There's a certain type of person, unfortunately all too common, who's like a mechanical device. Whenever input A is received, output B is spit out. It doesn't matter what the circumstances are, A must always result in B. As with automatons, there can be no exceptions, no deviations, only a rigid, unthinking, invariable stimulus/response. These people would be no more willing to actually think about what they do than they would be willing to donate their monthly paycheck to a local street gang. They possess consciousness, but prefer not to use it, opting instead to act like mental zombies. Such are the corporate overlords who run Super America:

Mr. Beverly is a hero, but he's treated as though he were caught sleeping on the job. It makes sense to have a policy of non-resistance to robbers, but that's not what was happening here. A co-worker was being beaten. What do the corporate sages at Super America, who have probably never risked anything to help anyone in their lives, suggest that Mr. Beverly should have done? Dialogue with the mugger? Call 911 and let the woman be beaten for five long minutes until the police responded? Continue to mop the floor and pretend nothing was happening?

It doesn't matter to the lobotomized suits who inhabit the Super America penthouse suite that Mr. Beverly did the only thing that any decent human being in his position could do. All they know is that he breached company policy and so must be made an example for any other would-be decent human beings in their employ. This is how we reward those, their dismissal of Mr. Beverly warns, who have the insolence to care about the well-being of other people enough to risk harm to themselves to help them.

I hope there are some businessmen in the twin cities region who possess brains as well as spine and who will see in Mr. Beverly the kind of humanity and courage that they would like to have working for them. He's obviously over-qualified for Super America.

HT: Hot Air

RLC

About a week ago we did a post on an opportunity for readers to express their displeasure with Congress' plans to bail out lenders and borrowers who can no longer make payments on their mortgages by signing a petition.

One reader who signed the petition offers his reasons on our Feedback page. I'm sure he speaks for millions of Americans, and his letter will help those who might not quite understand what the fuss is about to see the issue more clearly.

To read it click on the Feedback button to the left.

RLC

The Evangelical Manifesto we wrote about earlier this week has been released, and although I haven't had time to examine it thoroughly it seems on first reading to be a very impressive document. The concerns I expressed in the earlier post have been largely allayed.

The Manifesto's twenty pages are much too rich to summarize in a single post, but I certainly urge everyone to study it. Christians should familiarize themselves with it because it's a lodestone for people of faith looking to navigate the currents of modern culture, and non-Christians should study it because it's a Rosetta stone for those who seek to go beyond media stereotypes of Christianity and to decipher and understand for themselves who Christians are and what they really believe.

The Manifesto can be read here. A list of signatories can be found here.

RLC

There's a fascinating discussion going on at Uncommon Descent over the question of whether there are self-evident moral truths. The springboard for the conversation is a passage from Dostoyevsky's Brothers Karamazov in which Dostoyevsky has Ivan tell this story - which is believed to be based on actual events - in order to illustrate the utter depravity of human beings (Caution: This story describes acts of sickening violence):

The question is whether what the soldiers did was self-evidently and absolutely wrong. The answer is, if there is a God then yes; if there isn't then, no, it's not wrong at all. If there is no transcendent moral source then there are no absolute moral wrongs nor, indeed, is there such a thing as moral right and wrong. There are only things people do which we like or don't like.

My contribution to the debate is comment #90.

RLC

Forget about Rosie's gaffes in this clip (it's 3/5, not 3/4; the Tuskegee program was reprehensible, but the government did not give the men syphillis). Set aside the implied slur against black preachers that Rosie delivers when she says that Wright is just doing what black preachers do, i.e. lie. Forget that when Rosie says that Wright made sense to her that was all anyone teetering on the fence about Wright might need to justify abandoning any hope of ever sympathizing with the guy.

Ignore all that and ask yourself: Aren't you getting a little weary of people insisting that if we're going to scrutinize Jeremiah Wright then we ought to also scrutinize John Hagee, who endorsed John McCain, and indeed every other preacher in the U.S.?

John McCain did not sit under John Hagee for twenty years, Hagee did not baptize his children or wed McCain and his wife. McCain has not, so far as I know, donated thousands of dollars to Hagee's church nor does he consider Hagee a close personal friend and spiritual mentor. In other words, there is no relevant comparison between McCain's relationship with Hagee and Obama's relationship with Wright. There's even less reason to insist that if Jeremiah Wright is going to be deconstructed then so too should Pat Robertson and others. These preachers are not ideological influences on John McCain in the way that Wright has been on Obama.

So why do people like the women in this video clip keep insisting that there's some sort of equivalence between Hagee and Wright and that fairness demands that we treat both McCain's relationship to Hagee and Obama's relationship to Wright the same?

HT: Hot Air

RLC

I went for a bit of a field trip yesterday to a park near my home and had one of these gorgeous creatures land in a branch just a few feet from me. The picture is very good but even it doesn't give a full sense of the loveliness of this little bird:

The bird is a hooded warbler and is found in mature woodlands throughout much of the eastern U.S.

Since I'm posting bird pics, here are three other beauties I was lucky enough to see on my hike. I should note that I didn't take any of these photos:

This is one is an indigo bunting. It's very common on telephone wires near open fields in the eastern U.S., but it's so small and just looks dark when seen in poor light that most people never notice them, which is a pity because if they're seen in good light they're breathtakingly pretty.

This striking blackbird is called a bobolink. It breeds in extensive open areas like old hay fields, etc. Since extensive open areas are becoming increasingly scarce this fellow is, unfortunsately, not particularly common.

This last gorgeous little jewel is a denizen of woodlands and parks and can be found pretty easily if you learn it's song. It's called a scarlet tanager.

When a few hours of walking produces so much beauty it gives one an incentive to get out more often. Maybe tomorrow I'll post a few other photos of some of the beautiful birdlife that can be seen in spring if one just looks around a little.

RLC

David Berlinski responds to a scathing review of Expelled by National Review's John Derbyshire. Derbyshire is an intelligent, well-educated man who often writes sagely except when he turns his pen to the topic of intelligent design and related matters. Then he seems to come all unraveled and says and does the silliest things, like reviewing a movie he hasn't seen.

In any event, despite his acumen, he's no match for Berlinski, and he should have known better than to insult Berlinski in his review, tacitly referring to him as an eccentric non-Christian crank. Berlinski's riposte is a treat to read.

If you read both essays, do Derbyshire's first. If you have time for only one, read Berlinski's.

RLC

David Horowitz brings us up to date on the parlous condition freedom of speech finds itself in on American university campuses. According to Horowitz the major threat comes from an alliance of leftists and Muslim student groups. Reading his report one can't help but think that if the holocaust ever recurs in the West, it'll start in our institutions of higher learning.

RLC

Christopher Hitchens wonders whether Michelle Obama is behind her husband's unfortunate association with Jeremiah Wright. This is an interesting question in itself, but even more interesting was something Hitchens reminds us of in his essay that I had completely forgotten:

I had forgotten that Farrakhan had been implicated in the murder of Malcolm X, though nothing was ever proven. What was never in doubt, however, was that Farrakhan approved of the killing of the man who was a hero to so many African Americans. In fact, Malcolm's daughter, Qubilah Shabazz, was arrested back in the 90's for trying to hire a hit man to assassinate Farrakhan to avenge her father's murder.

So why do blacks let Jeremiah Wright get away with being cozy with Farrakhan? Why do blacks let the Obamas get away with being cozy with Wright? It's as deep a mystery, perhaps, as why African Americans let the Democrat party get away with keeping them on the political plantation while doing almost nothing to assuage their grievances.

RLC

David Berlinski is a charming example of that rare species among our intellectual flora and fauna - a genuine agnostic. Despite his own personal theological uncertainties he has written a book which offers a defense of modern religious belief. The work is titled The Devil's Delusion, an obvious play on Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion. Here's what the Product Description at Amazon says about the book:

I hope to have more to say about The Devil's Delusion once I get it read.

HT: Mindful Hack

RLC

Some 80 conservative Christian luminaries have composed a manifesto which, according to this article, says that these leaders:

I hope the manifesto is more specific than is this news article as to how often Evangelicals have failed to be loving in their proclamation of the truth and how, exactly, they have condoned their own sins. It's easy to criticize using nebulous allegations which reflect conventional prejudices, especially when one is reasonably assured that relatively few people will take the trouble to ask how prevalent and serious the problem really is.

I also hope the manifesto explains how a pastor can preach the gospel without preaching on the themes of justice and compassion and how, unless he speaks in terms so circumspect and vague as to be meaningless, he can preach on doing justice and compassion in this world without also urging people to be politically engaged. How political is "too political"?

Were not the early abolitionists like William Wilberforce, who is much admired by Os Guinness, politically engaged? Were not the churches havens for the American civil rights movement and, for better or worse, the anti-war movement of the sixties? How can we fight against hunger and oppression around the world without being politically involved? How can we effectively oppose the wanton killing of millions of unborn children without trying to elect pro-life politicians? How can we insist on decency and academic quality in our schools without being willing to elect like-minded school board members and legislators?

Perhaps we'll see on Wednesday. Meanwhile, Joe Carter has some good things to say in addressing the issue of evangelicals in politics.

RLC

I've long wondered why Darwinians place so much confidence in the ability of random mutation and natural selection to evolve the amazing panoply of living things. It always seemed to me that the conviction that an advantageous mutation - i.e. a mutation which conferred a slight advantage in the struggle for survival and which is granted by Darwinians to be relatively rare - would very likely be lost as soon as it appeared due simply to random events like the death of the organism because of accident, predation, etc.

A mutation that allowed an organism, for instance, to more effectively smell food might be lost simply because the organism perishes at the hands of a natural predator. In other words, having an advantage of one kind only makes survival of that organism very slightly more likely, and if the organism doesn't make it then the mutation is lost until it arises again in some future generation.

I've never seen much written about this problem, but Salvador Cordova has a fascinating discussion of it at Uncommon Descent. He talks about it in terms of what's called the Gambler's Ruin, the topic of a book written in the sixties by a mathematical genius at MIT named Edward O. Thorp. Thorp's book explained how one can beat the Las Vegas casinos, and the movie 21 is based on his work.

Cordova explains its relevance to Darwinian evolution in his article. The upshot is that natural selection is scarcely more likely to preserve a beneficial mutation than is random chance:

Check out the entire post if this is a topic that interests you.

RLC

Joe Trippi, former adviser to Sen. John Edwards', D-N.C., second presidential bid, http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalradar/2008/05/trippi-edwards.html says he should have "gone with his gut" and convinced the 2004 vice presidential candidate to stay in the race:

Trippi shouldn't let it get him down. By not urging Edwards to stick to his goal of becoming president he did what was best for the country.

RLC

I don't know how close we are to putting these new devices in the field but they sure would make life tough for the bad guys. AllahPundit asks us to imagine "the utter paranoia it'll engender in the enemy once the word gets out. Every time a spider crawls past or a dragonfly floats by, they'll look and wonder." Indeed:

RLC

If you think it's a bit unjust to be asked to bail out those who bought homes they couldn't afford and now find themselves unable to keep up with their mortgage payments, you can go here to sign a petition to Congress to that effect. If you think there's something absurd about being asked to help those living in $500,000 houses pay for their homes while you can't even afford to buy a house at all then you might consider signing the petition.

There may be some who have built up a lot of equity in their homes and stand to lose it, but for many of those facing default on mortgages on which they had to put little or nothing down, their situation seems to be no different than if they were renting the house for the time they lived in it. All they lose, if the house is repossessed by the lender, is the monthly mortgage payments they had been making, which were just like paying rent. The big loser is the lending agency which is now in possession of a house which they probably will not be able to sell for the value of the original mortgage.

But then that's the risk they took when they underwrote loans to people with dubious ability to pay.

RLC

We've reported previously on developments with skin stem cells showing that they can be programmed to behave like embryonic stem cells. Now comes word that skin stem cells have been used to regenerate heart tissue:

There is more on this at the link, including additional links to a number of related articles.

RLC

None of the answers given by the presidential candidates to the problem of high gas prices really addresses the problem. Simply put, the problem is that there's not enough supply to meet the global demand. As long as this imbalance exists, prices at the pump will continue to rise and the cost of food will rise with it, and reducing the federal tax on gas and other palliatives will only help temporarily.

Moreover, as long as corn and other grains are in demand as a source of ethanol the cost of those grains, including what is grown in poor countries, will also rise. While people starve, grain raised in their own country will be exported rather than used locally because the growers will get far more money for it if they export it than if they sell it domestically.

Unless we're prepared to see starvation on a large scale in the world's poorest countries we need to use grain for food, not fuel, and we need to increase the supply of oil and gasoline. No medium term solution that omits these will avoid the looming disaster.

RLC

Paul Shaheen criticizes Hollywood for presenting too many stereotypical images of Arabs and Muslims. He has praise for the movie Babel, which is much deserved, but he criticizes The Kingdom for making Arabs out to be bad guys. This makes me wonder whether he even saw the movie. The film is about terrorists in an Arab country. Mr. Shaheen may not have read any newspapers lately, so someone might tell him that this actually happens. Some very bad people are Arab Muslims, and it's to Hollywood's credit that they didn't shrink from portraying this reality. Moreover, one of the heroes of the film is an Arab.

Nevertheless, Mr. Shaheen seems miffed that every now and then Hollywood goes against its instincts and actually portrays things as they happen to be.

It is, no doubt, people who think as Mr. Shaheen does who have declared use of the words jihadist, mujahedeen, and Islamo-fascism to be henceforth unacceptable language in the U.S. State Department. There's a fear among the experts at Foggy Bottom, you see, that using words correctly and accurately will offend the delicate sensibilities of Muslim moderates.

See Andy McCarthy at NRO for more on this peculiar development.

You might also listen to what Robert Spencer has to say about the, ah, you-know-who who are waging world-wide you-know-what against Western civilization:

RLC

NASA has released some pics of galaxies interacting with each other taken with the Hubble space telescope. Amazing photos.

Bear in mind that each of these galaxies is roughly similar to our Milky Way and that if our sun were in the picture it would be so tiny it probably wouldn't be visible. The earth would most definitely not be visible.

RLC

I've met and spoken with Os Guinness on several occasions and even shared a meal with him once. He's a fine man, a brilliant speaker and a prolific author. He's also dismayed at the current state of discourse in this country, and his dismay is certainly warranted. Out of that concern has emerged yet another book from a man who has already authored or edited over two dozen of them.

The Case for Civility And Why Our Future Depends on it is one of the most important of the many themes he has addressed over his long career as a public intellectual, but unfortunately it's not one of his strongest efforts.

Os urges us to elevate the level of our discourse and disagreements. He's dismayed by the "culture wars" raging in the U.S. over issues like abortion, stem cell research, gay marriage, Iraq, etc. He calls for leadership from our politicians in promoting a civil public square. In all of this I cheer him on, but he cripples his case in the very beginning of the book, and continues to do so sporadically throughout its 175 pages, by taking precisely the kind of cheap shots at President Bush, though not always by name, that irritate people like me who think that this President has been one of the most civil, longsuffering, and least vindictive men ever to hold the office of president.

Bush has been relentlessly, and sometimes viciously and unfairly, vilified in the press by the Democratic opposition and even by some Republicans, yet he has never once, so far as I know, responded in kind, at least not publicly. He has tried repeatedly to demonstrate good will toward his political opponents only to be whacked in the head for his trouble. Nevertheless, rather than hold him up as an exemplar of the very attitude Os urges upon the rest of us, rather than cite his willingness to turn the other cheek as an example of how civility might work itself out in our politics, Os seizes whatever opportunities present themselves to take a few whacks himself.

On pages 5 and 6, for instance, he says: "I write as a longtime European admirer of the United States, with the deep conviction that the quest for civility in world affairs has to begin in America; but also with a growing sadness that America's recent leadership has not matched up to her global responsibilities." How so? In what way has our leadership failed to exercise civility on the world stage? Is this a reference to Afghanistan or Iraq? If so, in what sense do these ventures demonstrate an unfortunate lack of civility? They can do so only if they were inexcusably misguided, but if Os thinks they were then he needs to make that case because it's certainly not self-evident.

He also writes on page 6 that, "Like a later American president's 'Mission Accomplished' in Iraq, Allenby's rash claim was soon to be contradicted..." This is simply uncharitable. The Navy suggested the "Mission Accomplished" sign after deposing Saddam and the completion of the aircraft carrier's mission to Iraq. The White House okayed it, but Bush probably wasn't even informed of it. The President even said in his speech aboard the ship that the mission had to continue and that the work was not done. One can understand, perhaps, why partisans might exploit this opening to insult Bush, but why would a man calling for more civility in our politics do so? If the sign has to be mentioned at all why not try to put the best construction on it rather than the worst?

The book also suffers from a lack of specificity. Os bemoans "culture warring" throughout the work, particularly on pages 16 and 17, but he's never clear about exactly what he has in mind by the term. He talks about the need "to wrest back the culture wars from the domineering pundits and activists who have become the warlords of American public life," but who are these people and in what ways are they domineering and what's wrong, exactly with being an activist?

He warns us not to remain passive before the bullying of the culture warriors, but the reader has no idea what or whom he's talking about.

On page 18 he conflates the two biggest weaknesses of the book, his lack of specifics and his predilection for taking swipes at Bush: "The tie-in between the religious right and the person and policies of George W. Bush, has provoked a mounting backlash that has made the liaison a severe liability for both."

Is Os criticizing Bush's "person" here? What is it about Bush's person that makes him so odious? Which of his policies should Bush have not pursued? Appointing qualified pro-life judges? Opposing federal funding for embryonic stem cell research? Doing more than any president in history to help alleviate the suffering of the poor in Africa? What exactly?

Guinness adds that "...certain Christians form the bulk of one of the two great extremes in the American culture wars and are stirring up against themselves some of the most vehement antireligious animosity in the modern world." Who are these Christians? How are they stirring up animosity, and why is this bad? If the world hates Christians for taking a stand against modern social trends why is that the Christians' fault? Os doesn't explain.

He laments the militancy of atheists like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins and seems to blame it on the Religious Right (p.18) as if had Jerry Falwell never existed Dawkins would never have felt the need to write The God Delusion. Could it not be argued just as easily that the Religious Right is the backlash and that the debasement of our culture by the secularists is the stimulus?

He also gets a little too full of himself on page 19 where he writes that he's "setting out a vision of civility in the American public square that, if realized, could be the key to resolving the cuilture wars, could be a stunning tribute to the brilliance of the 'great experiment' devised by the American founders, and also could stand as an encouragement and as a model for public civility in other parts of the world." He sounds here like he's campaigning for the Nobel Peace Prize.

There needs to be made a case for civility, and I thank Os for keeping that need before us. I just wish he'd be more specific and civil himself.

After a historical longuer on the first amendment and the challenges of pluralism, Os gets to the heart of his topic in Chapter 4.

He sees two impediments to a more civil discourse in this country. First, is the desire by some (don't expect him to name names or cite examples) to try to sacralize the public square. Here he steps into a trap to which many fair-minded commentators seem prone. In trying to be credible he wants to pronounce a pox on both the houses of the left and the right which implies a kind of moral equivalence between them. Thus he either has to dredge up some specific example of right-wing perfidy or continue to speak in mind-numbing nebulosity. He chooses to do both:

"As one who holds the Hebrew prophets in the highest esteem, I am outraged by the false prophets of fundamentalism, who violate the biblical canons of prophecy and pronounce in the name of the Lord what is theologically obscene and historically untrue.... I am appalled by the way the Religious Right attacks its fellow believers and demonizes its enemies. Shame on the scurrilous attacks in much Christian direct mail, and on fundamentalist pastors and their followers who hold placards in public such as 'God Hates Fags,' 'Thank God for Maimed Soldiers,' and 'God Hates You.'"

This sort of behavior is indeed deplorable and I join Os in deploring it, but who's doing it and what wickedness does the direct mail contain? Without that information we're left in the dark as to whether this really is a significant phenomenon. Is it limited to people like the dozen or so family members who comprise the Westboro Baptist Church or is it much more typical of the Christian right?

He complains (p. 94) that "many in the Religious Right are more obviously fundamentalists than they are Christians." This may well be true, but it would help if he would give us examples of what he means so that we can judge whether it's true that "many" religious conservatives are actually guilty of the charge.

He gives some advice to Christians on this page that is worth repeating. In talking about how Christians sometimes portray themselves as victims of secular persecution he enjoins us to, in effect, get a grip. He reminds us that what Christians are facing in the U.S. is nothing compared to what they're facing in China, North Korea, Burma, and Sudan.

He makes another interesting point on page 96 where he points out that it is a bit of a mistake to think that the genocidal tendencies of Islam are a throwback to the 7th century. He writes: "Its view of its advocates as a revolutionary vanguard, and their belief in the power of violence to remake humanity are highly modern ideas and closer to the views of the nineteenth century anarchists and nihilists than to those of their Muslim forebears. As such Islamism is truly a modern reaction to the modern world."

He's also helpful when he notes on page 102 that, "whichever side it comes from, politicized preaching is faithless, foolish, and disastrous for the church." These are words that should be meditated upon by the Jesse Jackson's, Jeremiah Wrights and Al Sharptons of the world as well as those normally thought to be on the Religious Right.

The best line in the book comes in his chapter on saying no to the naked public square when he says that he finds it "curious to be treated by Muslims as a second-class citizen and by atheists as a second-class thinker - a dhimmi to one and a dummy to the other."

He's at his best in defending the open public square and this chapter (Chapter 5) is worth the price of the book. Unfortunately, he never overcomes his penchant for vague generalizing and thus never brings himself to explaining exactly what civil discourse would or should look like (perhaps because it might look too much like G.W. Bush). On pages 150-152 he talks about what it is not, but leaves us to form our own opinions as to where the boundaries of civil discourse actually lie.

Nevertheless, Os is to be commended for directing our attention to the need and importance of civil disagreement, and we would all do well to keep in mind that we do nothing to advance our own causes when we resort to aspersions, name-calling and attempts to embarrass and humiliate those with whom we disagree.

RLC