I have quite a bit of respect of Pat Buchanan.  While I certainly don’t agree with everything he says, he has an important ability to speak hard truths that people don’t want to hear.  His Death of the West, for instance, struck me as a clear call to common sense (which is perhaps one reason why Washington has generally ignored it).  He regularly points out inconsistencies and shortcomings of both parties, and doesn’t give a fig about their opinions of him.    

As such, I have no doubt that Mr. Buchanan will not care in the least about what I’m about to say:  Buchanan’s criticism in his recent opinion article of Bush’s comparison of negotiating with Iran to appeasing the Nazis is unfortunately as incorrect as Mr. Buchanan’s own grasp of the history of World War II.  (I can only hope that his upcoming book on the “unnecessary war” is more accurate.)  While accusing Bush of “making a hash of history,” Buchanan is, in fact himself making something of an omelet.

It isn’t my purpose to respond to Buchanan, point by point.  Nor do I want to.  Buchanan’s basic idea that we should use a combination of diplomacy, international pressure, and justified war is sound.  I will be focusing on three aspects:  His accusation that Bush is “playing the Hitler card,” his estimation of Hitler, and what this might mean for a comparison to Ahmadinejad.

As I’ve argued elsewhere, there are inherent dangers in comparing anyone to the Nazis.  Most people will brush it off as simply another way of saying “I think X is a really bad person/thing.”  The rest won’t believe you mainly because we’ve traditionally demonized the Nazis (understandably so) to such an extent that they no longer seem human.  After all, no mere homo sapien could ever be as evil as the creatures residing in Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.  So, on the practical side of things, Bush (or more precisely his speechwriters) should have come up with a more effective comparison. 

On the other hand, the association is probably much stronger in terms of real history than Mr. Buchanan seems to believe, and that has to do with my second point:  Mr. Buchanan’s misunderstanding of who Hitler was and what he wanted.

Hitler had not wanted war with Poland. … From March to August 1939, Hitler tried to negotiate Danzig [a port city primarily of German ethnicity split off from Germany in 1919 to give Poland access to the sea]. But the Poles, confident in their British war guarantee, refused. So, Hitler cut his deal with Stalin, and the two invaded and divided Poland.

Mr. Buchanan’s claims about Hitler’s interest in negotiations are based on observations of Hitler’s rhetoric and do not demonstrate any real knowledge of Hitler’s actual intentions.  Mr. Buchanan is, in fact, falling for a Nazi publicity stunt that apparently is still effective fifty years on.  (To remedy this, he might look at some of the captured Nazi secret documents available from various sources as far back as William Shirer’s Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.  More recent excellent sources include Ian Kershaw’s two volume biography of Hitler, Richard Evans’ two volumes on the Third Reich, or Norman Rich’s, Hitler’s War Aims.)  Hitler exploited the West’s assumption that everyone is basically reasonable by adopting a moderate stance publically.  In private, as far back as the Anschluss, Hitler had in fact prepared for and wanted war.  By the time the Danzig question came up, he was positively spoiling for a fight.  There was no question of if there would be war with Hitler, but merely when.  In fact, he made it clear to his inner circle and foreign policy team that he never had much intention of negotiating with the Poles.  Instead, he planned to press them so hard on Danzig that they would not be able to agree, thereby creating an excuse to go to war.  Also, despite what Mr. Buchanan implies, failure to negotiate over Danzig didn’t push Hitler unwillingly into Stalin’s open arms.  Since Hitler already wanted war, the alliance with the Soviets merely altered his plans, it didn’t dictate them.

As for the unrest in Danzig itself, which Mr. Buchanan seems to think was natural, the Nazis played a pivotal role in stirring it up to begin with, as they had in the Rhineland, Austria, and the Sudetenland.  Hitler wanted to create the impression of masses of oppressed German people begging for the Nazis to invade and “liberate” them.  This approach worked on Chamberlain up until Czechoslovakia, and it apparently still works on Mr. Buchanan.

So it seems that Mr. Buchanan apparently doesn’t understand Hitler’s mentality (or psychosis, if you prefer).  He essentially expects that Hitler would have acted rationally.  I believe that in his article Mr. Buchanan is misreading Ahmadinejad’s radical Islamic mindset in a similar way.  We are, after all, talking about a national leader who is a confirmed believer in bringing about the apocalypse, and has said that the “Hidden Imam” is already active in Iranian politics.  He denies the Holocaust, threatens/predicts the imminent doom of an entire nation, and is conveniently charging ahead pell-mell with his own nuclear program.  I somehow doubt that Mr. Buchanan will find Ahmadinejad’s ultimate demands to be any more “reasonable” than Hitler’s were.

I fear that in this case Bush may be precisely right.  Ahmadinejad will probably treat any real attempt at two-sided diplomacy as Hitler did:  mainly as something to be exploited.  Real negotiations must by definition begin with the assumption that both parties are willing to give something up.  Without that granted, one does not “negotiate,” he “dictates.”  To the mind of a crusading tyrant, giving ground is often seen as a sign of weakness.  It encourages further demands and promotes the flippant attitude that foreign powers are too morally weak to intervene forcefully.  There is a very real possibility that negotiating with Iran, even from what the West perceives as a position of power, may very well end up undermining the peace rather than encouraging it, as it did with Hitler.

While I hope that Mr. Buchanan will continue forcibly voice his usually informed opinions, I hope that this one is very quickly forgotten.  

In 2006, Pew Research conducted a survey that showed that conservatives were significantly happier with life than were their liberal counterparts.  Forty-seven percent of conservatives described themselves as “very happy,” while only twenty-eight percent of liberals made the same claim.  This, of course, obviously speaks well of holding to conservative values.  I suppose it was mainly a matter of time until someone somewhere discovered that not only was this claim not true, but rather that conservative contentment was actually something to be ashamed of.

It appears that psychologists Jamie Napier and John Jost of New York University have done just that.  As Fox News reported, they argue that the main reason conservatives are happier is that they have the incredible ability to explain away (“rationalize”) society’s wrongs and ignore the evil in the world.

Our research suggests that inequality takes a greater psychological toll on liberals than on conservatives…apparently because liberals lack ideological rationalizations that would help them frame inequality in a positive (or at least neutral) light.—Napier and Jost, Psychological Science, June 2008.

In reality, what I believe we have here are basically solid findings, couched in seriously biased language.  Someone—either the researchers themselves or perhaps journalists—is once again using the cloak of scientific “objectivity” to express a political opinion. 

First off, I believe that the essential findings of the study are correct, though their interpretation is radically skewed.  Conservatives possess a worldview that more than adequately explains why the world works the way it does.  This worldview, while not perfect and not fully represented in every individual in the general movement, is, on the whole, in accord with reality.  That is to say, it is true.  Part of this belief system teaches that while the average conservative should work to make the world a better place (and does so more often than liberals, according to this research), he/she also understands that due to humanity’s finitude and general tendency towards evil, we will never create a perfect world.  The fact of individual responsibility means that there is no necessary cause-effect relationship between the actions of two people who have neither met nor carried on meaningful interactions.  He/she should take responsibility for affecting those in his/her immediate vicinity and may often try to encourage change on a broader scale, but understands that he/she cannot make decisions for others.  He/she then bears no clear moral responsibility for anyone beyond his/her much smaller sphere of influence, and even there he/she has reasonable limits on what he/she can expect.  Frankly, that makes a life in a fallen world more bearable and expectations for living it more realistic.

So, why do I believe that there are any word games going on here at all?  I would suggest that a look at the use of the word “rationalizations” would be in order.  According to Dictionary.com, in the 19^th Century, to “rationalize” meant “to treat in a rational manner.”  However, we are all more familiar with the 20^th Century usage, pioneered by psychology itself:  “to ascribe (one's acts, opinions, etc.) to causes that seem reasonable but actually are unrelated to the true, possibly unconscious causes.”

By using that specific terminology, the study’s findings imply that conservatives actually have no real answers, only handy, irrational excuses to explain away a reality they don’t want to face.  They are, in fact, rather amoral (if not outright immoral) and so callous that they can ignore the suffering going on around them.  This sums up much of what liberal propaganda has said about conservative and conservative thought for years, from Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth to Dawkins’ critiques of Intelligent Design to Al Franken’s Lies to much of the on-air content of other Air America hosts.

The above quotation, taken generally, also implies the converse.  If liberals spend their time worrying about the world around them and won’t indulge in “ideological rationalization,” it means that they are not only more kind and caring toward their fellow men, but also have a much clearer-headed view of the world than average.  Their moral scruples make it impossible for them to ignore the pain and suffering around them.  This, of course, confirms the traditional leftist self-image as much as the previous picture of conservatives confirms its biases.

I believe we are seeing some rationalization here:  An attempt to explain away the inconvenient truth that conservatism is generally better equipped to deal with life and its stresses than some other belief systems. 

Perhaps the use of “rationalizations” is just incidental, but I doubt it.  There are probably hundreds of other ways to state that information that would be more objective and fair to both sides.  A look through of Jost’s and Napier’s university homepages shows that they are definitely postmodern leftist status quo.  Napier, for instance, compares political conservatism to “‘system justifying’ ideologies, such as opposition to equality, fair market ideology, economic system justification, and right-wing authoritarianism,” thereby taking for granted virtually every negative conservative stereotype currently on the market.  Jost provides a more long-winded echo of this when he explains that his group’s research focuses on, amongst other things,

counter-intuitive outcomes, such as…nonconscious biases that perpetuate inequality,…opposition to equality among members of disadvantaged groups, rationalization of anticipated social and political outcomes, and tendencies among members of powerless groups to subjectively enhance the legitimacy of their powerlessness and, in some cases, to show greater support for the system than do members of powerful groups.

Translated from the postmodernese, that means he wants to know why his subjects—conservatives in this case—are inherent racist anti-feminists opposed to equal rights and are willing to come up with illogical rationalizations to justify their feelings.  He also wants to know why some groups, perhaps poorer whites and conservative blacks, would support a movement like conservatism.  If this is the basis for their research, we should not be shocked (or impressed) by their conclusions. 

And just think:  your tax dollars are paying for this!

In the end, Jost and Napier’s results reveal less about conservatives than they do about liberal academia and the useful myth of total scientific objectivity.  It also gives us another example of why, in this highly politicized information age, we should set aside our blind idolization of anything people arbitrarily declare “science” and remember that there are human beings—with their own political agendas, right or left—behind it.  This is not to demean science at all; I am certainly most grateful for thousands of advancements it has produced.  But we must beware of science, draped with the misleading semblance of objectivity, used for political/social ends.

 “If people think God is interesting, the onus is on them to show that there is anything there to talk about. Otherwise they should just shut up about it.”—Richard Dawkins

I hesitate to take my time to answer anything that comes out of Richard Dawkins’ mouth.  First, he is such a high profile person that probably nearly every intelligent rejoinder that can be made has been, and several times over.  Secondly, most of his statements—at least his more famous ones—are of a sort that don’t bear refuting.  Like the quote above, they are mainly insults instead of reasoned arguments.

However, having recently seen the excellent movie Expelled:  No Intelligence Allowed, I could not help but notice a common theme amongst the various Darwinists, one that is epitomized by this Dawkins quotation.  Neo-Darwinists (NDs) insist that the burden of proof is on Intelligent Design (ID) advocates to show “that there is anything to talk about.”  The implication is that if there actually were the evidence to back ID up, then the open-minded Darwinians would be happy to pay attention.  Since there apparently isn’t anything forthcoming, though, they expect people to “just shut up” about ID.

The issue here isn’t so much in what the NDs say, but in what they don’t say.  They lead their listeners to make certain assumptions on implied grounds.  So, while they give the appearance of the essence of intellectual virtue, they are in fact stacking the proverbial deck in a very unscientific way by creating artificial standards of evidence for ID and then failing to subject their own theories to similar scrutiny.  The result is a drive-thru epistemology where science is defined primarily by what NDs personally want to be true.

The first assumption NDs allow is that they are appealing to objective reality, and that if ID is proven in that reality, science will accept it.  In fact, NDs see themselves as the final arbiter of truth.  Whatever convinces them must, by default, be “fact” and until they are personally swayed, those with competing theories should just “shut up.”  Any divergent position is universally derided as “unscientific” and “worthless”.  In this context, labels like these actually mean nothing more than “this doesn’t tickle my Neo-Darwinian fancy.”  A prime example of this appeared in Expelled, when Dawkins expressed a willingness to accept evidence of cellular intelligent design if it came from aliens, but not if it implied that God existed.  While there is manifestly less proof to support the idea of extra terrestrial life than a supernatural God, the general concept at least fits in with Dawkins’s naturalistic biases, and so he finds it acceptable.  Evidence has nothing to do with it. 

The second assumption is that NDs have a real standard of evidence in mind and, if ID could meet it, they would allow ID into the hallowed realm of science.  Asking that ID provide proof of course implies this, and the NDs’ apparent openness suggests that they will actually give the evidence a fair hearing.  Intentionally and notably absent from most of these statements is any indication of how much or what kind of data would be “sufficient” to convince them.  The straightforward answer is that for most NDs, no amount of proof could ever be enough because their main objection to ID has nothing to do with reason, logic, or facts.  They are opposed to ID on emotional/worldview grounds; the trappings of scientism are often nothing more than an emotional crutch:  Vox Day called Sam Harris’ book The End of Faith “a profoundly non-scientific expression of hope wrapped up in an emotional plea.”  In fact, Dawkins’s willingness to admit that ID evidence did exist if it was not attributed to God shows how far he is willing to go, so long as religion and the supernatural are left out of the picture.

As C. S. Lewis pointed out in the beginning of Miracles, before we can begin a discussion of whether a particular miracle has occurred, we must settle the question of whether miracles can occur.  If we do not accept that a miracle is even possible, no amount of evidence could ever convince us that any particular miraculous event took place.  NDs are in a similar boat.  They can confidently assert that they would be willing to admit ID was science if the proofs are there, since their assumptions have set such an artificially high standard that no amount of evidence for ID would ever be enough. 

Taken together, these two points are self-evidently wrongheaded, but are also illustrative. 

The idea that I have to convince Dawkins or Christopher Hutchens or any particular class of people of a premise before a statement or idea magically becomes “scientific” is clearly erroneous.  Reality continues on whether or not I (or anyone else) choose to satiate their particular prejudices, just as the earth kept revolving around the sun while Galileo faced the wrath of the church.  It is a testament to ND arrogance, however, that they see themselves as the exclusive gate-keepers of scientific objectivity.  Since ND itself is part of the “definition” of science, NDs can make what amount to arbitrary judgments, such as the ones we see above, while simultaneously giving their own theory a break on sticky points, as we’ll see below.

Regarding whether or not there could ever be enough evidence behind ID to qualify it as legitimate science, we must remember an aspect of the scientific method itself.  In order for a question to be genuinely interrogative (i.e. “Is there sufficient evidence to prove ID as a viable hypothesis?”), it must be open-ended to some extent.  In other words, we must be able to answer it honestly.  To simply presume the answer ahead of time and then use this “answer” to evaluate the evidence is not only counterproductive, it is intellectually dishonest.  In this way, NDs conveniently overlook various limitations in their own theory and application:  How does experimental science prove or disprove a specific creation method for the universe, given that the laws that govern science only came into existence after the initial creation moment?  Why are they not willing to allow that other intelligent people should be permitted to hold to a position that critiques Neo-Darwinism from a profoundly different perspective, when NDs can question anything they like?  Where are the millions of transitional fossils we’ve been told to expect for over a century? 

Whatever standard of evidence NDs apply to their own theories they should also apply externally and consistently to other competing propositions and to the evidence as a whole.  Any criticisms they level at other premises they should also apply to their own.  In the end, a “scientific theory” or “method” that is merely internally coherent is of no more practical explanatory use than Star Trek’s “Heisenberg Compensator” or “Warp Drive.”

 

Recently Admiral Mike Mullen responded to questions regarding new evidence that Iran is equipping and enabling anti-western terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan.  Despite announcing that yet another substantial stash of Iranian made weapons has been found in Iraq, Mullen added (most likely in response to either an actual question or an anticipated one), "I have no smoking gun that could prove the highest (Iranian) leadership is involved in this."  Unfortunately, the western world’s naiveté regarding what constitutes a “smoking gun” actively discourage our leaders from responding to a threat until it’s too late.    

If we presume, for the sake of argument, that a country like Iran (or North Korea or Syria) or a group like Al Qaeda is indeed actively attempting to develop or steal weapons of mass destruction or undermine our efforts in Iraq, there are only two logical times for the United States to take some kind of forceful preventative diplomatic or military action:  Before a group succeeds or afterward.  While the particular measures must be determined by the specific situation, in general, the sooner the United States acts the better chance it has to minimize any potential loss of life or other damage.  I think all would agree that acting in some way to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear arsenal is clearly preferable to figuring out what to do once they announce they have one, or worse, have already employed it.  Unfortunately, the media, talking heads, academia, etc. believe that our intelligence services must provide this so-called “smoking gun” before any serious intercession would be justified.  As Admiral Mullen observed above, no matter what evidence we find, we never seem to find that all-important piece. 

The reason we never can locate it is that, on the whole, we have a very silly set of unrealistically high expectations for what our spy services can deliver, most of it bred by watching too much television and too many movies.  We somehow get the idea into our heads that it’s possible to construct a complete and total image of any given country’s secrets, motivations, and future actions.  We think agents like 007 can penetrate every level of an opponent’s operation, learn any secrets they like, and then report back home with some absolutely damning evidence that is not open for interpretation or deconstruction. 

The fact of the matter is that the world of intelligence gathering and analysis is so complex and the evidence available to us so vast and yet so incomplete that there will likely never be a “perfectly clear” picture of what any country is doing or planning at any given time.   If an enemy is paying attention at all, there are an infinite number of ways to thwart the best efforts of the best equipped spies and most expensive satellites.  Even if we or one of our allies manages to obtain an important piece of information, there is no guarantee that it will be recognized as such.  The small tidbits of “intelligence” we see the media seize upon periodically represent only a tiny fraction culled from the mass of chaff and worthless information pouring into places like the CIA, FBI, and NSA on a daily basis.  This, of course, doesn’t even begin to take into account the fact that most countries also intentionally leak misleading information to enemy operatives.  In the midst of all this, how can we expect to instantly identify and act on the “good” while always ignoring the “bad”?  Unfortunately, the only way to know for sure is to wait for the benefit of hindsight, and at that point it may be far too late (as it was with Pearl Harbor).  The only time we will ever have a “smoking gun” is after it has been fired, and the crime has been committed.

In many ways, this is a similar situation to what some lawyers now refer to as the “CSI Effect.”  Juries suffering from this mental aberration somehow expect prosecutors to be able to reconstruct a case like they do on TV.  As one lawyer put it, “They want ‘my case’ to be worthy of an Emmy. They don’t want to be let down and if they are, they won’t convict.”  As this and other prosecutors note, CSI is a work of creative fiction.  The evidence used in real cases is almost never as clean or as clear as it is on TV, and it’s unrealistic to expect it to be.  The result here is that prosecutors lose cases where the perpetrator is clearly guilty, all because some fans cling to impractical assumptions they picked up loafing on the couch.

When applied to foreign affairs, this kind of gullibility can have serious consequences.  Many western leaders feel trapped by public opinion and wait for a “smoking gun” to appear before acting.   As we’ve seen, this is something that, as defined by popular misconceptions, will never materialize.  As a result, we lose virtually any chance of dealing with a potential threat before it becomes a full-blown international crisis that could literally threaten millions of lives.

Of course, I’m not suggesting that the United States should attack other nations on flimsy or non-existent evidence, only that we have to have a realistic view of what constitutes “sufficient” grounds to “accuse” (as the media insists on putting it) a nation of skulduggery and, if necessary, intervene somehow.  I only hope that when our present and future presidents find themselves in this quandary, they will have the intestinal fortitude to make the right decision and act forcefully, in spite of public pressure and political risk.  Those are the kinds of decisions that no president wants to make, but that will define a real legacy from the perspective of history. 

Recently, Georgia State University professor Ben Scafidi released a study on the economic effects of the destruction of the American family.  The study argues that single parent families—particularly those headed by single mothers—draw more on government aid programs than do traditional, two parent households.  The resulting drain is more $112 billion a year.  Scafidi, while not making a formal recommendation, observed that legislatures should consider the obvious answer:  find ways to strengthen the family.  Almost immediately criticism arose from various corners of academia, primarily questioning the “effectiveness” of marriage programs.  In short, critics are in favor of pursuing any number of other programs, but are “skeptical” of any program focused on marriage.  As one put it, “"We're now nearing 40 percent of kids in America born out of wedlock…I can't fathom that those marriage programs, even with increased investment, are going to reduce that."

In the end, this situation will probably be another case of how criticisms of “traditional” values are often self-fulfilling in the American context.  By adopting the approaches and ideas of the modern world, conservatives and Christians frequently predestine themselves for failure, and therefore damage their credibility in the culture wars.    

First off, we need to note that the study is clearly right when it says that failing marriages are the primary issue at hand here.  Any solution that fails to take that into account (such as better education for single mothers) is really only addressing symptoms, not the disease.  For instance, educated single mothers may earn more, but still won’t be home to raise and educate.  Without a father and with their mothers often absent by necessity, these children will hopefully be better fed and clothed, but will still lack the all-important guidance to really succeed in life.  This is clearly better than the alternative of growing up with absent parents and in abject poverty, but it still isn’t a real answer to the problem.   

Secondly, the sad fact is that the critics of the proposed marriage programs are probably right.  It is quite doubtful that we as a society would see any significant result from even the best funded government-sponsored marriage counseling.  Any doubters have only to look as far as the closest public school.  We have been throwing billions of taxpayer dollars at education for decades, and we have seen it progress from bad to worse, over all.  What makes us think that there will be some magic difference in throwing wads of cash at a different target?   

At issue here is the fact that while American conservatives and evangelicals claim (hereafter amalgamated into “social conservatives”) to espouse a significantly different worldview from the dominant secular humanist norm, they have, in fact, adopted their opponents’ views to a large extent.  Like their opponents, their proposals often address only the symptoms of a problem. 

While social conservatives are guilty of this in any number of ways, the one that matters here is the acceptance of the idea that human beings can be changed from the top down through government intervention.  This is a very old idea that really hit the fan with the “Enlightenment” and takes for granted the very anti-historical idea that human beings are all inherently good.  If that is true, then people in bad situations aren’t there by their own choosing; something else put them there and if that something is removed, they will revert to their natural state of goodness.  This is, in theory, what allows large government-led programs to work.  If we affect the conditions surrounding people, people by their very nature will respond positively.  It should work like a gigantic, social machine, and who better to keep a machine that large working properly than a central government?

Social conservatism in general (and the Christian worldview it originated from), on the other hand, approaches these questions on an individual basis.  Human beings have an inherent bent towards evil and will continue to follow evil until the individual—not the society—decides otherwise.  As such, the emphasis in Christian and conservative circles has almost always been on individual choices and individual accountability (see The Tragedy of American Compassion by Marvin Olasky).   This is obviously a much more personal and less mechanical approach to social change, and the interference of a huge bureaucracy that reduces people to numbers actually tends to get in the way rather than make this more efficient.

Simple reality should have taught us by now that the secular humanist approach is wrongheaded.  A look at the mess that western education, culture, and government have become in the late Twentieth Century should be enough to convince most people.  (If not, I would need more space than an op-ed to do so.) 

So, when social conservatives argue for bigger and better government programs in favor of their own agendas, they are in fact damaging their own cause.  They are de facto adopting the very worldview they claim to be critiquing, and with it they are accepting the same weaknesses they themselves have pointed out.  Government programs won’t fix the marriage crisis any more than they have fixed abstinence, education, politics, crime, war, or any of the other myriad issues they’ve addressed.   They can never get at the underlying problems because they rarely treat people as individual moral agents who must make individual decisions and be held accountable.  Millions, perhaps billions, of dollars are expended, and no final solutions are found.  This, of course, leads to guilt by association:  Since traditional values social programs thus framed do not produce lasting change, people argue that the moral structure behind them must also be faulty. 

Let me add that I personally believe that there is a place for governmental action, but it must be shaped and evaluated in a clear-headed, commonsense way.  The government can at times effectively alleviate immediate suffering, which allows for more meaningful change to take place.  To adapt an old cliché, teaching a man to fish may feed him for a lifetime, but will do him little good if he starves to death before he can learn how.  At the same time, these programs must be hardheaded and realistic; the people they help must always know that they can’t and shouldn’t come to expect temporary aid to replace permanent self sufficiency.

Social conservatives need to take a hard look at themselves and then try to put real, consistent solutions to social issues into action.  We must return to an emphasis on individual responsibility and work for cultural change on a more basic level and not simply assume the government must be our primary tool.  Perhaps, it’s time we offered truly original responses, instead of relying on systems and approaches we ourselves have often critiqued as failures.

 

“Fait accomplis must convince foreign powers of the hopelessness of intervention.”

--Adolf Hitler regarding a proposed invasion of Czechoslovakia, April 1938

Recently, Iran has announced that it has once again begun to expand on its controversial uranium enrichment program.  It plans to vastly increase the number and quality of centrifuges in its plants, but once again assures the nations of the world that its intentions are entirely “peaceful.”  I feel certain that the worst the Iranians will face is another wild round of vicious report-writing at the U.N. and saber rattling by Bush and his allies.  In the end, Iran will most likely receive a strongly worded note, which it will pile with all the others it has received.  In practical terms, nothing will happen, the centrifuges will spin away with ever increasing efficiency to their “peaceful” end, and the West will continue to wander wistfully down a path that the Nazi’s led it down within some people’s living memory. 

I hate comparing anyone to the Nazis, even if they deserve it.  I try to avoid this for the simple reason that as everyone’s favorite (and well-deserved) object of all-embracing hatred, Hitler and his gang are the generic go-to negative analogy for any angry person or group.  People of all political persuasions, left and right, can agree that the Nazi’s were evil.  Period.  And so, calling someone a “Nazi” is automatically effective.  The target’s actual resemblance to the historic atrocity that was Nazism more often than not has nothing whatsoever to do with the charge.  It is simply a way of saying “I really despise you and so want to make you look bad.”  As such, the comparison happens so often that most people settle for a shallow “You’re a really bad person” reading.  In most cases, they aren’t meant to dig deeper, because the speaker is rarely well enough educated about historic Germany to actually draw any such intelligent comparison. 

In this case, though, I literally mean it.  Ahmadinejad and his cronies in Iran appear to be literally following a path blazed in the Twentieth Century by Hitler himself.   In those fateful years leading up to World War II, Hitler consciously attempted to follow a policy that could be reasonably broken down into four stages:

Stage 1:  Convince the world that your intentions are both reasonable and peaceful.  Hitler knowingly played on the liberal, peace-loving tendencies of his enemies.  Westerners tend to presume that everyone thinks like they do.  Ergo everyone is at heart a reasonable, peaceful individual, or at least will become one when given the chance and a proper example.  Hitler played on that by giving speeches to the Reichstag and press that could be the epitome of moderate, gracious thought:  he was only interested in providing for oppressed German minorities in his target countries.  He only wanted the right to build up Germany’s military to parity with other nations, and, in fact, to become an equal, contributing member of the international community.  He even proposed disarmament talks!  The West—particularly the liberals—ate it up.  The London Times actually intentionally suppressed the truth of Nazi atrocities in the pre-war period as a way of reaching out to Hitler and showing how open they were.

Stage 2:  Pursue your own policy behind the scenes.  That Hitler never had the slightest intention of honoring any of his promises is an indisputable historical fact.  Even as he was saying “Peace!” he was laying the ground work for a huge military buildup that would far exceed even “parity” with the Allies.  He wanted power for a massive stroke that his targets would never be able to deflect.  Hitler had nothing but disgust for the “reasonable discourse” emanating from the West.  It interested him only insofar as it furthered his plans.

Stage 3:  Strike and accomplish your goal before your enemy can react.  Hitler’s plan called for a massive stroke that would end the fighting before it had fairly begun.  In Case Green, his plans for the invasion of Czechoslovakia, he gave his generals “four days” to destroy the country’s resistance entirely.  In this, we can easily see the birth of the infamous blitzkrieg that would later prove so successful.  The idea, of course, is to succeed entirely before possible opponents can even think about intervening.

Stage 4:  Fait Accompli—Reassume a reasonable posture and bargain from your new position.  After achieving a goal, Hitler would again crank up Goebbels’s propaganda machine, claim that his aggression was somehow reasonably justifiable, and promise that he had no future plans for more expansion.  The Allies were left asking themselves if they really wanted to risk massive bloodshed to reverse something Hitler had already clearly realized.   They would then begin a new series of negotiations that took Nazi Germany’s new position for granted.

Of course, this approach never worked out in perfect order in real life, but it worked well enough and often enough for Hitler to take over the Rhineland, Austria, and all of Czechoslovakia while the Allies babbled pointlessly on about “a peace for our time.”  Unfortunately for Hitler, he took his last step in Poland a little too quickly and on September 1, 1939 inaugurated a war he never intended to start; a war he could not win.  

It appears that Ahmadinejad is following in Hitler’s footsteps so closely he might as well as be wearing Der Fuehrer’s own jackboots.  Every “new” nuclear crisis we’ve seen from him so far has been Hitler’s approach in microcosm.  Iran talks peace, harmony, and reasonable rights while expanding their nuclear operation behind the scenes.  When a milestone is reached, Ahmadinejad announces it and immediately reassumes a “reasonable” stance.  After some complaint, an impotent U.N. (doing its best impression of the League of Nations) accepts Iran’s new position as fact and moves on.  While this has yet to involve military force (as Hitler’s plans called for), the basic pattern is the same.  I believe that the ultimate goal, of course, is a nuclear weapon (Are we really naive enough believe that a country with as many stated violent goals as Iran is really interested in just “energy”?  It appears so.).  In the meantime, behind the scenes, Iranian scientists are working nights bringing Iran closer to becoming a member of the nuclear club.  When that fateful day arrives and his generals can report to him that they have several nuclear weapons in their arsenal, Ahmadinejad will announce his big fait accompli to the world and dare them to do anything about it.  If the West is afraid to tackle a non-nuclear Iran, why should he believe that they will suddenly want to attack an atomic one?  The fait accompli may also be announced in a more dramatic way:  a strike on Israel.

There is at least one more commonality between the two situations:  the universal gullibility of the western liberal-intellectual elite.  What worked for Hitler seems to be working again for Ahmadinejad, and on the same people no less.  As I prepared to send this piece in, an article appeared on Breitbart:  Obama calls for talks with Iran.  This strikes me as the saddest part of the business.  One would think we would learn after Der Fuehrer had pulled the wool over our collective eyes.  Yet here we are again, talking about giving way before another petty dictator, in all likelihood creating another military monster.  I wonder how many people will die in the name of “reasoned discourse” this time?

“Springtime for Hitler” indeed.

My readers may already be aware of the blatant example of religious discrimination in a Wisconsin public school that Fox News recently brought to the nation’s attention.  Student “A. P.” drew a rather innocuous landscape for a school project.  In it, he placed a cross and a reference to John 3:16.  The teacher heard students talking about it and demanded that A. P. remove the “offensive” material, stating that when A. P. had signed a required document prohibiting “any violence, blood, sexual connotations or religious beliefs” in class artwork that he had “signed away his constitutional rights.”  A. P. tore up the paper and was thrown out of the class.  An assistant principle later twice confirmed that A. P.’s “religious expression infringed on other students' rights.”

There are a few small but important issues to mention before moving on to something more significant:  This situation is an illustration of the substantial mythology surrounding the idea of the religion-neutral classroom, and the practical results of those misguided beliefs.  Far from ensuring religious equality, the modern educational paradigm in fact promotes a secular humanistic atheism or agnosticism.   

First, it is amazing that lawyers can somehow find all sorts of “constitutional” rights for things like prison inmates being guaranteed the “right” to sue over crumbled cookies, but somehow this same class of people can’t identify this student’s right to basic religious expression.  I would think the line “Congress shall make no law…” would be pretty clear.  Since this is a public school and receives money and direction from the federal government, it is in clear violation of the First Amendment.  A selective reading of the Constitution can apparently work wonders:  The same amendment once designed to protect religion in America from the federal government is now being used by that same government to persecute religion.

Second, it is equally shocking to see this teacher’s particular classification of off-limits topics.  “Religious beliefs” are lumped in with “violence, blood,” and “sexual connotations.”  Murder, rape, torture, various forms of pornography, and John 3:16—I fear I do not see the necessary connection. The fact that many of the world’s greatest artistic expressions have come from religious origins seems completely lost on this instructor.  What I do see is a clear indication that in this classroom students are told that even basic religious beliefs are on the same level as serious societal abnormalities and outright crimes.   This sums up all too well what a whole generation of students is being taught to believe about religion in general and Christianity in particular.  Perhaps, in light of this, it is a good thing that apparently so many of them are failing to learn much from these “schools.”

Of more significance, though, is the light this situation sheds on the modern myth of the religion-neutral classroom.  Most Americans presume that public schools strive to provide a neutral arena in which multiple religions can be exercised equally.  Hence, Christians can maintain their own beliefs alongside others and in fact can use the school systems as a form of societal outreach.  Unfortunately, this is a serious misconception.

The key point is that in practice the schools—based on the secular humanist lead of men like John Dewey and his intellectual spawn—strive not to be inclusive, but rather exclusive.  This is primarily because they exhibit an overwhelming fear that someone might be offended.  The only practical way to insure that no student could ever be upset by a religious idea is to ban such things entirely, as the teacher here did.  Ironically, the public school system thereby shows its “devotion” to religious diversity by (in theory) discriminating equally against them all.  (In practice, however, it often seems that Christianity is the only “offensive” religion in America.)   No serious religious expression is welcome (though a few cultural platitudes are allowed), which sends the message that such beliefs are somehow wrong, and are something that, if spoken about at all, should be limited to embarrassed whispers behind closed doors.  Belief in a higher power is, at best, optional.  At worst it should be forcibly excluded and placed on the same level as “violence” and “blood.”

In place of religion, secular humanism posits a handy substitute conveniently classified as “non-religious” :  evolutionary scientism.  They preach this non-religious religion with a vehemence that borders on the fanatical.  By “scientism” I do not mean the legitimate pursuit of truth through solid scientific method; I mean the blind-faith sort of radical materialism idolized by secularists.  This kind of “science” is in fact a complete worldview that does not allow its basic premises to undergo serious examination.  The only other “religions” that this worldview can tolerate are of a milquetoast sort that are permitted to give adherents all sorts of warm fuzzies, but must not be allowed to comment on any issues that really matter or make a claim at being Truth.  The practical result is that students are actively discouraged from significant independent religious thought, but are supplied with a blind-faith pseudo-religion cloaked in the hollowed name “science.” 

Of course, I am painting with a broad brush by necessity and do not think that all schools fall directly into this category, or that even those that do are necessarily filled with raving secular humanists.  Still, the idea of the religion-neutral classroom is dominates much of modern education theory and is an almost universally enforced standard.  It can often result in schools becoming the intellectual enforcement arm of practical atheism or else perhaps a sort of mushy agnostic relativism. 

The schools claim to do all of this, of course, in the name of “tolerance.”  This is clearly false, whatever the intent.  If the instructor and school here had really sought to teach understanding between cultures, religious themes would be welcome and the more diverse the merrier.  The students in A. P.’s class who objected to his Christianity, would have been called aside and told to respect his personal beliefs just as he should respect theirs.  It is telling, however, that it was A. P. who was punished and given a zero.

This is a state of affairs thinking American parents should mull over when considering their children’s education.  We need to look deeper and really analyze not only educational rhetoric, but also the practical reality. 

There have been quite a few fingers pointed here and there (often legitimately) in the “why-are-our-schools-in-such-a-sorry-state” debate.  Good intentioned individuals fling billions of dollars at problems, and, in the end, hard working teachers still throw up their hands in frustration and disgust.  Unfortunately, the more obvious difficulties with America’s educational system often obscure an even bigger problem that lurks behind them.  One reason for the failure of American education—particularly public education—is the larger breakdown of American culture and morals due to progressive secularization.   

Most Americans for the past generation or two have shared in a major misconception about schooling in the United States:  they believe that children in public and private schools are not “homeschooled.”  With due respect to Ockham’s infamous razor, the truth is more complicated.  The simple fact is that one reason why the public education system worked in the first place was that, by and large, the children who took part in it actually spent as much time learning at home as they did at school.  Parents, extended family, and churches taught hundreds of hours of lessons in honesty, hard work, respect for elders, perseverance, standards of right and wrong, duty to family, friends, and country, and above all belief in a Higher Power to whom humanity is ultimately and completely accountable.  Further, this Deity cared enough about people’s individual lives to pay attention and would one day call everyone to account for his or her actions. 

These are the real lessons every student needs to master.  Math, science, history, etc. are all important, but they are not as necessary to really living life well.  In fact, once someone understands the lessons listed above, academic subjects can follow whenever the student chooses to pick them up.  Without these attitudes and skills, children (and adults) are students in name only. 

The various causes of our culture’s moral vacuum are too complex and numerous to treat thoroughly here.  Suffice to say that a previously “normal” family that would lay precisely the kind of foundation kids really need to succeed is now considered “abnormal” and in some states is actively discouraged.  Religion is despised in particular, and with it the idea that humanity is accountable to anyone or anything.  The end result is that as a culture Americans have destroyed their framework for moral living, and have discovered nothing remotely sufficient with which to replace it.

This throws the untenable burden of insuring pupils’ moral education onto an already overloaded class of individuals: school teachers.  Teachers who really care about their pupils are forced to spend so much time trying vainly to pick up after a neglectful culture that they are left unable to teach their academic subjects effectively and are therefore attacked as “failures” by the very society that is causing the problem.  To make matters worse, with the rise of modern educational theory, the “solution” of universal public education becomes just another part of the problem.  Most schools have been forcibly secularized, thereby removing any real moral compass they once possessed.  Instead, educational gurus seated in the Ivory Towers of academia produce a clergy of graduates who are told to preach a variety of failing secular humanistic creeds, all of which prove to be insufficient grounds for moral behavior.  Thus, many school systems actually end up reinforcing the very aspects of a declining culture that are causing the problem.  Students learn to be concerned about what society owes them, how to understand their victimhood, ways to pad their self-esteem, and about how it is the government’s responsibility to face life’s challenges for them. 

The sub-culture of educational entertainment promoted by some and resorted to by others further encourages this when it panders to the demand that it is a student’s “right” to be constantly amused and kept interested.  As a result, students emerge more complacent, self-centered, and arrogant than ever before, not only lacking the real skills needed to excel, but actually contemptuous of them.

I must be careful not to overstate my argument.  I do not mean to paint a too-rosy picture of America’s past by implying that earlier generations consisted of perfect families who produced perfect children.  Far from it.  In addition to the fall of the American family, increased truancy enforcement, amongst other things, must also be taken into account, though space considerations prevent me from doing so here. 

What solution can I suggest?  Only massive grassroots change followed by a complete overhaul of western educational philosophies and systems can hope to really “fix” what has gone wrong.  I do think that by understanding the real issue—that the primary supports that have made public education possible in America have been cut away from under it—will help us all to assess it properly.  Parents in the United States must take up the responsibility for their own children’s education once again.  They can no longer be assured someone will do it properly for them.

Educated people today seem to be embracing concepts that clearheaded philosophers of an earlier era would quickly recognize as lunacy.  An interviewee of the San Francisco Chronicle (long known as a nationally ranked platform for less-than-brilliant comments) has recently trotted out one of the oldest, but most disturbing ideas: that the government has a more basic claim on children than parents do.  In doing so, she made the following statement:

“[Leslie] Heimov [executive director of the Children's Law Center of Los Angeles] said her organization's chief concern was not the quality of the children's education, but their ‘being in a place daily where they would be observed by people who had a duty to ensure their ongoing safety.’”

 (http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/03/07/MNJDVF0F1.DTL)

Though her basic position is essentially worthless, Heimov’s comment contains a few instructive points. 

First, Heimov displays a shocking misunderstanding of the rights and responsibilities of parents.  Essentially, she is arguing that the state of California needs to systematically protect children from their own families.  The presupposition that undergirds this kind of thought is that the state is primarily responsible for the welfare and development of all children.  The government may often choose to delegate some of its role to parents, but it reserves the “right” to revoke parental authority whenever it chooses and for whatever reason.  Children only belong with their parents so long as what the parents do is pleasing to the state.

Next, Heimov also inadvertently reveals what is really going on here (a fact that none of the few web comments I looked at below the article picked up on):  For groups like hers this is not about parents being qualified to instruct their children in a range of academic subjects and life skills; compulsory school attendance is a tool of social control.  They believe that parents in general cannot be trusted to raise children properly and so the state must have a mechanism that allows it to observe and intervene at will.  While the word “safety” generally applies to physical danger, the courts and activists of California have already shown that they will use the broadest possible sense of the word.  This has the potential to produce a truly Orwellian state of affairs. 

If the parents of California give up their rights as parents to the government, they should not be surprised to see the government begin to exercise those rights.  The “Govenator’s” recent comments are encouraging, but Californians should stand behind him and act decisively.

A second point emerges from the way the Chronicle staff employed the quotation.  It was literally the final word of the article, apparently intended as a complete rejoinder to the statement from the seemingly misguided homeschoolers.  The author offered no analysis or critique of the asinine idea that parents should have to complete some ridiculous course in non-sense secular humanist educationese before they become magically “qualified” to care about their children’s “ongoing safety.”  The Chronicle accepted the idea at face value, as if it were actually something resembling commonsense and intelligence.  The very fact that one well-educated childrens professional could make such a statement and an equally well-educated journalist could repeat it as unchallenged truth is more than enough to demonstrate that there is “something rotten” in the state of California.

Frankly, I can understand how Heimov and the Chronicle can mistakenly think that our children are now the government’s responsibility.  As American culture continues its rapid decline into self-centered imbecility, more and more parents are indeed abdicating their rights and failing in their responsibilities.  This leaves the rest of society to live with the results.  Who will step into this gap?  In an earlier time, it would have been the churches, relatives, and local communities; those most competent to really intervene in a meaningful way.  Today, people reflexively expect the state and federal governments to assume control.  This is unfortunate on at least two levels.  First, the government (especially as influenced by modern educational theorists) is the least qualified to act in a parent’s stead.  Second, as we see here in California, the government tends to go after just those parents who are the least likely to need supervision:  parents who care enough about their children’s future to take a personal hand in shaping it.  So, far from really fixing the problem, the philosophies advocated by Heimov and the Chronicle only make matters worse while trampling on parental rights in the process

 The simple fact is that it takes parents to raise children, but a village to make them into idiots.

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”—Socrates

Howard Dean has demonstrated that historical ignorance doesn’t stop with teenage mall-rats, but in fact runs all the way up into the very heart of the DNC.  The good doctor (who hopefully knows more about his profession than he does about history) has made the claim that the Republican Party “talks like the 1850s.”  Dean, of course, is attempting to smear the Republicans as a party of racists who are defending systematic public discrimination.  In this he displays a ridiculous lack of knowledge not only of the Republicans, but also of the shameful history of his own party.

Most liberals today loudly proclaim the Democrats to be the party of minorities and the Republicans to be the party of racist oppressors.  I’m reminded of a ridiculous comment from another less-than-aware liberal icon, Bill Maher.  Maher commented on one Republican national convention by saying that “the last time the Republicans had that many black people on stage, they were selling them.”  Anyone—Dean or Maher—who can make such a statement with a straight face should limit their future comments to the failures of the American educational system (of which they are obvious victims).

So, what do Republicans from the 1850s talk like?

“…by the law of nature and of nations, the right of property in slaves falls to the ground; for one who is equal to another cannot be the owner or property of that other.”—William H. Seward

“The white man's happiness cannot be purchased by the black man's misery.”—Frederick Douglas (technically joined in 1860)

 “Whenever I hear anyone arguing for slavery, I feel a strong impulse to see it tried on him personally.”—Abraham Lincoln, a somewhat prominent antebellum Republican

The Republican Party in the 1850s was bound together by one thing:  No further spread of slavery.  While no pure haven of abolitionist idealism—there were quite a few racists in the GOP then—the plain fact is that the Republicans entered the American political arena dedicated to containing and (later) eliminating one of the worst abominations ever inflicted by one American upon another.   This dedication to slavery’s destruction become more pronounced as time (and the Civil War) wore on.  After the war, the Republican Party remained the party of choice for African Americans well into the 1900s. 

So, the Republicans of 1850 said quite a bit of which we can today be proud.  As a result, Dr. Dean’s “historically challenged” statement translates into quite the compliment.  And now for the Democrats.  What did some Democrats from the 1850s have to say?

“Military power should not be allowed to interfere with the relations of servitude, either by supporting or impairing the authority of the master….”—George B. McClellan, Milquetoast General and 1864 Democratic presidential candidate

“They [Black people] had no rights which the white man was bound to respect.”—Justice Roger B. Taney in the Dredd Scott decision in 1857

“[The right of slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God...it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts."—Jefferson Davis, an often conveniently overlooked 1850s Democrat.

Though the Republicans in the 1850s had some serious disagreements amongst themselves about how opposed to slavery they should be, they were looking in the right direction.  The Democrats, sadly,  were more united.  Dominated by a southern wing that promoted radical pro-slavery views and supported half-heartedly by swarms of spineless northern moderates, the Democrats were, without doubt, the party of slavery.

But little things like historical facts are hardly something to get in the way of people like Dean and Maher.  In cases like this, they are manifestly more concerned with propaganda than they are with truth.  Blatant falsehoods such as these (even accidental ones) serve a very practical purpose:  They keep minorities chained to the democratic bandwagon.  They reinforce false stereotypes (i.e. “Republican/conservative”=racist) wielded in a campaign of blantant emotional manipulation, thereby encouraging minorities to support the democrats out of some mythical “historical” principle.  This discourages minorities from asking the hard questions democratic leaders fear most.  The Republicans don’t get a pass on those sorts of issues (nor should they); its time the Democrats faced them too.  Frankly, minority voters deserve to be treated as much more than a sure-fire democratic stepping stone.

“Know thy enemy, know thyself.”  Apparently Howard Dean and Bill Maher know neither.

But when Jesus saw it, he was much displeased, and said unto them, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not: for of such is the kingdom of God.”

 Mark 10:24

 I suppose it was bound to happen sometime.  Planned Parenthood is now trying to turn the tables on its religious opponents by appointing a “chaplain,” Ignacio Castuera, and having him meet with various organizations.  It is a move that makes sense on paper: try to show that the “right” doesn’t have the market cornered on religion by staking your own claim to it.  Finding a front man would be a problem, but for the fact that in the more liberal denominations, you can literally find some “priest” or “pastor” or “reverend” who will deny just about any Truth you like and argue that “I know this is what Jesus said, but here’s what He really meant.” 

 But the idea of a chaplain for America’s largest promoter of abortion simply takes the cake.  And to hear him talk is even more bizarre.    I really don’t understand how the following statement can come from the mouth of anyone who knows anything about Jesus, but I think it does illustrate a few important points.  In it, Casteura is remarking on the fact that few, if anyone, wanted to talk to him in his new position:

 "The closer Jesus got to the cross, the smaller the crowds got," the chaplain said. "This is pretty close to the cross because [pro-abortion] people have to take derision, ostracism, all that."

 If there was law of physics that stated that the amount of force exerted upon the inside of one's skull cavity is directly proportional to the amount of hypocrisy leaving one's mouth, surely the good reverend would take half of Los Angeles with him when he exploded.

 Neo-nazis and white supremacists face "derision, ostracism, all that" all the time too.  In fact, Adolf Hitler is one of the most hated men of in history.  I hear Jeffery Dahmer, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy weren’t too popular either.  So, using Casteura's logic, that fact puts them all quite close to God. 

 Then again, perhaps subliminally that is precisely what he would like to see.  After all, this poor, persecuted little pearl is actually arguing that God would support an organization that has contributed to the murder of over 7 times the number of people Hitler could claim in his prime!  I’m supposed to feel that to refuse to meet with him is to persecute Christ!?  Perhaps we should throw in a little warm, fuzzy feeling for Josephs Mengele or Stalin while we’re at it?  I don’t think so. 

 What is really happening here is nothing more than an attempt at blatant emotional manipulation, and is in fact an insult to all men and women of faith.

 The most basic question with abortion isn’t quality of life.  It isn’t even the “rights” of the mother.  It is the humanity of the “fetus.”  If the baby should be considered human at conception then all other questions must be framed in light of that one fact.  And yet it is that one fact that Planned Parenthood is most desperate to avoid.

 By draping abortion and Planned Parenthood in religious language, the “chaplain” is defacto diverting attention from the real issues by suggesting that there are no religious grounds for questioning either, and they hope that we’ll just take his word for it since he and Christ have so much in common.  In fact, Casteura goes a step farther to imply that abortion is something that Christ Himself would have wanted and promoted.  (Who knows, perhaps Christ would have been too busy opposing Samuel Alito for the Supreme Court to make it to Jerusalem?) Nothing could be further from the truth, and I throw down the gauntlet to Casteura and his crowd to show me a single shred of scriptural evidence that Christ advocates anything like the killing of even a single inconvenient or unwanted child.

It is an affront to all men and women of faith in that it first assumes that most of them are nothing more than mindless boobs who will automatically follow anyone who asks, “What would Jesus do?” and mentions the Bible.  It is an insult to anyone who as ever read the Bible for what it is, especially when men like Casteura start wielding the inevitable hermeneutical orcish battle axe against scripture in order to further what amounts to an American Holocaust. 

 Christians, in America and elsewhere, must understand that it really is an all or nothing issue; it allows no more wiggle room for “erring brothers” than if we had confronted African chattel slavery in the 1800s.  The church needs to be willing to face the likes of Casteura head-on and see them for what they are: men who are willing to not only butcher the truth in their feel-good pursuit of a god-like humanity but will even sanctify the murder of innocent children for the crime of being inconvenient.

"When war does come, my advice is to draw the sword and throw away the scabbard."

   - General Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson

 I’m about to do something that may be a little impolite according to the standard American mind:  I’m about to argue that one of our bitterest enemies is right, dead right, in something he has said about the U.S.  Is that a real problem?  Personally, I think not.  It is foolishness to refuse to recognize (and then deal with) the truth, especially regarding war.  We might not like to hear it, but its too important not to.

 Just recently, the news media revealed that Al Qaeda’s number two man, Aymen al-Zawahiri, expects that the U.S. might just cut and run from Iraq, much like we did in Vietnam.  If we do, he argues, they must be ready to fill in the gap.  Now, this makes some patriotic Americans bristle all over, but I’m afraid he’s right.  There are three major issues of concern (realities, if you will) for Americans in this:  1. America did run from Vietnam, 2. We are in danger of doing it again, and 3. It is the worst possible outcome for not only Iraq but the entire war on terror.

 Taking these points one at a time:

 1.      Whatever your history teachers or PBS documentaries may have told you, America did not “lose” Vietnam.  We gave up.  Regardless of how the war was fought (and under Johnson stupidity beyond belief was the rule), America dealt out far more punishment to the enemy, even in the infamous Tet Offensive, than the