Bill's Comments

This essay in Belmont Club shows where we are headed with political correctness. We are consistently a decade or two behind England. Unless we change the lag will disappear.

......think again.

Read any article in the MSM about the Arizona law and its repercussions and the reactions to it, and the words are always immigration, immigrants, etc. as if these are what Arizona is against.

.....it is ILLEGAL immigration. They don't WANT to have a clue.

I only link to another post when I think it says something truly important. This post certainly does. You might check out the website itself. Ostensibly it is written by a pre-teen. If so, he is phenomenally intelligent and articulate. Well worth your time to visit.

Arizona passes a law that duplicates Federal law at the state level and intends to enforce it. What happens? It is being vilified and every possible challenge to invalidate it is being sought. Here it is in all its ugly splendor--the attempt to use legality and publicity to promote illegal behavior. When people publically consider breaking the law to be proper, we are in serious trouble.

.....that politicians and power groups WANT illegal immigration.

A few years ago there was a furor over the attempts by some Christians to introduce the teaching of Intelligent Design in the schools science curriculum. It went so far as a suit in Pennsylvania to force the teaching. The issue has since died out, but from my perspective it was handled extremely poorly by both sides, and a genuine teaching opportunity was lost. The press, being on against Intelligent Design (ID) from the start, failed to show the real issues underneath, and while everyone was pointing fingers at ID as being religious and a version of Creationism, no one pointed out that the arguments and positions of the other side were equally non-rational being Evolutionism. I think it is instructive to look at this in more detail, because it is another version of the kinds of arguments that have been going on throughout history.

Biblical literalists, that believe the world was created complete as we know it approximately 6000 years ago spend great amounts of energy, physical, emotional, and mental, trying to fit all that is known into their belief. They call it a theory of creation, and if they were willing to actually test its conclusions and inputs against known information honestly, they could indeed call it a theory, however poorly it does its job of explanation, and how invalid it is against any tests based on current knowledge. Because it is not subjected to external challenge, and is defended by ad hoc assumptions to keep the belief, it is an ideology and is most appropriately named Creationism. In fact there is a museum that purports to show and demonstrate the history of the earth in these terms in Petersburg, Kentucky, just Southwest of Cincinnati, Ohio.

One step more reasonable is Intelligent Design. The concept is based on an analogy to finding a watch, seeing its complexity, order, and functioning, and from that hypothesizing a watch maker. In this case, proponents of ID accept pretty much all of the factual basis of modern science, but then interpret it quite differently. Two of the most common arguments for a “watch maker” or “Universe Maker” or God, are the flagellum of some bacteria and a misapplication of probability to chemistry. In the case of a flagellum, because it consists of a dozen very specific proteins, any one of which when removed, renders the flagellum immobile, the analogy is drawn that like a watch, take out any one gear and it fails to function, and the watch is designed, so then is also the bacterial flagellum. What is missing is the idea that the flagellum might have started very imperfectly and over millions and billions of years changed and became perfected. In fact the ignoring of the element of time is one of the most glaring errors in ID.
The other “argument” is a gross misapplication of the concepts of statistics, an ignoring of the principles of chemical dynamics, and a refusal to think in the proper time scales. Essentially the argument is that given the number of atoms in a living being, the probability of them coming together in that configuration is so small as to be impossible, therefore they had to be guided, by God. First of all, one cannot validly calculate such a probability, since that isn’t how it happened. Probability must be calculated on the pathways to the result. Second, of all, if one looks at the chemistry of the universe, one finds that everywhere, the first small molecules of life are found. It is actually more probable that such compounds as amino acids, simple sugars, and even the polycyclic members of nucleic acid, will form than the atoms of matter will stay separated. Those compounds give off energy when they form, thus making them more stable than their separated components. When such compounds are then concentrated, they in turn form other stable, larger molecules, and so forth. Finally, given the amount of time that the universe appears to have been in existence, even relatively low probability events have had opportunities to occur.

Where the ID proponents really come into battle though is with evolution. They simply look at the complexity of living organisms and do not conceive of them occurring by chance or without direction. The eye has been used as an example of this, but interestingly enough, there were some simulated evolution studies that showed that given an increased sensitivity to light in a few cells on the surface of a multi-cellular organism, something functioning as an eye will form. For that matter one can see so-called convergent evolution in the eye of an octopus vs. the eye of chordates. The evolutionary path between them split off long before there was anything considered as a precursor to an eye, but both have amazingly similar eyes.

There is a subset of the ID proponents that will allow continuing evolution, but refuse to grant evolution of all living things from simple precursor organisms. Their constant refrain is, “Show me an transition form.” However, what this really means is, “Show me every possible link between the evolution from one predecessor to the final version that you claim.” There is an absolute refusal to accept any inferred links. However, I have also seen them reject actual transition forms because they don’t show the next step in the process.

For anyone fairly well educated in the basic sciences, it is easy to beat up on the Creationists and ID’ers. However, that is not to say that evolution gets a free pass. Regardless of how well corroborated, evolution is a theory not a fact. It is an interpretation of the facts that appears to fit them the best of other possible interpretations, but it has its own difficulties that are often ignored. The biggest one is, what is the jump from a collection of chemicals to a living organism? One can find all sorts of pieces in the literature. There are little hollow spheres of protein called coacervates that can form non-biotically, but yet in some ways behave like organisms. One can trap enzymes inside them a have them seem to metabolize, drawing in a sugar or similar compound and breaking it into two or more pieces. The pre-biotic chemists have done all sorts of things since the first Stanley Muller experiments that converted a hypothesized primordial gas mixture into a soup of biological molecules simply through constant electrical discharges and boiling the condensate to recycle the monomers and atoms. They have found all sorts of ways to create the precursors of DNA and ATP, two of the fundamental bases of life.
Or another question is how did DNA become the code? For that matter how did RNA become the translator? But still more fundamental, what defines life? We seem to know it when we see it, but have a very hard time properly defining it so that we will know definitively when we create it. Additionally, we still argue over the actual evolutionary pathways given that they exist. And there are many wonders in the biological world that are rarely discussed. We take it for granted now that mitochondria have DNA, and in fact that is being used as a marker in human evolution. But how did it get there in the first place? Most likely mitochondria and their plant analog, chloroplasts, were once independent organisms that became ingested but not digested, and formed a mutual supportive system. The metabolic traces are there, with very primitive anaerobic metabolism in the cytoplasm but the real energy-yielding reactions in the included chloroplasts or mitochondria.

What has happened in the school systems is that science has come to be taught as a collection of facts, not as a way of gathering, organizing, and using facts about the world around us. This is most evident in teaching evolution. It is taught as established fact, not well-corroborated theory. As such it should be labeled Evolutionism, not Theory of Evolution. It is well beyond the scope of this essay, but I think the teaching of science to the point of its being Scientism fits other agenda.

In fighting the introduction of ID into the classroom, teachers avoided having to actually show how science works. They would have had to understand the material well enough to explain its strengths and weaknesses and be able to analyze the fallacies of ID. There were many reasons and excuses given, not the least of which was the ad hominum attack of it was religious and non-intellectual.

From my perspective neither side was being honest. The ID’ers wanted their ideas presented as valid theory to be discussed, actually as an alternative to evolution, and the teachers and did not want any challenge to their intellectual hegemony. Rather than ID being given the necessary exposure to show it for what it was, and ideology, it was suppressed for other reasons. And classroom science became even more entrenched as a collection of facts rather than a system of knowledge acquisition and analysis. It is all reminiscent of the same debates with slightly different foci throughout history from the Middle Ages to the present.

These three words describe the manner in which the three monotheistic religions interact with the rest of the world. They represent Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, respectively. The observations are based on their behavior and their scriptural guidance.

The Hebrew Bible, or Old Testament, is filled with injunctions to the Jews not to intermarry or associate with the inhabitants of lands that they conquered or migrated to. The primary concern was to maintain the purity of the people and the covenants with God. To this day, Jews do not evangelize, though the prohibitions among reformed and perhaps conservative Jews have been relaxed. They do intermarry with gentiles. For the Jews the strategy has brought persecution, but also they have survived as a people, drawing themselves from their Diaspora back to Israel.

Christianity, on the other hand, has followed the injunction to go forth and baptize the nations in the name of the Trinity. It took the shift from evangelizing only other Jews, to Paul’s sanctions of evangelizing the gentiles and letting them avoid all the Pharisaic rules and regulations. He was more concerned with their actions towards one another and the rest of the world. As a consequence, Christianity, partly due to the history with Rome, became the dominant religion of Europe. The important note was that it was as much orthodoxy as orthopraxy that provided the growth. A major characteristic of Christianity is that it is done by choice, including the practices of the faith, as well as the questioning. This is not to say that has always been the case during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, but generally speaking it holds true, and certainly does today.

Islam evangelizes, and does so aggressively, BY FORCE. Where the Muslims conquered, they offered a choice of death, dhimmitude, or conversion. Depending on the burden of the jizzya or dhimmi tax, conversion might be more acceptable, to other than those willing to martyr themselves. Once converted, apostasy is punishable by death. Once a Muslim, always a Muslim, whether one wants to be or not. Needless to say, this is effective in numbers of converts, but one questions the strength of the faith. Apparently that is not a concern. When considering the scriptural basis of Muslim behavior, it is important to realize that like the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament, there are passages that can be interpreted as gentle and others as violent or aggressive. However, the rule in Muslim interpretation is that the later sutras override the earlier ones. Interestingly enough, the later sutras are the ones that are the most aggressive and punitive to infidels.

At this point, I am going to offer some of my own interpretations and speculations. First, that the Muslim-Jewish conflict is not new, and did not start with the creation of Israel. That just handed a cause to the Muslims on a plate. Muslims have had it in for the Jews ever since Mohammed was rejected as a scholar by the “People of the Book” as he called them. The problem is that Islam is simply a corrupted version of Judaism through combining a rather poor memory of Hebrew scripture with the norms of nomadic Arabian culture. Try reading the Quran. It is hard, because it is incoherent. If one reads the history of Islam and the visions in sources that are sympathetic to Islam, it is hard not to see it as a simple justification for whatever Mohammed wanted to do at the time. I found it very suspicious that every time he ran into a problem, he would have a vision that commanded him to do what was the most expedient and not necessarily the most principled.

The Muslim-Christian conflict results simply from the fact that Christians are infidels. We are hated for who we are, and until we get that idea straight in our heads, we will be constantly on the defensive. From my perspective, any Jewish-Christian conflict is due to politics not religion. This is not the essay to address that.

I guess that is enough to get me a fatwa. Ever notice that Jews and Christians never condemn their critics or threaten them with death? Tends to support my theses above.

This essay is a continuation of a previous one, “Benevolence, Good, Bad, and Evil,” and an expansion of a second, “Thoughts on the Nature of God.” The first essay established the definition of the terms in its title as preparation for this essay, and the second, though it definitely touched on theodicy, was more concerned with the nature of God Himself than the theodicic problem. This essay will examine the question in more detail.

The theodicic problem can most concisely be stated as, “How can God allow evil things to happen in the world?” This is a wonderfully complex question under the surface of the words, because it implies many things about God and assumes other things about Him as well. It implies that God has a choice, assumes that he has the power to prevent it, and describes the events as evil, considering that to be the correct description. This question was first asked in a meaningful way, philosophically, after the great earthquake in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1755. The loss of life and property was massive for the times, and given the orientation of the people at that time, the question was natural, “How could God let this happen?”

It is obvious the question still resonates today, when we have any major disaster. Fundamentalists will say it is God’s punishment for the way the victims lived. Never mind that both good people, BY THEIR STANDARDS, were killed as well as the bad. Others simply say it is the forces of nature. Others sweep the question under the rug, because it points out their own internal conflicts in their beliefs. The problem arises because God is considered omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent. As I discussed in “Thoughts on the Nature of God,” it is the omnipotent part in combination with the omni-benevolent part that creates the problem.

In some ways, the theodicic question is uniquely Christian in nature. Judaism, as related in the Old Testament, or Hebrew Bible, sees God as fairly harsh and judgmental at times, punishing His people for failure to live up to their covenants with him. To them the concept of omni-benevolence rings false. Islam is similar in that they will see anything happening to the infidel as coming to him, and as evidence of Allah’s judgment. Witness recent statements in the news. Christianity is unique in its concept of nonjudgmental love and caring, which is the basis of the idea of omni-benevolence.

Omnipotence comes from the very beginnings of belief. The logic is fairly simple and obvious, if God created everything, then he must be able to control everything. He is all-powerful. Even if it is taken one step in indirection, God created the laws by which everything came to be, there is still the implication that He is able to completely control everything. After all, if He created the laws, then he can change them as He wishes. But at least from Medieval time forward, there is also the belief that matter is totally inert, and the action of matter comes from the direct intervention of God. In one or another forms, that belief also still occurs today, and definitely relates to the question before us. Many Christians do believe that God controls everything, all the time. [It is hard to see how they rationalize that with the concept of free will.] When presented with the theodicic question, the response will be on the order of, “It is all in God’s hands, He always has a plan, God’s ways are not known to us,” etc., in other words, “I don’t know, and don’t want to think about it.”

In “Thoughts on the Nature of God,” I argued that of the three omni’s, omniscience, at least operationally, and omni-benevolence could have good cases made for them, and that the weak link was omnipotence. But here it is useful to look at omnipotence a bit more. In attributing the creation of the universe to God, there has been a form of rear-guard action fought throughout history, what has come to be known as The God of the Gaps. In essence, as science explains more and more, God is used to explain what is still unknown. For the most part it is not used in serious discussions of creation. However, God as the first cause, or the creator of the matter and laws of the universe from nothing is very much alive and well. This is the ultimate God of the Gaps. “Where did the matter and energy for the Big Bang come from that started the universe, and what determined the laws by which it operates?” “I don’t know,” is emotionally very unsatisfying to most people, hence, it came from God. This still argues for, or at least implies, the omnipotence of God.

So one way to limit omnipotence is to say, that God does not violate the laws of nature. Granted He created them, but now does not change or violate them. This doesn’t get rid of the omnipotence just let’s God voluntarily restrict its use. However, this still leads to theodicic problems as we shall see below.

Let’s now review a bit what was written in “Benevolence, Good, Bad, and Evil.” The crux of the discussion was that Benevolence and Evil entailed intent, but Good and Bad were neutral, in the sense that their effects are judged by their impact on humans, but they happen fortuitously or randomly if you will. They are equal opportunity effects, both people considered good and people considered bad suffer or benefit from them. For the discussion below there are two model events, a natural disaster such as the Lisbon earthquake or the Indonesian tsunami a few years ago, and a man-made disaster, in this case, 9/11 and the destruction of the World Trade Center.

Let’s start with the Lisbon earthquake since that is where theodicy became a philosophic issue. From our perspective today, the Lisbon earthquake was the result of stress relief in the crust of the earth. The stress build-up was due to the relative motions of two plates of the earth’s crust. Through long but consistent chains of reasoning, the event can be tied back to the laws of nature, or the ways in which the physical world works.

Here is the issue: if God made the rules, then he is ultimately responsible for all the deaths, and moreover, can be considered intentionally responsible, since the rules were made by intent. If he is intentionally responsible, then the Lisbon quake is evil since the intent was to enable harm through the operation of the rules of nature. If one tries to argue that as an unintended consequence of the structure of the rules, then one has denied omniscience. If one accepts the intent then one denies omni-benevolence. Something has to give or God is guilty of evil. Notice it makes no difference whether one says God created the earthquake on purpose or says that God did not interfere with the operation of the rules he made. The result is morally the same, unless one makes a utilitarian argument that it was less harmful to allow the Lisbon earthquake than to prevent it. Generally speaking, utilitarian arguments are an anathema to the Christian religion, and to make one in defense of God could be considered sacrilegious at the least and heretical at the worst.

The only solution to the quandary is to say God is less than omnipotent and could not prevent the earthquake. If one denies omni-benevolence then God is morally responsible for all the deaths and damage and it is therefore an evil act—it was intentional. To deny omniscience is to turn omnipotence into a potential out-of-control situation, where vast powers are unleashed without knowledge of their ultimate effects. Again a situation that resolves to evil when bad things happen. If God is less than omnipotent, then He is incapable of exercising the choice to prevent or allow the Lisbon earthquake. Without that capability, he no longer can be held morally responsible and the Lisbon earthquake is an extremely bad event, but not an evil one.

Now let us turn to 9/11. There is no doubt that in human terms, 9/11 was an evil event. It was the deliberate action of the members of Al Qaeda to kill as many infidels and destroy as much property as possible with four fully-fueled airliners. There is no doubt about its intentionality—it took years of preparation for the event. However, we have to decide where God is in all this. If he is omniscient, he knew it would happen; if He is omni-benevolent, He would not want it to happen, and if He is omnipotent, why did He let it happen?

So again we are at the theodicic crossroads, and the arguments against denying omniscience and omni-benevolence are the same. We are back to discussing omnipotence but with some variations. One of the major considerations of moral questions, and in fact underlies all moral questions, is whether or not the actor could have done other than they did. As long as we believe the person had a choice and were capable of exercising the choice, they are held to be morally responsible. In the case of 9/11, why did God not prevent it? It is ridiculous to argue that He wanted some or all of the people that died to do so, and in the case of its being only some the rest are collateral damage. That tosses omni-benevolence out the window. In addition, if He is omnipotent, he could have found a better way to do it.

Starting with the hypothesis above that God cannot alter the rules of nature, then can He still be held responsible? Potentially yes, because Christianity believes He knows all our thoughts and behavior, and with that the potential to change minds. But that raises a difficult question, if God wants us to be moral, we must have free will or our morality is meaningless. If He causes us to make choices, then we have no free will. So once again can God change our minds and doesn’t, or is He unable to directly force us to make the desired choice and therefore can only suggest options? If He can change our minds and doesn’t then we are in the position of being responsible for his choice as well as our own. It also tends to deny omni-benevolence. How can He want the best for all of us, if He allows evil to occur when He could have prevented it?

Again, I think that God’s ability is limited. He can read our minds, and He can, in His own way, communicate suggestions and requests to us. However, we have to be open to them and to Him. It is just like trying to talk in a noisy environment, if the background is too loud, even if one can hear the other’s voice, they may not be understood, and if the background is loud enough, even the voice will be lost. Or to use another analogy, one must be wanting to hear or talk for a message to get through. So if God is doing all he can to communicate, and we are doing nothing, then when we make a wrong choice, it is our responsibility, and solely ours, as to the outcome. Hence, for 9/11, the members of Al Qaeda were so determined to kill infidels, that they were never open to any other argument, and are therefore totally morally responsible for its results.

To have limited God’s power so drastically, that He is capable only of suggesting and asking things of us, has major implications on religion and religious metaphysics. If God is not omnipotent, then He most likely did not create the universe, so where did it come from? If God did not create the universe, then where did He come from? For that matter if He is so weak, what good is He? These are all outside the discussion of this essay, but the last question was addressed somewhat in “Thoughts on the Nature of God.”

In summary, the theodicic question arises from the belief that God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omni-benevolent. Once one shows that these are inherently contradictory, one must select one to be less than “omni.” This paper argues that the resolution of the theodicic question is to limit God’s omnipotence.

In one sense this looks like a continuum, but actually it is not. The continuum is simply atheism to theism. Within the two, one can make further distinctions. Interestingly enough, they are almost mirrors of each other in the behavior of their adherents. But it will help to do some taxonomy first.

From my perspective, which includes thirty years, earlier as an atheist and later an agnostic, atheism has roughly three main types, militant, quiet, and indifferent. Militant atheists, also referred to as Capital “A” Atheists, are very obvious. They are busy filing suits to rid society of any public mention of God whether governmentally stated or privately stated. They are evangelists for No-God. Often they defend the Theory of Evolution as fact. The most well-known of these was Madeline Maury who started her career of militant, politically active atheism forty or fifty years ago. Though it is a topic for another essay, they most frequently associate politically with the modern liberal factions. They put as much energy and passion into their atheism as Fundamentalists put into their Christianity or Islam. From my knowledge of a few of them, it is my supposition that their atheism is emotionally inspired to begin with and is not subject to any kind of reason as to its reasons for action.

Quiet atheists are often much more thoughtful about their atheism, and as a consequence also more tolerant of theists. Many, like I was, arrived there from a process of questioning the religion they were brought up in, especially when it ran counter to what they were learning in school. They made a choice between what was known intellectually and a belief in God, as He was presented to them, seeing the two as incompatible. They may or may not join cause with the militants on particular issues, but being more tolerant, most likely don’t see it as important unless it violates one of their principles. Their politics will be across the spectrum and based on principle, just as their religious beliefs or lack thereof are.

Indifferent atheists generally have never been exposed to religion, and don’t know and don’t care if there is or is not a God. It’s a “Nah, I don’t think so” approach. This is not the same as agnosticism which will be discussed next. Generally speaking they simply live life by the moment, focusing on what is useful or workable to them and with little concern for all the furor over religious issues in public. I suspect this constitutes the largest part of the people that don’t believe in God. But they probably blend belief-wise into the corresponding theist group.

This is a good place to mention Agnosticism because I don’t place it as the middle ground between atheism and theism. That is because what I consider proper agnosticism requires some thought to realize that there is no proof of the existence or non-existence of God, and a conscious decision to live with the unknown. It takes quite a bit of mental energy to maintain a position with a known unresolved issue. Human nature generally wants to decide one way or another because is makes the remaining decisions easier. The biggest distinction between an indifferent atheist and an agnostic is the answer to the question, “Do you believe there is God?” The former says, “Naw, or some equivalent in casualness,” and the latter, “I don’t know.” In effect, I consider agnosticism off to the side of the continuum.

Progressing along the continuum, we reach the indifferent theists. Typically these are people that have gone to church out of habit all their lives or have been exposed to religion enough to believe in God, but don’t let it have any impact in the way they live their lives. If asked if they believe there is a God, they will say, "Yes, I guess so," but if asked how it effects the way they live their lives will probably have no effective answer. My experience says this is a large proportion of the people who claim to believe in God. Statistics indicate that up to 80% of the country says they believe in God, but the attendance at churches is falling. To me this indicates the belief has no real importance, hence the label indifferent theists.

There is a transition group between the indifferent and quiet theists. This has sprung up in the past several years with the growth of the mega-churches. Mega-churches are characterized by a simple message that makes people feel good. There is strong emotional involvement at the time of worship, and there may be donations, often large, to the church, but the actual impact on the day-to-day lives of many of the attendees is minimal. It is transactionally oriented—be baptized, go to church, donate money, and all is good. Somehow, miraculously, your behavior will be OK and you are automatically saved. The emphasis is not on law and behavior but on the salvation part, with little emphasis on changing behavior. There are testimonials on the good works done under religious motivation, but it has the same spectator feel as attending a movie, play, or lecture.

The quiet theists are probably the largest proportion of the theists that attend church. They belong to all denominations of all the monotheistic religions. They worship fairly regularly, and actually strive to follow the teachings of their religion. They are reluctant to evangelize and only talk about religion amongst themselves. But they live their religion in their lives, doing good, volunteering, donating to all sorts of causes. (This is not to say that others don’t, it is just to point it out as a defining characteristic of the group.) Going to church for them is not a command but a desire, and they take pleasure in the company of their fellow church-goers.

At the extreme of the continuum are the militant theists. The most extreme form are the Islamic jihadists that believe killing non-believers is a holy thing to do. They have their equivalents in Fundamentalist Christians that have killed abortion clinic workers, bombed abortion clinics, and carried out other violent acts in the name of their religious beliefs. Somewhat less extreme and more common on the Christian side of things in this country are the very vocal evangelists for banning abortion, banning sexually oriented media, or making the religious definition of union the legal definition. [Marriage is originally a religious term, and embedding its definition in law is the equivalent to attempts to implement Shari’ia in secular law.] They are also the same general group that wanted to elevate Intelligent Design to the status of scientific theory. Only in their case it was not to be considered theory but fact. The characteristic here is that there is a self-righteousness that says that I believe it is wrong for religious reasons therefore everyone has to obey, even if by force.

Because of their outspokenness, the two extremes are often used to characterize the entire group, militant atheists being the avatar for all atheists and the same for militant theists. Either out of ignorance, failure to think for themselves, or group cohesion, the rest of the group often goes along. It is the actions of the extremes that have put us in the position of having a holy war between religion and secularism in this country. The truth is that this is either a minor or a non-issue to most of the populace, but they are too busy living their lives to take the time to defuse it. With the exception of the militants, there is far more in common among all believers and non-believers than there is difference, and there is tolerance of other opinion. We need to strive to make this more operative.

I was just reading Kathleen Parker's column in JWR, and it struck me that she really is afraid of people who are not as educated and nuanced as she. She sounds like a liberal press release, and she has supposedly conservative credentials. Though she lost my respect when she became an Obamacon, trashing Sarah Palin as not being sufficiently sophisticated, I return to reading her column hoping (there's that word again) that she will have something substantive to say. So far there is no change (there is That word again also). The only times I find her saying something non-elitist is on the most inconsequential things.

Real life has finally arrived at the gates of la-la land and it is scaring the pants off the inhabitants. They have no clue as to what is going on, and no way of understanding it.

A few minutes ago, a high school girl knocked on my door, identified herself, handed me a pamphelet, and asked for my support of the latest tax levy. The most troubling thing about her was she had a sweet smile, was very mannerly, and had wide-open, empty eyes. There was no person behind the face. This is what our schools are turning out--pod people.

Guess which way I will vote on the levy.

Oops, I just realized I need an absentee ballot. I will be gone election day.

One of the more obvious ploys used by liberals is to attempt to criminalize any behavior that opposes their views and actions. Here is the latest: Attempting to accuse Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin of sedition. What a laugh. Based on a quick review of the definition of sedition:

On NBC's April 18 "The Chris Matthews Show," Time columnist Joe Klein all but accused former GOP vice-presidential nominee and Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, along with Fox News host Glenn Beck of sedition.

"I did a little bit of research just before this show - it's on this little napkin here. I looked up the definition of sedition which is conduct or language inciting rebellion against the authority of the state. And a lot of these statements, especially the ones coming from people like Glenn Beck and to a certain extent Sarah Palin, rub right up close to being seditious."

Considering Ramsey Clark, Jane Fonda, and John Kerry all committed treason, the accusation of sedition is a real show of chutzpah. By the definition quoted on the show, any political dissent is seditious which is exactly what they are shooting for.

Over the past 12 years or so, we have seen an increasingly subjective press, reporting only what they wish to report and giving only the information they wish to give, filling in the gaps with pure opinion disguised as reporting. In the process they have adopted a stance of my end justifies any means to get it, including publishing secrets relating to national security, lying, failure to check obviously incorrect sources, and highly selective quoting in and out of context. The American people have slowly come to realize the situation and have developed a profound distrust of the media.

The problem is that most people have little time or the resources to obtain information from other than the main stream media. This would not be so bad except that all but one MSM source is obviously on one side of any question, the liberal-left side. Interestingly enough the one source that is not obviously biased to the liberal-left position, Fox News, is vilified by politicians and the other press, and enjoys the largest audience of any news supplier. In comparison to the the other news sources Fox might be considered conservative. However, I consider them mixed. I do not find my views completely supported by their offerings, and I consider myself conservative/libertarian.

This situation is not new. There have been crusading journalists and publishers throughout our history. Some of the news printed from the eighteenth and nineteen centuries is extremely lurid and inaccurate, in many instances outright libelous. However, as a counterweight to that were the large number of publications of varying views, public discussions, and a certain overall ethic that generally did not print things that would be harmful to the country vs. the rest of the world. From my perspective it has been just since the end of WW II that all this has broken down.

What went wrong? When and where did Freedom of the Press become a license to destroy? When did journalistic ethics change from a pride in finding all the facts and getting at what is hidden by legitimate means to accepting any and all information from any source unquestioned and publishing it?

The final breaking was the Vietnam War. [Whether you call it the politically correct “Vietnam Conflict” or not, it was a war.] With Walter Cronkite’s reporting on the Tet offensive, journalists discovered that they had the power to influence events not report them. Then there was the publication of the Pentagon Papers by the New York Times. This was the first of the open publication of illegally obtained information, relating to national security. Because the content of the papers ran counter to the liberal/left orthodoxy it was considered virtuous to break the law and publish them. From that we now routinely have news reported as from anonymous sources not authorized to discuss whatever is being reported on. Under the guise of Freedom of the Press, we now have unlawful, even treasonous activity allowed.

Probably what really put the icing on the cake was Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward’s investigation of the Watergate break-in. This was a brilliant investigation, and despite my general agreement with much of Richard Nixon’s politics, he did deserve to go down for abuse of the office of the President. The problem was that the wrong lesson came from it for many journalists. They didn’t see the work and effort and the investigation and the value of the press, they saw the power to destroy a public official they didn’t like, and didn’t like them. It was payback time.

The Constitution, specifically in the First Amendment, states that the freedom of the press cannot be abridged. However, nowhere does it say that such freedom also has immunity from prosecution for illegal activity, so-called protection of sources, or libel. What has to be clearly understood to fix the problem is that publication of opinion and fact, legally obtained, cannot be prohibited, though we are starting to see hints of this coming. What has to be stringently enforced is that if information is obtained illegally, the perpetrator must be prosecuted, not allowed to hide behind a fraudulent interpretation of the First Amendment.

More generally, and therefore more impossibly, there needs to be an understanding that journalism has a greater responsibility than the next scoop. Though in many cases the next scoop is essential to the survival of the press, or at least to its immediate standings, there are many things that are harmful to other people, that compromise the security of the country, or are plain illegal. We have seen many instances of the press committing borderline or even obviously treasonous acts with no regard to the consequences other than furthering their own image and/or agenda. What is worse, there is no politician or law enforcement official with the principles or the courage to call them on it.

There is hope, however. Most of the most egregious examples of what this essay is talking about are suffering severe loss of audience, far greater than can be accounted for by economic reasons, or technological reasons. The general populace is often slow to react to subtle issues, but react they eventually do. This is one place where market forces are still operative. The most liberal of newspapers and television news outlets are showing a monotonic decline of readership and audience and have for several years now. It will continue until there is change.

My friend Kevin Kim asked for my take on this paper in a comment to a recent post about the successful run of the Super Collider in Europe.

This is a fascinating mathematical tour de force in which the author is able to show that if reality is described in algebras, then all the algebras can be commuted with one another. From this he posits that he has created a theory of everything.

Several years ago I posted an item on Scientific Fallacy, in which I pointed out that it is very easy to confuse the description of a thing with the reality of a thing. I think this is what has occurred with this paper. What he as created, and a great accomplishment it is, is a description of everything. He also predicts some as yet unobserved items.

With reference to my statements made quite a number of times that theoretical physics reminds me of pre-Copernican astronomy, this is mostly a better way of calculating the epicycles not a change in their nature. He assumes the existing metaphysics and finds a way to describe it better. All my questions of modern physics revolve not around their methods but the interpretations. Because the mathematics works so well, nobody wants to question the metaphysics that is drawn from it. They simply dismiss its incomprehensibility as not important, as long as the math is consistent and measurements can be made consistent with the math.

For all its mathematical beauty, and in a mathematical sense it is quite aesthetic, it still falls within this same realm.

This was too good not to share with everybody.

So the President is making official policy to drastically limit the use of nuclear weapons. He is certainly true to his ideology, while trying to make politics work with the conservative side by not outright banning them. I have no problem with people living by their stated principles and even admire it when they encounter adversity while doing so. There is a big difference here--his principles are being applied to the entire US, and they are not ours.

If he wants to go unarmed in the world full of bad guys that have no qualms about beating up on someone who is defenseless, that's fine--as long as he only has willing volunteers going with him.

In my mind, this behavior borders on impeachable for not living up to his oath of office or his responsibilities as President with respect to the security of the US. How leaving ourselves open to attack by removing deterent translates into protecting us is beyond me. He has proven time and again in the past 14 months that his talk is just that, talk. His graded deterent with non-nuclear weapons is so much hot air. He either has no spine and will let the US be totally destroyed, or he will be like most cowards and get his backbone too late and end up with a much larger war than would have been necessary otherwise.

His domestic policy sucks, but his foreign policy is plain scary.

The world is full of lions and he wants to go out there with good intentions.

...the lions ate them.

I have long been pondering the effectiveness of Ghandi, among others, in the world, and Martin Luther King in this country. I have also thought about Rosa Parks and the Selma, Alabama, schools. Non-violent resistance resonates with the part of us that recoils from beating or punishing anyone or any animal that is simply letting itself be beaten. Decent people only fight that which fights back.

Unfortunately there is a sub-species [emphasis on sub-] of human that relishes the total destruction of another human being even after they have totally surrendered. To a human of that sub-species, surrender is an encouragement. They are stopped only by equal or greater resistance. When the US realizes on a large scale that Jihadism, and many other -ism are of that ilk, only then will we finally succeed in our goals which are at the root, peaceful.

....assumes decency on the part of most of the spectators.

This article courtesy of Jewish World Review points out something nobody seems to notice on either side of the political barricades...President Obama's policy towards Israel is simply a more personalized continuation of President Bush II's.

This then leads to the question of what is constant here?

To me it is obvious, the Department of State. The reason it is obvious, is that neither Pres. Bush nor Pres. Obama had any foreign relations expertise when they assumed office. It all comes from the State Department. We saw the various stupidities under both Colin Powell and Condoleeza Rice (I had hoped both would have cleaned house, and instead became pawns of their own minions). Now we see the same stupidities continued under Hillary Clinton. By now folks, the Secretary of State is a figurehead. The real state department is all the faceless people writing position papers that are fed to the Secretary.

.....in the State Department.

When Russia and Cuba were great buddies The Monroe Doctrine took a severe body blow. JFK somewhat resussitated it with the missile standoff, or at least put it on life-support. With this Drudge link, we can now call the Monroe Doctrine officially dead.

We will regret it.

This is the sixth anniversary of this blog. I would never have believed over 70K hits in that time, and maybe more, because I don't think the counter picks up RSS feeds. Over the years I have made some very good virtual friends, some of whom I have been able to meet physically on my travels. Thank you to all of you for taking the time to read, think, and comment.