Free-Market Environmentalism

I have been an advocate of the principle that private ownership is the best way of preserving the environment for many years. I therefore find the existence of this blog very exciting. Haven't had a chance to look it over yet, but I suspect it is going on the blogroll.
(Via Juan Non-Volokh)

Bush Decision Disenfranchises Blacks, Women

Or at least one black woman. La Shawn Barber writes:

I’m Not Voting In November

That’s it. The camel’s back is broken.

George Bush is allowing the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe to “monitor” the elections of our free and sovereign nation. Simply outrageous.

Okay, I was kidding about the headline. But you wouldn't be laughing if it wasn't plausible.

Education Choice Update

Two interesting stories relating to school choice. First the bad news (via Reuters):

A chain of private California schools that taught immigrants there are 53 U.S. states and four branches of the U.S. government was ordered to stop handing out phony diplomas this week, state Attorney General Bill Lockyer said on Friday.
Authorities seized the assets of California Alternative High School and asked a judge to stop the company's 30 schools statewide from handing out "high school diplomas" to students dreaming of a better life through education, Lockyer said.

The company charged its mainly Latino students $450 to $1,450 for a 10-week course based on a 54-page book that was riddled with errors, according to a lawsuit filed on Monday.

Students learned that Congress had two houses -- the Senate for Democrats and the House for Republicans; that the U.S. flag had not been updated to reflect the addition of Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico to the "original" 50 states; that the federal "administrative" branch oversees the Treasury Department; and that World War II occurred from 1938 to 1942.

Captain Ed has more comments but I just wanted to point out that this sort of thing has always been a major objection those of us on the pro-voucher campaign have had to put up with through the years. The argument is to the effect that, if voucher programs were allowed to thrive, there would be no effective way to prevent charlatans from setting up schools and cheating the tax-payers. And yet we do not have vouchers in California and somehow this managed to happen anyway. Strange. Now these poor people are out an average of about $1000 and probably will never recover it. If it had been the State of California that was cheated, do you think it's possible that the government might have a slightly better chance of recovering the loss? Something to think about.

But there is good news on the Education Choice front, although it is not really news to some of us:

Most home-school students aren't ducking the state assessment tests required under federal law, and many of those who aren't required to take them do it anyway.

"We studied it in the late 1990s, and home schoolers averaged 20-30 percentage points higher than the rest of the students," said Ian Slatter, spokesman for the National Center for Home Education in Purcellville, Va.

"Not every home schooler, but a lot of home schoolers take the tests. A lot of times it's a requirement," he said Monday. "Many states do not require it but a lot of parents choose to take it."

The home-school students take the tests in a variety of ways. Sometimes it's at the neighborhood school, others in a neutral setting, and the ones just taken for the benefit of parents who want to make sure their children are keeping up are taken at home.

So all those unregulated, anti-social, homeschooled misfits are, uh, actually taking the stanardized tests when they aren't legally required to. Just because their parents (i.e. instructors) want to know how well they are doing. Imagine.

Iraqi Citizens Free Hostages

Speaking of self-defense (see the end of the post below), this story from Arab News is very good news indeed:

One of the Jordanian hostages said he had been released with three other Jordanian truck drivers after a group of Iraqis stormed a house in the city of Fallujah late on Tuesday and freed them without firing a shot.

“When the brave people of Fallujah knew that we were held hostage they raided the house and rescued us last night. We are all safe,” one of the hostages, Ahmad Hassan Abu Jafaar, said by telephone. “We’re expecting to go back to Jordan today.”

[...]

The Iraqi rescuers were sent by a council of local elders formed last month to battle crime and kidnapping in Fallujah, where the interim government of Prime Minister Iyad Allawi in Baghdad exercises only minimal authority.

The corollary to Edmund Burke's famous quote is that when enough good people start doing something, the forces of evil begin to fail.
(Via: Armies of Liberation)

PotP Calls for Protective Force

Passion of the Present rightly notes that the joint statement of Khartoum and the UN on disarming the Janjaweed in Sudan is largely worthless:

The UN and the Sudanese government have jointly issued a statement saying they have agreed as to how the violence in Darfur can be halted.

This announcement seems premature, at best, given the real challenge of halting the far-reaching and genocidal campaign that has been unleashed. Here are two fascinating and very different accounts of the situation in Darfur--one writer pro-government and one convinced that genocide is being intentionally carried out by the government. Both writers agree that the militias cannot be disarmed anytime soon, and that doing so will require very strong and area-wide enforcement.

Here are the two links mentioned:

Pro-government article:

No one will give up their weapons until the government fully establishes a comprehensive security in the region. The government will have to virtually buy off those who bore arms, but to affect this we need at least three years."

Critical article:

The best, and perhaps the only, means of disarmament is that employed by the British seventy-five years ago: establish a working local administration, regulate the ownership of arms, and gradually isolate the outlaws and brigands who refuse to conform. It took a decade then, and it won't be any faster today. Not only are there more weapons now, but the political polarities are much sharper.

PotP concludes:

We must continue to press sharply for an outside protective force from the African Union, as the minimum necessary foundation for an international rescue that stops the genocide and begins the process of reweaving the torn fabric of life in Darfur.

I agree that this is the minimum necessary, but I do not think it will be sufficient. If the African Union is willing and capable of providing such security, it would certainly take some pressure off the US to supply forces as well as demonstrating a much needed commitment on the part of African nations to police themselves.

But I strongly suspect that the African Union does not really have the capacity, and will eventually lose the will, to provide the necessary protection. And the UN, which still thinks, despite all the recent evidence to the contrary, that sanctions are a credible option in resolving human rights abuses, is certainly not going to authorize Western troops on Sudan's sovereign territory.

So if these people are going to be protected at all, it will probably devolve on more "unilateral" action by the US and whatever coalition we can muster. I would not be particularly displeased by such an outcome; in fact, I have advocated it for years, long before the specific Darfur crisis. And since Sudan is on the list of Terror-Sponsoring Nations, it would certainly be in the interest of our national security, and consistent with the War on Terror, to do so. In October, 2001, President Bush said that "for those nations that stand with the terrorists, there will be a heavy price." Sudan's bill is long overdue.

But in addition to providing protection, we should be helping these people to defend themselves. Something like Kurosawa's Seven Samurai in which the peasants are armed and trained to defend their village. Or perhaps Neil Stephenson's HEAP (Holocaust Education and Avoidance Pod) in Cryptonomicon. I don't pretend to understand all of the details that would be involved in such a project, but it would not be the first time the US gave such assistance to a beleaguered people. The Southern Sudanese achieved a truce largely because of the effectiveness of their armed resistance. I wished that we could have provided more direct aid at the time, and there may yet be occasion to do so in the South. But certainly the largely defenseless population in Darfur would be a worthy candidate for this sort of assistance.

Defeat the Wizbang Seven

Kevin Aylward at Wizbang has posted a list of Democratic Congressional incumbents of the "tinfoil hat" caucus and their Republican challengers. He is suggesting that donations be made to the latter with $.02 to indicate that the donation came through his blog.

I tend to make my donations to charitable rather than political causes, but I think the project is worthwile for those of you who do plan on donating during this election. Of special note is #5: Loretta Sanchez (D) vs. Dr. Alexandria Coronado (R) who is in my area (though not in my specific district).

Pakistan Gets More Terrorists

As I predicted (OK, guessed) last week, the capture of Ahmed Ghailani seems to have contributed to more captures and better intelligence. Captain Ed has the story:

The key capture, the one that made headlines last week, was Pakistan's arrest of Ahmed Ghailani and computer expert Muhammed Naeem Nour Khan. Ghailani made the big headlines as one of the leading suspects in the 1998 embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. However, I wonder if the real prize was Khan, or more intriguingly, any equipment or data captured with Khan. The Pakistanis seem to be on a roll after a long, quiet period, and American intelligence on AQ activities appears a lot more specific than before. That would indicate that either the Pakistanis have infiltrated AQ to an unprecedented depth or that they're getting some pretty good intel from their captives. Hard drives and computer codes can keep secrets only so long.

In either case, AQ command must be worrying over the same issues and looking desperately for a mole. That would keep them occupied for a while, and we can continue to dismantle their operations while they chase their tails. In case anyone wonders, keeping the enemy on the defensive definitely demonstrates progress, and is a huge improvement over our pre-9/11 efforts against Islamofascist terror.

No Discernable Bounce

Evidently Kerry is not getting the expected bounce in the polls from the Democratic Convention last week. According to USA Today:

Last week's Democratic convention boosted voters' impressions of John Kerry but failed to give him the expected bump in the head-to-head race against President Bush

[...]

In the survey, taken Friday and Saturday, Bush led Kerry 50%-46% among likely voters. Independent candidate Ralph Nader was at 2%.

The survey showed Kerry losing 1 percentage point and Bush gaining 4 percentage points from a poll taken the week before the Boston convention.

Yes this is within the margin of error, it is too early to tell, polls don't decide elections, caveat, caveat, yada-yada-yada.

But when you spend thousand of dollars to get your campaign off to a big start, and you don't get any perceptible change, that is still losing ground.

But Matthew Dowd, chief strategist for the Bush campaign, said "history doesn't bode well" for Kerry. Since World War II, the three challengers who have unseated presidents held clear leads after their conventions.

This election is still Bush's to lose. Here's hoping he doesn't.

UPDATE: Here is the actual polling data.

Christians Targeted in Iraq

According to the AP:

Assailants triggered a coordinated series of explosions outside five churches in Baghdad and Mosul during Sunday evening services, killing 11 people and wounding more than 50 in the first major assault on Iraq's Christian minority since the 15-month-old insurgency began.

[...]

The unprecedented attacks against Iraq's 750,000-member Christian minority seemed to confirm community members' fears they might be targeted as suspected collaborators with American forces amid a rising tide of Islamic fundamentalism.

[...]

This (attack) isn't against Muslims or Christians, this is against Iraq," Deputy Foreign Minister Labid Abawi told The Associated Press.

[...]

Muslim clerics condemned the violence and offered condolences to the Christian community.

"This is a cowardly act and targets all Iraqis," Abdul Hadi al-Daraji, spokesman for radical Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, told Al-Jazeera television.

Mohammed Fadil al-Samara'i, an official with the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party, blamed terrorist groups and others "who profit from creating civil disturbances in Iraq."

The attacks on the churches signaled a vast change in tactics for insurgents, who have focused many previous attacks on U.S. forces, Iraqi officials and police in a drive to push coalition forces from the country, weaken the interim government and hamper reconstruction efforts.

To escape the chaos here, many of Iraq's Christians have gone to neighboring Jordan and Syria to wait for the security situation to improve.

Many who remained watched with fear as Islamic fundamentalism, long repressed under Saddam Hussein's fallen regime, thrived. Islamic radicals have warned Christians running liquor stores to shut down their businesses and have turned their sights on fashion stores and beauty salons.

I'm sure Belmont Club will have a more detailed analysis eventually, but the broad strategy seems obvious enough at first blush. Picking on Iraqi Christians is a fairly safe tactic because it allows the terrorists to demonstrate their valor to their friends without actually putting themselves in much danger. It also has the advantage of not antagonizing the majority population, which is a major error the terrorists have been making in the last few months. And, of course, as with any minority population, there will be a certain number of people who, though not otherwise sympathetic to the terrorists, will applaud such attacks from normal human bigotry.

There aren't a substantial number of Jews in Iraq, but if there are any Jewish communities left intact, look for them to be targeted as well.

UPDATE: Jane at Armies of Liberation makes a point that I had noticed as well but forgot to mention: "The more Zarqawi tries to turn the Iraqis against each other, the more they turn against him."

Yes, the response from the Iraqis (including a representative of al-Sadr) is rather encouraging.

Blue Moon Tonight?

Actually, no, according to Sky and Telescope. Modern folklore calls the second full moon in a month a "blue moon" but that definition is less that 60 years old. The original definition was the third full moon in a season that had four. This older type of blue moon can only occur in the month before the equinoxes and solstices (February, May, August or November) and usually falls around the 20th day so it could never be the second full moon in a month (which must fall after the 29th).

The sky and telescope article tells specifically how the error occurred, which is a fascinating, but somewhat long and convoluted, story. Here is an excerpt that explains the older definition:

The almanac also follows certain rules laid down as part of the Gregorian calendar reform in 1582. The ecclesiastical vernal (spring) equinox always falls on March 21st, regardless of the position of the Sun. Lent begins on Ash Wednesday, 46 days before Easter, and must contain the Lenten Moon, considered to be the last full Moon of winter. The first full Moon of spring is called the Egg Moon (or Easter Moon, or Paschal Moon) and must fall within the week before Easter.

[...] Seasonal Moon names are assigned near the spring equinox in accordance with the ecclesiastical rules for determining the dates of Easter and Lent. [...] When a season contains four full Moons, the third is called a Blue Moon.

Why is the third full Moon identified as the extra one in a season with four? Because only then will the names of the other full Moons, such as the Moon Before Yule and the Moon After Yule, fall at the proper times relative to the solstices and equinoxes.

So the blue moon was added in years that had an extra full moon, in order to keep the calendar straight for religious purposes. Since people have largely stopped caring about such things, it is hardly surprising that the newer definition, which is, after all, easier to remember, has become so popular.

Syrian Ambassador Gets Surreal

The story of the 14 Syrian "musicians" just got much more disturbing. Michelle Malkin links the Syrian Ambassador's letter to the Washington times and the follow-up by Annie Jacobson in Women's Wall Street. Ambassador Imad Moustapha wrote:

Your reporter failed to mention that the only "crimes" these professional musicians were accused of committing were going to the lavatory, eating McDonald's food and talking to one another. [But they were also traveling with expired visas, weren't they? -- JoC]

The fact that they have performed in the past six months in places such as the Kennedy Center, the Lincoln Center and the Juilliard School did not prevent Mrs. Jacobsen from saying, "[C]ouldn't 14 terrorists learn to play instruments?"

Annie Jacobson responds:

...I asked Dr. Moustapha why his letter suggested that these 14 Syrians played at the Lincoln Center, the Kennedy Center, and the Julliard [sic] School, when according to my research, that's not at all the case.

Dr. Moustapha said Nour Mehana and his back-up band had not played there, but that other Syrian musicians had. I told Dr. Moustapha that his letter to The Washington Times was at best misleading, and at worst, completely misrepresenting the facts. I added that I didn't consider doing so either diplomatic or fair.

So let me get this straight; when Moustapha says "they" in the second paragraph quoted above, he doesn't mean the same musicians as in the first paragraph, but some completely different set of Syrian musicians? That isn't just undiplomatic, it's insane. Who says things like that?

Oh, wait, I get it! He is suggesting that there is such unity among Syrians that what one does, they all do. So if some Syrian musicians played in Juilliard, then they all played in Juilliard. This must be that Eastern logic they told me about in High School. It's just our fragmented, individualistic Western culture that prevents us from understanding.

But wouldn't that imply that since some Syrians are terrorists, they all...? Uh, no, never mind, I won't go there. But it seems like something similar occurred to Ms. Jacobson. She continues:

Dr. Moustapha told me that I was a paranoid racist.

I asked Dr. Moustapha if, by suggesting that all Syrian musicians are innocent (not to mention talented) just because they are Syrian, wasn't that the same kind of gross generalization he'd accused me of?

Dr. Moustapha told me again that I was a paranoid person and that the men did nothing wrong.

I reminded him that it was the in-flight behavior of the men (which has now been corroborated by other passengers) which caused alarm, not their Syrian heritage.

[...]

He said a few more things that aren't fit to print.

I suggested to Dr. Moustapha that we focus on a diplomatic solution, that perhaps he himself could help to locate the 14 Syrian musicians in question so that they could share their side of the story. I waited for an answer, but instead, Dr. Moustapha hung up on me.

[Emphasis mine]

I'm sorry, but this has gone quite beyond misunderstanding. One of these people is flat-out lying. Since there are other corroborating stories to back up Ms. Jacobson, I'm betting it's Moustapha. And that is just not a good thing. If these fellows were innocent, it's hard to see why a trained diplomat should be acting so completely freakish.

Haiku Contest at Ace of Spades

My fellow playing card is hosting a Kerry-bashing haiku contest. This isn't my normal style, but it's Friday night and it's all good, clean fun. The contest entries are pretty good,so far and there is even a minor flame-war with an infiltrating Lefty. Not partiularly chivalrous, perhaps, but very literate.

My favorite so far:

Ever'body was
Haiku fighting. Those boys were
fast as lightening!

which is cheating, but what the hell.

Passion of the Present

I have added a new Sudan-oriented blog to the blogroll: Passion of the Present.

The site collects news and commentary about the genocide in Sudan as well as several "Contact Your Congressman" type resources. Looks like the articles are fairly well written and thoroughly researched as well, but I haven't had a whole lot of time to dig deeply. This article, on the history of Sudan's relationship to Al Qaeda, is very well written and informative.

Thanks to Seldom Sober for the link.

Also, until the crisis is past, I have reorganized the blogroll to include a special Sudan section. The links in this section are duplicated elsewhere. If you know of anyone who has a blog or news-site dedicated to this atrocity, send me an email and I will add them to the list. (Only serious sites need apply. I will not add anyone who, in my subjective judment, is using this crisis for political ends, whether on the Left or the Right.)

Update: I emailed Jane at Armies of Liberation about this site and she was kind enough to link back to me as well. As usual, she has much more to say about this than I and is much better informed. Check out her site if you haven't already.

Upstaged by the Balloon Drop

My guess is that this quote will be the most memorable line of the convention. Sad.

High Level Al Qaeda Leader Caught in Pakistan

The BBC reports:

Mr Ghailani has been indicted in the US over the bombings of the American embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, nearly six years ago.

[...]

Mr Ghailani is on the FBI's list of 22 "most wanted terrorists".

[...]

The BBC's Zaffar Abbas, in the Pakistani capital Islamabad, says the Pakistani security forces have killed or arrested several suspected Islamic militants in recent months.

But he adds that Mr Ghailani is the most significant Al-Qaeda suspect to be apprehended since the arrest of the mastermind of the 11 September 2001 attacks, Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, more than a year ago.

Well, I've never heard of him, but this is still good news. If he is as significant as all that, he may be able to lead us to more arrests.

UPDATE: Andrew Sullivan protests that he does not see grounds for a conspiracy theory in the timing of this arrest:

Pakistan gets a major al Qaeda figure the day of Kerry's speech. No I don't believe the conspiracy theories, but it doesn't help that TNR's John Judis predicted something quite close to this.

That's a good thing because the arrest was not on the same day as the speesh, but was actually made Sunday after a 24-hour standoff according the the CNN article he links to. Although, I suppose one could say that the timing of the announcement was suspicious if you were inclined to conspiracy theories ... unlike Mr Sullivan ... who isn't.

Gang of Oversized Women Terrorizes South Africa

No kidding:

A GANG of oversized women shoplifters has been terrorising shopkeepers and supermarkets in the South African port city of Durban over the past two months, police said.

The gang targeted stores in the city's crime-prone business district and diverted security staff with "commotion" while others packed their bags with goodies, Inspector Michael Read told AFP from Durban.

"Size is a factor in that they use it to intimidate the staff," he said, adding that the women operated in gangs of between four and 10.

"The modus operandi is that some of them pick up [sic] a mock fight or cause commotion while the others fill oversized bags with clothes. They usually target clothes shops and cosmetic outlets and then sell them to streetside vendors at cheap prices."

Read said "several arrests have been made but some of these women are still at large."

You should, like, pardon the pun.

Kerry's Speech

I only caught the last 15 minutes on the radio, but have read the Drudge Report version of the transcript. My first impression: it sounds like it was written by Andrew Sullivan. With a few exceptions, it was optimistic, patriotic, faith-friendly and pro-military. I am as skeptical as anyone that Kerry can keep this tone for the rest of the campaign, much less impose it on the Democratic party throughout a possible presidency. And no one really believes Convention speeches anyway. But there is no doubt that Kerry said the right things, and I think that is worthy of note.

But even if we don't believe them, it is profoundly encouraging that the Democrats have taken a rhetorical turn to the right. That indicates that they have recognized the overwhelmingly conservative character of the American people. I would love to believe, as Mr. Sullivan seems to, that the Democratic party has finally shaken off the influence of its left wing and has re-emerged as the populist party it was in the first half of the 20th Century. I don't actually believe that. But it would be nice to live in an America where the political differences were truly matters of policy, of how to achieve our shared ends, not over the ends themselves. The fact that the Dems have adopted our rhetoric gives me hope that such a scenario is possible, even if not immanent.

But I mentioned there were exceptions to the positive message, and I think those are worth emphasizing. I do not have time to do a thorough fisking of Kerry's speech (and it will probably be done better by others anyway) but the following points stand out as problematic:

As President, I will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence. I will immediately reform the intelligence system - so policy is guided by facts, and facts are never distorted by politics. And as President, I will bring back this nation's time-honored tradition: the United States of America never goes to war because we want to, we only go to war because we have to.

If Kerry wants to reassure people that he will not go soft on the War on Terror, this seems like a culpable misunderstanding. The suggestion, of course, is that Bush didn't need to take us to war against Iraq because we were not in immanent danger of attack. But Kerry himself made the connection between Saddam and terrorism and even disagreed with McCain whether the issue of an actual attack on the US was the primary danger. Suggesting that we went to war because we "wanted to" is simply slanderous.

But it gets worse:

And on my first day in office, I will send a message to every man and woman in our armed forces: You will never be asked to fight a war without a plan to win the peace.
[...]
I defended this country as a young man and I will defend it as President. Let there be no mistake: I will never hesitate to use force when it is required. Any attack will be met with a swift and certain response. I will never give any nation or international institution a veto over our national security. And I will build a stronger American military.

I'm glad to hear the line about building a stronger military. But, given his record in the Senate, we only have his word to go on that he has finally seen the light and won't veto legislation for reasons of nuance and complexity. I, for one, am skeptical.

But the real problem here is the wait and see attitude. If we only respond to attacks we are handing the initiative over to the terrorists. That is the fundamental issue in the Bush doctrine. It may be that Bush deserves some criticism for his handling of the intelligence community, but he at least understood that it is better to risk a misstep than to wait for the enemy to show his hand. Kerry doesn't get this crucial point yet and that is frightening.

On the domestic front:

For four years, we've heard a lot of talk about values. But values spoken without actions taken are just slogans. Values are not just words. They're what we live by. They're about the causes we champion and the people we fight for. And it is time for those who talk about family values to start valuing families.

You don't value families by kicking kids out of after school programs and taking cops off our streets, so that Enron can get another tax break.

We believe in the family value of caring for our children and protecting the neighborhoods where they walk and play.

Neither of these issues, education and police, are rightly federal responsibilities. If such problems exist, they were not caused by Bush policies, and they will not be solved by a Kerry administration. And don't forget about the gratuitous Enron reference. The fact is the Bush administration prosecuted Enron where the Clinton administration did not. This is just typical demagoguery and it is hard to see how this fits with the message of unity that Kerry thinks he is promoting.

We believe in the family value expressed in one of the oldest Commandments: "Honor thy father and thy mother." As President, I will not privatize Social Security. I will not cut benefits. And together, we will make sure that senior citizens never have to cut their pills in half because they can't afford life-saving medicine.

Well, you really can't expect better from a Democrat, so I will pass over the point that not privatizing Social Security is the surest way force cuts in benefits. But my real concern here is with the false biblicism of this canard. We do not honor our fathers and mothers by foisting their care off on the federal government. The Commandment speaks to a personal responsibility, not an excuse to redistribute wealth.

Since we are quoting the Bible, how about this one Senator: "Do not pervert justice; do not show partiality to the poor or favoritism to the great, but judge your neighbor fairly"? (Lev 19:15)

And let me tell you what we won't do: we won't raise taxes on the middle class. You've heard a lot of false charges about this in recent months. So let me say straight out what I will do as President: I will cut middle class taxes. I will reduce the tax burden on small business. And I will roll back the tax cuts for the wealthiest individuals who make over $200,000 a year, so we can invest in job creation, health care and education.

I guess that answers my question.

But let me end this on a positive note. I came in on the radio broadcast at about this point:

I want to address these next words directly to President George W. Bush: In the weeks ahead, let's be optimists, not just opponents. Let's build unity in the American family, not angry division. Let's honor this nation's diversity; let's respect one another; and let's never misuse for political purposes the most precious document in American history, the Constitution of the United States.

My friends, the high road may be harder, but it leads to a better place. And that's why Republicans and Democrats must make this election a contest of big ideas, not small-minded attacks. This is our time to reject the kind of politics calculated to divide race from race, group from group, region from region. Maybe some just see us divided into red states and blue states, but I see us as one America - red, white, and blue. And when I am President, the government I lead will enlist people of talent, Republicans as well as Democrats, to find the common ground - so that no one who has something to contribute will be left on the sidelines.

And let me say it plainly: in that cause, and in this campaign, we welcome people of faith. America is not us and them. I think of what Ron Reagan said of his father a few weeks ago, and I want to say this to you tonight: I don't wear my own faith on my sleeve. But faith has given me values and hope to live by, from Vietnam to this day, from Sunday to Sunday. I don't want to claim that God is on our side. As Abraham Lincoln told us, I want to pray humbly that we are on God's side. And whatever our faith, one belief should bind us all: The measure of our character is our willingness to give of ourselves for others and for our country.

I think this is a fair challenge. I have already suggested that I doubt Kerry's sincerity on these points or at least his ability to deliver. But the Republican party has a history of optimism and we are very well placed to meet Kerry's ante and raise him. I have long advocated exactly this approach to the political and social arena. We can beat them on the merits of our own arguments, without resorting to personal attacks, however clever.

UPDATE: And it already doesn't look like the left wing is buying Kerry's move to the right:

After three days of calm, protests turned ugly at the Democratic National Convention as demonstrators burned a two-faced effigy depicting President Bush on one side and Sen. John Kerry on the other.

UPDATE: It also looks like Pastorius' prediction was accurate as well:

Maybe Kerry wouldn't have the conviction and charisma to pull off such a statement. Don't count on it. I have a feeling he's going to surprise a lot of people tonight.

UPDATE: But it looks like I failed to predict Sullivan's assessment of this speech. Oh well, I guess that's why I keep reading him. He has exactly the same concern I mention about Kerry's wait-until-we're-attacked military policy. But overall he is less impressed than I was:

There will be time to judge his proposals against Bush's and to observe the progress of the war in the next few months. At some point both he and Bush will surely be asked what they will do about Iran. Their responses will be revealing (and probably indistinguishable). Until then, I think this convention has been a huge success, tempered by a bad candidate. They have found the right stance in general, but they may not have found the right general for the stance. Bush, in other words, may remain the luckiest man alive.

Coming from a man who obviously wants Kerry to be a viable candidate, that's gotta hurt.

Evidently, Damian doesn't...

... believe in Hell, that is. At least that is the conclusion I draw from this post:

Saddam had a stroke?
That's what his lawyers say. A stroke is not something I would wish on many people, but gosh darn it, Saddam Hussein is one of the few.

If this story is true, I hope his stroke was just enough to leave him partially disabled - but not so debilitated that he won't be able to stand trial. Whatever punishment this man must endure isn't enough.

Emphasis mine.

Religion is the Opiate of the Prosperous

Reuters reports that a belief in Hell is good for a nation's financial health:

Economists searching for reasons why some nations are richer than others have found that those with a wide belief in hell are less corrupt and more prosperous, according to a report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Researchers at the regional Federal Reserve bank acknowledged the importance of productivity and investment in the economic process but looked at some recent unconventional efforts to explain differences in national prosperity.

The St. Louis Fed drew on work by outside economists who studied 35 countries, including the United States, European nations, Japan, India and Turkey, and found that religion shed some useful light.

"In countries where large percentages of the population believe in hell, there seems to be less corruption and a higher standard of living," the St. Louis Fed said in its July quarterly review.

"A belief in hell tends to mean less corruption, and less corruption tends to mean a higher per capita income," they wrote. It correlated the belief in hell findings of the World Value Series with a measure of corruption produced by Transparency International.

It then looked at the relationship between corruption and per capita gross domestic product and found "a strong tendency for countries with relatively low levels of corruption to have relatively high levels of per capita GDP."

The researchers also noted the long tradition among classical economists to equate a society's honesty, and the strength of the rule of law, with economic vitality.

There are all sorts of caveats here, not least the one Glenn Reynolds notes below about correlation and causation. Also, a sample size of 35 does not seem very representative. I would like to know what the stats for the other 158 countries. And surely the belief in hell usually correlates with other religious beliefs that would be relevant to economic health.

Still, the argument that belief in Hell is a useful proxy for ethical behavior seems like a natural one. Karl Marx must be rolling over in his... well, wherever he is.

Moral Ills and Social Dysfunction

My fellow members of the Religious Right, who often like to argue for laws against things like pornography, prostitution or drug use based on the social consequences of these actions, might want to consider Glenn Reynolds' Tech Central Station column "Porn and Violence: Good for America's Children?"

When teen crime and pregnancy rates were going up, people looked at things that were going on -- including increased availability of porn and violent imagery -- and concluded that there might be something to that correlation. It turned out that there wasn't. Porn and Duke Nukem took over the land, and yet teenagers became more responsible and less violent.

Maybe the porn, and the videogames, provided catharsis, serving as substitutes for the real thing. Maybe. And maybe there's no connection at all. (Or maybe it's a different one -- research indicates that teenagers, though safer and healthier, are also fatter -- so perhaps the other improvements are the result of teens sitting around looking at porn and videogames until they're too out-of-shape and unattractive for the real thing…) Most likely, the lesson is that -- once again -- correlation isn't causation, despite policy entrepreneurs' efforts to claim otherwise.

But regardless, the fears of the doomsayers were proven wrong. People can continue to claim that psychological research suggests that videogames lead to violence and that porn leads to promiscuity, but in the real world the evidence seems to suggest otherwise. That's an argument against regulating videogames -- and it's an argument for taking other claims of impending social doom with a grain of salt.

Obviously, there is a large degree of facetiousness in the article but the general point is worth noting. If you have argued that behaviour X is wrong because it leads to consequence Y, and it is later shown not to lead to this consequence, people may rightly become suspicious of your claim that the behavior is wrong. Not necessarily, of course, because it might still be wrong for reasons you haven't mentioned. But the very fact that such reasons went unmentioned the first time naturally leads people to suspect a boy-who-cried-wolf scenario, especially if they are not inclined to support the agenda in the first place.

Of course, Reynolds makes the same mistake in the opposite direction by stating that this in an argument agaisnt regulation. It isn't. It is merely a rebuttal against one argument for regulation. And since, as he rightly points out, there may be other factors complicating the research, it may not even amount to that.

But in any case, his article highlights the dangers of tying moral arguments to secular outcomes. If we do not have the courage to admit that we think that legislation ought to be pleasing to God, quite apart from human sociological concerns, then we should either rethink our agenda or try to implement it in a way that does not involve legislation.

Europe, Orthodoxy and Islam

Pastorius has developed a real talent for asking questions that take me till 3:00 AM to answer. His latest is in the post titled "Those Primitive Religious People All Look The Same To Me" which relates to this quote from the High Level Advisory Group's "Dialogue Between Peoples and Cultures in the Euro-Mediterranean Area"

"... the enlarged Europe will move beyond the traditional relationship between Western Judeo-Christian Culture and Islam by incorporating people of Orthodox religion and culture: in addition to strengthening the role of Orthodoxy within the EU and beyond, this incorporation will transform the dialogue into a "trialogue". Furthermore, Orthodoxy sometimes leads to behavior which is surprisingly similar with that of Islam - particularly in relation to secularisation - which will have a major impact on, even radically change, the relationship between the enlarged Union and the Arab-Muslim world..."

Pastorius comments:

Now Jack, I believe you are a fan of Orthodoxy. And, while I don't know much about it, Orthodoxy seems to be a fine branch of Christianity, more formal and grounded in liturgy than American Protestant Christianity (which I like), however, at the same time, more likely to substitute ritual and tradition for an emphasis on a relationship with God. But, what do you think of this idea?

It doesn't seem workable to me. What are they going to do, run government-funded commercials on European television promoting the benefits of orthodoxy?

And what do they mean by saying Orthodoxy leads to behavior similar to that of Islam? Man that's a loaded statement. Do they mean that Orthodoxy leads to a Jihad mentality? To seeing the world, like the Taliban, in terms of black and white, so that anything which is not of Allah, be it art, architecture, or Western products, should be destroyed?

Do they mean that Orthodoxy might help Europeans swallow such behavior as Saudi Arabia posting, on their official state website, that "Jews" are not allowed to enter Saudi Arabia?

I am inclined to believe that for the European bureaucrats on the delegation that drafted this paper, their statement does not mean anything of the like. Because they do not, in the least, consider any of those frightening developments to be the consequences of Islamic culture. I'm guessing they buy the common panacea that Jihad is not "true Islam", that Jihad means merely to struggle within oneself.

Instead, I am inclined to believe that, once again, for Europe, it's all about the fashion. I'll bet they look at those Orthodox women and see that they are inclined to dress in black, and that they often wear head coverings, and they think to themselves, "Ahem, now is that a Muslim women, or an Orthodox women? All those primitive religious people look the same to me."

What do you think?

I don't know that I could be called a fan of Orthodoxy, since the Orthodox exclude me and my fellow protestants from communion, but I do acknowledge a greater affinity for this branch of Christianity than, say, for the average sub-Baptist Bible Fellowship that predominates the American religious scene. But to answer Pastorius' question, here is the email with which I replied:

Unfortunately there is not sufficient elaboration in the article to know exactly what they meant by the comparison between Orthodoxy and Islam. In my initial reading I had thought the reference was to the Orthodox Christians in Palestine, which would mean a basic similarity in their anti-Israeli stance. While this would certainly be an accurate observation (many Palestinian Christians refer to their Muslim fellow-Arabs as "brothers"), on a closer reading of the text it is clear that this is not what was intended. The Orthodox populations in question are evidently from the former Soviet Bloc countries that are now considering membership in the EU -- what Rumsfeld has referred to as New Europe.

In light of the second point, which refers to the Balkan region and which you do not quote, it seemed possible that the Orthodox in question were the Serbian people. This would also make a certain amount of sense in that the Serbs have been at war with their Muslim neighbors and can be said to have adopted similarly militant tactics. But it is difficult to see how this interpretation would square with the phrase "particularly in relation to secularisation" since Serbia is almost completely secularized.

So, I think your analysis that this is a secular culture looking with bemusement at all religions is probably pretty fair. The similarities in this case would be that both Orthodoxy and Islam have been resistant to modernization and both tend to be predominantly ethnic in distinction from the more cosmopolitan vision of Europe that is being advocated in this paper.

One point that may have occurred to you, but which you don't mention, is that this comparison is made specifically to de-emphasize the Jihad element of Islam. That is, it is not so much that the authors don't believe that this represents a real aspect of Islamic culture, but that they strongly suspect it does and want to hide that fact from themselves and their readers. Obviously, I have no direct evidence for this assertion, but some of the statements made in the executive summary and the earlier part of the article suggest this possibility to my imagination.

For instance, this statement about culture:
"Culture is by nature egalitarian, giving equal weight to all its forms: it is therefore both the basis of and vehicle for an equitable relationship. But in no other area is there such scope for both misunderstanding and understanding: it is therefore the ideal area for equals to work together to clarify and enrich a Euro-Mediterranean relationship still littered with obstacles (mutual perceptions, role of the media, etc.) and denials (of rights, dignity, liberty, equality, etc.). Why should this relationship be made a priority? Certainly not to prevent a very hypothetical clash of civilisations, but rather in the certainty that the principal complementarities of the two halves of the Euro-Mediterranean area will, in the next half century, have been integrated into their day-to-day life: what we now have to do is prepare the ground for this." [emphasis mine]

To fully unpack this statement, and others like it throughout the article, would require a thorough discussion of the history of European thought, which we obviously do not have time for. But briefly this thinking divides cultures into three basic categories, often called Pre-modern, Modern and Post-modern.

The temporal element is crucial to this division, implying as it does a progression and, therefore, a necessary evolution of thought. This coincides with the "certainty that the ... two halves ... will have been integrated" in the quote above. The idea is to disallow the notion that ideas are to be judged on the basis of their truth, but rather to be accepted on the basis of their currency. Since I reject this notion, I prefer not to use the terminology and simply classify the three groups as Sacramental, Secular and Skeptical respectively. This has, admittedly, a somewhat Christocentric bias, since it would put groups like Islam and, say, the animist of Sudan in the Sacramental category, which is not a description they would probably approve. But since I do, in fact, see such cultures as essentially deviant from Christian truth, I am not particularly averse to this consequence.

The Sacramental or Pre-modern culture views all aspects of life as essentially integrated and related directly to a design of the universe as a whole. This design is usually expressed as the Will of God, although some cultures, such as Buddhism and Taoism, have a more impersonal view of the divine nature. In this view such disparate concerns as sexuality, politics, art and agriculture, though they can be discussed separately, are ultimately interrelated to each other and united under the divine plan. Thus the search for truth in one area has consequences in all other areas, and often implies very strict responsibilities that many people desire to escape. I could give examples, but I think most people can come up with plenty of their own without much prompting.

The Secular, or Modern, worldview was essentially designed to provide an escape from the responsibilities of Sacramentalism, without abandoning its comforting capacity to order existence. The main theme of secularism has been a mechanical view of the universe which operates on principles accessible to human reason. On this view of things, everything that occurs has a causal explanation but, lacking an intelligent will, makes no inconvenient demands upon human behavior. Initially, of course, it was thought that ethical standards could be derived from the nature of man, but such projects had a tendency to result in such disasters a the French Revolution and ultimately culminated in the concentration camps and gulags of the 20th century.

This failure, among other things, led to the view or set of views known as Post-modernism, which I have dubbed Skepticism. The post-modern critique of Modernism is based on the insight that Modernism's claim to Universal Truth was just as subjective and prejudicial as the earlier religious views it attempted to transcend. Every theory attempting to order life in accordance with some "meta-narrative" is questionable and is generally assumed to have its a basis in a will to dominance over others. Thus the post-modern ethic is based, not on Divine Will or its paler cousin Reason, but on such tropes as Cooperation, Understanding and, somewhat less robustly, Multi-Culturalism. An avoidance of conflict is thus a chief characteristic of this view, often resulting in the sort of denial seen in the quote cited above.

The curious thing about this view is that, though it pretends to a moral superiority over such retrograde cultures as Christianity and Islam, it cannot, by its very nature, directly confront them. To do so would be to admit the existence of some commonly accessible vantage point from which to offer its critique, in other words a meta-narrative, which is anathema to the whole project of this brand of Skepticism. At best it can note the putative "denials (of rights, dignity, liberty, equality, etc.)" which it ascribes to all such primitivisms. But such a critique relies on the moral inhibitions of the critiqued cultures to motivate them to respond accordingly. When it encounters a culture that rejects the very basis of the critique, such as militant Islam, this Skepticism really has no alternative but to retreat into condescending hauteur.

Bad Idea

The House Republicans have passed legislation restricting the federal courts from ruling on state bans on gay marriage by stripping their jurisdiction. Contrary to those quoted in the article, this is probably constitutional due to the provision in Article III, Section 2:

In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

That doesn't make this a good idea, however. I will have more to say on this, when I get a free moment but Eugene Volokh already made some excellent points back in February:

But just how useful would that be? Even if federal courts lose jurisdiction over objections to some statute, state courts would still be able to entertain them -- state courts must enforce the U.S. Constitution just as much as federal courts do (that's in art. VI, sec. 2). If people are worried that the U.S. Supreme Court may strike down the Defense of Marriage Act, then they should be worried that state supreme courts may do the same; and even those state supreme courts that might n t take this view on their own might feel moved by precedents from other states, since courts throughout the country tend to try to interpret the U.S. Constitution consistently with the decisions of other courts.

What's more, if a state supreme court does hold DOMA unconstitutional under the U.S. Constitution, then there'll be no remedy (short of impeaching the state supreme court Justices). Amending the state constitution, which is a remedy for state supreme court decisions based on the state constitution (such as the Goodridge gay marriage decision in the Massachusetts) will do nothing to change the state court's interpretation of the U.S. constitution. And an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court won't be possible, because the Court has been stripped of jurisdiction to hear the case. (I suppose one could strip the Court of jurisdiction to hear appeals from decisions upholding DOMA but not from decisions invalidating DOMA, but then if the Court upholds a decision invalidating DOMA, DOMA will be invalid throughout the country.)

UPDATEA: Eugene Volokh has reposted his original remarks with some further comments here. An interesting fact about his second point

Such a jurisdiction-stripping statute would nonetheless probably be constitutional, because of article III, section 2, clause 2 of the Constitution

is that he emphasizes the word "probably". As I noted above, a plain reading of the text makes it perfectly obvious that Congress does have the Constitutional authority to do this, but Volokh is rightly cautious. The original intent of the Constitution was to make the laws clear to every citizen, but the days when we could rely on judges and lawyers to see the obvious are long gone.

UPDATE: And -- just when you thought the waters were muddy enough -- French judges have just anulled the first Gay marriage:

Members of the ruling conservative party, Roman Catholic church leaders and some opposition Socialists have opposed gay marriage on the grounds that children need a mother and a father. The couple's lawyer, Emmanuel Pierrat, said the court had based its ruling on the argument that marriage is traditionally considered the foundation of the family and that one of its main functions is to have children.

I wonder if this will make the Democrats stop drinking Bordeaux.

On a more realistic note, I don't think this argument will survive long. As the article continues:

Mr Pierrat said the judgment was based on an extremely traditional concept of the family, given that over half of French children are born outside of marriage.

However praiseworthy this decision may be, the very fact that that it comes as such a surprise suggests that it will be overturned on appeal. And in this country, it will take a huge effort to bring the culture back around to the point where marriage, sex and children form a natural progression rather than a collection of unrelated options. The courts are not the best battlefield for the traditional position, and will not be until there is a popular consensus on the subject.

American Vigilantes on Trial in Afghanistan

A rather strange story from the NY Times:

Three Americans went on trial Wednesday on charges they tortured eight prisoners in a private jail, with the group's leader saying he had tacit support from senior Pentagon officials who once offered to put his team under contract.

The U.S. military says the men were freelancers operating outside the law and without their knowledge.

Jonathan Idema, Brett Bennett and Edward Caraballo were arrested when Afghan security forces raided their makeshift jail in Kabul on July 5.

[...]

Idema said a four-star Pentagon official named Heather Anderson "applauded our efforts" and wanted to place the group "under contract" -- an offer they refused for fear it would limit their freedom to operate.

There are no four-star female officers in the entire U.S. military. The name Heather Anderson is not listed in the Pentagon phone book.

"The American authorities absolutely condoned what we did, they absolutely supported what we did," Idema told reporters crowding around the dock. "We have extensive evidence of that."

[...]

There was no attorney for Idema, a bearded former American soldier once convicted of fraud, who appeared in court in a khaki uniform with a reversed American flag on the shoulder.

Idema wore sunglasses in the courtroom, completing a look that once fooled even NATO peacekeepers, who sent explosives experts to help him with three raids before realizing they had been duped into thinking he was with U.S. special forces.

My guess is this isn't going to be a big story since there doesn't seem to be any political capital to be made from it. But a word of advice to future trouble makers: making up the names of four-star generals isn't a smart way to establish your credibility.

9/11 Attack Not Preventable?

In what might seem a rare display of integrity and common sense, the 9/11 Commission's final report will not claim that the attack was preventable; instead, it will allow the public to make up its own mind:

The Sept. 11 commission's final report won't declare that the worst terrorist attack in U.S. history was preventable, though some panelists said during the 20-month investigation they believed the hijackers could have been stopped.

In the end, the panel's five Democrats and five Republicans did not want to draw a conclusion on that major point, believing it could open the way to partisan sniping in a presidential election year.

"My personal view is that the intelligence system we have has been broken for a long time," said Republican commissioner John Lehman, a former Navy secretary. "But we wanted to let the American people make up their mind. They don't need our editorializing."

[...]

Commissioners won't point to individuals in the Clinton or Bush administrations, instead laying out what they consider a factual accounting of events.

"What's worked for us all along is looking at what the facts are and not trying to put any spin," said Democratic commissioner Jamie Gorelick, a former deputy attorney general. "We will lay out the facts with as much particularity as we can."

However, several commissioners say those facts could lead readers to conclude the attacks were preventable had the government done a better job following up on intelligence tips and tracking the 19 hijackers, some of whom entered the country illegally.

So, they are not saying the attack was preventable, but they are saying that readers could conclude that it was preventable.

Good. Glad we got that straightened out.

Johnson's Murderers Killed

...some of them, at least.

The head of slain American hostage Paul M. Johnson Jr., who was kidnapped and beheaded by militants in Saudi Arabia last month, was found in a raid on the house of Saudi Arabia's al-Qaida leader, the Interior Ministry said Wednesday.

Authorities said the head was found as Saudi security forces raided the home of Saleh Mohammed al-Aoofi. Two militants were killed and three were wounded in the sweep, but it was not clear if al-Aoofi was among them.

(Via: Rambling's Journal)

In related news: it appears that the Philippine pullout may have emboldened attackers to kidnap 6 more hostages:

Iraqi and U.S. officials had warned of a potential surge in threats and hostage-taking when the Philippines withdrew its 51-troop contingent from Iraq on Monday, giving in to the demands of militants holding a Filipino truck driver. The driver, Angelo dela Cruz, was released Tuesday.

A militant group calling itself "The Holders of the Black Banners," announced Wednesday it had taken two Kenyans, three Indians and an Egyptian hostage, and said it would behead a captive every 72 hours beginning Saturday night if their countries do not announce their intentions to withdraw troops and citizens from Iraq.

(Via: Powerline)

Berger's Pants vs Fawn Hall's Bra

Everyone seems to be talking about this story:

Sandy Berger, former President Clinton's national security adviser, is under criminal investigation by the Justice Department after highly classified terrorism documents disappeared while he was reviewing what should be turned over to the Sept. 11 commission.

[...]

Berger and his lawyer said Monday night he knowingly removed the handwritten notes by placing them in his jacket and pants, and also inadvertently took copies of actual classified documents in a leather portfolio.

At least republican scandals happen in interesting places.

(Instapundit has a roundup. Wizbang summarizes the non-coverage by the NY Times. And Belmont Club has further commentary.)

One Jew Not Welcome In France

Jacque Chirac is trying to snub Ariel Sharon after the latter urged French Jews to leave France immediately:

Chirac had written that "after some weeks of contacts concerning such a visit it turns out that it is impossible ... and you are not welcome following your comments," [...]

Sharon sparked anger in Paris with a speech on Sunday in which he urged all French Jews to move immediately to Israel in order to escape what he called the "spread of the wildest anti-Semitism".

This has an aspect of the old "you can't quit, you're fired" joke.
(Via deacon at Powerline, who has more thoughts)

Prayer Book Society Contest

The Society for the Preservation of the Book of Common Prayer is sponsoring a "godly competition to encourage the revival of the production and provision of contemporary prayers and hymns in the traditional religious language found in The Book of Common Prayer". The idea is to get people to write new prayers that are not in the "hey, dude" vernacular of "contemporary worship" services.

There will be six categories -- collects, prayers, litanies, hymns, liturgies and homilies. And there will be two age-groups -- those who have not yet reached their eighteenth birthday and those over eighteen years. All entries must be in English and may be submitted from any part of the world with British or American spelling. Each entrant shall make a statement to the effect that the submission is his own work.

I will be submitting the following collect, which I wrote in 1991 for St. Luke's. Every year we dedicate the Feast of Holy Innocents (Dec 28) to a prayer service for the unborn:

Lord God, who hast taught us to call thee "Father"; who hast created man from the dust of the earth and raised him, in Christ, to the very throne of Heaven; let us never cease praising thee for the unspeakable blessing of life and for the lives of our fellow men which are precious in our sight; Grant that we may more and more perceive thine image in our brothers, even those yet unborn, and that we may love them more and more; Make all nations and all peoples to know thy gospel and obey thy laws, that man may no more be a curse unto man; For his sake who, despising not the Virgin's womb, became a man for our salvation, thy Son, Jesus Christ.

Since the competition requires a minimum of three for the Collects category, I will have to come up with two more. Of course, this one is a bit longer than usual so I might be able to break it up into two separate collects.

Anyway, I think this is a wonderful idea and encourage anyone who reads this blog to give the competition some thought.

(Via: my friend and "Best Woman", Cindy who doesn't have a blog yet.)