(Click on title to play video)
Saturday, May 02, 2009
The Price of a Porcine Panic
By Michael Fumento
http://www.townhall.com/
May 1, 2009
There's absolute panic over an outbreak of swine flu. "Projections are that this virus will kill 1 million Americans," the nation's top health official has warned.
But the date is 1976. And the projection proves off by 999,999 deaths. However, a hastily-developed vaccine went on to kill or crippled hundreds. Sadly, the current hysteria outbreak threatens devastation on a worldwide scale.
A calm perspective of the current outbreak of the virus now known as influenza A (H1N1) would compare it to seasonal flu. According to the CDC, the seasonal flu infects between 15 to 60 million Americans each year (5% to 20%), hospitalizes about 200,000 and kills about 36,000. That comes out to over 800 hospitalizations and over 250 deaths each day during flu season.
Worldwide deaths are 250,000 to 500,000, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), or about 700 to 1,400 per day spread out over the year.
No matter that few bothered to make this comparison during the 2003 SARS hysteria, which caused only 8,096 cases and 774 deaths worldwide with no U.S. deaths.
There's no hint that influenza A (H1N1) is either easier to transmit than seasonal flu or more lethal. The symptoms are the same, and swine flu cases so far have generally been quite mild.
As of this writing 13 countries have officially reported 365 cases of influenza A(H1N1), yet the only deaths have been Mexican. It’s not a “puzzle” as to why. All infectious diseases strike much harder in underdeveloped countries, partly because of poorer health care but primarily because the people are less healthy to begin with. Only 322 of those 8,096 SARS cases were in developed nations.
The moniker "swine flu" clearly spooks many. But pigs, with the help of birds, routinely transmit seasonal flu to humans. "Swine flu" simply means it contains some pig flu genetic material. If this eccentricity made it that inherently more dangerous than a pure human flu, the 1976 strain wouldn't have caused merely 500 infections with a 0.02% death rate.
No, influenza A (H1N1) won’t become "another Spanish Flu of 1918-19," as pig flu panic purveyors claim. Nothing will. It’s been 90 years. Back then we were hobbled by a world war, general health in developed nations was much poorer than in Mexico today, and we’ve since developed things called "antibiotics" – as well as antivirals, pneumonia vaccines and other medical tools. In all flu outbreaks, including the Spanish one, the vast majority of deaths come from secondary bacterial infections.
Not coincidentally, one of the "worrisome" similarities between Spanish flu and swine flu is that both strains are of the H1N1 subtype. But--ahem!--So is one of the major subtypes of the latest seasonal flu.
Another panic prompter is that so far influenza A (H1N1) appears to disproportionately affect younger people. Assuming this holds up, one explanation would be that older persons have received some immunity from previous exposure to a similar strain. Alarming? In any case, the stronger immune systems of younger people could explain the apparent mildness of symptoms outside of Mexico.
It's true we have no vaccine for this flu. But two years ago, the seasonal flu shot proved ineffective against the primary strain and one of the two secondary strains. There was no appreciable increase in cases or deaths. That said, it would make sense to include swine flu as one of the three strains in this fall's seasonal flu vaccine.
It's also truly reassuring to see self-important health officials grasping for straws to make the outbreak appear more serious. Keiji Fukuda, a top WHO official, invoked the dreaded "M" word (mutation). "It's quite possible for this virus to evolve," he said, whereupon it "can become more dangerous to people." Actually, evolution favors mutations that make a virus less harmful; better to adapt to a host than to kill it.
The last time a flu mutation perceptibly increased the U.S. death rate was the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 (34,000 in a smaller population) and before that the Asian flu 1957-58 (70,000). They were bad, but hardly apocalyptic. For neither were antivirals or pneumonia vaccines available.
But influenza A (H1N1) hysteria is even now delivering a gut punch to a global economy, posing a serious risk of a recession within the recession.
It was SARS hysteria, and not the relatively tiny number of cases, that cost the economies of East and Southeast Asia 0.6 percentage points of 2003 GDP, according to the Asian Development Bank. And a World Bank report last year estimated that just the costs of avoiding infection during a flu pandemic--not the illness itself--would shave off 1.9% off world GDP. Some poorer parts of the world--including that containing Mexico--would lose 2.9% of GDP.
Ironically, because as we've seen in Mexico, wealth translates into health, poorer nations could lose far more lives to the hysteria than to the virus. Such are the wages of our swine flu fright fest.
- Michael Fumento is a, journalist, and attorney specializing in science and health issues as well as author of BioEvolution: How Biotechnology is Changing Our World .
http://www.townhall.com/
May 1, 2009
There's absolute panic over an outbreak of swine flu. "Projections are that this virus will kill 1 million Americans," the nation's top health official has warned.But the date is 1976. And the projection proves off by 999,999 deaths. However, a hastily-developed vaccine went on to kill or crippled hundreds. Sadly, the current hysteria outbreak threatens devastation on a worldwide scale.
A calm perspective of the current outbreak of the virus now known as influenza A (H1N1) would compare it to seasonal flu. According to the CDC, the seasonal flu infects between 15 to 60 million Americans each year (5% to 20%), hospitalizes about 200,000 and kills about 36,000. That comes out to over 800 hospitalizations and over 250 deaths each day during flu season.
Worldwide deaths are 250,000 to 500,000, according to the World Health Organization (WHO), or about 700 to 1,400 per day spread out over the year.
No matter that few bothered to make this comparison during the 2003 SARS hysteria, which caused only 8,096 cases and 774 deaths worldwide with no U.S. deaths.
There's no hint that influenza A (H1N1) is either easier to transmit than seasonal flu or more lethal. The symptoms are the same, and swine flu cases so far have generally been quite mild.
As of this writing 13 countries have officially reported 365 cases of influenza A(H1N1), yet the only deaths have been Mexican. It’s not a “puzzle” as to why. All infectious diseases strike much harder in underdeveloped countries, partly because of poorer health care but primarily because the people are less healthy to begin with. Only 322 of those 8,096 SARS cases were in developed nations.
The moniker "swine flu" clearly spooks many. But pigs, with the help of birds, routinely transmit seasonal flu to humans. "Swine flu" simply means it contains some pig flu genetic material. If this eccentricity made it that inherently more dangerous than a pure human flu, the 1976 strain wouldn't have caused merely 500 infections with a 0.02% death rate.
No, influenza A (H1N1) won’t become "another Spanish Flu of 1918-19," as pig flu panic purveyors claim. Nothing will. It’s been 90 years. Back then we were hobbled by a world war, general health in developed nations was much poorer than in Mexico today, and we’ve since developed things called "antibiotics" – as well as antivirals, pneumonia vaccines and other medical tools. In all flu outbreaks, including the Spanish one, the vast majority of deaths come from secondary bacterial infections.
Not coincidentally, one of the "worrisome" similarities between Spanish flu and swine flu is that both strains are of the H1N1 subtype. But--ahem!--So is one of the major subtypes of the latest seasonal flu.
Another panic prompter is that so far influenza A (H1N1) appears to disproportionately affect younger people. Assuming this holds up, one explanation would be that older persons have received some immunity from previous exposure to a similar strain. Alarming? In any case, the stronger immune systems of younger people could explain the apparent mildness of symptoms outside of Mexico.
It's true we have no vaccine for this flu. But two years ago, the seasonal flu shot proved ineffective against the primary strain and one of the two secondary strains. There was no appreciable increase in cases or deaths. That said, it would make sense to include swine flu as one of the three strains in this fall's seasonal flu vaccine.
It's also truly reassuring to see self-important health officials grasping for straws to make the outbreak appear more serious. Keiji Fukuda, a top WHO official, invoked the dreaded "M" word (mutation). "It's quite possible for this virus to evolve," he said, whereupon it "can become more dangerous to people." Actually, evolution favors mutations that make a virus less harmful; better to adapt to a host than to kill it.
The last time a flu mutation perceptibly increased the U.S. death rate was the Hong Kong flu of 1968-69 (34,000 in a smaller population) and before that the Asian flu 1957-58 (70,000). They were bad, but hardly apocalyptic. For neither were antivirals or pneumonia vaccines available.
But influenza A (H1N1) hysteria is even now delivering a gut punch to a global economy, posing a serious risk of a recession within the recession.
It was SARS hysteria, and not the relatively tiny number of cases, that cost the economies of East and Southeast Asia 0.6 percentage points of 2003 GDP, according to the Asian Development Bank. And a World Bank report last year estimated that just the costs of avoiding infection during a flu pandemic--not the illness itself--would shave off 1.9% off world GDP. Some poorer parts of the world--including that containing Mexico--would lose 2.9% of GDP.
Ironically, because as we've seen in Mexico, wealth translates into health, poorer nations could lose far more lives to the hysteria than to the virus. Such are the wages of our swine flu fright fest.
- Michael Fumento is a, journalist, and attorney specializing in science and health issues as well as author of BioEvolution: How Biotechnology is Changing Our World .
Obama looks moderate, acts radical
By Mark Steyn
Syndicated columnist
Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion
Friday, May 1, 2009
We're still in the first hundred days of the joyous observances of Barack Obama's first hundred days, and many weeks of celebration lie ahead, so here are my thoughts:
President Obama's strongest talent is not his speechifying, which is frankly a bit of a snoozeroo. In Europe, he left 'em wanting less pretty much every time (headline from Britain's Daily Telegraph: "Barack Obama Really Does Go On A Bit"). That uptilted chin combined with the left-right teleprompter neck swivel you can set your watch by makes him look like an emaciated Mussolini umpiring an endless rally of high lobs on Centre Court at Wimbledon. Each to his own, but I don't think those who routinely hail him as the greatest orator since Socrates actually sit through many of his speeches.
On the other hand, if you just caught a couple of minutes of last Wednesday's press conference, you'd be impressed. When that groupie from The New York Times asked the president about what, during his first hundred days, "had surprised you the most … enchanted you the most … humbled you the most and troubled you the most", Obama made a point of getting out his pen, writing it down and repeating back the multiple categories: "Enchanted," he said. "Nice." Indeed. Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger, you may see a stranger across a crowded room, but then he scribbles down your multipart question to be sure he gets it right, and he looks so thoughtful, and suddenly he's not a stranger anymore, and the sound of his laughter will ring in your dreams.
The theater of thoughtfulness is critical to the president's success. He has the knack of appearing moderate while acting radical, which is a lethal skill. The thoughtful look suckered many of my more impressionable conservative comrades last fall, when David Brooks and Christopher Buckley were cranking out gushing paeans to Obama's "first-class temperament" – temperament being to the Obamacons what Nick Jonas' hair is to a Tiger Beat reporter. But the drab reality is that the man they hail – Brooks & Buckley, I mean; not the Tiger Beat crowd – is a fantasy projection. There is no Obama The Sober Centrist, although it might make a good holiday song:
"Obama The Sober Centrist
Had a very thoughtful mien
And if you ever saw it
You would say it's peachy keen …"
And it is. But underneath the thoughtful look is a transformative domestic agenda that represents a huge annexation of American life by an ever more intrusive federal government. One cannot but admire the singleminded ruthlessness with which Obama is getting on with it, even as he hones his contemplative unhurried moderate routine on prime time news conferences. On foreign affairs, the shtick is less effective, but mainly because he's not so engaged by the issues: He's got big plans for health care, and federalized education, and an eco-friendly government-run automobile industry – and Iran's nuclear program just gets in the way. He'd rather not think about it, and his multicontinental apology tours are his way of kicking the can down the road until that blessed day when America is just another sclerotic Euro-style social democracy, and even your more excitable jihadi won't be able to jump up and down chanting "Death to the Great Satan!" with a straight face.
It would seem to me that reality is more likely to intrude on the Obama project from overseas than domestically. But if he's lucky it won't intrude at all, not until it's too late. Thirty years ago this month, a grocer's daughter from the English Midlands became Britain's female prime minister – not because the electorate was interested in making (Obama-style) history, but just because nothing worked any more. The post-1945 socialist settlement – government health care, government automobile industry, government everything – had broken down: Inflation over 25 percent, marginal taxes rates over 90 percent, mass unemployment, permanent strikes. The country's union leaders were household names, mainly because they were responsible for everything your household lacked. Even moving around was hard: The nationalized rail network was invariably on strike, and you had to put your name on a waiting list months in advance for one of the "new" car models. The evening news was an endless parade of big beefy burly blokes picketing some plant for the right to continue enjoying the soft pampering workweek of the more effete Ottoman sultans.
Margaret Thatcher was a great leader, who reversed her country's decline – to the point where, two decades later, the electorate felt it was safe to vote the Labour Party back into office. And yet, in the greater scheme of things, the Thatcher interlude seems just that: a temporary respite from a remorseless descent into the abyss. In its boundless ambition, the Left understands that the character of a people can be transformed: British, Canadian and European elections are now about which party can deliver "better services," as if the nation is a hotel, and the government could use some spritelier bellhops. Socialized health care in particular changes the nature of the relationship between citizen and state into something closer to junkie and pusher. On one of the many Obama Web sites the national impresario feels the need to maintain – "Foundation for Change" – the president is certainly laying the foundation for something. Among the many subjects expressing their gratitude to Good King Barack the Hopeychanger is "Phil from Cathedral City, Ca.":
"I was laid off in mid-January from a job I had for 12 years. It's really getting hard to make ends meet, but this month I got some great news. This week I received in the mail official notification that my COBRA monthly payments for medical, dental and vision insurance will decrease from $468 to only $163, all due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This is a $305 in savings a month!
"I can't tell you how much of a weight off my shoulders this is. I am living proof of how the president's bold initiatives are beginning to work!"
But just exactly how do these "bold initiatives" work? Well, hey, simple folk like you and I and Phil from Cathedral City don't need to worry about the details. Once these "bold initiatives" really hit their stride maybe the cost of everything over four hundred bucks can be brought down to $163. Wouldn't that be great?
The problem in the Western world is that governments are spending money faster than their citizenry or economies can generate it. As Gerald Ford liked to say, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." And that's true. But there's an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give Phil from Cathedral City everything he wants isn't big enough to get Phil to give any of it back. That's the stage the Europeans are at: Their electorates are hooked on unsustainable levels of "services," but no longer can conceive of life without them.
Margaret Thatcher has a terrific line: "The facts of life are conservative." Just so. Alas, while the facts are conservative, everything else – the culture, the media, the institutions in which we educate our children, the language of public discourse, the societal air we breathe – is profoundly liberal. Phil is "living proof" of something, but it's not good news for conservatives.
©MARK STEYN
Syndicated columnist
Orange County Register
http://www.ocregister.com/opinion
Friday, May 1, 2009
We're still in the first hundred days of the joyous observances of Barack Obama's first hundred days, and many weeks of celebration lie ahead, so here are my thoughts:President Obama's strongest talent is not his speechifying, which is frankly a bit of a snoozeroo. In Europe, he left 'em wanting less pretty much every time (headline from Britain's Daily Telegraph: "Barack Obama Really Does Go On A Bit"). That uptilted chin combined with the left-right teleprompter neck swivel you can set your watch by makes him look like an emaciated Mussolini umpiring an endless rally of high lobs on Centre Court at Wimbledon. Each to his own, but I don't think those who routinely hail him as the greatest orator since Socrates actually sit through many of his speeches.
On the other hand, if you just caught a couple of minutes of last Wednesday's press conference, you'd be impressed. When that groupie from The New York Times asked the president about what, during his first hundred days, "had surprised you the most … enchanted you the most … humbled you the most and troubled you the most", Obama made a point of getting out his pen, writing it down and repeating back the multiple categories: "Enchanted," he said. "Nice." Indeed. Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger, you may see a stranger across a crowded room, but then he scribbles down your multipart question to be sure he gets it right, and he looks so thoughtful, and suddenly he's not a stranger anymore, and the sound of his laughter will ring in your dreams.
The theater of thoughtfulness is critical to the president's success. He has the knack of appearing moderate while acting radical, which is a lethal skill. The thoughtful look suckered many of my more impressionable conservative comrades last fall, when David Brooks and Christopher Buckley were cranking out gushing paeans to Obama's "first-class temperament" – temperament being to the Obamacons what Nick Jonas' hair is to a Tiger Beat reporter. But the drab reality is that the man they hail – Brooks & Buckley, I mean; not the Tiger Beat crowd – is a fantasy projection. There is no Obama The Sober Centrist, although it might make a good holiday song:
"Obama The Sober Centrist
Had a very thoughtful mien
And if you ever saw it
You would say it's peachy keen …"
And it is. But underneath the thoughtful look is a transformative domestic agenda that represents a huge annexation of American life by an ever more intrusive federal government. One cannot but admire the singleminded ruthlessness with which Obama is getting on with it, even as he hones his contemplative unhurried moderate routine on prime time news conferences. On foreign affairs, the shtick is less effective, but mainly because he's not so engaged by the issues: He's got big plans for health care, and federalized education, and an eco-friendly government-run automobile industry – and Iran's nuclear program just gets in the way. He'd rather not think about it, and his multicontinental apology tours are his way of kicking the can down the road until that blessed day when America is just another sclerotic Euro-style social democracy, and even your more excitable jihadi won't be able to jump up and down chanting "Death to the Great Satan!" with a straight face.
It would seem to me that reality is more likely to intrude on the Obama project from overseas than domestically. But if he's lucky it won't intrude at all, not until it's too late. Thirty years ago this month, a grocer's daughter from the English Midlands became Britain's female prime minister – not because the electorate was interested in making (Obama-style) history, but just because nothing worked any more. The post-1945 socialist settlement – government health care, government automobile industry, government everything – had broken down: Inflation over 25 percent, marginal taxes rates over 90 percent, mass unemployment, permanent strikes. The country's union leaders were household names, mainly because they were responsible for everything your household lacked. Even moving around was hard: The nationalized rail network was invariably on strike, and you had to put your name on a waiting list months in advance for one of the "new" car models. The evening news was an endless parade of big beefy burly blokes picketing some plant for the right to continue enjoying the soft pampering workweek of the more effete Ottoman sultans.
Margaret Thatcher was a great leader, who reversed her country's decline – to the point where, two decades later, the electorate felt it was safe to vote the Labour Party back into office. And yet, in the greater scheme of things, the Thatcher interlude seems just that: a temporary respite from a remorseless descent into the abyss. In its boundless ambition, the Left understands that the character of a people can be transformed: British, Canadian and European elections are now about which party can deliver "better services," as if the nation is a hotel, and the government could use some spritelier bellhops. Socialized health care in particular changes the nature of the relationship between citizen and state into something closer to junkie and pusher. On one of the many Obama Web sites the national impresario feels the need to maintain – "Foundation for Change" – the president is certainly laying the foundation for something. Among the many subjects expressing their gratitude to Good King Barack the Hopeychanger is "Phil from Cathedral City, Ca.":
"I was laid off in mid-January from a job I had for 12 years. It's really getting hard to make ends meet, but this month I got some great news. This week I received in the mail official notification that my COBRA monthly payments for medical, dental and vision insurance will decrease from $468 to only $163, all due to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. This is a $305 in savings a month!
"I can't tell you how much of a weight off my shoulders this is. I am living proof of how the president's bold initiatives are beginning to work!"
But just exactly how do these "bold initiatives" work? Well, hey, simple folk like you and I and Phil from Cathedral City don't need to worry about the details. Once these "bold initiatives" really hit their stride maybe the cost of everything over four hundred bucks can be brought down to $163. Wouldn't that be great?
The problem in the Western world is that governments are spending money faster than their citizenry or economies can generate it. As Gerald Ford liked to say, "A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take away everything you have." And that's true. But there's an intermediate stage: A government big enough to give Phil from Cathedral City everything he wants isn't big enough to get Phil to give any of it back. That's the stage the Europeans are at: Their electorates are hooked on unsustainable levels of "services," but no longer can conceive of life without them.
Margaret Thatcher has a terrific line: "The facts of life are conservative." Just so. Alas, while the facts are conservative, everything else – the culture, the media, the institutions in which we educate our children, the language of public discourse, the societal air we breathe – is profoundly liberal. Phil is "living proof" of something, but it's not good news for conservatives.
©MARK STEYN
Friday, May 01, 2009
Torture? No. Except . . .
By Charles Krauthammer
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Friday, May 1, 2009
Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy. Even John McCain, the most admirable and estimable torture opponent, says openly that in such circumstances, "You do what you have to do." And then take the responsibility.
Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don't entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen.
The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. This case lacks the black-and-white clarity of the ticking time bomb scenario. We know less about the length of the fuse or the nature of the next attack. But we do know the danger is great. (One of the "torture memos" noted that the CIA had warned that terrorist "chatter" had reached pre-9/11 levels.) We know we must act but have no idea where or how -- and we can't know that until we have information.
Catch-22.
Under those circumstances, you do what you have to do. And that includes waterboarding. (To call some of the other "enhanced interrogation" techniques -- face slap, sleep interruption, a caterpillar in a small space -- torture is to empty the word of any meaning.)
Did it work? The current evidence is fairly compelling. George Tenet said that the "enhanced interrogation" program alone yielded more information than everything gotten from "the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency put together."
Michael Hayden, CIA director after waterboarding had been discontinued, writes (with former attorney general Michael Mukasey) that "as late as 2006 . . . fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of al-Qaeda came from those interrogations." Even Dennis Blair, Obama's director of national intelligence, concurs that these interrogations yielded "high value information." So much for the lazy, mindless assertion that torture never works.
Could we not, as the president repeatedly asserted in his Wednesday news conference, have obtained the information by less morally poisonous means? Perhaps if we'd spoken softly and sincerely to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, we could equally have obtained "high-value information."
There are two problems with the "good cop" technique. KSM, the mastermind of 9/11 who knew more about more plots than anyone else, did not seem very inclined to respond to polite inquiries about future plans. The man who boasted of personally beheading Daniel Pearl with a butcher knife answered questions about plots with "soon you will know" -- meaning, when you count the bodies in the morgue and find horribly disfigured burn victims in hospitals, you will know then what we are planning now.
The other problem is one of timing. The good cop routine can take weeks or months or years. We didn't have that luxury in the aftermath of 9/11 when waterboarding, for example, was in use. We'd been caught totally blind. We knew there were more plots out there, and we knew almost nothing about them. We needed to find out fast. We found out a lot.
"We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened," asserts Blair's predecessor, Mike McConnell. Of course, the morality of torture hinges on whether at the time the information was important enough, the danger great enough and our blindness about the enemy's plans severe enough to justify an exception to the moral injunction against torture.
Judging by Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress who were informed at the time, the answer seems to be yes. In December 2007, after a report in The Post that she had knowledge of these procedures and did not object, she admitted that she'd been "briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future."
Today Pelosi protests "we were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any other of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." She imagines that this distinction between past and present, Clintonian in its parsing, is exonerating.
On the contrary. It is self-indicting. If you are told about torture that has already occurred, you might justify silence on the grounds that what's done is done and you are simply being used in a post-facto exercise to cover the CIA's rear end. The time to protest torture, if you really are as outraged as you now pretend to be, is when the CIA tells you what it is planning to do "in the future."
But Pelosi did nothing. No protest. No move to cut off funding. No letter to the president or the CIA chief or anyone else saying "Don't do it."
On the contrary, notes Porter Goss, then chairman of the House intelligence committee: The members briefed on these techniques did not just refrain from objecting, "on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda."
More support, mind you. Which makes the current spectacle of self-righteous condemnation not just cowardly but hollow. It is one thing to have disagreed at the time and said so. It is utterly contemptible, however, to have been silent then and to rise now "on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009" (the words are Blair's) to excoriate those who kept us safe these harrowing last eight years.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
The Washington Post
http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Friday, May 1, 2009
Torture is an impermissible evil. Except under two circumstances. The first is the ticking time bomb. An innocent's life is at stake. The bad guy you have captured possesses information that could save this life. He refuses to divulge. In such a case, the choice is easy. Even John McCain, the most admirable and estimable torture opponent, says openly that in such circumstances, "You do what you have to do." And then take the responsibility.Some people, however, believe you never torture. Ever. They are akin to conscientious objectors who will never fight in any war under any circumstances, and for whom we correctly show respect by exempting them from war duty. But we would never make one of them Centcom commander. Private principles are fine, but you don't entrust such a person with the military decisions upon which hinges the safety of the nation. It is similarly imprudent to have a person who would abjure torture in all circumstances making national security decisions upon which depends the protection of 300 million countrymen.
The second exception to the no-torture rule is the extraction of information from a high-value enemy in possession of high-value information likely to save lives. This case lacks the black-and-white clarity of the ticking time bomb scenario. We know less about the length of the fuse or the nature of the next attack. But we do know the danger is great. (One of the "torture memos" noted that the CIA had warned that terrorist "chatter" had reached pre-9/11 levels.) We know we must act but have no idea where or how -- and we can't know that until we have information.
Catch-22.
Under those circumstances, you do what you have to do. And that includes waterboarding. (To call some of the other "enhanced interrogation" techniques -- face slap, sleep interruption, a caterpillar in a small space -- torture is to empty the word of any meaning.)
Did it work? The current evidence is fairly compelling. George Tenet said that the "enhanced interrogation" program alone yielded more information than everything gotten from "the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency put together."
Michael Hayden, CIA director after waterboarding had been discontinued, writes (with former attorney general Michael Mukasey) that "as late as 2006 . . . fully half of the government's knowledge about the structure and activities of al-Qaeda came from those interrogations." Even Dennis Blair, Obama's director of national intelligence, concurs that these interrogations yielded "high value information." So much for the lazy, mindless assertion that torture never works.
Could we not, as the president repeatedly asserted in his Wednesday news conference, have obtained the information by less morally poisonous means? Perhaps if we'd spoken softly and sincerely to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, we could equally have obtained "high-value information."
There are two problems with the "good cop" technique. KSM, the mastermind of 9/11 who knew more about more plots than anyone else, did not seem very inclined to respond to polite inquiries about future plans. The man who boasted of personally beheading Daniel Pearl with a butcher knife answered questions about plots with "soon you will know" -- meaning, when you count the bodies in the morgue and find horribly disfigured burn victims in hospitals, you will know then what we are planning now.
The other problem is one of timing. The good cop routine can take weeks or months or years. We didn't have that luxury in the aftermath of 9/11 when waterboarding, for example, was in use. We'd been caught totally blind. We knew there were more plots out there, and we knew almost nothing about them. We needed to find out fast. We found out a lot.
"We have people walking around in this country that are alive today because this process happened," asserts Blair's predecessor, Mike McConnell. Of course, the morality of torture hinges on whether at the time the information was important enough, the danger great enough and our blindness about the enemy's plans severe enough to justify an exception to the moral injunction against torture.
Judging by Nancy Pelosi and other members of Congress who were informed at the time, the answer seems to be yes. In December 2007, after a report in The Post that she had knowledge of these procedures and did not object, she admitted that she'd been "briefed on interrogation techniques the administration was considering using in the future."
Today Pelosi protests "we were not -- I repeat -- were not told that waterboarding or any other of these other enhanced interrogation methods were used." She imagines that this distinction between past and present, Clintonian in its parsing, is exonerating.
On the contrary. It is self-indicting. If you are told about torture that has already occurred, you might justify silence on the grounds that what's done is done and you are simply being used in a post-facto exercise to cover the CIA's rear end. The time to protest torture, if you really are as outraged as you now pretend to be, is when the CIA tells you what it is planning to do "in the future."
But Pelosi did nothing. No protest. No move to cut off funding. No letter to the president or the CIA chief or anyone else saying "Don't do it."
On the contrary, notes Porter Goss, then chairman of the House intelligence committee: The members briefed on these techniques did not just refrain from objecting, "on a bipartisan basis, we asked if the CIA needed more support from Congress to carry out its mission against al-Qaeda."
More support, mind you. Which makes the current spectacle of self-righteous condemnation not just cowardly but hollow. It is one thing to have disagreed at the time and said so. It is utterly contemptible, however, to have been silent then and to rise now "on a bright, sunny, safe day in April 2009" (the words are Blair's) to excoriate those who kept us safe these harrowing last eight years.
letters@charleskrauthammer.com
Thursday, April 30, 2009
The "Blessing" of Abortion
By Marvin Olasky
http://www.townhall.com/
April 30, 2009
"Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done."
The Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale at St. David Episcopal Church in Pepperell, MA. (Jon Chase for the Boston Globe)
That was the Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale in 2007, repetitiously inciting her disciples to be not just pro-choice but fanatically pro-abortion. This is significant because, according to standard journalistic stylebooks, Ragsdale does not exist. We're told that pro-choice folks don't like abortion; they're just trying to help a woman facing tragedy.
Ragsdale, though, says abortion is a "blessing," and not only in harsh situations but good ones: "When a woman becomes pregnant within a loving, supportive, respectful relationship; has every option open to her; decides she does not wish to bear a child; and has access to a safe, affordable abortion—there is not a tragedy in sight—only blessing. The ability to enjoy God's good gift of sexuality without compromising one's education, life's work, or ability to put to use God's gifts and call is simply blessing."
Ragsdale is in the news because of a plum appointment: On July 1 she is scheduled to become president of Episcopal Divinity School, a major seminary near Harvard that was founded in 1974 when two venerable divinity schools (founded in 1858 and 1867) merged.
Hear some more of Ragsdale's statement to her troops: "I want to thank all of you who protect this blessing—who do this work every day: the health care providers, doctors, nurses, technicians, receptionists, who put your lives on the line to care for others (you are heroes—in my eyes, you are saints); the escorts and the activists; the lobbyists and the clinic defenders; all of you. You're engaged in holy work."
Ragsdale is a member of the board of NARAL Pro-Choice America and for eight years chaired the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights. Nevertheless, calling abortion "holy work" seemed so over-the-top that WORLD called Ragsdale to ask whether a fanatic had taken her name in a variant of identity theft. Ragsdale acknowledged that the words were hers and that she still identified abortion with "blessing." She said, though, that she had pulled that speech off her website because it was "creating an occasion for sin" as readers posted critical comments. She also said she's "really busy and can't keep up with the comments coming in."
How has Ragsdale developed her position? I looked on her website at sermons that remain. In 2005 she asked rhetorically why pro-lifers did not look at pro-aborts "with tolerance and respect." She then said, "The answer to that question is that in this arena it is women who must make the final decision and that you do not respect the moral agency (or full personhood) of women simply because we are women." Convenient: It's not about life; it's about sexism.
But go back further, to an Easter sermon in 2003 when she said that the Resurrection may never have happened. (Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "If Christ has not been raised, our faith is futile . . . we are of all people most to be pitied.") And go back further to Easter 2002: "The suffering and death of Jesus, according to the theory of the Atonement, pays for our sins and buys our salvation. It's an interesting theory, but not one that I find compelling."
Some denominations have cracked open on issues of homosexual ordination, but the fissure began long before, when clerics put God on trial and chose which doctrines they found compelling. In 2003, proclaiming her lesbianism, Ragsdale took aim at those who say that "we can't help being gay—the old take pity, have mercy, argument. You know, the one that concludes with a plaintive—who would choose this? Let me answer that with three words: Me! Me! Me!"
The tragedy of abortion is bad enough, but the origin of the tragedy, and so many others of our time, emerges from worship not of Christ but of "me, me, me." Katherine Ragsdale may show this tendency in a heightened form, but all of us display it to some degree. May God have mercy on her, on her students, and on all of us.
http://www.townhall.com/
April 30, 2009
"Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Let me hear you say it: abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done. Abortion is a blessing and our work is not done."
The Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale at St. David Episcopal Church in Pepperell, MA. (Jon Chase for the Boston Globe)
That was the Rev. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale in 2007, repetitiously inciting her disciples to be not just pro-choice but fanatically pro-abortion. This is significant because, according to standard journalistic stylebooks, Ragsdale does not exist. We're told that pro-choice folks don't like abortion; they're just trying to help a woman facing tragedy.
Ragsdale, though, says abortion is a "blessing," and not only in harsh situations but good ones: "When a woman becomes pregnant within a loving, supportive, respectful relationship; has every option open to her; decides she does not wish to bear a child; and has access to a safe, affordable abortion—there is not a tragedy in sight—only blessing. The ability to enjoy God's good gift of sexuality without compromising one's education, life's work, or ability to put to use God's gifts and call is simply blessing."
Ragsdale is in the news because of a plum appointment: On July 1 she is scheduled to become president of Episcopal Divinity School, a major seminary near Harvard that was founded in 1974 when two venerable divinity schools (founded in 1858 and 1867) merged.
Hear some more of Ragsdale's statement to her troops: "I want to thank all of you who protect this blessing—who do this work every day: the health care providers, doctors, nurses, technicians, receptionists, who put your lives on the line to care for others (you are heroes—in my eyes, you are saints); the escorts and the activists; the lobbyists and the clinic defenders; all of you. You're engaged in holy work."
Ragsdale is a member of the board of NARAL Pro-Choice America and for eight years chaired the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Rights. Nevertheless, calling abortion "holy work" seemed so over-the-top that WORLD called Ragsdale to ask whether a fanatic had taken her name in a variant of identity theft. Ragsdale acknowledged that the words were hers and that she still identified abortion with "blessing." She said, though, that she had pulled that speech off her website because it was "creating an occasion for sin" as readers posted critical comments. She also said she's "really busy and can't keep up with the comments coming in."
How has Ragsdale developed her position? I looked on her website at sermons that remain. In 2005 she asked rhetorically why pro-lifers did not look at pro-aborts "with tolerance and respect." She then said, "The answer to that question is that in this arena it is women who must make the final decision and that you do not respect the moral agency (or full personhood) of women simply because we are women." Convenient: It's not about life; it's about sexism.
But go back further, to an Easter sermon in 2003 when she said that the Resurrection may never have happened. (Paul wrote to the Corinthians, "If Christ has not been raised, our faith is futile . . . we are of all people most to be pitied.") And go back further to Easter 2002: "The suffering and death of Jesus, according to the theory of the Atonement, pays for our sins and buys our salvation. It's an interesting theory, but not one that I find compelling."
Some denominations have cracked open on issues of homosexual ordination, but the fissure began long before, when clerics put God on trial and chose which doctrines they found compelling. In 2003, proclaiming her lesbianism, Ragsdale took aim at those who say that "we can't help being gay—the old take pity, have mercy, argument. You know, the one that concludes with a plaintive—who would choose this? Let me answer that with three words: Me! Me! Me!"
The tragedy of abortion is bad enough, but the origin of the tragedy, and so many others of our time, emerges from worship not of Christ but of "me, me, me." Katherine Ragsdale may show this tendency in a heightened form, but all of us display it to some degree. May God have mercy on her, on her students, and on all of us.
The Real Culture War Is Over Capitalism
Tea parties, 'ethical populism,' and the moral case against redistribution.
By ARTHUR C. BROOKS
The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/home-page
April 30, 2009
There is a major cultural schism developing in America. But it's not over abortion, same-sex marriage or home schooling, as important as these issues are. The new divide centers on free enterprise -- the principle at the core of American culture.
Despite President Barack Obama's early personal popularity, we can see the beginnings of this schism in the "tea parties" that have sprung up around the country. In these grass-roots protests, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans have joined together to make public their opposition to government deficits, unaccountable bureaucratic power, and a sense that the government is too willing to prop up those who engaged in corporate malfeasance and mortgage fraud.
The data support the protesters' concerns. In a publication with the ironic title, "A New Era of Responsibility," the president's budget office reveals average deficits of 4.7% in the five years after this recession is over. The Congressional Budget Office predicts $9.3 trillion in new debt over the coming decade.
And what investments justify our leaving this gargantuan bill for our children and grandchildren to pay? Absurdities, in the view of many -- from bailing out General Motors and the United Auto Workers to building an environmentally friendly Frisbee golf course in Austin, Texas. On behalf of corporate welfare, political largess and powerful special interests, government spending will grow continuously in the coming years as a percentage of the economy -- as will tax collections.
Still, the tea parties are not based on the cold wonkery of budget data. They are based on an "ethical populism." The protesters are homeowners who didn't walk away from their mortgages, small business owners who don't want corporate welfare and bankers who kept their heads during the frenzy and don't need bailouts. They were the people who were doing the important things right -- and who are now watching elected politicians reward those who did the important things wrong.
Voices in the media, academia, and the government will dismiss this ethical populism as a fringe movement -- maybe even dangerous extremism. In truth, free markets, limited government, and entrepreneurship are still a majoritarian taste. In March 2009, the Pew Research Center asked people if we are better off "in a free market economy even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time." Fully 70% agreed, versus 20% who disagreed.
Free enterprise is culturally mainstream, for the moment. Asked in a Rasmussen poll conducted this month to choose the better system between capitalism and socialism, 13% of respondents over 40 chose socialism. For those under 30, this percentage rose to 33%. (Republicans were 11 times more likely to prefer capitalism than socialism; Democrats were almost evenly split between the two systems.)
The government has been abetting this trend for years by exempting an increasing number of Americans from federal taxation. My colleague Adam Lerrick showed in these pages last year that the percentage of American adults who have no federal income-tax liability will rise to 49% from 40% under Mr. Obama's tax plan. Another 11% will pay less than 5% of their income in federal income taxes and less than $1,000 in total.
To put a modern twist on the old axiom, a man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart; a man who is still a socialist at 40 either has no head, or pays no taxes. Social Democrats are working to create a society where the majority are net recipients of the "sharing economy." They are fighting a culture war of attrition with economic tools. Defenders of capitalism risk getting caught flat-footed with increasingly antiquated arguments that free enterprise is a Main Street pocketbook issue. Progressives are working relentlessly to see that it is not.
Advocates of free enterprise must learn from the growing grass-roots protests, and make the moral case for freedom and entrepreneurship. They have to declare that it is a moral issue to confiscate more income from the minority simply because the government can. It's also a moral issue to lower the rewards for entrepreneurial success, and to spend what we don't have without regard for our children's future.
Enterprise defenders also have to define "fairness" as protecting merit and freedom. This is more intuitively appealing to Americans than anything involving forced redistribution. Take public attitudes toward the estate tax, which only a few (who leave estates in the millions of dollars) will ever pay, but which two-thirds of Americans believe is "not fair at all," according to a 2009 Harris poll. Millions of ordinary citizens believe it is unfair for the government to be predatory -- even if the prey are wealthy.
Political strategy aside, intellectual organizations like my own have a constructive role in the coming cultural conflict. As policymakers offer a redistributionist future to a fearful nation and a new culture war simmers, we must respond with tangible, enterprise-oriented policy alternatives. For example, it is not enough to point out that nationalized health care will make going to the doctor about as much fun as a trip to the department of motor vehicles. We need to offer specific, market-based reform solutions.
This is an exhilarating time for proponents of freedom and individual opportunity. The last several years have brought malaise, in which the "conservative" politicians in power paid little more than lip service to free enterprise. Today, as in the late 1970s, we have an administration, Congress and media-academic complex openly working to change American culture in ways that most mainstream Americans will not like. Like the Carter era, this adversity offers the first opportunity in years for true cultural renewal.
Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute.
By ARTHUR C. BROOKS
The Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/home-page
April 30, 2009
There is a major cultural schism developing in America. But it's not over abortion, same-sex marriage or home schooling, as important as these issues are. The new divide centers on free enterprise -- the principle at the core of American culture.Despite President Barack Obama's early personal popularity, we can see the beginnings of this schism in the "tea parties" that have sprung up around the country. In these grass-roots protests, hundreds of thousands of ordinary Americans have joined together to make public their opposition to government deficits, unaccountable bureaucratic power, and a sense that the government is too willing to prop up those who engaged in corporate malfeasance and mortgage fraud.
The data support the protesters' concerns. In a publication with the ironic title, "A New Era of Responsibility," the president's budget office reveals average deficits of 4.7% in the five years after this recession is over. The Congressional Budget Office predicts $9.3 trillion in new debt over the coming decade.
And what investments justify our leaving this gargantuan bill for our children and grandchildren to pay? Absurdities, in the view of many -- from bailing out General Motors and the United Auto Workers to building an environmentally friendly Frisbee golf course in Austin, Texas. On behalf of corporate welfare, political largess and powerful special interests, government spending will grow continuously in the coming years as a percentage of the economy -- as will tax collections.
Still, the tea parties are not based on the cold wonkery of budget data. They are based on an "ethical populism." The protesters are homeowners who didn't walk away from their mortgages, small business owners who don't want corporate welfare and bankers who kept their heads during the frenzy and don't need bailouts. They were the people who were doing the important things right -- and who are now watching elected politicians reward those who did the important things wrong.
Voices in the media, academia, and the government will dismiss this ethical populism as a fringe movement -- maybe even dangerous extremism. In truth, free markets, limited government, and entrepreneurship are still a majoritarian taste. In March 2009, the Pew Research Center asked people if we are better off "in a free market economy even though there may be severe ups and downs from time to time." Fully 70% agreed, versus 20% who disagreed.
Free enterprise is culturally mainstream, for the moment. Asked in a Rasmussen poll conducted this month to choose the better system between capitalism and socialism, 13% of respondents over 40 chose socialism. For those under 30, this percentage rose to 33%. (Republicans were 11 times more likely to prefer capitalism than socialism; Democrats were almost evenly split between the two systems.)
The government has been abetting this trend for years by exempting an increasing number of Americans from federal taxation. My colleague Adam Lerrick showed in these pages last year that the percentage of American adults who have no federal income-tax liability will rise to 49% from 40% under Mr. Obama's tax plan. Another 11% will pay less than 5% of their income in federal income taxes and less than $1,000 in total.
To put a modern twist on the old axiom, a man who is not a socialist at 20 has no heart; a man who is still a socialist at 40 either has no head, or pays no taxes. Social Democrats are working to create a society where the majority are net recipients of the "sharing economy." They are fighting a culture war of attrition with economic tools. Defenders of capitalism risk getting caught flat-footed with increasingly antiquated arguments that free enterprise is a Main Street pocketbook issue. Progressives are working relentlessly to see that it is not.
Advocates of free enterprise must learn from the growing grass-roots protests, and make the moral case for freedom and entrepreneurship. They have to declare that it is a moral issue to confiscate more income from the minority simply because the government can. It's also a moral issue to lower the rewards for entrepreneurial success, and to spend what we don't have without regard for our children's future.
Enterprise defenders also have to define "fairness" as protecting merit and freedom. This is more intuitively appealing to Americans than anything involving forced redistribution. Take public attitudes toward the estate tax, which only a few (who leave estates in the millions of dollars) will ever pay, but which two-thirds of Americans believe is "not fair at all," according to a 2009 Harris poll. Millions of ordinary citizens believe it is unfair for the government to be predatory -- even if the prey are wealthy.
Political strategy aside, intellectual organizations like my own have a constructive role in the coming cultural conflict. As policymakers offer a redistributionist future to a fearful nation and a new culture war simmers, we must respond with tangible, enterprise-oriented policy alternatives. For example, it is not enough to point out that nationalized health care will make going to the doctor about as much fun as a trip to the department of motor vehicles. We need to offer specific, market-based reform solutions.
This is an exhilarating time for proponents of freedom and individual opportunity. The last several years have brought malaise, in which the "conservative" politicians in power paid little more than lip service to free enterprise. Today, as in the late 1970s, we have an administration, Congress and media-academic complex openly working to change American culture in ways that most mainstream Americans will not like. Like the Carter era, this adversity offers the first opportunity in years for true cultural renewal.
Mr. Brooks is president of the American Enterprise Institute.
MUSLIMS: 'WE DO THAT ON FIRST DATES'
By Ann Coulter
http://www.anncoulter.com/
April 29, 2009
Without any pretense of an argument, which liberals are neurologically incapable of, the mainstream media are now asserting that our wussy interrogation techniques at Guantanamo constituted "torture" and have irreparably harmed America's image abroad.
Only the second of those alleged facts is true: The president's release of the Department of Justice interrogation memos undoubtedly hurt America's image abroad, as we are snickered at in capitals around the world, where they know what real torture is. The Arabs surely view these memos as a pack of lies. What about the pills Americans have to turn us gay?
The techniques used against the most stalwart al-Qaida members, such as Abu Zubaydah, included one terrifying procedure referred to as "the attention grasp." As described in horrifying detail in the Justice Department memo, the "attention grasp" consisted of:
"(G)rasping the individual with both hands, one hand on each side of the collar opening, in a controlled and quick motion. In the same motion as the grasp, the individual is drawn toward the interrogator."
The end.
There are rumors that Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney wanted to take away the interrogators' Altoids before they administered "the grasp," but Department of Justice lawyers deemed this too cruel.
And that's not all! As the torments were gradually increased, next up the interrogation ladder came "walling." This involves pushing the terrorist against a flexible wall, during which his "head and neck are supported with a rolled hood or towel that provides a C-collar effect to prevent whiplash."
People pay to have a lot rougher stuff done to them at Six Flags Great Adventure. Indeed, with plastic walls and soft neck collars, "walling" may be the world's first method of "torture" in which all the implements were made by Fisher-Price.
As the memo darkly notes, walling doesn't cause any pain, but is supposed to induce terror by making a "loud noise": "(T)he false wall is in part constructed to create a loud sound when the individual hits it, which will further shock and surprise." (!!!)
If you need a few minutes to compose yourself after being subjected to that horror, feel free to take a break from reading now. Sometimes a cold compress on the forehead is helpful, but don't let it drip or you might end up waterboarding yourself.
The CIA's interrogation techniques couldn't be more ridiculous if they were out of Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch:
Cardinal! Poke her with the soft cushions! ...
Hmm! She is made of harder stuff! Cardinal Fang! Fetch ... THE COMFY CHAIR!
So you think you are strong because you can survive the soft cushions. Well, we shall see. Biggles! Put her in the Comfy Chair! ...
Now -- you will stay in the Comfy Chair until lunchtime, with only a cup of coffee at 11.
Further up the torture ladder -- from Guantanamo, not Monty Python -- comes the "insult slap," which is designed to be virtually painless, but involves the interrogator invading "the individual's personal space."
If that doesn't work, the interrogator shows up the next day wearing the same outfit as the terrorist. (Awkward.)
I will spare you the gruesome details of the CIA's other comical interrogation techniques and leap directly to the penultimate "torture" in their arsenal: the caterpillar.
In this unspeakable brutality, a harmless caterpillar is placed in the terrorist's cell. Justice Department lawyers expressly denied the interrogators' request to trick the terrorist into believing the caterpillar was a "stinging insect."
Human rights groups have variously described being trapped in a cell with a live caterpillar as "brutal," "soul-wrenching" and, of course, "adorable."
If the terrorist manages to survive the non-stinging caterpillar maneuver -- the most fiendish method of torture ever devised by the human mind that didn't involve being forced to watch "The View" -- CIA interrogators had another sadistic trick up their sleeves.
I am not at liberty to divulge the details, except to mention the procedure's terror-inducing name: "the ladybug."
Finally, the most savage interrogation technique at Guantanamo was "waterboarding," which is only slightly rougher than the Comfy Chair.
Thousands of our troops are waterboarded every year as part of their training, but not until it was done to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- mastermind of the 9/11 attack on America -- were liberal consciences shocked.
I think they were mostly shocked because they couldn't figure out how Joey Buttafuoco ended up in Guantanamo.
As non-uniformed combatants, all of the detainees at Guantanamo could have been summarily shot on the battlefield under the Laws of War.
Instead, we gave them comfy chairs, free lawyers, better food than is served in Afghani caves, prayer rugs, recreational activities and top-flight medical care -- including one terrorist who was released, whereupon he rejoined the jihad against America, after being fitted for an expensive artificial leg at Guantanamo, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.
Only three terrorists -- who could have been shot -- were waterboarded. This is not nearly as bad as "snowboarding," which is known to cause massive buttocks pain and results in approximately 10 deaths per year.
Normal human beings -- especially those who grew up with my older brother, Jimmy -- can't read the interrogation memos without laughing.
At Al-Jazeera, they don't believe these interrogation memos are for real. Muslims look at them and say: THIS IS ALL THEY'RE DOING? We do that for practice. We do that to our friends.
But The New York Times is populated with people who can't believe they live in a country where people would put a caterpillar in a terrorist's cell.
http://www.anncoulter.com/
April 29, 2009
Without any pretense of an argument, which liberals are neurologically incapable of, the mainstream media are now asserting that our wussy interrogation techniques at Guantanamo constituted "torture" and have irreparably harmed America's image abroad.Only the second of those alleged facts is true: The president's release of the Department of Justice interrogation memos undoubtedly hurt America's image abroad, as we are snickered at in capitals around the world, where they know what real torture is. The Arabs surely view these memos as a pack of lies. What about the pills Americans have to turn us gay?
The techniques used against the most stalwart al-Qaida members, such as Abu Zubaydah, included one terrifying procedure referred to as "the attention grasp." As described in horrifying detail in the Justice Department memo, the "attention grasp" consisted of:
"(G)rasping the individual with both hands, one hand on each side of the collar opening, in a controlled and quick motion. In the same motion as the grasp, the individual is drawn toward the interrogator."
The end.
There are rumors that Dick "Darth Vader" Cheney wanted to take away the interrogators' Altoids before they administered "the grasp," but Department of Justice lawyers deemed this too cruel.
And that's not all! As the torments were gradually increased, next up the interrogation ladder came "walling." This involves pushing the terrorist against a flexible wall, during which his "head and neck are supported with a rolled hood or towel that provides a C-collar effect to prevent whiplash."
People pay to have a lot rougher stuff done to them at Six Flags Great Adventure. Indeed, with plastic walls and soft neck collars, "walling" may be the world's first method of "torture" in which all the implements were made by Fisher-Price.
As the memo darkly notes, walling doesn't cause any pain, but is supposed to induce terror by making a "loud noise": "(T)he false wall is in part constructed to create a loud sound when the individual hits it, which will further shock and surprise." (!!!)
If you need a few minutes to compose yourself after being subjected to that horror, feel free to take a break from reading now. Sometimes a cold compress on the forehead is helpful, but don't let it drip or you might end up waterboarding yourself.
The CIA's interrogation techniques couldn't be more ridiculous if they were out of Monty Python's Spanish Inquisition sketch:
Cardinal! Poke her with the soft cushions! ...
Hmm! She is made of harder stuff! Cardinal Fang! Fetch ... THE COMFY CHAIR!
So you think you are strong because you can survive the soft cushions. Well, we shall see. Biggles! Put her in the Comfy Chair! ...
Now -- you will stay in the Comfy Chair until lunchtime, with only a cup of coffee at 11.
Further up the torture ladder -- from Guantanamo, not Monty Python -- comes the "insult slap," which is designed to be virtually painless, but involves the interrogator invading "the individual's personal space."
If that doesn't work, the interrogator shows up the next day wearing the same outfit as the terrorist. (Awkward.)
I will spare you the gruesome details of the CIA's other comical interrogation techniques and leap directly to the penultimate "torture" in their arsenal: the caterpillar.
In this unspeakable brutality, a harmless caterpillar is placed in the terrorist's cell. Justice Department lawyers expressly denied the interrogators' request to trick the terrorist into believing the caterpillar was a "stinging insect."
Human rights groups have variously described being trapped in a cell with a live caterpillar as "brutal," "soul-wrenching" and, of course, "adorable."
If the terrorist manages to survive the non-stinging caterpillar maneuver -- the most fiendish method of torture ever devised by the human mind that didn't involve being forced to watch "The View" -- CIA interrogators had another sadistic trick up their sleeves.
I am not at liberty to divulge the details, except to mention the procedure's terror-inducing name: "the ladybug."
Finally, the most savage interrogation technique at Guantanamo was "waterboarding," which is only slightly rougher than the Comfy Chair.
Thousands of our troops are waterboarded every year as part of their training, but not until it was done to Khalid Sheikh Mohammed -- mastermind of the 9/11 attack on America -- were liberal consciences shocked.
I think they were mostly shocked because they couldn't figure out how Joey Buttafuoco ended up in Guantanamo.
As non-uniformed combatants, all of the detainees at Guantanamo could have been summarily shot on the battlefield under the Laws of War.
Instead, we gave them comfy chairs, free lawyers, better food than is served in Afghani caves, prayer rugs, recreational activities and top-flight medical care -- including one terrorist who was released, whereupon he rejoined the jihad against America, after being fitted for an expensive artificial leg at Guantanamo, courtesy of the U.S. taxpayer.
Only three terrorists -- who could have been shot -- were waterboarded. This is not nearly as bad as "snowboarding," which is known to cause massive buttocks pain and results in approximately 10 deaths per year.
Normal human beings -- especially those who grew up with my older brother, Jimmy -- can't read the interrogation memos without laughing.
At Al-Jazeera, they don't believe these interrogation memos are for real. Muslims look at them and say: THIS IS ALL THEY'RE DOING? We do that for practice. We do that to our friends.
But The New York Times is populated with people who can't believe they live in a country where people would put a caterpillar in a terrorist's cell.
Wednesday, April 29, 2009
Under Buckley's Giant Shadow
By Mona Charon
http://www.townhall.com/
April 28, 2009
Fourteen months ago Bill Buckley collapsed and died at his desk in Stamford, Conn. The ground has still not finished shaking. How could it? Two sons -- one biological and one professional -- have now written memoirs of their lives with Bill. Both make for absorbing reading.
Chris Buckley was the only child of Bill and Patricia Taylor Buckley -- two outsized personalities. "(W)hen the universe hands you material like this," Buckley explains of his decision pen the memoir, "not writing about it seems either a waste or a conscious act of evasion." Bill was of course world famous -- the founding father of modern conservatism, an American icon. Pat, too, was formidable -- tall, fashionable, witty, and sometimes outrageous. No, I mean really outrageous.
Chris relates an example: His 19-year-old daughter brought her best friend, Kate Kennedy, to dinner with Bill and Pat. Pat rounded on the poor girl and "informed her that she (Mum) had been an alternate juror in the murder trial of Kate's father's first cousin Michael Skakel." Skakel had been tried and convicted for the murder of a 15-year-old. "Having presented this astonishing (and utterly untrue) credential, Mum then proceeded to launch into a protracted lecture on the villainy of Kate's near relative." Your mother may not have committed sins like that. She may have done better or worse. But all mothers have done something that requires forgiveness by their children, just as the children will themselves need to ask forgiveness for their own transgressions. As she lay comatose and dying, Chris relates, he stroked her hair and "said, the words surprising me, coming out of nowhere, 'I forgive you.'" The tales of Pat's misbehavior are florid and accordingly more memorable than the accounts of her virtues. And yet, the deep and true grief borne by her son is eloquent evidence that this proud and domineering woman also loved tenderly.
As for his diamond-bright father, again deep love shines through in a dozen affectionate, sometimes even awed anecdotes. Chris Buckley -- I am not breaking news here -- can really write. But there are other stories, too. Bill was hardly the ideal father. "When I was 11, I spent three weeks in the hospital without a visit from him." WFB could be astonishingly selfish, as when, bored at Chris's college graduation ceremony, he gathered up friends and family and decamped to a restaurant for lunch, "leaving me to spend my graduation day wandering the campus in search of my family."
"Losing Mum and Pup" is the story of three personalities so large that one family could not hold them without shuddering and shaking. Chris describes some of his conflicts with his father as "locking theological antlers." Still, the center held.
Richard Brookhiser, in "Right Time, Right Place" tells an equally gripping tale of being handpicked as WFB's successor -- only to be later dumped. Rick was 14 when he wrote his first cover story for National Review and his precocity clearly reminded WFB of himself. The story of how their relationship unfolded over time is told, as in Chris Buckley's memoir, straightforwardly and honestly. It was easier to be WFB's protege than his son -- but there were also similarities. Brookhiser relates that Bill's style was to deliver bad news, such as the decision that Rick would not after all be the next editor of National Review, by mail when Bill was safely out of town.
But that painful episode is a small part of a fascinating look back (how does he remember so many details?) at a 30-year friendship and collaboration (a part of which I witnessed firsthand). Rick's personal history with WFB parallels the rise of the conservative movement. And it will not surprise fans of Brookhiser's biographies that this memoir is also a brilliant and beautifully written history of the past several decades. Here, for example, is the way Brookhiser describes the Republican Party circa 1984:
"The Republicans were superficially calmer. ... But because ambition and disagreement never rest, there was a subterranean struggle, as among creatures in the leaf litter on the forest floor, to define what Reaganism meant ..." And here is a biting description of George W. Bush: "(He) spoke badly out of confidence and indifference, believing that whatever he said was said well enough ... He was shorter than his father; when he passed through the crowd shaking hands he moved like a lightweight heading up to the ring for an easy bout, perhaps because it was fixed."
William F. Buckley Jr. was a key figure in American history. His gravitational pull was such that, even now, we cannot get enough of stories about him. Some of the tales in these memoirs are less than hagiographic. It reminds me of the story about Winston Churchill. After repeated episodes of bad behavior on the prime minister's part, his valet got up the courage to tell him off. When Churchill protested that the valet had been rude, he responded, "But you were rude, too." "Yes," Churchill reportedly replied, "but I am a great man."
- Mona Charen is a syndicated columnist, political analyst and author of Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help .
http://www.townhall.com/
April 28, 2009
Fourteen months ago Bill Buckley collapsed and died at his desk in Stamford, Conn. The ground has still not finished shaking. How could it? Two sons -- one biological and one professional -- have now written memoirs of their lives with Bill. Both make for absorbing reading.Chris Buckley was the only child of Bill and Patricia Taylor Buckley -- two outsized personalities. "(W)hen the universe hands you material like this," Buckley explains of his decision pen the memoir, "not writing about it seems either a waste or a conscious act of evasion." Bill was of course world famous -- the founding father of modern conservatism, an American icon. Pat, too, was formidable -- tall, fashionable, witty, and sometimes outrageous. No, I mean really outrageous.
Chris relates an example: His 19-year-old daughter brought her best friend, Kate Kennedy, to dinner with Bill and Pat. Pat rounded on the poor girl and "informed her that she (Mum) had been an alternate juror in the murder trial of Kate's father's first cousin Michael Skakel." Skakel had been tried and convicted for the murder of a 15-year-old. "Having presented this astonishing (and utterly untrue) credential, Mum then proceeded to launch into a protracted lecture on the villainy of Kate's near relative." Your mother may not have committed sins like that. She may have done better or worse. But all mothers have done something that requires forgiveness by their children, just as the children will themselves need to ask forgiveness for their own transgressions. As she lay comatose and dying, Chris relates, he stroked her hair and "said, the words surprising me, coming out of nowhere, 'I forgive you.'" The tales of Pat's misbehavior are florid and accordingly more memorable than the accounts of her virtues. And yet, the deep and true grief borne by her son is eloquent evidence that this proud and domineering woman also loved tenderly.
As for his diamond-bright father, again deep love shines through in a dozen affectionate, sometimes even awed anecdotes. Chris Buckley -- I am not breaking news here -- can really write. But there are other stories, too. Bill was hardly the ideal father. "When I was 11, I spent three weeks in the hospital without a visit from him." WFB could be astonishingly selfish, as when, bored at Chris's college graduation ceremony, he gathered up friends and family and decamped to a restaurant for lunch, "leaving me to spend my graduation day wandering the campus in search of my family."
"Losing Mum and Pup" is the story of three personalities so large that one family could not hold them without shuddering and shaking. Chris describes some of his conflicts with his father as "locking theological antlers." Still, the center held.
Richard Brookhiser, in "Right Time, Right Place" tells an equally gripping tale of being handpicked as WFB's successor -- only to be later dumped. Rick was 14 when he wrote his first cover story for National Review and his precocity clearly reminded WFB of himself. The story of how their relationship unfolded over time is told, as in Chris Buckley's memoir, straightforwardly and honestly. It was easier to be WFB's protege than his son -- but there were also similarities. Brookhiser relates that Bill's style was to deliver bad news, such as the decision that Rick would not after all be the next editor of National Review, by mail when Bill was safely out of town.But that painful episode is a small part of a fascinating look back (how does he remember so many details?) at a 30-year friendship and collaboration (a part of which I witnessed firsthand). Rick's personal history with WFB parallels the rise of the conservative movement. And it will not surprise fans of Brookhiser's biographies that this memoir is also a brilliant and beautifully written history of the past several decades. Here, for example, is the way Brookhiser describes the Republican Party circa 1984:
"The Republicans were superficially calmer. ... But because ambition and disagreement never rest, there was a subterranean struggle, as among creatures in the leaf litter on the forest floor, to define what Reaganism meant ..." And here is a biting description of George W. Bush: "(He) spoke badly out of confidence and indifference, believing that whatever he said was said well enough ... He was shorter than his father; when he passed through the crowd shaking hands he moved like a lightweight heading up to the ring for an easy bout, perhaps because it was fixed."
William F. Buckley Jr. was a key figure in American history. His gravitational pull was such that, even now, we cannot get enough of stories about him. Some of the tales in these memoirs are less than hagiographic. It reminds me of the story about Winston Churchill. After repeated episodes of bad behavior on the prime minister's part, his valet got up the courage to tell him off. When Churchill protested that the valet had been rude, he responded, "But you were rude, too." "Yes," Churchill reportedly replied, "but I am a great man."
- Mona Charen is a syndicated columnist, political analyst and author of Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help .
Speaking Truth to Power
The Nation's Pulse
By Lisa Fabrizio on 4.29.09 @ 6:06AM
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/
Some years ago, a priest friend of mine suggested that the legalization of same-sex marriage might be even more morally harmful to our nation than the scourge of abortion. How, I wondered at the time, could anything be more harmful than taking the lives of our innocent children. And then I realized that most people are not in favor of abortion but, as Rush Limbaugh often points out, they pity those around them who might be in need of that awful procedure. But the advent of the push for homosexual marriage goes much deeper; it represents a war on truth.
As we all know, liberals are crafty in their deceit; even tampering with the English language to further their aims. If they find that their ideas are not sitting well with average Americans, they simply change the labels. Think that abortion sounds too harsh? Let's call it a women's reproductive health issue. Have real scientists proved that the Earth is cooling and not warming? Let's then use the term climate change to terrify the populace. Does the word homosexual imply too much of its true meaning? Demonize those that use it by calling them homophobes.
These and other tactics of the left point toward this inescapable conclusion: it is not equality, or human rights or any other pleasant-sounding euphemisms that are behind much of their agenda. It is a deliberate attack on truth. It is their intention to strip the notion of objective truth from our national ethos. And when there is thought to be no real and permanent truth, when everyone has their own truths which are based on prevailing cultural norms or whims, who then will wield the power to make and enforce our laws? You guessed it.
But how to go about it? Where does the objective truth -- which for thousands of years has condemned homosexual behavior and infanticide as harmful to society -- still reside? It is in the shrinking abode of religion, as practiced around the world by people of faith. This then is the principal goal of the left; to separate the people from God by declaring that religion must be cordoned off from public life, that its tenets have no place in politics or anywhere else outside the church door.
Yes, it is God himself who is in the crosshairs of liberals around the world and it's not difficult to see why. If even the teachings of Natural Law can be made to seem obsolete, then the world will be wide open to any group with the power and machinery to make their truth law. That is why all modern totalitarian governments have made religion -- "the opiate of the people" -- their first target. And this plan is well underway in the United States.
As if we needed further proof, along comes the New York Times with a piece entitled, "More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops," by religion writer, Laurie Goodstein. It is mostly a touch-feely account of what wonderful folks atheists are, how they organize picnics and volunteer at soup kitchens while positing that their cause is somehow noble, "like environmentalism or muscular dystrophy."
Yes, they're just a harmless bunch of Americans who are troubled by their belief that they are viewed as "social pariahs." But the money line hits you like a slap in the face: "They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public.…The most important thing is coming out of the closet."
The piece goes on to point out that these atheists are -- surprise, surprise -- "fed by outrage over the Bush administration's embrace of the religious right," and that they are "pooling resources to lobby in Washington for separation of church and state." And so it would seem that they, like their homosexual brethren, are not merely content to shed their pariahdom, but to change the very fabric of our moral underpinning and rule of law.
We're often told that it is improper and even unfair for the majority of Americans to impose their views on others in the form of law, as if that's not how the supreme law of our land was written. Those who love the Constitution realize that while it protects the rights of minorities, religious and otherwise, the very nature of the processes to amend it not only infer, but mandate majority rule.
Make no mistake about it; our nation is in deep trouble if we continue to allow tiny minorities to dictate our way of life. Atheism, abortion, and homosexuality are all negatives, they have no affirmation of life in them. Which is to say that they lack the animating power of God, a power that has blessed this country for over two hundred years.
Lisa Fabrizio is a columnist who hails from Connecticut (mailbox@lisafab.com).
By Lisa Fabrizio on 4.29.09 @ 6:06AM
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/
Some years ago, a priest friend of mine suggested that the legalization of same-sex marriage might be even more morally harmful to our nation than the scourge of abortion. How, I wondered at the time, could anything be more harmful than taking the lives of our innocent children. And then I realized that most people are not in favor of abortion but, as Rush Limbaugh often points out, they pity those around them who might be in need of that awful procedure. But the advent of the push for homosexual marriage goes much deeper; it represents a war on truth.As we all know, liberals are crafty in their deceit; even tampering with the English language to further their aims. If they find that their ideas are not sitting well with average Americans, they simply change the labels. Think that abortion sounds too harsh? Let's call it a women's reproductive health issue. Have real scientists proved that the Earth is cooling and not warming? Let's then use the term climate change to terrify the populace. Does the word homosexual imply too much of its true meaning? Demonize those that use it by calling them homophobes.
These and other tactics of the left point toward this inescapable conclusion: it is not equality, or human rights or any other pleasant-sounding euphemisms that are behind much of their agenda. It is a deliberate attack on truth. It is their intention to strip the notion of objective truth from our national ethos. And when there is thought to be no real and permanent truth, when everyone has their own truths which are based on prevailing cultural norms or whims, who then will wield the power to make and enforce our laws? You guessed it.
But how to go about it? Where does the objective truth -- which for thousands of years has condemned homosexual behavior and infanticide as harmful to society -- still reside? It is in the shrinking abode of religion, as practiced around the world by people of faith. This then is the principal goal of the left; to separate the people from God by declaring that religion must be cordoned off from public life, that its tenets have no place in politics or anywhere else outside the church door.
Yes, it is God himself who is in the crosshairs of liberals around the world and it's not difficult to see why. If even the teachings of Natural Law can be made to seem obsolete, then the world will be wide open to any group with the power and machinery to make their truth law. That is why all modern totalitarian governments have made religion -- "the opiate of the people" -- their first target. And this plan is well underway in the United States.
As if we needed further proof, along comes the New York Times with a piece entitled, "More Atheists Shout It From the Rooftops," by religion writer, Laurie Goodstein. It is mostly a touch-feely account of what wonderful folks atheists are, how they organize picnics and volunteer at soup kitchens while positing that their cause is somehow noble, "like environmentalism or muscular dystrophy."
Yes, they're just a harmless bunch of Americans who are troubled by their belief that they are viewed as "social pariahs." But the money line hits you like a slap in the face: "They liken their strategy to that of the gay-rights movement, which lifted off when closeted members of a scorned minority decided to go public.…The most important thing is coming out of the closet."
The piece goes on to point out that these atheists are -- surprise, surprise -- "fed by outrage over the Bush administration's embrace of the religious right," and that they are "pooling resources to lobby in Washington for separation of church and state." And so it would seem that they, like their homosexual brethren, are not merely content to shed their pariahdom, but to change the very fabric of our moral underpinning and rule of law.
We're often told that it is improper and even unfair for the majority of Americans to impose their views on others in the form of law, as if that's not how the supreme law of our land was written. Those who love the Constitution realize that while it protects the rights of minorities, religious and otherwise, the very nature of the processes to amend it not only infer, but mandate majority rule.
Make no mistake about it; our nation is in deep trouble if we continue to allow tiny minorities to dictate our way of life. Atheism, abortion, and homosexuality are all negatives, they have no affirmation of life in them. Which is to say that they lack the animating power of God, a power that has blessed this country for over two hundred years.
Lisa Fabrizio is a columnist who hails from Connecticut (mailbox@lisafab.com).
Obama’s Liberal Arrogance Will Be His Undoing
American politics didn’t come to an end with Obama’s election.
By Jonah Goldberg
http://www.nationalreview.com/
April 29, 2009, 0:00 a.m.
The most remarkable, or certainly the least remarked on, aspect of Barack Obama’s first 100 days has been the infectious arrogance of his presidency.
There’s no denying that this is liberalism’s greatest opportunity for wish fulfillment since at least 1964. But to listen to Democrats, the only check on their ambition is the limit of their imaginations.
“The world has changed,” Sen. Charles Schumer of New York proclaimed on MSNBC. “The old Reagan philosophy that served them well politically from 1980 to about 2004 and 2006 is over. But the hard right, which still believes . . . [in] traditional-values kind of arguments and strong foreign policy, all that is over.”
Right. “Family values” and “strong foreign policy” belong next to the “free silver” movement in the lexicon of dead political causes.
No doubt Schumer was employing the kind of simplified shorthand one uses when everyone in the room already agrees with you. He can be forgiven for mistaking an MSNBC studio for such a milieu, but it seemed not to dawn on him that anybody watching might see it differently.
When George W. Bush was in office, we heard constantly about the poisonous nature of American polarization. For example, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg came out with a book arguing that “our nation’s political landscape is now divided more deeply and more evenly than perhaps ever before.” One can charitably say this was abject nonsense. Evenly divided? Maybe. But more deeply? Feh.
During the Civil War, the political landscape was so deeply divided that 600,000 Americans died. During the 1930s, labor strife and revolutionary ardor threatened the stability of the republic. In the 1960s, political assassinations, riots, and bombings punctuated our political discourse.
It says something about the relationship of liberals to political power that they can overlook domestic dissent when they’re at the wheel. When the GOP is in office, America is seen as hopelessly divided because dissent is the highest form of patriotism. When Democrats are in charge, the Frank Riches suddenly declare the culture war over and dismiss dissent as the scary work of the sort of cranks Obama’s Department of Homeland Security needs to monitor.
If liberals thought so fondly of social peace and consensus, they would look more favorably on the 1920s and 1950s. Instead, their political idylls are the tumultuous ’30s and ’60s, when liberalism, if not necessarily liberals, rode high in the saddle.
Sure, America was divided under Bush. And it’s still divided under Obama (just look at the recent Minnesota Senate race and the New York congressional special election). According to the polls, America is a bit less divided under Obama than it was at the end of Bush’s first 100 days. But not as much less as you would expect, given Obama’s victory margin and the rally-around-the-president effect of the financial crisis (not to mention the disarray of the GOP).
Meanwhile, circulation for the conservative National Review (where I work) is soaring. More people watch Fox News (where I am a contributor) in primetime than watch CNN and MSNBC combined. The “tea parties” may not have been as big as your typical union-organized “spontaneous” demonstration, but they were far more significant than any protests this early in Bush’s tenure.
And yet, according to Democrats and liberal pundits, America is enjoying unprecedented unity, and conservatives are going the way of the dodo.
Obama has surely helped set the tone for the unfolding riot of liberal hubris. In his effort to reprise the sort of expansion of liberal power we saw in the ’30s and ’60s, Obama has — without a whiff of self-doubt — committed America to $6.5 trillion in extra debt, $65 billion for each of his first 100 days, and that’s based on an impossibly rosy forecast of the economy. No wonder congressional Democrats clamor to take over corporations, tax the air we breathe, and set wages for everybody.
On social issues such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, Obama has proved to be, if anything, more of a left-wing culture warrior than Bush was a right-wing one. All the while, Obama transmogrifies his principled opponents into straw-man ideologues while preening about his own humble pragmatism. For him, bipartisanship is defined as shutting up and getting in line.
I’m not arguing that conservatives are poised to make some miraculous comeback. They’re not. But American politics didn’t come to an end with Obama’s election, and nothing in politics breeds corrective antibodies more quickly than overreaching arrogance. And by that measure, Obama’s first 100 days have been a huge down payment on the inevitable correction to come.
— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.
© 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
By Jonah Goldberg
http://www.nationalreview.com/
April 29, 2009, 0:00 a.m.
The most remarkable, or certainly the least remarked on, aspect of Barack Obama’s first 100 days has been the infectious arrogance of his presidency.There’s no denying that this is liberalism’s greatest opportunity for wish fulfillment since at least 1964. But to listen to Democrats, the only check on their ambition is the limit of their imaginations.
“The world has changed,” Sen. Charles Schumer of New York proclaimed on MSNBC. “The old Reagan philosophy that served them well politically from 1980 to about 2004 and 2006 is over. But the hard right, which still believes . . . [in] traditional-values kind of arguments and strong foreign policy, all that is over.”
Right. “Family values” and “strong foreign policy” belong next to the “free silver” movement in the lexicon of dead political causes.
No doubt Schumer was employing the kind of simplified shorthand one uses when everyone in the room already agrees with you. He can be forgiven for mistaking an MSNBC studio for such a milieu, but it seemed not to dawn on him that anybody watching might see it differently.
When George W. Bush was in office, we heard constantly about the poisonous nature of American polarization. For example, Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg came out with a book arguing that “our nation’s political landscape is now divided more deeply and more evenly than perhaps ever before.” One can charitably say this was abject nonsense. Evenly divided? Maybe. But more deeply? Feh.
During the Civil War, the political landscape was so deeply divided that 600,000 Americans died. During the 1930s, labor strife and revolutionary ardor threatened the stability of the republic. In the 1960s, political assassinations, riots, and bombings punctuated our political discourse.
It says something about the relationship of liberals to political power that they can overlook domestic dissent when they’re at the wheel. When the GOP is in office, America is seen as hopelessly divided because dissent is the highest form of patriotism. When Democrats are in charge, the Frank Riches suddenly declare the culture war over and dismiss dissent as the scary work of the sort of cranks Obama’s Department of Homeland Security needs to monitor.
If liberals thought so fondly of social peace and consensus, they would look more favorably on the 1920s and 1950s. Instead, their political idylls are the tumultuous ’30s and ’60s, when liberalism, if not necessarily liberals, rode high in the saddle.
Sure, America was divided under Bush. And it’s still divided under Obama (just look at the recent Minnesota Senate race and the New York congressional special election). According to the polls, America is a bit less divided under Obama than it was at the end of Bush’s first 100 days. But not as much less as you would expect, given Obama’s victory margin and the rally-around-the-president effect of the financial crisis (not to mention the disarray of the GOP).
Meanwhile, circulation for the conservative National Review (where I work) is soaring. More people watch Fox News (where I am a contributor) in primetime than watch CNN and MSNBC combined. The “tea parties” may not have been as big as your typical union-organized “spontaneous” demonstration, but they were far more significant than any protests this early in Bush’s tenure.
And yet, according to Democrats and liberal pundits, America is enjoying unprecedented unity, and conservatives are going the way of the dodo.
Obama has surely helped set the tone for the unfolding riot of liberal hubris. In his effort to reprise the sort of expansion of liberal power we saw in the ’30s and ’60s, Obama has — without a whiff of self-doubt — committed America to $6.5 trillion in extra debt, $65 billion for each of his first 100 days, and that’s based on an impossibly rosy forecast of the economy. No wonder congressional Democrats clamor to take over corporations, tax the air we breathe, and set wages for everybody.
On social issues such as abortion and embryonic stem-cell research, Obama has proved to be, if anything, more of a left-wing culture warrior than Bush was a right-wing one. All the while, Obama transmogrifies his principled opponents into straw-man ideologues while preening about his own humble pragmatism. For him, bipartisanship is defined as shutting up and getting in line.
I’m not arguing that conservatives are poised to make some miraculous comeback. They’re not. But American politics didn’t come to an end with Obama’s election, and nothing in politics breeds corrective antibodies more quickly than overreaching arrogance. And by that measure, Obama’s first 100 days have been a huge down payment on the inevitable correction to come.
— Jonah Goldberg is editor-at-large of National Review Online and the author of Liberal Fascism: The Secret History of the American Left from Mussolini to the Politics of Meaning.
© 2009 Tribune Media Services, Inc.
Between the Covers with John J. Miller
Andrew Klavan on The Last Thing I Remember
http://radio.nationalreview.com/betweenthecovers/
April 28, 2009
(Click on title to play interview)
http://radio.nationalreview.com/betweenthecovers/
April 28, 2009
(Click on title to play interview)
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The Truth Delusion of Richard Dawkins
By Melanie Phillips
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/
http://www.melaniephillips.com/
April 28, 2009
The most famous atheist in the world, biologist Professor Richard Dawkins, poses as the arch-apostle of reason, a scientist who stands for empirical truth in opposition to obscurantism and lies. What follows suggests that in fact he is sloppy and cavalier with both facts and reasoning to a disturbing degree.
I previously wrote about the remarkable debate (which can be seen at this website) between Dawkins and John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics and Fellow in the Philosophy of Science at Oxford. Lennox is the author of God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? which demolishes Dawkins by showing not only that there is no inherent conflict between science and faith but that the argument for faith is now being bolstered enormously by the remarkable developments in science. Dawkins was on the back foot because Lennox was attacking him from his own platform of science. He was on safer ground only when, in a further debate between the two at Oxford’s Natural History Museum last October, he attacked Lennox for his Christian faith which he could more easily ridicule. But to Lennox’s core arguments, he seemed to me to have no convincing response.
In a lecture earlier this month to the American Atheists’ Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, Dawkins chose to attack Lennox (about 15 minutes into this video) from the safety of an unchallenged speaking spot in front of a sycophantic audience – but in a manner which inadvertently revealed rather more about himself than he bargained for. Describing Lennox belittlingly as a ‘Christian apologist’ and an ‘Irish mathematician’, he took a comment Lennox had made at a meeting two days after the Oxford debate and tried to debunk it by claiming that Lennox had misrepresented him.
Lennox had observed that, in the Oxford debate, Dawkins appeared to have made a stunning admission by saying that ‘a good case could be made for a deistic god’(a generalised kind of deity as opposed to the personalised God of the Bible). Lennox observed that acknowledgement of a deistic god was the position arrived at recently by the celebrated former atheist philosopher Anthony Flew; and that saying a good case could be made for such a god ‘knocked the heart out’ of Dawkins’s core contention that complex life forms had derived from simple ones.
In response, Dawkins tried to maintain that Lennox had grossly misrepresented him. Pointing out that he had gone on to say that he didn’t accept the deistic argument – which indeed he had said – he claimed that Lennox had selectively quoted him to give an entirely false impression. To make his point, he drew an analogy with the conceit, once employed by a particular astronomer, of ironically disdaining authoritative sources purely as a rhetorical device to underscore the truth of an argument. Just as it would be dishonest to treat such ironic disdain as if it was seriously meant, he said, so by analogy Lennox was being dishonest by treating Dawkins’s remark about deism as if it was seriously meant when in fact he had merely been
making the concession about deism to show up the fatuousness of his [Lennox’s] belief.
But it was Dawkins’ argument which was surely disingenuous. For he had said without any hint of irony, nor with any indication that this was not sincerely meant, that
...you can make a respectable case for deism – not a case that I would accept but I think it is a serious discussion that you could have.
It was certainly true that he used this ‘respectable case for deism’ to draw a sharp comparison with belief in Jesus, upon which he duly poured scorn. But to say as he did that he was only
making the concession about deism to show up the fatuousness of his belief
was very sharp verbal practice indeed. There was no suggestion at all that he did not mean what he said -- that a respectable scientific case could be made for deism. And so Lennox was entirely justified in expressing astonishment. For even though Dawkins went on to say he did not agree with this case, given his previous absolutism in stating that anything unsupported by evidence is superstitious mumbo-jumbo and that anyone who believes that matter must have had an original creator is a cretin, it should therefore follow that no respectable case could possibly be made for deism.
The fact that he said he thought it could was surely a startling development. And it was very interesting that he should feel so defensive about having said it that this was the one aspect of Lennox’s comprehensive attack on him that he singled out for refutation; and that he tried to do so moreover through disreputable means, by imputing dishonesty to Lennox when it was Dawkins who was employing dubious debating tactics.
Wait – worse was to come.
Dawkins had made much of the fact that Lennox didn’t acknowledge Dawkins’s disagreement with the argument for deism. Dawkins then went on to claim that Lennox – who had not made anything of this whole deism issue during the Oxford debate itself – had been subsequently put up to raising it by me. Yup, your humble blogger.
This was because I had attended that debate – and afterwards had written here of my amazement at hearing Dawkins say a case could be made for deism. This is what I actually wrote about the deism point:
This week’s debate, however, was different because from the off Dawkins moved it onto safer territory– and at the very beginning made a most startling admission. He said: ‘a serious case could be made for a deistic God’. This was surely remarkable. Here was the arch-apostle of atheism, whose whole case is based on the assertion that believing in a creator of the universe is no different from believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden, saying that a serious case can be made for the idea that the universe was brought into being by some kind of purposeful force. A creator. True, he was not saying he was now a deist; on the contrary, he still didn't believe in such a purposeful founding intelligence, and he was certainly still saying that belief in the personal God of the Bible was just like believing in fairies. Nevertheless, to acknowledge that ‘a serious case could be made for a deistic god’ is to undermine his previous categorical assertion that...all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all ‘design’ anywhere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection...Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.
In Oxford on Tuesday night, however, virtually the first thing he said was that a serious case could be made for believing that it could. Anthony Flew, the celebrated philosopher and former high priest of atheism, spectacularly changed his mind and concluded -- as set out in his book There Is A God -- that life had indeed been created by a governing and purposeful intelligence, a change of mind that occurred because he followed where the scientific evidence led him. The conversion of Flew, whose book contains a cutting critique of Dawkins’s thinking, has been dismissed with unbridled scorn by Dawkins – who now says there is a serious case for the position that Flew now adopts! ...Afterwards, I asked Dawkins whether he had indeed changed his position and become more open to ideas which lay outside the scientific paradigm. He vehemently denied this and expressed horror that he might have given this impression.
You will see from this that I acknowledged loud and clear that Dawkins had said he did not agree with the case for deism – the very thing Dawkins was accusing Lennox, and therefore by extension myself, of not doing.
But now look at the text that Dawkins proceeded to put up on the screen (about 25 minutes in), saying that this was what I had written in the Spectator and in which I had grossly misrepresented what he had said:
Arch-atheist Richard Dawkins is an evolutionist. But many are now asking whether the dyed-in-the-wool critic of religion may be, well, evolving in his views about God. You see, in a recent debate with theist and Christian John Lennox, he let slip what many would regard as a major blooper: he actually admitted that there might be a case for theism of sorts. This was a worldview change of seismic proportions. It was a most remarkable turnaround. For someone who had spent over five decades championing the atheist cause to all of a sudden renounce it was an incredible achievement.
I read this with astonishment. For these were not my words at all. I had not written them in the Spectator or anywhere else.
They were written in fact by a blogger called Bill Muehlenberg at his Culture Watch site. Muehlenberg, who had read what I had written about the Oxford debate, was himself passing comment upon it. Those were the words Dawkins falsely ascribed to me, reading them out to smirks and guffaws at my expense – and accusing me thereby of distorting what he had said! He thus held me up to ridicule and accused me of lying -- at a public meeting recorded on video which, as you can see, incited hateful comments on the thread below it – on the basis of someone else’s words altogether.
Dawkins then went on to quote some of what I had actually written in my own blog entry, as follows:
Even more jaw-droppingly, Dawkins told me that, rather than believing in God, he was more receptive to the theory that life on earth had indeed been created by a governing intelligence – but one which had resided on another planet. Leave aside the question of where that extra-terrestrial intelligence had itself come from, is it not remarkable that the arch-apostle of reason finds the concept of God more unlikely as an explanation of the universe than the existence and plenipotentiary power of extra-terrestrial little green men?
This passage had been quoted on the Muehlenberg blog – suggesting that what Dawkins had done was carelessly to run together Muehlenberg’s remarks with my own quoted comments. What remarkable sloppiness. And what arrogance. Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL, the former Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, whose website advertises ‘clear thinking’ and who poses as the indefatiguable champion of intellectual integrity, can’t even be bothered to check that he is actually quoting the person he thinks he is quoting -- even while attacking her for dishonesty.
Wait – there was worse still. For the next slide he put up, immediately after -- this time -- correctly quoting my words, read:
Lying for Jesus.
Lying for Jesus! Oh dear oh dear. Not only did Dawkins falsely accuse me of distorting his position, but he accused me of doing so because he assumed I was a Christian. Five minutes’ research maximum would have told him that I am a Jew. Either he thought that all the stuff written on Culture Watch by Bill Muehlenberg, who appears to be a devout Christian, was written by me; or he assumed that, since John Lennox is a Christian, anyone who supports John Lennox must also be a Christian. Either way, the man who has made a global reputation out of scorning anyone who makes an assumption not grounded in empirical evidence has assumed to be true something that can easily be ascertained to be totally false – thus suggesting that the mind that is so addled by prejudice it cannot deal with demonstrable reality is none other than his own.
Finally, he rounded off this jeering display of intellectual sloppiness, error, ignorance and prejudice with a piece of spite. Telling his American audience that they wouldn’t have heard of Melanie Phillips, he informed them that she was
infamous as one of the most bigoted and unpleasant journalists in the whole of Britain.
When someone resorts to such gratuitous insults you know they know they have lost the argument. Indeed, Dawkins’s whole presentation in Atlanta surely betrayed unconsciously a note of desperation. For the effort he expended on attempting to rubbish both the deism point and my mockery of him for appearing to believe that ‘little green men’ were a more plausible explanation for the origin of matter than God suggested that this had really got under his skin.
The way he chose to defend himself, through insults and sneers which tried to cover his tracks as he attempted to retreat from what he had said, furthermore merely emphasised his notable reluctance to address the many arguments of substance against his pseudo-scientific attack on religion which were made by John Lennox on the grounds of scientific reason and accuracy – arguments which Dawkins most tellingly chose to ignore altogether. Instead, he went for what he thought were the soft targets -- a credulous Irish Christian and a ‘dreadful woman’ journalist – and substituted smears and jeers for proper debate.
Unfortunately, he fell flat on his face. From this attempt to tarnish his opponents with the charge of dishonesty, we learn instead that for Richard Dawkins truth is a delusion. Who other than the similarly deluded can ever take him seriously again?
http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/
http://www.melaniephillips.com/
April 28, 2009
The most famous atheist in the world, biologist Professor Richard Dawkins, poses as the arch-apostle of reason, a scientist who stands for empirical truth in opposition to obscurantism and lies. What follows suggests that in fact he is sloppy and cavalier with both facts and reasoning to a disturbing degree.
I previously wrote about the remarkable debate (which can be seen at this website) between Dawkins and John Lennox, Professor of Mathematics and Fellow in the Philosophy of Science at Oxford. Lennox is the author of God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? which demolishes Dawkins by showing not only that there is no inherent conflict between science and faith but that the argument for faith is now being bolstered enormously by the remarkable developments in science. Dawkins was on the back foot because Lennox was attacking him from his own platform of science. He was on safer ground only when, in a further debate between the two at Oxford’s Natural History Museum last October, he attacked Lennox for his Christian faith which he could more easily ridicule. But to Lennox’s core arguments, he seemed to me to have no convincing response.In a lecture earlier this month to the American Atheists’ Convention in Atlanta, Georgia, Dawkins chose to attack Lennox (about 15 minutes into this video) from the safety of an unchallenged speaking spot in front of a sycophantic audience – but in a manner which inadvertently revealed rather more about himself than he bargained for. Describing Lennox belittlingly as a ‘Christian apologist’ and an ‘Irish mathematician’, he took a comment Lennox had made at a meeting two days after the Oxford debate and tried to debunk it by claiming that Lennox had misrepresented him.
Lennox had observed that, in the Oxford debate, Dawkins appeared to have made a stunning admission by saying that ‘a good case could be made for a deistic god’(a generalised kind of deity as opposed to the personalised God of the Bible). Lennox observed that acknowledgement of a deistic god was the position arrived at recently by the celebrated former atheist philosopher Anthony Flew; and that saying a good case could be made for such a god ‘knocked the heart out’ of Dawkins’s core contention that complex life forms had derived from simple ones.
In response, Dawkins tried to maintain that Lennox had grossly misrepresented him. Pointing out that he had gone on to say that he didn’t accept the deistic argument – which indeed he had said – he claimed that Lennox had selectively quoted him to give an entirely false impression. To make his point, he drew an analogy with the conceit, once employed by a particular astronomer, of ironically disdaining authoritative sources purely as a rhetorical device to underscore the truth of an argument. Just as it would be dishonest to treat such ironic disdain as if it was seriously meant, he said, so by analogy Lennox was being dishonest by treating Dawkins’s remark about deism as if it was seriously meant when in fact he had merely been
making the concession about deism to show up the fatuousness of his [Lennox’s] belief.
But it was Dawkins’ argument which was surely disingenuous. For he had said without any hint of irony, nor with any indication that this was not sincerely meant, that
...you can make a respectable case for deism – not a case that I would accept but I think it is a serious discussion that you could have.
It was certainly true that he used this ‘respectable case for deism’ to draw a sharp comparison with belief in Jesus, upon which he duly poured scorn. But to say as he did that he was only
making the concession about deism to show up the fatuousness of his belief
was very sharp verbal practice indeed. There was no suggestion at all that he did not mean what he said -- that a respectable scientific case could be made for deism. And so Lennox was entirely justified in expressing astonishment. For even though Dawkins went on to say he did not agree with this case, given his previous absolutism in stating that anything unsupported by evidence is superstitious mumbo-jumbo and that anyone who believes that matter must have had an original creator is a cretin, it should therefore follow that no respectable case could possibly be made for deism.
The fact that he said he thought it could was surely a startling development. And it was very interesting that he should feel so defensive about having said it that this was the one aspect of Lennox’s comprehensive attack on him that he singled out for refutation; and that he tried to do so moreover through disreputable means, by imputing dishonesty to Lennox when it was Dawkins who was employing dubious debating tactics.
Wait – worse was to come.
Dawkins had made much of the fact that Lennox didn’t acknowledge Dawkins’s disagreement with the argument for deism. Dawkins then went on to claim that Lennox – who had not made anything of this whole deism issue during the Oxford debate itself – had been subsequently put up to raising it by me. Yup, your humble blogger.
This was because I had attended that debate – and afterwards had written here of my amazement at hearing Dawkins say a case could be made for deism. This is what I actually wrote about the deism point:
This week’s debate, however, was different because from the off Dawkins moved it onto safer territory– and at the very beginning made a most startling admission. He said: ‘a serious case could be made for a deistic God’. This was surely remarkable. Here was the arch-apostle of atheism, whose whole case is based on the assertion that believing in a creator of the universe is no different from believing in fairies at the bottom of the garden, saying that a serious case can be made for the idea that the universe was brought into being by some kind of purposeful force. A creator. True, he was not saying he was now a deist; on the contrary, he still didn't believe in such a purposeful founding intelligence, and he was certainly still saying that belief in the personal God of the Bible was just like believing in fairies. Nevertheless, to acknowledge that ‘a serious case could be made for a deistic god’ is to undermine his previous categorical assertion that...all life, all intelligence, all creativity and all ‘design’ anywhere in the universe is the direct or indirect product of Darwinian natural selection...Design cannot precede evolution and therefore cannot underlie the universe.
In Oxford on Tuesday night, however, virtually the first thing he said was that a serious case could be made for believing that it could. Anthony Flew, the celebrated philosopher and former high priest of atheism, spectacularly changed his mind and concluded -- as set out in his book There Is A God -- that life had indeed been created by a governing and purposeful intelligence, a change of mind that occurred because he followed where the scientific evidence led him. The conversion of Flew, whose book contains a cutting critique of Dawkins’s thinking, has been dismissed with unbridled scorn by Dawkins – who now says there is a serious case for the position that Flew now adopts! ...Afterwards, I asked Dawkins whether he had indeed changed his position and become more open to ideas which lay outside the scientific paradigm. He vehemently denied this and expressed horror that he might have given this impression.
You will see from this that I acknowledged loud and clear that Dawkins had said he did not agree with the case for deism – the very thing Dawkins was accusing Lennox, and therefore by extension myself, of not doing.
But now look at the text that Dawkins proceeded to put up on the screen (about 25 minutes in), saying that this was what I had written in the Spectator and in which I had grossly misrepresented what he had said:
Arch-atheist Richard Dawkins is an evolutionist. But many are now asking whether the dyed-in-the-wool critic of religion may be, well, evolving in his views about God. You see, in a recent debate with theist and Christian John Lennox, he let slip what many would regard as a major blooper: he actually admitted that there might be a case for theism of sorts. This was a worldview change of seismic proportions. It was a most remarkable turnaround. For someone who had spent over five decades championing the atheist cause to all of a sudden renounce it was an incredible achievement.
I read this with astonishment. For these were not my words at all. I had not written them in the Spectator or anywhere else.
They were written in fact by a blogger called Bill Muehlenberg at his Culture Watch site. Muehlenberg, who had read what I had written about the Oxford debate, was himself passing comment upon it. Those were the words Dawkins falsely ascribed to me, reading them out to smirks and guffaws at my expense – and accusing me thereby of distorting what he had said! He thus held me up to ridicule and accused me of lying -- at a public meeting recorded on video which, as you can see, incited hateful comments on the thread below it – on the basis of someone else’s words altogether.
Dawkins then went on to quote some of what I had actually written in my own blog entry, as follows:
Even more jaw-droppingly, Dawkins told me that, rather than believing in God, he was more receptive to the theory that life on earth had indeed been created by a governing intelligence – but one which had resided on another planet. Leave aside the question of where that extra-terrestrial intelligence had itself come from, is it not remarkable that the arch-apostle of reason finds the concept of God more unlikely as an explanation of the universe than the existence and plenipotentiary power of extra-terrestrial little green men?
This passage had been quoted on the Muehlenberg blog – suggesting that what Dawkins had done was carelessly to run together Muehlenberg’s remarks with my own quoted comments. What remarkable sloppiness. And what arrogance. Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL, the former Professor for Public Understanding of Science at Oxford, whose website advertises ‘clear thinking’ and who poses as the indefatiguable champion of intellectual integrity, can’t even be bothered to check that he is actually quoting the person he thinks he is quoting -- even while attacking her for dishonesty.
Wait – there was worse still. For the next slide he put up, immediately after -- this time -- correctly quoting my words, read:
Lying for Jesus.
Lying for Jesus! Oh dear oh dear. Not only did Dawkins falsely accuse me of distorting his position, but he accused me of doing so because he assumed I was a Christian. Five minutes’ research maximum would have told him that I am a Jew. Either he thought that all the stuff written on Culture Watch by Bill Muehlenberg, who appears to be a devout Christian, was written by me; or he assumed that, since John Lennox is a Christian, anyone who supports John Lennox must also be a Christian. Either way, the man who has made a global reputation out of scorning anyone who makes an assumption not grounded in empirical evidence has assumed to be true something that can easily be ascertained to be totally false – thus suggesting that the mind that is so addled by prejudice it cannot deal with demonstrable reality is none other than his own.
Finally, he rounded off this jeering display of intellectual sloppiness, error, ignorance and prejudice with a piece of spite. Telling his American audience that they wouldn’t have heard of Melanie Phillips, he informed them that she was
infamous as one of the most bigoted and unpleasant journalists in the whole of Britain.
When someone resorts to such gratuitous insults you know they know they have lost the argument. Indeed, Dawkins’s whole presentation in Atlanta surely betrayed unconsciously a note of desperation. For the effort he expended on attempting to rubbish both the deism point and my mockery of him for appearing to believe that ‘little green men’ were a more plausible explanation for the origin of matter than God suggested that this had really got under his skin.
The way he chose to defend himself, through insults and sneers which tried to cover his tracks as he attempted to retreat from what he had said, furthermore merely emphasised his notable reluctance to address the many arguments of substance against his pseudo-scientific attack on religion which were made by John Lennox on the grounds of scientific reason and accuracy – arguments which Dawkins most tellingly chose to ignore altogether. Instead, he went for what he thought were the soft targets -- a credulous Irish Christian and a ‘dreadful woman’ journalist – and substituted smears and jeers for proper debate.
Unfortunately, he fell flat on his face. From this attempt to tarnish his opponents with the charge of dishonesty, we learn instead that for Richard Dawkins truth is a delusion. Who other than the similarly deluded can ever take him seriously again?
Specter's Blame Game
[David Freddoso]
The Corner
http://corner.nationalreview.com/
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The departure of Arlen Specter looks very bad for the GOP. You never want to lose anyone. But could Senate Republicans have stopped it? No, not once it became clear that he was going to be trounced in his primary. Specter's problem is not the party in the sense of its leadership or direction, but rather with the Republican voters in Pennsylvania.
Arlen Specter switched from Democrat to Republican in 1965 so that he could win an election. He is now doing the reverse for precisely the same reason.
If we take Arlen Specter's word for why he is leaving, we have to accept the idea that the stimulus vote represented some kind of huge turning point for him. In fact, Specter's apostasy on that vote was less remarkable than several others — for example, his vote on the Employee Free Choice Act, or his courageous refusal to vote either "yes" or "no" on Bill Clinton's impeachment. The reason the stimulus vote matters is that it matters to voters and has become an issue in the primary — which again, is the only reason Specter is leaving the Republican Party.
If we take Specter's word, then the GOP has become intolerant of moderate politicians like himself. On this score, Specter appears to have a severe case of amnesia. Exactly five years ago, the national Republican Party swooped into Pennsylvania and saved him from certain defeat at the hands of Rep. Pat Toomey (R). Valuable presidential time was sacrificed on his behalf. Also sacrificed for Arlen Specter was the reputation of his conservative colleague, Rick Santorum (R), who never recovered. From that moment forward, he lost his core constituency, and was easily defeated two years later by a pro-life Democrat.
Without essential help from the party that is so intolerant of people like him, Arlen Specter would already be a former senator today. It is not the party but the voters in Pennsylvania who have stopped tolerating Specter.
If we take Specter's word, then conservatives act in bad faith when they become involved in the political process and try to elect the candidates of their choice. Conservatives should disengage from the political process and stop challenging people like Arlen Specter. They should not organize — whether through groups like the Club for Growth or otherwise — nor should they participate in the political process, nor donate to nor vote for candidates they prefer.
Specter noted this afternoon that the Club worked against several moderates, including Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R, R.I.), who won his primary but lost his general election in 2006. Chafee did not even vote for President Bush in 2004, but like Specter he received a great deal of money and help from the Republican Party in his primary.
Reps. Joe Schwarz (R, Mich.) and Wayne Gilchrest (R, Md.) are two moderate victims of the Club for Growth whom Specter mentioned today. They were not being sore losers, but rather acted in good faith when they lost their respective primaries to conservatives and then turned around and endorsed the Democratic nominee in the general election. (Note that when he lost to Specter in 2004, Pat Toomey endorsed him immediately.) Conservatives must be team players in the GOP, but if moderates behave differently, we blame the conservatives who challenge them for subsequent disunity and defeat.
What is funny is that without any action so far by the Club for Growth, social conservatives, or anyone else, Republican voters in Pennsylvania have been lining up to end Specter's career, as the polls demonstrate. That is why Specter does not want to be judged by them. It is the only reason he has left the party.
04/28 05:02 PM
The Corner
http://corner.nationalreview.com/
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
The departure of Arlen Specter looks very bad for the GOP. You never want to lose anyone. But could Senate Republicans have stopped it? No, not once it became clear that he was going to be trounced in his primary. Specter's problem is not the party in the sense of its leadership or direction, but rather with the Republican voters in Pennsylvania.Arlen Specter switched from Democrat to Republican in 1965 so that he could win an election. He is now doing the reverse for precisely the same reason.
If we take Arlen Specter's word for why he is leaving, we have to accept the idea that the stimulus vote represented some kind of huge turning point for him. In fact, Specter's apostasy on that vote was less remarkable than several others — for example, his vote on the Employee Free Choice Act, or his courageous refusal to vote either "yes" or "no" on Bill Clinton's impeachment. The reason the stimulus vote matters is that it matters to voters and has become an issue in the primary — which again, is the only reason Specter is leaving the Republican Party.
If we take Specter's word, then the GOP has become intolerant of moderate politicians like himself. On this score, Specter appears to have a severe case of amnesia. Exactly five years ago, the national Republican Party swooped into Pennsylvania and saved him from certain defeat at the hands of Rep. Pat Toomey (R). Valuable presidential time was sacrificed on his behalf. Also sacrificed for Arlen Specter was the reputation of his conservative colleague, Rick Santorum (R), who never recovered. From that moment forward, he lost his core constituency, and was easily defeated two years later by a pro-life Democrat.
Without essential help from the party that is so intolerant of people like him, Arlen Specter would already be a former senator today. It is not the party but the voters in Pennsylvania who have stopped tolerating Specter.
If we take Specter's word, then conservatives act in bad faith when they become involved in the political process and try to elect the candidates of their choice. Conservatives should disengage from the political process and stop challenging people like Arlen Specter. They should not organize — whether through groups like the Club for Growth or otherwise — nor should they participate in the political process, nor donate to nor vote for candidates they prefer.
Specter noted this afternoon that the Club worked against several moderates, including Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R, R.I.), who won his primary but lost his general election in 2006. Chafee did not even vote for President Bush in 2004, but like Specter he received a great deal of money and help from the Republican Party in his primary.
Reps. Joe Schwarz (R, Mich.) and Wayne Gilchrest (R, Md.) are two moderate victims of the Club for Growth whom Specter mentioned today. They were not being sore losers, but rather acted in good faith when they lost their respective primaries to conservatives and then turned around and endorsed the Democratic nominee in the general election. (Note that when he lost to Specter in 2004, Pat Toomey endorsed him immediately.) Conservatives must be team players in the GOP, but if moderates behave differently, we blame the conservatives who challenge them for subsequent disunity and defeat.
What is funny is that without any action so far by the Club for Growth, social conservatives, or anyone else, Republican voters in Pennsylvania have been lining up to end Specter's career, as the polls demonstrate. That is why Specter does not want to be judged by them. It is the only reason he has left the party.
04/28 05:02 PM
Music Review: Bob Dylan - Together Through Life
By DAVID FRICKE
http://www.rollingstone.com/
(Posted: Apr 13, 2009)
Bob Dylan - Together Through Life
RS: 4 of 5 Stars
Bob Dylan has sung in many voices on his records: the nasal-braying alarm of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"; the acidic dismissal in "Like a Rolling Stone"; the country hermit on The Basement Tapes; the grizzly wisecracking drifter on 2001's Love and Theft and 2006's Modern Times. But Dylan, who turns 68 in May, has never sounded as ravaged, pissed off and lusty, all at once, as he does on Together Through Life. It is a murky-sounding, often perplexing record. The lyrics seem dashed off in spots, like first drafts, while the performances — by Dylan's current touring band — feel like head arrangements caught on the run between Never Ending Tour dates. But there is a grim magnetism coursing through these 10 new songs — and most of it is in Dylan's vividly battered singing.
The shock of his voice comes right away. Dylan starts the record as if he's at a loss for words. "I love you, pretty baby/You're the only love I've ever known/Just as long as you stay with me/The whole world is my throne," he sings in the muddy samba "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'." It is a plain, unpromising opening, except for the delivery: a deep, exhausted rasp that sounds like the singer has been beaten to a pulp, then left for dead at the side of the road. When Dylan gets to the title punch line in each verse, he grumbles it with an audible sneer. As far as he can tell, there isn't much world left to sit on.
Dylan's throat has never been anyone's idea of clear and soaring. But as a young folk singer, he strained to sound older and more sorely tested than he was, as if he had known Charley Patton, A.P. Carter and the Great Depression firsthand. He's finally there, with an authentically pitted instrument ideally suited to the devastated settings of these songs and the rusted desert-shed production (by Dylan under his usual pseudonym, Jack Frost): brushed-snare strolls and bar-band shuffles; bag-of-snakes guitars, with frequent stinging fills by Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; the rippled sigh and mocking laugh of an accordion icing most songs, played by David Hidalgo of Los Lobos. Compared to the Western-swing-like buoyance of Love and Theft and the Fifties-Chess-session air of Modern Times, this record sounds like it was cut in the dead-end Mexican border town in Orson Welles' 1958 film noir, Touch of Evil, especially when Dylan gets to lines like the closing few in "Forgetful Heart," a musky blend of banjo, dirty guitar and utter emotional defeat: "All night long/I lay awake and listen to the sound of pain/The door has closed forevermore/If indeed there ever was a door."
That hardened, bleating voice is also perfect for these times: A nation drunk on hope less than six months ago now drowns in red ink and pink slips. "Some people they tell me/I got the blood of the land in my voice," Dylan cracks in the Nashville Skyline-style sway of "I Feel a Change Comin' On." But the country in these songs is running on fumes, into brick walls. "State gone broke/The county's dry/Don't be looking at me with that evil eye," Dylan snaps in the Chicago-blues lark "My Wife's Home Town," spitting the lines like a CNN news ticker. (The name of that town, according to Dylan: Hell.) "Shake Shake Mama," a string of comic come-ons with a Louisiana juke-dance gait, ends not with scoring but dire warning: "If you're goin' on home, better go the shortest way."
There is another line worth noting in "I Feel a Change Comin' On" — "You are as whorish as ever" — and Dylan growls it like a compliment. Together Through Life is, in a surprisingly direct way, about the only thing you can count on when you're surrounded by clowns, thieves and government (sometimes all the same thing) and what happens when you lose — or throw away — your good thing. In the slow hurt of "Life Is Hard," Dylan bites down gently on each syllable, over soft-shoe drums and weeping pedal steel ("My dreams are locked and barred/Ad-mit-ting life is hard/With-out you near me"). And regret doesn't get much better than his strict instructions in the final verse of "If You Ever Go to Houston," a Doug Sahm-like shot of norteño R&B: "Find the barrooms I got lost in/And send my memories home/Put my tears in a bottle/Screw the top on tight."
Ultimately, Together Through Life is a mixed bag of this decade's Dylan — impulsive, caustic, sentimental, long done with the contrived details of contemporary record-making. The album may lack the instant-classic aura of Love and Theft or Modern Times, but it is rich in striking moments, set in a willful rawness, and comes with a wicked finish. "It's All Good" is a bayou-John Lee Hooker boogie that opens with bad shit ("Big politician telling lies/Restaurant kitchen, all full of flies/Don't make a bit of difference") and just gets worse ("Brick by brick, they tear you down/A teacup of water is enough to drown"). It's a portrait of an ugly America, devolving into bare-knuckle Darwinism — survival of the coldest and cruelest — and Dylan rubs your face in it. "It's all good," he sings repeatedly with a cruel shrug in that voice, knowing damn well it's not. But Dylan is just as sure, in nearly every other song here, that there is strength in numbers — and that number is two.
It's All Good on Bob Dylan's 'Together Through Life'
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/
April 28, 2009
Even this late, one month shy of his 68th birthday, another side of Bob Dylan reveals itself.
After securing iconic status in the '60s, the most revered songwriter of the modern age has spent decades subverting his image, confounding expectations and redefining himself.
He does all three to delightful effect on Together Through Life (* * * * out of four), a raffish riff on romance. Dylan's 33rd solo album, out Tuesday, lives up to the artistic standards established by a trilogy of career-recharging gems that started with 1997's Time Out of Mind. But he deviates from their apocalyptic burdens to spin yarns, wry and real, of ordinary folks in the grip of lust, longing and heartache.
The album sprang from a single jazz-tinged ballad, Life Is Hard, composed for French director Olivier Dahan, who made the Edith Piaf biopic La Vie En Rose and asked Dylan to contribute material for the upcoming My Own Love Song.
Inspired, Dylan lingered in the studio with his band and accordion player David Hidalgo of Los Lobos to follow his impetuous muse.
Producing himself under the usual pseudonym Jack Frost, Dylan has captured the vibrant, visceral, ramshackle sound of music made on the fly. The raw emotions and ragged spontaneity of Together, which is rooted in traditions that Dylan cherishes yet keenly surveys a contemporary landscape, set this work apart from 2001's Love and Theft and 2006's Modern Times.
While Together is anchored in Chess-era blues, with Dylan freely channeling Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and Otis Rush, it's not monochromatic. Echoes of a Tex-Mex roadhouse, a Louisiana bayou and a Parisian cafe creep into the mix.
Of course, nothing separates Dylan from the pack like his craggy vocals and literate lyrics. Long ago celebrated for his surreal winding narratives, he now deals in straight talk, his searing irony and sly humor delivered with greater economy. "Shake Shake Mama" and "It's All Good" crackle with twisted humor. He still has the power to spook ("The door has closed forevermore/If indeed there ever was a door").
And some couplets are simply Dylanesque: "I'm listening to Billy Joe Shaver and I'm reading James Joyce/Some people they tell me I got the blood of the land in my voice."
He's got grit, for sure. His gloriously wicked, wheezy croon suits these biting, sentimental tales of love in hard times. Dylan may be tangled up in blues, but when he punctuates "My Wife's Home Town" with a mischievous chuckle, it's clear he has never felt so unfettered.
http://www.rollingstone.com/
(Posted: Apr 13, 2009)
Bob Dylan - Together Through Life
RS: 4 of 5 Stars
Bob Dylan has sung in many voices on his records: the nasal-braying alarm of "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall"; the acidic dismissal in "Like a Rolling Stone"; the country hermit on The Basement Tapes; the grizzly wisecracking drifter on 2001's Love and Theft and 2006's Modern Times. But Dylan, who turns 68 in May, has never sounded as ravaged, pissed off and lusty, all at once, as he does on Together Through Life. It is a murky-sounding, often perplexing record. The lyrics seem dashed off in spots, like first drafts, while the performances — by Dylan's current touring band — feel like head arrangements caught on the run between Never Ending Tour dates. But there is a grim magnetism coursing through these 10 new songs — and most of it is in Dylan's vividly battered singing.The shock of his voice comes right away. Dylan starts the record as if he's at a loss for words. "I love you, pretty baby/You're the only love I've ever known/Just as long as you stay with me/The whole world is my throne," he sings in the muddy samba "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'." It is a plain, unpromising opening, except for the delivery: a deep, exhausted rasp that sounds like the singer has been beaten to a pulp, then left for dead at the side of the road. When Dylan gets to the title punch line in each verse, he grumbles it with an audible sneer. As far as he can tell, there isn't much world left to sit on.
Dylan's throat has never been anyone's idea of clear and soaring. But as a young folk singer, he strained to sound older and more sorely tested than he was, as if he had known Charley Patton, A.P. Carter and the Great Depression firsthand. He's finally there, with an authentically pitted instrument ideally suited to the devastated settings of these songs and the rusted desert-shed production (by Dylan under his usual pseudonym, Jack Frost): brushed-snare strolls and bar-band shuffles; bag-of-snakes guitars, with frequent stinging fills by Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers; the rippled sigh and mocking laugh of an accordion icing most songs, played by David Hidalgo of Los Lobos. Compared to the Western-swing-like buoyance of Love and Theft and the Fifties-Chess-session air of Modern Times, this record sounds like it was cut in the dead-end Mexican border town in Orson Welles' 1958 film noir, Touch of Evil, especially when Dylan gets to lines like the closing few in "Forgetful Heart," a musky blend of banjo, dirty guitar and utter emotional defeat: "All night long/I lay awake and listen to the sound of pain/The door has closed forevermore/If indeed there ever was a door."
That hardened, bleating voice is also perfect for these times: A nation drunk on hope less than six months ago now drowns in red ink and pink slips. "Some people they tell me/I got the blood of the land in my voice," Dylan cracks in the Nashville Skyline-style sway of "I Feel a Change Comin' On." But the country in these songs is running on fumes, into brick walls. "State gone broke/The county's dry/Don't be looking at me with that evil eye," Dylan snaps in the Chicago-blues lark "My Wife's Home Town," spitting the lines like a CNN news ticker. (The name of that town, according to Dylan: Hell.) "Shake Shake Mama," a string of comic come-ons with a Louisiana juke-dance gait, ends not with scoring but dire warning: "If you're goin' on home, better go the shortest way."
There is another line worth noting in "I Feel a Change Comin' On" — "You are as whorish as ever" — and Dylan growls it like a compliment. Together Through Life is, in a surprisingly direct way, about the only thing you can count on when you're surrounded by clowns, thieves and government (sometimes all the same thing) and what happens when you lose — or throw away — your good thing. In the slow hurt of "Life Is Hard," Dylan bites down gently on each syllable, over soft-shoe drums and weeping pedal steel ("My dreams are locked and barred/Ad-mit-ting life is hard/With-out you near me"). And regret doesn't get much better than his strict instructions in the final verse of "If You Ever Go to Houston," a Doug Sahm-like shot of norteño R&B: "Find the barrooms I got lost in/And send my memories home/Put my tears in a bottle/Screw the top on tight."Ultimately, Together Through Life is a mixed bag of this decade's Dylan — impulsive, caustic, sentimental, long done with the contrived details of contemporary record-making. The album may lack the instant-classic aura of Love and Theft or Modern Times, but it is rich in striking moments, set in a willful rawness, and comes with a wicked finish. "It's All Good" is a bayou-John Lee Hooker boogie that opens with bad shit ("Big politician telling lies/Restaurant kitchen, all full of flies/Don't make a bit of difference") and just gets worse ("Brick by brick, they tear you down/A teacup of water is enough to drown"). It's a portrait of an ugly America, devolving into bare-knuckle Darwinism — survival of the coldest and cruelest — and Dylan rubs your face in it. "It's all good," he sings repeatedly with a cruel shrug in that voice, knowing damn well it's not. But Dylan is just as sure, in nearly every other song here, that there is strength in numbers — and that number is two.
It's All Good on Bob Dylan's 'Together Through Life'
By Edna Gundersen, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/
April 28, 2009
Even this late, one month shy of his 68th birthday, another side of Bob Dylan reveals itself.
After securing iconic status in the '60s, the most revered songwriter of the modern age has spent decades subverting his image, confounding expectations and redefining himself.
He does all three to delightful effect on Together Through Life (* * * * out of four), a raffish riff on romance. Dylan's 33rd solo album, out Tuesday, lives up to the artistic standards established by a trilogy of career-recharging gems that started with 1997's Time Out of Mind. But he deviates from their apocalyptic burdens to spin yarns, wry and real, of ordinary folks in the grip of lust, longing and heartache.The album sprang from a single jazz-tinged ballad, Life Is Hard, composed for French director Olivier Dahan, who made the Edith Piaf biopic La Vie En Rose and asked Dylan to contribute material for the upcoming My Own Love Song.
Inspired, Dylan lingered in the studio with his band and accordion player David Hidalgo of Los Lobos to follow his impetuous muse.
Producing himself under the usual pseudonym Jack Frost, Dylan has captured the vibrant, visceral, ramshackle sound of music made on the fly. The raw emotions and ragged spontaneity of Together, which is rooted in traditions that Dylan cherishes yet keenly surveys a contemporary landscape, set this work apart from 2001's Love and Theft and 2006's Modern Times.
While Together is anchored in Chess-era blues, with Dylan freely channeling Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters and Otis Rush, it's not monochromatic. Echoes of a Tex-Mex roadhouse, a Louisiana bayou and a Parisian cafe creep into the mix.
Of course, nothing separates Dylan from the pack like his craggy vocals and literate lyrics. Long ago celebrated for his surreal winding narratives, he now deals in straight talk, his searing irony and sly humor delivered with greater economy. "Shake Shake Mama" and "It's All Good" crackle with twisted humor. He still has the power to spook ("The door has closed forevermore/If indeed there ever was a door").
And some couplets are simply Dylanesque: "I'm listening to Billy Joe Shaver and I'm reading James Joyce/Some people they tell me I got the blood of the land in my voice."
He's got grit, for sure. His gloriously wicked, wheezy croon suits these biting, sentimental tales of love in hard times. Dylan may be tangled up in blues, but when he punctuates "My Wife's Home Town" with a mischievous chuckle, it's clear he has never felt so unfettered.
Monday, April 27, 2009
Pancake Red Stone
Media Matters
By Daniel J. Flynn on 4.24.09 @ 6:08AM
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/
"Izzy taught a great many of us about the importance of independence, the critical ingredient of a good journalist," journalist Robert Kaiser, who later became managing editor of the Washington Post, said of I.F. Stone upon his death in 1989. "Izzy was totally independent from the politicians and officials he wrote about." The Times of London titled its obit: "I.F. Stone: Spirit of America's Independent Journalism." Jeff Cohen, the founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), more recently called Stone "an American patriot" whose "journalistic hallmark was independence."
But the man behind I.F. Stone's Weekly was neither patriot nor independent. He was an agent for the Soviet Union.
"Charges about Stone's connections with the KGB have been swirling about for more than a decade, prompting cries of outrage among his passionate followers," write John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev in an excerpt of their new book, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, posted at Commentary magazine's website and linked by the Drudge Report. "Until now, the evidence was equivocal and subject to different interpretations. No longer."
Long before the trio of Cold War scholars came along with the latest evidence, the case against Stone showing him as a compromised rather than an independent voice was considerable.
The WWII-era Venona intercepts of Soviet spy cables document repeated attempts by Soviet intelligence to contact Stone. "PANCAKE to give us information," one such cable triumphantly reported. Stone, the Soviet spymaster noted, avoided the earlier entreaties because he did not want to attract the attention of the FBI or damage his career. That said, he reported that Stone "would not be averse to having a supplementary income."
Atop the Venona intercepts, numerous mid-century FBI informants, including the former managing editor of the Daily Worker, reported Stone as a onetime Communist Party member. KGB General Oleg Kalugin, who plied his trade as a press liaison at the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., conceded in the early 1990s that Stone had been his agent. "We had an agent -- a well known American journalist -- with a good reputation who severed his ties with us in 1956," he declared. "I myself convinced him to resume them. But after 1968, after the invasion of Czechoslovakia… he said he would never again take any money from us." Kalugin subsequently identified the unnamed agent as Izzy Stone. After an uproar by Stone's admirers in the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, Kalugin vacillated as to how formal the arrangement with Stone actually was.
And now, Vassiliev, a KGB-agent-turned-historian, has recovered more than 1,100 pages of notes from research inside Soviet intelligence archives. Included among them are details of Stone's work as a Soviet agent in the 1930s. "Relations with Pancake [Stone's codename] have entered the channel of normal operational work," a document from 1936 reports. The intelligence files outline Stone's role in recruiting other agents for the KGB and passing along information to his handlers. "To put it plainly," Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev write, "from 1936 to 1939 I.F. Stone was a Soviet spy."
Even without the declassified FBI memos, decrypted Venona cables, and the material from Soviet-era archives, Stone's peculiar prose was enough to raise suspicions.
During the Great Depression, Stone judged a "Soviet America" as "the one way out that could make a real difference to the working classes." When Sidney Hook, John Dewey, Norman Thomas, and other leftist intellectuals issued a proclamation condemning the Left's double standard on totalitarianism in Germany versus totalitarianism in Russia, Stone was a signatory of the response that held it "a fantastic falsehood that the U.S.S.R. and totalitarian states are basically alike." In the waning days of World War II, long before the left expressed outrage over Robert Novak's "outing" of CIA officer Valerie Plame, Stone exposed four American intelligence officers, including future CIA director Allen Dulles, working undercover in neutral Switzerland. Stone even advanced the idea, rejected just about everywhere save for one prison state in East Asia, that the South Koreans started the Korean War.
Alexander Vassiliev's find documenting the espionage work of Izzy Stone adds further confirmation of the journalistic icon as a compromised puppet manipulated by Moscow ventriloquists. More significantly, it exposes the gullibility, and utter incuriosity, of journalists when the subject deserving investigation is one of their own—both professionally and politically. It is a mark of dishonor for journalism that journalists would honor someone so dishonorable to their profession. But honor him they do.
Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism awards an "I.F Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence." Ithaca College hosts an "Izzy Awards" for "independent media." The University of California-Berkeley's graduate school of journalism offers "I.F. Stone Fellowships." In 1999, New York University's journalism department, and a panel of prestigious scribes that included Jeff Greenfield, Mary McGrory, and Morley Safer, named I.F. Stone's Weekly as number 16 on its list of the 100 best works of U.S. journalism in the 20th century.
Don't expect the academic honors, or the media hosannas, to evaporate anytime soon. Stone took money from the KGB and not the CIA, after all. Izzy Stone was wrong about nearly everything he wrote about during the Cold War. It is only fitting that his admirers got him so wrong too.
By Daniel J. Flynn on 4.24.09 @ 6:08AM
The American Spectator
http://spectator.org/
"Izzy taught a great many of us about the importance of independence, the critical ingredient of a good journalist," journalist Robert Kaiser, who later became managing editor of the Washington Post, said of I.F. Stone upon his death in 1989. "Izzy was totally independent from the politicians and officials he wrote about." The Times of London titled its obit: "I.F. Stone: Spirit of America's Independent Journalism." Jeff Cohen, the founder of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), more recently called Stone "an American patriot" whose "journalistic hallmark was independence."
But the man behind I.F. Stone's Weekly was neither patriot nor independent. He was an agent for the Soviet Union."Charges about Stone's connections with the KGB have been swirling about for more than a decade, prompting cries of outrage among his passionate followers," write John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr, and Alexander Vassiliev in an excerpt of their new book, Spies: The Rise and Fall of the KGB in America, posted at Commentary magazine's website and linked by the Drudge Report. "Until now, the evidence was equivocal and subject to different interpretations. No longer."
Long before the trio of Cold War scholars came along with the latest evidence, the case against Stone showing him as a compromised rather than an independent voice was considerable.
The WWII-era Venona intercepts of Soviet spy cables document repeated attempts by Soviet intelligence to contact Stone. "PANCAKE to give us information," one such cable triumphantly reported. Stone, the Soviet spymaster noted, avoided the earlier entreaties because he did not want to attract the attention of the FBI or damage his career. That said, he reported that Stone "would not be averse to having a supplementary income."
Atop the Venona intercepts, numerous mid-century FBI informants, including the former managing editor of the Daily Worker, reported Stone as a onetime Communist Party member. KGB General Oleg Kalugin, who plied his trade as a press liaison at the Soviet embassy in Washington, D.C., conceded in the early 1990s that Stone had been his agent. "We had an agent -- a well known American journalist -- with a good reputation who severed his ties with us in 1956," he declared. "I myself convinced him to resume them. But after 1968, after the invasion of Czechoslovakia… he said he would never again take any money from us." Kalugin subsequently identified the unnamed agent as Izzy Stone. After an uproar by Stone's admirers in the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, Kalugin vacillated as to how formal the arrangement with Stone actually was.
And now, Vassiliev, a KGB-agent-turned-historian, has recovered more than 1,100 pages of notes from research inside Soviet intelligence archives. Included among them are details of Stone's work as a Soviet agent in the 1930s. "Relations with Pancake [Stone's codename] have entered the channel of normal operational work," a document from 1936 reports. The intelligence files outline Stone's role in recruiting other agents for the KGB and passing along information to his handlers. "To put it plainly," Haynes, Klehr, and Vassiliev write, "from 1936 to 1939 I.F. Stone was a Soviet spy."
Even without the declassified FBI memos, decrypted Venona cables, and the material from Soviet-era archives, Stone's peculiar prose was enough to raise suspicions.
During the Great Depression, Stone judged a "Soviet America" as "the one way out that could make a real difference to the working classes." When Sidney Hook, John Dewey, Norman Thomas, and other leftist intellectuals issued a proclamation condemning the Left's double standard on totalitarianism in Germany versus totalitarianism in Russia, Stone was a signatory of the response that held it "a fantastic falsehood that the U.S.S.R. and totalitarian states are basically alike." In the waning days of World War II, long before the left expressed outrage over Robert Novak's "outing" of CIA officer Valerie Plame, Stone exposed four American intelligence officers, including future CIA director Allen Dulles, working undercover in neutral Switzerland. Stone even advanced the idea, rejected just about everywhere save for one prison state in East Asia, that the South Koreans started the Korean War.
Alexander Vassiliev's find documenting the espionage work of Izzy Stone adds further confirmation of the journalistic icon as a compromised puppet manipulated by Moscow ventriloquists. More significantly, it exposes the gullibility, and utter incuriosity, of journalists when the subject deserving investigation is one of their own—both professionally and politically. It is a mark of dishonor for journalism that journalists would honor someone so dishonorable to their profession. But honor him they do.
Harvard University's Nieman Foundation for Journalism awards an "I.F Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence." Ithaca College hosts an "Izzy Awards" for "independent media." The University of California-Berkeley's graduate school of journalism offers "I.F. Stone Fellowships." In 1999, New York University's journalism department, and a panel of prestigious scribes that included Jeff Greenfield, Mary McGrory, and Morley Safer, named I.F. Stone's Weekly as number 16 on its list of the 100 best works of U.S. journalism in the 20th century.
Don't expect the academic honors, or the media hosannas, to evaporate anytime soon. Stone took money from the KGB and not the CIA, after all. Izzy Stone was wrong about nearly everything he wrote about during the Cold War. It is only fitting that his admirers got him so wrong too.