From the WSJ Opinion Archives
The
Irreligious Reich
In The American Prospect, Clinton cabinet member Robert Reich rehearses a liberal
canard about religion:
Since last summer's Supreme Court decision in Lawrence vs. Texas, overturning Texas' anti-sodomy law, evangelicals have grown louder. Now that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has declared that gay couples have the right to marry, evangelicals are committed to making gay marriage a major issue during the upcoming presidential campaign. Their recent legislative victory over "partial-birth" abortions has emboldened them to seek additional ways to erode Roe v. Wade. They're mounting an all-out offensive for Senate confirmation of people like Alabama's attorney general, William Pryor--who called Roe "the worst abomination of constitutional law in our history"--to the federal courts. And they're determined to put religion back into the public schools. . . .
Democrats should call all this for what it is--a clear and present danger to religious liberty in America. For more than three hundred years, the liberal tradition has sought to free people from the tyranny of religious doctrines that would otherwise be imposed on them. Today's evangelical right detests that tradition and seeks nothing short of a state-sponsored religion. . . . Democrats should remind Americans that however important religion is to our spiritual lives, there is no room for liberty in a theocracy.
If Reich believes this stuff, he's hallucinating. There is absolutely no danger of America becoming a theocracy. For one thing, the Constitution expressly forbids it.
But let's say for the sake of argument that the purported proponents of theocracy managed to get the requisite two-thirds of each house of Congress and 38 state legislatures to agree to a constitutional amendment repealing the establishment clause and setting up an official church. Who would be in charge? The Mormons? The Baptists? The Catholics? The Church of God? The Nazarenes? The Seventh-day Adventists? The Methodists?
Theocracy is simply unfeasible in a country with America's multitude of religious denominations, and that's why the Founding Fathers wrote the establishment clause--not out of hostility toward religion, but to prevent the government from becoming an instrument of a particular sect at the expense of others.
When you look at Reich's bill of particulars, it turns out what he really objects to is not theocracy at all. Rather, his complaints deal with two areas of policy: laws involving moral questions (sodomy, marriage, abortion) and the use of religious rituals and symbols in public functions (here he cites only school prayer, but we're guessing he agrees with the ACLU agenda of banning things like Ten Commandments memorials, crèches and menorahs in public parks).
Now, it's worth noting that the left's objection to religious symbols in public life and legislation on moral questions is very highly selective. In January, for example, we will observe a national holiday honoring a Christian minister, but no one argues that Martin Luther King Day violates the separation of church and state. Nor does anyone advocate repeal of the civil-rights laws for which Dr. King fought because they were informed by a Christian worldview.
There are reasonable arguments on both sides of the debates over such things as abortion, same-sex marriage and school prayer. But Reich doesn't even bother making a case for his own positions. All he does is denounce those on the other side for being evangelical Christians. That this should serve as a substitute for argument shows just how prevalent is anti-Christian bigotry on America's liberal left.
The Theologian in Chief Gets It Right--II
Boy did we hear from readers who took issue with our item
yesterday defending President Bush's proposition that Christians and Muslims
worship the same God. Thanks for the thoughtful dissents, and thanks especially
to those who suggested we should stick to politics and stop writing about religion.
That is excellent advice, and we may well take it tomorrow.
Some tried to illustrate why we're wrong by employing analogies, one of which came up several times. Here's reader Mark Hammer:
Christians, Jews and Muslims all claim to worship the God of Abraham. So President Bush was essentially correct.
However, your logic in saying that "if you believe in only one God, it makes no logical sense to describe a fellow monotheist as worshipping a 'different' God' " is simply not supportable.
The left and The Wall Street Journal agree that only one person won the 2000 presidential election. Are you saying that it makes logical sense to assume that George W. Bush and Al Gore are therefore the same president?
Here is the problem with this analogy: Either Bush or Gore is theoretically capable of being president, as are millions of other Americans. Who holds the office at any given time is an empirical question, dependent on all sorts of contingencies.
The analogy might work if we were polytheists arguing about whether Zeus or Apollo is the king of the gods. (It's Zeus, of course, but Apollo demands a recount!) Monotheism, however, posits as a matter of metaphysical reality that only one God exists, not a multitude of gods competing for the title of God.
According to reader Justin Taylor, however, while "it is true to say that Muslims and Christians both believe that there is one God," it is "not true that they believe in the same God":
To be the same means that they would be identical. But they are not: Christians believe in a Trinitarian God (one nature, three persons) while Muslims are pure monotheists (one nature, one person).
You made the argument that they are the same God, but conceived differently. That works only with incidental differences. For example, if one person thinks you are short and another person thinks you are tall, it doesn't get to the core of who you are--hence, it may be possible they're both talking about the same you, just from a different vantage point. But if one says that you have a son, and another doesn't; and one says that you have certain personality traits, and another denies it; and one says that your constitutional makeup is one way, and the other says something opposite--well, then the different "conceptions" mean you're talking about different "objects."
Let's return to the Bush vs. Gore analogy, but this time we'll focus just on Bush. (Gore's existence, after all, is a matter of some doubt.) Different people have wildly divergent opinions about the president. To his greatest admirers, he is a statesman, a liberator and a great American; to his harshest detractors, he is an arrogant would-be dictator.
A Bush supporter's conception of Bush's "constitutional makeup" is utterly at odds with that of a Bush hater. Not all conceptions about Bush are equally true; Paul Krugman, for example, is totally wrongheaded, while this column generally is the model of verity. But whether Krugman is writing about him or we are, George W. Bush is the same man.
By the same token, to say that all monotheistic religions worship the same God is not to say that they are all equally valid. Indeed, since Christianity and Islam make competing claims about the nature of God, it would be logically incoherent to argue that both are true. Yet to say that they worship the same God does not contradict either religion's claim to be the one true faith. As to which religion is true, that is beyond the scope of this column.
Blogging
and Nothingness
Speaking of Paul Krugman, he apparently entertains doubts about our existence.
In a column arguing that Krugman "is completely crackers," the Boston
Globe's Alex Beam quotes the former Enron adviser:
In an e-mail, Krugman explains that "the 'nonentities' who go after me include Taranto at Wall Street Journal Online--he was the main source for the claim that I was in Mahathir's pay--Andrew Sullivan, Mickey Kaus, etc."
To set the record straight, our item last month on the Krugman-Mahathir link did not claim Krugman was in Mahathir's pay. A blog entry by Donald Luskin did raise the question of whether Krugman had been paid for advice he rendered to Mahathir (Krugman later said he had not), but we did not repeat the question, though we did link to the blog entry and quote other elements of it.
Also contrary to Krugman, we are an entity, and darn proud of it.
Max Cleland's
Last Refuge
Remember all the tears Democrats shed last year over poor Max Cleland, the erstwhile
Georgia senator? Republicans criticized him for voting against creating the
Department of Homeland Security because the legislation lacked favors to unions,
and all of a sudden they were "questioning his patriotism." Well,
remember Howard Dean's bad back that got him out of the draft back in 1970?
(We noted it
yesterday.) Here's Cleland, quoted on the subject by First Read, NBC News's
political blog:
"Now, at a time when young Americans are being killed and wounded by President Bush's failed policy in Iraq . . . our country can not afford to have another leader who took the easy way out like George W. Bush who hid out in the Houston National Guard. We can not afford to have a leader who weaseled out of going to Vietnam on a medical deferment for a bad back and wound up on the ski slopes of Aspen like Howard Dean."
"Houston National Guard"? That's Texas Air National Guard, soldier. Anyway, here's Cleland, questioning the patriotism of his party's likely nominee, of the president and, by implication, of everyone who has ever served in the National Guard. Is it any wonder the people of Georgia sent him packing when he sought re-election last year?
Debate
Fatigue
Forgive us, but we're not sure we can take any more of these Democratic debates.
We started watching yesterday's eight-man show (sans Lieberman) in Iowa (with
Johns Kerry and Edwards checking in via satellite from Washington) but just
got exhausted. For about an hour our TiVo has been paused 34 minutes into the
two-hour event; John Edwards is frozen on the screen in a goofy pose with his
tongue hanging halfway out of his mouth. It's not exactly an inspiring sight,
but we just can't go on. Maybe later.
We did catch this nifty metaphor alert from Carol Moseley Braun, referring to the Medicare bill: "This bill is not only a Trojan horse. It's a turkey stuffed with goodies for the pharmaceutical and the insurance industries and a poison pill for seniors."
Readers called our attention to a couple of other high points. For one thing, moderator Tom Brokaw asked Al Sharpton about his role in the Tawana Brawley rape hoax, and Sharpton dodged and dissembled:
Brokaw: Reverend Sharpton, Howard Dean did apologize for his remarks about the Confederate flag on the back of a pickup truck. But a lot of people who admire you and especially like your spirit in engagements like this are wondering whether you're ever going to apologize for your role in the Tawana Brawley case.
Sharpton: Absolutely. If--I would apologize if I felt I was wrong. I think if you think you're right, you pay the penalty for it and you stand there. If Governor Dean thought he was right, he should have taken whatever that was. He, after some assessment, felt he was wrong.
I don't feel I was wrong. I've stood up on cases, one was the Central Park jogger case--13 years later people felt I was right. But I think also, Tom, to compare a case of a young lady telling us something that we believe with a Confederate flag that represented a society's commitment to lynching, to rape, to murder and treason, I think that's a stretch even for Tom Brokaw.
Brokaw: I wasn't making--I wasn't making a judgment. What I was saying was that people, once there was a body of evidence in the Tawana Brawley case . . .
Sharpton: Well, there was a body of evidence the jury didn't believe. I just cited you a body of evidence where people went to jail eight years and it was overturned. We're not talking about a case when we're talking about the Confederacy. We're talking about people that were committed against a race of people.
I may have a disagreement on any case. Right now a lot of people think O.J. Simpson was guilty. The jury said he wasn't. Should they apologize? I mean, you're covering right now a lot of cases. So to try and make a case something and equate that with what we talked about--when I see a pickup truck and Confederate flag, I see James Byrd dragged through Jasper, Texas. I'm not talking about a jury making a decision on a case.
You know, it's funny, a lot of people--Jessica Lynch said something didn't happen to her, and this administration believes it. I believe in a girl that said something did happen to her. I'd like to have that debate with George Bush.
Joe Lieberman wasn't there, but let's give him an honorary quote from an earlier debate: "Anytime I come after the Reverend Sharpton, I always want to say, 'Amen, brother.' "
Mickey Kaus has some fun quoting John Kerry, the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Democrat who by the way served in Vietnam:
Kerry: . . . And I'd like to know if [Howard Dean] still intends to reduce the rate of growth in Medicare as one of the ways in which he's going to balance the budget. . . .
Kerry: But you still haven't answered my question . . .
Kerry: But you still haven't answered my question . . .
Brokaw: Congressman?
Kerry: No, the question is will you slow the rate of growth? Do you intend to slow the rate of growth in Medicare because you said you were going to do that? . . .
Kerry: Are you going to slow the rate of growth, Governor, yes or no?
Dean: We're going to do what we have to do to make sure that Medicare lasts.
Kerry: Are you going to slow the rate of growth, Governor?
Kerry also offered these deep thoughts:
Brokaw: Senator Kerry, what about the French? Are they friends, are they enemies, or something in between at this point?
Kerry: The French are the French. I think there's a . . .
Brokaw: Very profound, Senator.
Kerry: Well, trust me. It has a meaning. And I think most people know exactly what I mean.
At another point in the debate, Brokaw asked Dean about his draft deferment, and Dean noted that Kerry served in Vietnam.
What
Would We Do Without Journalism Ethics Experts?
"New York Times Sponsors Civics Speeches by Vice President Gore; Some Journalism
Ethics Experts Say Press Should Cover Events, Not Back Them"--headline
and subheadline, New York Sun, Nov. 25
Who's
Distracted?
"U.S. forces have disrupted several planned terrorist attacks against Western
and other targets in the Horn of Africa and local authorities have killed or
captured more than two dozen militants," the Associated Press reports from
Camp Lemonier, Djibouti, where the wire service landed an interview with Brig.
Gen. Mastin Robeson, who commands the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa:
"There are three issues here: there is transnational terrorist networking, at large, there are specific cells planning terrorist attacks, and there's the recruiting, training and shipping of foreign fighters into Iraq," Robeson said Saturday night at his headquarters on a former French Foreign Legion post in Djibouti. . . .
Robeson said his job is to empower governments in the region to stop terrorism by helping them improve their militaries, police, coast guards and intelligence services. His troops also help the governments fight poverty through humanitarian projects. . . .
Robeson [said] the 1,800 troops permanently based in Djibouti work throughout the region and are establishing a model for future operations that will depend more on intelligence and less on firepower. The focus is on helping poor countries stop terrorism before a massive U.S. military intervention, like the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, is required.
"We like to use the analogy that if Iraq and Afghanistan were an apple and an orange, we're a Volkswagen," he explained. "Our mission is pure and simply to help host nations control their own destiny."
An apple, an orange and a Volkswagen? It sounds as though Robeson is doing great work in Africa, but he may be reading too much Thomas Friedman.
Jacko's
Friends the Saudis
Michael Jackson is asking a Saudi prince for help in beating child-molestation
charges, reports the New York Daily News:
Seven years ago, The King of Pop and Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal announced they were setting up a joint venture called Kingdom Entertainment that would build "family values" theme parks around the world. Their plans never came to pass. But insiders say Jackson hopes that the prince still believes the Gloved One embodies "family values." That's why Jackson's asked the royal to help underwrite his legal defense, sources tell us.
"Black America is spitting mad" over Jacko's prosecution, BET.com reports, providing some disturbing quotes from readers:
Writing under the head, "I am more angry than 911 on this one," BET.com member Beeeken says, "I have never been more ANGRY with the USA than this. I have not seen anything but famous African American Males get either almost or convicted of Crimes, some they may not even have been guilty of. The public is lynching our [men]. Michael may not have a dark skin tone any more, but underneath he is still African American, and he is one of our Biggest Reps. and is the Biggest star in the World. I am very angry how they are trying to Lynch him before proven guilty in a court." . . .
Says songofsongs, "When is RACE never not an issue? It was only 50 years ago (and sometimes even more recently) that a black man could be lynched, that a black woman could be raped without [sic] impunity. . . . So, it's not unreasonable to question whether race has influenced this case--the DA and Sheriff were LAUGHING at the news conference, as if the whole point is bringing down Michael Jackson, NOT stopping a pedophile who's harming children. Come on, already! "When will people wake up and face the facts: that this is NOT a colorblind world?!"
This reminds us of a joke we heard from a 10-year-old (don't worry, he's just a friend):
"Mommy," says a little boy, "is God black or white?"
"God is both black and white," the mother explains.
"Oh." He seems confused. "Well, is God male or female?"
"God is both male and female."
"Oh!" Suddenly the boy's face brightens. "God is Michael Jackson!"
Scaredy-Cat
Scholars
The Washington Post reports from Austin on the Young
Conservatives of Texas, a student group that has published a "watch
list" of professors who use their classrooms "to promote personal
agendas and 'indoctrinate' students." One of the profs on the list, Robert
Jensen, will be familiar to longtime readers of this column; he's the journalism
professor who in October
2001 shrugged off the Sept. 11 attacks as "no more despicable than
the massive acts of terrorism . . . that the U.S. government has committed during
my lifetime."
According to the Post, "Jensen denies that he ever equated the United States and al Qaeda." And not only does he lack the courage of his convictions, but all these profs come across as a bunch of cowards. "Most of the UT professors named on the list said it was unsettling," the Post reports:
Jensen, who said he is bisexual, said the list could have an ominous effect on the faculty: "If professors are constantly worried about being branded liberal, and not just liberal but inappropriately executing their duties, then it's going to make people a little nervous and there's a self-censorship effect." . . .
"Regardless of whether they want to or not, they have sent us a message," said [Jennifer] Suchland, one of three professors on the list who do not have tenure. "I'm feeling like anything is possible. That at some point, someone can say, 'We think you're anti-American and we think you should shut up'--that it's not appropriate to talk about these things." . . .
Many professors see the list as manifesting an intolerance for criticism under the banner of post-Sept. 11 patriotism. . . . "This is part of a trend of blacklisting us, of making sure that we know we're under surveillance," said Gordon, the anthropology professor, who teaches a course on African American culture. "I do worry that what this is moving towards is some sort of censoring."
When we were in college, professors were every bit as stupidly left-wing, but they weren't nearly as scared of their students. Has the professoriate gone soft, or does the new generation of collegians have a fighting spirit our peers lacked back in the day?
Generalissimo
Francisco Franco Is Still Dead
"Dictionary Is Still the Best Source on Words"--headline, Mail Tribune
(Medford, Ore.), Nov. 25
The
Birds and the Bees
"Genetic and field studies on the personality of birds, which researchers
suggest could reflect on the behavior of humans and other animals, reveal that
mates with opposing personalities produce offspring with higher survival rates,"
reports the Discovery Channel:
For the initial study, Kees van Oers used artificial selection to breed great tits (Parus major) with extreme personalities. Some of the birds were fast moving, aggressive risk takers. Others were more slow and cautious.
Van Oers then analyzed the offspring of these two extremes. He discovered that the personalities of the offspring were 54 percent hereditary, with some genes for behavior dominating over others. This resulted in baby chicks with predictable, yet varying, personalities.
Wow, this guy actually gets paid to study great tits? And we thought we had a fabulous job.
(Elizabeth Crowley helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Ronald Brady, C.E. Dobkin, Jose Guardia, Tim Graham, Barak Moore, Edward Schulze, S.E. Brenner, Jim Orheim, Michael Moynihan, Rafi Segal, Thomas Lifson, Michael Siegel, Thomas Linehan, C.K. Lee, Lars Larson and Alan Sayre. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)
Today on OpinionJournal:
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- Terry Teachout: "Of course you know this means war." Who said it?
