More on Infanticide

For those of you who might have thought my characterization of Dutch euthanasists as "tyrants" was a bit over the top, here is a Tech Central Station column that makes the same connection:

This then, is the common thread that binds Singerian ethics, Dutch medicine, and tyranny of all stripes. The weak exist only at the discretion of the strong. Should the weak become troublesome, then they're fair game, be they defective babies, Bosnian Muslims, or non-Arab Sudanese. We in the West may try to cloak our true motives in the language of science and reason, but it's all of the same cloth. Neonatal euthanasia isn't so much a step down the slippery slope to tyranny as it is a wholesale embrace of it.

(Via Kathryn Lopez at the Corner)

Peeve Farm on SouthPark Republicans

Brian Tiemann of Peeve Farm (Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets) has an interesting take on the non-socially conservative Republicans: they are social conservatives!

What do you call a show that isn't afraid to stand up in favor of the word "morality" and restore the fading negativity of the word "whore", as though trying to reverse the lunge into licentiousness led by the madam of Springfield's beloved Burlesque House? That takes a stand against stem-cell research by showing Christopher Reeve sucking out fetuses' spinal fluid in order to regain his feet (as Frank J puts it, "The embryonic stem cell lobby group Others Must Die So We May Walk")? That argues in favor of tightened immigration restrictions to keep us from having to squeal, "They took our jeaarrbs!"? That spends a whole half-hour episode making fun of the Mormon religion, and then—in the last thirty seconds—spins on its heels and makes the viewer feel like an absolute ass for having laughed along with it with a single accusatory barb?

I call it conservative. All the profanity and lewdness and sex and so on notwithstanding. And I think that's because they're simply framing those views in a way that makes them acceptable to modern jaded ears. They know nobody on Comedy Central will take such opinions seriously if they hear them from Billy Graham; but they know they'll watch South Park. And as such, certain things have become acceptable even to social conservatives.

I am not quite sure I agree either with his conclusion or with his endorsement of this brand of conservatism. But it strikes me that the highlighted sentence above is similar to Flannery O'Connor's defense of the grotesque nature of her work.

Now about the Psalms

The piece Sullivan links complains that "NPS has also ordered bronze plaques with verses from Psalms placed at canyon overlooks, truly emphasizing what a Judeo-Christian religious experience the view can be." This is at least misleading if not actually false. The fact is the plaques were placed there 30 years ago by the Evangelical Sisterhood of Mary, a German protestant service organization. The Arizona chapter of the ACLU protested in July, 2003 and the plaques were removed (according to a report from Christianity Today).

After a letter and email campaign, spearheaded by radio talk-show host Dennis Prager among others, the plaques have been restored. So this is not some new putsch of the Evanegelical Right to impose their views on the rest of the country. In the words of Donald W. Murphy, the Park Service's director, in his letter requesting the return of the plaques after they had been returned to the Sisterhood, this was a "return to the historical situation that had been in place".

Now, I have concerns about government involvement in creating intellectual standards especially those that impact science, religion and history. But it seems fairly innocuous to have a privately funded plaque giving glory to God in a fairly generic way, especially since one of our oldest national symbols does exactly that. The Liberty Bell in Philadelphia has the following quotation from Leviticus 25:10, "Proclaim LIBERTY throughout all the Land unto all the Inhabitants thereof."

And, for those who want equal time for other religions, they already have it. As the Christianity Today article remarks:

After all, the Grand Canyon is absolutely full of religious imagery. Buttes are named after Hindu and other religious gods and figures: Isis Temple, Wotans Throne, Zoroaster Temple, Krishna Temple, Holy Grail Peak. The oldest geological layer seen at the bottom of the canyon is called Vishnu Schist.

Canyons, Creationists and Chasms

Andrew Sullivan, usually an articulate spokesman for discourse and mutual understanding, seems to have a blind spot in applying these principles to conservative Christians. The latest example is this brief slur against a perfectly legitimate request for equal time from respectable scientists who hold a Creationist vies:

CREATIONISM WATCH: The Grand Canyon National Park bookstore is the latest victim.

Reading that sentence, anyone who knows a little about the craziness that infests some quarters of the Evangelical Compound may be forgiven for supposing that some Creationist group or other is trying to get evolutionary books banned from the Grand Canyon bookstore. That would be a legitimate complaint and would justify the use of the word "victim".

But, following the link, it seems that the Rabid Oppressors of Truth, Justice and the American Way (ROTJAW?) have much more modest demands:

More from the Faith-Based Front: Look for national parks' geology to be written more in the image of creationists over the next four years in the continuing effort to create "faith-based parks." An ongoing dispute at Grand Canyon National Park bookstores is that Grand Canyon, a Different View was ordered to stay on the bookshelves by top NPS brass. The book says that the Grand Canyon is 4,500 years old and was formed by Noah's flood. Conventional scientific wisdom has the canyon more around 6 million years old, still rather young compared to the age of the Earth. Despite protests from scientists and the Grand Canyon Park superintendent, the book has stayed on the shelves. The Bush administration said it would review the policy, but the review hasn't even been started since the February complaint. NPS has also ordered bronze plaques with verses from Psalms placed at canyon overlooks, truly emphasizing what a Judeo-Christian religious experience the view can be.

It seems that the real offense is that these faith-based fanatics just want their book to stay on the shelves of a publicly funded entity, on the same principle of equal time that is used for political discussion on public airwaves. Hardly an unreasonable request I would think. People who object to the banning of books aren't usually characterized as making victims of the rest of us. (I will have more to say about the Psalm plaques shortly.)

Suppose for the moment that the secular/evolutionary view is correct and this really is junk science. What exactly do they have to lose by allowing these folks to make fools of themselves in public? Isn't that what the marketplace of ideas is all about?

But I would actually like to challenge the assumption that this is junk science. I have not read the book itself, but I am familiar with the work of some of its contributing authors (Steve Austin, Ken Ham, Duane Gish) and most of those with whom I am not familiar have respectable credentials in the physical sciences. There are many approaches to the question of the age of the Grand Canyon (as you would expect from scientists who are drawing conclusions from the data rather than working toward an agenda) but one of the key arguments that it is of recent origin is that we have actually observed very rapid formation of its key geological features: stratification and erosion. The eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980 has provided direct observational evidence of both of these processes occuring within a matter of weeks (and in some instances, within a matter of minutes).

STRATIFICATION:

Up to 400 feet thickness of strata have formed since 1980 at Mount St. Helens. These deposits accumulated from primary air blast, landslide, waves on the lake, pyroclastic flows, mudflows, air fall, and stream water. Perhaps the most surprising accumulations are the pyroclastic flow deposits amassed from ground-hugging, fluidized, turbulent slurries of fine volcanic debris, which moved at high velocities off the flank of the volcano as the eruption plume of debris over the volcano collapsed. These deposits include fine pumice ash laminae and beds from one millimeter thick to greater than one meter thick, each representing just a few seconds to several minutes of accumulation. A deposit accumulated in less than one day, on June 12, 1980, is 25 feet thick and contains many thin laminae and beds. Conventionally, sedimentary laminae and beds are assumed to represent longer seasonal variations, or annual changes, as the layers accumulated very slowly. Mount St. Helens teaches us that the stratified layers commonly characterizing geological formations can form very rapidly by flow processes. Such features have been formed quickly underwater in laboratory sedimentation tanks, and it should not surprise us to see that they have formed in a natural catastrophe.

EROSION:

Erosion during volcanic eruptions at Mount St. Helens was accomplished by scour from steam blast, landslide, water waves, hot pumice ash flows (pyroclastic flows), and mudflows. Since the eruptions, the erosion process has been dominated by sheet flooding and channelized flow of water, with occasional mudflows. About 23 square miles of the North Fork of the Toutle River Valley was obstructed by two-thirds cubic mile of landslide and pyroclastic debris, which has been rapidly eroded since 1980. Jetting steam from buried water and ice under hot pumice reamed steam explosion pits with associated mass-wasting processes at the margins of pits, producing rills and gullies over 125 feet deep. Photographic documentation assembled by ICR scientists demonstrates that very pronounced rills and gullies had formed at the margins of seam explosion pits before May 23 - less than five days after the pumice was deposited. The rills and gullies resemble badlands topography, which geologists have usually assumed required many hundreds or even thousands of years to form.

Mudflows, from Mount St. Helens, were responsible for the most significant erosion. A mudflow on March 19, 1982, eroded a canyon system up to 140 feet deep in the headwaters of the North Fork of the Toutle River Valley, establishing the new dendritic pattern of drainage. As ICR scientists surveyed this new terrain, they began to contemplate the processes which may have formed the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River. The little "Grand Canyon of the Toutle River" is a one-fortieth scale model of the real Grand Canyon. The small creeks which flow through the headwaters of the Toutle River today might seem, by present appearances, to have carved these canyons very slowly over a long time period, except for the fact that the erosion was observed to have occurred rapidly! Geologists should learn that, since the long-time scale they have been trained to assign to landform development would lead to obvious error on Mount St. Helens, it also may be useless or misleading elsewhere.

Now I want to emphasize that nothing in this discussion is based on faith or a literal reading of the Bible. It is true that the scientists involved are Christians and would like to defend the biblical view of the earth's history. But their conclusions are based on direct observation and evaluation of evidence. It may be that their conclusions are inaccurate, but dismissing them a priori as irrelevent is hardly an act of intellectual honesty.

UPDATE: For those who would like a closer look at the book in question, it is available from both ICR and Amazon. The Amazon price is better but by ordering form ICR you would be helping a worthy cause.

Shia Street-Blogging

Here is the kind of thing I like to hear about (from the Financial Times):

A black-turbaned Shia cleric drove through the streets of the southern Baghdad district of al-Amel on Saturday, carrying a loudspeaker and mocking the insurgents who scrawled anti-election slogans on the neighbourhood's walls.

"Let those who wrote this show their faces, if they are men," residents quoted him as saying, as two dozen armed supporters followed his motorcade on foot, painting over graffiti that threatened to "cut off the heads" of voters.

"Come and vote," the cleric said to passersby. "We will protect you."

It was a rare display of militancy by one of the pro-establishment Shia clerics, who have so far strongly discouraged any action by their followers against predominantly Sunni insurgents, lest it trigger a civil war.

Belmont Club has an analysis from a military perspective which is, as usual, worth reading.

I wanted to comment that this is an easily missed example of the extent to which freedom has already arrived in Iraq. Two years ago, a Shiite driving down the street blaring insults at Sunnis would have had his tongue cut out. Now he is doing on the streets of Iraq what bloggers like Salam Pax had to do in secret before the war.

For all the problems that Operation Iraqi freedom may have produced, one undeniable benefit has been the beginnings of freedom of speech which is the foundation of a free society. This freedom is fragile and it may well be lost in the future course of Iraqi politics. Who can tell? But we ought to recognize that this nameless cleric is exemplifying more than mere courage by publicly challenging the totalitarian/terrorist insurgency. He is also displaying for all the world, if they will only see it, that human beings, if given an opportunity, may choose freedom over short-term security.

One final note: Despite the fact that this is an Islamic cleric, Christians ought to be celebrating this example of freedom of speech. In a culture where discourse is not conditioned at gun-point, I fail to see how Christianity can not thrive. (To be sure, it can thrive under oppressive conditions as well, but that takes a bit more courage and commitment.) If we are allowed a public hearing, I am convinced that we will eventually win every argument. I am not sure if that is what my friend over at CUANAS is getting at with this post, but I can agree with his celebration of freedom because I am confident that we will win in such an environment.

Feast of St. Nicholas

I have no idea how St. Nick got associated with Christmas, other than the fact that they both occur in the same month. This holiday is special to me simply because 12 years ago today I asked my wife to marry me. I would like to say that my only regret is that I didn't meet her sooner, but she probably wouldn't have married me if she had known me when I was younger. So, all in all, I am pretty happy with the way things turned out.

OK, back to more impersonal blogging later.

Freeper Escapes from Iran

An Iranian student correspondent to the Free Republic message board has escaped from Iran and the Freepers are trying to get him asylum:

We first met in the summer of 2003 when I was reporting on the protests inside of Iran (Iranian Alert Daily Threads). This young man kept us on FR informed by sending me “on the spot reports” at risk to his life about these protests, which I posted for him.

After the protests died down, he would send messages trying to educate Americans and those in the west about what the average Iranian thinks of America and what kind of support the people of Iran need to see a regime change take place in his country.

Well, this friend of ours was forced to go “underground” a month ago. The Iranian regime discovered that he had passed information to our government. As a result, for the past month the regime has been hunting him. He had to keep on the move every few hours. He was nearly captured several times. He struggled with depression, health and fear. It was a horrifying situation. I tried to encourage him to the best of my ability.

After many weeks he was finally able to get help and sneak out of the country.

But now he could use some help from the Freeper community.

We need to ensure that when he finally gets to a US embassy that they will help him, not merely refer him the UN refugee program.

We are asking any Freepers that have contacts in the administration or the state department to please contact us. We are seeking a way to help him get asylum.

He risked his life for us; the least we can do is help him.

For those of you not familiar with Free Republic, a Freeper is kind of like a blogger on steroids. The messages fly so quickly over there that it can be difficult to keep up with the velocity.

I doubt any of my readers will have connections to the US embassy, but if any of you care to pass this along on your own blogs it might help.
(Via Regnum Crucis)

Bill Cosby for NAACP Pres?

Well, probably not, but Clarence Page is nominating him anyway. I think its a great idea. If this ever turns into a serious proposal, I would be willing to do just about anything (short of actually joining the NAACP) to help bring it about. As I said last month he has been a role-model long before I even knew that "race" meant anything other than a sporting event. (And I was never very good at that kind of race either.)

Lump of Coal Campaign

Michelle Malkin is fed up with cities who want to change their Christmas parades to "Holiday" parades:

The persecution never ends. Denver has launched war against a church group that wanted to march in the city's Christmas parade "Parade of Lights." (I hate, hate, hate that p.c. euphemism.)

From the Denver Post: Parade Organizers Say Christmas Carols May Be Offensive To Others

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper recently announced that next year the phrase "Merry Christmas" will be removed from the city building and replaced with "Happy Holidays."
And now a church group who wants to march in the Parade of Lights and sing Christmas carols will not be allowed to participate in the parade. Organizers say the parade is about the holidays, not Christmas, but leaders of the Faith Bible Chapel say that's ridiculous.
"We can't pretend that Christ didn't exist and Christmas wasn't about his birthday, so we felt we could sing it and apparently that is not in social vogue anymore," said Pastor Gary Beasley, with the Faith Bible Chapel.
"This event is not one that has ever intended to have a religious message or a political message," said Susan Rogers, with the Downtown Denver Partnership.
She said no overtly religious symbols is allowed in the parade and that means participants can't carry "Merry Christmas" signs and can't sing traditional Christmas hymns.

I am hereby launching the Lump of Coal campaign. Later today, I will box up a lump of charcoal, mark the package "MERRY CHRISTMAS!" and send it to the Denver Mayor in protest of his idiotic policy. Please join me in doing the same (and if you take a photo of your creatively designed package, I will link/post).

Send to:

Mayor John W. Hickenlooper
Denver City and County Building
1437 Bannock Street, Suite 350
Denver, CO 80202

I have actually been thinking about the same issue lately and have come up with the first ever, Fully Pro-Choice Holiday Message:

Have a Merry Christmas or Fuck Off ... Your Choice.

Think it will catch on?

Big Media Unfair to Churches

This story seems like it should be getting more attention by the religious right than it apparently has:

The CBS and NBC television networks are refusing to run a 30-second television ad from the United Church of Christ because its all-inclusive welcome has been deemed "too controversial."

The ad, part of the denomination's new, broad identity campaign set to begin airing nationwide on Dec. 1, states that -- like Jesus -- the United Church of Christ seeks to welcome all people, regardless of ability, age, race, economic circumstance or sexual orientation.

According to a written explanation from CBS, the United Church of Christ is being denied network access because its ad implies acceptance of gay and lesbian couples -- among other minority constituencies -- and is, therefore, too "controversial."

"Because this commercial touches on the exclusion of gay couples and other minority groups by other individuals and organizations," reads an explanation from CBS, "and the fact the Executive Branch has recently proposed a Constitutional Amendment to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman, this spot is unacceptable for broadcast on the [CBS and UPN] networks."

Josh Marshall has been following the story (here, here, here and here for instance) and Andrew Sullivan has mentioned it but I haven't been able to find this story on any of the conservative blogs that I read regularly.

It seems to me that if we are going to criticize the media for being unfair to Christians, that should include liberal Christians as well. I don't agree with the United Church of Christ on the issue of homosexuality, and the equation of moral disapproval with racial bigotry is dishonest, but they ought to be able to advertise on public airwaves just like the condom companies and Frederick's of Hollywood. People who don't want to watch the ads can change the channel. (Or, better yet, sell the fricking TV!) And the ad itself does not seem particularly offensive. Surely this is another example of the media's arrogance and blindness, which we have not been shy at pointing out when it affects us personally. Of course, this isn't a First Amendment issue: Viacom has every right, as a private company, to refuse to run anything it wants. But so do we, as consumers, have a right to protest such decisions.

And, if the argument from principle is not sufficient, consider this: it may well be in our best interest to protest. Is it possible that the ad was refused in order to make the religious right appear the villain? Josh Marshall points out the following rationale:

The CBS memo to the UCC includes three basic points.

1. The alleged policy of not running ads which address issue of public debate or controversy.

2. An alleged rule against ads from religious organizations which can be said in any way to proselytize.

3. And the fact that President Bush has recently called for a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

Reason #2 seems like the best argument (though it's pretty weak in itself). But the CBS memo specifically says that this isn't the reason they're rejecting it. Reason one, they say, was an entirely sufficient reason for rejecting the ad.

But having enunciated this bar against ads which discuss or take a position on any "current controversial issue of public importance" they then gratuitously add this line about President Bush's call for a constitutional ban on gay marriage.

[...]

I would think that the general rule, if evenly enforced, would be sufficient. I cannot think of any good reason why President Bush's (who's now apparently been renamed 'Executive Branch') stated position should have any bearing at all on whether the ad should run.

Can you?

Actually, yes, I can. By including that sentence, CBS is suggesting that it is afraid that it may suffer at the hands of the Bush administration if they air an ad the administration finds offensive. They are invoking, without actually mentioning, the spectre of Right-wing Thought Police. This has the benefit of being perfectly deniable, since no actual charges against Bush have been made, but people will still gain the impression that Things Are Getting Scary.

This is actually a rather common tactic in political rhetoric and is frequently used to sow resentment. Throughout history it has been a cause of anti-semitism when the discontent was aimed at a successful Jewish class, and Evangelicals are becoming as safe a whipping boy as the Jews in certain circles.

I would much rather that we were on record as objecting on principle to the sort of soft censorship that CBS is perpetrating against our fellow Christians. But, for whatever reason, we ought to speak up.

A Little Early for Holy Innocents

Anyone familiar with the Liturgical Calendar knows that the Feast of Holy Innocents occurs three days after Christmas on December 28. On this day the recognizes the children killed by the tyrant, Herod, in his attempt to destroy Jesus. For over a decade my church, St. Luke's, has observed this day with a prayer service for the victims of abortion and other forms of oppression. (I blogged about the prayer I wrote for our service here.)

It looks like the tyrants are starting the reenactment a little early this year:

Four times in recent months, Dutch doctors have pumped lethal doses of drugs into newborns they believe are terminally ill, setting off a new phase in a growing European debate over when, if ever, it's acceptable to hasten death for the critically ill.

Few details of the four newborns' deaths have been made public. Official investigations have found that the doctors made appropriate and professional decisions under an experimental policy allowing child euthanasia that's known as the Groningen University Hospital protocol.

But the children's deaths, and the possibility that the protocol will become standard practice throughout the Netherlands, have sparked heated discussion about whether the idea of assisting adults who seek to die should ever be applied to children and others who are incapable of making, or understanding, such a request.

[...]

Under the Groningen protocol, if doctors at the hospital think a child is suffering unbearably from a terminal condition, they have the authority to end the child's life. The protocol is likely to be used primarily for newborns, but it covers any child up to age 12.

Last week's issue of World Magazine contained an interview with Peter Singer, the Princeton professor who is considered the most influential philosopher of the culture of death in America. But even he draws the line at killing children over the age of two.

Mark Roberts seems to have broken this story on the blogosphere and Hugh Hewitt was wondering yesterday why more bloggers haven't picked it up. It looks like more have gotten on board today. Possibly the reason for the lack of outrage is that we have come to expect this sort of degradation and it no longer shocks us. Frankly, I am constantly amazed that such things haven't happened much sooner -- evidence, no doubt, of God's restraining hand in human affairs.

Looking Forward to Tomorrow

The return of Chris Muir's Day By Day.

A Psalm 137 Kind of Day

... over at CUANAS.

By The Rivers Of Babylon

First, an excellent essay by Mark Steyn (aren't they all?) on the morality of the Iraq war. Pastorius Screaming Memes comments:

Why do we never hear apologies from all those who said going into Afghanistan and Iraq that the wars would not work, and that hundreds of thousands, if not millions, would be killed?

Answer: because people who say such things are being treated as if they are children, and therefore are not held to be accountable for their actions.

It is not healthy for our civilization to allow such people to continue on in their irresponsibility. They are sustained by our civilization, they need to start participating in it. They need to recognize that their freedom was established and preserved through war. It's ok to be a pacifist, or to be against the Iraq War while not being entirely a pacifist. However, it is not ok to lie and exaggerate to make one's case, and then not apologize even when that case is shown not only to be groundless, but, through hard evidence, to have been immoral as well.

For There Our Captors Asked Us For Songs

Next an odd story about Israeli soldiers forcing a violinist to play. I am not sure I understand this either but I think there is a strong aversion among civilized people to needless cruelty. There is a sense that violence is an unavoidable aspect of war, even when innocents are the victims, but somehow pointlessly tormenting someone then letting him go seems jarring. I'm not saying this is rational, but I think I can relate even if I don't agree.

On the other hand, there is the obvious explanation that the Guardian may have just wanted to show Israel in as bad a light as possible.

He Who Seizes Your Infants And Dashes Them Against The Rocks

And finally this horrifying story:

Four minutes later, Israeli troops opened fire on the girl with machine guns and rifles, the radio transmissions indicated. The captain walked to the spot where the girl "was lying down" and fired two bullets from his M-16 assault rifle into her head, according to an indictment against the officer. He started to walk away, but pivoted, set his rifle on automatic and emptied his magazine into the girl's prone body, the indictment alleged.

Pastorius Screaming Memes rightly comments that this behavior would not necessarily even be condemned, let alone prosecuted, if it were a Palestinian who had killed a little Jewish girl.

However, Shmuel Shenfeld and his client "Capt. R", are, apparently, both willing to be traitorous to that Israeli conscience. They are both willing to lie, and thus damage the entire citizenry of Israel in the eyes of the world, in order to get Capt. R's ass off the hook.

Unless it shown beyond a doubt that some extenuating circumstance prompted Capt. R to such horrific behavior, I hope he is convicted, and that he spends the rest of his life in jail. Oh, and if only attorneys like Shmuel Shenfeld could be held accountable for the damage they do to society with their disgusting lies.

I agree, of course. But still, what a horror.

Is Pat Sajak One of Us?

I think I have made it pretty clear that I do not follow television so it is no surprise that I know little or nothing about the various TV personalities and celebrities. But this article in Human Events by Pat Sajak (via Andrew Sullivan) got me wondering about Sajak's background:

Somewhere in the world, a filmmaker creates a short documentary that chronicles what he perceives as the excesses of anti-abortion activists. An anti-abortion zealot reacts to the film by killing the filmmaker in broad daylight and stabbing anti-abortion tracts onto his body. How does the Hollywood community react to this atrocity? Would there be angry protests? Candlelight vigils? Outraged letters and columns and articles? Awards named in honor of their fallen comrade? Demands for justice? Calls for protection of artistic freedom? It’s a pretty safe bet that there would be all of the above and much more. And all of the anger would be absolutely justified.

So I’m trying to understand the nearly universal lack of outrage coming from Hollywood over the brutal murder of Dutch director, Theo van Gogh, who was shot on the morning of November 2, while bicycling through the streets of Amsterdam. The killer then stabbed his chest with one knife and slit his throat with another.

Now there is nothing particularly earth-shaking about this analysis, but it is just not the sort of example the typical Entertainment Industry insider would use. When the left criticizes itself, it is usually in terms of having "our" hearts in the right place but not doing enough. You don't usually see this sort of Right or Wrong dichotomy and you certainly don't see even indirect criticism of pro-abortionists.

Then there is this:

Maybe they think it would be intolerant of them to criticize the murder, because it would put them on the side of someone who criticized a segment of the Arab world. And, after all, we are often reminded that we need to be more tolerant of others, especially if they’re not Christians or Jews.

OK, the cat is definitely out of the bag at this point. This is a thoroughly right-of-center sentiment. What is going on here? Have I been missing something all these years? The host of the number one syndicated television show is a conservative?

Checking the biography on Sajak's web site doesn't give many clues. No mention of church, Reagan or the NRA, just the typical rags to riches story that should but usually doesn't make famous people respect American freedom and opportunity. But wait! What is this? A whole slew of articles (including the current one) from a conservative point of view. And Wikipedia has the following interesting tidbit at the very end of its Sajak entry:

Sajak is an External Director of the right-wing publishing house, Regnery.

(Regnery, of course, is affiliated with Human Events.)

So, I guess I am the only clueless one around here. Not that this makes me any more inclined to watch more television. But I suppose I do find game shows to be among the its less offensive offerings, when circumstances force me to watch.

Happy 79th Birthday

William F. Buckley, Jr.

(Via the Corner)

Targeting Procreation

In an attempt to "think outside the box" in combating Gay Marriage, Allan Carlson of the Family Research Council is proposing the possibility of restricting marriage benefits to couples who actually have children:

Are there other political acts that would reconnect procreation and marriage? Perhaps, if we are prepared to think "outside the box." For example, we could turn one of our opponents' key arguments back on them. Perhaps we should restrict some of the legal and welfare benefits of civil marriage solely to those married during their time of natural, procreative potential: for women, below the age of 45 or so (for men, in the Age of Viagra, the line would admittedly be harder to draw). The idea is not without recent political precedence. Back in 1969, Representative Wilbur Mills--the then-chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee--wanted to respond to complaints by unmarried adults that existing tax law unfairly favored the married. It was true that the existing practice of "income splitting" by married couples on their joint tax returns, in the context of high marginal tax rates, did give a strong tax benefit to marriage. Importantly, though, Mills stated that he wanted to preserve this "marriage bonus" for the young and fertile, while still helping those whom he labeled (in now-archaic language) as "spinsters." Accordingly, he proposed maintaining the benefits of income splitting only for married persons under the age of 35. (This approach, I note in passing, went nowhere. The Nixon administration and Congress chose instead to reduce the benefits of income splitting for all married persons; and they so unwittingly created the "marriage penalty" with which we still grapple today.)

Another, and perhaps more realistic way to rebind marriage and procreation would be, counter-intuitively, to take some of the benefits currently attached to marriage and reroute them instead through children. Allow me one practical example here. Whatever the future, it is likely that most households with two or more children will continue to be married-couple, natural-parent homes. These are still, and always will be, the places most open to what we once called "a full quiver." We could encourage them by tying retirement benefits to family size: that is, the more children that a couple brought into the world, the higher their later monthly Social Security benefit. Or, we could create a new tax credit against payroll taxes:rebating, say, 20 percent of the current 15.3 percent tax facing parents for each child born. Again, these ideas would indirectly favor child-rich homes; and most of these, in the American context, would predictably contain a married couple.

Andrew Sullivan, somewhat mystifyingly but perhaps ironically, applauds this as an honest admission that procreation and marriage have been inescapably severed:

Can we still defend the purpose of marriage as procreation? No, not in the current constitutional climate. It is now clear that the "right of privacy," conceived by the Supreme Court nearly four decades ago, is the enemy of both marriage and procreation separately, and is especially hostile when they are united. It is also clear that we lost the key battles in defense of this union decades ago, long before anyone even imagined same-sex marriage. And we lost these battles over questions that--to be honest--relatively few of us are really prepared to reopen. How many are ready to argue for the recriminalization of contraception? How many want to argue for a strict legal and cultural imposition of the word illegitimate on certain little children?

I acknowledge that this admission is somewhat more astute than I had expected of the FRC, but it seems to highlight exactly why conservatives ought to drop the whole issue. As I argued in July 2003 on the Ranter's Guild:

Having said all that, I think conservatives have already lost the argument over homosexual marriage. When we supported no-fault divorce in the 70s, we lost all credibility for political arguments based on protecting the sanctity of marriage. The only ground left would be to argue that the fortunes of a nation depend on obedience to God, which currently will not get a consensus even among religious conservatives.

Carlson's autocratic thinking outside the box has even less chance of actually occurring, but amply demonstrates the tortured lengths some will go to impose their vision on society. If there is to be any progress on this issue, it must come from within society, by means of changed hearts and minds, not be forced upon it in such heavy-handed proposals. Remember that, however we may seem to be in control at the moment, there may yet come a Pharaoh who knows not Joseph. And he who lives by the State can just as easily perish by it.

Virgin Grilled Cheese?

Slate reports that a grilled cheese sandwich with the image of the BVM has recently been auctioned on eBay for $28,000.

Looking at the sandwich, I had no idea the Virgin looked so much like Carole Lombard!
(Via the Volokh Conspiracy)

Recovered Treasures of Afghanistan

More than 22,000 treasures from the Kabul Museum in Afghanistan, long thought to have been lost in the war against the Soviet Union and the subsequent cultural purge by the Taliban, have been located in bank vaults and other safe places where they were hidden by museum officials.

The priceless Bactrian gold collection, precious ivories, bronze statues and other artifacts of 5,000 years of history on the Orient's Silk Road — virtually all of the museum's most precious items — were preserved despite the devastation engulfing the country, archaeologists said last week.

The discovery of the Bactrian gold was announced this summer, but a just-completed inventory revealed that virtually all of the museum's most precious items are intact, said Oxford University archaeologist Fredrik T. Hiebert.

In the midst of the resistance against the Soviets, a team of curators in the early 1980s boxed up the most valuable pieces in the museum's collection, stashing them in various vaults around Kabul, the Afghan capital. The curators — most of whose names are unknown — used small safes, tin boxes, steel containers and anything else they could find at hand.

They then went "dead quiet," said British archaeologist Carla Grissman, keeping their knowledge to themselves even as rumors floated widely about the destruction and looting of the museum's contents.

They kept their secrets for a quarter of a century.

"These are the real heroes of this story," said Hiebert, leader of the team that has been inventorying the newly rediscovered artifacts.

(Via WizBang)

Then We Were Like, Whoa!

Dan Rather is stepping down from CBS Evening News!

Dan Rather announced Tuesday that he will step down as anchor and managing editor of the CBS Evening News in March, 24 years after his first broadcast in that position.

Rather will continue to work full-time at CBS News as a correspondent for both editions of 60 Minutes, as well as on other assignments for the news division.

CBS made no mention of a potential successor.

Rather, 73, has come under fire for his 60 Minutes report on President Bush's service in the National Guard during the Vietnam War. The report relied on documents that cast Mr. Bush's service in a negative light. Critics charged that the documents were forgeries, and CBS News was unable to vouch for their authenticity. An independent commission is now investigating the matter.

At this point, I don't really expect to see CBS or Rather admit the full extent of their culpability. And there were rumors that Rather was planning on stepping down even before Memogate. But the fact that these "criticisms" are cited, however circumspectly, in connection with Rather's retirement must be counted a small victory for the blogosphere.

One further note, in the context of this remark:

Rather's announcement comes eight days before his NBC rival, Tom Brokaw, steps down as Nightly News anchor and is replaced by Brian Williams.

Dare one hope that, with the departure of the old guard, a new generation of media personalities will see which way the wind is blowing and return to the roots of honest journalism?

Group-Think and Hayekian Criticism

Two cautions occur to me with regard to the post below:

First, the well-known phenomenon of group-think, or the tendency of decisions arising out of consensus to ignore crucial objections, often disastrously. The text book example of this is the Bay of Pigs invasion, in which Kennedy's advisors apparently lacked any dissenting voice that led to the needless slaughter of hundreds of Cuban expatriates. The loss of Colin Powell's alternative perspective is seen by many as a dangerous development in an administration which already has a reputation for disregarding dissent. Gregory Djerejian tends to this view (as well as preferring Powell to Rice on a more absolute level) but is willing to see possible silver linings in the switch:

But hey, she had to deal with Beltway behemoths Don "so-called Occupied Territories" Rumsfeld and Powell sparring endlessly! My point? Never an easy job; it was particularly hard this go around. Give her at least a little bit of a pass given the open trench warfare between State and Defense these past three and a half years--worse than any I've seen in recent memory.

On the positive side of the ledger? She shined against Clarke during her 9/11 Commission congressional testimony. She can be a strong advocate, she's intensely disciplined, she's pretty damn smart (though she's not a visionary foreign policy thinker--but name me a SecState since Kissinger who was...)

[...]

Condi is going to spearhead a major push on the Arab-Israeli peace process. She may, just perhaps, prove more effective in this than Powell as people will know she has Bush's ear and full confidence. The Israelis won't risk back-ending her by running to the Pentagon or NSC (like they reportedly often did with Powell).

Not, to be sure, a ringing endorsement, but significant praise from a semi-adversary. It remains to be seen whether these possible benefits will outweigh the tendency to group-think, but I am betting they will.

A related but more subtle objection is one that might be raised by followers of F. A. Hayek, to the effect that successful policies occur not as the result of all-explaining theories but through trial and error over time. This caution would propose that, since the Bush administration seems to be embarked upon a program of providing a unified front in the form a common theory of foreign policy, there is the danger that facts will be ignored or downplayed in order to fit the theory. This is a powerful objection, and one to which I am very sympathetic, but I would suggest that the Bush Doctrine may in fact be an expression of the very dynamic that Hayek promotes. That is, we have had decades of experience with a multiplicity of approaches to the problem of terrorism and observation teaches that negotiation does not work while forceful confrontation does. This is not a theoretical but a battle-tested principle and thus avoids the Hayekian anti-constructivist objection.

It remains to be seen how the nation building component of Bush's foreign policy (expressed in the sentiment that the best antidote to terrorism is freedom) will measure up to this test, but there is substantial evidence that democracies do, in fact, tend to limit the aggressiveness of states. Whether such states can be created out of the whole cloth of Middle-Eastern autocracies is the question of the hour, but, since it has never been tried, there can't by definition be an empirical answer to such a question.

(I had hoped someone at Taking Hayek Seriously would have touched on this point, but alas I was disappointed. Well, not disappointed exactly, since I always enjoy browsing around the place, but I couldn't find anything relevant to this post.)