Of Alan Colmes, Test Oaths, Pro-Abortion Catholics and the Freedom of Conscience.

I was more than a little embarassed for Alan Colmes tonight. He was doing the set-up for the Democrat position on whether opposing Bill Pryor because of his statements of his personal cum religious opposition to abortion and Roe v. Wade resonates with bigotry. When he attempted the usual inconsistency gambit on the issue by pulling out of the air that the "but the Catholic Church opposes the death penalty," C. Boyden Gray accurately pointed out that while the Pope has expressed definite opposition to the death penalty, the dogmatic position of the Church has not condemned the death penalty. Although admitting his ignorance, Colmes gamely hung in with his wrong and uninformed claim. Of course, recognizing that his purpose is to score debating points, Colmes' didn't let his acknowledged ignorance get in the way of his pressing his tendentious position.

Colmes also previewed the latest Democrat/Liberal talking point on the claim that the Democrats are engaging in incipient anti-Catholic discrimination. With the able assistance of a self-described Catholic representing the People for the American Way, Colmes pitched the question "how can opposition to Catholics who oppose Roe v. Wade be anti-Catholic when there are Catholic Democrats leading the charge?" Gray attempted to spell out the idea that while the opposition to Pryor may not be motivated by Pryor's Catholicism, the principle identified by the Dems - no one who faithfully adheres to Catholic teachings on abortion can be a federal judge - establishes an anti-Catholic rule in its effects. Unfortunately, time ran out before Gray could set up this concept over the hectoring of the representative of PFAW. While Gray was on the right road, and Colmes's casual and shallow equivocation is tendentious, seeing why takes more than a Hannity & Comes soundbite.

One of the difficulties here is the confusion of concepts. One concept is "bigotry." Bigotry involves some kind of personal animus directed against a person because of perceived characteristics associated with that person's membership in a given group. For example, it would be bigotry to say that I don't like Mormons because of their racism. That statement presupposes that (a) Mormons hold such beliefs, (b) this person holds such beliefs because of his membership in the Mormon group and (c) presumably would act on or voice such beliefs. Interestingly, the putative trait associated with the group is something that would properly be condemned if it existed. Hence, if blacks were lazy or Italians were criminal, laziness and criminality would still be properly condemned upon instantiation in a given person. We just aren't permitted to infer from one characteristic that other characteristics necessarily exist.

The other concept is "Test Oaths." A Test Oath is not the same as bigotry. A Test Oath simply requires that a person to demonstrate adherence in to certain beliefs in order to fully participate in civil society. Typically, Test Oaths require some statement that a person abjures an unorthodox belief, which belief is not in itself necessarily morally wrong so much as incorrect. The English Test Oath, for example, required that the oath-taker subscribe to a belief in the primacy of the English monarchy over the English Church. Similarly, the Nicene Creed which Catholics say every Sunday in Mass is a Test Oath. Although a contrary belief to that which is outlined in the Oath might be incorrect, or unsettling to general society, it's hard to say that a dissenting view is evil or immoral in the way that sloth or criminality is.

The vice of Test Oaths are several. First, they have been condemned as being abusive to an individual's conscience. Test Oaths force - or coerce or unfairly motivate - a person to foreswear what he truly believes is right in order to preserve viability in the system of governmental patronage and prestige. Thus, although a person might know what he truly believes, he lowers himself to say the right words so that he will be rewarded with position. Certainly, generations of Catholics became grimly aware of the personal abasement that went with the knowledge that onerous taxes could be avoided, or emancipation could be obtained, simply by saying certain little words. The fact that they all didn't says a lot about the price that Test Oaths imposes.

Second, Test Oaths are commonly seen as being ineffective and hypocritical. The Test Oath that most exercises the Left is the anti-communist "loyalty oath." Now, I have actually taken this oath on several occasions, associated with obtaining employment with the State of California and, I think, becoming an attorney. The dreaded "loyalty oath" simply says that the oath-taker will not countenance violent overthrow of the government. Now, I never had any problem with taking that oath and I don't see how any sane person could. [On the other hand, if I thought that the government was tyrannical and deserved violent overthrow, not only would I not take the oath, I wouldn't even work for the government.] But, on the other hand, I have wondered what good it does. If someone actually were committed to the violent overthrow of the government, wouldn't they feel justified in lying about that belief to the government they felt justified in violently overthrowing? Test Oaths are therefore at some level - the level of hypocrisy and bad faith, perhaps - simply unenforceable.

My problem with the Pryor inquisition about his beliefs is that it resemble a Test Oath. Pryor is being condemned concerning his views on Roe v. Wade not becasue of his public record, which has been to follow the law, but because of his confessions of an adherence in orthodox Catholic teachings. That strikes me as not being bigotry, but a control move intended to enforce a political/moral orthodoxy.

The other point implied by Colmes is that the presence of Catholics who condemn Pryor's public statements as "outrageous" or "extreme" doesn't preclude one from arguing that the situation reflects anti-Catholic bigotry for two reasons. [Note that a position similar to Colmes's insinuation has resulted in quick condemnation by the Catholic Bishop of Denver.]

The first point is that the broad label of "Catholic" covers a number of religious attitudes. Catholics can be "conservative," "traditional" or "liberal." They can be "practicing" or "lapsed," or "faithful" and "dissenting." What holds Catholics together, like other groups, is adherence to some family of values. ["Family" in the Wittgenstein sense of a related or similar or nexus of meaning.]

One of those "family" values is clearly an opposition to the murder of innocent people simply because they haven't been born. Unlike Colmes' faux pas about the death penalty, as to which the Church has expressed fair concerns but no dogmatic position, the Church's position on abortion is really very clear. Participating in, procuring or intentionally causing an abortion automatically results in excommunication. Like divorce, which Jesus condemned very clearly (and sometimes it's about Jesus), opposition to abortion is a Catholic family value.

So while those nominal Catholics who want no dissent on the subject of abortion are "dissenting" or "unfaithful" Catholics, Pryor is a "faithful" Catholic. The issue is therefore discrimination against "faithful" Catholics.

Second, the idea that dissenters from a tradition are somehow the safeguard of the liberties of the orthodox is fairly laughable. If there is one thing that we have learned from history, it's that dissenters - or converts (sorry, Mark Shea) - are generally the least tolerant of heterodoxy. (Perhaps, it would be more correct to say that converts are the most committed adherents to a belief; my mother was wont to observe when I was a child that "converts are more Catholic than the Pope.") They have made their decision, they have paid their price, they have been ostracized by their families, but they know they are right and, usually, by God, everyone else who joins them in Damascus must agree with them. One thing I have learned from my divorce experience is that once problems in the marriage appear, you get a lot of advice from divorced people that the marriage is doomed and that divorce is inevitable. It seems that misery loves company and dissenters need reassurance. This must be particularly true of Catholic abortion supporters who, while it would be presumptuous to say they are damned, certainly must wonder about their stint in purgatory. It wouldn't be surprising to find that Catholic Democrats who - if they have any religious belief whatsoever - must fear that they have traded their eternal salvation for Congressional District 29 in Ohio. Were I them, the last thing I would want to hear is Bill Pryor clearly expressing a faith consistent with the Catholic teachings in which I was raised. In the "dark night of the soul," I'd have to wonder if the 29th Congressional District was worth it.

Consequently, the Pryor hearing may represent a very dangerous turn in American politics in that it brings back the ghost of Test Oaths. Frankly, as an American lawyer, I find that prospect as distressing as the idea that "[t]he bias against "papism" is alive and well in America. It just has a different address."

Last point: Richard Cohen argues from approximately three religious references that Pryor would be a bad judge. I'll grant that Cohen's examples may be arguable, but not necessarily. Nothing stops a person from having views about the separation of church and state when he enters public office or from working for those positions politically. Apart from the "Granite Monument with the 10 Commandments," Cohen doesn't clearly cite Pryor's actions as a public official. Nonetheless, Cohen's examples do not save his case. The fact that there may be political reasons to oppose Pryor doesn't negative the religious animus proven by the Democrats' investigation of Pryor's personal views on Roe when his public conduct established his belief in stare decisis. Simply put, you don't disprove racism by pointing to equivocal performance problems after uttering racist statements. (Trust me on this one; I've proven points similar to this before judges and juries.)

Other thoughts: Bill Cork makes a pox on both your houses point by noting that Catholics opposed to the death penalty would be precluded from serving on juries. Bill then suggests that we not lose sight of the fact that Republicans impose "test oaths" as well as Democrats, when convenient.

A slight demurrer is in order. The issue of the "death qualified jury" is controversial. (At least it was when I was in law school.) But, simply put, the "death qualification" of jurors removes from the jury pool people whose biases may affect their rational deliberative processes. The view is that a person who is adamantly opposed to the death penalty might be inclined to acquit rather than be in a position where the death penalty would be imposed. Further, the "death qualification" rule relieves those situations where a jurors moral views might be compromised by his oath to follow the law. Death qualification offers an out of jury service in death penalty cases to those who oppose the law.

On the other hand, if a juror expresses a willingness to follow the law and consider all options that the law permits, then bouncing the juror would be impermissible. For example, if a prosecutor made it his practice to use his preremptories on Catholic (or Quaker) jurors who had stated their willingness to follow the law, that practice could and would be challenged as a basis for obtaining a new trial. [I'll defer to CrimLaw on this point, though.]

But the point on Pryor is that he is willing to follow the law. Pryor has expressed his willingness to be bound by stare decisis and his public performance established that he actually would respect the holding of Roe v. Wade. The attack on Pryor is, therefore, purely about his beliefs and that is why it is pernicious.

Further, Further Update: [via Mark Shea.] You know that my basic thesis has to have some merit when even Mark Shields notes that the Democrats are telling Catholics to "get lost" by including only pro-abortion Catholic sites in the offical DNC web site's "links of interest." Per Shields:

But in a deliberate act of political bigotry, the Democratic National Committee is daily telling Catholic voters to get lost. Do you think I exaggerate? Then go to the Democratic National Committee website. There you will finds "links of interest from the Democratic National Committee."

If your interests include the environment or veterans or Gay and Lesbian or Jewish-American or pro-choice or African-American, the DNC will happily suggest dozens of places for you to spend time. There is under "Catholic" only one Democratic Party-endorsed site to visit: the absolutely unflinching champions of abortion on demand, "Catholics for a Free Choice."

Shields notes the offensiveness that would be clearly perceived if this approach were tried on any other group. He concludes:

Uncritical, unrestricted access to abortion for all has become the litmus test for the national Democratic Party. The DNC may be run by single-issue voters. But Catholics, as they have shown to the consternation of conservatives time and again, are anything but single-issue voters. Will any national Democratic leader have the decency and the intelligence to apologize to Catholic voters for the Democratic National Committee's insults? I wonder.

Note the phrase "political bigotry?" Apparently, the presence of pro-abortion Catholics in the DNC doesn't appear to persuade Shields that the DNC is not merchandizing a kind of bigotry. The more I think about it, the more my thesis that pro-abortion Catholic Dems are locked into a visceral need for reassurance seems sound.

More Views on Religious Test Oaths

Robert Musil offers his read on the Pryor nomination and religious test oaths issue. He also quotes the relevant section of the the Constitution and offers a useful precedent.

Theists Confess

I'm watching Martin Short and Jason Alexander being interviewed on Pat Sajak about working in a new production of the Producers. Sajak cautiously brought up the issue of offending gays. Alexander responded that the play offends everyone, which set up Short to respond that The Producers is very Catholic about giving offense and "he's a Catholic" so it comes naturally, or some such. I found that somewhat surprising. I had always assumed that Short was Jewish (and his comment may have been a joke.) Nonetheless, a Google search turned up this Onion piece where celebs are asked "is there a God?" Here's Short's answer:

A star of stage and screen, Martin Short's most recent project was a daytime talk show.

The Onion: Is there a God?

Martin Short: Yes, there is. Of course. Yes.

The arresting thing is that he's the first celeb to give a simple, unhesitating affirmative answer. Sort of makes me respect Short.

Odd little article for Onion, but it's almost a snapshot of celeb culture.

Update: Mark Shea picked up on the Onion piece and noticed all the bone-headed shallow comments being mouthed by our "cultural elites." It's worth checking out for the sharp and incisive comments by Shea's readers, anyone of whom could give lessons in thinking to any dozen of the "cultural elites."

The Coming Real Cultural Divide

Crim Law has a post on the ads that the RNC is running in Republican areas on the Pryor nomination. Per Crim Law:

Let's be clear here - Pryor is not being opposed because he has acted on his beliefs. Pryor has not followed Church doctrine to the exclusion of constitutional mandate. In fact, had he done so he would have given a much more expansive interpretation of the Alabama anti partial-birth abortion law. He did not. He tried to bring the statute within the mandates of the constitution not the mandates of the Church.

This is a case of the pain being so great because the arrow has struck too close to home. Nominal Catholics, as demonstrated by Senator Richard J. Durbin, distance themselves as far as they can from Church positions which are unpopular to the Left2. The question which hangs in the air is what is the difference in particular between Durbin and Pryor? Both claim to believe in doctrine but neither has followed it to the exclusion of other obligations. The difference? Pryor doesn't make the law and is honest about his belief that abortions have killed unborn babies. And because of that he will not become a federal judge.

Given the importance of Catholic ethnics and the growing Hispanic population to the Democrats, this issue could be explosive.

For the record, I don't see the issue as an area of per se discrimination. I really don't think that there is any real dislike for Catholics like Pryor individually. I could be wrong, but I don't see a real cultural phenomenon in attributing individual Catholics with pernicious stereotypes. [Now, evangelicals are clearly a different story, if sociological studies showing that the core of the Democrat party actually hates evangelicals with a mindless bigotry not seen since the era of "tolerance" and "diversity" began in the mid-70's. See The Public Interest, Fall 2002, "Our Secularist Democratic Party." But, as everyone knows, "tolerance" and "diversity" cannot be extended to snake-handling Holy Rollers who interbreed with their sixteen year old first cousins in the foothills of Appalachia, not that there's anything wrong with that middle part pace Lawrence.]

On the other hand, discrimination can be proven either by intent or by effect. If the Democrats institute a rule that says that having a religiously based opposition to abortion automatically disqualifies that person from public office notwithstanding the candidate's belief in stare decisis, then what you have is a per se religious test. And that is entirely antithetical to the "diversity" or "pluralism" or the "American Way" or whatever other catch-phrases get airplay whenever it's convenient to indict anyone outside of Los Angeles or New York as homophobes or racists. [Ironically, Libertarian Rand Simberg recently went on a tear about how unqualified Senator Santorum was because of his advice to his daughters that they have a choice in how they express their sexuality, which shows that the risk of "de facto religious tests" is a cultural issue, and not merely a political one.]

Of course, given the recent opportunistic approach to stare decisis, legal principles may not be quite the bulwark against arbitrary judicial rulings as they once were. That concern, however, was one of the reasons for stare decisis and related legal principles.

Careful there, son, I might get recalled to teaching Corporations Law

I didn't realize this, but a fairly new blog - Winkola's Wending Way - is a law student at Fresno's San Joaquin College of Law (ABA Rated). Looks like another techie transitioning to the Holy Grail of Law. Good luck.

I am, however, not retiring my title as the "Most Respected Blog in North Central Fresno County," although I might have to amend the title to include something like "north of Nees Avenue."

[Also Bill Cork] A Catholic perspective on "premillenial dispensationalism" (which I'd never heard of before starting this blog.)

Bill Cork, who owns the subect, links to an article where Robert Bork talks about his conversion. From the perspective of contemporary history, the following is interesting:

I was introduced to the Catholic faith through my second wife, Mary Ellen. She had been a nun for 15 years. I didn’t know any priests or nuns. Although I had many Catholic friends, we never discussed religion. I had been to a Catholic Mass a couple of times with friends when I was in my teens and early 20s, but I hadn’t been to any church for years and years until I began going to Sunday Mass with my Mary Ellen.

Remember how often that Bork has been condemned for being the advance man for the forces of the mindless "religious right"? Well, apparently, he was completely indifferent to religion during the time that he was creating his public record.

I also like the following:

I found the evidence of the existence of God highly persuasive, as well as the arguments from design both at the macro level of the universe and the micro level of the cell.
I found the evidence of design overwhelming, and also the number of witnesses to the Resurrection compelling. The Resurrection is established as a solid historical fact.

Well, sure, but it's nice to hear someone say so in public.

Worth Reading

Jonah Goldberg recovers from apoplectic fit of giggles long enough to pen a sharp deconstruction of the Berkeley conservatives-as-psychotics study.

Also, appropos of my earlier appropriation of Hayek, Goldberg has this:

And that brings us to the fundamental problem, identified most famously by Samuel Huntington in his 1957 essay "Conservatism as an Ideology." Conservatism in much of the world is situational. A conservative in Saudi Arabia or Russia wants to conserve something very different from what a conservative in America wants to conserve. A Saudi conservative wants to maintain State control of the economy, scoffs at civil liberties and wants to spread Wahhabbi Islam around the globe. Meanwhile, in America it's true that conservatives want to defend traditional arrangements but our traditional arrangements are defined by classically liberal institutions. This is why Hayek admired American conservatives even though he distrusted European ones — because American conservatives are determined to defend the institutions which keep us free. American liberals are determined to protect the "advances" they believe keep us "progressive."

Which is exactly the point. Hayek's "Why I am not a conservative" essay wasn't about American conservativism, which conserves classical liberalism, it was about the Statists who would enact Corn Laws and similar protectionist measures. In short, Hayek was talking about Dick Gephardt, Joe Lieberman and the rest of the Seven Dwarves, who really do exploit fear. If you want to really see the face of people who are filled with fear of change and insist on avoiding anything that might represent ambiguity, go to a National Educators Association conference or to any of the other interest blocs of the Democratic Party.

Meme Building.

[Via the The Mighty Barrister.] James lileks notes the following:

Hugh Hewitt's show today concerned an interesting judicial controversy - some Dems are suggesting that a certain nominee is unfit for confirmation because he is a staunch Catholic, and hence opposed to abortion, and hence cannot be trusted to rule in a fashion consistent with Roe V. Wade. We have not gotten into the abortion issue here, and we won’t now, or ever. I bring up the issue because there’s something revealing about the implications of the criticism.

If a judicial candidate says “I’m personally opposed to (social issue X), but it is legal, and any rulings I make on the matter will be informed by the law, not my own beliefs,” ought that not be sufficient? I want my judges to uphold the law, not contort it to fit their views. I don’t want them teasing penumbras from the emanations of the glow of the spark of the reflection of the echo of the intent of the Framers - I want them to deal specifically with the specific words of the law, as they specifically apply. So if someone accuses a judge of being unable to uphold the law because they hold a personal belief that conflicts with the law - even though that belief has nothing to do with the specifics of the case - then the accuser might be giving us a window into their own souls. The accuser might be suggesting that they would overturn a law to fit their personal morality, regardless of the fitness of the statute. Isn’t that how people behave, after all?

It’s called “projection,” I think.

I think that is a fair observation that goes back to a fundamental difference in "liberal" and "conservative" judicial dispositions. I don't think the difference is an artifact of perspective of the "I am principled, you are stubborn" variety. There really is a view among judicial conservatives that law exists somehow as an independent objective enterprise. Now, clearly, personal values creep in inevitably, but that tendency is something to be fought so that the purity of the law isn't undermined by personal values. Judicial conservatives, therefore, seem to take a perverse delight in affirming decisions they don't personally agree with - think of Thomas's comment on sodomy as a "silly law," for example.

Judicial liberals think that's all hooey. Law is a control project by those who exercise the levers of power. Since law is nothing more than an epiphenomenon used to rationalize personal and subjective value decisions ad hoc and after the fact, the focus should be on having the right people with the right value make the decisions.

As I noted in this post, both judicial approaches have advantages and drawbacks. I also noted that this differnce explains the grilling given to Pryor:

In short, a conservative judge would probably be more inclined to adhere to stare decisis than a liberal, but liberals projecting their own attitudes onto individuals such as Pryor are truly playing the "legal realist" game alluded to by Kmiec. They can't really believe that a Catholic could dissassociate his personal beliefs from his approach to the "Law" because liberals don't really believe that the "Law" is anything more than a tool for social reorganization. In other words, liberals may be inherently predisposed to play the game of "test oaths" based on a nominee's personal identity.

If that's the case, per Kmiec, the fact that liberals can't "separate who you are from how you judge" may eventually force Catholics to form a "victim-group identity" opposed to liberalism. And, I ask again, do they really want to do that to 25% of the population?

Based on Lilek's humorous observation, it looks like the meme that judicial liberals are engaging in "projection" is building.

Here's a collection of "evil, dead Sadam son's cartoons. It's amazing how many of them are in tasteless and offensive. It really does have a "Palestinians dancing in the streets on September 12" feel.

More on the self-inflicted wound that is the modern Episcopalian Church.

Calblog explains, or points the way to those who can explain, the Byzantine machinations behind Bustamane's attempt to circumvent the Recall election.

The Virtue of Hate?

Michael Williams has a post re-examining his initial joy at the death of Uday and Qusay Hussein. His conclusion is:

So, I'm re-evaluating my reaction. Yes, I'm glad that justice was served, and I'm glad that those two monsters won't be able to murder, rape, and torture anyone else ever again. They got what the deserved. Perhaps my lack of compassion is due to my near-certainty that neither one of them would have ever repented. Whatever the reason, I need to temper my thirst for justice with compassion, even for the worst of humanity.

This seems to be a fairly common attitude among the Blogs I've been cruising through. [MT Politics is a notable exception for his simple comment "RIH."]

I think that Williams' dilemma is authentic. Hate is a powerful, addictive emotion. It feels good to hate and that good feeling can lead to vice if indulged in too much. Hate can easily break down the containing walls we construct around it and do considerable damage to those around us. There's something wrong with hate.

On the other hand, there's something wrong with the opposite tendency. The attitude that refuses to speak any ill of Uday and Qusay merely because they are dead has some very real problems. First, it implicitly indicts the wisdom of God's provenance in removing these two beasts from the mortal world. Second, the non-judgmental attitude seems to view these evil men and their conduct as though their crimes were mere "lifestyle options." Third, it seems to demand something inhuman. For example, it would demand that concentration camp survivors view their Nazi tormentors with no more ill-feeling than they would Rotarians. That seems untenable. [I'll grant that the Great Example given to us was "Father, forgive them," but how does the part about "for they know not what they do" play in this discussion?]

Other traditions endorse hate as a virtue in some circumstances. In this First Things essay Meir Soloveichik discusses the differences between the Jewish and the Christian traditions with to the issue of hating evil. Solovechik observes:

Some might respond that the raging, vengeful Samson is the Bible’s sinful exception, rather than its rule; or, perhaps, that Samson acted in self–defense. Yet a further perusal indicates that the Hebrew prophets not only hated their enemies, but rather reveled in their suffering, finding in it a fitting justice.

With respect to that concept, I note that Catholicism does not appear to condemn hatred per se. Section 1933 of the Catechism contains this observation:

Liberation in the spirit of the Gospel is incompatible with hatred of one's enemies as a person, but not with hatred of the evil that he does as an enemy.

So it appears that hatred is not always a vice even for the Christian tradition.

On a related note, Disputations tackles the issue of praying for Uday and Qusay's souls and his answer is simply "no." Why, he asks, should Uday and Qusay now have some special claim on him simply because they're dead? Good question. [I mean it really is and the discussion in the Disputation comments is worth following.]

For what it's worth, I think the answer probably can be found in Aristotle's doctrine that virtue is to be found as the mean between correlated extremes. Visceral hate would be one extreme. Indifference would be the other. The mean would be,what? Satisfaction in seeing justice done? Righteous Anger?

Whatever the ultimate answer, I am pleased with the deaths of the vile Uday and Qusay. I think there is nothing wrong with drinking a toast to the death of tyrants. I don't think that attitude strays toward either extreme.

Turnabout links to a Guardian article about the "real untold scandal" of the Anglican Church which is the "mounting catalog of sexual assaults" by clerics against women.

Of course, this kind of behavior has been going on for years, and it occurs in other denominations. It probably won't get the same attention as the Catholic Church scandal of last year because it doesn't play upon or confirm a stereotype, but it certainly indicates that allowing priests to marry was not necessarily the solution to evil behavior.

Cool!

Via Bill Cork this news:

Republican judicial martyr Robert Bork has converted to Catholicism, according to U.S. News & World Report's Paul Bedard. The foiled Supreme Court nominee, now 76 and a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, was baptized a Catholic by a conservative priest and Opus Dei member, C. John McCloskey, at the Catholic Information Center chapel on K Street. The former Protestant's sponsors were National Review pundit Kate O'Beirne and United Press International chief John O'Sullivan. "If you get baptized at my age, all of your sins are forgiven. And that's very helpful," Bork said.

The bottom line is that we get all the best. Although I had somehow assumed he was Papist all along. I do like his observation about the forgiveness of sins, which is entirely consistent with St. Augustine.

Welcome aboard, Brother Bob.

Iraqis Saddened by Deaths of Uday and Qusay.

This from Best of the Web:

Then there's this gem, from the National Post:

At least one man voiced disappointment that Uday, who ran much of Iraq's media and sport with a heavy hand, had been killed. "I don't want him dead. I want to torture him first," said Alaa Hamed, who was a producer at Uday's television station.

Sadly, Alaa, we live in an imperfect world.

That's the spirit.

The Gang of Idiots are at it again. Read this Angry Clam post about "objective" Berkeley researcher's findings about the psychological dysfunctions of "conservativism." And here is Bryon Scott's retort to the Berkeley professariat's incoherent, intellectualoid flatulence.

Further thoughts: I don't want to write off the possibility that the whole thing is a parody of the liberal mindset. The problem is that the difference between earnest liberal sententiousness and parody of liberal eanestness can be razor- thin. I mean a lot of liberalism seems to be an exercise in self-parody, which is why George Orwell's 1984 with slogans like "Freedom is Slavery" was so effective.

Further Further Thoughts: On the other hand, Voyage to Arcturus not only doesn't feel the study is not a gross parody, but endorses its conclusions. While "Voyage" is a fairly sensible guy, his post does express a problem with the comic book version of Conservativism that passes as sensible copy among the educated. For example, he posts Hayek's "Why I am not a Conservative" as his apologia. I could, and have, endorsed Hayek's principles as my own, particularly Hayek's views about the organic development of social institutions that incorporate communal knowledge. Hayek was, of course, opposed to the "Old Whigs" who supported protectionism and other Statist regulations. Like it or not, those tendencies are not found on the Right in this day and age. Any sensible person would concede that those attitudes are to be found among the "anti-globalist" "green" Left.

On the other hand, I abandoned Libertarianism when it became nothing more than a "me too" version of the New Left. The Libertarianism I abandoned in the early 80's preached that America was evil and that the millenia would arrive once we stripped the American Republic of its military. It was a goofy view then and it hasn't aged well at all. Strangely, I believe that one of the most important civil rights is the civil right not to be hijacked in a commercial airline and flown into the side of a building. I think the Founders would have agreed.

I think there is a class issue in the reluctance of some to identify as a conservative. In some quarters being a conservative is just "uncool." It reeks to them of racism and antiquity. Furthermore, the Left has had it all its own way in comfortable niches with describing itself as per se tolerant and open to new ideas.

Well, stop smoking dope. In my experience, Conservatives have been more tolerant of personal and stylistic differences than Liberals. Liberals have been the folks who, in my experience, demand a Stalinist - nay, a Trotskyite - adherence to their norms. It's no accident that he Libs have imposed the litmus tests and banish dissidents from their "big tent." I know that when I uncloaked as a person who advocated, inter alia, nuclear power or free market regulation of attorney ethics,the liberal educators found ways to penalize my grades. And rest assured that I learned my lesson and kept my opinions to myself in the "liberal and tolerant" cultural environment of the University of California where "openess" and "willingness to embrace change" were not the noticeably defining characteristics.

The problem is that the Libs have been playing off the cultural capital of the 60's. Back then it was easy to point out the inconsistencies of the status quo. Those days are over, and the inconsistencies are entirely to be found on the Left. Thus, discrimination in the admission of applicants to elite educational institutions is always unconstitutional if it's based on sex but permissible if based on race. (Huh???) Or police can't exercise their police powers against people based on the content of their speech, unless they oppose abortion. (Huh???) Or the constitutional right of privacy precludes the regulation of private sexual behavior unless it involves incest, polygamy or necrophilia. (Huh???) The libs have become bloated in the special exemption they have been afforded by the adversarial elements of the New Class. Perhaps with more exposure to criticism, Libs might have developed in a coherent and principled way.

Nonetheless, if that kind of special pleading prevents you from identifying a conservative, then, well, the more power to you. It won't be long before the incoherent, illogic that passes as social policy today will look as absurd as the "substantive due process" that struck down Roosevelt's economic legislation looks today.

RAH Rules.

I've just discovered Heinleinblog. There's a nice picture of the Man himself and various Heinlein-related posts full of that technogeek goodness that brings back many fond memories.

Black Helicopters Everywhere

First, Uday and Qusay may finally be dead according to XLRQ. Hurray! Freedom loving Americans drink a toast to the death of tyrants.

Second, according to A Small Victory the lunatic left - but I repeat myself - believes that the timing of the announcement's is a political stratagem.

Deservedly doomed?

[Via Lane Core.] That is the opinion of Christopher Johnson, publisher of Midwest Conservative Journal and an Episcopalian, about his denomination. Johnson productively fisks the fatuous comments of Bishop-elect Gene Robinson who left his wife of fourteen years to take up an active homosexual lifestyle. Here's a nice riff (Robinson in normal font; Johnson in italics):

In a broadside against evangelicals on both sides of the Atlantic, he also said: "I must say that we are intent on tearing ourselves apart around the sexuality issues. Young people who have already decided about this issue and moved on with their lives find that ridiculous. For them the Church now looks hopelessly irrelevant."

This statement alone ought to disqualify Gene Robinson from any Christian ministry anywhere. Fidelity to the Word of God is not important to Robinson. But the "relevance" of the Church is vital. Since young people "have already decided about this issue and moved on with their lives," Gene Robinson will one day have to share what's left of his "church" with an adulterous bishop or a bishop who's fathered five different children with five different women or a bishop who's done things more evil than these. And as long as the young people aren't disturbed, Gene Robinson apparently won't be either.

Relevance is all, and pace any doubts concerning the existence of God, the essential sphere of religion is "story-telling." (Note: the jump cite is to an excellent lecture series by an "agnostic Episcopalian.") Consequently we have been told by one prominent Episcopalian Archbishop's Easter Sermon, that the literal, historic truth of the Resurrection is not all that germane to faith. Tolerance and Progress may fit the whole story-telling process just as well, if not better, as what really happened one Sunday morning.

Of course, tolerance is just a stage in the narrative. The next stage is to "re-educate" the "reactionaries." The outlines of that program are sketched in this William Sulik post.

In short, as a supportive outsider, I have to suggest that there is something terribly wrong in the C of E.

Why do I care? I'm not sure. One reason may be that I feel sad for the folks who are losing their tradition. Sulik and Johnson and others will wake up one morning like various Methodist and Presbytarian clients of mine and wonder what happened. The other reason is the whole train wreck aspect of this. I recently told a fellow Rotarian, who is an Episcopalian priest and going to this years Conference, that he certainly is lucky to be at the historic conference which may very well spell the explosion of his denomination into a myriad of factions.

He was less than thrilled by the prospect of being an eye-witness to history.

Rod Dreher ponders "becoming civilized" to good effect.

Bill Cork links to this article by Rodney Stark entitled "The Truth About the Catholic Church and Slavery." The subtitle gives away the premise - "The problem wasn't that the leadership was silent. It was that almost nobody listened." The stuff about the historic condemnation of slavery by the Christian church rings true. There is a driving logic between the idea that all men are equally endowed with the promise of salvation that seems consistent with an anti-slavery position. Hence, Stark's comments about the encyclicals and Aquinas sound accurate.

When Stark turned to the New World, I became sceptical. On the other hand, the historical novelty of the "Jesuit Republic of Paraguay" resonates with the little known "War of the Triple Alliance," as part of which Paraguay declared war on Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay. The result was:

The Paraguayan people had been fanatically committed to L?pez and the war effort, and as a result they fought to the point of dissolution. The war left Paraguay utterly prostrate; its prewar population of approximately 525,000 was reduced to about 221,000 in 1871, of which only about 28,000 were men.

The "Jesuit Republic" experience may explain Paraguay's subsequent "go it alone" instinct (and deserves to be grouped with the Anabaptist Kingdom of Munster as historical novelties.)

Stark's other point is that the systemic anti-spanish bias of historians has caused the ameliorating influence of Catholic Christianity compared to Protestant Christianity to be overlooked. Since the bias certainly exists, Stark's point shouldn't be dismissed as non-credible.

Stark, incidentally, is the author of The Rise of Christianity, which looks at early Christianity from a sociology perspective. I found The Rise of Christianity to be persuasive, so I am not inclined to disregard Stark's thesis that there was a historic Catholic agenda against slavery. I also note that Stark appears to have a new book out - For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-hunts, and the End of Slavery - which I will be looking for.

Someone who uses the phrase "Web of a million lies" can't be all bad.

Yet another movie I won't let the Widget, the Wadget and Boff watch.

Captain Spaulding offers this gem:

I saw Chitty Chitty Bang Bang a couple of days ago. The interesting part was an until-now unaired scene where Caractacus Potts is condemned by the UN and various NGOs for unilaterally overthrowing the government of Vulgaria and for the looting that went on afterwards. Plus the various conspiracy theories on Indymedia that the only reason Potts defeated the king was so the Scrumptious Candy Company would get the lucrative candy contract for the newly freed children and accusations that Potts lied about the extant of Vulgaria's flying car program.

Of course, they can't watch Winnie the Pooh either, what with Tigger being a thinly veiled Trotskyite allegory.

From the "Prophet is not without Honour" archive.

Tony Blair offers this advice to Americans:

Members of Congress, if this seems a long way from the threat of terror and weapons of mass destruction, it is only to say again that the world's security cannot be protected without the world's heart being (one/won? ). So America must listen as well as lead. But, members of Congress, don't ever apologize for your values. (Applause.) Tell the world why you're proud of America. Tell them when "The Star-Spangled Banner" starts, Americans get to their feet -- Hispanics, Irish, Italians, Central Europeans, East Europeans, Jews, Muslims, white, Asian, black, those who go back to the early settlers, and those whose English is the same as some New York cab drivers I've dealt with -- (laughter) -- but whose sons and daughters could run for this Congress. Tell them why Americans, one and all, stand upright and respectful. Not because some state official told them to, but because whatever race, color, class or creed they are, being American means being free. That's why they're proud. (Cheers, sustained applause.)

Dick? Joe? Are you listening?

Being Sick and Twisted doesn't necessarily equate to Criminal Guilt, which has to be reassuring news for Michael Moore.

According to the New York Times:

A state appeals court today dismissed the guilty plea of a man imprisoned for writing fictitious stories of child torture and molestation.

Lawyers specializing in the First Amendment say they believe that the inmate, Brian Dalton, is the first person in the United States successfully prosecuted for child pornography that involved fictional writings, not images.

This sounds about right - notwithstanding the fact that Dalton is obviously a sick, twisted scrap of cancer walking around in human flesh. Nonetheless, last time I checked, criminal laws generally required an "actus reus" to correspond to a "mens rea." I was never clear what Dalton's criminal act was supposed to have been.

Bulwer-Lytton Time.

No it isn't an ailment requiring the intervention of Saint Bonaventure.

The Cracker Barrel Philosopher has a link to the annual Bulwer-Lytton Worst Writing Contest. I don't think this excerpt from the article was an entry, but it does give you the flavor of the contest:

Simms, 42, who purchased an Australian Bearded Dragon from a reptile breeder last weekend, took a break from feeding crickets to the juvenile lizard, named Zippo, to discuss the epiphany behind her winning entry -- which, like the majority of pathetic ramblings submitted to the contest, was characterized by ridiculous whipsawing between unrelated concepts, as well as a profundity of commas and an extreme verbosity, which manifested itself in sentences frequently exceeding 50 words, many with multiple restrictive and nonrestrictive clauses.

Whew!

CBP nominates this non-winner as "Best in Show:"

Colin grabbed the switchgear and slammed the spritely Vauxhall Vixen into a lower gear as he screamed through the roundabout heading toward the familiar pink rowhouse in Puking-On-The-Wold, his mind filled with the image of his comely Olive, dressed in some lacy underthing, waiting on the couch with only a smile and a cucumber sandwich, hoping that his lunch hour would provide sufficient time for both a naughty little romp and a digestive biscuit.

As the great Floridian philosopher Jimmy Buffet was wont to observe, "they don't dance like Carmen no more." But they do write like Edward Bulwer-Lytton.

Trend away, Dream Baby.

Robert Musil has a follow-up on Rich Galen's piece about the internecine fight between the Dems and their African-American voting bloc. He also takes note of the media silence on the 11% drop in African-American identification with the Democratic Party, and insinuates that the cause may be Colin and Condoleeza.

This makes sense and since I hadn't heard about this - undoubtedly because of the media attention on homelessness or uranium purchases - I thought I'd pass it along.

Is this true?

Not that I want to imply that Pat Buchanan would err on this kind of subject. Here's Buchanan's quote on the Kennedy-McCarthy connection:

That is why Joe is hated. Not for what he did wrong, but for what he did right. America's young should ask themselves: If Joe McCarthy was such a monster, why did Joe Kennedy back him, the Kennedy girls date him, Robert Kennedy work for him and JFK defend him as a "great patriot" in his year of censure? And why was McCarthy asked to be the godfather to Bobby Kennedy's firstborn?

Given the virulent anti-Communism of American Catholicism in 40's and 50's, it sounds right. It's just that it also seems so at odds with the way that history is remembered through the lens of the 60's and 70's.

Best Sentence in the English Language that will see the Light of Day This Week.

[via Dailypundit] In the middle of a deconstruction of his role in the Jerry Springer v. Jonah Goldberg contretemps, Goldberg hammers out this gem: (I include the full paragraph for context)

The scrotal-torsion-inducing spin of this nonsense could sterilize an elephant. The stretch required to say my description of Springer-voters applies to every decent, hardworking and non-rich American gives new meaning to the word elastic. Anybody who has watched The Jerry Springer Show — or if they heard my comments in context — understands that I was referring to the toothless hookers, incestuous pimps, drug-dealing wastoids, transgender Klansmen, and the rest of the freaks, weirdoes, and perverts Jerry Springer has exploited to make himself very, very rich. Moreover, "hicks" — of the sort who live in Hicksville — vote Republican in this country in general and in Ohio in particular. You could look it up.

Wouldn't it be cool if Points and Authorities could be this pithy?

Recall News.

I'm sure that my interest in the the California recall will increase as the election gets closer, but right now I'm fairly disinterested in the subject. I signed the petition. I will undoubtedly vote in favor of recall, but part of me thinks that we're doing no favors to the Republican who gets elected to clean up Davis' mess.

In any event, Bear Flagger Bryon Scott has analyzed the poll numbers, which appear to show a majority of Californians favor ousting Davis and that a substantial number of Davis' apparent supporters would pull the lever in favor of recall if someone they like for Governor puts his name on the list. That can't be good news for Davis, and it kind of underscores his amazing lack of charisma.

The Dog that didn't Bark.

David Cohen at Brothers Judd asks "Why did the administration "admit" that the President shouldn't have said what he said, and why now." Cohen sketches a possible answer based on the notion that Karl Rove is playing a deep game to mousetrap the Democrats into backing action against North Korea.

Maybe, but it seems pretty Machievellian. I will admit that I'm puzzled. Why is the Bush Administration conceding that the "African Uranium" line should have been removed from the State of the Union speech? Why is the CIA issuing mea culpas on the inclusion of that reference? As near as I can tell, the Brits are standing by the claim and how hard would it be for Bush to point to Blair's government as the source of the sentence.

Odd, indeed.

Rich Galen has a typically insightful memo on the "Black v. White" donneybrook at the NAACP Meeting. Of course, I heard on Cable News that Julian Bond had likened Republicans to supporters of the "Confederate Swastika." Everyone glided right past the vapid stupidity of that metaphor and seized on the obvious point which is that the typical Republican is a Brown-shirt. What was interesting was one apologist on Scarborough Country who argued that it was no big deal because Kwasei Mfume had criticized Democrats (and Bush) who had no-showed at the Presidential beauty pageant this apolitical entity was putting on.

The interesting thing is who no-showed - Kucinich, Lieberman and Gephardt - and why. Kucinich is a nutcase and he probably didn't have air fare is my guess. Lieberman probably wanted to stay away from an outbreak of virulent anti-semitism. I don't have a clue about Gephardt, except that he may be positioning himself as the right wing of the presidential contenders and thought this would do him some good among white ethnics who might be a little steamed about the preservation of a racial quota system which favors the elites. The odd thing is that you would think that Lieberman and Gephardt are really the true contenders among the Democrats, and they appear to be doing nothing to build a bridge to the all important Black element of the Democratic coalition. That is interesting.

And, as Galen notes, for its part, the NAACP is feuding with top Democrats and it's all being ignored by the mainstream press:

So the NAACP is mad at three Presidential candidates, the Congressional Black Caucus is angry with another, everyone appears to be angry with the chairman of the Democratic National Committee.

African Americans are the staunchest supporters of the Democratic party (Al Sharpton pointed out at the NAACP meeting that they give "92 percent" of their votes to Democratic candidates) so, you might think all this would be of some interest to the mainstream press as they follow the ebbs and flows of the early political season.

All of which suggests that African-Americans would be well served by being something other than the political ward of the Democratic Party.

Rats

Omnibus Bill has decided to quit blogging because of his concern about repercussions at work. "Bill" was a government attorney and feared that DOJ restrictions might be applied to him someday. I didn't get around to permalinking him because of blogger problems with my template, but I liked his take no prisoners prose.

Sob. Now I will probably never know what his blogspot site name - "Crimen Falsi" - meant. I'm sure it has nothing to do with implants, but what could it mean? Oh, wait, I have one of those big green Black's Law Dictionary. Back in a Mo.

Well, that wasn't real clear.

Oh, and by the way, Merry Effing Bastille Day to you all!

Here's the link to Jonah Goldberg's All-Time Greatest Bastille Day Diatribes.

Mark Shea links to an article discussing a Dutch study on the substantially ephemeral nature of most gay relationships. According to the article, the study finds that the average length of such relationships is one and a half years. Then there is this observation:

In "The Male Couple," published in 1984, authors David P. McWhirter and Andrew M. Mattison report that in a study of 156 males in homosexual relationships lasting anywhere from one to 37 years, all couples with relationships more than five years had incorporated some provision for outside sexual activity.

"Fidelity is not defined in terms of sexual behavior but rather by their emotional commitment to each other," the authors said. "Ninety-five percent of the couples have an arrangement whereby the partners may have sexual activity with others."

?!?!?

But then who are we to judge? After all, does infidelity really Weaken emotional commitment? Shouldn't individuals in the pursuit of their life mystery be allowed to develop their own customs and rules? Who is really harmed by infidelity?

And, I'm picturing this argument being made in any healthy hetero marriage. Which, in a way, is exactly the point. Men are different than women in terms of a multitude of issues, ranging from views about sexual security and the concomitant importance of trust to the hormonal bond created by the act of giving birth and the corresponding attitude toward child rearing. In some ways these differences are why marriage between a man and a woman is good and natural and won't be replicated by the alternative.

Actually, though, what got to me was this throw-away comment:

Among heterosexuals, by contrast, 67 percent of first marriages in the United States last at least 10 years, and researchers report that more than three-quarters of married people say they have been faithful to their vows.

These figures are presented as if they evidenced the vitality and health of heterosexual marriages? Obviously they aren't. One in four spouses cheat; one third of marriages will fail within ten years. Given the importance of faithful, succesful marriages for children, spouses and society, some thought ought to be given to promoting marriage. Defining marriage down to include institutional infidelity doesn't seem to be the answer.

The X-Men, Galileo and You.

I previously made the point that much of what passes for anti-Catholic bigotry is actually a result of impoverishment; many modern artists have no other way of invoking emotions or feelings of the sacred other than through Catholic imagery. Such people, therefore, don't deserve animosity so much as they merit pity for the cramped and small world that they inhabit. As such, anti-Catholicism in art is an indictment of the cultural poverty that has been wrought by post-modernism and secularism.

I made this point in the context of a discussion of an X-Men comic book involving "disintegrating communion wafers" that would panic Catholics into believing the Rapture had occurred and allow the subsitutions of Popes. Having followed a Mark Shea link to a review of the "book," let me repent. I was wrong. There are people who care nothing about the sacred, but they, in fact, have a deep hatred for their comic book view of Catholic history and their work is generally part of a deeper agitprop for that view.

The kind of anti-Catholicism that relies on off-the-shelf archetypes of superstitious, anti-intellectual Catholics behaving badly in the face of science and progess is as ignorant of history as the artists who smear the Madonna with dung are ignorant of culture. The problem is that it is so easy to get away with all of this because it is part of the cultural furniture.

A case in point is this review of Wade Rowland's book entitled "Galileo's Mistake. Based on the review it appears that Rowland's take is that the conventional understanding of the Galileo affair is "simplistic and wide of the mark." Rowland's argument appears to be that Galileo's error was not in adopting the Copernican system, but in arguing that the scientific method was the sole route to determining truth. [A proposition which would certainly have gotten Galileo burned in Geneva or Nuremberg, and, yet, resulted in only a Roman house arrest (which may be Rowland's point.)]

The New York Times review is generally supportive of Rowland's book. But in the penultimate paragraph, the reviewer - who is writing a book on the Protestant Reformation - airily dimisses the book as being wrong:

It's true, as Mr. Rowland notes, that the idea of free expression was alien in Europe in those years. But he fails to convey the lengths to which the church would go to protect its hold on knowledge. During the Middle Ages it denied laymen access to the Bible, lest they learn to read it for themselves. When the invention of the printing press made that impossible, it set up the Index of Forbidden Books. The Inquisition was its barbaric apparatus of enforcement.

And that's that for Rowland's book. Rowland's wrong. The reviewer has shown that Rowland's wrong about Galileo because of the Inquisition, Latin Bibles and the Index of Forbidden Books.

The problem is that this indictment of Rowland's book is simply fatuous. I'm not writing any book on the Reformation, but this Learning Company lecture series by Professor Brad Gregory advises that there were 120 separate publications of the Bible in German prior to 1517. [Incidentally, it's a wonderful lecture series that takes no sides, which is certainly refreshing.] Likewise, the "Index of Forbidden Books" is an equally point to make for the basic reason that censorship was normal for all governments prior to at least 1800 - anybody reading about the Philosophes in pre-Revolutionary France picks this up quickly, and in Russia censorship lasted well into the late Nineteenth Century. For that matter, I hadn't realized that the phrase "Banned in Boston" was a product of the Vatican, but it must have been, because, if you read the review you are supposed to agree with the reviewer that the list of "forbidden books" proves that the Renaiscence Catholic Church was unique in its desire to control men's minds. The point is that all governments, until quite recently, felt it was their duty to engage in censorship for the purpose of protecting the morals of their subjects. The Church in that regard was unique only to the extent that it didn't have the power to enforce it's censorship rules by licensing printing presses - which was done in Protestant countries - or by imprisoning those who violated censorship - which, again, occurred in Protestant countries.

The last point about the Inquisition is another cheap shot. Why is the Inquisition the bete noir of the modern English-speaking world? Why not "Star Chamber?" Believe it or not, but until quite recently most governments had courts of special jurisdiction over treason. Moreover, even assuming that the Inquisition's reputations was well earned, there is nothing alleged about the Inquisition that wasn't true of Tudor England or Lutheran Germany (or, lest the secularist get proud, Revolutionary France or Communist Russia.) So, why the Inquisition? Could the answer be that this is the English-speaking world and our common cultural heritage was founded on a distrust of the Spanish?

And, thus, you end up with X-Men comics that depict the Pope as the anti-Christ. I don't think I mind the ideas expressed by these people as much as I mind the casual smugness with which these folks commend themselves for being original thinkers who are free of any superstitions or historical baggage.

I think John Derbyshire kind of grows on you. I originally didn't like his curmudgeonly take on things, but my law partner has been dropping "Derb" columns on me on a fairly regular basis. Anyhow, "Derb" directs readers to this apologia pro Derbyshire, which is extremely well written. But what I really liked was Derbyshire's intelligent, and restrained, takedown on an anti-semitic book by an "evolutionary psychologist." Take this insight, for example:

Perhaps it is true, as MacDonald claims, that “most of those prosecuted for spying for the Soviet Union [i.e. in the 1940s and 1950s] were Jews.” It is also true, however, that much of the secret research they betrayed to their country’s enemies was the work of Jewish scientists. The Rosenbergs sold the Bomb to the Soviets; but without Jewish physicists, there would have been no Bomb to sell. Last spring I attended a conference of mathematicians attempting to crack a particularly intractable problem in analytic number theory. A high proportion of the 200-odd attendees were Jews, including at least two from Israel. Sowers of discord there have certainly been, but on balance, I cannot see how anyone could deny that this country is enormously better off for the contributions of Jews. Similarly for every other nation that has liberated the energies and intelligence of Jewish citizens. Was Hungary better off, or worse off, after the 1867 Ausgleich? Was Spain better off, or worse off, before the 1492 expulsions? “To ask the question is to answer it.”

Nicely done. Particularly compared to the snarky, sarcastic prose that such a book probably deserves. Along the way, Derbyshire manages to get some cogent observations about whether "group evolutionary strategy" is folderol, the legitimacy of societies based upon "ethnic dominance" and the fact that America will not return to such a society because "the toothpaste is out of the tube." Good essay. Maybe my law partner is on to something.

I am always amazed when I learn that some statement that I barely remember was the key to convincing Americans, presumably including myself, to undertake some policy. With all of the tendentious claims that "Bush lied" about the Saddam's intent with respect to the development of nuclear weapons, Pejman has provided the relevant passages from the State of the Union speech. Here's an excerpt from the excerpt:

From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be moved from place to a place to evade inspectors. Saddam Hussein has not disclosed these facilities. He's given no evidence that he has destroyed them.

The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb. The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production. Saddam Hussein has not credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to hide.

The dictator of Iraq is not disarming. To the contrary; he is deceiving. From intelligence sources we know, for instance, that thousands of Iraqi security personnel are at work hiding documents and materials from the U.N. inspectors, sanitizing inspection sites and monitoring the inspectors themselves. Iraqi officials accompany the inspectors in order to intimidate witnesses.

So, Bush was stating that the British had the information about uranium purchases. Still sounds accurate, even if the Brits were wrong.

I do clearly remember, however, the high-strength aluminum tubes point. Those still haven't been explained. I also remember news reports about Al Tuwaitha nuclear plant which is leaking radiation like Madame Curie's fillings. Isn't the point still something like "was Saddam in a position to continue to develop nuclear weapons if given time?" and "did Saddam have the intention or desire to engage in such development?" In the light of our September 11 experience, I still think the United States government was justified in weighing the evidence in favor of protecting the lives of its citizens. Call me nuts, but that's the extremist position I'm staking out.

Important Blog.

Jesus Gil is developing a new blog on divorce and spirituality, called Santificarnos. I say it's important because as a divorcing Catholic, I really haven't seen many resources on the subject. In fact, apart from my ad hoc Communio group, I have had absolutely no support from my religious community in transitioning into post-marriage life with all of its attendant responsibilities. On the other hand, once an evangelical protestant friend found out my situation, it didn't take him as a long as a week to get me an introduction to his church's divorced men's group. I didn't go because of the calendar conflict with Communio, but the offer was nice, as was the idea of community support. In this area, as with many others, it seems that RCs could better emulate the Protestants. Hence, on a very personal level, I appreciate Jesus Gil's outreach efforts.

This you have to read.

Go to Lane Core's blog and follow the link to Ted Rall's essay on the long night of terror that will shortly descend on our fair land when George Bush torches the Reichstag. Seriously, the dude needs to get back on his meds.

Breathing New Life into the Bill Jones Campaign.

Odd, but tonight, on the way back from Communio discussion group, I heard an Issa for Governor advertisement. It's odd because it's way early for that and because the Valley doesn't get much advertising for statewide offices. I guess the idea is to spend the money where the candidate gets the most bang for the buck.

On the other hand, it makes a kind of sense. If you're going hunting for Republican votes, this is where you get the most bang for your buck. The largest effort to obtain signatures for the recall petition are being made here for that reason. Likewise, if Issa figures that all he needs is a plurality and that multiple Democrats will split the dem vote, then campaigning here may be his best strategy rather than wasting his time among Democrats who won't vote Republican anyway. [Under that assessment, Bill Jones, who is a Fresnan and the last Republican to hold a state wide office as Secretary of State, would seem to have the inside track.]

So, maybe, just maybe, the often overlooked Valley will actually be responsible for picking the next California Governor.

The McCarthyite Temptation

There's something in the conservative temperment that draws certain conservatives to the Holy Grail of the movement - redeeming Joseph McCarthy's reputation. There is an equally strong counterreaction among other conservatives who want none of it. Last night, I got an earful from a former boss who loudly assured me that McCarthy was the biggest jerk in American history, notwithstanding his sainted mother's veneration of Tailgunner Joe. Ombudsgod points out the cat fight kick started by Ann Coulter's new book, "Treason," by linking to David Horowitz' essay on Coulter's book. Horowitz points out that one problem that McCarthy had in finding communists in government was not they had never been there, rather the problem was that Truman had got there first:

Democrats did allow the Communists to penetrate their party and their administrations in the 1930s and 1940s. The Truman Administration did dismiss Republican charges of Communist influence as partisan politics and was lackadaisical before 1947 in taking the internal Communist threat seriously. But in 1947 all that changed. Truman instituted a comprehensive loyalty program to ferret out Communist influence in government. It was the Truman Administration that prosecuted Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs. In fact the decisive battles of this era took place inside liberalism. It was Walter Reuther – a socialist – who purged the Communist from the CIO and it was Truman’s anti-Communist policies that provoked the Communists into leaving the Democratic Party and forming the Progressive Party to oppose his re-election in 1948.

Then, there's this passage on Kennedy:

It’s true that he bungled the invasion but Dwight Eisenhower failed the Hungarians in 1956, while Nixon and Kissinger betrayed the Vietnamese in the infamous truce of 1973. In 1961, Kennedy stood the Russians down in Berlin – risking nuclear war to do so – and a year later he again risked nuclear war to force the removal of Soviet missiles in Cuba. He put 16,000 troops into Vietnam rather than write that country off to the Communists. Why is Ann equivocating on the question of his loyalty and commitment to the anti-Communist cause?

Now, I will stand second to no man in my disdain for JFK and the Kennedys, and I say that as a proud Irish Catholic whose mother hails from Quincy, Massachusetts, but Kennedy's anti-communist bona fides are undisputed. [In fact, the unbending anti-communist orientation of the Catholic church and American Catholics may have finally allowed the acceptance of Catholics as true Americans and the election of Kennedy (something we forget after the flirtation with "Liberation Theology" in the 1970s.)] So, Coulter is wrong, wrong, wrong on that point.

On the other hand, Coulter isn't a thinker; she's a demagogue with legs. She oversells for effect and the truth is that the Democrats have abandoned Truman-Kennedy tradition. The history of Kennedy's staunch anti-communist policies have largely been sent down the memory hole. If Kennedy's role in Viet Nam is remembered, it's not that he got us involved in that war and why. It's probably the pop historical fantasy that he would have kept us out of Viet Nam (if only he hadn't been killed by the military (as opposed to a lone psycho with real communist connections.)) So, in some sense, Coulter's polemic is accurate insofar as it plays off the distorted history that the Left has been promoting as historical fact for the last three decades.

Sympathy for the Devil.

File this one away in the "little bit of unknown Americana" archive. Mark Shea has a quick post on Madelyn Murray O'HaraO'Hair, founder and self promoter of the American Atheist Society. The real action is in the comments. One comment by Rosemarie expresses a moving sympathy for O'Hair's tortured soul:

Anyway, she took her fury out on God, standing in the rain during a thunderstorm, hurling profanities at the heavens and daring God to kill her. When she didn't get hit by lightning, she decided God didn't exist because He didn't strike her.

Guess she never considered that God may have actually had compassion on a distraught pregnant woman who had been abandoned by her hypocritical husband, and on her preborn child who would one day serve Him. What if He *had* struck her and her baby down, all because of her little tantrum - what a rotten fellow He'd be! Talk about "Damned if you do, damned if you don't".

Yes, a very tragic figure. I know she'd hate to know it, but I've prayed for her. Maybe she received the grace to repent right before she was murdered. I guess we won't know in this life. Lord have mercy on her soul....

Then there are the comments by Pavel Chichikov who claims to have been working in a Soviet Embassy and received a call from O'Hair wherein she complained bitterly about the lack of support she was receiving from the pre-eminent atheist state. Fascinating story.

The whole thing caused Shea to repent the harshness of his original post.

Correction: Robert Musil thoughtfully e-mailed me to point out that the unhappy atheist was O'Hair, not O'Hara. Argh, zounds, oofta. My brain must have been conflating Madelyn Murray O'Hair with Maureen O'Hara, who last I checked did not publicly oppose school prayer and therefore has nothing to do with the subject of this post. Well, that was embarrassing.

Bear Flag Rebellion

In these desperate times, when the forces of repression and intolerance are ascendant, the good and the true must join forces to make common cause to "flood the zone." It is therefore with pride and not a certain amount of humility, that I announce that Lex Communis has joined The Bear Flag League, a motley band of "right leaning blogs" located in California.

I use the term "California" loosely since it appears that the bulk of the league is from Southern California and the Bay Area. Nonetheless, as the sole blogger from California's Republican Heartland, Lex Communis has to give credit to the doughty Conservative warriors in the "blue counties" of Southern California and the Bay area who are facing the struggle each and every day.

Over the next week, I should be adding links and a special section to the directory. [Note: that was easier than I thought, since I already had directory listings for three of six, and XLRQ has been on my to do list for months.]

Now, if someone could only tell me how to add the nifty flag.

Oddly striking a blow against drivel and Reality TV, but I repeat myself.

I am totally with the plaintiff in the lawsuit against Peter Funt and Candid Camera, which is based on the following facts:

"Okay, where's the candid camera?" Philip Zelnick demanded on June 15, 2001, when an airport security official in Bullhead City, Ariz., instructed him to climb atop an authentic-looking, but phony, X-ray scanner machine (though identical in appearance to scanners reserved for carry-on luggage, the fake did not emit real rays).

It seemed fishy, but Zelnick complied. By the time the security guard (actually "Candid Camera" host Peter Funt) barked his trademark "Smile! You're on 'Candid Camera!'" the last thing Zelnick wanted to do was smile — instead, he wanted to sue.

In a suit filed against Funt, "Candid Camera," the Pax television network, the airport and the Mojave Country Airport Authority, Zelnick, 35, claims he incurred bruises and bleeding after becoming stuck in the faux scanner. According to his lawyer, Andrew Jones, Zelnick's thigh was pinched in the machine, forming a red, fist-sized "raspberry." His leg was also punctured by a pen inside his pocket.

"It wasn't a deep wound," Jones told Courttv.com. But "anxiety, distress, and humiliation" were after-effects of Zelnick's experience.

Which I'm sure they were, that being the purpose of the whole exercise. Apparently, Funt was wearing a security uniform and leaned on unwilling participants in his little theatre de exploitation by telling them that it was a serious security matter if they demurred.

"Jones," incidentally, is Andy Jones who is a fellow North Fresno Rotarian. The "Candid Camera" lawsuit was tried last week and was recorded by Court TV. Andy told me yesterday that the jury came back with $2,000 compensatory and $300,000 in punitives.

One legal issue arising from the result is that a recent SCOTUS decision provides a general guideline that punitives should be no more than a single digit multiple of compensatory damages. If this rule applies, then Candid Camera's exposure is somthing around $20,000, which hardly seems likely to deter future invasions of acts that amount to false imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress and invasion of privacy.

Andrew Sullivan calls this essay by Jeffrey Rosen the most effective anti-Lawrence argument he's seen. That may be so, but it's more a commentary on Sullivan's exposure to true Constitutional history than on Rosen's prose. Take this passage, for example:

The reason liberal and conservative defenders of judicial restraint have long been skeptical of the Court's increasingly abstract odes to sexual autonomy is that their constitutional roots are so flimsy. The first references to the idea that the Constitution protects private decisions regarding marriage and family life occurred in the 1920s, when the Court struck down nativist state laws prohibiting the teaching of foreign languages. But those cases were better defended in terms of the First Amendment right of free expression and had nothing to do with sexual freedom. In 1965, the Court struck down a Connecticut law forbidding the use of contraceptives; but despite its infamous references to "penumbras, formed by emanations" from the Bill of Rights, it failed to identify a constitutional provision that protected a broad right of personal autonomy; instead it emphasized the special status of the marital bedroom and pointed to the Third and Fourth Amendments, which protect the spatial privacy of the home. In Roe, the right to privacy was unmasked as a right of sexual autonomy, but the Court never explained where the right came from--it simply asserted that the liberty protected by the Constitution was "broad enough to encompass a woman's decision whether or not to terminate her pregnancy," citing the Court's traditional concern with the freedom of marriage and family life. Finally, in reaffirming Roe, the Court abandoned all pretense of protecting traditional relationships of marriage and the family and, with the "sweet-mystery" passage, seemed to suggest that any restrictions on sexual freedom were constitutionally suspicious. And now comes Lawrence to confirm, by judicial fiat, Scalia's wildest fears.

Kennedy's opinion relies heavily on the idea of a growing national consensus against legislating on matters of morality. As evidence, he cites state legislatures decisions to repeal sodomy laws over the course of the last twenty years. But it's not at all clear from that record that such a consensus exists: In 1986, 25 states banned sodomy in some form; and today 13 continue to do so. Between 1986 and today, only 4 sodomy laws were repealed by state legislatures and 12 were struck down by state courts--often under the same expansive privacy reasoning that the Supreme Court failed to defend in Lawrence. It's true that only four states today single out same-sex conduct, as Texas does. But the decision to single out homosexual, but not heterosexual sodomy, wasn't made in a vacuum; it reflects an attempt to satisfy the demands of an overly activist Supreme Court. The reason that the Texas legislature, in 1973, amended its sodomy laws to prohibit homosexual but not heterosexual sodomy was because the Supreme Court said in 1972 that states couldn't discriminate between married and unmarried people in regulating sexual activity.

OK, it's well written, but not earth shattering. I like the point about consensus, though. I'd add this point - what the heck is the Supreme Court doing basing it's constitutional jurisprudence on a prevailing consensus. It seems like we already have a system to transform consensus into law and it's called democracy. The Court is supposed to make its determination of law on a past consensus which has already gone through the democratic process.

One nice point nicely stated is found over at Eve Tushnet. She writes:

Right after the bit I quoted above, Kinsley says, "Regarding children and finances, people can set their own rules, as many already do." No $#@!, Sherlock. That's part of the problem.

How could anyone look at marriage in America today and think it needs to become more ad hoc, more centered on the individual contracting adults and not on the children and the wider society, more do-it-yourself?

Marriage has developed over time (ooh, Hayek would like this!) to fulfill several specific needs that hold society together: couples' need for a promise of fidelity; children's need for a father and for stability and security; young people's need for a tie to the next and the previous generations; young people's need for a transition to adult womanhood and manhood; men's (women's too, but especially men's) need for a channel for sexual desire that is fruitful, not destructive.

As we strip marriage of its societal honor, its special status, and the various features that helped it fulfill its complex functions (and I really think its restriction to opposite-sex couples is one of these features), we make it much, much harder for love to make the world go 'round. We make it much harder to link eros and responsibility. We make it much harder for adults' desires and children's interests to line up--thus forcing unnecessary tragic choices between adults and their own children. We also, I note for the libertarians in my readership, weaken the societal infrastructure that makes limited government possible.

This observation is worth quite a bit of contemplation. Marriage is difficult. Many go or stay decisions are made at the margin. We've had a nice ride the last thirty years because we've been cashing in the social capital laid down over the last several centuries. Things are going to get tougher. I remember one teacher at a local high school telling me that her students looked at her when she explained that she had been married to the father of her children - the same man - for twenty five years as if she had just confessed to being an extraterrestrial.

What is it going to be like in ten or fifteen years when those children come to age with their deep understanding based on their own personal experiences that dad, or a succession of dads, come and go. Frankly, we have alread created the polygamous marriage.

It's simply polygamy extended through time.

Sponged.

I am on the Bishop Spong mailing list. Every week he answers a question in his typical sententious, stuffy, pompous style. Check out this question and the partial answer:

David from Rosemont, PA asks:
"Is there some hidden reason why you treat the issue of homosexuality so frequently? Are you gay?"

Dear David,

I am amazed that prejudice against homosexual persons is so deep that people like you think there must be some hidden agenda that would motivate a person to take up the battle for justice and full acceptance in both Church and society for gay and lesbian people. "He must have an angle," they say. "Perhaps he is a closeted homosexual." Actually, the surprising thing that we discover over and over is that some of the most vigorous religious opponents of homosexuality, including some who are bishops are in fact covering their own closeted homosexuality in their frequent attacks on homosexual persons.(emphasis added.)

Get that? If you ask a supporter of the homosexual agenda if he is gay, you are a vicious homophobic bigot. On the other hand, if you oppose the homosexual agenda you are likely to be a closeted homosexual. Not that Spong is indulging in the practice of proting pernicious stereotypes. He is above that kind of thing because is his heart is pure. Besides Spong has obviously determined that David from Rosemont is clearly a "hater."

But is he? The question looks like a question to me. Is it a fair question? It's not one that I would ask, but my side wasn't the one who created the idea that the "personal is the political" or the concept that one's politics are dictated by sex, race or sexual orientation. One can understand how such simplistic concepts - well and truly exploited by victim group ideologues - could be used to intuit facts about a person based on personal characteristics.

Captain Spaulding finds an odd bit of liberal hit and run smearing in a review of "T3."

This next is for the "what it's worth" file. I just drove back from Morro Bay. I stopped off at Cholame and took some photos of the James Dean Memorial. [Basically, practicing with a new digital camera.] The marker at Cholame states that on September 30, 1955, the 24 year old actor James Dean died in an automobile accident 900 yards to the east. That spot is where Highway 41 splits into Highway 41 and Highway 46. Cholame itself consists of the marker, a dirt parking lot, and the Jack Ranch Cafe. The Cafe has thoughtfully posted two signs which give Cholame a certain charm. One sign warns visitors to "watch for rattlesnakes;" the other advises that bathrooms are for customers only and directs them to the next restroom four miles down the road. This sign is not entirely accurate since the next rest stop in either directions is at least forty miles away.

Dean was cited as the cause of the accident. The other driver was Donald Turnipseed, who was coming from Fresno and making a left turn on 46, which was then 466. Now, Turnipseed is a memorable and somewhat unusual name. I've known two Turnipseeds in my time, both from Fresno. One was my high school history teacher, Dorman, and the other was his son, Bart. I've long wondered what the connection with Donald was.

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY

Rich Galen has something up on Kuwaiti democracy which is worth some reflection on this Independence Day.

Kuwait has an extremely restricted franchise - only 120,000 men out of the 2.1 million population can vote. The dominant "Islamicist" and "Tribalist" factions oppose the extension of the franchise to women. The hereditary Emir runs the government, albeit his decrees can be overturned by a majority of the parliament, as occurred with a recent decree extending the vote to women.

But, as Galen notes, some democracy is better than no democracy. This is worth considering when we hear the sophomoric criticism of those who seek to tarnish the American founders by pointing out the cramped notion of democracy that our heroic Forefathers mortgaged their lives, fortune and sacred honour to purchase. As cramped as American democracy was in 1776, and in 1789, it was still better than any comparable notion of democracy. Furthermore, it had within it the seed of better things.

Maybe that's why July 4 shouldn't be only about 1776. It should also include some remembrance of 1863, when on the same day, 100 of miles apart at Gettysburg and at Vicksburg, Americans on both sides were paying the "last full measure of devotion." Lincoln saw the Civil War as an expiation of America's sin in tolerating and maintaining slavery. Yet, while the blood price was paid by both sides, it was fortunate for the development of American liberty, and, concomitantly, for liberty on Earth, that the Union forces prevailed in both battles. America was the "last best hope" for democracy and liberty. A Confederate victory at either battle might have led to European recognition of the Confederacy. [Harry Turtledove sketches where that might have led.] Equally, it would have fostered the anti-democratic notion that the losers in democracy are permitted to take their marbles and go home when the democratic process produces results that they don't agree with. This is obviously something with which we will still struggle.

So, today, God Bless America and give thanks to the God who has blessed America with people like George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and the average American who raised children, paid taxes, created business and, when necessary, went off to fight for freedom for America and for other countries.

Stuart Buck has this essay on the "apatheistic" tradition in American religiousity.

Don't forget that July 4, 1863 saw two important event in the history of the United States. The Union was victorious at both Gettysburg and Vicksburg. The latter was arguably more important. Moreover, it revealed U.S. Grant as the true military genius of the American Civil War.