POTUS campaign trivia

How about this for curious: On the two tickets are represented the first state, and the 48th, 49th, and 50th. Not a good year for states added in the 19th century, apparently.

Palin for Veep

The Corner is abuzz about the Palin pick. With good reason. Almost no one saw it coming.

The best aspect of this pick might just be Palin's perfect positioning to make inroads into the culture of abortion. Consider this analysis:

For now, let's just give McCain credit for going for the Democratic Party's solar plexus. He picked a woman when his competitor couldn't. He picked a pro-life mother of a Down Syndrome baby to run with him against a man who, as Jonah points out, couldn't bring himself to protect babies who survive abortion.

All of that matters. A lot. We could be witnessing the high-water mark of the pro-abortion movement. Imagine the damage that a pro-life, female Vice President can do to the abortion rights crowd. Imagine the immensity of her bully pulpit. Add the fact that she kept a child with Down Sydrome and her moral authority on this issue seems insuperable.

UPDATE: I just watched her speech. Just when you think her moral authority cannot possibly be any stronger, she discloses that she has a son serving in Iraq.

I hope the McCain campaign did its due diligence. This is almost too good to be true. As long as she doesn't have any dark skeletons in her closet, she's going to make Slow Joe Biden look like a used car salesman.

More on Democrats' antipathy to free speech

Powerline has the latest in a "series of near-daily 'Democrats vs. Free Speech' stories." Stanley Kurtz has now crossed the Dems' hawse with his inquiries into Obama's connections to the terrorist Bill Ayers. According to Politico, the Obama campaign responded with an effort to disrupt Kurtz's appearance on a Chicago radio program.

The campaign e-mailed Chicago supporters who had signed up for the Obama Action Wire with detailed instructions including the station's telephone number and the show's extension, as well as a research file on Kurtz, which seems to prove that he's a conservative, which isn't in dispute. The file cites a couple of his more controversial pieces, notably his much-maligned claim that same-sex unions have undermined marriage in Scandinavia.

"Tell WGN that by providing Kurtz with airtime, they are legitimizing baseless attacks from a smear-merchant and lowering the standards of political discourse," says the email, which picks up a form of pressure on the press pioneered by conservative talk radio hosts and activists in the 1990s, and since adopted by Media Matters and other liberal groups."

It is absolutely unacceptable that WGN would give a slimy character assassin like Kurtz time for his divisive, destructive ranting on our public airwaves. At the very least, they should offer sane, honest rebuttal to every one of Kurtz's lies," it continues.

Clearly, this issue touches a nerve in the Obama campain.

UPDATE: Guy Benson has a first-hand account.

More on health care

A liberal colleague of mine, who identifies himself as an evangelical but stands squarely outside 2000 years of Christian tradition on matters of legal and political philosophy, is fond of the Wallisian argument that Christian moral teaching demands single-payer health care. Christians have a moral obligation, he thinks, to employ the state to ensure that disparities in health care are eradicated.

The flaws in this argument are too many to count. But it is important to respond to this sort of nonsense because many liberal Christians, eager for an excuse to vote for Barack Obama, are buying it.

First, this consequentialist account of political engagement simply does not hang together. It is entirely inconsistent with 2000 years of orthodox Christian teaching on jurisprudence and poltical philosophy. The Church has always taught a moral philosophy that is deontological and emphasizes the importance of the Eschaton values -- virtue, the Good -- relative to things of lesser and merely temporal importance, such as human conditions. In short, these Christian consequentialitsts stand squarely outside of orthodox Christianity. Perhaps that is not troubling to so-called "progressive Christians," but it should at least cause them to pause.

That aside, the assumption on which the argument is predicated -- that the justness or morality of a policy is determined by its consequences (the "moral goal," to borrow your oxymoron) -- is anything but self-evident, and liberal Christians have not bothered to demonstrate it. I would love to know they plan to get around the incommensurability problem, which in the last 50 years has caused consequentialist philosophers the world over to abandon consequentialism as untenable. So far, they aren't saying.

As a prudential and factual matter, their claims are simply wrong. "Progressive" -- statist and collectivist -- proposals have never, anywhere, at any time reduced disparity in healthcare (is it disparity to which they object or inadequacy?), reduced waste, or made anyone more healthy. Health care rationing in Canada is now so extreme that doctors are actually dropping patients from their practice lists. I suppose in that sense, Canada's statist system has reduced disparity: everyone is equally unable to obtain adequate health care.

An old joke about the Soviet economy went like this. After ordering his car at a local dealership, a customer inquired when it might be available to pick up. The dealer told him, "You can come by to get it on February 3, two years from now." The customer replied, "I can't. The plumber's coming that day."There's a reason why that joke is funny. It was true.

Indeed, most (though certainly not all) of the failures of the current health insurance system are due to too much state intervention and not enough freedom of market. If insurers were freed from disparate and restrictive state regulatory schemes, a national market would naturally emerge, increasing access and reducing costs.

The tradeoff would be that less affluent people would end up with "Wal-Mart" plans and more affluent people would end up with "Brooks Brothers" plans. In the minds of conservatives, that would be a good thing. Better a Wal-Mart plan than no plan at all. But liberals care more about disparity than about access, so they prefer a single-payer system that rations a smaller quantum of health care on more equal terms.

McCain's plan is, in the minds of conservatives, superior to the statist solution Obama offers for all of these reasons.

So much for free speech

Barack Obama is trying to silence a group that is raising legitimate, unanswered questions about Obama's ties to the terrorist William Ayers. He is threatening to employ the Justice Department to pressure television stations that carry advertisements linking him to Ayers. And he is impliedly threatening to have the stations' broadcast licenses revoked, asserting that running the ads violates the stations' obligations to operate "in the public interest." That phrase is a term of art, the standard for determining which television stations get to broadcast and which ones do not.

I have not seen the ads. Perhaps they imply stronger inferences than the evidence will bear. However, Obama is a public figure, so the ads are almost certainly not defamatory. Cheaps shots? Perhaps. But in this country we happen to believe that tough questions in a political campaign are protected under the First Amendment. And we trust American citizens to distinguish between political ads that are legitimate and those that are over the line.

The bigger issue is this. If Candidate Obama is willing to go to such extremes to silence critics during a political campaign, imagine what a President Obama might do once he has actually obtained the reigns of power. The man obviously has little regard for the First Amendment. Add this to the list of things -- human life, marriage, free markets -- for which he has little regard, and one discerns a troubling pattern.

UPDATE: Police in Denver have arrested an ABC news producer for "trespass" on a public sidewalk, a physical impossibility. At the time of his arrest, the producer was attempting to photograph Democratic senators and DNC donors. How little do Obama's folks value free speech?

I am informed that Rush Limbaugh is covering this story on his radio show.

Having a bad day?

Feeling down? A bit sorry for yourself? Read this. Your day won't seem so bad anymore.

Facts that don't fit the narrative

For the mainstream media, frenzied in its peurile, pubescent passion for the Big O, facts have little value. The Washington Times, not infected with Obamamania, has uncovered a fact that the New York Times, the networks, and CNN -- in short, Obama's communications agents -- refuse to report because it doesn't fit their Obamanarrative: Obama's half brother lives in a hut in Africa, subsisting on three cents per day. It seems that the multi-millionaire and Democratic-nominee Candidate of the Past wants to spend your hard-earned money and mine on programs for the poor but cannot bring himself to share a meager fraction of his own coin with his own flesh and blood.

This fact is consistent with recent revelations that the Obamas make millions each year and, as the Washington Times points out, live in "a mansion that a mobster helped pay for." Also consistent is the fact (again, tip to the Washington, not New York, Times) that the Obamas give less than the national average to charities. And the fact (yup, Washington Times) that Michelle Obama's employer, a hospital in Chicago, steers poor blacks to other hospitals. The list goes on, but you won't read any of these facts in the news section of your mainstream paper or any news service that relies primarily on the AP and/or Reuters.

The moral of the story is simply this: if you want a liberal narrative devoid of any connection to reality within the four dimensions of time and space, get your "news" from traditional sources. If you want facts, conservative media is the place to go.

Liberal theonomy comes in Catholic variety, too

We have on numerous occasions condemned theonomous reasoning on matters of civic importance (for examples, see here, here, here, and here). Both liberal Christians and conservative Christians can be found arguing that the Bible says x, therefore Christians ought to endorse y policy. Almost invariably one finds that the speaker is a protestant, usually a self-described evangelical.

Today the Bishop of Providence, Rhode Island demonstrates that Catholics are not immune to the temptation to indulge in theonomous lines of argument. According to the AP, "Rhode Island's Roman Catholic bishop is calling on U.S. authorities to halt mass immigration raids and says agents who refuse to participate in such raids on moral grounds deserve to be treated as conscientious objectors." America's immigration laws ought not be enforced, according to Tobin, because they are unjust and immoral.

One of the many problems with the rhetorical tie between theology and public policy is that it is a cop-out. It excuses the one making the assertion from engaging in the rigorous process of reasoning publicly, invoking publicly-accessible propositions and demonstrating proofs. Bishop Tobin doesn't bother to explain his assertion that the democratically-enacted immigration laws of this country are unjust. And the assertion is just that: an assertion. It is anything but a self-evident truth.

The AP author provides a clue, stating, "The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has called U.S. immigration policies 'morally unacceptable,' saying they keep families divided and encourage the exploitation of migrants." If that sums up Tobin's concern with current immigration laws, then he has no ground for claiming that the laws are unjust and immoral. The laws may be imprudent. They may result in undesirable (and presumably unintended) outcomes, such as the division of families. They may for these reasons be bad public policy. But that in no way makes the laws unjust or immoral. Unwise perhaps, but not unjust.

And Tobin should know this. As a Catholic bishop, he is aware of the distinction between matters of principle and matters of prudence. The legalization of abortion is unjust in principle. Our current health care laws are unwise as a matter of prudence. Similarly, our immigration policies are prudentially suspect in some respects. But to encourage law enforcement officers to refuse to enforce the law, simply because one has prudential disagreements with the lawmaker, is to thumb one's nose at the rule of law.

More dishonesty from the homosexuality lobby

This ad is currently running in California. The ad shows an attractive young woman trying to get to the alter, where her handsome, chivalrous husband-to-be waits to marry her. Various obstacles have been placed in her way, and after squeezing between cars in the parking lot, losing a heel and her veil, and being tripped up by a clumsy, elderly guest, she gives up and sits in the aisle just a few feet short of her destination. The minister then restrains her fiance from coming to her aid. The following words then apear on the screen: "What if you couldn't marry the person you love."

The ad is disingenuous on so many levels. To name just a few:

(1) The couple trying to get married consists of one man and one woman. No same-sex couples, polygamous couples, or any other groups of people trying to marry the people they love appear anywhere in the ad. The imagery is intentional, of course, and extremely dishonest. A single image of a same-sex couple approaching the alter would belie the myth underlying the ad.

(2) The message is predicated upon a lie. Nothing prevents any person -- heterosexual or homosexual -- from getting married. Everyone has equal access to marriage under traditional laws. But homosexuality lobbyists don't want equal access. They want the law's special and particlar endorsement of homosexual intimacy.

(3) An unmistakable, if veiled, implication of the ad is that various people have thrown up (legal) obstacles to prevent homosexuals from reaching the alter. Of course this also is untrue. But the implication betrays a more subtle presupposition: anti-gay traditionalists are obsessed with keeping harmless homosexuals from attaining marital bliss.

The traditionalists-are-obsessed-with-same-sex-marriage slander, commonly recited by sexual liberationists, is particularly galling because it is a classic example of psychological projection. Before the homosexuality lobby shoved this issue into the national consciousness by litigating it before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court and every other judicial forum they thought might be receptive, I and most people like me though about same-same marriage as often as we thought of platinum ice cream (that is to say, not at all) and for exactly the same reasons.

Victory in Iraq

One problem with fighting a war against terrorists is that no single event marks final victory. However, the signs that we are winning in Iraq are now accumulating so quickly that victory in that theatre seems almost inevitable. This is particularly striking and encouraging when one considers that defeat seemed inevitable just several months ago.

The latest landmark on the road to victory comes with the announcement, expected on Friday, that Moqtada al Sadr intends to disband his infamous Mahdi Army. The Journal explains why this is so important. "Coupled with the near-total defeat of al Qaeda in Iraq, this means the U.S. no longer faces any significant organized military foe in the country. It also marks a major setback for Iran, which had used the Mahdi Army as one of its primary vehicles for extending its influence in Iraq."

Despite the best efforts of liberals and Democrats, we are winning in Iraq. We have defeated both Sunni terrorists and Shiite thugs. While mainstream media institutions emboldened and enabled our enemies, the men and women of our military quietly went about their business beating an impassioned, determined, and dishonest enemy.

God bless the men and women who serve us in uniform. God bless the fast-maturing Iraqi government. And God bless America, preserver and defender of freedom and hope.

Superficial dandies

I was trying to make sense of a student evaluation yesterday. One of my students complained at last semester's end (though the semester ended in May, I only got around to reading my evaluations yesterday) that I was too hard on him or her and that I needed to understand that not everyone is as privileged as I.

That struck me as odd. Privileged? Really? As I have mentioned here before, I grew up in poverty and busted my hump for decades to get out. And because I tell my students a very abbreviated version of my life story at the end of the year (I intend it as inspiration, not cannon fodder) my students are aware of this fact. So the claim that I am privileged struck a particularly discordant tone.

Reading Thomas Sowell's column today cleared things up for me. Sowell observes of our contemporary culture:

People who have achieved success are often referred to as "privileged," especially by the intelligentsia. Achievements used to be a source of inspiration for others but have been turned into a source of grievance for those without comparable achievements.

I see this phenomenon frequently in some (but not most) of my students. Another student complained that I was playing favorites. The basis for the charge? I praise students who answer questions correctly and do not give similar praise to those who get the answer wrong.

This entitlement mentality goes hand in hand with the "incessant self-dramatization" to which Sowell rightly objects. Increasingly, young people nurture the notion that they deserve success regardless of merit. They seem to believe that achievements, fame, and honors are like lottery winnings. How have we failed them so badly?

The power of liberal academic dogma

Anyone who thinks that universities in America are places of free and open inquiry either: (1) has not recently stepped foot on an American campus or (2) is liberal and deluded. The latest demonstration of narrow-mindedness in the left-leaning academy comes from North Dakota, where the NoDak Law Review had the audacity to publish articles by pro-marriage scholars. For this bit of heresy, the Law School is being flogged in the local press and legal community.

Protests from North Dakota lawyers have been so passionate and widespread that North Dakota Law School Dean Paul LeBel posted a disclaimer on the school’s Web site assuring the legal community that “the university and the School of Law are welcoming and inclusive educational communities.”

Just last week I shared dinner with a fellow member of the legal academy who unwittingly slandered me to my face. She complained of "anti-gay bigots" who "oppose gay marriage." Of course, it never occurred to her that I, a rational person, might support conjugal marriage, much less that the word "bigot" might be an insulting calumny. Mercifully, another colleague arrived at that very moment to save me from having to respond. But the point was (once again) driven home: scholarship in the American academy is for the exchange of ideas and the pursuit of truth, unless those ideas are conservative and the truth is inconvenient for the liberal worldview.

Debunking the callous-America myth

Over at Mirror of Justice, Greg Sisk takes down the liberal canard that the United States of America has failed to commit financial resources to development of its poor. Unlike his intellectual opponents, he uses facts. Lots of them.

For example, government spending in 2007 consumed $4.9 trillion, 35.9% of our gross domestic product. Sisk states, "Of that government spending, social spending constituted some 55.8 percent of total spending, totaling more than $2.88 trillion."

Think about that number for a moment. That's "trillion" with a "t". Furthermore, Sisk points out that "the percentage of the federal budget devoted to defense has plummeted while social spending has skyrocketed."

Finally, the average American begins working on January 2 each year and doesn't start taking money home until May 1. Everything she earns before May 1 goes to the government. And while she is not taking money home, she is not able to give to charitable organizations, which are able to help the poor much more effectively than government bureaucrats. This graph effectively illustrates the problem:



It is worth noting that Barack Obama proposes to make this problem worse by increasing expenditures on federal entitlements for the poor. In short, the claim that America is not serious about assisting the poor and needs to take a more liberal, compassionate (profligate) posture toward state spending is hogwash.