Sexualizing Chivalry

This is the kind of thing that bugs me. CNN Money starts off with a reasonable sounding question: "Does it Pay to Flirt at Work"

Women who cross their legs provocatively, wear short skirts or massage a man's shoulders at work get fewer pay raises and promotions, according to Friday's USA Today.

The newspaper, citing a Tulane University study, said 49 percent of MBA graduates polled admitted that they have tried to advance in their careers by sometimes engaging in certain sexual behaviors, including sending flirty e-mails and wearing revealing clothing.

The respondents who said they never engaged in such activity earned an average of three promotions, versus two for the group that had employed sexuality. Those who said they never used sexuality were, on average, in the $75,000-$100,000 income range; the other group fell, on average, into the next range, $50,000 to $75,000.

Fine. This is a perfectly legitimate concern and even shows signs of validating the conservative position that women don't have to lower their moral standards to succeed in the world of business. But then comes the twist:

Tulane professor Arthur Brief said the study suggests that women should be careful about letting men open doors or lift boxes that aren't particularly heavy, because chivalry is "benevolent sexism."

"We argue that there are negative consequences for women who use sexuality in the workplace," Brief told the newspaper.

This is a complete non-sequitur. Did the study include such behavior as allowing men to open doors? It isn't in the original list. Only someone who starts witht the premise that treating women with respect is necessarily motivated by sexual attraction could jump from flirting to chivalry in this way.

What is worse, such a reductionistic, which can conceive of only base motives, view tends to make women suspicious of the kindness of men. Is it any wonder that the prevalence of such views tends to produce a coarsening of culture?

This kind of tripe was popular in the 70s. Really, I had thought we were getting beyond all of this, but evidently it still pervades academia. You've come a long way, baby.

China Conversion?

According to the Washington Times, millions of Chinese are converting to Christianity:

Chinese are embracing Christianity in a social revolution that is spreading through town and countryside to the point where Christians already may outnumber members of the Communist Party of China.

Visits to villages in backward rural provinces or to urban churches in Beijing, where even on weekdays the young and middle-aged gather to proclaim their faith, confirm the ease with which conversions can be won.

No doubt the Zionists are behind this, too.

The Complexity of the Mauritanian Coup

We were thrilled at the democratic revolutions in Lebanon and the Ukraine. We look upon the civil unrest in Iran with hope for regime change. But what to make of the coup in Mauritania?

Mauritania's armed forces have set up a military council to rule the country and put an end to the "totalitarian regime" of President Maaouya Ould Sid'Ahmed Taya, a statement on the state news agency said on Wednesday.

The statement, signed by a so-called Military Council for Justice and Democracy, said the council would rule the Islamic republic for two years:

"The armed forces and security forces have unanimously decided to put a definitive end to the totalitarian activities of the defunct regime under which our people have suffered so much over recent years," the statement said.

"This council pledges before the Mauritanian people to create favorable conditions for an open and transparent democracy" it said.

On the one hand, Taya's administration was an "ally" of the US in the War on Terror.


More here.

Snuppy Love

Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University (SNU) has succeeded in cloning a dog:

In the new study, a team led by Woo Suk Hwang of Seoul National University fused cells from an adult hound's ear to eggs obtained from fertile female dogs. Within hours after a blood test confirmed that ripe eggs had been released from a dog's ovaries, Korean veterinarians anesthetized the dog, surgically exposed her reproductive tract, and flushed the barely visible eggs into laboratory dishes.

Of about 1,400 embryos created by fusing those eggs to skin cells with an electrical shock, 1,095 were deemed healthy enough to be transferred to the reproductive tracts of surrogate mother dogs -- each of which also had to be in heat, to support the growth of those embryos into fetuses. That required more surgeries, with five to 12 embryos transferred to each of 123 surrogates.

Follow-up sonograms indicated that three of the 123 surrogate mothers were pregnant. One miscarried, and the other two gave birth. One newborn died from pneumonia after 22 days. The survivor is Snuppy, for ''Seoul National University puppy."

Tintangel

A great group if you like Celtic music. (Actually, if you don't like Celtic music that's basically your problem; they're still a great group.) Just heard them play at the Diedrich's coffee house in Orange, where they have a gig every 3rd Saturday. This is the third or fourth time we've heard them play there, and we're getting to know the ladies in the band. Really nice people, not to mention beautiful and talented.

Here is their web site, which has sample MP3s from their albums.

(I assume the name Tintangel is from the castle in Cornwall where King Arthur was born, although I have usually seen it spelled Tintagel.)

No Torture at Gitmo

See my first post over at Love America First. And thanks to Rosemary for graciously inviting me to join the team.

"God Curse the Mujahedeen"

From the Washington Times (registration required):

BAGHDAD -- Tiny plastic sandals, some tattered and stained with blood, lay in a pile near a child's crushed bicycle. Mothers wailed and beat themselves after a suicide bomber killed 18 children and teenagers getting candy and toys from American soldiers.

One of the soldiers was among the up to 27 people killed in the blast yesterday in an impoverished Shi'ite Muslim neighborhood. At least 70 persons, including a newborn and three U.S. soldiers, were wounded.

[...]

Twelve of the dead were 13 or younger, and six were 14 to 17, said police Lt. Mohammed Jassim Jabr. Among the wounded was 4-day-old Miriam Jabber, cut slightly by flying glass and debris.

"There were some American troops blocking the highway when a U.S. Humvee came near a gathering of children," said Karim Shukir, 42. The troops began handing out candy and smiley-face key chains.

"Suddenly, a speeding car bomb ... struck both the Humvee and the children," Mr. Shukir said.

[...]

At Kindi hospital, where many victims were taken, a distraught mother swathed in black sat cross-legged outside the operating room. "May God curse the mujahedeen and their leader," she cried, referring to the insurgents as she pounded her head with her fists in grief.

"The car bomber made a deliberate decision to attack one of our vehicles as the soldiers were engaged in a peaceful operation with Iraqi citizens," said Maj. Russ Goemaere, a spokesman for Task Force Baghdad.

"The terrorist undoubtedly saw the children," Maj. Goemaere said, calling the attack "absolutely abhorrent."

Brutality beyond description. I can understand how people could justify an "insurgency" in the abstract, but how do they reconcile such tactics with whatever vestiges of conscience they may have left?

The Volokh Conspiracy has been debating recently the propriety of using the phrase "homicide bomber" as opposed to the clearer and more descriptive "suicide bomber". I prefer the latter construction, but for those who want something a little more visceral, may I suggest "merciless bastard"? Or perhaps, "cursed by Allah". What would that be in Arabic...?

Promoting Botswana

I have long been an admirer of the nation of Botswana. Almost alone among African countries it stands as an example of liberty, prosperity and stability. I thought I had said something about this several months ago on this blog, but I could not find it in the archives. It had also occured to mention Botswana in connection with the hoopla over the Live-8 concert, but I didn't get around to it. Fortunately, Will Franklin has picked up the slack in his entry for the Carnival of the Revolutions:

Botswana is the model for reforming Africa. It has a generally free and open market economy; it is freer, politically (.pdf -- Freedom House), than Brazil, India, and even Jamaica.

Corruption is low, the free enterprise system is allowed to work, and, what do you know, the country is one of the more successful countries in Africa. Botswana's per capita GDP ($9,200) is above that of China, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Turkey, Brazil, and Thailand; Botswana's per capita GDP even bests the world average.

Contrast Botswana with Zambia (or any number of sub-Saharan nations), and you can really see how much institutions matter.

In short, Africa could learn a lot, from one of its own.

One thing Will does not point out is that Botswana is largely a Christian nation. According to the CIA World Factbook, 71.6% of Batswana are Christians. (I have seen other estimates that place the number closer to 50%, but these numbers are only good for comaparison anyway.) Additionally about 80% of the country is literate, which is low by Western standards but remarkably high for African nations. Curiously, the female literacy rate is higher at 82.4% than the male rate at 76.9%. I would suggest that the prosperity Will cites is largely due to these two facts, both of which can be traced to the legacy of the British Empire.

Annoy a Dictator

An undisclosed source alerts me, via email, to the fact that the Yemeni government is continuing to silence oposition newspapers. Specifically, al-Shura, the newspaper of the Popular Forces Unionist Party (PFUP), has been taken over by a group of gunmen (led evidently by a former security guard of PFUP who was not a member of the party) and are publishing bogus editions of the paper. The editor, Abdulkarim al-Khaiwanii, had been imprisoned from September to March and is now under threat of death.

In order to lend support to a free press in Yemen, and possibly to save the life of one of its courageous advocates click here to send an email. Write "In Support of al-Khaiwanii and al-Shoura" or "In Support of a Free Press in Yemen" in the subject line. The details of the current crisis are not available on line but here is some background:
Yemeni Election Fraud (07/2005)
PFU Party Headquarters Stormed (05/2005)
PFUP Members Kidnapped (05/2005)

Zionists Converting Muslims to ... Christianity!

The JPost has all the lurid details of this heinous conspiracy:

THE RECENT visit of the American televangelist Josh McDowell, invited by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and received by King Mohammed VI, has sparked lots of conspiracy theories. In fact, Le Journal Hebdomadaire reported on January 8 that this evangelization campaign was part of US President George W. Bush's campaign in the current war. Unsurprisingly, the article pointed out that this was also the goal of the neocons and the Zionists.

OK, that was a lame attempt at humor taking my cue from the irony already noted by CUANAS and Dhimmi Watch. But the article actually highlights some good news:

In the past few years, increasing numbers of Westerners have been converting to Islam. Agence France Presse recently reported annual figures in France alone of 30,000 to 50,000. But a new phenomenon – largely unreported in the Western media – is occurring: Muslims, especially in the Maghreb (north-west Africa) are becoming Christians.

[...]

According to most reports, the culprits are American evangelical missionaries operating in major cities such as Casablanca, Rabat, Marrakech and Fez to remote areas in the mountains or the countryside.

The statistics differ wildly: Missionaries are reported to number anywhere from 150, according to French weekly newsmagazine Le Nouvel Observateur, to the 800-plus figure most often used. Converts are said to number anywhere from 7,000 to 58,000. These discrepancies are easily explained by the fact that both missionaries and converts have to stay constantly below the radar.

[...]

CLEARLY, THE evangelists are focusing their energies on the young and the poor, but that's not the whole picture. Another target, according to Pastor Jean-Luc Blanc are the intellectuals and the privileged. However, there is no typical profile of a convert. On March 5, the French daily Le Monde published numerous interviews with converts in Morocco and Algeria.

A large part of the good news here is that this is actually being reported. (And in Le Monde of all places!) But the high point of the article for me is the concluding paragraphs:

Another convert in his 30s, Abu Ghali, pointed out that most conversions are initiated by Moroccans themselves and added: "If Moroccans are given the opportunity to compare and choose, then you'll see lots of them going towards Christianity."

[...]

The Arab press has been quick to accuse the US evangelists for the massive conversion numbers, therefore playing into the hands of the Islamists who advocate an end to the semi-freedom of religion in Morocco. But this assumption is wrong because as many observers emphasized, some Muslims are disillusioned by the crimes committed in the name of Islam, especially in Algeria by the Islamists and al-Qaida's terrorist acts and are looking for something else.

This is the sort of angle we should be going for: the superiority of Christian truth over false religions. Compared side to side Christianity cannot help but beat out the competition (and this is true even in countries where martyrdom is the likely result of conversion). This style of thinking is in line with Augustine's approach in The City of God (especially books 6-10) where he exposes the shamefulness of most pagan religions and their inability to offer hope even at their best (i.e. Pythagoras and Plato). We would do well to emphasize the distinction between Christianity and the world in our own churches rather than accomodating to the existing culture through "seeker sensitive" programs.

Blaming Heterosexuals

Russell Moore of Touchstone's Mere Comments blog links to an op-ed by Stephanie Coontz who points out that at least part of the blame for the current movement to redefine marriage to include gays belongs to ... religious conservatives:

Coontz, director of public education for the Council on Contemporary Families, argues that homosexuals didn't start the revolution. Heterosexuals did, a long time ago. Writes Coontz:

Heterosexuals were the upstarts who turned marriage into a voluntary love relationship rather than a mandatory economic and political institution. Heterosexuals were the ones who made procreation voluntary, so that some couples could choose childlessness, and who adopted assisted reproduction so that even couples who could not conceive could become parents. And heterosexuals subverted the long-standing rule that every marriage had to have a husband who played one role in the family and a wife who played a completely different one. Gays and lesbians simply looked and the revolution heterosexuals had wrought and noticed that with its new norms, marriage could work for them, too.

[...] Coontz is precisely right that the redefinition of marriage didn't begin with social revolutionaries in Massachusetts and San Francisco. This is why it will never work for Christian churches to stand against same-sex "marriage," while remaining silent about working mothers, daycare, the contraceptive culture, and egalitarian marriage roles.

[...]

Coontz diagnosis is on target, while her antidote, surrender to a malleable definition of marriage, is deadly. The answer is for counter-cultural churches and families to model something alien to both Ozzie and Harriet and Will and Grace: marriage that points to the mystery of Christ and his church.

Forgive me for feeling somewhat vindicated by this acknowledgement of a point I have made previously (see here and here) from such a bastion of orthodoxy and conservatism as Touchstone. It has been rather lonely trying to point out that the "defense of marriage" theme is a two-edged sword that really points out the shame of our own sorry performance. In fact, in one off-line debate I remember an oponent specifically citing Touchstone as an authority that I ought to respect in considering a change in my position. I am glad to see Touchstone and I are now making the same point.

In the interest of full-disclosure, I must admit that the debate was about the Federal Marriage Ammendment and as far as I know Touchstone has not rescinded its support of that proposal (moribund though it may be). Also, I would not like to be understood as supporting either gay marriage or civil unions. But if we are to defeat either of those ideas, we must have a more robust rallying cry than "defending traditional marriage" when we really have no intention of doing anything of the sort.

Blogiversary Alert

Rosemary at My Newz 'n Ideas has been in operation for a year as of today. She also contributes to three other blogs, among which is the new Love America First, which I have just added to the blogroll.

Telltale Signs

Found this in a Fark photoshop thread.

TRUE! nervous, very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am; but why WILL you say that I am mad?

With apologies to Edgar Alan Poe.

OK, What The Hell Is Up With Blogger?

The posts are appearing down at the bottom of the blogroll. I can't see anything wrong with the HTML.

UPDATE: OK, I have even tried changing the template and the problem persists. Evidently this is not something I did. Grr.

Undemagoguing Guantanamo

According to the Washington Times (Registration Required):

Two Democratic senators just back from reviewing U.S. detention facilities and interrogations at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, said they saw no signs of abuse and said it would actually be worse to close the facility and transfer the detainees elsewhere.

"I strongly prefer the improved practices and conditions at Camp Delta to the outsourcing of interrogation to countries with a far less significant commitment to human rights," said Sen. Ron Wyden, Oregon Democrat, who toured the U.S. facility along with Sen. Ben Nelson, Nebraska Democrat.

The two Democrats were joined on the trip by two Republicans, Sen. Jim Bunning of Kentucky and Sen. Michael D. Crapo of Idaho.

This is good news on a number of levels. First, I am glad to see that there are members of the Democratic party that are willing to go against party talking points to get at the truth. I am especially impressed with the senator from Oregon, who must be under a considerable amount of pressure to toe the liberal line.

More important, though, is the assertion that there is no evidence of abuse. I have effectively stopped reading Andrew Sullivan because of his increasing hostility to the Religious Right, but I consider his warnings against failing to address the allegations of widespread abuse to be absolutely correct and to date largely unanswered. (Greg Djerejian of Belgravia Dispatch has similar criticisms but without the hostility.) This bipartisan report goes a long way toward reassuring me of the generally moral character of US conduct.

But what of the supposedly credible evidence that such abuse did occur? Well, I have been unsuccessful in finding primary sources on the subject, and the reportage seems to be somewhat contradictory when it isn't based on hearsay. But, supposing for the sake of argument that the reports are valid and the abuse did actually occur. Is it possible that the public pressure and investigation has caused those responsible to clean up their act? If so, I suggest that this is the best result we can reasonably hope for. A democratic and open society does not produce perfect men, but it does restrain their ability to do wrong.

Still, none of this should detract from the necessity to fully investigate such charges. We can't become complacent when dealing with charges of such gravity. But I fully recognize the difficulty of getting the facts straight when dealing with a hostile group that is religiously committed to the idea that infidels are not owed the truth.

Update: In looking over Sullivan's and Djerejian's blogs to see if they had reacted to this news, I noticed that they are both discussing something called a Conscience Caucus:

Greg's sin is to be pro-war and anti-torture, making him a member of the fledgling "conscience caucus" of pro-war, right-of-center writers who oppose the Bush administration policy of allowing abuse of prisoners if "military necessity" demands it.

I guess you can count me in that group, although I am not clear that this abuse is an actual policy. But I am certainly uncomfortable with some of the rhetoric that conservatives have been using to justify these practices. Greg posts that he will be giving more details on the subject when he gets back from vacation. I will be very interested in what he has to say.

Oil, Israel and Conspiracies

Meryl Yourish finds this article funny:

More than two decades ago, John Brown grew mesmerized by an evangelical preacher's theory that the Bible hinted at a major oil field deep beneath Israel's soil.

[...]

Two months ago, Brown's Zion Oil & Gas Co. began drilling a deep well near Kibbutz Maanit, 25 miles north of Tel Aviv, a site that lies at the intersection of faith and science.

Brown, 65, cites a passage from Genesis that quotes Jacob telling Joseph that God will give him "blessings of the deep that couches beneath," which he believes refers to oil.

The passage says the blessings will be on "the head of Joseph," which Brown reads as the geographic location in ancient Israel occupied by the tribes of Manasseh and Ephraim, Joseph's sons. Maanit falls within that area.

Zion's geological experts say previous wells drilled in the area showed the site has good potential for oil, Brown said.

[...]

Brown is not the first prospector to combine faith and science in the search for Israeli oil. Other Evangelical oilmen, though few with Brown's financing, have tried their luck here, with no success.

Last year, Tovia Luskin, an ultra-Orthodox Jew, began drilling about 15 miles south of Brown's site, inspired in part by the same "deep that couches beneath" Biblical passage.

OK, I admit this is pretty damn silly. The idea that the Bible could be used as a guide to oil prospecting is the sort of superstitious nonsense that could only occur to a fundamentalist and gives the rest of us a bad name.

But what really interests me in this article is the following passage:

In a Middle East rich with petroleum, Israel has struggled with little success to find deposits of its own for more than 50 years. Large oil companies' reluctance to work here and risk angering major Arab oil producers has hindered exploration, as have unfavorable geological conditions. [emphasis mine]

So the Arabs are putting pressure on major oil companies not to do business with Israel? Shouldn't the International Conspiracy of Jewish Bankers be doing something about this? Or the Americanmilitaryindustrialcomplex? How about Dick Cheney?

Seriously, though, I'm always amazed at how the crazy conspiracy theories correctly identify the problem but get the players wrong. There is an oil consipiracy in the middle east but it isn't us who are running it.

Aid for Africa (Again?)

Several conservative bloggers seem genuinely impressed with the Live8 campaign to End Poverty in Africa:

Althouse:

It struck me that Geldof, like Bush, saw establishing democracy as central to solving problems. And there was none of the Bush-related cynicism one normally expects to hear. How can Bush take the lead pushing for democracy in Africa when so many people in other G8 countries are derisive about his efforts in Iraq? No such thing was said. Geldof acted as if such a thought did not exist. He thinks Bush is perfectly positioned to take the lead.

(OK, she's not a conservative, but she isn't a lefty either and she's generally pretty reliable.)

IMAO:

It ends up that Bob Geldof, the organizer or Live 8, has a real plan for tackling poverty in Africa (real, in that it involved free trade and competition in parts of it) and hopes the blogosphere can use some of its influence in pushing towards the means needed for the end. The conference call should be up as a podcast a little later, and I'll urge you all to listen to it. I hope to get you more information soon (that was my main suggestion during the conference call was to have a place to link to where things are explained as well as Sir Geldof explained them himself), and, perhaps, you'll see more of the blogosphere talking about this.

Powerline:

To say that I was impressed would be an understatement. Geldof is an extraordinarily knowledgeable guy. Equally important, he is not soft-headed about Africa's problems. He emphasizes free markets and the need for political reform, which should be, and according to Geldof will be, a condition of the assistance that he advocates. Another important point, I think, is that he talks eloquently not only about the appalling conditions in some areas of Africa, but also about the striking progress being made in areas where political tyranny or upheaval have made such progress impossible. While I am no expert on Africa, I know that there are a lot of important, under-reported positive stories coming out of that continent.

Citizen Smash:

Overall, I'm happy to report that much of my skepticism was unwarranted. In case you haven't noticed, Geldof hasn't produced much music in the past 20 years. Instead, he's devoted his life to fighting hunger and poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa, and it shows -- Sir Bob really knows his stuff. And while he is clearly trying to reach out to a wide spectrum of people, he didn't pull any punches when it came to criticizing those who waste, embezzle, or squander public money (at one point, he casually mentioned that both Prime Minister Berlusconi of Italy and French President Jacques Chirac would be in jail for corruption if they weren't leaders of their respective nations). I was impressed.

Here's the clincher: Geldof wasn't asking for donations. He admits that food aid and even debt cancellation, while helpful, are of limited utility in the long run. Instead, he's asking us to start a converstation about how to stimulate long-term development in Sub-Saharan Africa. "This isn't Live Aid 2," the website reads, "LIVE 8 is about justice not charity."

Little Green Footballs:

Despite my skepticism (rock stars with causes, oh boy), I was impressed with Geldof's knowledge of the situation, and by his group's ideas to make sure that whatever aid is generated will not simply be pocketed by corrupt African dictators. Ultimately, the vision seems to be to promote freedom and reform on the African continent. Geldof said, "Robert Mugabe will not be included."

Ed at Captain's Quarters was live-blogging:

Believe me, we all understand the skepticism -- perhaps Geldof most of all. We know this will be a tough sell, even to ourselves. I want to see the specifics before I go running around mindlessly supporting it. However, I think we need to ask ourselves where we want to see Africa in twenty years, and what needs to be done to get it there.

Even John Hawkins at Right Wing News had good things to say about Geldof (though he is unconvinced about the program):

He said nice things about the Bush administration, seemed appreciative of the help America is giving, thinks Robert Mugabe is a hopeless tyrant, talked a lot about accountability in Africa, seemed to have a fairly good grasp of the political landscape in America and Africa, and generally came off as exactly the opposite of the airy headed, sniping liberal, rock star you'd expect.

Still -- while my opinion of Geldof improved considerably, I'm an enormous skeptic on Africa. Sure, we can always do something, feed hungry people, give a certain amount of aid, forgive debts, but -- the reality is that the problems Africa has are on a scale that simply can't be fixed by the West.

So, what to make of all this optimism? Well, it strikes me that much of it comes from the marketing skill of Joe Trippi who has evidently figured out how to talk to conservatives and is training Geldof. I don't yet see evidence of anything concrete that would make conservatives happy. The only two proposals on the table -- doubling government aid and canceling debt -- are actually antithetical to the free-trade ideal that has everyone singing. And even that is couched in leftist terms of "trade justice", presumably to avoid scaring off the base.

The enthusiasm probably stems from the simple fact that we have finally found someone who speaks our language. And this is no small thing. When you have been alone in the dark for a long time, the faintest light or the most distant sound of a human voice can be a joyful thing. Most of the respondents expressed continued skepticism, but it is only natural to hope that someone who actually talks about free-trade and democracy as vehicles for social renewal might actually be able to make a difference.

And one, small, final point: if the Aid Crusaders are starting to realize that they need our input, is it possible that we may be winning the war of ideas that we have been fighting for the past quarter century? Too early to tell, really.

But, here's hoping.

Update: A different kind of Aid for Africa.

Potential Terrorists Caught Near State Capital

Two Islamic leaders and a father/son team was arrested by the FBI in Lodi, CA:

Federal agents searched the homes of two Islamic leaders in Lodi, California, and have made four arrests since Sunday, part of an ongoing terrorism investigation, according to the FBI and witnesses.

Two of those arrested are top Muslim leaders in Lodi, including one who publicly condemned the September 11, 2001, terror attacks and issued a declaration of peace with Christian and Jewish leaders in Lodi three years ago.

The other two were a father and son, identified as 47-year-old Umer Hayat and 22-year-old Hamid Hayat, who allegedly lied about the younger man's attendance at an al Qaeda training camp in Pakistan, according to an FBI affidavit unsealed Tuesday evening by a federal court in Sacramento.

Both Hayats are charged with "making false statements of material fact within the jurisdiction of the FBI," the affidavit says. Both are U.S. citizens; Hamid Hayat was born in California, it says.

The affidavit says the younger Hayat confessed to attending the camp, which he said was run by al Qaeda, in 2003-2004 while he was in Pakistan ostensibly to attend a madrassa, or school, his grandfather ran.

According to the affidavit, Hamid Hayat was on a U.S.-bound flight that authorities diverted because his name was on a "no-fly" list. In interviews afterward, Hayat initially denied attending the camp.

[...]

"Potential targets for attack would include hospitals and large food stores," the document says.

[...]

The two local Islamic leaders in Lodi -- Muhammed Adil Khan and Shabbir Ahmed -- were detained on immigration charges and will face an immigration hearing, FBI Special Agent John Cauthen said.

The Department of Homeland Security Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the two were in custody on "administrative immigration violations for violating their religious worker visas" and there is not a set date for their hearing.

(Via Michelle Malkin)

Update: The above story does not explain how the two clerics are related to the Hayats. According to this local report they met with Umer Saturday but are not being charged with criminal activity. Rather murky. (Via My Pet Jawa who has much more.)

Maybe They Really Don't Know What "Is" Means

Pastorius is tracking Astute Blogger who notes that the left is becoming increasingly caught up in its own metaphors:

Powerline - and others, notably DISSECTING LEFT and this blog - have noted that the Left seems to continually use analogies and metaphors instead of deductive reasoning and rational arguments. I have described this as the "IS/AS Conflation" because it is typically most obvious when someone treats an analogical comparison ("that man sings like a bird") as if it had an ontological verity (that man who sings like a bird is a bird. OR: "The USSR had secretive prisons known as gulags; Gitmo is LIKE a secretive prison; therefore Gitmo IS a gulag."

Some Gals Have All the Luck

I've always wanted one of these. Don't really have a use for it, but I think they're cool.

(I don't know what I'd do with one of these either, though it has nothing to do with firearms.)

The Return of Shame

A couple of months ago I agreed (in principle if not every detail) with this lady's practice of publicizing married men who were soliciting her for sex on an adult dating service. This practice is similar:

Images of men convicted of soliciting prostitutes will soon be joining professional athletes and product placements on city billboards here.

Beginning this month, some billboards will be updated to show the photos of "johns" - men convicted of soliciting sex - with the headline "How Much Clearer Can We Make It?"

The measure is part of a "shaming campaign" to crack down on prostitution.

"We're warning everyone: Next time, the image won't be blurred," City Council President Ignacio De La Fuente said at a news conference Wednesday, where city officials stood under a 10-by-22-foot billboard with the images of four convicted men intentionally blurred so they could not be recognized.

The billboards will only show the images of those convicted of soliciting sex, De La Fuente said. Most persons arrested for soliciting sex - a misdemeanor - ultimately plead guilty to a lesser infraction of disturbing the peace and serve little, if any jail time.

Well, that last bit seems a little wimpy, but it's a step in the right direction.
(Via La Shawn Barber)

Definitive Post on the Filibuster Question

I got too involved in real-life concerns to expand my thoughts on the filibuster before it ceased to be a live issue. Story of my life, really. Fortunately Prof. Bainbridge was more on the ball:

Lots of my fellow conservatives are seriously exercised by the compromise reached by the Senate moderates on judicial nomination filibusters:

[...]

Will somebody please get these folks some cheese to go with their whine? I find these reactions not only short-sighted but also surprisingly unconservative. They reflect a willingness to put possible short-term partisan gain (and I emphasize the word possible) over both principle and long-term advantage.

[...]

The filibuster is a profoundly conservative tool. It slows change by allowing a resolute minority to delay - to stand athwart history shouting stop. It ensures that change is driven not "merely by temporary advantage or popularity" but by a substantial majority. Is it any wonder that it has usually been liberals who want to change or abolish the filibuster rule?

There is much more and it is all good. Don't miss the lovely quote from Russell Kirk that I ellided for space considerations.

Some of my lack of motivation to blog recently has been due to depression over the fact that people I respect have been so willing to abandon conservative principle in favor of partisan advantage. I am glad to note that Bainbridge is still on the same side.

(Via: Andrew Sullivan)

Full Disclosure: I should mention that when I say "some of my lack of motivation", I really mean a small portion. Most of it is just plain, old-fashioned sloth.

California Textbook Page Limit

It would be difficult to make up a story about public schools that was more absurd than this story from the Sacramento Bee (Registration Required):

Lawmakers voted Thursday to ban school districts from purchasing textbooks longer than 200 pages.
The bill, believed to be the first of its kind nationwide, was hailed by supporters as a way to revolutionize education.

Critics lambasted Assembly Bill 756 as silly.

Silly doesn't even begin to describe it. As the Center for Local Liberty notes:

The bill would exclude The Federalist Papers, the Bible, the Lincoln-Douglas debates, innumerable classic novels, just for starters.

Maybe therein lies the explanation?

(Via Captain's Quarters)

Book Meme

I got tagged with this from Pastorius at CUANAS:

1. Total Number of Books I've Owned:
This is actually a bit of a domestic crisis at the moment. We have bookshelves on every available wall in our house with loose books shoved sideways in the spaces between one row of books and the next shelf. In front of some of the shelves, my wife has crates and boxes of books sitting on the floor, two rows deep at one point. Every available surface has a stack of books on it. I have no idea how many there are. Surely in the thousands. And that doesn't account for the many books donated to libraries, lost in moves or "loaned" to friends over the years.

2. Last Book I Bought:

Restoring the Lost Constitution by Randy Barnett of the Volokh Conspiracy. Haven't had a chance to start it yet, but I have been impressed with many of Barnett's arguments.

Before that, I can't quite remember which books I've bought. Most of my reading recently has been trying to catch up with backlogged books that I've owned for awhile. For reasons cited above, I've put a semi-moratorium on buying new books, although occasionally my wife will find something interesting at the thrift store for a price too good to pass up. We got the first five Lemony Snicket books that way, I think.

3. Last Book I Read:

This answer has thee parts: my personal reading, the book I am reading to my wife and the book we are reading in our church's reading club.

Personally, I am just finishing Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy. Most people have heard about The Prince, of course, and think they know what it is about: power for power's sake, the end justifies the means, etc., etc. I learned that in public school too when I actually tried to read the Prince. But I was too ignorant of general political ideas to make much of it, so I pretty much assumed that what I had been taught to think was what I actually did think, and left it at that for several years.

When I began to be a conservative, in college, I suspected that maybe the conventional wisdom was unfair to Machiavelli, especially since he was always presented as someone you don't need to read because everyone already knows what he is all about. But other interests got in the way and only recently did I get serious enough about political theory to give him another read. As noted below, his Discourses are focused on the concept of liberty and how to preserve it. It is true that he does make some hair-raising statements such as "it is better to be feared than loved." But what he means by that is that someone who tries to govern by making people like him will inevitably do more harm to innocent people by letting the guilty go unpunished than if he acquired a reputation for strictness. This is an observation many conservatives have had occasion to reiterate in recent years.

For the last few weeks, I have been reading Charles Williams' War in Heaven to my wife. This is my third-favorite book by him, coming behind The Place of the Lion and Descent into Hell, in that order. I am discovering, however, just how difficult Williams is to read aloud. His thought is often so idiosyncratic that you have to read a sentence a few times to yourself to get what he is saying, which of course doesn't work if you are reading aloud. Also, his humor is of the elliptical, 1920s variety (think P. G. Wodehouse or Lord Peter Wimsey) that derives much of its effect from the assumption that if you are sufficiently in-the-know, you don't really need to hear the punchline to get the joke. Also, you wouldn't be so offensive as to suggest that the teller should go to all that extra trouble to actually say those few extra syllables. Also, you've heard it all before. It is a humor of ultra-sophistication and embodies all of the worldliness, ennui and arrogance of the early 20th century. I actually enjoy this sort of humor and try, in my own pathetic way, to indulge in it whenever I can. But it is one thing to make this kind of humor, and quite another to read the transcript of someone else making it. If I were a voice actor, I might be able to pull it off but in an unrehearsed, after-dinner reading session it is a bit beyond my capacity.

At church we are reading Russell Kirk's Roots of American Order. If you haven't read it, stop wasting time with this silly blog and go buy a copy. Now, Damn It!

4. Five Books That Mean A Lot To Me:

Only Five? ONLY FIVE? Jeez, who wrote this question, Dyslexics Anonymous? Well, hmmm. I will skip including the Bible as that should be fairly obvious. Nor will I include the Lord of the Rings, for pretty much the same reason (though to a different degree, of course). Also, I won't mention Atlas Shrugged or Mere Christianity, even though they were jointly responsible for my conversion to Christianity, since explaining how that all works would make this a very long post indeed. I won't mention Roots of American Order, either, because that was included in question #3. Does that narrow the list down? Well, no actually.

Hmmm. Well, how about this: I'll only mention the 5 books that I think would be most surprising to people who know me. That might work.

I. The Forgotten Beasts of Eld by Patricia McKillip. Quite simply the best fantasy novel ever written. Her ability to create a compelling and intricate moral conflict among people who love each other in varying ways is phenomenal, and, what is more, she manages it without becoming sentimental or introspective in that annoying twentieth century way. In general I hate stories that put essentially modern characters into chainmail bras and codpieces and expect us to pretend it is honest fantasy. For some reason people of our era tend to be so pleased with our own consciousness that we can't help projecting it back into the past or out into faerie with uniformly tedious results. But McKillip maintains a voice that, while not particularly archaic, is nevertheless ancient and weighty. I marvel, for she speaks not as the scribes, but with authority. This book ranks for me with Till We Have Faces but the latter is excluded because it isn't terribly surprising.

II. Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne. Okay, this won't surprise a lot of people because I mention it all the time, but most of my friends are surprised the first time I bring it up. The idea seems to be that I am too intellectual, too serious, too mathematical to be fooling about with whimsical children's books. But, actually, it is because I am all those things that I value Pooh so much. There is nothing more mortifying to me than the recollection of my late childhood and early adulthood when I couldn't communicate with my peers because I (unconsciously) thought I was smarter than them. Or, at least, that my interests were more important. If I have a personality at all, it is largely because I discovered late in life that I could borrow Pooh's and no one would know because they were only familiar with the idiotic Disney version.

III. The Magic Goes Away by Larry Niven. Also the related short stories, "Not Long Before the End" and "What Good is a Glass Dagger?" For much the same reasons that I like the McKillip book: there is a certain worldly wisdom in these stories that I draw upon frequently in the real world, and yet they belong quite firmly in the fantasy genre. I still find the paragraph where Niven relates the "history" of how the story of the quest for the lost god is reflected in tale of Chicken Little thrilling. I hope someday to be able to write with so much flair.

IV. Radical Son by David Horowitz. This book completely changed the way I thought about politics, not because I learned any new facts about the left, but because the facts became illuminated by a pattern I could never previously articulate. Reading this was very much an oceanic experience. I don't generally like biography, but this book is the biography of an entire worldview.

V. Illusions by Richard Bach. Well there are many books that I like that I could have put in this final slot, but the question was books that mean a lot to me. This book is important to me in much the same way that the Holocaust is important to Jews: Never Again. The self-deifying theology of this book corrupted much of my early life, aided my involvement with Mormonism and pretty much turned me into the arrogant, cynical relativist that I have spent the latter half of my life trying to escape. Obviously there were many other influences from the 70s that aided this corruption, but I think this single volume is a good metaphor for the lot.

5. People I Will Infect With This Meme:

There are lots of intriguing possibilities here, but I will play it safe for the moment and pick on my fellow parishioners Andrew, Michele and Paul. (If for no other reason than to wake them from their slumber...)

Update: Paul responds here.

Kingdom of Humanist Revisionism

Saw The Kingdom of Heaven last nigt. Don't have time to create a full post at the moment but I wanted to record two observations while I am thinking about it.

1. All the Muslims were honorable and none of the Good Guys were Christians. Every European who was sympathetic had lost his faith or had never had any to lose. No exceptions.

2. I have to look up some of the details, but I think they screwed up the history pretty badly. Like a missing king, and a queen who runs off with a character that never really existed.

More later.

Publius 2000

Pastorius of CUANAS alerted me via email of this blog by another member of his group. Publius is evidently a history professor interested in, among other things, constitutional law. He seems to be getting a slow start, but what he has written so far is right on target. Publius is hereby added to the blogroll.

Yemeni Elections

Jane from Armies of Liberation cautions that the upcoming elections in Yemen bear close scrutiny. The recent victories for democracy in Afghanistan, Iraq, Ukraine and Lebanon should not blind us to the fact that dictators can easily flaunt the trappings of freedom while flouting its essence:

AL-Sahwa net-The popular Forces’ Union (PFU) party blamed Yemeni authorities for trespassing on its headquarters and robbing the computer sets belonging to its mouthpiece, “Al-Shoura” newspaper (al-Khaiwani’s paper). A statement, issued by the PFU and a copy of which was obtained by Al-Sahwa net, said that the assault coincided with President Saleh’s strong-worded attack on the party.

It also recalled the adduction of Nabeel Al-Wazeer, member of the party’s secretariat general, and the threats of outlawing the party.

The PFU statement urged the political parties and the non-governmental organizations to “firmly stand against such violations, and to support the democratic option as a precondition for building the country’s future and maintaining its security and stability”. During his meeting with Yemeni clerics last Saturday, President Saleh accused the PFU and Al-Haq parties of plotting to lead a coup d` `etat against what he termed as “the revolution and the republican system”.

Jane comments: "Interesting how all the reformers and opposition are getting harrassed in advance of the election. Did I mention that Salah won 96% of the vote in 1999?"

Dennis Miller Cancelled?

My lone source of information about TV culture, Ann Althouse, reports that the Dennis Miller show is scheduled to be cancelled by CNBC:

His show never got to be as good as it could have been because -- I'm guessing -- Miller never got the support from CNBC he needed. And he deserved it. His past work on HBO was great, but the CNBC show was struggling on the edge all along. I suppose Miller never should have risked his reputation by venturing into that unsupported environment. There was a limit to how much he could do on sheer wits alone. And it was often painful to watch him sweating it out on camera.

He needed great writers and supporting actors and a sharp audience -- what Jon Stewart has on "The Daily Show." Now, he's the one stuck looking like a failure. And I blame CNBC for doing that to him.

This sounds like a bad deal for the reasons that Althouse gives, but also because Dennis Miller is one of the few independent thinkers on the TV talkshow circuit. I suspect that may be part (even unconsciously) of the reason that Miller did not get the support Althouse mentions.

But further reading in the CNN piece that Althouse links to reveals that this is not the whole story:

The network will also replace "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" with a new business show at 7 p.m. that will debut in the third quarter.

Both moves are part of a repositioning of CNBC's primetime back to the network's focus on financial news and away from failed attempts at entertainment, according to the report.

Whenever TV moves away from entertainment in order to focus on providing actual information that would be a Good Thing. (Unless the "information" turns out to be political analysis by some Jim Lehrer clone, but I doubt that will be the case with financial shows.)

One of the problems with my policy of not watching TV is that I can't join in the sort of boycott Ms. Althouse describes (it would be like a vegetarian giving up meat for Lent). But on the whole, this may not be a particularly bad move for CNBC and Dennis Miller is good enough that he should find another venue without too much trouble. At least I hope so.

Legitimate Legal Systems

Randy Barnett, of the Volokh Conspiracy, has a lengthy post describing his approach to defining the legitimacy of a legal system. He is drawing on concepts that he outlines in his book, Restoring the Lost Constitution (which is on my ever-growing list of books to read). Here are some selections from his 8-point discussion that I found interesting:

(1) The concept of "legitimacy" I am considering concerns whether laws that are imposed on the people create a prima facie (i.e. rebuttable) duty of obedience because they are laws, or (another formulation) are presumptively binding on conscience.

(2) The concept I am considering is objective, not subjective. By this I mean that I am not discussing the perception that there is a prima facie duty to obey the law, but whether any such perception is valid or justified.

These two points are related in that if an obligation is objective it is necessarily binding on the conscience. What he means by rebuttable or presumptive is that if a law is passed through legitimate means it is presumed to be a legitimate (ie binding) law unless it is shown not to be on substantive grounds. In the latter case, it can be repealed through the same procedural methods. I metion this because there are some who confuse legality with morality, but that isn't what Barnett is talking about here.

One route to legitimacy is the consent of the governed, but [...] the consent of some can never explain how nonconsenting persons come to be bound in conscience. This is the challenge to constitutional legitimacy made famous by Lysander Spooner [...] I try to meet Spooner's challenge by positing an alternative route to legitimacy. (a) No one can complain about the imposition of a law if it does not violate his natural (prepolitical) rights; (b) because one has a duty to respect the rights of others, one also has a duty to obey a law that is necessary to defining and protecting the rights of others. A coercive command that meets these two requirements is "just" and binding in conscience. Therefore (c) a law is legitimate (in the sense defined above) if it is produced and enforced by procedures that make it more likely than not that it (a) respects the rights of the persons on whom it is being imposed and (b) is needed to protect the rights of others. In this sense "constitutional legitimacy" is procedural in nature, though the procedures must be assessed with a background theory of substantive rights in mind.

This is a very powerful concept and bears re-reading. From a Christian point of view, this account of legitimacy allows reconciliation of the often thorny choice between being submissive to the established authorities (Rom 13: 1-7) and obeying God rather than man (Acts 4:19). If, as I believe, establishing justice in the land (1 Cor 6:2) is a duty of the Christian in a democratic society (ie a land in which every man is king) then this notion of legitimacy allows us to participate in a society where the substance of the laws is ungodly, provided there is a legitimate (in the above sense) system whereby laws can be changed. So long as there is hope that the ungodly laws can be changed, we are not obligated to break the law, for instance, by destroying abortion clinics or freeing slaves. However, a corollary is that if it ever becomes clear that there is no legitimate process by which laws can be changed, (such as is the case for Christians in Sudan, for instance), rebellion is justified.

Machiavelli on Freedom and Monarchy

I came across this passage while reading Machiavelli's Discourses (Book I: Discourse 55):

But to make plain what I mean when I speak of _gentlemen_, I say that those are so to be styled who live in opulence and idleness on the revenues of their estates, without concerning themselves with the cultivation of these estates, or incurring any other fatigue for their support. Such persons are very mischievous in every republic or country. But even more mischievous are they who, besides the estates I have spoken of, are lords of strongholds and castles, and have vassals and retainers who render them obedience. Of these two classes of men the kingdom of Naples, the country round Rome, Romagna, and Lombardy are full; and hence it happens that in these provinces no commonwealth or free form of government has ever existed; because men of this sort are the sworn foes to all free institutions. And since to plant a commonwealth in provinces which are in this condition were impossible, if these are to be reformed at all, it can only be by some one man who is able there to establish a kingdom; the reason being that when the body of the people is grown so corrupted that the laws are powerless to control it, there must in addition to the laws be introduced a stronger force, to wit, the regal, which by its absolute and unrestricted authority may curb the excessive ambition and corruption of the great.[Emphasis Mine]

The bolded section is what interested me, since it is essentially the same point I was making here:

I do happen to believe that the bible portrays monarchy as a punishment inflicted on a people who reject God's rule and are, therefore, incapable of ruling themselves.

Of course, Machiavelli is not arguing from a biblical perspective and quoting him does not really advance the debate that much. In fact, given the slanderous treatment Machiavelli usually gets by the public school system, quoting him sympathetically may even get me into more trouble than my earlier citation of Paine did. But I am gratified to see that other lovers of liberty have come to similar conclusions to my own largely self-taught attempts to make sense of human history.

Belated Thanks ...

... to Michi of Journal of a Girl for the link. I am honored to have anyone as a reader who is willing to lose friends over the truth.

Darfur Drawn

Human Rights watch has posted images of drawings by young children who have escaped from the genocide in Sudan's Darfur region:

On mission along the border of Chad and Darfur, Human Rights Watch researchers gave children notebooks and crayons to keep them occupied while they spoke with the children’s parents. Without any instruction or guidance, the children drew scenes from their experiences of the war in Darfur: the attacks by the Janjaweed, the bombings by Sudanese government forces, the shootings, the burning of entire villages, and the flight to Chad.

Here are a couple of examples:

Human Rights Watch: What’s happening here?
Mahmoud: These men in green are taking the women and the girls.
Human Rights Watch: What are they doing?
Mahmoud: They are forcing them to be wife.

I am looking at the sheep in the wadi. I see Janjaweed coming—quickly, on horses and camels, with Kalashnikovs—shooting and yelling, 'kill the slaves, kill the blacks.'

Nur: This is my brother. He is hiding in Sudan. He is not happy.
Human Rights Watch: Why?
Nur: He wants to learn, to go to school, but he has nothing. Our school was burned.

John Hinderaker of PowerLine comments:

Of course, I still don't have much to say about Darfur. My view is that ordinarily, the United States should intervene abroad only when our own national interests are at stake, and, in addition, humanitarian interests are served, or at least not compromised. It's hard to see any purpose other than the purely humanitarian in stepping into Sudan. That would, ideally, make it a job for the United Nations, I suppose, but the U.N. doesn't do anything that useful--it's too busy denouncing America and Israel--and, truth be told, many U.N. members don't especially disapprove of the conduct of the government of Sudan [...]

There was a time, while I was struggling to make the transition form Liberal to Conservative thinking, when I would have reluctantly agreed with this sentiment for consistency's sake. It makes sense to limit US involvement in light of the fact that resources are inevitably scarce and we can't be everywhere at once.

However, I now believe, as noted below that the Liberals got this one partly right. It is in the long-term interest of the US to put a stop to tyranny and terror, even if there is no immanent threat or pressing national interest. Furthermore, relying on the deliberative facilities offered by the UN is only viable if we can trust the member nations to adhere to civilized standards, which is manifestly not the case. (This is where the Liberals get it wrong.)

If the Bush doctrine of defeating terror through establishing free countries is to be effective, there must be a point at which we are willing to acknowledge that recalcitrant nations must be confronted, even if they do not pose an immediate threat. If US power had been used to intervene in Sudan when Khartoum was oppressing the Southern region, the genocide in Darfur may have been prevented. In this sense, my assertion that "Bush has taken the liberal foreign policy recommendations of the '80s and actually made them work" is diminished by the continuing crisis in Sudan.

Nature Profiles Intelligent Design

Speaking of grudging concessions, Nature, a prestigious international science journal, has run several articles on Intelligent Design in its April 28 issue. William Dembski comments:

Bottom line: ID still isn't science and is dead wrong, but too many people are taking it seriously, so it needs to be addressed seriously. This is an important concession. Look for more to come.

Reading the linked article and the attached editorial, I am struck by the fact that the focus is completely on the human interest aspect of ID advocates and completely ignores or misstates the actual argument of ID. One example among many:

Others, including Cordova himself, arrived at intelligent design from almost the opposite direction. Over a coffee earlier that day, he explains how intelligent design helped him resolve his own spiritual crisis five years ago. Since high school, Cordova had been a devout Christian, but as he studied science and engineering at George Mason, he found his faith was being eroded. "The critical thinking and precision of science began to really affect my ability to just believe something without any tangible evidence," he says. The breaking point came in 2000 when a woman from his Bible study group put her faith before her personal safety - traveling to Afghanistan as part of a covert Christian mission in a country that was, at the time, a militant Islamic theocracy. He felt unhappy accepting the promotion of such activities unless he could be sure Christianity was a true faith.

Frankly, I could care less about how he feels about ID, Evolution or Christianity. My interest in the subject is with the quality of the ideas. It is true that ID is a school of thought with quite a few lacunae in its argument, but such gaps can best be filled by discussing the theory as it stands and challenging both sides to come up with answers. Focusing on secondary issues such as motivations and personal perspectives gives people the false impression that they have understood the theory when all they have done is decide who they want to sympathize with. This serves neither the reader nor the scientific community at large and is more worthy of Newsweek than Nature.

But Dembski makes a good point in noting that this is a slight victory for ID in that it is being mentioned at all. Up until recently the strategy of evolutionists has been to ignore ID, thus implying that it is not worthy of serious discussion. As a side bar in the article notes:

Evolution advocates say that researchers should be careful about how they respond to such overtures. If the request is for a public debate with an intelligent-design advocate, the best answer is 'no', argues Robert Pennock, a philosopher of science at Michigan State University in East Lansing. "A public debate is an artificial setting for getting into scientific issues," he says. "There's no way in that format to thoroughly give a scientific response, especially to a lay audience."

"A formal debate is not how we do science," agrees Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, California.

Which is all very well, except that the exclusion is also applied to peer-reviewed journals, which is how we do science. But if that wall starts to break down, it may not be long before ID researchers begin to gather the public recognition -- and the concomitant funding -- that will allow them to make their case more rigorously.

Who Was Guarding the Guardian?

Charles Johnson catches Max Hastings of the Guardian in a moment of lucidity:

[...]A friend who visited the White House recently described the president's buoyant account of his Iraqi crusade, which highlighted the fact that a national government has been formed. Some progress is claimed towards normalisation in Shia and Kurdish regions. Syrian withdrawal gives Lebanon a chance of making something of democracy. Washington asserts that it is involving itself more than ever in the Middle East peace process.

None of these claims should be dismissed out of hand. The greatest danger for those of us who dislike George Bush is that our instincts may tip over into a desire to see his foreign policy objectives fail. No reasonable person can oppose the president's commitment to Islamic democracy. Most western Bushophobes are motivated not by dissent about objectives, but by a belief that the Washington neocons' methods are crass, and more likely to escalate a confrontation between the west and Islam than to defuse it.

Such skepticism, however, should not prevent us from stepping back to reassess the progress of the Bush project, and satisfy ourselves that mere prejudice is not blinding us to the possibility that western liberals are wrong; that the Republicans' grand strategy is getting somewhere.

Not surprisingly, this magnanimity does not quite last to the end of the article. Inevitably, when the left is forced to acknowledge the success of conservatism, it does so by way of contrast with the downside, in a tone of balance and even-handedness:

My own contacts say that the situation is improving, but remains precarious.
[...]
It is hard to derive much comfort from statistics that show a diminution in clashes between insurgents and security forces.
[...]
The most powerful reason for remaining cautious about Iraq must be doubt -- shared by many US officers -- about whether the country is sus­tainable as a unitary state.

Still, Hastings fights manfully against the temptation to be wholly negative:

It seems wrong for either neocon true believers or liberal skeptics to rush to judgment. We of the latter persuasion must keep reciting the mantra: "We want Iraq to come right, even if this vindicates George Bush."

Those who say that Iraqis are incapable of making a democracy work may well be proved right. But until we see what happens on the ground over the months ahead, we should not write off the possibility that the Iraqi people will forge some sort of accommodation. A premature coalition withdrawal promises catastrophe for them, not us.

Irresistibly, the old addiction to nuance and multi-lateralism resurfaces, but only in the final paragraph:

Yet it still seems reasonable to question the optimism currently prevailing among Washington's neocons, because this remains founded upon a woefully simplistic vision. It is true that, in some chronic, unstable regions, some bad governments — those of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein — have been removed by the Americans. But the fragile advantages gained will be lost, unless Washington can match its boldness in the deployment of military power with a new sensitivity to alien cultures, matched by far more subtle political skills.

Ironically, the "simplistic" Bush approach was what, during the Reagan administration, liberals used to call "common sense". American firepower employed in taking out the most egregious dictatorships was precisely what we demanded. The fact that the US did not drop its ("futile" and "counterproductive") cold war with the Soviet Union to clean up the stinking torture states of the third world was irrefutable evidence of its greed, corruption and domination by big business. Now that the USSR is gone -- and, I am cynically inclined to add, no longer in need of liberal support -- the same factors are adduced as motivations of Bush's interventionism.

What Hastings needs to remember is that the word "neocon" which he so glibly tosses around is not an epithet but has a precise meaning: a former liberal who has seen the value of conservative principles. In that light, it is hardly surprising that Bush has taken the liberal foreign policy recommendations of the '80s and actually made them work.

(Via CUANAS)

Addendum: In citing Bruce Cockburn's Rocket Launcher, it occurs to me that the entire song is worth quoting in this context:

Here comes the helicopter -- second time today
Everybody scatters and hopes it goes away
How many kids they've murdered only God can say
If I had a rocket launcher...I'd make somebody pay

I don't believe in guarded borders and I don't believe in hate
I don't believe in generals or their stinking torture states
And when I talk with the survivors of things too sickening to relate
If I had a rocket launcher...I would retaliate

On the Rio Lacantun, one hundred thousand wait
To fall down from starvation -- or some less humane fate
Cry for Guatemala, with a corpse in every gate
If I had a rocket launcher...I would not hesitate

I want to raise every voice -- at least I've got to try
Every time I think about it water rises to my eyes.
Situation desperate, echoes of the victims cry
If I had a rocket launcher...Some son of a bitch would die

Well, Bruce, we do have a rocket launcher.

Notes on the "Unprecedented" Filibuster

I have been debating this point on and off for a couple of weeks with friends. Looks like the AP has finally noticed that the talking points that both Republicans and Democrats are making don't quite square with the facts:

Time was, Republicans buried Bill Clinton's judicial picks by the dozen in the Senate Judiciary Committee and Democrats indignantly demanded a yes-or-no vote for each. That was then.

This is now, when Democrats block a far smaller number of President Bush's court nominees -- and Republicans heatedly insist the Constitution itself requires a vote.

"Give them a vote. A vote up or down," Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch of Utah said recently, speaking of seven appeals court nominees Democrats have vowed to block. "That's what we've always done for 214 years before this president became president."

Except for more than 60 nominees whose names Clinton sent to the Senate between 1995 and 2000.

Republicans didn't resort to filibusters in many of those cases. They didn't need to.

They controlled the levers of Senate power at the time, and simply refused to schedule action on the nominations they opposed. Hatch, a former chairman of the Judiciary Committee, played a pivotal role in the blockade.

Inconsistency is hardly a Republican-only trait.

"According to the U.S. Constitution, the president nominates, and the Senate shall provide advice and consent," Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., said in 1997.

"It is not the role of the Senate to obstruct the process and prevent numbers of highly qualified nominees from even being given the opportunity for a vote on the Senate floor," said Boxer, who supported a move in 1995 to ease the filibuster rule.

Except that she joined other Democrats in successfully filibustering 10 of Bush's first-term appeals court candidates. Bush has renominated seven of the 10, and they are at the core of the current struggle over rules governing judicial confirmation.

I have not posted on this because I find it hard to get too excited about what seems to be an obvious fact of politics. Politicians do and say what they need to get their agendas implemented and it doesn't always match what they did or said previously when the situation was reversed. Not particularly admirable, but hardly surprising.

But I am rather annoyed that conservatives, who don't have political carreers to think about, have bought into the Constitutional meme and are even pretending that the Democrats are being somehow particularly unprincipled in the present circumstance. It may be good for the country to abolish the 60 vote rule for ending a filibuster; I don't really know. But it is hardly a moral concern and it is certainly well within conservative principles to allow it to stand. I may have more to say about this later.

Parablogs

First, you may have noticed that, for the past few months, my blogroll has had 18 Skirts at the top. I didn't mention this earlier because Michele has had a bit of a slow start, but now that she has 5 posts, I think we can safely say that she is one of us. (Ignore the fact that her most recent post is about Weight Watchers. She isn't the soccer mom type. Trust me.)

Second, and what inspired this post, another friend evidently jumped into the blogosphere web log community at Inside the Box without my noticing. (My own fault for not checking my email all last week.) I have thought for a while that Paul would be a natural blogger web log stylist auteur writer, but didn't like to say so for reasons that will become obvious. His blog web log is, in his own words,

about Trying To Be Like Christ ... The Good, The True, and The Beautiful ... Reality's Integrity ... and Story. For now.

My guess is it will also turn out to be very much about paradox.

Welcome to the blogosphere community club.

UPDATE: It ocurrs to me that the title could be taken two ways. I didn't mean the prefix "para" to imply that these are not fully blogs, but just that there's a pair of them. Also, I was trying to make a lame reference to "paradox", which is rather obscured by the fact that it has nothing to with Michele's blog. This is why I hate puns and basketball. I am not good at either.

Sphere Sovereignty

Blue Goldfish links to several posts about the concept of Sphere Sovereignty including this definition from Gideon Strauss:

We say that there are diverse spheres in human life, each with a creational design for which specified laws are given by God, and within which there are distinct responsibilities and authority relationships. These spheres need room to flourish in society, but must also not encroach on one another [...]

I think this concept is very useful in understanding the application of biblical principles to politics, provided the sovereignty indicated isn't taken too absolutely. The spheres should not be pictured as air-tight compartments which share no space with one another as in, say soap bubbles. Rather they should be envisioned as slightly overlapping spheres that share territories at the borders as in, say, the "spheres" of sound that are emitted by multiple loud-speakers. Most theorists that I have heard discuss the matter acknowledge this point, at least implicitly, but it is worthwhile to make it explicit to avoid confusion. Also, there should probably be a greater emphasis on hierarchy amongst the various spheres than I have heard most protestants make. Some loud-speakers, after all, have a greater range than others.

I think this concept will become crucial in the monarchy debate I am having with Andrew, and I alluded to it here:

But since I actually distrust paternalism in government, I am not sure I want to go in that direction.

But even apart from that specific debate, I think this concept of mutual restraint and limitation of power is a crucial insight of the reformers and a key to the liberty that God wills for his people.

Habeunt Papam

Joseph Ratzinger has taken the name of Benedict XVI as the 265th pope.
Update: Sorry for the spelling error, my Latin isn't as good as it used to be.

The Monarchy Debate

Andrew of Unpopular Opinions has challenged some of the points I made in this post. His post is merely an initial sortie in a much larger campaign which Andrew outlined in the 8 points of his initial post. Specifically relevant to our discussion are points 1 and 2:

1. Divine government is monarchical.
2. Human authority is derived from and patterned after the divine monarchy.

Since my original post was only tangentially related to these theses, I don't feel it would be profitable to make a point-by-point response to Andrew's critique, but there are a few points where he is misinterpreting my position and at least one where I feel his view of history is sufficiently mistaken that it would be misleading to let it go unchallenged. So I will limit myself to addressing those few points, then turn immediately to a positive statement of what I believe to be a biblical model of government.

First, Andrew makes the following claim about my contrast of Saddam's dictatorship with the rule of law:

Here Russ has set up the problematic that is common to all Enlightenment thinking: either rule by a person or rule by law. Either dictatorship or democracy. But I do not accept these alternatives.

But I was making no such dichotomy. I am ready to admit that monarchy is a valid form of government, just not that it is the valid form. And, of course, it is perfectly possible to have a constitutional monarchy in which the king is subject to the rule of law. I believe Andrew has been misled by my quotation of Paine into assuming that I would argue from an Enlightenment perspective. But the basis of my argument, as I will demonstrate below, is biblical not theoretical. As a general principal I reject the rationalistic or deductive model of argument that is characteristic of the Enlightenment in favor of a muddling-through, traditional, inductive approach that is more at home with Edmund Burke, F. A. Hayek and the Common Law tradition. (Incidentally, in his concluding remarks, Andrew says "I would more readily trust my case to one who viewed me in some sense as a son than I would to someone who regarded me a stranger." But surely this is just as much a false dichotomy as I am accused of making. Why cannot we hold judges to the same standard of fatherhood as we would for a monarch? But since I actually distrust paternalism in government, I am not sure I want to go in that direction.)

Andrew continues:

But let's be perfectly clear, the true import of this thinking is that there should be no king.

It is not at all clear to me that this is the import of my assertion. I was speaking historically, not prescriptively and was contrasting a pagan with a Christian worldview. I do happen to believe that the bible portrays monarchy as a punishment inflicted on a people who reject God's rule and are, therefore, incapable of ruling themselves. But I was making no such argument in the post that Andrew cites.

There is much that can be said in response to this rebel's rant, but I shall restrict my comments to address the possibility of rule by law alone.

But even Paine was not arguing for quite so radical a thing as "rule by law alone". The actual government which his generation produced was fully grounded in the notion that some will rule and others obey. It was a representative republic not an oligarchy of judges that actually existed in America at the time and was later officially adopted in the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution.

As illustrated in the Schiavo debacle, judges are very powerful in this country.

I don't agree that this is quite the lesson to be learned from the Schiavo case, but I fully agree that judges are indeed powerful. But their power derives largely from the self-same lack of accountability that would occur in a monarchy except that it is somewhat more diffuse in the case of judges. Andrew is largely making my own case here.

Tommy Paine's ideal that law replace the king has been actualized in the real world as government run by lawyers.

I disagree. Call it a flaw in the original design of the Constitution, but it is not the rule of law but the unrestricted power of the judiciary that is implicated here. And Paine's argument specifically notes that "But lest any ill use should afterwards arise, let the crown at the conclusion of the ceremony, be demolished, and scattered among the people whose right it is." It is not quite clear what he means by "ill use" in this context but it is at least conceivable that he anticipated Andrew's criticism (and mine) and suggested a solution for what we now call judicial activism: democratic oversight. It is a pity this theme was not translated into the actual governing documents of our nation, but that is a topic for another day.

This leads me to the final point, which I characterized earlier as a misunderstanding of history. He doesn't say so in this post, but permeating Andrew's discourse is the idea that the American Revolution was an inevitable product of the Enlightenment rejection of Christendom. This is consistent with his 5th principle:

5. Enlightenment revolutionism (whether American, French, or Bolshevik) is the political expression of anti-Christ.

I remember hearing this trope (sans the bit about anti-Christ, which wouldn't have flown) when I went to public school, too, but it is simply false. The Left -- who are the true heirs of the Enlightenment -- would like us to believe that the American Revolution is morally and ideologically consistent with the French and Bolshevik varieties, but they differ in both their motivations and their results. The American Revolution is more in line with the Glorious Revolution of 1668 in England in that it aimed at restoring ancient liberties which had been abused than with either of the other two which attempted to create entirely new societies that had never existed outside of humanist theorizing. I don't have time to defend this assertion here, but let me note that such a defense would draw heavily on the writings of Russell Kirk's Roots of American Order as well as Burke's various letters in support of American grievances in contrast to his criticism of the French Revolution. One might also point to the distinction between the two made by both Hayek (in Constitution of Liberty) and Horowitz (Politics of Bad Faith) for support of my general thesis. If this particular point is a matter of interest, I would be happy to comment on it in future posts (and probably will anyway, whether or not anyone is interested).

I am mindful that there were indeed strong Enlightenment influences on both the war of independence and the founding of the country and that, indeed, Thomas Paine's later writings are a particularly egregious example of this influence. I am also aware of the serious criticisms of the American Revolution from a biblical perspective, and indeed am sympathetic to some of those criticisms. But whatever the moral status of the war, the actual nation that resulted from it is thoroughly steeped in the biblical traditions of the rule of law and limited government. To be sure, I did not originally adduce Paine's work as the ground of my argument but merely as independent corroboration that the Bible favors democracy. Dismissing his points on the grounds that he is no "illustrious biblical scholar" commits both the fallacies of ad hominem argument and an appeal (negatively) to authority.

But let me move on to a brief outline of what I believe the Bible presents as a pattern for human government. First, as a sort of preview, I note the wisdom of Jethro when he speaks to Moses in Exodus 18:

And when Moses' father in law saw all that he did to the people, he said, What is this thing that thou doest to the people? Why sittest thou thyself alone, and all the people stand by thee from morning unto even? And Moses said unto his father in law, Because the people come unto me to enquire of God: When they have a matter, they come unto me; and I judge between one and another, and I do make them know the statutes of God, and his laws. And Moses' father in law said unto him, The thing that thou doest is not good. Thou wilt surely wear away, both thou, and this people that is with thee: for this thing is too heavy for thee; thou art not able to perform it thyself alone. Hearken now unto my voice, I will give thee counsel, and God shall be with thee: Be thou for the people to God-ward, that thou mayest bring the causes unto God: And thou shalt teach them ordinances and laws, and shalt shew them the way wherein they must walk, and the work that they must do. Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be rulers of thousands, and rulers of hundreds, rulers of fifties, and rulers of tens. (Ex 18:14-21)

This is clearly an indication that, at very least, government should not be autocratic and is too big a task for a single individual. Also note that the solution to Moses' dilemma begins with the rule of law. However, this is still a monarchial form of government (albeit ameliorated by a hierarchy of representatives), so it may seem that this point goes to Andrew. But note that in the parallel passage in Deuteronomy, the men appointed by Moses were already leaders that the people had chosen for themselves:

And I spake unto you at that time, saying, I am not able to bear you myself alone: The LORD your God hath multiplied you, and, behold, ye are this day as the stars of heaven for multitude. (The LORD God of your fathers make you a thousand times so many more as ye are, and bless you, as he hath promised you!) How can I myself alone bear your cumbrance, and your burden, and your strife? Take you wise men, and understanding, and known among your tribes, and I will make them rulers over you. And ye answered me, and said, The thing which thou hast spoken is good for us to do. So I took the chief of your tribes, wise men, and known, and made them heads over you, captains over thousands, and captains over hundreds, and captains over fifties, and captains over tens, and officers among your tribes. (Dt 1:9-15)

The pattern I think we see here is that the people are being trained for self-rule under God's ultimate authority in accordance with his law. And remember that the audience in Deuteronomy is the next generation, the people that are about to leave Moses behind and enter the Promised Land. I would infer (although this is certainly debatable) that the people needed a single authority figure, having spent generations under the tyrannical rule of the Pharaohs, but God's ultimate purpose was that they should be free and self-ruled. For support of that thesis I turn to the preamble to the law that is given in Exodus which is echoed, in the Christian era in both 1 Peter and Revelation:

And ye shall be unto me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation. (Ex 19:6)

But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. (1 Pet 2:9)

And hast made us unto our God kings and priests: and we shall reign on the earth. (Rev 5:10)

Taken together I think this shows a trajectory of increasing self-government on earth under God's heavenly rule. This is also supported by the following eschatalogical passage in Jeremiah

Behold, the days come, saith the LORD, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD: But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the LORD: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the LORD: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.

So, if, as we both agree, earthly government should reflect heavenly principles, I would make a strong case that self-rule and not monarchy is the true ideal. To be sure, democracy is not self-rule any more than monarchy. Both are compromises with the sinful state that we currently find ourselves in. But as a people grows in grace my understanding of the biblical model predicts that they should also outgrow the need for external coercion.

I think I have babbled on long enough for now. I already know at least one objection that Andrew is going to make (involving Deuteronomy 17) but I will let him make it before attempting to respond.

Islam and Islamism

My friend Pastorius has been part of a fascinating discussion on whether "Islamism" is a weasel-word. Follow the links on his page. Here are my comments on the third post, but read the whole thing before contiuning:

The problem I have with the "crosswalk" theory is that in negotiation it is generally fatal to suggest a concession you would be willing to make before it is necessary. When Muslims are willing to admit the inherent violence of their religion, I would be willing to concede that not all Muslims are actually violent. But to lead with the latter proposition is to lower the standard without gaining anything in return. I ultimately agree with the "Islamists" that theirs is the proper interpretation of Islam, which is why I reject Islam -- or one of the reasons, anyway.

I respect Pastorius' compassion in seeking a peaceful engagement which allows Muslims to retain their dignity, but ultimately I don't think Islam can or should be reformed. It must be discredited. The Christian approach to all false religions has historically been to point to a better way. Being sinners we have often done this badly and there is much to be ashamed of in our own history (I am thinking especially of our treatment of Jews) but it remains the ideal. If we do succeed in defeating Islam, the remaining Muslims will certainly find a way to come to terms with the defeat as people inevitably do. But helping them do that without turning to the grace of Christ is ultimately more harmful to them in the long run.

Having said all this, I do frequently use the word "Islamist" in order to avoid the distracting explanations that simply saying "Islam" would entail. Count me as a weasel, I suppose.