South Dakota Politics

Daschle the Lobbyist

Wall Street Journal: "Barack Obama, He-Who-Does-Not-Take-Corporate-PAC-Money, is similarly conflicted. When former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle isn't recruiting superdelegates for the Illinois senator, he's advising lobbying giant Alston & Bird, with its long list of pharma and financial clients."

Obama and Rural America

Just to add one other thought to what my colleagues have already touched on below regarding Barack Obama's statement on small town Americans: what does Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin think of Obama's bashing of small towns?

Meanwhile, historian Victor Davis Hanson sees the McGovernization of Obama.

UPDATE:  A helpful photo essay.

Religion, Science, And The Problem Of Islam

Some time ago Doug Wiken passed along this article to me on science and the Islamic world.  I commend it to your attention.  The author, Pervez Hoodbhoy, himself a Pakistani scientist, documents the lack of scientific output from Muslim nations and then seeks to explain this phenomenon. 

There was a time, granted it was the Middle Ages, when Muslim peoples were at the forefront of scientific achievement.  What happened?  See Prof. Blanchard's post below for part of the answer.  See also Bernard Lewis's What Went Wrong.  Hootbhoy himself lays some of the blame on a backwards looking Islam that, one might say, seeks to merely protect the past and consolidate gains rather than promote scientific progress:

Science, in the view of fundamentalists, is principally seen as valuable for establishing yet more proofs of God, proving the truth of Islam and the Qur'an, and showing that modern science would have been impossible but for Muslim discoveries. Antiquity alone seems to matter. One gets the impression that history's clock broke down somewhere during the 14th century and that plans for repair are, at best, vague. In that all-too-prevalent view, science is not about critical thought and awareness, creative uncertainties, or ceaseless explorations. Missing are websites or discussion groups dealing with the philosophical implications from the Islamic point of view of the theory of relativity, quantum mechanics, chaos theory, superstrings, stem cells, and other contemporary science issues.

Hoodbhoy goes further.  It isn't just fundamentalist Islam that is at war with science, but religion of all kinds. 

Science finds every soil barren in which miracles are taken literally and seriously and revelation is considered to provide authentic knowledge of the physical world. (snip)

Just as important, the practice of religion must be a matter of choice for the individual, not enforced by the state. This leaves secular humanism, based on common sense and the principles of logic and reason, as our only reasonable choice for governance and progress. Being scientists, we understand this easily. The task is to persuade those who do not.

Hoodbhoy seems entirely ignorant of the role the Church historically played in developing the university and promoting the preservation and creation of knowledge (Gregor Mendel anyone?).  It is the very preservation of knowledge that allows scientific knowledge to increase, as Prof. Blanchard notes.  Understanding of the natural world necessitates a sequential increase of knowledge that builds over time.  Universities founded by the Church played an indispensable role in this mission. On a more contemporary note one may encounter a defense of reason in John Paul II's encyclical Fides et Ratio and in Benedict XVI's controversial Regensburg lecture.  What made the latter piece controversial was precisely its critique of fundamentalist Islam's antipathy to human reason. 

If there is a problem with Islam in its more vocally radical forms is its violent rejection of modernity.  Christianity in its various forms may have critiques of modernity and offer itself at times as an alternative to a thoroughgoing modernism, but even in its fundamentalist forms it is not ultimately or violently at odds with the modern world. Rejection of Darwinism does not necessarily mean the total rejection of science.  Even the most medieval of churches, the Catholic Church, has long made its peace, if sometimes an uneasy one, with the modern world.  Western Civilization, as it exists today, is produced by the meeting of Christendom and Enlightenment. 

While Christianity may have its critiques of modernity, fundamentalist Islam often defines itself in its opposition to the modern world and the Western Civilization which is defined (to a significant degree) by that modernity.  The Islamic fundamentalists do not merely wish to critique modernity or point out the short comings of modern science, they wish to supplant it, by force if necessary, with a particular form of Islam.   They believe the material success of the infidel West is an offense to Allah, and therefore they reject all that makes the West successful: its culture, its politics and its science. 

Patrick Deneen is on to something when he points to Catholicism as a kind of "middle way."  One need not buy Catholic theology to understand the wisdom of what Deneen teaches.

Catholicism represents the "middle way" between these two extremes [of rationalism and deconstructionism], holding that culture, language, history, tradition, law, interpretation, community, discourse, and finally, politics is the medium of human knowing - but holding simultaneously that there is something to be known. We "see through a glass darkly," but there is something to be seen, even if we can't be positive of its precise outlines and exact dimensions. Mediation is the means to truth and knowledge, not its obstacle, on the one hand, or all that there is, on the other. It is, finally, a sacramental vision, holding that through earthly and corporeal media we gain an access - if indirectly and still imperfectly - of the Divine. This indirectness and imperfection does not result in the call to deconstruct, but to ascend. Ritual and liturgy are ways we enact that ascent in our daily lives.

There is no reason why science, as an "earthly and corporeal media," cannot play a role in the understanding of the world.  I have yet to meet the Christian who thinks otherwise, although I am sure they exist.  Yet, as I continue to argue, science has its limits.  Science can teach me how things work, but it cannot teach me what it good.  Science can tell me what I am made out of, but it cannot tell me who I am.   For these answers I will go to the philosophers, the poets and the theologians. 

Barack Obama: Kind To Gun Owners, Religious People, And Other Dumb Animals

More fallout from Obama's remarks about rural Pennsylvania (note, in my previous post I said that these words were uttered in Pennsylvania.  Nope.  Obama was in San Francisco talking about Pennsylvania).  Here's Mickey Kaus. 

I used to think working class voters had conservative values because they were bitter about their economic circumstances--welfare and immigrants were "scapegoats," part of the false consciousness that would disappear when everyone was guaranteed a good job at good wages. Then I left college. ..

Stinging words from John Podhoretz:

Obama’s astonishing sentence offers a syllogistic string of superciliousness: Gun ownership is equated with religious fanaticism, which is said to accompany hatred of the other in the form of opposition to  immigration and support for trade barriers. It drips with an attitude  so important to the spiritual well-being of the American liberal — the paternalistic attitude that says, “Oh, well, people only do thing differently from me because they are ignorant and superstitious and backward” — that it has survived and thrived  despite the suicidal impact it has had on the achievement of liberal political goals and aims.

But perhaps the winner for best take on this story is a commenter on Tom Maguire's site:
HALP US BROK O'BOMBA-- WE R STUCK HEAR N ALTOONA.

What is Science?

On Thursday I posted a comment in response to a response to a response by Professor Schaff.  The general question was the intellectual and moral authority of science.  One of the non-obvious questions raised by this exchange is what we mean by "science." 

Tonight I happened to listen to a podcast of The Philosopher's Zone, an ABC (that's Australian Broadcast Corporation) production.  The topic was the emergence of science.  The host, Alan Saunders, interviewed Stephen Gaukroger, who has written a book on the history of science.  The interview is in two parts, and I have only listened to the first, but I highly recommend it.  You can download the audio at this web address.  The Philosopher's Zone is by far the best podcast on philosophy that I have found.  Every single episode is good. 

In part one this question was raised: "why did the great scientific revolution occur in the West and not in China or the Arab-Islamic world?"  But first Gaukroger had to explain what it meant to say that it arose here and not there.  Rational investigation into nature certainly occurred in other parts of the world.  The ancient Greeks and the ancient Chinese knew the world was round.  The Medieval Islamic scholars were, for a considerable time, more advanced in science than their smelly European counterparts.  What was different about the West?

Gaukroger put it this way: in those other parts of the world, scientific questions arose, were dealt with, and then the inquiry stopped.  That is what happens when science is primarily a way to solve practical problems.  In Europe, in the thirteenth century, a tradition began of cumulative research.  Each generation of scientists built on the work of previous generations, and the process kept going.  It was not at any point a practical enterprise.  Only recently did Western science actually begin producing useful things.  It was motivated by a desire to understand things as they are. 

That tradition is what we mean by science.  When we ask what authority it should have, we should remember what it is.    

What Must Obama Think About South Dakotans?

My friend and esteemed Keloland colleague Todd Epp is very fond of telling us about his man-crush on Obama.  But one might wonder whether the affection is returned.  What does Barack Obama think about us South Dakotans?  We get a hint from the following quote, which my NSU colleague, Professor Schaff directs our attention to. This is what Obama said in San Francisco (from Powerline):

[T]he truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Wow.  Consider all the interesting ideas crawling around in that statement.  If some communities decline, it isn't just the ordinary course of economics and demographics, it must be someone's fault! Obama seems to promote the very pathology he diagnoses.  But of course the real meat of the quote is his view that  Americans "who aren't like him" are different because they suffer from some pathological state of mind. 

What are the symptoms of that pathology, from which we in the Dakotas surely suffer?  Anti-immigration and anti-trade sentiment, we learn.  Now one might have thought that a person could want the immigration laws of the United States to be enforced without for that being called a dysfunctional personality.  And as for anti-trade sentiment, apparently someone with an ivy-league education, from a boom town like Chicago, can suffer from it, as it is a major plank in Obama's platform. 

But of course the real kicker is the "guns and religion" part.  It's nice to know that those of us who "cling to guns," i.e., own guns and believe we have a right to own them, and "cling to religion," i.e., go to church on a regular basis and believe it is right to do so, are suffering from an economically induced pathology.  I am sure that a lot of folks in the Rushmore State would be interested to learn that this is Obama's opinion of them. 

I have thought for some time that Obama's twenty-year relationship with a racist, anti-American preacher, might be explained by the simple fact that, when he was in church, everyone around Obama talked the same way.  Why rock the boat?  But Obama spoke the words above in San Francisco, where he had some reason to suppose that everyone in the audience thinks like he does.  He forgot that he was on camera.  Now we know what he says about us when he thinks he can speak freely. 

Just Asking

A question for Pat Powers.  If a video is "not suitable for many listeners," why post it?  Are we less informed citizens if we don't hear Randi Rhodes say the f-word? 

Obama Nation!

I am getting email from the Obama campaign. Here is what they sent today:

Chicago, IL -- The Obama for American campaign today announced that six South Dakota Tribal Leaders have endorsed Senator Barack Obama for President, citing his call for unity to bring fundamental change to Washington. 

In an op-ed that ran in Indian Country Today,  John Yellowbird Steele, president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe; William ''Shorty'' Brewer, vice president of the Oglala Sioux Tribe; Michael Jandreau, chairman of the Lower Brule Sioux Tribe, Rodney Bordeaux, president of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe; Robert Moore, councilman of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe; and Joseph Brings Plenty, chairman of the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe, endorsed Barack Obama.  The leaders will serve on Obama's Tribal Leaders Steering Committee.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama in Pennsylvania seems to think that economic uncertainty is what turns people into gun-toting, Jesus loving immigrant hating anti-trade weirdos.  Here's what Obama said:

You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them...And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Glenn Reynolds posts the following video which suggests that Barack Obama is not exactly an American original.

Pelosi's Disgraceful Deed

Don't take my word for it.  See the Washington Post:

THE YEAR 2008 may enter history as the time when the Democratic Party lost its way on trade. Already, the party's presidential candidates have engaged in an unseemly contest to adopt the most protectionist posture, suggesting that, if elected, they might pull out of the North American Free Trade Agreement. Yesterday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared her intention to change the procedural rules governing the proposed trade promotion agreement with Colombia. President Bush submitted the pact to Congress on Tuesday for a vote within the next 90 legislative days, as required by the "fast-track" authority under which the U.S. negotiated the deal with Colombia. Ms. Pelosi says she'll ask the House to undo that rule.

In other words, Pelosi changed the rules in the middle of our negotiations with Columbia, thus slapping a loyal and valuable ally right across the face.  And all this, to defeat a treaty that is obviously in the interests of the U.S.

Economically, it should be a no-brainer -- especially at a time of rising U.S. joblessness. At the moment, Colombian exports to the United States already enjoy preferences. The trade agreement would make those permanent, but it would also give U.S. firms free access to Colombia for the first time, thus creating U.S. jobs. Politically, too, the agreement is in the American interest, as a reward to a friendly, democratic government that has made tremendous strides on human rights, despite harassment from Venezuela's Hugo Chávez.

Why has Speaker Pelosi done this?  The San Francisco Chronicle has the answer:

Recession's in the air, American exports are enticingly cheap, and Washington could badly use a solid ally in Latin America.

These are all good reasons to support a free-trade pact with Colombia, which the White House has negotiated and brought to Congress.

But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is playing politics by pandering to free-trade foes. Instead of accepting the usual fast-track process of voting up or down on the treaty within 90 days, she plans to rip up these rules and sidetrack the matter.

It's not hard to guess why. She's clearing the field of a painful Democratic dilemma: backing wider trade that unions fear will threaten their jobs. Remember the contorted debate on the eve of the Ohio primary between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton over who was more hard-line in opposing the NAFTA trade treaty with Mexico?

Insulting a vital ally and defeating a treaty that would strengthen the U.S. economy and create jobs is price the Democrats are willing to pay for victory in November.  Good thing the outside world is merely an illusion created by campaign advertising.  Otherwise, we might have cause to worry. 

 

A Bored Press Is A Careless Press

Ed Morrissey spots this story over at the NYT about John McCain's foreign policy advisers.  The Times fulminates over a supposed battle for McCain's soul between competing camps comprised of realists on one side and neo-conservatives on the other.  I don't know about the merits of this story, but this observation from Morrissey caught my eye:

Life on the road covering a confirmed presidential nominee apparently bores reporters to tears. Instead of covering news, they literally make up controversy to keep themselves from falling asleep.

Folks should not dismiss Morrissey's claim out of hand.  In his book Ambling Into History, former NYT reporter Frank Bruni, who covered George Bush for the Times in the 2000 election, supports this notion that campaign reporters get bored by the road.  Bruni suggests that one reason why "Bush commits another malaprop" stories were so prevalent is that the press became so bored covering essentially the same speech every day that the only real "news" was when Bush fumbled a word.  Also, the reporters on the press bus would often talk to each other about the state of the campaign and then quote each other as "sources close to the campaign." 

We should be skeptical about press coverage of our presidential candidates. 

Obama and Farrakhan

More Farrakhan problems for Barack Obama.  Jake Tapper is unimpressed.  More thoughts from Ed Morrissey, who writes:  "Someone at the Barack Obama campaign had better start watching the hyperbole meter when Obama gets off script."

Dems Planning $40M Hit on McCain

Ben Smith at the Politico:

Wealthy Democrats are preparing a four-month, $40 million media campaign centered on attacks on Senator John McCain. And it will be led by David Brock, the former investigative reporter who first gained fame in the 1990s as a right-wing, anti-Clinton journalist.

The planned campaign is the product of a shakeup in the top ranks of the struggling independent Democratic groups. Brock, now best known as the ex-conservative founder of the liberal group Media Matters, last month quietly assumed the chairmanship of what's expected to be the main vehicle for independent Democratic attacks on McCain, now called Progressive Media USA.

...

[A]fter a dinner Tuesday night at the Manhattan apartment of liberal megadonor George Soros, at which Brock and the consultant Paul Begala laid out the group's plans, Brock said his group now has commitments worth $7.5 million – almost twice what the Fund for America is expected to report raising in the first quarter of this year. He said the group would begin running ads before it meets its $40 million goal.

Science and Human Beings

Professor Schaff has been engaged in conversation with our Keloland colleague Bob Schwartz on the question of science and the problem of abortion.  I recommend this conversation to our readers, and especially Jon's original post.  This is good blogging.

I agree with Professor Schaff on all the substantive points regarding the issue, but I am skeptical of his critique of "scientism."  This seems to me to be an attempt to draw prophylactic boundaries around "science," lest the guys in lab coats should get into the library or the chapel and ruin the carpet.  But the fact that Jon has no hesitation to call upon science to support his arguments on abortion suggests that the boundaries are not always so useful.

The word "science" means a lot of things.  Most specifically it means the modern method of forming a hypothesis and testing it by experiments.  This might be the most spectacularly successful method in the long history of methods.  But it is not often of much direct use in practical questions. More generally, science means any thinking that discovers general principles in some subject matter and/or proceeds from the same.  I don't think that Jon's reasoning on abortion is any less scientific, or "scientistic," than Al Gore's reasoning (if one can call it that) on global warming. 

I take Aristotle as my guide here (after all, he is in good with the Church).  It is useful to distinguish the questions that are appropriate to each science (how fast it moves is physics), and it is useful to distinguish practical questions, which turn on changing circumstances, from theoretical questions, which aim at more permanent truths. 

A Response To A Response

Bob Schwartz responds to my post of yesterday:

Maybe you missed the sarcasm of my post. While I believe that determining when life begins could end the debate, the science that would go into making that determination would never be accepted by many. To these folks science never trumps their belief system no matter what the evidence to the contrary might be.

See Bob's original post here.

I get Bob's point.  As I just emailed Bob, a plague on fundamentalists of all stripes; those who won't question their religious beliefs and those who won't question science.  Scientism is also a fundamentalism. 

There are many things science can teach me.  Who I am is not one of them.  See the Walker Percy video I posted a couple days ago.  If I had to choose between the scientists on one side against the theologians and poets on the other, I'd choose the theologians and poets.  Luckily I don't need to make such a choice. 

Set Them Free

The Associate School Boards of South Dakota object to charter schools.  As the post title suggests, charter schools are relatively free from "public oversight" and "public accountability."  But this is precisely the point.  What the ASBSD means by "public" is government.  What is means by "oversight" and "accountability" is bureaucracy.  Their objection is really that charter schools free educators from the government bureaucracy. 

See this story (ht Julie Ponzi) about a public schools attempt to become a charter school.  By all means watch the Drew Carey video attached and follow the links.  You will get a picture of American education which the desire of some to increase their power and protect incompetence comes at the expense of children and educators who truly care about them. Here is what the post's author writes:

Charter schools are public schools liberated from the stifling bureaucracy of the school district and the innovation-killing influence of the teachers' unions. Charter schools aren't perfect -- union partisans will be quick to cite stories like this and this -- but they offer far more opportunities for academic success in poor, crime-ridden and low-achieving areas than the standard model.

See yesterday's post for other thoughts on education.  But watch the Carey video and listen to the union rep with the goatee.  Here is a guy who just hates anything that questions the authority of education establishment.  He's the problem with American education, not the lack of funding.

If you want to see a problem with a public school, go here to see how the state of Minnesota is funding a pervasively Muslim school. 
 

Presidential Politics

Badlands Blue's very own Virginia Lowell makes a lame attack on John McCain.  Lowell, as usual, is simply repeating the talking points from this DNC overlords.  I'll post the video below, but Lowell is trying to claim, implausibly, that John McCain doesn't know the difference between Shiites and Sunnis.  Watch the video.  It seems to be clear that McCain is simply making the point that Al Qaeda is still a force in Iraq, not an obscure minor sect.  McCain is not trying to tie Al Qaeda to the Sunnis or Shiites, but is arguing that Al Qaeda is a bigger threat than a minority faction of any religious sect.  The real criticism Lowell could make is that the surge was supposed to take care of this problem.  If  the surge is still necessary to quell threats in Iraq then it isn't really a surge, is it?  It is just a troop increase.  But Lowell doesn't know what to say about that because the DNC has yet to tell him what to think.

One thing you can say about John McCain is that he knows our friends from our enemies.  You can't necessarily say that about Barack Obama. Obama thinks we should be talking to Iran without conditions.  Now the Bush administration has short shrifted diplomacy in its tenure, but Obama talks the good of diplomacy to an extreme.    What exactly does he think he can say to the Iranian regime that will stop it from pursuing nuclear weapons and supporting international terrorism?  Here is a bit of a truism: people who think they have time to not negotiate.  Until Iran faces a credible threat of force, either military or serious sanctions, it will not negotiate away its violent tendencies. 

Finally, there has been some talk on this blog and elsewhere regarding Condi Rice as a VP candidate with McCain.  Jay Cost argues that Condi is a sure loser for McCain due to her close ties to the Bush administration.  Discuss among yourselves.

Update: John Hinderaker on the McCain story. 

Argus Leader Quote of the Decade

Argus Leader:

A journalism professor at South Dakota State University said the issue is all about appearances.

"I think Larry Long is totally honest," said Jack Getz. "In my own mind, I'm sure he could write an honest and fair explanation. But I think what the situation presents is the appearance of a conflict. It's the sort of situation that, if it happened in a newsroom, the editor would put a different reporter on the story simply to avoid that appearance of conflict of interest."

You know, like the Argus Leader did with Dave Kranz during the 2004 campaign when bloggers disclosed his close ties to Tom Daschle and the Democratic Party.  Oh, wait . . .

Dem Official Says SD Will Play Part in Final Primaries

Rapid City Journal excerpt:

Even though NBC News has apparently forgotten about the June 3 primary in South Dakota, the state's Democratic Party's executive director isn't worried that the candidates will.

Last Saturday, "NBC Nightly News" aired a story by correspondent Lee Cowan about how Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are campaigning diligently in Montana. Cowan said Montana is holding the last primary in the nation, on June 3.

Cowan and NBC apparently forgot that South Dakota also has its primary on June 3.

If the presidential race isn't settled among the two Democratic candidates by the Pennsylvania primary on April 22 or by the spate of primaries in May, South Dakota -- and Montana -- could play a role.

South Dakota Democratic Party executive director Rick Hauffe expects that both Obama and Clinton will make campaign appearances in South Dakota before the June 3 primary.

"The events up in Montana and North Dakota were just tremendous for party building and raising money," Hauffe said Tuesday. "We don't want to be the one state that didn't get helped by these campaigns. I don't imagine that's going to happen."

Hauffe noted that Tom Daschle is working for Obama, and George McGovern is supporting Clinton. "They're the two premier Democrats from South Dakota. I can't imagine that their clout would be so ineffective that they wouldn't bring them (Clinton and Obama) to South Dakota," Hauffe said.

Right now, Clinton and Obama are tightly focused on winning Pennsylvania, especially Clinton, Hauffe said.

"If Pennsylvania holds for Hillary, this thing's going to run all the way to the convention," he said. "If Obama wins Pennsylvania, the math is a problem for Hillary."

Hamas in Iraq: Iran funds al-Qaeda

Jules Crittenden:  "Hamas Iraq accuses al-Qaeda in Iraq of ties to Iran, and gets specific."  More by Ed Morrissey.

North Dakota Oil

Businessweek:  "A long-awaited federal report on oil that could be recovered in parts of North Dakota, Montana and two Canadian provinces is to be released this week. The Bakken shale formation encompasses some 25,000 square miles in North Dakota, Montana, Saskatchewan and Manitoba. About two-thirds of the acreage is in western North Dakota, where the oil is trapped in a thin layer of dense rock nearly two miles beneath the surface."

Zombie Survival

In keeping with the spirit of SDP's Zombie Watch, I feel obligated to pass this along from SayUncle:

[F]irearms, other than double barrel shotguns at close range, are generally not effective against zombies. But, if you’re engaging zombies at close range, a chain saw is a much better weapon assuming you can somehow get into a position where the zombies are channeled in to you one at a time. A decapitated zombie is a friendly zombie.

An issue is that weapons that are effective against zombies tend to be heavily regulated. For instance, a zombie trap could work if you had some bait and an explosive. Getting your hand on the bait (tasty brains) is probably easier than getting your hands on a lawful explosive. After all, you could simply place the tasty brains with a trigger on them and the zombies, drawn by the brains, will blow themselves up.

Also, he observes, rather importantly, that the experts seem to agree: setting a zombie on fire is not a good idea  (via Glenn Reynolds).

A Way To End The Abortion Debate Instantly: A Response

Bob Schwartz has an intriguing suggestion that he thinks will solve the abortion debate:

Personally, I think we as a country could end the abortion debate with one determination....Why can't the same science that can cure diseases that only a generation ago used to kill us, be used to scientifically determine when life begins using similar milestones that are used for removing life support?

Once science does that we can finally put the abortion debate to bed.

I will leave aside the notion that we should leave it to the scientists to determine what it means to be human (so much for the humanities) and consider this conundrum on Mr. Schwartz's own grounds. 

Doctors use cessation of brain activity (i.e., brain death) to determine the end of life.  But that is not applicable in the case of the unborn.  Brain activity starts at about day 40, but even before that we can make a distinction between a dead human whose brain has stopped for good and an embryo that, left to its natural growth, will at some point gain brain activity.  Scientists already have a good answer as to when human life begins: conception, or soon after.  There is no doubt that what happens at conception creates a unique life.  It has its own unique genetic code and left to itself will grow into a person just like you and me.  In various online debates with defenders of abortion rights, I have asked what genus and species an embryo is.  If it is life, and it is, it can be categorized scientifically.  I have yet to see the argument that it is not homo sapiens.  If it is otherwise, please let me know.  As Robert George and Patrick Lee put it:

Human embryos are not mere clumps of cells, but are living, distinct human organisms, the same as you and I were at earlier stages of our lives. With the fusion of sperm and ovum, or with the coming to be of a distinct and complete (though immature) human organism either by (identical) twinning or by cloning, there is present a distinct organism which will (unless prevented) actively develop himself or herself to a more mature stage as a member of the human species. This new organism directs its own growth, coordinating from within all of its elements and forces toward his or her own survival and maturation.

Here is a counter-argument, but one that hardly helps those who wish to define away the humanity of the embryo.

The fact that the unborn are so obviously biologically human helps explain why so many philosophical defenders of abortion, such as Peter Singer, turn not to humanity but to "personhood," usually defined as having consciousness, as the characteristic that confers rights.  This line of argument was bought by John Kerry in the 2004 election.  Indeed, feminist author Naomi Wolf once conceded the humanity of the unborn, urging the fellow pro-choice feminists to come up with arguments as to why killing unborn humans is acceptable.   Wolf writes, "Sometimes the mother must be able to decide that the fetus, in its full humanity, must die" (my emphasis).

The best way to come to a resolution to the abortion debate, to the extent such a resolution is possible, is to overturn Roe v. Wade.  This would represent the rejection of the notion that unelected judges should set the abortion code for the nation without any direction from the Constitution or the traditions of the common law. Each state can come to its own resolution of the issue and therein respecting the diversity of opinion on the subject.

Sibby Lovin'

Despite the haranguing of Sibby by Pat Powers, Sibby is onto something in his post on education.  I don't endorse all Sibby's suggestions (such as eliminating the state education board) but education is needlessly bureaucratized and regulated.  I have previously advocated here requiring teachers to earn a four year degree in a subject field and only then taking one year in education classes. Also, alternative certification would allow those who have life experience but no education degree to teach in our schools. 

Schools spend an inordinate amount of money simply to comply with federal regulations.  If we eliminated those regulation we could take that extra money and give it to teachers.  I believe education is a national priority and requires some federal policy, but by and large I'd prefer federal education money given to states as block grants with relatively no strings attached. 

Washington Post Backs Up Blanchard on Democrats

Only a few hours after I posted my piece on the mendacity of the Democratic candidates on trade, the Washington Post does the same.  Coincidence?  We report, you decide. 

YET ANOTHER Democratic adviser is in trouble for having more common sense that his candidate -- or at least, more than his candidate has the courage to admit having. ...

This is a particular danger in the case of Colombia, since the arguments against the pact are so flimsy. Colombian exports already have access to the U.S. market, so this agreement would help U.S. exporters without harming domestic industry; and Colombia, with backing from both the Clinton and Bush administrations, has demonstrated remarkable success in quelling civil conflict and restoring order and human rights. Both Democratic candidates rest their opposition on supposed concern about assassination of trade unionists in Colombia, although such violence has fallen so much that the crime rate for them now is lower -- as we've pointed out in past editorials -- than for the population at large. Mr. Obama committed a particularly egregious libel last week when he said, referring to Colombian President Álvaro Uribe, who has taken on the violent left and the violent right at considerable risk to himself, "You've got a government that is under a cloud of potentially having supported violence against unions, against labor, against opposition."

Does Mr. Obama really believe that? Does Ms. Clinton really believe a newly elected president should adhere to a year-old timetable for troop withdrawal, regardless of circumstances? Are they each unaware of the real statistics on NAFTA's effects? Voters are left to wonder, and to ponder which would be worse: that the candidates are sincere and misguided or are insincere and lacking the courage to speak honestly.

Trade Policy Mischief Among Democrats

The Democrats have no trade policy, or at least none that they are willing to talk about.  We have already seen how Barack Obama openly campaigned against NAFTA while his campaign surrogates quietly assured the Canadians that he didn't really mean it.  Now we discover that  Hillary Clinton's own Karl Rove, Mr. Mark Penn, was hired by the Columbian Government to promote a free-trade deal with the U.S., while Senator Clinton attacked that agreement on the campaign trail. 

This pair of parallel micro-scandals suggests a deep cognitive dissonance in the party.  Cognitive dissonance is what you suffer from when you think you are driving in, say, Springfield Missouri, but are in fact turning a corner in downtown Hong Kong.  My, but there are a lot of Chinese Restaurants and architecture in this Midwestern city!  The Democrats campaign as if it were possible to protect American workers by isolating our economy from the world.  That is where a lot of Democrats want to think their party are driving. But if Senators Clinton and Obama are both shameless liars on such matters, they are not fools.  They know that any substantial moves toward protectionism will hurt more Americans than those who benefit; otherwise, why send (or allow) your agents contrary to your official positions?  I find this sort of thing rather comforting. 

Unfortunately, there is a real world out there beyond Pennsylvania.  At a time when Hugo Chavez is trying to unite Latin America against the U.S., it might not be such a good idea to insult Columbia, which is a steadfast ally of ours.  Here is John Fund at the Wall Street Journal:

Colombia is a democratic ally of the U.S. in a tough neighborhood. Alvaro Uribe, its president, has been battling a left-wing insurgency that has used kidnapping, murder and drug trafficking in an attempt to overthrow his government. An impressive body of evidence shows the insurgents, known as the FARC, have been encouraged and financed by Venezuela's strongman, Hugo Chavez. Mr. Chavez, who already has allies in charge of Bolivia, Ecuador, and Nicaragua, would love to extend his influence in Latin America.

The trade agreement shouldn't be controversial. Colombia's economy is doing well, with growth rates of some 6% a year, and more than 90% of its exports to the U.S. already are duty-free under previous agreements. The new proposed trade pact would strip dozens of high tariffs Colombia erects to restrict the flow of U.S. goods and services in.

American unions demanded that the agreement incorporate labor and environmental standards. They got their wish, but that wasn't enough for some unions, which leaned on Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to make opposition to the agreement a theme of their presidential campaigns.

That last part is the kicker.  What is at issue is not any substantive policy, but whose view of the world will the two Democratic candidates be loyal to.  The unions don't really care about their brethren in Columbia, or the global environment; they want to know that their domestic concerns will trump any other issue. 

If Senator Obama were really interested in a new kind of politics, this would be a good opportunity to speak truth to union power.  He might say what he obviously knows: it won't do benefit either our own workers of their Columbian counterparts to keep the last few restrictions on trade between our nations.  He might point out that, as President, he would have to be concerned about supporting our allies and defeating murderous and tyrannical insurgencies in our hemisphere.  I think that such responsible words would in fact do more for his eventual election than anything else he could do right now. 

Senator Clinton cannot take such responsible positions.  No one has had reason to believe anything she says since the 1970's.  But of course, neither can Senator Obama.  His party won't let him.  It is not ready to let go of a fanciful view of the world. 

We're Not Worthy ...

This is the future of paintball!

 

Walker Percy At Notre Dame

I found this the other day at You Tube.  You can skip to 3:45 to actually hear Walker Percy speak.

It's The Family, Stupid

Back from Chicago tanned, rested, and ready (well, none of the three actually), I direct the fearless reader to two stories from Rod Dreher.  Last week Dreher commented on a story of third graders who plotted the death of their teacher.  While reports differ as to how serious the kids were, this seems to have gone beyond juvenile "I hate teacher" games.  Dreher opines:

One must be careful drawing conclusions about The Meaning Of It All without more information, but it's not hard to figure out where kids get these ideas. Violence and permissiveness is everywhere in our popular culture -- and many parents are too lazy and/or stupid to do their jobs. I've said before how undone I would routinely get as a film critic, when I would leave screenings of intensely, graphically violent films, and see parents exiting the theater with very small children in tow. (snip)

The culture is so degraded, and so all-enveloping, that it's easier to minimize the threat -- especially if you don't have the resources, financial or otherwise, to get your kid out of a school that has a destructive peer culture. Remember Caitlin Flanagan's line? "The 'it takes a village' philosophy is a joke, because the village is now so polluted and so desolate of commonly held, child-appropriate moral values that my job as a mother is not to rely on the village but to protect my children from it."

This brings to mind a conversation I had with an acquaintance a couple years ago.  This fellow has five kids and he expressed his frustration over raising these kids in a culture that undermines his values at every turn.  As he put it, he can control his own house, but he can't control all the other houses in the neighborhood or those of his kids' friends.  We live in a culture which bombards children with all sorts of violent, sexual, and generally vulgar messages.  This is a kid hostile environment. As David Tubbs argues in this book, contemporary liberalism, with its emphasis maximizing the liberty of the  autonomous individual absent the consequences of such an effort has created a culture antagonistic to childhood and children. 

Dreher comments on a second story pointing out, again, that family structure is more correlated with persistent poverty than any other variable including, remarkably, income.  In other words, a child from a poor but intact family is low risk for continuing in poverty. Nothing explains persistent poverty like family breakdown.  Thus the only way to break that chain of poverty is to combat the still sky-high illegitimacy rate among the poor generally and blacks and Hispanics specifically.  As Kay Hymowitz argues, the really caste structure is not built on economics but on marriage, which then is represented in economic success.

For the umpteenth time, spending on education means little when compared to other variables.  While we in this state should increase our spending on education, let us not be fooled that increase in teacher pay can make up for two parents who care.   

Obama Surrogate: McCain a “warmonger”

On Friday at an event in North Dakota, liberal talk radio host Ed Schultz was introducing Barack Obama to the gathered crowd and called John McCain a "warmonger," after which Obama thanked him for his speech.  Obama has now said he will not repudiate Schultz's remarks.  Compare that with John McCain's reaction to the introduction given by Bill Cunningham in Ohio, where Cunningham thought it appropriate to repeatedly use Obama's middle name.  McCain apologized for Cunningham's slur, repudiated the comments, and promised to take the high-road in the campaign.  And that was just for using Obama's actual middle name. 

Is this the "new politics" we can expect from Obama?  Obama lets his surrogates do the name calling, while he takes the stage and speaks highly of setting a new tone in politics and raising political discourse.  Obama has positioned himself as the candidate of change.  So far, we've seen the same hysterical anti-war rhetoric coming from his events.  Rather than just talking about changing the discourse, Obama should follow through and actually work to change it.

Finally, how will Obama supporter Stephanie Herseth-Sandlin react?  Will she criticize the comment made by those associated with her candidate, or stand by Obama and support it?

The Health Risk of Blogging?

I had no idea what I was getting in to:

A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs, armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling under great physical and emotional stress created by the around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of news and comment.

...

Two weeks ago in North Lauderdale, Fla., funeral services were held for Russell Shaw, a prolific blogger on technology subjects who died at 60 of a heart attack. In December, another tech blogger, Marc Orchant, died at 50 of a massive coronary. A third, Om Malik, 41, survived a heart attack in December.

Other bloggers complain of weight loss or gain, sleep disorders, exhaustion and other maladies born of the nonstop strain of producing for a news and information cycle that is as always-on as the Internet.

To be sure, there is no official diagnosis of death by blogging, and the premature demise of two people obviously does not qualify as an epidemic. There is also no certainty that the stress of the work contributed to their deaths.

Cannot be proven, but that doesn't stop the New York Times from rolling on as if the story has a firm foundation in fact.  No doubt blogging can sometimes take its toll, but I would bet that a majority of our readers -- and a majority of South Dakotans -- have at one time in their life dug ditches for a living or worked on a farm or owned a business.  Pounding a keyboard is a cakewalk compared to those tasks.  Perhaps those bloggers who are paid for their posts have a higher degree of stress because they must keep information flowing 24/7.  Frankly, I find blogging to be therapeutic. (via Memorandum)

HEH:  "I guess it’s all individual but for God’s sake if it’s killing you go work for the Ny Times, seems to be a cakewalk over there." Indeed.

UPDATE:  More thoughts from Ed Morrissey.

ANOTHER UPDATE:  Thanks for the link, Todd.  And don't worry about that ill feeling you get when reading SDP.  Just keep reading and the side effects of common sense will wear off soon enough (I kid because I care).  Besides, Sibby must make blood shoot out your eyes, so, really, I think you're in good care with us.

Bookstore Blogging

Prof. Blanchard remarked earlier this week about the demise of independent record stores and bookstores.  When I was out in L.A., I visited a used book store and chatted with the owner about how independent bookstores are becoming a dying breed in the face of online shopping and large retailers.  We could bemoan the impact that large retailers have on small businesses, such as Starbucks supposedly driving out independent coffee houses (that's certainly not the case around Lincoln, Nebraska!), but there's no denying that the retailers have offered a world of books, music, and movies to communities that once before may not have had access to such material.  There are a couple great used bookstores here in Lincoln.  If you're ever in town, I encourage you to checkout Bluestem Books on O Street and A Novel Idea on 14th.  Both have fantastic selections to browse through.  At any rate, today's Washington Post looks at the bookstore business in a story entitled "The Changing Bookstore Battle."