.
Spain and Canada are steadily moving toward the legalization of same-sex "marriage." In past months the bishops' conferences in both countries have issued numerous declarations assailing the attempts to put heterosexual marriage and same-sex unions on the same level.
This opposition, explained the Spanish episcopal conference in a declaration April 21, does not mean that homosexuals should be discriminated against or maltreated. As individuals they have the same rights and dignity as all other persons, the bishops said. Yet, this does not mean that two persons of the same sex have any right to contract matrimony, the episcopal statement cautioned.
Opposition has been equally firm in Canada. "Because the relationship of a man and woman committed in a marriage is the strongest core of the family, and because the family is the most vital unit in society, we run great risks in tinkering with the definition of marriage and the family," explained a note published March 16 by the Canadian bishops' conference.
Of particular concern to the Church, and other groups, is that the proposed laws in Spain and Canada would allow same-sex couples to adopt children.
Adoption, insisted the Spanish bishops in a statement Oct. 1, should be about looking after the good of children, and not "supposed" rights of those who wish to adopt. Two people of the same sex do not constitute an adequate point of reference for adoption, the bishops stated.
Compelling empirical evidence supporting the Church's objection on the issue of adoption was published earlier this month in the United States by the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality (NARTH). The organization was founded in 1992 to provide psychological understanding of the cause, treatment and behavior patterns associated with homosexuality.
On May 6 NARTH published a study titled, "Review of Research on Homosexual Parenting, Adoption, and Foster Parenting." The paper was written by George Rekers, professor of neuropsychiatry and behavioral science at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine.
The study, accompanied by extensive documentation and bibliographical references, was prepared for use in U.S. legal proceedings on the question of whether homosexuals should be allowed to adopt children.
Harmful stresses
Rekers explains that the inherent nature of a household formed by homosexually behaving adults "uniquely endangers foster children by exposing them to a substantial level of harmful stresses that are over and above usual stress levels in heterosexual foster homes."
The professor observes that adopted children are "among the most vulnerable of all citizens," as by the time they arrive at their new home they have already gone through a series of difficulties, often involving separations, neglect, and traumas such as the death of parents. Added to this is the stress of adjusting to a new home and neighborhood.
He then goes on to cite a number of studies that detail how, even when adopted children are placed in favorable family circumstances, they already suffer from substantially higher rates of psychological disorders.
Citing a wide variety of academic studies from countries around the world, Rekers explains that homosexual adults suffer from significantly higher rates of psychological disorders such as suicide, conduct disorder and substance abuse. Living with a parent who suffers from a mental disorder or has problems with drug or alcohol abuse will only trigger further stresses and problems for adopted children, he contends.
"The logical conclusion from these findings would be that heterosexual adults generally have significantly and substantially better health, more energy, and better emotional stamina to devote to foster children," argues Rekers.
Instability
Another factor that militates against homosexuals being given the possibility to adopt children is the well-demonstrated fact that same-sex partner relationships are significantly less stable and more short-lived on the average compared to a marriage of a man and a woman.
For adopted children this will lead to a substantially higher rate of household transitions in foster homes for youngsters placed with a homosexually behaving adult. Foster children have already suffered one or more traumatic transitions, notes Rekers, and more-frequent transitions result in greater psychological harm and psychosocial maladjustment.
Rekers observes that a longitudinal study based on population registers in Norway and Sweden, which included legally registered same-sex partnerships in the latter nation, reported that homosexual male couples were 1.5 times as likely to break up as married heterosexual couples.
Breakup rates were even higher for homosexual female couples, who were found to be 2.67 times as likely to split as heterosexual married couples. Rekers goes on to explain that according to this study, when controls for demographic characteristics associated with increased risk of divorce were added to the analysis, male homosexual couples were 1.35 times as likely to divorce, and lesbian couples were three times as likely to divorce as heterosexual married couples.
Needing a mom and dad
Another series of problems arises from the lack of role models, normally present in a household headed by a father and a mother. A household with one or more homosexually behaving members "deprives foster children of vitally needed positive contributions to child adjustment," Rekers states.
Lacking is the mother/father relationship and model as related to child rearing. Also absent is the model of a husband/wife relationship "which is significantly healthier, substantially more stable socially and psychologically, and is more widely approved compared to homosexual lifestyles," the professor writes.
Rekers notes that openly identified homosexual researchers frequently argue that an adult's sexual orientation has no bearing on whether they can carry out important parenting functions. He admits that this capability is necessary in a foster home, but it is not the only condition needed.
Adopted children not only require parents who can carry out basic parental functions. They also need parents who provide a family structure where there is an environment that is propitious for a child's development. In fact, for this reason, he notes, the state already puts restrictions on those who can adopt, and normally excludes, for example, newly married or elderly couples, and recently arrived immigrants.
Children placed for adoption have normally already lost a positive role model of a married mother and father, and placing them in a household headed by two persons of the same sex will leave them still bereft of this model.
Marriages that consist of both a man and a woman provide special advantages in raising children, Rekers explains. Children see and experience the innate and unique abilities and characteristics that each sex possesses and contributes to their combined endeavor. As well, children learn lessons for later life by seeing both parents working together in child rearing.
Reker argues that a heterosexual marriage provides a child with four models that provide strong advantages to a child who grows up to become a married adult:
— A heterosocial role model of a stable married male/female relationship.
— A heterosocial role model of mother and father coordinating co-parenting.
— A parenting role model of father-child relationship.
— A parenting role model of a mother-child relationship.
The study observes that the best child adjustment come about when they live with a married man and woman. "It is clearly in the best interests of foster children," Rekers states, "to be placed with exclusively heterosexual married-couple foster families because this natural family structure inherently provides unique needed benefits and produces better child adjustment than is generally the case in households with a homosexually behaving adult." Whether such arguments impress legislators in Canada and Spain remains to be seen.
Russell Crowebar said he was sorry yesterday for a wild outburst at a New York City hotel this past weekend. Crowebar had become incensed that he could not place a telephone call to Australia. The actor then propelled the telephone, scoring a direct hit on the face of a member of the hotel's staff. Here is what our panel had to say about Crowebar's apology.
A person should always apologize when they've done something wrong. Let me try and think if I've ever done anything wrong ... War in Iraq ... staggering economy ... inaction on global warming ... No, I've never done anything that I need to apologize for.
I agree with George.
F**k apologies
A person should always apologize if he/she causes damage and destruction for no apparent reason.
I believe it is because the case for man coming from ape-men ancestors is so incredibly weak!
PALEOANTHROPOLOGY: ALL THINGS ARE POSSIBLE TO THOSE WHO BELIEVE!
I think the case for men coming from ape-men based on paleoanthropological data is incredibly weak because it is so sparse and so open to interpretation.
I cite the following:
Quote:
Sir Solly Zuckerman, the famous paleoanthropologist of Birmingham University in England states how ideological expectations shape the way of thinking:
"…We then move right off the register of objective truth into those fields of presumed biological science, like extrasensory perception or the interpretation of man's fossil history, where to the faithful anything is possible - and where the ardent believer is sometimes able to believe several contradictory things at the same time." [3]
3. Solly Zuckerman, Beyond the Ivory Tower, New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1971, p. 64.
"Fossil evidence of human evolutionary history is fragmentary and open to various interpretations. Fossil evidence of chimpanzee evolution is absent altogether". Henry Gee (evolutionist), “Return to the Planet of the Apes,” Nature, Vol. 412, 12 July 2001, p. 131.
David Pilbeam, of the Boston Museum, was a lifetime expert in the field of paleoanthropology (the study of fossil man).....Pilbeam ranked so high in the field, that he was the advisor to the government of Kenya in regard to the establishment of an international institute of the study of human origins. It is Kenya that, for decades, has been the center of hominoid research, because of the efforts of *Richard Leakey and his mother, *Dr. Mary Leakey. They have tried to dig ancient half-man / half-ape bones out of the ground. The Leakeys have their headquarters in Nairobi.
The Washington Post today publishes an editorial prepared by Anne Applebaum ("Dissing Darwin") that uses the term "intelligent creator" three times to describe the concept of intelligent design. The writer knows better, but apparently believes that if she can lodge the word "creator" (as in "creationist") in people's minds, it will reside there forever. The key to understanding such writing: the proponents of intelligent design must never be allowed to speak for themselves or define their own ideas. Instead they must only be spoken about and accept definitions of their terms that are offered by their foes.
The editorial also twice describes the film The Privileged Planet as "religious", though the writer admits it doesn't mention the word God. (It also never mentions Darwin, since Darwin's theory isn't the topic of the film, though it is in the title of the Post editorial.) It escapes her, for example, that the "fine tuning" case made in the film is not exactly a staple of Sunday School fare, but is rather a widely accepted position in the scientific community, while not the consensus view.
The editorial also knowingly hides the fact that the Smithsonian did "co-sponsor" the Discovery film event. The writer had seen a copy of the letter from the Smithsonian declaring its co-sponsorship and she knew from several sources that the co-sponsorship was not sought by Discovery, but actually was required by the Smithsonian. That the Museum withdrew a gift that was never requested fails to draw her interest at all.
And the editorial wholly ignores the fact that the Smithsonian still intends to screen the film at the National Museum of Natural History on June 23, which was all we ever did request.
I suppose we should be appreciative that Post editorials keep using the word "sophisticated" to describe proponents of intelligent design. I think that means that the only way for them to answer us is to misrepresent the content of our views. That is not very sophisticated at all.
Granville Sewell is a mathematician on the faculty of Texas A&M University who has just published the second edition of a book on differential equations: The Numerical Solution of Ordinary and Partial Differential Equations (2005). Appendix D of that book is titled “Can Anything Happen in an Open System?” and is pure ID. Consider the following quote:
The development of any major new feature presents similar problems, and according to Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe, who describes several spectacular examples in detail in Darwin’s Black Box [Behe 1996], the world of microbiology is especially loaded with such examples of irreducible complexity. Although I cannot imagine any uses for the components of this airtight insect trap before the trap was almost perfect, a good Darwinist will imagine 2 or 3 far-fetched intermediate useful stages, and consider the problem solved. I believe you would need to find thousands of intermediate stages before this example of irreducible complexity has been reduced to steps small enough to be bridged by single random mutations — a lot of things have to happen behind the scenes and at the microscopic level….
I read the appendix. Very nice. Mikey likes it. My stock reply to the evolutionist’s stock reply about violations of the 2nd law of thermodynamics (2Lot) is that you cannot willy-nilly swap heat entropy for information entropy which is what they do when they argue that the earth is an open system with heat from the sun powering information buildup on the planet’s surface.
Sewell seems to be saying the same thing in several places. It’s nice to see agreement from an authoritative source.
Anyhow, I think Sewell’s inspired me to come up with a corollary to 2LoT as follows.
Springer’s Evo-Creo 2LoT Corollary: As ID arguments get more organized, evolutionist arguments must become less organized. The end result is that ID becomes a completely coherent explanation of the facts while the Darwinian narrative decays into a vast state of disarray.
Hypocrisy is the mother of all credibility problems, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has it in spades. While loudly complaining about the "unethical" treatment of animals by restaurant owners, grocers, farmers, scientists, anglers, and countless other Americans, the group has its own dirty little secret.
PETA kills animals. By the thousands.
From July 1998 through the end of 2003, PETA killed over 10,000 dogs, cats, and other "companion animals" -- at its Norfolk, Virginia headquarters. That's more than five defenseless animals every day. Not counting the dogs and cats PETA spayed and neutered, the group put to death over 85 percent of the animals it took in during 2003 alone. And its angel-of-death pattern shows no sign of changing.
On its 2002 federal income-tax return, PETA claimed a $9,370 write-off for a giant walk-in freezer, the kind most people use as a meat locker or for ice-cream storage. But animal-rights activists don't eat meat or dairy foods. So far, the group hasn't confirmed the obvious -- that it's using the appliance to store the bodies of its victims.
In 2000, when the Associated Press first noted PETA's Kervorkian-esque tendencies, PETA president Ingrid Newkirk complained that actually taking care of animals costs more than killing them. "We could become a no-kill shelter immediately," she admitted.
PETA kills animals. Because it has other financial priorities.
PETA raked in nearly $29 million last year in income, much of it raised from pet owners who think their donations actually help animals. Instead, the group spends huge sums on programs equating people who eat chicken with Nazis, scaring young children away from drinking milk, recruiting children into the radical animal-rights lifestyle, and intimidating businessmen and their families in their own neighborhoods. PETA has also spent tens of thousands of dollars defending arsonists and other violent extremists.
PETA claims it engages in outrageous media-seeking stunts "for the animals." But which animals? Carping about the value of future two-piece dinners while administering lethal injections to puppies and kittens isn't ethical. It's hypocritical -- with a death toll that PETA would protest if it weren't their own doing.
PETA kills animals. And its leaders dare lecture the rest of us.
The alternative to religious dogmatism on the right and the emotionalism of the egalitarian left is a code of moral absolutes based on reason and individualism.
Does morality depend upon religion? Most people believe it does, which is a major reason behind the appeal of the religious right. People believe that without faith in a supernatural authority, we can have no moral values -- no moral absolutes, no black-and-white distinctions, no firm demarcation between good and evil -- in life or in politics. This is the assumption underlying Justice Antonin Scalia’s recent assertion that “government derives its authority from God,” since only religious faith can supposedly provide moral constraints on human action. & nbsp; And what draws people to this bizarre premise -- the premise that there is no rational basis for refraining from murder, rape or anarchism? The left’s persistent assault on moral values.
That is, liberals characteristically renounce moral absolutes in favor of moral grayness. They insist, for example, that criminals should not be reviled, but should be seen as tragic products of their “social environment” -- that teenage mothers are just as entitled to welfare checks as wage-earners are to their paychecks, and that to deny welfare benefits for a child born into a family already receiving welfare is, as the ACLU declares, to “unconstitutionally coerce women’s reproductive decisions” -- that America is morally equivalent to its enemies, with our own policies having provoked the September 11 attacks and our “unilateralist” actions in Iraq being no different from any forcible occupation of one nation by another.
Repulsed by such egalitarian, anti-“judgmental” absurdities, many people disavow what they regard as leftism’s essence: secularism, and turn to religion for their values. & nbsp; But this is a false alternative. Secularism is simply a viewpoint that disclaims religion; what it embraces, though, may be rational or not. And the absurdities of the left stem precisely from its irrationality -- its pervasive emotionalism, its insistence on doing whatever “feels right,” its contention that there are no fixed truths, its credo that morality is anything one wishes it to be. The left maintains that no objective principles exist to validate moral judgments. From its multicultural equalization of all societies - -savage or civilized -- to its belief in an indefinable, “evolving” Constitution, the left rejects the logic of objective standards and enshrines the arbitrariness of subjectivism. Thus, what the left’s opponents should disavow is not secularism per se, but rather the replacement of a religious variant of unreason -- blind faith -- with a secular variant: blind feelings.
The real alternative to the leftist claptrap is a morality of reason. Such a morality begins with the individual’s life as the primary value and identifies the further values that are demonstrably required to sustain that life. It observes that man’s nature demands that we live not by random urges or by animal instincts, but by the faculty that distinguishes us from animals and on which our existence fundamentally depends: rationality. & nbsp; With reason as its cardinal value, this code of individualism espouses fixed principles and categorical moral judgments. It demands, for instance, that the initiation of force -- the antithesis of reason -- be denounced and that an unbridgeable moral chasm be recognized between the criminal and the non-criminal. & nbsp; Since life requires man to produce what he needs, productiveness is a moral value -- thereby making moral opposites out of the industrious worker and the parasitic welfare recipient. Since life requires man to use his own judgment rather than submissively accept the assertions of others, independence is a moral value -- making moral opposites out of the person (or nation) acting on his own rational convictions and the one deferring to the consensus of his neighbors (or the U.N.). Since life requires the mind, man’s political system must allow him to use it, i.e., freedom is a moral value -- making moral opposites out of America, the defender of liberty, and America’s enemies, who seek liberty’s destruction. & nbsp; A morality of reason counters the relativism and the undiscriminating “tolerance” of the left. & nbsp; It also counters a morality of faith, and establishes a genuine “culture of life.” Individualism upholds your sovereignty over your life -- and refuses to subordinate the preservation of that life to, say, the preservation of embryonic stem cells in some petri dish. Individualism defends your inalienable right to your life, including your right to end it -- and evaluates, say, opposition to assisted-suicide as a desecration of human life, since forcing someone to live who wishes to die is no less evil than forcing someone to die who wishes to live. & nbsp; There is indeed morality without religion -- a morality, not of dogmatic commands, but of rational values and of unbreached respect for the life of the individual.
If we don’t start paying attention to the enemy within, it could very well take us down.
It’s become increasingly clear in recent weeks that a second front has opened in the War on Terrorism. Now not only is the United States battling Islamic terrorism and its state supporters, it’s facing another enemy: The mainstream media. Aided by its allies among international human rights organizations, the anti-American left, and traitors within our own military, government and intelligence services, the mainstream media is doing all it can to defeat the United States.
The mainstream media has long had it out for President Bush as well as being transparently opposed to the war in Iraq, but beginning with the Abu Ghraib story, it started focusing almost solely on the U.S. military. Their obsession with Abu Ghraib began a narrative in which U.S. soldiers were the bad guys and the terrorists they fought just innocent victims.
This was familiar territory for the media, which led the charge against U.S. soldiers in Vietnam and along with the anti-war movement, managed to stain Vietnam veterans’ honor for generations. ABC White House correspondent Terry Moran even admitted to the media’s Vietnam Syndrome during a radio interview last month. While they held off for a bit after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, it didn’t take long for the media to resort to form. And today we find ourselves back in “babykiller” territory. Only this time, it’s all about the poor, abused terrorists at Guantanamo Bay prison.
It was here that the mainstream media’s latest campaign against the U.S. military centered. It all began with a Newsweek story (tipped off by an unnamed government official) that alleged so-called “Koran abuse” at the hands of guards at Gitmo. It was said that guards had flushed a Koran down the toilet in front of a prisoner, something that defies the laws of physics if not common sense. But it was soon disclosed that the story was false. Still, fellow members of the media continued to make excuses for the Newsweek gaffe and began pushing a shameful “fake yet accurate” narrative that persists to this day.
It wasn’t enough that the bogus Newsweek story helped spark riots across the Muslim world leading to 16 deaths and over 100 wounded, or that it gave the terrorists a major victory in the propaganda war, or that it was eventually retracted. America’s new enemy just couldn’t let the “prisoner abuse” story go. So they pressed on with their offensive.
A week later Newsweek and other media outlets again insisted that “Koran abuse” had occurred at Guantanamo Bay, this time according to leaked FBI e-mails. This retread of the original story was based mostly on the claims of terrorist inmates, making it almost as reliable as the original falsehood. Apparently, none of the reporters involved bothered to read the al-Qaeda manual, which instructs terrorists to claim torture or desecration of the Koran no matter what. Either unable or unwilling to comprehend the strategies employed by America’s enemies, the mainstream media is now openly doing the bidding of Islamic terrorists.
The next attack came from Amnesty International who used the media to compare U.S. treatment of prisoners at Gitmo to the Soviet Union in Siberia and called it “the gulag of our time.” They must have missed the concentration camps in North Korea where people are being gassed to death a la Auschwitz. And the slaughter of black Christians by Muslims in Sudan or the hundreds of dissidents rotting in Cuban prisons. Then there’s the ongoing destruction of Zimbabwe at the hands of the mad dictator Mugabe. But according to Amnesty International, the United States is worse than all of them combined.
One of their arguments is that the United States should confer Geneva Conventions rights on the prisoners at Gitmo. But this would be folly at its worst. These terrorists claim no nationality nor do they wear the uniform of any military. It is only to jihad that they are loyal. In fact, their tactics involve using the West’s adherence to the Geneva Conventions against it. So while our armies try to tiptoe around the sites protected by the Conventions -- mosques, hospitals and schools -- the terrorists have no such delicacies. They routinely hole up in mosques and seem to have no compunction about blowing them up either. They use ambulances as moving bomb receptacles and hospitals to house ammunition. They store suicide-bombing vests in schools and take school children hostage. They attack civilian targets as a rule and engage in torture, beheadings and mutilation of hostages. This is the savagery to which the West is expected to react with kid gloves, according to the defenders of terrorism.
When it comes to allegations of torture, the media and its allies just can’t seem to make up their minds. On the one hand, the media flips out at any hint of physical torture, but when the military utilizes psychological methods to unsettle prisoners, it turns out they’re against that too. Claims that guards at Gitmo used female interrogators to get information out of terrorists and thereby capitalized on Muslim hang-ups about sex were met with shock by the media. This sudden prudery was rather touching, but ridiculously overwrought. I thought that knowing your enemy and using his weaknesses against him is what psychological warfare is all about.
The terrorists certainly know how to capitalize on the naivete of the mainstream media. All one has to do is to read passages of the Koran to see that adherents are instructed to use any means necessary to deceive the “disbelievers” or non-Muslims. The practice even has a name -- it’s known as “al-Takeyya.” Chilling tales have been told by former Muslims about the cold-blooded lies told to “infidels” in the name of spreading Islam. Whether it be Palestinian terrorists battling Israel or al-Qaeda terrorists attacking the United States, all use deception to defeat their enemies.
None of this information is hidden from the public. In fact, it’s available all over the Internet and particularly at the website for the Middle East Media Research Institute. Memri.org is the place to find translated and archived print and television media from the Muslim world. So one would think that the erstwhile reporters of the mainstream media would have access to all this information. To continue claiming ignorance while the terrorists themselves brag about lying on a routine basis, demonstrates either a willful blindness or an outright hostility towards their own country. I’m betting on the latter.
In the end, it turns out that many of the alleged incidents at Gitmo involving “Koran abuse” were actually non-events such as a Koran being accidentally knocked on the floor or worst of all, touched by a non-Muslim. In one case, a detainee himself ripped up pages of a Koran and stuffed them in the toilet, presumably to stir up the other inmates. Of course, what’s lost among all the hoopla is the fact that the inmates only have Korans because the U.S. military furnished them. But none of this matters to anti-American Muslims who continue to protest the “desecration” as we speak.
Even if the trumped up “Koran in the toilet” story were true, would that really constitute torture? And if we’re talking about the desecration of holy books, how did the mainstream media manage to overlook Saudi Arabia, where bibles are shredded on a routine basis. Incidentally, they don’t allow Judaism or Christianity to be practiced in their country either. Coming from the staunch secularists in the media who shriek in horror at any expression of Christianity in America, this sudden concern for religious symbols seems just a tad hypocritical.
But the media wouldn’t be able to put forward these stories without their informants. What about these members of the military who keep leaking supposedly classified information to the media? Or government officials who mysteriously disclose America’s secrets to the media and by extension, its enemies? The fact that U.S. intelligence services seem to be in on the assault is not reassuring. These all constitute treasonous activities and every effort should be made to track down and punish the perpetrators.
Even when the leak is done with good intentions, as in the photos of Saddam in his skivvies, the end result is the same. That America seems to have so little control over such information does not bode well for success in the War on Terrorism. We face a nihilistic enemy that seeks to use weapons of mass destruction against us and we can ill afford such leniency.
No one is suggesting censorship, but how about some wartime standards? Remember the WWII phrase “Loose lips sink ships?” It seems impossibly quaint by today’s standards, but there’s no doubt that such precaution helped America and the allies win the war against fascism. Just imagine what this war would be like if we had the media on our side. Short of that, providing aid and comfort to the enemy should at least be considered unacceptable. The media may be eager to embrace dhimmitude, but the rest of us don’t have to facilitate their surrender.
No longer can the War on Terrorism simply involve soldiers fighting on the battlefield or even the liberation of millions of Muslims. If we don’t start paying attention to the enemy within, it could very well take us down.
I read the appendix. Very nice. Mikey likes it. My stock reply to the evolutionist’s stock reply about violations of the 2nd law of thermodynamics (2Lot) is that you cannot willy-nilly swap heat entropy for information entropy which is what they do when they argue that the earth is an open system with heat from the sun powering information buildup on the planet’s surface.
Sewell seems to be saying the same thing in several places. It’s nice to see agreement from an authoritative source.
Anyhow, I think Sewell’s inspired me to come up with a corollary to 2LoT as follows.
Springer’s Evo-Creo 2LoT Corollary: As ID arguments get more organized, evolutionist arguments must become less organized. The end result is that ID becomes a completely coherent explanation of the facts while the Darwinian narrative decays into a vast state of disarray.
It’s all a simple matter of physics you see.