South Dakota Politics

Iron Man

I ran into Schaff & Co. coming out of Iron man.  He was disappointed.  I thought it was just about perfect.  Not as good as Spider Man, but only because Spider Man was probably the best comic book ever produced.  Iron Man was not that, but it was a very good basic superhero. 

The movie is very faithful to the comic, weaving in a lot basic elements that made it very readable.  In the comic, Tony Stark, millionaire industrialist, is injured in a racing accident.  He designs a chest plate to repair his own heart, and then keeps adding options.  Voila!  Iron Man.  The original iron suit was large, yellow and bulky;  eventually the artists produced a much cooler, slimed down version.  All that is in the movie, though the original story is changed a lot. 

I was worried about rumors that the movies politics turns leftist in the second half.  Not so.  There are some pieties about the weapons industry, but the U.S. military is still the good guys, terrorists and criminals are the bad guys, and homeland security turns out to be alright.  The character of Tony Stark is presented as someone who has a near death experience, and becomes a much better person.  Much faster too, and he can fly. 

If you like this sort of thing, you won't see much better. 

Science, Part II

I have no significant disagreement with Ken Blanchard's post below on Frankenstein and Ben Stein (no relation).  I only wish to add that most modern proponents of science, or more specifically those who advocate an ideology I call scientism, do not share Ken's nuanced/catholic (small c) view of science.  It has been some decades, if not centuries, since Philosophy and Natural Philosophy (i.e., natural science) were considered partners as opposed to rivals.  If that is changing within biology, then so much the better. 

Most advocates of scientism, though, are fierce proponents of what is termed "the fact/value distinction." Facts are things that can be quantified, measured and tested.  Values are everything else.  The only real knowledge, argue those who advocate this distinction, is the former rather than the latter.  Thus "values" exist merely in the realm of opinion and one can say nothing authoritative about them.   The real authority, then, is facts, and they are derived from science. I might suggest this is the default position of most moderns.  This is also the theory, unstated and probably just assumed, underlying Cory's post on Stein (Ben, not Franken).  Those not equipped with facts, those who are not experts, should defer to those who are.  The error here is that while I might defer to the physicist on the nature of the atom's nucleus, there is no reason why I should defer to him as to what use to put that knowledge. 

To use a more homey illustration than the literary examples I used yesterday, consider Jurassic Park, either the film or the book (which I suppose is literature, if not very good literature).  The movie plays up the notion that simply because we can make dinosaurs doesn't mean that we should. But trapped in an ideology of science and corporate greed, the John Hammond character doesn't bother asking the "should" question.  To him can and should are the same.  The book version concentrates a bit more on the fact that Hammond had assembled a team of experts, but all of them were experts in only one thing.  They had a lot of knowledge, but none of them were very wise.  The practical problem this presented is that once something went wrong and the computer programmer turned up traitor, no one else had the knowledge to run the computerized security system.  On a more theoretical level, this is why we try to give our students a liberal education.  We don't just give them knowledge.  We try to teach them to use that knowledge well.

I will concede this: Ben Stein's phraseology was crude and unhelpful.  But to question the limits of natural science is not denounce natural science; it is to say, as Prof. Blanchard suggests, that there is a master science that we call ethics that stands above what we call natural science. 

Conservatives Victorious! In Britain.

American conservatives will have to be content, this year at least, with victories abroad.  Still, it's hard not to chuckle about events in the Mother Country.  For the first time in forty years, a Tory has been elected Mayor of London.  Red Ken (no relation to yours truly) has been swept out of office in a landslide.  The picture above indicates great cause for concern.  This might be the most disastrous haircut in the history of the English speaking democracies. Here is the London Telegraph:

The Conservative candidate's win over Ken Livingstone followed a calamitous   showing for Labour at the local elections - the party's worst performance at   the polls for 40 years.

Mr Johnson's landmark victory, a result that would have been almost   unthinkable six months ago, was the most symbolic blow to Mr Brown's   authority on a day that left the Prime Minister facing the gravest crisis of   his leadership.

By taking City Hall, Mr Johnson becomes the first Tory politician to hold a   senior role in British politics since the party was swept out of power in   1997. His win provided a significant boost to David Cameron's bid for   victory at the next general election.

Democratic Socialist Ken Livingstone (with all the emphasis going on the second qualifier), has been humiliated.  Londoners want to be safe on their ancient streets.  Red Ken promised them he was getting tough on crime, but who could believe him when no one ever saw the extra bobbies and besides, Ken himself didn't believe it.  Socialists don't believe in curring crime by arresting criminals.  They believe in curring crime by preschool programs and union contracts.  But there is only so much socialism that can be accomplished by a mayor. 

Besides, the English may want sensible moderates in Parliament, but they want flamboyant clowns for their mayors.  And sometimes even clowns won't do.  In 2002, H'Angus the Monkey, a football mascot, was elected mayor of Hartlepool. Apparently, Boris Johnson, the new London Mayor, was at least this entertaining.   And the monkey has a better haircut.

But London was just the grand prize.  The Labour Party was crushed in local elections all over England.  The English government is a two party system with three parties.  In addition to the Conservative or Tory Party, and the Labour Party, there is the Liberal Democrats.  Apparently, in British English, "liberal democrat" means "none of the above."  In yesterday's local elections, the ruling Labour Party came in third, with the Conservatives scoring a major victory and the Liberal Democrats winning a distant second. 

But it isn't clear whether this was a vote so much for the Conservatives as against Labour.  From the Guardian:

Another worrying trend for Labour is that voters seem happy to side with whichever party looks best placed to beat it — indicating tactical voting of the type that cost the Tories so dear in 1997. In northern constituencies such as Newcastle East and Derby North, where the Liberal Democrats are running second, our analysis shows voters have rallied to them. By contrast, in southern seats, where the Conservatives are stronger, such as Plymouth Moor View and Southampton Itchen, the Liberal Democrats have been squeezed as voters have rallied to the Conservatives. Before this week's elections some within Labour were warning about southern discomfort. But in the event, the discomfort has arrived in the north and the south alike.

In other words, the Conservatives came in first because they were "not Labour" in more places than the Liberal Democrats were "not Labour."  This is very bad news for PM Gordon Brown, who has elections in 2010 to look forward to.

In America, the Republican Party is in the same position as Labour.  The Republican base is very depressed.  President Bush is deeply unpopular, but so is Congress which, I note, is controlled by the Democrats.  In the U.S., "Democrat" has come to mean "none of the above."  That is not the same thing as being loved. 

Frankenstein and Ben Stein

I think that Jon Schaff is right to point out that Cory Heidelberger's critique of Ben Stein is based on a single sentence, or maybe a sentence fragment, and therefore looks a lot like the kind of "sound bite gotcha" that Cory complained about in connection with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright.  I think Cory is nonetheless right that the sentence in question looks very embarrassing, and it was perfectly fair to point that out. I note moreover that Cory begins by noting evidence that Stein is otherwise a reasonable fellow. 

Here is the offending passage:

…Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

I was not able to get the video to play, but apparently the interview is at this site.  The words above are taken from the National Review blog, The Corner. 

I like to think of myself as a man of science.  I am, as any regular reader will know, a confirmed Darwinist.  The central focus of my scholarship and scholarly thinking (such as it is) has always been the intersection of science and philosophy with religion and politics.  The sentence above clearly looks to be anti-science.  It makes it look as though science is inevitably evil in its trajectory. Whether or not that is Ben Stein's real view, the rhetorical effect is obviously disastrous.

Jon's post is devoted to serious literary critiques of the scientific view of the world.  Jon is no Luddite. I take his point to be that science alone, divorced some kind of spiritual or otherwise moral inspiration that science cannot provide, does in fact pose serious moral perils for modern civilization.

I concur in part and dissent in part.  Our notion of science begins with Aristotle, who divided philosophy into a number of distinct fields, each limiting itself to a specific subject matter and beginning with certain assumptions.   The biologist, for example, begins by assuming that living things exist, without trying to prove that.  But all sciences are essentially part of philosophy, which begins with the distinction between opinion and knowledge, and proceeds to try to close that gap by reasoning from the available evidence.  What modern science adds to this is a special method: forming a hypothesis based on the evidence, and then gathering more evidence to test the hypothesis.  It aims at the development of general theories that predict and perhaps explain how the world works. 

Where is the moral peril in this?  Aristotle distinguished between theoretical and moral or practical sciences.  Physics, logic, and mathematics belong to the one; ethics and politics to the other.  Modern science has, until recently, been dominated by physics.  Physicists have been contemptuous of all "lesser sciences," and the lesser scientists have often suffered from physics-envy.  But physics is very far removed from human concerns.  Its purpose is to understand with the greatest precision truths about about the simplest things. 

There is a real danger when someone tries to understand human beings or even animals solely by the principles of physics.  Such a view is blind to a large part of the reality of human and non-human biology.  It cannot distinguish between pain and pleasure, life and death, or a fish made of molecules from the molecular sea in which it swims.  The physicist, and biologists determined to imitate them, frequently forget what Aristotle knew: that their sciences could capture only a part of reality.  But this is a problem mostly for scientists, and it is largely self-correcting.  Today biology is slowly breaking free from the dominion of physics.  The biologists are recognizing that their science has more principles than physics, principles that cannot be reduced to the principles of physics.  Biology is a more comprehensive science that physics, just as ethics is a more comprehensive science than biology.

The severe moral errors that Professor Schaff's examples point to (eugenics, genocide, etc.) have nothing to do with the limitations of science.  They are the results of the scientific method, scientific ideas, and technology, directed by pernicious political ideas.  Hitler did not become Hitler because he encountered or studied genetics. He seized on genetics (which he altogether misunderstood) because he sought to use it to support his wicked agenda.

I do not believe that the truth about the world, in so far as it can be discovered by a honest attempt to replace opinions and perspectives with knowledge, can ever be the cause of evil.  The evil, when it appears, is always imported into the project. But it may be that science and philosophy require something beyond them to keep the evil at bay.  Perhaps we need something like faith in divine law.  But that is a question that has been alive since the Medieval Averroists took issue with Biblical Revelation.  I will not attempt to resolve that one. 

Obama's Fall in the Polls

John Hood:

Obama's Collapse In Carolina   

Two more polls of North Carolina primary voters came out late Wednesday. The effects of the Wright disaster, the Clinton endorsement by Gov. Mike Easley, and effective messaging by the Clinton campaign in rural and small-town NC are clearly evident:

An Insider Advantage poll for Southern Political Report has it at Clinton 44-Obama 42.*

A Mason-Dixon poll for WRAL-TV in Raleigh has it at Obama 49-Clinton 42.

A new Indiana poll is showing Clinton with a big lead over Obama.  Also, see this Denver Post editorial entitled "The company Obama keeps."

UPDATE:  Michael Barone:  "Is the bottom falling out for Barack Obama? It's too early to say that, but there are some disturbing signs."

To The Gas Chamber With The Intellectuals

Cory H., fresh from castigating friend Blanchard for taking Rev. Wright out of context (an argument, btw, now rendered moot), now feels free to write a long post bashing Ben Stein based on one sentence Mr. Stein uttered the other day, namely, "Science leads you to killing people."  You can find at least part of the transcript at Mr. Schwartz's site:

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

Cory concedes the he admires much of Mr. Stein's economics commentary.  So Cory knows Stein is not a dumb man.  So why not give him the benefit of the doubt?  What could one possibly mean by the statement "science leads you to killing people"?  Mr. Stein is aware of the great benefit science has been to the modern age, so he presumably is not a Luddite. Yet Cory uses this and one other story to do what Progressives have been doing at least since Richard Hofstadter, labeling their opponents as dumb, unenlightened anti-intellectuals.   

A more charitable and reasonable interpretation of what Mr. Stein was saying is that science, absent moral strictures, cannot give us moral guidance and will lead to beastly actions.  This is one theme, for example, of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.  But then again, she wasn't a scientist so perhaps she was just another anti-intellectual.  C.S. Lewis held faculty positions at both Oxford and Cambridge, but he wasn't a scientist so perhaps we can dismiss him as an anti-intellectual when he wrote:

One of the questions before [the scientist freed from morality] is whether this feeling for posterity (they know well how it is produced) shall be continued or not. However far they go back, or down, they can find no ground to stand on. Every motive they try to act on becomes at once petitio. It is not that they are bad men. They are not men at all. Stepping outside [morality], they have stepped into the void. Nor are their subjects necessarily unhappy men. They are not men at all: they are artefacts. Man's final conquest has proved to be the abolition of Man.

Abraham Lincoln suggested something similar in his Second Lecture on Discoveries and Invention when he noted that one modern "invention" was slavery, the use of one set of human beings to lighten the load another set of human beings.  Even in the midst of a paean to technology Lincoln warned us that technology should be limited by natural right.  We shouldn't see other human beings as things to be used, but as humans with rights.  But then again Lincoln never even went to high school, so he was probably just an anti-intellectual putting restraints on the god Progress. 

Flannery O'Connor was a lowly author, so we perhaps can dismiss her anti-intellectualism when she wrote:

If other ages felt less they saw more, even though they saw with the blind, prophetical, unsentimental eye of acceptance, which is to say, of faith. In the absence of this faith now, we govern by tenderness.... [But when] tenderness is detached from the source of tenderness, its logical outcome is terror. It ends in forced labor camps and the fumes of the gas chamber.

Not being a trained specialist, she should have shut her mouth and left questions of science to the experts. 

Walker Percy was an expert, being a medical doctor. But he then fell from grace by becoming a mere novelist and philosopher,  so he was probably off his intellectual rocker when he had a character in Thanatos Syndrome echo O'Connor:

Fr. Smith: "My brothers, let me tell you where tenderness leads."
A longer pause.
"To the gas chambers.  On with the jets."

Alister McGrath holds a doctorate in molecular biology, but he is also a theologian so it is possible he is an anti-intellectual.  Notice what he writes:

But what of that greater question: what’s life all about? This, and others like it, Medawar insisted, were “questions that science cannot answer, and that no conceivable advance of science would empower it to answer”. They could not be dismissed as “nonquestions or pseudoquestions such as only simpletons ask and only charlatans profess to be able to answer”. This is not to criticise science, but simply to calibrate its capacities.

McGrath is obviously an dunce.  The proof he is a dunce is that he disagrees with the project to reorient all of modern life based on the amorality of science.  The fool. Ah, the commandment of the Progressive: Thou shalt not propose any limits on science. 

I didn't see the interview with Stein and I haven't seen his movie.   It is possible that he actually holds the views imputed to him by Cory, but I seriously doubt it.  It seems far more likely that that this one quote, taken out of context and perhaps poorly put, is meant to suggest that science, in and of itself, cannot tell us why killing is wrong. 

I am glad that Cory is so open to the government of experts.  Ken Blanchard and I have doctorates in political science.  I assume then that Cory will be deferring to us on all matters political from here on out. 

Finally, perhaps Cory is not familiar with the fact that Gov. Rounds has been out in front to get extra funding and new programs at our universities to create new research that will benefit out economy. Cory apparently has not heard of all the efforts to win funding for our enormous hole out west.

Update: Bob Schwartz helpfully passes along a link from which you can find the entire Stein/TBN video (it's on Monday April 21).  Skip to roughly minute 26 and I think you get the context of the "science leads to killing people" quote.  The context, I believe, lends even more credence to my interpretation.  The comments come after a series of clips from prominent scientists wishing for the end of all religion.  Therefore it seems reasonable to conclude the Stein is referring to science absent a   religious sentiment that Stein, not implausibly, believes necessary for a decent moral code.

Bob argued in his email to me that many conservatives are jumping on Stein.  Perhaps.  But then they are wrong.  The conservative attacks I have seen have largely come from the likes of John Derbyshire, Andrew Studdaford and Glenn Reynolds, people who have little to no use for religion in the first place.  On the other hand, Yuval Levin, whose opinions I respect on these matters, has also denounced Stein while David Klinghoffer gives a limited defense.

Herseth-Sandlin to Run for Governor

Excerpt from yesterday's congressional newsletter, Roll Call:

In South Dakota, Rep. Stephanie Herseth Sandlin (D) is expected to run for the state’s open governorship. Her family has a long political history in the state that includes her grandfather, former Gov. Ralph Herseth, and grandmother, former Secretary of State Lorna Herseth. The Congresswoman’s father, Lars Herseth, was a longtime state legislator who lost his own gubernatorial bid in 1986. Herseth Sandlin could run in part to redress his loss.

Herseth Sandlin already represents the entire state in her at-large district, and would be a formidable gubernatorial candidate. But her seat will be a tough hold for the DCCC. She had the family history in the state and one statewide bid under her belt before winning under unusual circumstances.

She lost her first House race in 2002 to former Gov. Bill Janklow (R), earning 46 percent. But Janklow resigned the seat in January 2004 after killing a motorcyclist in a car crash and being convicted of second-degree manslaughter. Herseth Sandlin won the subsequent June special election with 51 percent over former state Sen. Larry Diedrich (R). She won a full term, 53 percent to 46 percent in a rematch five months later, and cruised to re-election in the previous cycle.

But South Dakota still is a Republican state, and Democrats will struggle to find someone to follow Herseth Sandlin in the House. President Bush carried the state 60 percent to 38 percent in 2004.

Video Of The Day

Kinda sad when the kids are more adult than the adults:

Real Diversity

A University of St. Thomas law student wanted to do an internship at Planned Parenthood.  The University is refusing to give her credit for it.  Read the story here.  The law school dean says:

“Volunteer service at Planned Parenthood, whatever the nature of that service, advances the mission of Planned Parenthood, an organization whose mission is fundamentally at odds with a core value of the Catholic Church,” he said.

The student is shocked:

Borton has calmed down some, she said, “but when I read that email I was really upset.” She understands his point — that allowing her to volunteer for Planned Parenthood makes it look like the school is endorsing its mission. “But I think that’s totally off base,” she said. “I think that much it’s more of an academic detriment to the school than it is protective of Catholic identity.”

And the predictable response from Planned Parenthood:

“St. Thomas appears to be out of step with many of it’s own students and the majority of Minnesotans. This decision illustrates a disturbing and dangerous lack of tolerance on the part of leadership at the school.”

Of course the last thing Planned Parenthood is interested in is tolerance. What they are interested is getting St. Thomas to endorse its promotion of abortion and contraception as positive goods.  The student surely was aware of the Catholic position on abortion and contraception when she came to the school.  St. Thomas is not a public institution. Its goal is to form students in a manner consistent with Catholic teaching.  So if St. Thomas allows a student to intern for credit at an institution that promotes something that, by Catholic teaching, is a great evil, it does so as an act of generosity, not an act of justice. 

This student and Planned Parenthood not only want to promote their own agenda, they are angry when their own opponents refuse to promote that agenda.  This student is seeking to get an education through the beneficence of the Catholic church. It strikes one as the height of ingratitude that she should pout because the Church refuses to recognize her internship.  She wants to take from the Church with no strings attached.  The school does not say she cannot work for Planned Parenthood.  It does not say that she cannot advocate for abortion and contraception.  They are saying she cannot do it on the Church's time and on the Church's dime.   If this is what she wants to do on her internship, she should go to a different school.

Patrick Deneen and Rod Dreher discuss the rise of the monoculture.  Some of their comments are relevant.  Here is Deneen:   

Our schools were once a patchwork of local and particular traditions - regional, religious, pedagogical diversity, as diverse and lovely as a local ecosystem. Now they all race to be identical, deathly afraid that they may not be conforming closely enough to the nearest competitor who harbors exactly the same fears.

And Dreher:

First, the idea that the diversity our official culture pays so much lip service to is a sham diversity; you are allowed to be as diverse as you want, unless you challenge a rather narrow set of ideals that the cultural leaders take as universally true.

As even the student suggests, one goes to law school at St. Thomas precisely because it is different, namely it is Catholic.  She does not then get to pick and choose the way in which it is different.  She and Planned Parenthood wish to brow beat St. Thomas and like institutions into compromising their beliefs.  St. Thomas is happy to tolerate this student's beliefs; it just isn't willing to fund them and recognize them as part of the university's education.  But Planned Parenthood has no tolerance for the difference represented by the University of St. Thomas. 

Time to Start Drilling for Oil

Back when the Clean Cut Kid was still in business, Chad used to make this curious argument: it makes no sense to drill for oil in ANWR because the oil won't be available for at least ten years.  Congressional Democrats are now making the same argument.  I replied to them as I did to Chad: if we had begun ten years ago, we'd have the oil now, wouldn't we?  If we begin now, we'll have the oil in ten years, when we will probably still need it, won't we? 

One of my favorite economists, Robert Samuelson, has this at RealClearPolitics:

It may surprise Americans to discover that the United States is the third-largest oil producer, behind Saudi Arabia and Russia. We could be producing more, but Congress has put large areas of potential supply off-limits. These include the Atlantic and Pacific coasts and parts of Alaska and the Gulf of Mexico. By government estimates, these areas may contain 25-30 billion barrels of oil (against about 30 billion of proven U.S. reserves today) and 80 trillion cubic feet or more of natural gas (compared with about 200 tcf of proven reserves).

What keeps these areas closed are exaggerated environmental fears, strong prejudice against oil companies and sheer stupidity. Americans favor both "energy independence" and cheap fuel. They deplore imports -- who wants to pay foreigners? -- but oppose more production in the United States. Got it?

My colleague, Professor Schaff, raises the prospect of "peak oil," the idea that we are have reached the point that the world oil supply can no longer grow with demand, and that the happy days are behind us.  The argument that we have reached that point is made in a New York Times article:

“According to normal economic theory, and the history of oil, rising prices have two major effects,” said Fatih Birol, the chief economist at the International Energy Agency, which advises industrialized countries. “They reduce demand and they induce oil supplies. Not this time.”

A key reason that supply is not rising to meet demand is that producers outside of the OPEC cartel — countries like Russia, Mexico and Norway — have been showing troubling signs of sluggishness. Unlike the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, whose explicit goal is to regulate supply to keep prices up, the other countries are the free traders of the international market, with every incentive to produce flat-out at a time of high prices.

But for a variety of reasons, like sharply higher drilling costs and nationalistic policies that restrict foreign investments, these countries are finding it difficult, if not impossible, to increase output. They seem stuck at about 50 million barrels of oil a day, or 60 percent of the world’s oil supplies, with few prospects for growth.

I am skeptical.  So far, rising prices haven't forced Americans or countries with "nationalistic policies that restrict foreign investments" to change their behavior.  But the kicker is that the Democrats in Congress are still opposing policies that would increase domestic production.  When oil prices do reach that level, one of two things will happen: the Democrats will suddenly decide that they were in favor of new drilling and more refineries all along, or they will be swept out of Congress. 

I think that the supply of oil, like that of everything else, will keep rising to meet demand.  But there will be short term bottlenecks, like the energy crisis of the seventies.  We can spare ourselves a lot of agony by taking steps now to bring more oil into production in the future. 

For those who are worried about the effect of this on the environment, I say this: only wealthy nations have ever cared about the environment, or, what is the same thing, could afford to protect it. If oil really seems to be running out before we get an alternative energy source, no one is going to give a rat's ass about sea levels and beach front property.

McCain's Wright-Wing Pastor

Kudos to Keloland contributor Bob Schwartz, who brings our attention to the Reverend John Hagee. Hagee, I gather, is the closest thing anyone has found to a Jeremiah Wright standing anywhere near John McCain.  Bob concedes that Hagee is not McCain's pastor; the connection is that the one has backed the other for President.  Bob gives us some juicy quotes, with confusingly arranged quotation marks, linked to a site with little atomic mushrooms superimposed on McCain's head.  I gather from a New York Times interview that Hagee has made some very controversial remarks, but I haven't yet found a list of them I would trust.  No, wait, here is something at Salon. 

Well, based on a quick survey of sound bites, produced mostly by people who are no more fond of McCain and Hagee than the conservative press is of Obama and Wright, I'd say Hagee is pretty much way out there, and McCain would be well-advised to keep his distance from him.  Based on the image to the right, he surely cuts a less attractive figure than Jeremiah Wright.

Hagee is not an unmixed bag.   On the one hand, he represents a position that Jews and liberal Christian theologians have been calling for for a long time.  When I attended an international conference on the Holocaust in Oxford, England, in 1988, the most frequent item on the agenda was a call for Christians to put aside their attempts to convert the Jews.  The so-called "replacement theory" held that God replaced the Old Testament religion with Christianity, and therefore all Jews should come to Christ.  A lot of Jews think that this idea is one of the prime historical drivers of antisemitism, and that Christians should drop the idea if they want to oppose antisemitism.  Well, Hagee has dropped it.  He believes that God intended for the Jews to remain as a distinct people with their ancient religion intact.  That represents a significant bit of progress where one does not usually look for it.  He is also a strong backer of Israel, which is also a good thing, in my view.

On the other hand, this is part of his belief that the apocalypse is coming, and that Hagee knows how it is going to go down.  He thinks he knows what part God intends Israel to play in the final drama.  That strikes me as pretty far outside the mainstream, as they say.  His view that the U.S. and Israel should launch a preemptive strike against Iran can be defended on rational grounds, but the apocalyptic vision altogether discredits this reasoning. 

He seems to believe that Hurricane Katrina was an act of God aimed at punishing New Orleans for its sins.  Now I have the same problem with this sort of thing that I have with the Anti-Christ mythology.  I am in no position to tell conservative Protestants how to interpret Biblical doctrine, but when they start scribbling contemporary people and place names into the text of Revelations, they presume to know the mind of God. That, as I judge it, is inconsistent with the very heart of the Bible's teaching, and it shows that they have left the path of wisdom (if indeed they, or anyone else, was ever on it). 

Now all this is subject to the caution that I have not read any of Hagee's sermons in part or in whole. It may be that Hagee's positions have been distorted by a hostile press, just as Wright claims his were (as he went about confirming what his critics had said).   I gather that McCain has denounced some of Hagee's views, and he ought to be very careful not to be associated with them. 

But one reason that McCain has so far had little trouble on this score is that he has no history of any close association with Hagee.  There is simply no reason to suspect that McCain believes any of the strange things that Hagee believes.  He didn't spend twenty years in his church.  He didn't bring up his children in that church. He didn't mention Hagee in his autobiography. 

Another reason that Hagee is less trouble is that, judging by the New York Times interview, he is capable of embarrassment. When he recognizes that what he is said or said to have said is offensive and alarming to the world outside his church walls, that it may damage political allies like McCain or Joe Lieberman, he knows when to back off and disown himself.  This kind of embarrassment is a political virtue in a religiously diverse republic.  Reverend Wright seems altogether immune to it. 

Argus Libel Suit To Be Decided By Jury

The libel suit filed against the Argus Leader by Dan Scott in November 2007 will be decided by a jury:  "A libel lawsuit involving the Argus Leader and its top editor moved closer to being decided at a trial by jurors, rather than a judge, after a court ruling this week.  Former Sioux Falls Development Foundation president Dan Scott’s case against the newspaper and Randell Beck, its executive editor, is best suited for a jury to decide, Minnehaha County Circuit Court Judge Kathleen Caldwell ruled."

UPDATE:  For the record, the transcript of Scott's remarks can be found here (PDF alert).  The link above (or here) is the archive of Beck's column.

VIDEO:  Scott's lawyer, Bill Janklow, says he's looking forward to the trial.

MORE:  Here's a copy of the motion filed to the court (PDF alert), via SDWC.

YET MORE:  Todd Epp writes:  "My guess is that Gannett won’t be writing a check in this case. Scott is going to have to show actual malice as a public figure, which is really, really tough to prove. Janklow is an excellent lawyer but he isn’t exactly up against patsies on the other side either."  That's a good point.  Also recall that Janklow unsuccessfully sued both Newsweek and author Peter Mattiessen on libel charges.

STILL MORE:  A commenter at SDWC has an opposite take on Epp's argument:  "Republican or Democrat, this case may be death of the Argus unless they settle. the Argus needs to pray the 1st amendment will save them because jury likely will not. If a jury finds malice, any appeals court will be hard pressed to reverse a jury."

LAST UPDATE:  The full Janklow interview has been posted.  Money quote: "They say they’re a serious newspaper.  They’re going to get a chance to prove.  Because some people like me don’t think they are."

Random Thoughts

See Scott Johnson's discussion of Churchill has a young man, taking his bearings from this piece by Larry Arnn from the Claremont Review of Books. 

Rod Dreher has some evidence of the "peak oil" theory.  The high price of oil should be spurring new production, but it isn't.  Does that mean there is no more oil to be had?  In other energy news, Congress seems to be working overtime to keep oil prices high.  This is a question for Democrats: if you are really concerned about high energy prices, why do you oppose drilling in ANWR and off-shore and building more refineries?  What does this tell John Q. Voter?  The Democratic Party cares about high energy prices, but not as much as the environment.  That's defensible, but not necessarily popular right now. 

I've beaten up John McCain for his proposal to wave the federal gas tax for the summer.  Well, here's a McCain proposal I can get behind. 

Republican presidential candidate John McCain wants health insurance companies to compete for your business on the open market.

He would offer families a $5,000 tax credit to help buy insurance policies.

"Millions of Americans would be making their own health care choices again," McCain said in remarks prepared for delivery Tuesday at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute in Tampa. (snip)

Under McCain's plan, anyone could get the credit, and those who like their company health care plan could choose to stay in it. The credit would be available as a rebate to people at lower income levels who have no tax liability, Holtz-Eakin said.

To pay for the tax credit, McCain would eliminate the tax exemption for people whose employers pay a portion of their coverage, raising an estimated $3.6 trillion in revenues, Holtz-Eakin said. Companies that provide coverage to workers still would get tax breaks. McCain would also cut costs by limiting health care lawsuits.

Finally, is a college degree overrated?  This piece argues it is. 

Thune On Farm Bill

Denise Ross has John Thune's reaction to the Farm Bill follies. 

From Ducks Unlimited

    Sodsaver Under Attack:
        South Dakota DU members’ voices needed!

                                                                                                                                                             

Contact Information:

South Dakota                                                    Senator Thune:   866-850-3855     Senator Johnson:   800-537-0025     Representative Herseth-Sandlin:    (866) 371-8747

With the Farm Bill being finalized, conservation is under attack. The assault is now on Sodsaver, a provision that would save taxpayers $120 million dollars and maintain critical duck production habitat.

The proposal being written now would exempt Montana and North Dakota from the provision and pressure is mounting in South Dakota to do the same or eliminate Sodsaver altogether! These developments are unacceptable and would leave millions of acres of native prairie unprotected, unless the governor decides to opt-in.

South Dakota Senator John Thune, Senator Tim Johnson and U.S. Representative Stephanie Herseth Sandlin have been strong supporters of the Sodsaver provision throughout the Farm Bill deliberations. However, they are under intense pressure from many groups to abandon their support for Sodsaver and need to hear from us ASAP!

It is critical that DU members and supporters contact their Senators and Representatives in South Dakota by 5 pm EDT today, Wednesday, April 30, and thank them for their strong support of Sodsaver and ask them to maintain their support and to not allow this exemption to stand.

When calling, please ask for the staffer handling the Farm Bill and share with them that:

• Native prairie is one of the most endangered ecosystems in the world – more than 70% of native prairie has already been lost
     
   
• The exemption or removal of Sodsaver would open up some of the most important land in the waterfowl breeding grounds to destruction – with the support of duck hunters tax dollars
         
        
• This exemption would negate gains from Sodsaver in other Duck Factory states, undermining the value of the entire provision
         
        
• Continued support for Sodsaver is needed and the special exemption allowing Governor’s to “opt in”, needs to be removed.

If emailing, please deliver this message:

 

Native Prairie is one of the most productive areas for waterfowl, and one of the most endangered. More than 70% of native prairie has been lost, and much more will follow. Under the Sodsaver provision of the Farm Bill, destroying native prairie would no longer be subsidized by the American taxpayer.

 

Thank you for support of Sodsaver throughout the Farm Bill process. Now, more than ever, we need your continued support and also ask your help in removing the exemption from the Sodsaver provision that allows Montana and North Dakota to opt-out of Sodsaver – the last of our native prairies is too important to important to squander.

 

Thank you for your support.

Indiana and South Dakota Get Supreme Court Win

An interesting, but I am guessing largely inconsequential decision was announced by the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday: Crawford v. Marion County Election Board.  In a 6 to 3 decision, the High Court upheld Indiana's law requiring a photo identification to vote.  Indiana is said to have the toughest voter ID law in the country, though South Dakota and several other states have similar laws.  SD law allows a voter without ID to sign an affidavit and then vote.  Indiana's law allows someone to vote without ID, but requires that person to appear later before an official to verify the ballot. 

The Court split by thirds.  Stevens, Roberts, and Kennedy agreed that the Indiana law imposed no undue burden on voters, i.e., no burden that was not justified by the state's interest in enforcing voting requirements.  But they took seriously the idea that slightly more stringent requirements would violate the Constitution.

Scalia, Thomas, and Alito joined in the decision, but they would have allowed more stringent regulations. 

Souter,  Breyer, and Ginsburg would have struck down the law.

As usual, Scalia was right.  If it is permissible to allow some people to vote (citizens), but others not, (resident or illegal aliens, felons, three year olds), then states should be allowed to impose the same ID requirements that are imposed on job seekers, check signers, and persons wishing to purchase alcoholic beverages. 

To be sure, every registered voter is entitled to vote and states should strive to make sure that they can.  But the people are also entitled to know that the laws are being enforced.  Voting is a fundamental civil right, but that fact does not relieve the citizen of all responsibility in the exercise of that right. 

Obama's Wright Turn

As I hope to have shown above, another reason to blog about Reverend Wright is that his name lends itself to all manner of good post titles.  That, and the fact that every politically aware medium is abuzz with this business. 

My replies to Madville Times, and to reader Mondak, have concerned the question whether the criticism aimed at Wright a few weeks ago were unfair.  My interlocutors argued that Wright's positions (or at least some of them) were defensible.  I disagreed.  It appears that Barack Obama agrees with me, for he has now rejected Reverend Wright and his views in a more categorical way.

It is not just Obama.  Bob Herbert, vehemently left-wing Bush hater in good standing, writes a scathing piece about Wright. 

It’s a twofer. Feeling dissed by Senator Obama, Mr. Wright gets revenge on his former follower while bathed in a spotlight brighter than any he could ever have imagined. He’s living a narcissist’s dream. At long last, his 15 minutes have arrived.  ...

All but swooning over the wonderfulness of himself, the reverend acts like he is the first person to come up with the idea that blacks too often get the short end of the stick in America, that the malignant influences of slavery and the long dark night of racial discrimination are still being felt today, that in many ways this is a profoundly inequitable society.

This is hardly new ground. The question that cries out for an answer from Mr. Wright is why — if he is so passionately committed to liberating and empowering blacks — does he seem so insistent on wrecking the campaign of the only African-American ever to have had a legitimate shot at the presidency.

That last bit is the most serious indictment of Wright on a personal level.  Whatever one may think of the press for its treatment of the Wright sermons when the question hit the net, Wright II, the Sequel, was entirely the decision of the Reverend himself.  Whether it was out of narcissism, as Herbert believes, or out of more laudable motive, he had to know that he was playing into the hands of the Clintons and the Republicans.  It turns out that a woman who "facilitated" Reverend Wright's appearance between the Washington Press Club was a Clinton supporter.  Reverend Wright obviously doesn't care. 

Critics of the media and of blogs will argue that all this attention is much ado about nothing of much importance.  I dissent.  Elections are all about coalition building.  The Democratic coalition has already split down the middle.  Why stop there?  Why not split Black voters, already alienated by the Clintons, into Obama and Wright factions?  And while you are at it, why not split the activist core of the party along the same lines?  That is what Jeremiah Wright is doing, deliberately or not. 

Wright Stuff

At the risk of turning this into a Jeremiah Wright blog, let me do a document dump on the latest on the Rev.  Let's just say it hasn't been a good day.  Obama supporter Andrew Sullivan calls on Obama to disown Rev. Wright, something Obama said he could not do in his famous "race speech." Rod Dreher suspects that Sullivan is the first in the line of many who will become disillusioned with Obama as they learn precisely how left-wing he is.  Ross Douthat's estimation of Jeremiah Wright's weekend is quite direct: Jeremiah Wright, SOB. Mark Hemingway questions Wrights exegesis, while Prof. Schramm thinks that Obama is done, thanks to Wright. 

Here is the transcript to Wright's speech before the National Press Club.  I have not seen the video.  Seems like it was more energetic than most Press Club events.  In this speech Wright defends innate racial differences:

Being different does not mean one is deficient. It simply means one is different, like snowflakes, like the diversity that God loves. Black music is different from European and European music. It is not deficient. It is just different. Black worship is different from European and European-American worship. It is not deficient. It is just different. Black preaching is different from European and European- American preaching. It is not deficient. It is just different. It is not bombastic. It is not controversial. It's different. (Laughter, applause.)

(snip)

Black learning styles are different from European and European- American learning styles. They are not deficient. They are just different.

Wright does not defend genetic racial superiority, but he does defend innate racial difference.  On the other hand, he does defend Louis Farrakhan who does believe in racial superiority:

What I think about him, as I said on Bill Moyers and it got edited out -- how many other African-Americans or European-Americans do you know that can get 1 million people together on the mall? He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century; that's what I think about him. I said, as I said on Bill Moyers, when Louis Farrakhan speaks it's like E.F. Hutton speaks. All black America listens. Whether they agree with him or not, they listen.

Now, I am not going to put down Louis Farrakhan any more than Mandela will put down Fidel Castro. You remember that Ted Koppel show where Ted wanted Mandela to put down Castro because Castro is our enemy, and he said, "You don't tell me who my enemies are; you don't tell me who my friends are."

Let me suggest that if you cannot denounce a Farrakhan or a Castro without significant equivocation than you have a damaged moral compass. 

Wright also buys into Marxist inspired theology:

Now, in the 1960s, the term "liberation theology" began to gain currency with the writings and the teachings of preachers, pastors, priests and professors from Latin America. Their theology was done from the underside. Their viewpoint was not from the top down or from a set of teachings which undergirded imperialism. Their viewpoints, rather, were from the bottom up, the thoughts and understandings of God, the faith, religion and the bible from those whose lives were ground under, mangled and destroyed by the ruling classes or the oppressors. Liberation theology started in and started from a different place. It started from the vantage point of the oppressed.

What liberation theology started from was a Marxist interpretation of history.  This is why John Paul II chastised liberation theologians for politicizing the gospel (yes, I know Wright is not Catholic).  Liberation theology plays with the heresy of pelagianism, which like Marxism denies the fallen nature of man.

Barack Obama claims he is "shocked" at what he is hearing from Wright:

Obama said he was ``shocked'' by Wright's statements during a speech at the National Press Club yesterday in Washington.    

``The person I saw yesterday was not the person I had come to know over 20 years,'' said Obama, an Illinois senator.

This strains credulity.  Did Obama, a smart highly educated man, really not know that he was going to a Marxist inspired church?  Did he really not know that his church preaches a gospel of racial exclusivity?  I mean, it's on the dang website.  Are we really to believe that after twenty years he is "shocked" that Rev. Wright holds those views?  If this is true then Barack Obama is so dense that he cannot possibly be qualified to be president.  But he isn't that dense.  He's just a hedger, like your stereotypical politician.  He hedged his bets with Rev. Wright when he was a Chicago politician who needed street cred, and now that he is being called on it he is going to fold that hand.

Unlike others I think Obama will weather this storm and come out of it a stronger candidate.  He will get his party's nomination and he can still win in the fall.  He will use any attacks on this subject as a reason to play the victim and decry the politics of negativity.  Meanwhile, through his surrogates he will beat on John McCain like Ali beat on Frazier.   
    

      

Chad Schudt Facing Charges

Our former blogosphere colleague, Clean Cut Kid, is now facing charges.  From Keloland:

Former Consulting Firm Employee Faces Charges

A man fired last summer from his job at a Sioux Falls company now faces felony grand theft charges involving $200,000 in losses.

It's alleged that 37-year-old Chad Schuldt overpaid himself, misused a company credit card and racked up federal tax penalties while working for Hildebrand Tewes Consulting firm.

Schuldt has pleaded not guilty. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Now, for the first time, I really feel sorry for Chad.  Twenty years sounds like a lot of time for this kind of crime, but I understand that he is unlikely to serve much of it if he works to pay back the money. 

A Remarkable Story

From the American News:

PIERRE - Math and science standards for all grade levels of South Dakota students score well with the American Federal of Teachers in a new report.

The organization said the standards clearly define what students are expected to learn in those subjects, but South Dakota standards for English and social studies need improvement.

Learning standards should be clear, specific and content-focused, AMT said, adding that the state's standards for math and science meet those criteria. It is important to clearly define the knowledge that students should gain in each subject and at each grade level, the group said.

South Dakota's English standards did not meet ATF criteria for any grade level. The state's social studies standards were judged well-written for middle schools and high schools, but flunked at the elementary level.

South Dakota was in a group of 14 states meeting 50 percent to 74 percent of ATF standards.

Stopping here serves my purposes.  What is remarkable is not the content of the story; I'll leave discussion of that to others.  Notice how many errors are made with what I presume is the American Federation of Teachers (not the American Federal of Teachers).  The abbreviation is then wrong twice, with AMT and ATF substituting for AFT.  I wasn't aware that Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was all that concerned with our schools or that our schools paid an Alternative Minimum Tax. 

Reverend Wright's HIV Theory

I have spent a lot of time and attention on the Reverend Jeremiah Wright over the last few days.  I suppose this requires an apology, in the Greek sense.  One obvious reason for this concern is that Jeremiah Wright is a powerful personality, and he has an obvious connection to the presidential ambitions of Barack Obama.  Another is that I am getting a lot of feedback on this issue, from my Keloland comrade Cory Heidelberger, and others.  Such conversations are what the blogosphere should be all about.

I received a thoughtful and very respectful note from Mondak on this topic.  Here is the heart of it:

I say this with the most deep down respect and sincerety.  I think you got caught up the past few weeks in all the quick judgemental quips made about Reverand Jeremiah Wright.  We all do it from time to time. I watched a clip of his interview and his speech to the NAACP last evening. For far too long, we have been given one side of the story from many people who appear to hate the Reverend Wright for reasons that make no sense to me and other people that I know.  The man is very intellegent and from what I witnessed, he is not the hateful and divisive man he has been made out to be by you.  Now, I'm willing to forgive you for being so quick to judge.  I am a Christian and I realize we all make mistakes, including yourself in the latest judgement calls you have made about Mr. Wright.  Ken, I've done it myself in the past and I'm not proud of it.  But, it takes a big man to admit his mistakes and make an honest effort to not repeat them in the future.  I pray that you will see the errors of your ways in this matter and I remain very much hopeful that you will.  Ken, please do not take this personally because you do a great job on your blog.  It's just sometimes, you get ahead of yourself and make mistakes like the rest of us.  I know that Reverend Wright's words were taken out of context by your network and others.  Tonight's speech proves that he really does not harbor hate in his heart and that you probably mistook his words on that videotape that was not entirely shown on some networks.

I appreciate the comment, and I feel very responsible in light of the grace that is offered to me here.  But when all is said and done, I have to call 'em like I sees 'em.  Here is a bit from Wright's interview with the National Press Club. 

MODERATOR: In your sermon, you said the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color. So I ask you: Do you honestly believe your statement and those words?

REVEREND WRIGHT: Have you read Horowitz's book, "Emerging Viruses: AIDS and Ebola," whoever wrote that question? Have you read "Medical Apartheid"? You've read it?

(UNKNOWN): Do you honestly believe that (OFF-MIKE)

REVEREND WRIGHT: Oh, are you -- is that one of the reporters?

MODERATOR: No questions...

(CROSSTALK)

REVEREND WRIGHT: No questions from the floor. I read different things. As I said to my members, if you haven't read things, then you can't -- based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything.

In fact, in fact, in fact, one of the -- one of the responses to what Saddam Hussein had in terms of biological warfare was a non- question, because all we had to do was check the sales records. We sold him those biological weapons that he was using against his own people.

So any time a government can put together biological warfare to kill people, and then get angry when those people use what we sold them, yes, I believe we are capable.

Now Wright's defenders will respond to any treatment of such a passage by saying it is taken out of context.  But the context here is this: he was asked a question, and this is his answer.  This is no long sermon.  I do not think that there is anything wrong with paying attention to what he says and taking him at his word.  He mixes a lot of legitimate arguments in here, without ever quite answering the question.  But I think that the answer to the question is quite clear.

Reverend Jeremiah Wright really does believe that "the government lied about inventing the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color," and so, that the government did invent the HIV virus as a means of genocide against people of color.  This is both loony and atrocious.  If it were true, then we are Nazis.  And that is what Reverend Wright clearly thinks about the United States of America.  But it is a damnable lie. Reverend Wright discredits himself, and all his intelligence and his prophetic sermons.  He didn't merely say this, he preached it!  You can't speak truth to power if what you are speaking is full of tin foil hat conspiracy theories. 

This kind of thing poisons politics.   I'm sorry, Mondak, but if this isn't hateful, what could hateful possibly look like? 

Welcome Back, Northern Valley Beacon!

My esteemed colleague emeritus and Keloland comrade David Newquist has returned after a long period of recuperation.  I know he will not appreciate this, but I was genuinely concerned about him.  He fills us in on his health problems.  Despite our differences, which have been quite hot at times, I have never disliked David.  His style of blogging is not mine, but I do think it adds a great deal of spice to the local blogosphere.  I welcome his return.

One thing that David and I have in common is a love of jazz.  The only friendly conversations I have had with him have been on this topic.  I remind him that I have a established a jazz blog.  I invite him to check it out and let me know what he thinks.  Maybe we can talk about Miles Davis, on occasion, or maybe his hero Lester Young. 

NYT Circulation Falling

Editor & Publisher:  "Print circulation continues on its steep downward slide, the Audit Bureau of Circulations revealed this morning in releasing the latest numbers for some of the country's largest dailies in the six-month period ending March 31, 2008. When a full analysis appears it is expected to find, according to sources, the biggest dip yet, about 3.5% daily and 4.5 for Sunday. . . . The New York Times lost more than 150,000 copies on Sunday. Circulation on that day fell a whopping 9.2% to 1,476,400. The paper's daily circulation declined 3.8% to 1,077,256."  Meanwhile, circulation at the Wall Street Journal and USA Today is up.  Wonder what the difference is?  (via Instapundit)

UPDATE:  Quote of the day.

"Hildygate" Lives

Argus Leader:

A Sioux Falls man fired last summer from his job at Hildebrand Tewes Consulting Inc. now faces felony grand theft charges in Minnehaha Circuit Court.

Chad Schuldt, 37, stole nearly $200,000 from his former employer by overpaying himself, misusing a company credit card and causing federal tax penalties, according to a Sioux Falls Police affidavit for an arrest warrant.

Schuldt pleaded not guilty earlier this month to a two-count information charging him with grand theft. He faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

Schuldt, then the firm’s business manager, called co-owner Steve Hildebrand in June to tell him the business had problems with the Internal Revenue Service. After finding the IRS had placed a lien on the business for unpaid income taxes, Hildebrand determined through an accountant that Schuldt was responsible.

Read more in Tuesday's Argus Leader.

The Wright Prophet

I read with interested Prof. Blanchard's response to Cory's exegesis on exegesis.  Unlike Prof. Blanchard, I work for a living, so I have just got back into town from a business trip and am pretty exhausted.  I will limit my comments to the suggestion, hinted at by both, the Jeremiah Wright is a "prophet."  Cory, for example, writes:

[Rev. Wright] embodies the finest tradition of speaking in the Christian prophetic voice -- no, not predicting the future, but speaking truth to power. The Bible was written by oppressed peoples, Reverend Wright reminds us. The faith so many Americans conflate with their patriotism was born of opposition to worldly powers of all sorts, from Pharaoh and Caesar right on down to the military-industrial complex. His words deserve our attention and our agreement.

Let's leave aside the notion that Rev. Wright deserves our agreement and concentrate on the claim that Rev. Wright is prophetic.  As I wrote a few weeks ago:

Dennis Prager argued on his radio show last week that a prophet is exactly what Jeremiah Wright is not.  A prophet tells the people what they don't want to hear. A prophet goes to his people and asks them to look inside themselves at their own sin.  Jeremiah Wright assures his congregation that there is nothing wrong with them; it is everyone else who needs to change.

The Gospel, and Scripture in general, is not just for the oppressed but for everyone.  Moses condemned the Israelites for worshiping the golden calf.  Jonah was called to judge the city of Nineveh.  While Isaiah finishes his work with good news of a messiah, the first couple dozen chapters of his book condemn sinful Judah.  Jesus himself speaks of separating the goats from the sheep and the wheat from the chaff.  He also claims the he himself is the way, truth and life, and that no one comes to the Father but through him.  Further, we should repent, for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand.  The Gospel cannot be reduced to "it's nice to be nice to nice people."  We are called to love the Lord and love our enemies.  I am not sure Rev. Wright's congregation gets much of either message. 

I stand by my statement that Rev. Wright, whatever else he is, is no prophet. That doesn't mean he is wrong, but it does mean that he doesn't seem to spend much time asking his congregation to reform their lives and commit themselves to Jesus; rather he directs our attention to an impersonal "them," e.g., the government, the capitalists, the white people, and asks that they be blamed for the ailments of his congregation.  This is a critique of Rev. Wright as a pastor, not as a social critic.   

While naturally any political system or theology will consider what it is against, it should not be reduced to that.  Let us not reduce our theology or our patriotism to merely what we are against.  For that opposition is not mere negativity, but a reaction to some positive principles that we hold dear.   

Has Wright Doomed Obama?

Dana Milbank thinks so:

Should it become necessary in the months from now to identify the moment that doomed Obama's presidential aspirations, attention is likely to focus on the hour between nine and ten this morning at the National Press Club. It was then that Wright, Obama's longtime pastor, reignited a controversy about race from which Obama had only recently recovered - and added lighter fuel.

Speaking before an audience that included Marion Barry, Cornel West, Malik Zulu Shabazz of the New Black Panther Party and Nation of Islam official Jamil Muhammad, Wright praised Louis Farrakhan, defended the view that Zionism is racism, accused the United States of terrorism, repeated his view that the government created the AIDS virus to cause the genocide of racial minorities, stood by other past remarks ("God damn America") and held himself out as a spokesman for the black church in America.

In front of 30 television cameras, Wright's audience cheered him on as the minister mocked the media and, at one point, did a little victory dance on the podium. It seemed as if Wright, jokingly offering himself as Obama's vice president, was actually trying to doom Obama; a member of the head table, American Urban Radio's April Ryan, confirmed that Wright's security was provided by bodyguards from Farrakhan's Nation of Islam.

Defending Wright Against the Right Wing

Having had my say on Jeremiah Wright's rhetorical excesses, as I see them, I am now prepared to defend him against recent criticism coming from conservatives.  Powerline links to Michelle Malkin on Wright's recent speech before the NAACP.  You can get a transcript of the talk at CNN.  Here is the passage that Malkin and others have found objectionable:

Left brain is logical and analytical. Object oriented means the student learns from an object. From the solitude of the cradle with objects being hung over his or her head to help them determine colors and shape to the solitude in a carol in a PhD program stuffed off somewhere in a corner in absolute quietness to absorb from the object. From a block to a book, an object. That is one way of learning, but it is only one way of learning.

African and African-American children have a different way of learning.

They are right brained, subject oriented in their learning style. Right brain that means creative and intuitive. Subject oriented means they learn from a subject, not an object. They learn from a person. Some of you are old enough, I see your hair color, to remember when the NAACP won that tremendous desegregation case back in 1954 and when the schools were desegregated. They were never integrated. When they were desegregated in Philadelphia, several of the white teachers in my school freaked out. Why? Because black kids wouldn't stay in their place. Over there behind the desk, black kids climbed up all on them.

Because they learn from a subject, not from an object. Tell me a story.

Malkin likens this argument to  phrenology, and compares to Leonard Jeffries theory of "sun people vs. ice people."  In other words she thinks it is both junk science and racist.

Neither charge is fair.  I do not know Janice Hale's work, and I confess that I am somewhat skeptical regarding the view that Black Africans are, on the whole, predominantly "right-brained".  Moreover, I see some problems with Wright's defense of this argument. 

[African-American children] have a different way of learning. Those same children who have difficulty reading from an object and who are labeled EMH, DMH and ADD. Those children can say every word from every song on every hip hop radio station half of who's words the average adult here tonight cannot understand. Why? Because they come from a right-brained creative oral culture like the (greos) in Africa who can go for two or three days as oral repositories of a people's history and like the oral tradition which passed down the first five book in our Jewish bible, our Christian Bible, our Hebrew bible long before there was a written Hebrew script or alphabet. And repeat incredulously long passages like Psalm 119 using mnemonic devices using eight line stanzas. Each stanza starting with a different letter of the alphabet. That is a different way of learning.

The problem here is that every culture descends from a people who practiced memorizing long stories, because that was the only way to preserve long stories before the advent of writing.  Someone had to remember the Iliad and the Odyssey before Homer (or someone) wrote them down.  Yet the Greeks look to be about as left-brained as anyone.

But whether or not the hypothesis can be supported, there is nothing inherently racist about it.  The phenomenon that deserves the name of racism is the identification of someone as morally inferior and/or one's enemy merely on the basis of racial identification.  Simply recognizing certain biological differences between racial groups, such as the prevalence of difference diseases, in no way implies racism. 

As to whether the theory described by Wright is junk science or not, for that we would have to see Dr. Hale's evidence.  But the difference between left and right brain functions is very well supported in the literature, and there is considerable reason to suppose that some people are naturally oriented toward one side or the other.  There is no reason I can think of why African-Americans might not differ from European and Asian Americans on this count in some statistically significant way. 

Wright's defenders will complain that, once again, his critics have taken his words out of context.  Once again they will be off the mark.  At least in this case, his critics are merely wrong. 

Supreme Court Upholds Indiana Voter Identification Law

This morning, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the challenge to Indiana's voter ID law, 6-3:  "The Supreme Court ruled Monday that states can require voters to produce photo identification without violating their constitutional rights, validating Republican-inspired voter ID laws."  Seems reasonable to me.  Justice Stevens, joined by Kennedy and Roberts, announced the judgment of the Court.  Justices Scalia, Thomas, and Alito concurred with the judgment, while Justices Souter, Breyer, and Ginsberg dissented.  The opinions are here (PDF alert).

Daschle/Obama in West River This Week?

Black Hills Fox News:

The Obama Campaign Kick-off events will take place beginning at 11:30 at Black Hills State University in Spearfish Tuesday morning. Then it's on to the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center in Rapid City at 5:30 Tuesday afternoon. The final Kick-off event will be at the Custer County Annex in Custer at 9:30 on Wednesday morning. Tom Daschle will appear at each of those events.

Also, Representative Herseth-Sandlin will campaign with Obama in South Dakota.

South Dakota Presidential Primary Heating Up

From this morning's Argus Leader:

Who would win that primary today is anyone's guess.

Obama has South Dakota ties here with former Sen. Tom Daschle his co-chairman at the national level. Steve Hildebrand, a longtime strategist and campaign aide to candidates such as Vice President Al Gore and Daschle, plays a significant role for Obama. Clinton has the endorsement of former Sen. George McGovern, whom she worked for when he ran for president in 1972.

Like Obama, Clinton has not been here during this election cycle, but she spent much time in South Dakota in the 1992 and 1996 campaign trips when her husband was running for president. President Clinton's last campaign stop of his presidential career was in Sioux Falls in 1996.

When weighing chances of both candidates, it is becoming more obvious that, while Bill Clinton ignited controversy along the way during his wife's campaign, it oftentimes seemed like he is the Clinton that voters came to see.

That could play a role at some level here, too.

Consider a recent comment from Porter Williams, a prominent member of the black community, who is a Sioux Falls-area contractor, artist and Hillary Clinton supporter.

"Things were never so good when Bill Clinton was president," he said.

Because of his recall of that period, Williams will keep his vote in the Clinton family.

All that said, what South Dakotans need to know is they will be a part of the selection process, said Bob Burns, political science professor at South Dakota State University. "We matter," he said.

The Battle of Indiana

Washington Post excerpt:

Driven by strategy and necessity as the New York Democrat's advertising budget runs low, the Clinton campaign has opened 28 offices in Indiana, where she faces another critical test on May 6. With 72 delegates at stake in Indiana, the Clinton family has made more than 50 stops in the state already, far more than Obama and his wife, Michelle. … While the Clinton campaign advertised 30 organized canvassing expeditions this weekend, the Obama team said it put together 55 "block parties" for supporters and undecided voters on Saturday, complete with food and music. At each, voters were encouraged to go straight to nearby government offices and cast their ballots.

My Boy Jack, PBS on Kipling

I watched the PBS Masterpiece drama yesterday, set at the beginning of World War I.  It was flawed, but still very good.  Daniel Radcliffe played the writer's son, John Kipling, so let me get the Harry Potter jokes out of the way.  Why couldn't he use a shield charm, or take out the machine gun nest with Expelliarmus!  In fact, I didn't think about Harry Potter more than fourteen times during the show.  Radcliffe was that good.

David Haigh wrote the screenplay and played the part of Rudyard Kipling, and for both my opinion of him has risen considerably.  The chief flaw in the production was that it could not quite decide what it wanted to be: a sympathetic portrait of a family tragedy or an anti-war movie.   Gillian Anderson (Agent Scully on the X Files) tried to push it to the latter in the introduction, by speaking of Kipling's "rampant patriotism."  And in the beginning of the film, it seemed to be going that way.  Kipling, enamored of military virtue and intoxicated with the glory of the British Empire, pushes his son to military service and uses all his influence to get his son in harms way.  Jack is killed on his first day of action.  Rudyard is thereafter racked with guilt. 

There is a lot in the film to confirm that interpretation.  It is very deliberately left out that the war started when the Germans invaded Belgium. But Haigh was too good a writer and actor to let the piece descend into a screed.  Kipling was, to be sure, a British patriot and saw, rightly, that war was coming despite all hopes to the contrary.  He may well have pushed his son toward service, but it is quite clear (in fact and in the film) that the boy wanted desperately to serve. These days, when so many criticize those who get themselves or their children out of military service, we might not want to so quickly condemn someone who did the opposite. 

The First World War, like the American Civil War, was fought with very bad doctrine.  Defense so thoroughly overwhelmed offense that either side could have won easily just by not bothering to attack.  But it is characteristic of modern views of the war that they leave out considering the alternatives.  The truth of the matter is that Germany was determined to do what Napoleon had earlier tried to do: bring all of Europe under their dominion.  Should the British, and by extension the Americans, have let the Germans get away with that?  Perhaps not. 

Between 1789 and 1945 Britain set herself again and again against tyranny in Europe. In 1916, America began to back her play.  This is not something either people should be ashamed of.  God bless all who fought, or suffered, or died in that business.  I can only be grateful that I, and my children, were born in the right half of the twentieth century. That is what My Boy Jack is about, though it might come as a surprise to the producers. 

The Wright Interpretation: A Reply to Cory

In a lengthy response to my comments on Bill Moyer's interview with Jeremiah Wright, Cory Heidelberger accuses me of "prooftexting" (building an interpretation on short passages, taken out of context), as opposed to exegesis (careful reading of passages in light of the larger meaning of a text).  Cory's is well-argued, and I recommend it to our readers.  Despite our disagreements, I respect Cory and think that he is fine addition to the Keloland blog page.  He says I was flat wrong in my piece, but I tried to be fair to Reverend Wright, and at least some of what I say agrees with what Cory says, so perhaps I was wrong only in a bumpy way. 

Let me be honest.  I am not so inclined as he is to see truth and light in Reverend Wright's sermons.  Suppose the tables were turned, and we were talking about a conservative pastor who said "Not God Bless Homosexuals,  but Goddamn Homosexuals"?  Suppose the same pastor presented a long list of the sins of Homosexuals and then said that the AIDS epidemic was "the chickens coming home to roost"?  How much "exegesis" would it take to convince Cory that this pastor didn't mean what he surely seemed to be saying?  Cory would vehemently condemn such a sermon, especially if it came from someone who had political significance.  I would condemn such a sermon along with Cory.

I am sorry, but the defense of Wright's infamous "Goddamn America" statement presented in the interview, and backed up by Cory, just won't do.  It is true that condemnation and damnation have a "shared etymology."  So do inspiration and respiration, but they hardly mean the same thing!  Surely "Goddamn" can mean condemnation in ordinary speech; but in a sermon, delivered by a Biblical scholar standing in the pulpit, it means one thing: final judgment.  I tried to be charitable by calling this a rhetorical excess.  But if, as Cory insists, Reverend Wright believes everything he said, then we know what he thinks of America.  Barack Obama found it necessary to disown such statements.  Perhaps Cory is wiser than Obama, or perhaps Obama was being less than truthful about his agreement.  I will let Cory decide that one. 

Both Moyers and Wright and Heidelberger want to have it that the good Reverend is being crucified for "speaking truth to power," i.e., criticizing America.  Of course crucified is here a metaphor for political attacks (which, I dare to point out) are not so painful or fatal), but it is still just wrong.  Wright's sermons became radioactive for Obama because of the extreme rhetoric that he used.  Like Moyers, Cory ignores a couple of other items that populate these sermons: that the government intentionally supplies drugs to Blacks, and that the government "lied about inventing the AIDS virus."  Are these among the "truths" that Wright speaks to power? 

I think that people like Jeremiah Wright have an important place in Republican politics.  We need him to play prophet to our Israel.  But his extremism discredits his message.  In calling these statements "rhetorical excesses", I believe I was doing him more favors that Mr. Heidelberger does by trying to neutralize them with exegesis. 

Cory says this:

Mrs. Madville Times and I watched the full interview last night. (It was worth cheating on TV Turnoff Week.) We listened closely. Neither one of us heard Wright say anything that disagreed with our political beliefs, our patriotism, or with Christianity.

But that, of course, is the problem for Mr. Obama.  He already has Mr. and Mrs. Madville Times, or surely will if he is nominated.  It's those small town voters still clinging to religion and guns, some of whom, at least, are Democrats, who would find plenty to disagree with in Wright's sermons.  I have a higher opinion of such folks than Obama, or Wright, or Heidelberger.  I do not believe, as Cory seems to believe, that any Americans pray to George W.  I think that most Americans know, and are willing to hear, that their country has much to atone for.  They do not, as Cory would have it, conflate their faith with patriotism.  But neither do they think that America is Pharaoh and Caesar. We are sinners, but we aren't the bad guys.   

Suppose for the moment that the United States had never existed.  Would the world today be a better place or a much worse place?  I would like to think that Cory would agree with me on this one.  I am not sure what Barack Obama would say, if he were being honest, and that concerns me a lot more.  I am pretty sure what Reverend Wright would say.