The Atheist Renaissance
by Joe Sobran

Atheists are feeling their oats these days. Three militant unbelievers—Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens—have recently hit the best-seller lists and talk shows. Not since Bertrand Russell have we seen atheism so prosperously married to celebrity. Why now?

Since the September 11 terror attacks, militant Islam has given ammunition to those in the secularized West who were already disposed to damn “religion” as such, without splitting too many hairs about fine distinctions between, say, Islam and popery.

Consider the mere title of Hitchens’ polemic: God Is Not Great: How Religion Spoils Everything. The book won a laudatory lead review from Michael Kinsley in the New York Times’ Sunday Book Review section, less for its content, which Kinsley barely touched on, than for its brilliance as a veteran contrarian’s latest career move. Takes one to know one, I guess.

Kinsley was basically reviewing author, not book, saluting him on his successful strategy for winning publicity, the principle being that there is no such thing as bad publicity, by which rule the surly atheist has earned the fellowship of such devout men of the cloth as the Reverend Sharpton.

“God is not great”? “Religion poisons everything”? Is the animus here antitheistic, or just antimonotheistic? What does it mean? How, if at all, does it apply to Homer? Does “religion” ruin the Iliad? Or is the Iliad an object lesson of some sort, illustrating how the gods, or perhaps a belief in them not necessarily shared by the poet, incited the Trojan War (a quagmire if ever there was one, though the Greek attackers may have expected it to be a cakewalk)?

However that may be, Hitchens is telling us about his feelings, not his thoughts. Unlike Russell, he hardly purports to explain philosophically “why I am not a Christian,” though he wants us to think he has philosophically sophisticated reasons for his comprehensive grudge. And unlike such more dispassionate unbelievers of an older generation as Rudolf Carnap and Anthony Flew, he doesn’t bother with publicity-repellent, “value-free” analysis of abstract ideas and neutral propositions.

Religion and its votaries are bad, that’s all. Look at all the wars it has caused. Not only that, it sometimes opposes war! Check out the last two popes’ objections to the Anglo-American wars on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Religion is no good, I tell you! Never mind that Hitchens himself has favored both wars. (Then again, some atheists haven’t.)

And besides, to shift our focus just a bit, religion is notoriously hostile to Reason and Science. Does the name Charles Darwin ring a bell? Possibly you’ve seen the movie Inherit the Wind. Can you dig it? Give me that old-time irreligion: Reason and Science have spoken, with one conclusive voice.

Well, the truth of Darwinism may seem self-evident to liberal-arts majors, especially those who watch Animal Planet, but Hitchens appears blissfully unaware, as they say, of what can be (and has been) said by critics of the idea. Of these, my favorite is the late Australian philosopher David Stove, himself an atheist, who finds Darwin’s thesis not only false but absurd on its face, “a ridiculous slander on human beings.” Stove’s book, Darwinian Fairytales, makes a scathingly witty attack on the very premises that the Darwinists assume to be impregnable.

Stove’s argument is startlingly simple: If Darwin’s theory of a “ruthless struggle for survival” among human beings were true, the human race could never have existed. Human life just isn’t like that. Period. Every human being depends on parental care and protection until near-maturity. Without these, obviously, none of us could survive. Man is, and must be, a cooperative creature.

To meet this clear objection, Darwinists appeal to prehistory: Man, they admit, is cooperative now, but was not in primitive times. This won’t do, Stove replies. Apart from the sheer absence of evidence, Darwinism is a “universal generalization,” purporting to be a scientific law, true in all times and places. So if it was ever true of man, it must still be true today, and we see clearly that it isn’t. Therefore, it was never true.

Stove disclaims any special scientific knowledge and never appeals, for example, to the fossil record. He merely applies linguistic analysis to Darwin’s claims and shows their vacuity and incoherence. He also makes short work of such dodges as Dawkins’ “selfish genes” and “memes.” The holes in Darwinism can’t be patched.

Speaking of overgeneralizations, Hitchens’ indiscriminate assertions about “religion” instantly raise the suspicion that he simply doesn’t know what he’s talking about. How could so many accusations, against so many disparate things, possibly be true? Is the religion of the ancient Hebrews indistinguishable from the religion of the Aztecs? Are Hindus hard to tell from Unitarians? Is there no essential difference between the thought of Jonathan Edwards and that of John Henry Newman?

Another of Hitchens’ reviewers, Stephen Prothero, author of Religious Literacy, remarks, “I have never encountered a book whose author is so fundamentally unacquainted with its subject.” Hitchens appears to be a total stranger to any form of religious experience. Does he even realize what he’s saying? He’s like a blind man discussing Renaissance painting—and condemning all of it in clichés he has overheard.

Besides being ignorant of his subject and wrong about it, Hitchens is preposterously self-congratulatory. Whereas believers are “literal and limited,” atheists (such as himself) are “ironic and inquiring.” What about Stalin and Kim Jong-il? They’re not true atheists, you see, since, as Orwell says, “a totalitarian state is in effect a theocracy.” Thus, Hitchens rigs the whole debate.

Why shouldn’t he? “If God does not exist,” as Ivan Karamazov says, “everything is permitted,” including calumniating believers. Hitchens does believe in most of the Christian virtues, after all; he merely insists that only atheists actually practice them.

Contributing editor Joseph Sobran is a syndicated columnist.

This article first appeared in the July 2007 issue of Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture.

From Rush Limbaugh.com:

The Americans Who Risked Everything

My father, Rush H. Limbaugh, Jr., delivered this oft-requested address locally a number of times, but it had never before appeared in print until it appeared in The Limbaugh Letter. My dad was renowned for his oratory skills and for his original mind; this speech is, I think, a superb demonstration of both. I will always be grateful to him for instilling in me a passion for the ideas and lives of America's Founders, as well as a deep appreciation for the inspirational power of words which you will see evidenced here:

"Our Lives, Our Fortunes, Our Sacred Honor"

It was a glorious morning. The sun was shining and the wind was from the southeast. Up especially early, a tall bony, redheaded young Virginian found time to buy a new thermometer, for which he paid three pounds, fifteen shillings. He also bought gloves for Martha, his wife, who was ill at home. Thomas Jefferson arrived early at the statehouse. The temperature was 72.5 degrees and the horseflies weren't nearly so bad at that hour. It was a lovely room, very large, with gleaming white walls. The chairs were comfortable. Facing the single door were two brass fireplaces, but they would not be used today. The moment the door was shut, and it was always kept locked, the room became an oven. The tall windows were shut, so that loud quarreling voices could not be heard by passersby. Small openings atop the windows allowed a slight stir of air, and also a large number of horseflies. Jefferson records that "the horseflies were dexterous in finding necks, and the silk of stockings was nothing to them." All discussing was punctuated by the slap of hands on necks. On the wall at the back, facing the president's desk, was a panoply -- consisting of a drum, swords, and banners seized from Fort Ticonderoga the previous year. Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold had captured the place, shouting that they were taking it "in the name of the Great Jehovah and the Continental Congress!" Now Congress got to work, promptly taking up an emergency measure about which there was discussion but no dissension. "Resolved: That an application be made to the Committee of Safety of Pennsylvania for a supply of flints for the troops at New York." Then Congress transformed itself into a committee of the whole. The Declaration of Independence was read aloud once more, and debate resumed. Though Jefferson was the best writer of all of them, he had been somewhat verbose. Congress hacked the excess away. They did a good job, as a side-by-side comparison of the rough draft and the final text shows. They cut the phrase "by a self-assumed power." "Climb" was replaced by "must read," then "must" was eliminated, then the whole sentence, and soon the whole paragraph was cut. Jefferson groaned as they continued what he later called "their depredations." "Inherent and inalienable rights" came out "certain unalienable rights," and to this day no one knows who suggested the elegant change. A total of 86 alterations were made. Almost 500 words were eliminated, leaving 1,337. At last, after three days of wrangling, the document was put to a vote. Here in this hall Patrick Henry had once thundered: "I am no longer a Virginian, sir, but an American." But today the loud, sometimes bitter argument stilled, and without fanfare the vote was taken from north to south by colonies, as was the custom. On July 4, 1776, the Declaration of Independence was adopted. There were no trumpets blown. No one stood on his chair and cheered. The afternoon was waning and Congress had no thought of delaying the full calendar of routine business on its hands. For several hours they worked on many other problems before adjourning for the day.

Much To Lose What kind of men were the 56 signers who adopted the Declaration of Independence and who, by their signing, committed an act of treason against the crown? To each of you, the names Franklin, Adams, Hancock and Jefferson are almost as familiar as household words. Most of us, however, know nothing of the other signers. Who were they? What happened to them? I imagine that many of you are somewhat surprised at the names not there: George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, Patrick Henry. All were elsewhere. Ben Franklin was the only really old man. Eighteen were under 40; three were in their 20s. Of the 56 almost half - 24 - were judges and lawyers. Eleven were merchants, nine were landowners and farmers, and the remaining 12 were doctors, ministers, and politicians. With only a few exceptions, such as Samuel Adams of Massachusetts, these were men of substantial property. All but two had families. The vast majority were men of education and standing in their communities. They had economic security as few men had in the 18th Century. Each had more to lose from revolution than he had to gain by it. John Hancock, one of the richest men in America, already had a price of 500 pounds on his head. He signed in enormous letters so that his Majesty could now read his name without glasses and could now double the reward. Ben Franklin wryly noted: "Indeed we must all hang together, otherwise we shall most assuredly hang separately." Fat Benjamin Harrison of Virginia told tiny Elbridge Gerry of Massachusetts: "With me it will all be over in a minute, but you, you will be dancing on air an hour after I am gone." These men knew what they risked. The penalty for treason was death by hanging. And remember, a great British fleet was already at anchor in New York Harbor. They were sober men. There were no dreamy-eyed intellectuals or draft card burners here. They were far from hot-eyed fanatics yammering for an explosion. They simply asked for the status quo. It was change they resisted. It was equality with the mother country they desired. It was taxation with representation they sought. They were all conservatives, yet they rebelled. It was principle, not property, that had brought these men to Philadelphia. Two of them became presidents of the United States. Seven of them became state governors. One died in office as vice president of the United States. Several would go on to be U.S. Senators. One, the richest man in America, in 1828 founded the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. One, a delegate from Philadelphia, was the only real poet, musician and philosopher of the signers. (It was he, Francis Hopkinson not Betsy Ross who designed the United States flag.) Richard Henry Lee, a delegate from Virginia, had introduced the resolution to adopt the Declaration of Independence in June of 1776. He was prophetic in his concluding remarks: "Why then sir, why do we longer delay? Why still deliberate? Let this happy day give birth to an American Republic. Let her arise not to devastate and to conquer but to reestablish the reign of peace and law. "The eyes of Europe are fixed upon us. She demands of us a living example of freedom that may exhibit a contrast in the felicity of the citizen to the ever-increasing tyranny which desolates her polluted shores. She invites us to prepare an asylum where the unhappy may find solace, and the persecuted repost. "If we are not this day wanting in our duty, the names of the American Legislatures of 1776 will be placed by posterity at the side of all of those whose memory has been and ever will be dear to virtuous men and good citizens." Though the resolution was formally adopted July 4, it was not until July 8 that two of the states authorized their delegates to sign, and it was not until August 2 that the signers met at Philadelphia to actually put their names to the Declaration. William Ellery, delegate from Rhode Island, was curious to see the signers' faces as they committed this supreme act of personal courage. He saw some men sign quickly, "but in no face was he able to discern real fear." Stephan Hopkins, Ellery's colleague from Rhode Island, was a man past 60. As he signed with a shaking pen, he declared: "My hand trembles, but my heart does not."

"Most Glorious Service" Even before the list was published, the British marked down every member of Congress suspected of having put his name to treason. All of them became the objects of vicious manhunts. Some were taken. Some, like Jefferson, had narrow escapes. All who had property or families near British strongholds suffered. · Francis Lewis, New York delegate saw his home plundered -- and his estates in what is now Harlem -- completely destroyed by British Soldiers. Mrs. Lewis was captured and treated with great brutality. Though she was later exchanged for two British prisoners through the efforts of Congress, she died from the effects of her abuse. · William Floyd, another New York delegate, was able to escape with his wife and children across Long Island Sound to Connecticut, where they lived as refugees without income for seven years. When they came home they found a devastated ruin. · Philips Livingstone had all his great holdings in New York confiscated and his family driven out of their home. Livingstone died in 1778 still working in Congress for the cause. · Louis Morris, the fourth New York delegate, saw all his timber, crops, and livestock taken. For seven years he was barred from his home and family. · John Hart of Trenton, New Jersey, risked his life to return home to see his dying wife. Hessian soldiers rode after him, and he escaped in the woods. While his wife lay on her deathbed, the soldiers ruined his farm and wrecked his homestead. Hart, 65, slept in caves and woods as he was hunted across the countryside. When at long last, emaciated by hardship, he was able to sneak home, he found his wife had already been buried, and his 13 children taken away. He never saw them again. He died a broken man in 1779, without ever finding his family. · Dr. John Witherspoon, signer, was president of the College of New Jersey, later called Princeton. The British occupied the town of Princeton, and billeted troops in the college. They trampled and burned the finest college library in the country. · Judge Richard Stockton, another New Jersey delegate signer, had rushed back to his estate in an effort to evacuate his wife and children. The family found refuge with friends, but a Tory sympathizer betrayed them. Judge Stockton was pulled from bed in the night and brutally beaten by the arresting soldiers. Thrown into a common jail, he was deliberately starved. Congress finally arranged for Stockton's parole, but his health was ruined. The judge was released as an invalid, when he could no longer harm the British cause. He returned home to find his estate looted and did not live to see the triumph of the Revolution. His family was forced to live off charity. · Robert Morris, merchant prince of Philadelphia, delegate and signer, met Washington's appeals and pleas for money year after year. He made and raised arms and provisions which made it possible for Washington to cross the Delaware at Trenton. In the process he lost 150 ships at sea, bleeding his own fortune and credit almost dry. · George Clymer, Pennsylvania signer, escaped with his family from their home, but their property was completely destroyed by the British in the Germantown and Brandywine campaigns. · Dr. Benjamin Rush, also from Pennsylvania, was forced to flee to Maryland. As a heroic surgeon with the army, Rush had several narrow escapes. · John Martin, a Tory in his views previous to the debate, lived in a strongly loyalist area of Pennsylvania. When he came out for independence, most of his neighbors and even some of his relatives ostracized him. He was a sensitive and troubled man, and many believed this action killed him. When he died in 1777, his last words to his tormentors were: "Tell them that they will live to see the hour when they shall acknowledge it [the signing] to have been the most glorious service that I have ever rendered to my country." · William Ellery, Rhode Island delegate, saw his property and home burned to the ground. · Thomas Lynch, Jr., South Carolina delegate, had his health broken from privation and exposures while serving as a company commander in the military. His doctors ordered him to seek a cure in the West Indies and on the voyage, he and his young bride were drowned at sea. · Edward Rutledge, Arthur Middleton, and Thomas Heyward, Jr., the other three South Carolina signers, were taken by the British in the siege of Charleston. They were carried as prisoners of war to St. Augustine, Florida, where they were singled out for indignities. They were exchanged at the end of the war, the British in the meantime having completely devastated their large landholdings and estates. · Thomas Nelson, signer of Virginia, was at the front in command of the Virginia military forces. With British General Charles Cornwallis in Yorktown, fire from 70 heavy American guns began to destroy Yorktown piece by piece. Lord Cornwallis and his staff moved their headquarters into Nelson's palatial home. While American cannonballs were making a shambles of the town, the house of Governor Nelson remained untouched. Nelson turned in rage to the American gunners and asked, "Why do you spare my home?" They replied, "Sir, out of respect to you." Nelson cried, "Give me the cannon!" and fired on his magnificent home himself, smashing it to bits. But Nelson's sacrifice was not quite over. He had raised $2 million for the Revolutionary cause by pledging his own estates. When the loans came due, a newer peacetime Congress refused to honor them, and Nelson's property was forfeited. He was never reimbursed. He died, impoverished, a few years later at the age of 50.

Lives, Fortunes, Honor Of those 56 who signed the Declaration of Independence, nine died of wounds or hardships during the war. Five were captured and imprisoned, in each case with brutal treatment. Several lost wives, sons or entire families. One lost his 13 children. Two wives were brutally treated. All were at one time or another the victims of manhunts and driven from their homes. Twelve signers had their homes completely burned. Seventeen lost everything they owned. Yet not one defected or went back on his pledged word. Their honor, and the nation they sacrificed so much to create is still intact. And, finally, there is the New Jersey signer, Abraham Clark. He gave two sons to the officer corps in the Revolutionary Army. They were captured and sent to that infamous British prison hulk afloat in New York Harbor known as the hell ship Jersey, where 11,000 American captives were to die. The younger Clarks were treated with a special brutality because of their father. One was put in solitary and given no food. With the end almost in sight, with the war almost won, no one could have blamed Abraham Clark for acceding to the British request when they offered him his sons' lives if he would recant and come out for the King and Parliament. The utter despair in this man's heart, the anguish in his very soul, must reach out to each one of us down through 200 years with his answer: "No." The 56 signers of the Declaration Of Independence proved by their every deed that they made no idle boast when they composed the most magnificent curtain line in history. "And for the support of this Declaration with a firm reliance on the protection of divine providence, we mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor." My friends, I know you have a copy of the Declaration of Independence somewhere around the house - in an old history book (newer ones may well omit it), an encyclopedia, or one of those artificially aged "parchments" we all got in school years ago. I suggest that each of you take the time this month to read through the text of the Declaration, one of the most noble and beautiful political documents in human history. There is no more profound sentence than this: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness..." These are far more than mere poetic words. The underlying ideas that infuse every sentence of this treatise have sustained this nation for more than two centuries. They were forged in the crucible of great sacrifice. They are living words that spring from and satisfy the deepest cries for liberty in the human spirit. "Sacred honor" isn't a phrase we use much these days, but every American life is touched by the bounty of this, the Founders' legacy. It is freedom, tested by blood, and watered with tears. - Rush Limbaugh III

From The New York Post:
TWO WARS - AND NO LEADERSHIP
By RALPH PETERS

WE'RE not fighting a single war against terrorists. We're stuck in two. The past few days saw both conflicts hit the headlines. And we're still not serious about either one.

One war in this global struggle involves Sunni-Arab fanatics, exemplified by al Qaeda, who believe not only that the atrocities they commit will revive the caliphate - a romanticized religious empire - but that their merciless brand of Islam is destined to rule the world.

Our other fight is with Shia extremists, such as the god-gangsters wrecking Iran, Muqtada al-Sadr's thugs and Hezbollah. Their goals are regional (for now): They want to master the heart of the Middle East and gain hegemony over the world's oil supply.

In London, then in Glasgow, we saw attempts (blessedly incompetent ones - thanks, Allah!) to generate mass civilian casualties, challenge Britain's new government and strengthen the U.K.'s appeasement faction. The terrorists involved weren't the "wretched of the earth" beloved in left-wing mythology, but included at least two doctors, as well as other middle-class immigrants.

Behind all the jihadi nonsense, this was a revenge plot by madmen for imagined wrongs. Like all religious fanatics, the would-be murderers (burn, baby, burn) weren't really serving any god, but acting out their struggle with personal demons. It was classic Sunni terrorism - 9/11 re-invented by the Three Stooges.

In the Shia terror war, a U.S. military spokesman in Iraq yesterday finally admitted the serious role that Iran and its clients play in the bombing, kidnapping and cold-blooded murder of our troops. Back in March, our forces busted Ali Mussa Daqduq - a Hezbollah bomb, ambush and abduction expert - in Basra. He wasn't on vacation.

Media speculation holds that Iran, which funds and equips Hezbollah, called in some chips and forced Daqduq to take a leave of absence from Lebanon to help Tehran's al Quds commandos train Iraqi Shias to kill Americans more efficiently.

What's wrong is the notion that Daqduq was press-ganged. Shia terror also crosses borders, if still only regionally. The terrorists are "cross-leveling" expertise with enthusiasm, not reluctance.

Within both the Sunni and the Shia terror co-ops, we're seeing a level of collaboration that's utterly missing in the West. And the Iran-backed rise of Sunni Hamas makes it look as if they're increasingly willing to work across sectarian lines, if it helps them defeat Israel, the West and moderate Arab governments.

They'll get back to killing each other in good time. But right now they want to kill us. Meanwhile, we want to persuade them that we're nice guys.

The most effective action we ever launched against Sunni terror was the destruction of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. We took away the terrorists' safe-haven state, still the greatest loss suffered by Qaeda and Sunni fanaticism. Even if no Democratic presidential aspirant will admit it, al Qaeda has never recaptured the authority it lost.

Shia extremists have a safe-haven state, too: Iran. But the Bush administration ran out of steam when Iraq didn't turn into Iowa. Aware that Tehran's commandos were active in Iraq, supplying weapons, training and direct supervision of attacks that targeted Americans, we did nothing. An Iranian diplomatic passport turned out to be a better form of body armor than anything our troops wear.

Patience isn't a virtue when a hostile government's killing your soldiers. Our timidity only encouraged Iran, which has paid no serious penalties. Tehran has been given free rein not only in Iraq, but also in Lebanon and Gaza.

An invasion of Iran isn't the answer. But selective strikes against the infrastructure of the Revolutionary Guards (and the Quds Force in particular), as well as against Tehran's security services, are the minimum needed to get the regime's attention. Our Air Force's combat capabilities are distinctly under-utilized: It's time for 30 seconds over Tehran. Let's see if those F-22s really work.

Sanctions? Diplomacy? Tell it to the troops in Walter Reed. Or in Arlington.

Oh, I wish we could just buy every terrorist a pint of Ben & Jerry's and make him feel all mushy about surfer-girls in bikinis. But it ain't going to happen. If you want to win any war, you have to kill the enemy until he gives up trying to kill you. Instead, our response to terror is the equivalent of a lawsuit.

If military action isn't a perfect answer, appeasement is never the answer. Give in to terrorists' demands, and you'll only get more demands. Britain is paying for its reluctance to crack down hard on extremist mosques and hate speech - even though most British Muslims would be glad to be rid of the fanatics. Fair play doesn't work if the other side refuses to play fair.

Here at home, we face maddening calls to extend to captured terrorists the legal rights enjoyed by American citizens. Stop and think about that - really think about it. We're bleeding in multiple wars, and we want to send in the lawyers?

Perhaps the biggest lie told since 9/11 is that we must wage war according to our values. If we'd tried that in World War II, we'd still be fighting in the Philippines and struggling to reach the Rhine. In war, the point is to win. Nothing else matters. And you don't get credit for manners.

Our global position isn't eroding because we're stuck in Iraq or because Europeans are mad at us (they're always mad at us). We're losing ground because our leaders, Democrat and Republican, still don't believe we're at war. They live in perfect safety and don't really care if you or your children die, as long as you vote for them.

If roadside bombs were going off on Capitol Hill, we'd punish Iran ferociously and stop treating captured terrorists like white-collar crooks. But as long as the IEDs only kill and cripple our soldiers and Marines, neither political party gives a damn.

How is it possible to be a relativist in relation to these animals?

From The New Republic Online:
Moral relativism and A Mighty Heart.
Back to Focus
by Judea Pearl

I used to believe that the world essentially divided into two types of people: those who were broadly tolerant; and those who felt threatened by differences. If only the forces of tolerance could win out over the forces of intolerance, I reasoned, the world might finally know some measure of peace.

But there was a problem with my theory, and it was never clearer than in a conversation I once had with a Pakistani friend who told me that he loathed people like President Bush who insisted on dividing the world into "us" and "them." My friend, of course, was taking an innocent stand against intolerance, and did not realize that, in so doing, he was in fact dividing the world into "us" and "them," falling straight into the camp of people he loathed.

This is a political version of a famous paradox formulated by Bertrand Russell in 1901, which shook the logical foundations of mathematics. Any person who claims to be tolerant naturally defines himself in opposition to those who are intolerant. But that makes him intolerant of certain people--which invalidates his claim to be tolerant.

The political lesson of Russell's paradox is that there is no such thing as unqualified tolerance. Ultimately, one must be able to expound intolerance of certain groups or ideologies without surrendering the moral high ground normally linked to tolerance and inclusivity. One should, in fact, condemn and resist political doctrines that advocate the murder of innocents, that undermine the basic norms of civilization, or that seek to make pluralism impossible. There can be no moral equivalence between those who seek--however clumsily--to build a more liberal, tolerant world and those who advocate the annihilation of other faiths, cultures, or states.

Which brings me to my son, Daniel Pearl. Thanks to the release of A Mighty Heart, the movie based on Mariane Pearl's book of the same title, Danny's legacy is once again receiving attention. Of course, no movie could ever capture exactly what made Danny special--his humor, his integrity, his love of humanity--or why he was admired by so many. For journalists, Danny represents the courage and nobility inherent in their profession. For Americans, Danny is a symbol of one of our very best national instincts: the desire to extend a warm hand of friendship and dialogue to faraway lands and peoples. And for anyone who is proud of their heritage or faith, Danny's last words, "I am Jewish," showed that it is possible to find dignity in one's identity even in the darkest of moments. Traces of these ideas are certainly evident in A Mighty Heart, and I hope viewers will leave the theater inspired by them.

At the same time, I am worried that A Mighty Heart falls into a trap Bertrand Russell would have recognized: the paradox of moral equivalence, of seeking to extend the logic of tolerance a step too far. You can see traces of this logic in the film's comparison of Danny's abduction with Guantánamo--it opens with pictures from the prison--and its comparison of Al Qaeda militants with CIA agents. You can also see it in the comments of the movie's director, Michael Winterbottom, who wrote on The Washington Post's website that A Mighty Heart and his previous film The Road to Guantánamo "are very similar. Both are stories about people who are victims of increasing violence on both sides. There are extremists on both sides who want to ratchet up the levels of violence and hundreds of thousands of people have died because of this."

Drawing a comparison between Danny's murder and the detainment of suspects in Guantánamo is precisely what the killers wanted, as expressed in both their e-mails and the murder video. Obviously Winterbottom did not mean to echo their sentiments, and certainly not to justify their demands or actions. Still, I am concerned that aspects of his movie will play into the hands of professional obscurers of moral clarity.

Indeed, following an advance screening of A Mighty Heart, a panelist representing the Council on American-Islamic Relations reportedly said, "We need to end the culture of bombs, torture, occupation, and violence. This is the message to take from the film." The message that angry youngsters are hearing is unfortunate: All forms of violence are equally evil; therefore, as long as one persists, others should not be ruled out. This is precisely the logic used by Mohammed Siddiqui Khan, one of the London suicide bombers, in his videotape on Al Jazeera. "Your democratically elected government," he told his British countrymen, "continues to perpetrate atrocities against my people ... . [W]e will not stop."



Danny's tragedy demands an end to this logic. There can be no comparison between those who take pride in the killing of an unarmed journalist and those who vow to end such acts--no ifs, ands, or buts. Moral relativism died with Daniel Pearl, in Karachi, on January 31, 2002.

There was a time when drawing moral symmetries between two sides of every conflict was a mark of original thinking. Today, with Western intellectuals overextending two-sidedness to reckless absurdities, it reflects nothing but lazy conformity. What is needed now is for intellectuals, filmmakers, and the rest of us to resist this dangerous trend and draw legitimate distinctions where such distinctions are warranted.

My son Danny had the courage to examine all sides. He was a genuine listener and a champion of dialogue. Yet he also had principles and red lines. He was tolerant but not mindlessly so. I hope viewers will remember this when they see A Mighty Heart.

Judea Pearl is president of the Daniel Pearl Foundation, an organization committed to interfaith dialogue, and co-editor of I am Jewish: Personal Reflections Inspired by the Last Words of Daniel Pearl.

In Defeat, a Bush Opportunity
By Patrick Buchanan

"I'll see you at the bill signing," said a cocky George W. Bush in Bulgaria, when he heard the Senate had just fallen 15 votes short of voting cloture on the Kennedy-Kyl immigration bill he had embraced.

Bush returned home, went to the Hill and implored the Senate Republicans to resurrect his bill. They did, only to have it go down to crushing defeat a second time, 46 to 53, last Thursday.

Bush has sustained a major humiliation. But he is not alone.

Routed, too, were Teddy Kennedy and John McCain, the Chamber of Commerce and La Raza, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal. For this proposed amnesty for 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens ignited a spontaneous uprising against the leadership of both parties, corporate America and the mainstream media, as well.

A defeat like this is almost unheard of in Washington. For when the establishment unites -- as it did behind the Panama Canal giveaway and NAFTA -- it almost always wins.

Indeed, just as it is a defining mark of a superpower that when it commits to war it wins, so it is a defining feature of an establishment that when it commits to a political course, it prevails. When the Soviet Union was defeated in Afghanistan, it ceased to be a superpower and soon ceased to exist. Our establishment has suffered a comparable defeat.

The Beltway was routed by a coalition of TV and radio talk show hosts, grass-roots activists and backbenchers with the courage to defy their masters. The regime was run off the hill by the country that it claims to represent.

Repercussions will be far-reaching, as they were from that Panama Canal debate. Ronald Reagan led the opposition in that fight, and though he lost, it propelled him to the presidency.

Consider McCain. Once thought to be the runaway favorite for the GOP nomination, he has fallen to sixth in Iowa, dropped out of the Aug. 11 straw poll, plunged to single digits in South Carolina and may see his campaign crash before January.

Among GOP senators, Jim DeMint, David Vitter, Jeff Sessions and Tom Coburn have emerged as lions, while Jon Kyl, Lindsey Graham and Mel Martinez have likely suffered enduring damage for having chartered a Teddy Kennedy Republican Club.

Among Democratic senators, newcomers Jim Webb of Virginia, John Tester of Montana and Claire McCaskill of Missouri joined a dozen others to vote down the bill. Bernie Sanders, the Vermont socialist, also voted no.

In this vote are the makings of a new coalition. On one side, Reid-Kennedy liberal Democrats joined K Street Republicans to vote for amnesty. On the other, Red State Democrats joined the conviction conservatives of the GOP. Upon what were they united? Call it a policy of putting country and community before commerce.

Eighteen months before Bush departs, it is clear that his open-borders, free-trade globalism is no longer unchallenged dogma in the GOP. Three of every four Senate Republicans rejected amnesty. And fast track, by which Congress surrenders its right to amend Bush trade bills, expired Saturday. The Doha Round of global trade negotiations is as dead as the immigration bill.

If there is a rising sentiment in America today, it is nationalism.

Americans are growing weary of seeing their sons die in wars to bring democracy to people who do not seem all that appreciative. They are tired of reading of factories going to China and jobs going to India, while illegal aliens march in their cities under foreign flags to demand their "civil rights." They are tired of reading about new billionaires as their wages fail to rise to compensate for soaring gas prices and the falling value of their homes.

The establishment is losing the trust of the people, who are coming to believe that establishment is looking out for its own interests, not theirs -- and the two are no longer the same.

About President Bush, there are two questions: Does he see what is happening? Is he flexible and skillful enough to dump the Kennedy-Bush alliance and take up the leadership of the new center-right coalition that is forming?

In the Harriet Miers affair, he showed that skill. When the right raged against the nomination of his White House counsel to the Supreme Court, Bush skillfully withdrew it, sent up Sam Alito, reunited his coalition and won one of the signal victories of his second term. Reconstituting the Supreme Court could be a Bush legacy. The left is terrified at the prospect.

What should Bush do today? Graciously accept the "thumping" on amnesty, and seize the leadership of the border-security coalition -- 90 percent of the nation -- with a tough new bill that liberal Democrats will choke on, but the country will unite around. And kiss Kennedy goodbye.

Copyright 2007 Creators Syndicate Inc.

From Jihad Watch:

New Spencer book cover

I just got this from Regnery Publishing, which will be putting out the book on August 13. The one at Amazon is a dummy -- above is the real cover. And please note that I appreciate your input very much, but at this point the book has gone to press: the title and the cover are final.

Here is the cover flap copy, as reported by Amazon:

Christianity or Islam: which is the real "religion of peace"?

Almost any liberal pundit will tell you that there's a religion bent on destroying our Constitution, stripping us of our liberties, and imposing religious rule on the U.S. And that religion is . . .Christianity! About Islam, however, the Left is silent--except to claim a moral equivalence between the two: if Islam has terrorists today, that's nothing compared to the Crusades, inquisitions, and religious wars in Christianity's past.

But is this true? Are conservative Christians really more of a threat to free societies than Islamic jihadists? Is the Bible really "just as violent" as the Qur'an? Is Christianity's history really as bloodstained as Islam's? In Religion of Peace? Why Christianity Is and Islam Isn't, New York Times bestselling author Robert Spencer not only refutes such charges, but also explains why Americans and Europeans must regain an appreciation of our Christian heritage if we ever hope to defeat Islamic supremacism. In this eye opening work, Spencer reveals:

* The fundamental differences between Islamic and Christian teachings about warfare against other religions: "Love your enemies" vs. "Be ruthless to the unbelievers"

* The myth of Western immorality and Islamic puritanism and why the Islamic world is less moral than the West

* Why the Islamic world has never developed the distinction between religious and secular law that is inherent in Christianity

* Why Christianity has always embraced reason--and Islam has always rejected it

* Why the most determined enemies of Western civilization may not be the jihadists at all, but the leftists who fear their churchgoing neighbors more than Islamic terrorists

* Why Jews, Christians, and peoples of other faiths (or no faith) are equally at risk from militant Islam

Spencer writes not to proselytize, but to state a fact: Christianity is a true "religion of peace," and on it Western civilization stands. If we are not to perish under Islam's religion of the sword--with its more than 100 million active jihadists seeking to impose sharia law--we had better defend our own civilization.

From Slate.com:
Don't Mince Words
The London car-bomb plot was designed to kill women.
By Christopher Hitchens

Posted Monday, July 2, 2007

Why on earth do people keep saying, "There but for the grace of God …"? If matters had been very slightly different over the past weekend, the streets of London and the airport check-in area in Glasgow, Scotland, would have been strewn with charred body parts. And this would have been, according to the would-be perpetrators, because of the grace of God. Whatever our own private theology or theodicy, we might at least agree to take this vile belief seriously.

Instead, almost every other conceivable explanation was canvassed. The June 30 New York Times report managed to quote three people, one of whom attributed the aborted atrocity in London to Tony Blair's foreign policy; one of whom (a New Zealand diplomat, at that) felt "surprisingly all right about it"; and one of whom, described as "a Briton of Indian descent," was worried that "if I walk up that road, they're going to suspect me." The "they" there was clearly the British authorities, rather than the Muslim gangsters who have declared open season on all Hindus as well as all Jews, Christians, secularists, and other kuffar or infidel filth.

On the following day, July 1, the same newspaper informed us that Britain contained a "disenfranchised South Asian population." How this was true was never explained. There are several Muslim parliamentarians in both houses, often allowed to make the most absurdly inflammatory and euphemistic statements where acts of criminal violence are concerned, as well as several districts in which the Islamic vote keeps candidates of all parties uneasily aware of what may and may not be said. True, the Muslim extremist groups boycott elections and denounce democracy itself as profane, but this does not really count as disenfranchisement.

Only at the tail end of the coverage was it admitted that a car bomb might have been parked outside a club in Piccadilly because it was "ladies night" and that this explosion might have been designed to lure people into to the street, the better to be burned and shredded by the succeeding explosion from the second car-borne cargo of gasoline and nails. Since we have known since 2004 that a near-identical attack on a club called the Ministry of Sound was proposed in just these terms, on the grounds that dead "slags" or "sluts" would be regretted by nobody, a certain amount of trouble might have been saved by assuming the obvious. The murderers did not just want body parts in general but female body parts in particular.

I suppose that some people might want to shy away from this conclusion for whatever reason, but they cannot have been among the viewers of British Channel 4's recent Undercover Mosque, or among those who watched Sunday's report from Christiane Amanpour on CNN's Special Investigations Unit. On these shows, the British Muslim fanatics came right out with their program. Straight into the camera, leading figures like Anjem Choudary spoke of their love for Osama Bin Laden and their explicit rejection of any definition of Islam as a religion of peace. On tape or in person, mullahs in prominent British mosques called for the killing of Indians and Jews.

Liberal reluctance to confront this sheer horror is the result, I think, of a deep reticence about some furtive concept of "race." It is subconsciously assumed that a critique of political Islam is an attack on people with brown skins. One notes in passing that any such concession implicitly denies or negates Islam's claim to be a universal religion. Indeed, some of its own exponents certainly do speak as if they think of it as a tribal property. And, at any rate, in practice, so it is. The fascistic subculture that has taken root in Britain and that lives by violence and hatred is composed of two main elements. One is a refugee phenomenon, made up of shady exiles from the Middle East and Asia who are exploiting London's traditional hospitality, and one is the projection of an immigrant group that has its origins in a particularly backward and reactionary part of Pakistan.

To the shame-faced white-liberal refusal to confront these facts, one might counterpose a few observations. The first is that we were warned for years of the danger, by Britons also of Asian descent such as Hanif Kureishi, Monica Ali, and Salman Rushdie. They knew what the village mullahs looked like and sounded like, and they said as much. Not long ago, I was introduced to Nadeem Aslam, whose book Maps for Lost Lovers is highly recommended.

He understands the awful price of arranged marriages, dowry, veiling, and the other means by which the feudal arrangements of rural Pakistan have been transplanted to parts of London and Yorkshire. "In some families in my street," he writes to me, "the grandparents, parents, and the children are all first cousins—it's been going on for generations and so the effects of the inbreeding are quite pronounced by now." By his estimate and others, a minority of no more than 11 percent is responsible for more than 70 percent of the birth defects in Yorkshire. When a leading socialist member of Parliament, Ann Cryer, drew attention to this appalling state of affairs in her own constituency, she was promptly accused of—well, you can guess what she was accused of. The dumb word Islamophobia, uncritically employed by Christiane Amanpour in her otherwise powerful documentary, was the least of it. Meanwhile, an extreme self-destructive clannishness, which is itself "phobic" in respect to all outsiders, becomes the constituency for the preachings of a cult of death. I mention this because, if there is an "ethnic" dimension to the Islamist question, then in this case at least it is the responsibility of the Islamists themselves.

The most noticeable thing about all theocracies is their sexual repression and their directly related determination to exert absolute control over women. In Britain, in the 21^st century, there are now honor killings, forced marriages, clerically mandated wife-beatings, incest in all but name, and the adoption of apparel for females that one cannot be sure is chosen by them but which is claimed as an issue of (of all things) free expression. This would be bad enough on its own and if it were confined to the Muslim "community" alone. But, of course, such a toxin cannot be confined, and the votaries of theocracy now claim the God-given right to slaughter females at random for nothing more than their perceived immodesty. The least we can do, confronted by such radical evil, is to look it in the eye (something it strives to avoid) and call it by its right name. For a start, it is the female victims of this tyranny who are "disenfranchised," while something rather worse than "disenfranchisement" awaits those who dare to disagree.

Christopher Hitchens is a columnist for Vanity Fair and the author of God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything.

Best Vietnam book ever.
Review from the New York Times:

One Morning in October
By PHILIP CAPUTO


THEY MARCHED
INTO SUNLIGHT
War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967.
By David Maraniss.
Illustrated. 572 pp. New York:
Simon & Schuster. $29.95.

October 5, 2003

BEFORE I read this book, I thought everything humanly possible had been said about the Vietnam War and the 1960's -- in fiction and nonfiction, in high culture and low, in film and on television. So when I boarded a flight from New York to Anchorage, I was reluctant to open David Maraniss's ''They Marched Into Sunlight.'' Here was a volume of doorstop dimensions about the war and the 60's. I wasn't three pages into it before my reluctance vaporized; I think the plane was over Vancouver when I finished it.

Maraniss, a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter for The Washington Post and author of biographies of Bill Clinton and Vince Lombardi, is a writer with a masterly sense of narrative pace. In ''They Marched Into Sunlight'' he juxtaposes a small but ghastly battle in Vietnam with an antiwar demonstration at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, during the same two days in October 1967, a coincidence he must have found irresistible. Moving between the campus at Madison and the jungles of Vietnam, with side trips to Hanoi and Washington, the tale unfolds with a magisterial sweep that recaptures the war and its era, filled with moral ambiguity and moral conviction, with promise and dread, with hippie antics and weekly body counts.

The book presents a Tolstoyan array of characters, 172 altogether, from Sgt. Willie Johnson to President Lyndon Johnson, from Nguyen Van Lam, a Vietcong guerrilla, to Vo Nguyen Giap, commander in chief of the North Vietnamese Army, and from Billy Simons, a student protest leader, to William Sewell, the University of Wisconsin's chancellor. There are also businessmen, policemen, professors, a street theater company called the San Francisco Mime Troupe, New Left radicals and two young graduate students named Dick and Lynne Cheney.

Maraniss is sometimes challenged to bring them all to life, but the major figures are drawn vividly, giving ''They Marched Into Sunlight'' a novelistic quality. Still, its epic scope occasionally overreaches. The excursions to the halls of power in Washington unnecessarily slowed the story's flow and struck me as condensed rehashes of ''The Best and the Brightest,'' by David Halberstam. And the roster is so large that I often had to flip back to the ''Cast of Characters,'' six pages long, to figure out who was who. Those flaws aside, the book fulfills its ambition to evoke political, social and cultural quakes whose aftershocks are felt to this day.

Neoconservatives have tried to transmute the war from a tragic folly into a heroic endeavor undermined by quislings, and the entertainment industry has turned the 60's into caricature, warping both the war and its time into cliché and myth. Maraniss restores them to their original shapes by shedding a fresh light on forgotten truths. ''Ideological formulations'' are not what interest him, but rather ''the connections of history and of individual lives, the accidents, incidents and intentions that rip people apart and sew them back together.''

The war episodes open with an image that seems to possess the faded tones of a wire-service photo from World War II: several thousand replacements report to board a troopship that will carry them across the Pacific to Vietnam. After they land at the port of Vung Tau, we follow several to their assignments in a legendary battalion known as the Black Lions, part of the fabled First Infantry Division, the Big Red One. The battalion is commanded by Lt. Col. Terry de la Mesa Allen Jr., of El Paso, Tex., son of a military icon: Maj. Gen. Terry Allen Sr. led the First Division through some of the heaviest fighting in World War II. Allen Jr. has shown promise of following in his heroic father's footsteps, but his personal life is in tatters -- his wife has left him for a rodeo clown -- and he has begun to suffer doubts about the war and his military career.

The scene shifts to the enemy's headquarters, where we meet Vo Minh Triet, commanding another storied outfit, the First Regiment of the Ninth Vietcong Division. Triet's 1,500-man regiment is in temporary occupation of a formidable and formidably named patch of jungle northwest of Saigon, the ''Long Nguyen Secret Zone.'' Pressured from on high to rack up big enemy body counts, Allen leads the Black Lions into this hell on a search-and-destroy mission. A battalion normally has 800 troops; battlefield attrition, disease and personnel problems have reduced the Black Lions to half that, and Allen is leading only half of the half on the mission -- two under-strength rifle companies and a depleted headquarters company. Triet's men, outnumbering the Americans nearly 10 to 1, are waiting. The irony is -- and here I'm reminded of Tolstoy's idea that battles aren't won or lost by the brilliance or stupidity of field commanders but often by sheer accident -- Triet's regiment isn't supposed to be where it is. Ordered to march on the city of Loc Ninh, it has run out of food and has wandered into the Long Nguyen Secret Zone to look for rice. To get where he's been ordered to go, Triet has to sweep the Americans out of his way, which he does with textbook efficiency.

Those who still believe that we lost the war because political considerations forced the Army to fight with one hand tied behind its back need to read this book. Maraniss's account of the two-day battle is as horrific and gripping as the now famous first 25 minutes of ''Saving Private Ryan.'' If it does nothing else, I hope it disposes of the rubbish about war that compliant news media heaped on a credulous public in the recent Iraqi conflict. This is what infantry combat is really like -- terrible noise, confusion and chaos, the dead, the dying and body parts scattered everywhere, blood spilled in such profusion that it causes rifles to jam. Fifty-eight of Allen's 200 men, including Allen himself, are killed, and 61 wounded.

The Black Lions had ceased to exist as an effective combat unit but, as Maraniss goes on to point out, the American military propaganda machine manipulated the facts to make the catastrophe appear as a triumph. These appalling lies are contrasted with depictions of the battalion's survivors recovering in military hospitals, of the families of the dead answering doorbells to behold the dread sight of men in uniform, holding fateful telegrams.

The sections dealing with the war against the war, encapsulated in protest at Madison, are equally arresting. The demonstration has been organized to stop the Dow Chemical Company, manufacturer of napalm, from recruiting on campus. Like Allen marching into Triet's trap, protesters, cops and university officials walk into a violent confrontation, thanks to miscalculations and miscommunication on everyone's part.

Led by a determined minority of antiwar zealots, frustrated with the limitations of legitimate protest, the demonstrators seize the building where Dow executives are conducting their interviews. After failing to persuade the protesters to leave the building peacefully, the university chancellor calls in the Madison Police Department, with disastrous consequences. Heads are cracked open, tear gas is exploded and bystanders are overrun, creating new recruits for the antiwar movement.

Maraniss avoids stereotyping school officials, police officers and the New Leftists who led the protest. Sewell, himself bitterly opposed to the war, comes off as more pathetic than tragic, a liberal sociologist out of his depth as an administrator caught between the forces of order and those of radical change. The protesters are drawn as rounded human beings spurred by a mixture of altruism, passion, self-interest and self-righteousness. Paul Soglin, a graduate student from a progressive Jewish family who is destined to become Madison's mayor, is seen as a politician in the making, stirring political calculation into his moral convictions.

Finally, the questions debated so hotly and so violently 40 years ago resonate loudly today: questions about America's role in the world, about imperial overreach, about the folly of guns and butter and about war's hideous legacy. The words of George Mosse, a University of Wisconsin history professor, are particularly apt: ''Even while continuing to honor the memory of the fallen, we must never lose our horror, never try to integrate war and its consequences into our longing for the sacred. . . . If we confront mass death naked, stripped of all myth, we may have slightly more chance to avoid making the devil's pact with that aggressive nationalism whose blood trail has marked our century.''

Philip Caputo is the author of ''A Rumor of War.'' His most recent books are ''The Voyage'' and ''Ghosts of Tsavo.''

From Backstreets.com:

NEW PATTI ALBUM COMING IN SEPTEMBER
Patti Scialfa took so long between her first and second albums -- 11 years -- that it became something of a running joke. Not so this time. Only three years after 23rd Street Lullaby, her third solo album has just been announced. Yep, her husband hasn't been the only one hard at work on a new record lately... and hers drops first: Play It As It Lays is due September 4 from Columbia.

On Play It as It Lays, Patti reteams with her 23rd Street co-producer Steve Jordan (pictured left with Patti), also adding Ron Aniello to the production team. She reunites key players from her 2004 band, now known as the Whack Brothers Rhythm Section (now that's how you name a band!): Jordan on drums, percussion, and acoustic guitar; Willie Weeks on bass; Cliff Carter on keyboards; Nils Lofgren on guitars, pedal steel, and dobro; and one Bruce Springsteen, on Hammond B3, acoustic and electric guitar, and harmonica. Other players on the record include fellow members of the Sessions Band: Soozie Tyrell, Jeremy Chatzky, Lisa Lowell, Cindy Mizelle, and Curtis King.

Patti wrote the album's ten tracks which, as described in today's press release, incorporate "elements of roots rock, folk, country, street corner doo-wop, girl groups and more into a sound and sensibility uniquely her own." The songs:

• Looking for Elvis
• Like Any Woman Would
• Town Called Heartbreak
• Play Around
• Rainy Day Man
• The Word
• Bad For You
• Run, Run, Run
• Play It As It Lays
• Black Adder

Patti is currently booked to perform on The Today Show and The Late Show with David Letterman on September 4, and The View on September 6. We'll keep you updated on any other shows and other promotional appearances as we know them.
-July 2, 2007

From VDare.com:
Bush’s Border Patrol Betrayal
By Henry McCulloch

The Houston Chronicle reports the Border Patrol is on a recruiting drive—supposedly as a

“[K]ey component of the Bush administration's renewed efforts to broker a pending immigration-reform law by ramping up security at the border.

''’We're pulling out all the stops,’ said Todd Fraser, a Border Patrol spokesman in Washington, D.C.”

[Border patrol races to sign up thousands, By James Pinkerton, Houston Chronicle June 25, 2007]

This may sound like good news. But it should make anyone concerned about the National Question and the chicanery of the Bush administration and its Congressional open-borders co-conspirators very nervous. The quote above gives the game away: Bush and his assorted brains are pushing a Potemkin-village non-solution to our border problems in yet another attempt to con Americans into supporting, or at least accepting, their amnesty/”guest” worker giveaway of American citizenship and abolition of our borders.

We can’t fall for it. (Not that any regular VDARE.COM readers are likely to.)

Expect any recruiting under this program to be purely for political consumption. Expect it to be rushed and thoughtless—as Border Patrol mouthpiece Fraser admits in the quote above. Expect affirmative action favoritism to rule the recruiting and selection.

Which brings me to my major concern about this whole fraudulent enterprise: the institutionalizing of dual, or at best divided, loyalty in federal employees whose sole allegiance should be to the United States, and whose sole concern in carrying out their duties should be the interests of Americans and the United States.

Affirmative action in this case means aggressively recruiting Hispanics.

Undivided loyalty is very far from the case in the U.S. Border Patrol today. The Border Patrol recruits heavily in areas along the Mexican border—it’s an easier sell as Border Patrol agents from near the border don’t have to go far from home to be on station. And of course our “diversity”-obsessed Federal Government likes it because these areas now have heavily Mexican and Mexican-American populations from which to make affirmative-action hires.

But since the major purpose of the Border Patrol along the Mexican border (when the Administration allows it to do its job, that is) is to keep Mexicans from entering the United States illegally and to return expeditiously those who make it across, does it make any sense to have the ranks of those who are fighting America’s real war be full of people with strong national and familial ties to Mexico—often people themselves born in Mexico?

(As an aside, how many of today’s Border Patrol agents are only here and in their jobs because a Mexican relative was amnestied in 1986, allowing the future agent to come to America? Forbidden question, I know—but perhaps worth asking.)

Border Patrol agents Ramos and Compean seem to be worthy exceptions to my concern about divided loyalty—and maybe that’s why the Bush administration, at the Mexican government’s behest, is making sure they languish in the federal pen for a long time to come, pour encourager les autres not to get too serious about keeping all those potential George P. Bush voters from bringing their family values across the Rio Grande river.

What to make, though, of Rene Sanchez, Mexican-born Border Patrol agent and intimate of Mexican drug smuggler and regular border-jumper, Osbaldo Aldrete-Davila, whose wounding became the pretext for incarcerating Ramos and Compean?

Sanchez, who took extraordinary steps to help build a case against his Border Patrol colleagues, on all evidence seems to feel far greater solidarity with a Mexican narcotraficante than with his Mexican-American comrades. Is this the sort of man we want patrolling the Mexican border?

The back pages of newspapers are now replete with stories (for the most part the major media are studiously uninterested) of Border Patrol agents who have broken their oaths and helped smuggle illegal aliens into the United States. While not all of the surnames in the papers are Spanish, most are.

Recently the National Guard has been sent in to beef up the border patrols—and three men from the Texas National Guard have been charged with smuggling aliens. Two of them were Hispanic.

Nevertheless, the Bush Administration makes it clear as can be that it will do nothing to address this prudential concern. Quite the contrary. In addition to slashing standards and training requirements across the board, it is recklessly courting the risk of dual loyalty—or even primary loyalty to Mexico and other Latin American countries—in its Border Patrol high-speed recruiting drive:

“The Border Patrol recently has conducted recruiting fairs in cities including Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Detroit and Edinburg in the Rio Grande Valley.

“To draw more interest, the age limit for recruits has been raised to 40 from 37.

“To get recruits into the field more quickly, the Border Patrol is cutting its training schedule at its New Mexico academy from 91 to 81 days.

“In October, a new Spanish test will allow those who pass it to shave 30 more days from their academy training, Fraser said. According to Border Patrol officials, this test could benefit about half of all recruits, because the agency is heavily recruiting Hispanic trainees.” [emphasis added]

Not only will Hispanics—those most likely to have divided loyalties about securing our southern border—be preferred over other candidates for affirmative-action reasons, they will be preferred on the basis of Spanish language skills. To the extent Spanish is made a prerequisite for Border Patrol service, ordinary Americans will be made ineligible for jobs working for their own government.

(Another aside: Why is Spanish proficiency necessary for border patrolling in the first place?) As Peter Brimelow has documented, the forced national bilingualism of Canada has operated to create enormous preferences in government employment for French-speaking Quebecois. Do we want the same sort of divisive preference regimes here? Especially since Spanish is not an American national language, as French is in Canada.

This Bush Border Patrol recruiting drive has two purposes.

The short term purpose is to provide political cover for an illegal alien amnesty and “guest” worker (read American-displacement) program that would dwarf our 1986 mistake, massive as that was.

The second, long-term purpose is to Hispanicize the Border Patrol even more—with no thought about what that does to the Border Patrol’s effectiveness. (Maybe, though, given President Bush’s emotional Mexicanism, it is very well thought out.)

Of course, if the Bush Administration succeeds in using the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America to draw the United States into a North American Union, the Border Patrol will be irrelevant.

Our politicos will have succeeded in abolishing America’s borders—by abolishing America, period.

Henry McCulloch (email him) blogs frequently for VDARE.COM.

Toll of glory for Earl Campbell
Heisman winner paying price
for punishing running style

08:55 AM CDT on Saturday, June 30, 2007

By CHIP BROWN / The Dallas Morning News
chipbrown@dallasnews.com

AUSTIN – While Tony Dorsett played with his kids and Archie Griffin and George Rogers played golf Friday at Barton Creek Resort, Earl Campbell was struggling to walk.

Wearing a burnt orange, Texas golf shirt, white knee-length shorts and new Nikes with a Longhorn logo, Campbell used a walker to inch down a window-lined hallway overlooking one of his favorite golf courses.

He took roughly six minutes to cover 40 yards – a distance he used to breeze through in less than five seconds as a punishing running back at Texas and during an eight-year, Hall of Fame career in the NFL, mostly with the Houston Oilers. Still wearing his trademark beard, now gray, he stands at a 45-degree angle, unable to straighten at his lower back. He can no longer straighten his knees, either.

When the walker becomes too much work, he uses a wheelchair that he travels with at all times. During a 40-minute interview with a few reporters on Friday, Campbell was totally lucid one second and struggling to recall names and prominent dates the next.

"The doctor says I'll be playing golf by October," Campbell said in eternal optimism, even though he hasn't swung a club in six years.

Campbell is being honored this weekend along with former Texas A&M running back John David Crow by the Heisman Winners Association. The event, sponsored by Triton Financial, has attracted more than 20 former Heisman Trophy winners to Austin to help raise funds for charity and to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Campbell's Heisman win (1977) and 50th anniversary of Crow's win (1957).

The subject of Campbell's health became a topic of discussion among the former NFL players gathered in Austin this weekend because of testimony before Congress on Tuesday by aging NFL retirees.

Those retirees told horror stories of endless surgery, dementia and even homelessness while fighting with the NFL for better pensions and health insurance. Retired NFL players receive health insurance for the first five years after their playing career and then are on their own, when insurance is often unaffordable.

The league and the players association said pensions are improving and that there's no need for Congress to step in.

"I stay focused and prayerful that I won't have to deal with the situation of Earl Campbell one day," said former Tennessee Titans and Cowboys running back Eddie George, who won the Heisman at Ohio State in 1995.

Fortunately for Campbell, he is in his 16th year as a special assistant to the athletic director at Texas, a job that pays him $50,000 a year and provides his health insurance.

Texas athletic director DeLoss Dodds on Friday called Campbell "an important ambassador for the university."

"Thank God for the University of Texas," said Campbell, whose latest back surgery came on March 26 to remove bone spurs. He goes to physical therapy three days a week and regrets quitting on the physical therapy prescribed after previous back surgeries.

"They wanted me to lift some weights, and I told them I didn't know how to do that," Campbell said. "I never lifted weights when I played football. (Former Oilers coach) Bum Phillips took $10,000 from me because I didn't lift weights."

Close to home

For Dorsett, Griffin and Rogers, Campbell's physical condition hits close to home. They are contemporaries who shared a position known for collisions akin to car accidents. Dorsett, who won the Heisman at Pitt in 1976, is 53. Campbell and Griffin are 52. Rogers, the Heisman winner at South Carolina in 1980 before an eight-year NFL career, is 48.

They all talk about ailments that still bother them today. Dorsett, a Hall of Fame running for the Cowboys, temporarily lost feeling in his left arm a while back. Rogers can't raise his right arm above his shoulder.

"Earl's an example of what can happen playing that game," said Ohio State's Griffin, the only two-time Heisman winner (1974-75). "He's paying the price for that today. But Earl never brings attention to himself. He's not going to complain. He still has a great outlook and is still bigger than life."

It's obvious to everyone but Campbell that his physical condition, on the decline for years, is the direct result of his bullish running style. Campbell repeatedly led with his helmet when taking on defenders, raising the question of concussions in addition to the toll taken on his neck and back.

Campbell, however, maintains his physical condition is genetic.

"It's not because of football," Campbell said angrily when a reporter inferred otherwise. "The most serious injury I got from football was a broken finger and broken ribs."

Still a legend

A few of Campbell's business ventures have failed, but he remains a figurehead for Earl Campbell Meat Products. Campbell keeps an office near downtown Austin, where his Heisman Trophy is kept in a glass case.

Campbell has been known to show up at the Shoal Creek Saloon, a local bar and popular hangout among New Orleans Saints fans, where he will drink Budweisers with fans and sign baseball hats that read "20 – The Legend" for $20.

On Friday, he said he can't believe he hasn't been offered more endorsements in Austin over the years.

"With all the computer companies here, not one of those companies have said, 'Would you be interested in representing our company?' " Campbell said. He then asked one of the reporters to help him get a car deal with a BMW dealership.

"I need the biggest BMW they got, black and loaded," Campbell said.

Campbell covered a lot of topics Friday, including a car accident near his hometown of Tyler last Sunday, when he was run off the road by an 18-wheeler.

"Man was I lucky," said Campbell, who was uninjured in the wreck.

On Ricky Williams, Texas' only other Heisman winner who has fallen out of the NFL after repeated failed drug tests, Campbell said, "That's his family's fault, Texas' fault and mostly Ricky's fault. If he would have played for Darrell Royal, that stuff would have stopped. But we as a Heisman group should let Ricky know we still love him."

On Vince Young, who led Texas to the national title in 2005 and then skipped his final year of eligibility for the NFL, Campbell said, "Athletes are great when they get a degree."

Campbell said he would like to see the Heisman Trophy presentation ceremony move to Austin, where the former winners "can play golf" instead of "just sitting around in a cramped hotel drinking."

When Campbell mentioned the idea Friday to former Nebraska running back/receiver Johnny Rodgers, the 1972 Heisman winner, Rodgers chuckled and patted Campbell on the shoulder.

During Friday's interview, Campbell repeatedly called this year the "20th anniversary" of his Heisman win and continued to refer to NFL Players Association chief Gene Upshaw as "Art Shell" even after being corrected twice.

But he is absolutely beloved by his peers. Only they truly know what kind of punishment he handed out – and absorbed – on the field.

"Earl Campbell was my idol," Rogers said. "When I was a player, I tried to be just like him."

Best friends

Of all the Heisman winners, Campbell said he considers Dorsett his best friend because Dorsett calls on Campbell regularly.

Dorsett, who lives in Frisco, is a part owner of Hall of Fame Mortgage in Dallas and also has his own food company – Tony Dorsett Food Products, which makes precooked foods for the military.

"I called Earl and told him to sell his meats to the military because they use sausage in meals just about every day," Dorsett said. "Earl told me he wasn't sure about it because he doesn't like to travel that much."

Having won the Heisman in back-to-back years, Dorsett and Campbell tried to outperform each other during their pro careers – a fact they learned after they retired.

"One time, I asked Earl, 'Why don't you let one man bring you down sometimes?' " Dorsett said. "He said, 'I got to get them. They're talking that noise.' "

When asked about that conversation Friday, Campbell said, "Tony had his style, I had my style."

Dorsett sounded like an excited little boy when naming several defenders Campbell threw around like rag dolls on highlight reels.

"Earl was the biggest, baddest player in the game," Dorsett said. "He was my Skoal brother. But no matter how big or strong you are, the game ultimately wins."