The Role of Religion in Democracy

Christopher Hitchens has an illuminating column in Slate protesting the "untrammeled" free exercise of religion. As a Christian, I don't share his hostility to organized religion, but he is in a sense correct in pointing out that religious freedom cannot be used to justify intolerance or radically different cultural practices that subvert one's allegiance to the Constitution beneath that of their church.  He takes on many  denominations: Jews, Christians, the Catholic Church, Mormons, Scientology. He saves Islam for last as he mocks the ridiculous comparison some Muslims draw between folks who protest the ground zero mosque, and those of bigoted anti-Semites:

Now to Islam. It is, first, a religion that makes very large claims for itself, purporting to be the last and final word of God and expressing an ambition to become the world's only religion. Some of its adherents follow or advocate the practice of plural marriage, forced marriage, female circumcision, compulsory veiling of women, and censorship of non-Muslim magazines and media. Islam's teachings generally exhibit suspicion of the very idea of church-state separation. Other teachings, depending on context, can be held to exhibit a very strong dislike of other religions, as well as of heretical forms of Islam. Muslims in America, including members of the armed forces, have already been found willing to respond to orders issued by foreign terrorist organizations. Most disturbingly, no authority within the faith appears to have the power to rule decisively that such practices, or such teachings, or such actions, are definitely and utterly in conflict with the precepts of the religion itself. 

Reactions from even "moderate" Muslims to criticism are not uniformly reassuring. "Some of what people are saying in this mosque controversy is very similar to what German media was saying about Jews in the 1920s and 1930s," Imam Abdullah Antepli, Muslim chaplain at Duke University, told the New York Times. Yes, we all recall the Jewish suicide bombers of that period, as we recall the Jewish yells for holy war, the Jewish demands for the veiling of women and the stoning of homosexuals, and the Jewish burning of newspapers that published cartoons they did not like. What is needed from the supporters of this very confident faith is more self-criticism and less self-pity and self-righteousness.

Those who wish that there would be no mosques in America have already lost the argument: Globalization, no less than the promise of American liberty, mandates that the United States will have a Muslim population of some size. The only question, then, is what kind, or rather kinds, of Islam it will follow. There's an excellent chance of a healthy pluralist outcome, but it's very unlikely that this can happen unless, as with their predecessors on these shores, Muslims are compelled to abandon certain presumptions that are exclusive to themselves. The taming and domestication of religion is one of the unceasing chores of civilization. Those who pretend that we can skip this stage in the present case are deluding themselves and asking for trouble not just in the future but in the immediate present.

This is why multiculturalists are deluding themselves in believing many cultures can wholly retain their autonomy yet still peacefully co-exist in a democratic society. One only needs to look at the angry  nativism rising in Europe, a frustrated response to the the carving out of separate Islamic sectors in society, to see how such a policy has balkanized those countries.  Different cultures have thrived in America only because they assimilated themselves to the enduring values of America being founded on a civic ideal; of a nation-state not built on race, ethnicity, or religion, but instead, on dedication to a limited government where individuals participate in self-governance, and respect the rule of law which applies equally to all.  Immigrants to America retain some of their culture; they speak their own languages, create their own communities, and practice some of their customs in both the private and public sphere. But as Hitchens notes, just as we demanded that the Mormons in Utah give up polygamy before joining the union, we must also ask Muslims to do the same to be part of western society.  So in a sense, we do ask they give up some of their culture to be part of the ideal of America.  

More Muslims Speak Out Against Ground Zero Mosque

From the WaPo, Neda Bolourchi lost her mother on Sep 11 at Ground Zero. She was on United Flight 175 that the terrorists flew into the south tower of the WTC. She is a Muslim who left Iran during the revolution, and eloquently expresses that she has no grave site to visit, nor was she able to bury her mother in a proper funeral. On the Ground Zero mosque, she says:

On the day I left Ground Zero shortly after the tragedy, I felt that I was abandoning my mother. It was like being forced to leave the bedside of a loved one who is dying, knowing you will never see her again. But I felt the love and respect of all those around me there, and it reassured me that she was being left in good hands. Since I cannot visit New York as often as I would like, I at least want to know that my mother can rest in peace.

I do not like harboring resentment or anger, but I do not want the death of my mother -- my best friend, my hero, my strength, my love -- to become even more politicized than it already is. To the supporters of this new Islamic cultural center, I must ask: Build your ideological monument somewhere else, far from my mother's grave, and let her rest.

Raheel Raza, a board member of the Canadian Muslim Association, bluntly tells Bill O'Reilly why a mosque near Ground Zero does not heal Muslim relations with the west (H/T: Hotair):







These are the type of moderate Muslims we should be turning to--they understand the sensitivities regarding Ground Zero and acknowledge that terrorists attacked us in the name of Islam.

The Intellectual Vanity of The Left

Hear of Dr Steven Chu, the Energy Secretary in the Obama administration who won the Nobel Prize in Physics? Nothing wrong with that at all, but this American Thinker article by James Lewis titled Put Some Harvard SmartCream on That, points out how the Obama administration confuses education with actual wisdom:

The weirdness is that during the months of oil gushing from the BP leak, Obama and his spokesnoid Robert Gibbs kept reminding the world that Dr. Chu has a Nobel Prize. That plus five bucks will buy you a Starbucks French Roast on the Gulf Coast, right where you can watch the sunset reflecting off the oil slick. It's really pretty, and as some Obamanoid was saying the other day, if Louisiasans were smart, they would turn it into a tourist attraction. Fortunately, it looks like the oil leak has been plugged, and all that oil will be metabolized by the ocean in due course.

But the Leftist superstition about Harvard SmartCream will keep haunting us for years. The reason is that no matter what the emergency may be, the instinct of this White House is to apply the same panacea. Put some SmartCream on that, and it'll be fixed. Or at least it will look as if we are Doing Something.

Obama's adoring fans seem to share the superstitious belief that intelligence is a kind of oil slick that you just discover in places like Harvard and Yale. Take a problem, any problem -- global warming,  the U.S. economy, race, and gender-baiting -- and smear it liberally with SmartCream from Larry Summers or Elena Kagan -- and behold! The answer pops out, just like that. It's amazing. For you, it's only $ 9.95, 'cause I like your face. Can't you see Obama selling that line on an informercial with his great photogenic smile? 

Janet Daley over at the Telegraph examines how this intellectual vanity has bred class resentment where the highly educated are aligned with the poor against the middle class.  She knows this because it's a depressingly familiar development in British politics:

America, in other words, has discovered bourgeois guilt. A country without a hereditary nobility has embraced noblesse oblige. Now, there is nothing inherently strange or perverse about people who lead successful, secure lives feeling a sense of responsibility toward those who are disadvantaged. What is peculiar in American terms is that this sentiment is taking on precisely the pseudo-aristocratic tone of disdain for the aspiring, struggling middle class that is such a familiar part of the British scene.

Liberal politics is now – over there as much as here – a form of social snobbery. To express concern about mass immigration, or reservations about the Obama healthcare plan, is unacceptable in bien-pensant circles because this is simply not the way educated people are supposed to think. It follows that those who do think (and talk) this way are small-minded bigots, rednecks, oiks, or whatever your local code word is for "not the right sort".

The petit bourgeois virtues of thrift, ambition and self-reliance – which are essential for anyone attempting to escape from poverty under his own steam – have long been derided in Britain as tokens of a downmarket upbringing. But not long ago in America they were considered, even among the highly educated, to be the quintessential national virtues, because even well-off professionals had probably had parents or grandparents who were once penniless immigrants. Nobody dismissed "ambition" as a form of gaucherie: the opposite of having ambition was being a bum, a good-for-nothing who would waste the opportunities that the new country offered for self-improvement.

But now the British Lefties who – like so many Jane Austen heroines looking down on those "in trade" – used to dismiss Margaret Thatcher as "a grocer's daughter", have their counterparts in the US, where virtually everybody's family started poor. Our "white van man" is their Tea Party activist, and the insult war is getting very vicious. It is becoming commonplace now for liberals in the US to label the Tea Party movement as racist, the most damaging insult of all in respectable American life. 

So the Democrats, who once represented the interests of ferociously self-respecting blue-collar America, are now seen – under their highly educated president, who wholeheartedly embraces the orthodoxy of the liberal salon – as having abandoned their traditional following. Which is precisely what Labour did here when it turned its back on what used to be called "the respectable working class" because of its embarrassing resentments and "prejudices" against welfare claimants, immigrants, and anti-social youths. Bizarrely, among people who see themselves as profoundly empathetic, there was an utter failure to understand why the spirit of benevolent understanding and tolerance did not flourish among those whose daily lives were directly affected by a mass influx of foreign workers, or local delinquency, or a welfare system that rewarded inertia.

Conservatives know this social and intellectual snobbery well--they've borne the brunt of the condescension from the Left.  Reagan? They called him an amiable dunce.  President Bush 41? Remember that snarky comment, it's the economy stupid?  VP Quayle? He was harangued by the media and chattering classes for weeks when he suggested what many suspected was true: that perhaps we should not celebrate voluntary single motherhood where men are mere accessories to a women's self fulfillment and therefore disposal as fathers, despite what was portrayed by Murphy Brown.  President Bush 43? His Harvard degree was granted because of his family connections but as Jacob Weisberg from Slate declared, he was a dimwit.

There's even more vitriol hurled if one is conservative and from the working or middle class.  Joe the Plumber's personal life was investigated illegally by government officials to dig up any dirty laundry to immediately discredit him because he somehow got then candidate Obama to admit that yes, he wanted to spread your wealth. Witness the intellectual rape and wilding of Sarah Palin where she's turned into a bimbo and sexual object.  Somehow sympathetic to the Tea Party? One must be dubbed racist, because the NAACP says so.

It's an old tired tactic from the Left. It's easier to denigrate someone personally to discredit their ideas rather than debate the ideas themselves.  Not all Democrats are ensconced in their ideological cocoons from the electoral impact of their condescension.  VP Joe Biden, who Democrats constantly remind us rode the subway to Congress and is therefore, bona-fide working class, has swung into damage control. Here he is on ABCNEWS saying that he and President do not think the Tea Party is a racist organization.

A word of advice for the Left: someone once said, I am the wisest man alive, for I know one thing, and that is that I know nothing.  Those words were uttered by none other than Socrates.

Christopher Hitchens and Prayer

After reportedly being diagnosed with esophageal cancer, famous atheist and intellectual Christopher Hitchens is asked in this interview by Hugh Hewitt how he feels about believers praying for his recovery:

HH: The number of people I’m sure who are praying for you, including people who come up to me and ask me to tell you that, people like Joseph Timothy Cook, how are you responding to them, given your famous atheism?

CH: Well look, I mean, I think that prayer and holy water, and things like that are all fine. They don’t do any good, but they don’t necessarily do any harm. It’s touching to be thought of in that way. It makes up for those who tell me that I’ve got my just desserts. It’s, I’m afraid to say it’s almost as well-founded an idea. I mean, I don’t, they don’t know whether prayer will work, and they don’t know whether I’ve come by this because I’m a sinner.

HH: Oh, I...has anyone actually said that to you?

CH: Yeah, oh yes.

HH: Oh, my gosh. Forgive them. Well…

CH: Well, I mean, I don’t mind. It doesn’t hurt me. But for the same reason, I wish it was more consoling. But I have to say there’s some extremely nice people, including people known to you, have said that I’m in their prayers, and I can only say that I’m touched by the thought. [emphasis added]

Is Obama A Socialist?

The Corner  points out that the majority of likely voters describe Obama as a socialist in a new poll from Democracy Corps, James Carville's outfit:

• When LV were asked what words or phrases describe Obama they responded in the following way:
• Too liberal (describes well/does not describe well):  57 / 38
• A big spender (describes well/does not describe well): 62 / 38
• A socialist (describes well/does not describe well):  55 / 39

The sample size was 1,001 2008 voters.  When including Independents that lean Democrat, 47% of those polled described themselves as a Democrat while 43% described themselves as Republican. 

61% of likely voters say the country is on the wrong track versus 31% that say it's on the right track.  Total approval rate of Obama is 45% while 51% disapprove.

So the description of Obama as a socialist is not a fringe or Tea Party "extremist" opinion as often described by liberals and media pundits.

So is Obama a socialist?  The term "socialist" conjures up specific connotations in many American minds.  Socialism is often reduced to Marxism or Leninism.  As Johan Goldberg notes in this debate with David Frum on whether Obama is a socialist, Americans go into Cold War mode hearing the term.  Goldberg correctly notes Americans will "flip the safety off our rifles" to fight some mysterious bogeyman who will come to our house in the middle of the night and confiscate all our private property, or worse--throw us in some sort of gulag.

In Goldberg's Commentary piece, What Kind of Socialist is Barack Obama?, he describes socialism as being much broader than just Marxism, and notes it exists in many different forms:

As mentioned above, one of the key liberal techniques for fending off accusations of socialism, and discrediting those who make the charge, is to equate Marxism with socialism and then insist (often correctly) that since liberals aren’t Marxists, anyone who says liberals are socialists is a fool or a partisan ideologue. But socialism preceded Marxism, and socialism has survived Marxism, in part because Marxism was subjected to a real-world test for nearly a century and failed on an epic scale. Soviet revolutionaries did not engage in Fabian incrementalism; they got their country and their empire and their worldwide movement, and they worked their will without opposition.

The contribution Marxism made to the socialism from which it arose was to offer a pseudo-scientific gloss to the ill-defined urges and impulses of those who despised the rising system of capitalism and the growing middle class to which it gave birth. Because Marxism was taken seriously as an economic theory for so long, it gave socialism an empirical patina that it otherwise lacked. But at its core, socialism remains a rationalization for a fundamentally tribal and premodern understanding of economics.

Indeed, the economic aspect of socialism was itself something of an afterthought. The French Revolution was the birthplace of socialism, yet the unjust distribution of economic resources was not then its immediate concern. “Whereas the core issue for the Americans in 1776 was political legitimacy,” Muravchik writes, “for the French in 1789 it was social status.” Overturning the privileges of the aristocracy drove the French quest for égalité. To that end, the French Revolutionaries actually championed the imperative of private property for all citizens. Even the constitution of 1793, which Muravchik calls “the formal expression of the most extreme phase of the Revolution,” held private property to be sacrosanct.

It was the revolutionary rabble-rouser Francois-Noël Babeuf who first asserted in 1794 that true equality would be impossible without the abolition of private property. The pursuit of private wealth was simply the means of replacing one aristocracy with another, he argued. The true promised land required abolishing such distinctions, inherited or earned. Babeuf’s “Conspiracy of Equals”—a precursor to Lenin’s revolutionary avant-garde—sought to “remove from every individual the hope of ever becoming richer, or more powerful, or more distinguished by his intelligence.” The goal, according to the Manifesto of the Equals, was the “disappearance of boundary-marks, hedges, walls, door locks, disputes, trials, thefts, murders, all crimes, courts, prisons, gallows, penalties, envy, jealousy, insatiability, pride, deception, duplicity, in short, all vices.” To fill that void, “the great principle of equality, or universal fraternity would become the sole religion of the peoples.” Say what you will about such an agenda, it is certainly not focused on empirical economic theory.

Yet because the popular connotations of socialism persist, it's not polite in American politics to label someone a socialist, even if it's accurate.  For if you're around liberals, someone will inevitable bring up the specter of McCarthyism. But McCarthyism is non sequiter; while there are plenty of demagogues throughout the political spectrum, conservatives like Goldberg are not asking socialists to testify in front of Congress on their loyalty to the US, nor are they calling on them to step down from public office (see self-declared democratic socialist Senator from Vermont, Bernie Sanders), nor are they advocating these political parties be banned (the key distinction being made between those who seek a violent overthrow of the US government, aka revolution, and those who reject such an approach, which describes most socialists today as I will outline below). Moreover, the international context has changed since the days of McCarthy; we're no longer locked in a Cold War with the evil empire.

Obama is not a traditional Marxist-Leninist. Both men advocated revolution of the working class to overthrow the bourgeoisie. In 1899, a debate was ignited among socialists and communists that would later lead to a split between them.  Edward Bernstein, a colleague of Fredrich Engels, published  Evolutionary Socialism.  His critique of The Communist Manifesto lead social democrats to discuss the possibility of a gradual transformation of capitalism into socialism through democratic means rather than through the communist method of revolution. The formal break eventually lead to the establishment of Socialist International, which convened in 1951 to sign the Frankfurt Declaration of Principles. These principles repudiate Communism as establishing a single party dictatorship. Socialist International sees itself as being a tradition of democratic socialists, in order to achieve a social democracy.


Obama is rather, in the spectrum of a social democrat or a democratic socialist. Academics will quibble over the difference between the two movements, and there are variances  depending on the politics of the country one resides in, but they both generally reject the use of violence and revolution to overthrow the capitalist system.  They instead, prefer gradual and incrementalist reforms of the capitalist economy. Where the differences arise is that some social democrats and democratic socialists acknowledge the necessary existence of capitalism as a utilitarian model to determine consumer demand for goods.   While this position stirs controversy with some more orthodox members, Socialist International lists as its principles under the section Economic Democracy:

3. Socialist planning can be achieved by various means. The structure of the country concerned must decide the extent of public ownership and the forms of planning to apply.
4. Public ownership can take the form of the nationalisation of existing private concerns, municipal or regional enterprise, consumers’ or producers’ cooperatives.
These various forms of public ownership should be regarded not as ends in themselves but as means of controlling basic industries and services on which the economic life and welfare of the community depend, of rationalising inefficient industries or of preventing private monopolies and cartels from exploiting the public.
5. Socialist planning does not presuppose public ownership of all the means of production. It is compatible with the existence of private ownership in important fields, for instance in agriculture, handicraft, retail trade and small and middle-sized industries. The state must prevent private owners from abusing their powers. It can and should assist them to contribute towards increased production and well-being within the framework of a planned economy. [emphasis added]
6. Trade unions and organisations of producers and consumers are necessary elements in a democratic society; they should never be allowed to degenerate into the tools of a central bureaucracy or into a rigid corporative system. Such economic organisations should participate in shaping general economic policy without usurping the constitutional prerogatives of parliament.
7. Socialist planning does not mean that all economic decisions are placed in the hands of the Government or central authorities. Economic power should be decentralised wherever this is compatible with the aims of planning.
8. All citizens should prevent the development of bureaucracy in public and private industry by taking part in the process of production through their organisations or by individual initiative. The workers must be associated democratically with the direction of their industry.

In Europe, the socialist label is hardly shocking; it's seen as an accurate acknowledgment of one's political views.  Indeed, many social democratic parties in Europe belong to the Socialist International. Its declaration of principles include:

10. The Socialist International was founded a hundred years ago in order to coordinate the worldwide struggle of democratic socialist movements for social justice, human dignity and democracy. It brought together parties and organisations from different traditions which shared a common goal: democratic socialism. Throughout their history, socialist, social democratic and labour parties have stood for the same values and principles.

11. Today the Socialist International combines its traditional struggle for freedom, justice and solidarity with a deep commitment to peace, the protection of the environment, and the development of the South. All these issues require common answers. To this end, the Socialist International seeks the support of all those who share its values and commitment. 
   

Its website lists its members to include the social democratic parties of Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Hungary, Switzerland, and Estonia.  Labor party members come from countries like Great Britain, Ireland, Israel, Poland, Norway, and the Netherlands.  And of course, you have the socialist parties of France, Spain, Portugal, Luxembourg, and Democratic Socialists of the USA.  One only need to browse its website to see the photos of many prominent European and British politicians and heads of state at its conferences.

Social Democrat party platforms in Europe typically include a nationalized or heavily government regulated health care system, major redistribution of income, free universal education, and a significant role of labor groups in society to achieve common ownership of goods or at least heavily influence on the means of production.  The latter are all in line with Obama's stated goals in his own words: he seeks redistribution of income for the purposes of "spreading the wealth";  he is a professed proponent of a single payer health care system; he envisions a large role for labor unions in American society to "leverage" against businesses. He's already made the federal government the sole lender of college  loans when he signed the health care bill.  The National Journal in 2007  shows Obama's voting record as a US Senator is to the left of socialist Senator Bernie Sanders.  This is not to say any garden-variety American liberal is a socialist, or those that seek to regulate the market are socialists, or that is one supports a safety net in society that makes them a socialist either.  But if one seeks to emulate social democracies in Europe such as the Scandinavian states, then one in heavily in line with current socialist positions and ideology.


So it is in this mold I describe Obama as a socialist. It's not surprising he surrounds himself with socialists like Carol Browner, Assistant to the President for Energy and Climate Change, once a member of Socialist International, or Green Jobs Czar Van Jones, who described himself as a communist. Other far left folks in his administration also include the new head of Center for Medicare and Medicaid, Dr Berwick, who said he loved the British NHS and believes excellent health care by definition, is redistribution from the rich to the poor. Then there's his Science Czar, John Holdren, who once advocated for coercive measures of sterilization to curb world population growth. He also advocated for a Planetary Regime to redistribute all natural resources, and allocate population growth limits to different countries. Then you have the State Department's legal advisor Harold Koh, who adheres to the law theory of transnationalism. Simply put, a transnationalist seeks to import international law into the American legal system to override domestic law. And the list goes on.

Many see political gain from using the term "socialist" to describe Obama. Yet there is a long history of socialists and communists in the American intellectual tradition, from Eugene V. Debs who ran for President five times, to Margaret Sanger who advocated for women to have access to birth control, to union founders Mother Jones and Daniel de Leon, civil rights activist William Du Bois, Helen Keller who was deaf and blind yet still advocated for women's birth control and trade unionism, and novelists Upton Sinclair, Jack London, and Sinclair Lewis.  And in recognizing this history, conservatives should not throw out the term socialist to shut down debate. Clearly, some ideas from socialists have became integrated in the American political fabric.  Instead, conservatives should discuss socialism as a starting point to clarify one's orientation so they can debate them transparently in the open.  Driving socialists underground makes it much more difficult to debate them in the marketplace of ideas where voters can decide on the merits of a social democracy, a capitalist society, or a mixed economy like the one we currently have. If conservatives are confident their philosophy is the correct one, they should not be afraid of the debate.

Tearing Down American Exceptionalism: It's NASA's Turn

The 4th of July is a uniquely American holiday.  It's more than just celebrating our independence; it's about the historic character of this country aspiring to higher ideals.  So it was quite a stunner to finish up the quintessential American holiday by reading that NASA will not only no longer focus on space exploration, but instead, as described by NASA administrator, Charles Bolden, Pres Obama has asked him to focus on three things:

"When I became the NASA administrator -- or before I became the NASA administrator -- he charged me with three things. One was he wanted me to help re-inspire children to want to get into science and math, he wanted me to expand our international relationships, and third, and perhaps foremost, he wanted me to find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science ... and math and engineering," Bolden said in the interview.

Bolden went on further:

He said the United States is not going to travel beyond low-Earth orbit on its own and that no country is going to make it to Mars without international help. 

The WH has stood by his comments.  Bolden is already catching flak from the former administrator of NASA, Michael Goodwin:

NASA ... represents the best of America. Its purpose is not to inspire Muslims or any other cultural entity," Michael Griffin, who served as NASA administrator during the latter half of the Bush administration, told FoxNews.com....

Griffin said Tuesday that collaboration with other countries, including Muslim nations, is welcome and should be encouraged -- but that it would be a mistake to prioritize that over NASA's "fundamental mission" of space exploration

. 

"If by doing great things, people are inspired, well then that's wonderful," Griffin said. "If you get it in the wrong order ... it becomes an empty shell." 

Griffin added: "That is exactly what is in danger of happening." 

He also said that while welcome, Muslim-nation cooperation is not vital for U.S. advancements in space exploration. 

"There is no technology they have that we need," Griffin said.

Obama's thinking is symptomatic of postmodern multiculturalism.  Multiculturalism
originated from the progressive movement on the Left, and has ideological similarities to socialism.  Socialism started as a way to level the economic playing field for different classes in society.  When the brutalities of socialism in the USSR and China came to light, it largely fell out of favor. However, committed leftists latched onto multiculturalism, a relativistic philosophy that carried to its logical conclusion, is anti-reason.  Antonio Gramsci, a committed Italian Communist, observed that the failure of socialist revolutionary fervour to take root among the proletariat was due largely to western cultural hegemony.  This cultural unity lent itself to support the capitalist status-quo, since the majority of the population adopted the same systematic beliefs, norms and values. Only by attacking this hegemony could socialism finally prevail.  How would this western-centric ideological hegemony be countered?  Enter multiculturalism.

Multiculturalism seeks to level the playing field between cultures by pretending there is nothing uniquely superior or special about any one nation-state or civilization (definitely not western civilization, which is seen as racist).  Instead, each society should accept many cultures that retain their own cultural autonomy, in contrast to assimilation and social integration.  As if redistribution of income isn't enough, Obama seeks to amazingly, socially engineer the choice of participants in space exploration. This goes beyond the more benign multiculturalist goal of celebrating a particular group's scientific achievements.  NASA will no longer represent rugged American individualism in exploration--it must now be a collectivist effort.  Not only is he attempting to change the individualistic ethos of American culture through what's seen as a unique American institution of NASA, he also seeks how to allocate space exploration by swearing off any US space exploration outside low earth orbit UNLESS other countries can participate in it so we do not make them feel inferior.  This politicizes science and impedes its progress by seeking buy-in from the collective, which often results in the lowest common denominator in thinking.  This is a consequence of socialism and multiculturalism:  these ideologies specifically penalize success whether in the workplace, or in celebrating a culture's achievements.     

It's a fatal utopian vision that belongs to the no-borders crowd; multiculturalists and socialists believe the nation-state is just a stepping stone that will eventually be overcome to a more perfect, collectivist society.  Marxists like Eric Hobsbawm seek to deny any useful identity  to the nation-state, instead describing it as a social abstraction. The nation-state is simply an "imagined community" the elites found useful to construct given their historical circumstances at the time.  While there are historical accuracies within Hobsbawm's description, such reductionist thinking is quite destructive.  It ultimately undermines the strengths of a civilization, recognizing little value in its very existence.  And in this light, the idea of independent frontiersmen of American history, the pioneers, explorers, and yes, astronauts, are outdated.  One must instead succumb to the stifling conformity of an ideological mantra that repeats everyone, all cultures, are equal in condition, no matter what experience may tell one otherwise, or whatever the consequences.  Space as the final frontier, be damned.

NYers Say No To Mosque Near Ground Zero

It's not even close:

New York City voters oppose 52 - 31 percent a proposal by a Muslim group to build a mosque and cultural center two blocks from Ground Zero, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today. Another 17 percent are undecided.

Opinions about the proposed mosque range from 46 - 36 percent support among Manhattan voters to 73 - 14 percent opposition in Staten Island, the independent Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pe-ack) University poll finds.

Opposition to the mosque is 56 - 31 percent among white voters, 45 - 34 percent among black voters and 60 - 19 percent among Hispanic voters. Opposition among religious groups is 66 - 22 percent among Jews, 66 - 24 percent among white Catholics and 46 - 36 percent among white Protestants.

Opposition cuts across both parties, although Republicans are more likely to be opposed than Democrats. The majority of Independents are opposed.  Don't count on the so-called elites to reverse course.

Can Athesists Be Moral?

The answer is yes, non-believers can act morally. However, Assistant Village Idiot points out that the morality of hard-core atheistic-Darwinists is not grounded in any foundation since according to this view, human beings exist due to accidental and fortuitous circumstances. Thus, our morality is a by-product of our imperative to survive:

Do you begin to see why the nonbeliever’s insistence that they can be just as moral as the next guy is true, but it is a truth with no value? It helps the group to survive, but really, why should we care? It helps us to survive individually, but why should we care about that, either? It’s an opposable thumb, the loss of a tail, a purple flower. ..

This morality protects its young, but what would be the objection the morality which ate its young? By habit and training that feels very wrong to us, and nonbelievers are as quick as anyone to say it is simply wrong. They don’t do those things, and it is moral that they don’t. They can avoid those things as well as believers.

Perhaps this whole picture is correct, and all of morality simply a dorsal fin. But if so, then everything is permitted, just as Dostoevsky said. That the current crop of nonbelievers don’t eat their children should be a matter of great rejoicing. But what if next year’s crop slips into some other odd branch of this survival tool we call morality and develops post hoc reasoning why eating Junior is okay? It’s no good to even comment on whether that would be moral or immoral. Everything is permitted.

The Christian answer, as I have suggested, may be no truer than the others. It may be just one more variation of photosynthesis. I offer here no defense of that. Perhaps there is some other explanation outside of mankind – no, it would have to be outside of life itself – no wait, it would have to be outside of this accidental planet and even the accidental universe – that would make something in morality real, and true, and valuable. But absent any such, there isn’t anything that qualifies as morality – and there is simply no meaning beyond the masturbatory for a nonbeliever to give himself any credit for having one equal to the believer’s.

In other words, why is survival in and of itself of the group or individual of the most paramount value if there's no meaning to our existence in the universe? If we're just the sum of our parts, a bag of cells with no soul, why does maximizing survival for all individuals matter? What is the foundation to the non-believer's morality? The answer is there can be none; the logical extension of atheism eventually leads to the rationalization of taboo cultural restrictions.

The Longest Hatred: Anti-Semitism

The WH should marginalize Helen Thomas for her awful anti-Semitic remarks (see below).  Her apology is not adequate and does not make up for her remarks.  Whatever one thinks of Israeli policy towards the Palestinians, it does not justify hateful anti-Semitism.  While bigots have the right to free speech like everyone else, failure to marginalize such views will only encourage the anti-Semities to disrupt a more rational discussion on Israeli policy, and US relations towards Israel.






Anti-semitism is the one of the oldest prejudices around, and as the Optimistic Conservative points out, based on the victim narrative.  This narrative basically states all our problems are the Jews' fault, whether they are a minority or the state of Israel. Another popular variant that is often invoked domestically involves the conspiratorial claim that powerful Jewish lobbyists are controlling our foreign policy (for an excellent refutation of the Israel Lobby myth, see former Secretary of State George P. Shultz).  Some of the rhetoric coming out of the MidEast is no different than Nazi Germany's propaganda against the Jews during WWII.  Worldwide, anti-Semitism has grown into a worrisome trend, and morally bankrupt politicians excuse this rhetoric and worse, violence against Jews since, they claim, look at Israel's policy towards the Palestinians. This is akin to the logic that well, she had a mini-skirt on so she can't blame her attacker from raping her. We see this same logic from those on the far Left who believe that America had it coming on 9-11 due to our foreign policy.  To question the victim's judgement is one thing, but to shrug your shoulders and imply she deserved the attack shifts blame to the victim and exculpates the attacker from his crime.  This is what anti-Semitism does; it encourages the metaphorical raping of Israel and Jews in general.

Recent anti-Semities have learned to hide their bigotry through one-sided criticism of Israeli policies while nary a word on Palestinian terrorism or genocidal rhetoric against Jews.  That does not mean criticism of Israeli policies itself is anti-Semitic, but those who want an honest critique of Israeli policies to be part of our political discourse should agree that anti-Semities should not be invited to that discussion since there's no way for rationality to prevail when its permeated with bigotry.  It's difficult to tell at first who the anti-Semities are, but they always reveal themselves in time.  Helen Thomas can continue to squawk and write about other issues, but regarding Israel, the WH Press Secretary should refuse to take any questions from her.  For when she discusses Israel, we know where her views come from, just as we tune out Pat Buchnanan when he discusses Jews (or come to think of it, any minorities).  As the Corner over at NRO pointed out, this incident brings to mind Andrew Klavan's newest video when he asks "You know what's great about anti-Semitism? It lets you know exactly who the dirtbags are."


The WH should not give any journalist, no matter how distinguished, a platform to spew bigotry.  For if the WH doesn't push back on this type of rhetoric, expect the anti-Semities to be emboldened. Their cacophony will doom any honest or rational discussion of US-Israeli relations.

Update: Helen Thomas just announced her retirement. One of the better recent decisions she has made; it's in the best interest for everyone to include Thomas. Any shred of credibility she had as a journalist is gone.

Muslims on Why No Mosque Should be Built Near Ground Zero

From the founder and President of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, M. Zuhdi Jasser, M.D. Dr Jasser served in the US Navy for 11 years as a doctor, and became a Lt CMDR. As a devout Muslim dedicated to contesting the ideas of political Islam and organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, he explains why the huge mosque the Cordoba initiative run by Iman Rauf wants to build near ground zero is wrong in the NY Post today:

I am an American Muslim dedicated to defeating the ideology that fuels global Islamist terror -- political Islam. And I don't see such a "center" actually fighting terrorism or being a very "positive" addition near Ground Zero, no matter how well intentioned.

To put it bluntly, Ground Zero is the one place in America where Muslims should think less about teaching Islam and "our good side" and more about being American and fulfilling our responsibilities to confront the ideology of our enemies.

Khan and Rauf avoid discourse on reform and political Islam. Instead, they simply give us the familiar, too vague condemnation of "extremism and violence." They seem to conveniently view 9/11, al Qaeda and every manifestation of militant Islamism as simply a public-relations problem for "Muslims in the West." Imam Rauf has even gone so far as to bizarrely say that the 9/11 terrorists were "not Muslims."

As controversy over the project has become heated, Rauf's Web site has scrubbed the term "mosque" in exchange for "center" -- again missing the boat of why so many Americans are offended. (Meanwhile, the plans of another local Islamic group to rebuild near Ground Zero only added to the quandary.)

This is not about the building of a mosque or a religious facility. It is not about religious freedom. This is about a deep, soulful understanding of what happened to our country on 9/11.

When Americans are attacked, they come together as one, under one flag, under one law against a common enemy that we are not afraid to identify. Religious freedom is central to our nation - and that is why the location of this project is so misguided. Ground Zero is purely about being American. It can never be about being Muslim.

The World Trade Center site represents Ground Zero in America's war against radical Islamists who seek to destroy the American way of life. It is not ground zero of a cultural exchange.

He's not the only Muslim speaking out against this.  Here's former terrorist Walid Shoebat, who had fought for the PLO in his youth. He has since converted to Christianity, and reveals disturbing contradictions between Ground Zero mosque founder Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf’s English statements and his Arabic comments. At about 5:30 minutes in the video, Shoebat tells us establishing a mosque on any property is viewed to Muslims as being a Muslim embassy, and non-believers are not permitted to dismantle it.





Or as Robert Spencer of Jihad Watch points out:

The placement of mosques throughout Islamic history has been an expression of conquest and superiority over non-Muslims. Muslims built the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock on the site of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem in order to proclaim Islam’s superiority to Judaism. The Umayyad Mosque in Damascus was built over the Church of St. John the Baptist, and the Hagia Sophia Cathedral in Constantinople was converted into a mosque, to express the superiority of Islam over Christianity. Historian Sita Ram Goel has estimated that over 2,000 mosques in India were built on the sites of Hindu temples for the same reason...

The possibility of deception cannot here be ruled out, given that Abdul Rauf has a history of making smooth statements that appear to endorse American principles and values, when on closer examination he is upholding Sharia law, denigrating freedom of speech, and advocating against anti-terror measures.

At minimum, Imam Rauf is duplicitous. At worst, he seeks to undermine our ideals by using our open society and democratic process to impose a type of sharia law for Muslims in America.

Note to White House: Dump your Counterterroism Advisor

In an exercise of post-modernist self-denial, Fox News reported that John Brennan, the WH counterterrorism advisor, claims Al Qaeda is not Islamic and that we shouldn't refer to terrorists as jihadists because "jihad is a legitimate tenet of Islam." He believes associating them with Islam is counterproductive:

"Moreover, describing our enemy in religious terms would lend credence to the lie propagated by Al Qaeda and its affiliates to justify terrorism -- that the United States is somehow at war against Islam," he said. 

While most Americans do not wish to go to war with all Muslims, and we know that these jihadist groups do not represent all Muslims, pointing out there is a connection between political Islam and terrorism is not anti-Muslim.  It's an objective observation of some of the dynamics in the Middle East that the sooner we recognize and speak honestly about, the more effectively we're able to formulate a foreign policy that de-legitimizes these ideologies, just as we waged and won an ideological war over Communism. We need to take care not to conflate it with all of Islam, but we must identify the major threads to spark an honest discussion of it.  It'll be tough to do given Arab societies operate mostly as an honor society, not prone to self-refection or constructive criticism.  

John Brennan may think by cleverly disassociating Islam with Al Qaeda or any terrorist organization, he is in fact sapping those groups of their Islamic credentials. But his incorrect diagnosis of the problem disarms counterterrorist analysts of the tools they need to identify potential threats to the US.  Where does one focus their analytical efforts if there is no connection between Islam, jihad, and terrorism? Brennan names Al Qadea and their affiliates as our enemy, and that's a start, but should we not be proactive in identifying other potential jihadist threats rather than be solely reactive to an unquestionably important, but known variable? What about examining certain mosques not affiliated with Al Qaeda that may be the hotbed of Islamic extremism?

Moreover, what's dangerous about this view is that it reinforces in many Muslims that there is no need to scrutinize how commonly held interpretations of Islamic law can lead the terrorists to commit such acts. Jihad Watch refutes the myth there is no connection with jihad does not connate warfare:

It doesn't just "connote" warfare. It juridically means warfare, according to Islamic texts and teachings. There is not a single traditional school of Islamic jurisprudence that does not teach, as part of the obligation of the Muslim community, warfare against and the subjugation of unbelievers.

Jihad Watch goes on to list the major schools of Islamic jurisprudence and summarizes their interpretation of jihad.

But according to Brennan, there is no association with Islam and you see, the 9-11 highjackers, most of who were well-educated and came from middle class families, since violent extremists are really victims of forces outside their control:

During a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, John Brennan described violent extremists as victims of "political, economic and social forces," but said that those plotting attacks on the United States should not be described in "religious terms." 

While Brennan is trying to tamp down on the perception in many Muslim countries that the west is engaged in a war against Islam, he ends up completely inverting moral logic by calling extremists "victims." Additionally, by denying any connection with political Islam and terrorism, he ignores the dynamics that will enable many more Arabs to be brought up believing jihad is warfare against non-Muslims. Ignoring these dynamics will not simply make them go away. It's an exercise in avoidance; denial has a way of eventually coming home to roost.

Another observation: Brennan has gone native, and has drank the multi-cultural propaganda kool-aid.  He started out his career as a political officer in Saudi Arabia, and his spent much of his CIA time in southwest Asia, becoming the Middle East station chief in 1996.  He's asserted that American Muslims are "100% behind US anti-terrorism efforts" (what about the shooter at Ft Hood? The Times square bomber? The underwear bomber?).  He even called Jerusalem "Al Quds" at a WH sponsored event at the Islamic Center at New York University. While he was undoubtedly trying to ingratiate himself with his Muslim audience, by calling Jerusalem "Al Quds," he associates Jerusalem with Muslim ownership of it.

While all of the above is more than enough to question his objectivity as the chief counterterroism advisor to the President, perhaps what's more problematic is his penchant for making dubious statements for the purposes of political damage control such as his assertion that Gitmo recidivism rates at "twenty percent is not that bad," when he compared terrorism with rank and file crimes and the recidivism rate in American judicial system.  He also tried to disingenuously smear Congressional Republicans over their criticism of why the underwear bomber last Christmas was read his Miranda rights, and leaked information that the suspect was cooperating just after FBI Director Robert Muller told Sen Kit Bond (R) that it was essential to keep his cooperation secret so they could carry out other counter-terrorist actions.  When Brennan steps out in public and speaks of terrorism, he owes the American people straight-talk about the threat this country faces.  Yet he seems only interested in putting out political spin. 

Brennan has a long and distinguished career within the intelligence community, but as we've seen, he's very much a politically motivated animal. This, combined with his unwillingness to see any connection between Islam and Al Qadea or any other jihadi-inspired terrorist groups, calls into his question his competence.  The President must get an objective analysis of our adversaries, even if it's in contradiction to his world view. He requires this in order to ably defend this nation. John Brennan has shown himself to be a political hack.  The sooner the Obama administration gets rid of him, the better. If they keep him on, I can only assume it's because he's a sycophant reflective of the administration's own views.

The Multiculturalist View: Why not a Mosque by Ground Zero?

The NYC community board voted 29-1 in support of the a huge Muslim cultural center and mosque being built within 3 blocks of Ground Zero, with 9 members abstaining. Hotair has the background information on this developing story. Michelle Malkin's site shows a video of Debra Burlingame at the meeting with the community board, who claims the leader behind the Cordoba Initiative who wants to build this mosque, Iman Feisal Abdul Rauf, is a supporter of sharia law. Rauf denies this center will be a mosque in a NY Daily News opinion piece, saying it will be open to all, although it will have a separate Muslim prayer room.

Burlingham disputes Imam Raul's assertion that the cultural center is not a mosque:

Debra met with the Soho Properties partners, Sharif and Sammy El-Gamal, owners of the corporation that bought the property with $4.85 million in cash. They refused to disclose their investors “on the advice of our attorneys.” According to Debra: “They showed us a professional rendering of the plans. It’s not a 13-story building. It’s a 15-story building and the mosque, accommodating 2,000 congregants, will be on the TOP FLOOR, with a commanding view of the entire Ground Zero site. On the ground floor, clearly printed, were these words: “Elevator to mosque.”  

Just who is Imam Raul? Hannity examines his views more in depth with Burlingame:

Rauf also writes a blog on Faith for the Washington Post.  In a post dated April 29, 2009, in a piece titled, "How Islamic Law Can Work," he dubiously compares Islamic law to the Declaration of Independence and insists all that is wrong with Sharia is the penal code which is a cultural holdover that should be updated. Tellingly, he writes:

What Muslims want is to ensure that their secular laws are not in conflict with the Quran or the Hadith, the sayings of Muhammad.

Read it for yourself. He's also been critical of the west, seemingly blaming us for 9-11:

Rauf has often directly contradicted his seemingly tolerant and peace-loving pronouncements with harsh, antagonistic assessments of the U.S. In his May 7 Khutbah (Muslim sabbath sermon), delivered at 1:00 p.m. at 45 Park Place in Manhattan, Rauf implied that Muslims did not perpetrate 9/11 at all, according to writer Madeline Brooks, who attended (26): “Some people say it was Muslims who attacked on 9/11 … ” he stated, before trailing off into another topic.

He also expressed this view in an interview with 60 Minutes aired on Sept. 30, 2001 as well (27):

The attacks were “a reaction against the U.S. government politically, where we espouse principles of democracy and human rights, [yet] … ally ourselves with oppressive regimes in many of these countries. … [U.S.] policies were an accessory to the crime that happened.

Not the crimes Muslims committed: “the crime that happened.” He continued:

In … the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden was made in the USA (28).

Here are his criticisms of the west from an overview of one of his books on the American Society for Muslim Advancement website, an organization he founded. Read his interview in the Sydney Morning Herald, where he claims the US must apologize to Muslims for our misdeeds, and said it was Christians who first started mass casualty attacks with WWII.  Interestingly, in another WaPo blog piece, he cheers on the Dutch government's decision to encourage media companies not to air Geert Wilder's film that is critical of Islam.  But as Bret Stephens in today's WSJ points, out, tolerance can't be a one-way street. Or as Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury over at Blitz puts it:

To my personal opinion, this mosque is an insult to the memory of 9/11, comparing the idea to building a German cultural centre at Auschwitz. I really fail to understand as to why those Manhattan politicians and Community Board 1 are supporting this ridiculous idea of constructing the mosque on the Ground Zero site.

New Yorkers seem overwhelmingly opposed to the plan, comparing its insensitivity to the German government opening, say, a Bach appreciation museum right outside the Auschwitz death camp, or Toyota opening a car factory by the Arizona Memorial on the island of Oahu.

On radio shows, families of 9/11 victims called in to condemn the plans as 'a slap in the face,' 'highly insensitive,' and 'a despicable attempt to claim victory at the site where so many innocent Americans died.'

Debra Burlingame, the sister of the American Airlines pilot whose jet was hijacked and flown into the Pentagon, is the founder of 9/11 Families for a Safe and Strong America. In a recent Fox News interview she said:

"The idea that you would establish a religious institution that embraces the very Shariah Law that terrorists point to as their justification for what they did … to build that where almost 3,000 people died, that is an obscenity to me."

Eminent writer Pamela Geller wrote, "recent history has shown that if you draw a picture of the Prophet of Islam or otherwise "insult" Islam, you'll have no shortage of offended Muslims lining up for an opportunity to stab you in the heart, behead you, rape your daughter or burn your house… so you'll have to forgive my tongue-in-cheek "confusion" that sensitive Muslims everywhere don't realize how offensive it is to build a huge mosque on the holy ground surrounding what was the World Trade Centre.

"The joke is, of course, that the people planning to build the 9/11 Mosque at Ground Zero knows exactly how offensive it will be.

"That's the idea. That's why they want to hold the grand opening on the tenth anniversary of the slaughter of 9/11.

"The proponents know that the building won't be seen by the Islamist fascists as a mere mosque: it will be a victory monument. A symbol of American submission. A vision of the progress of the worldwide Muslim Caliphate that is the Jihadist goal.

Perhaps what's most idiotic about this is how the multiculturalists' concern over diversity and tolerance doesn't extend to the 9-11 families' sensitivities:

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer said in a statement that by supporting the multi-faith community and cultural center, the board "sent a clear message that our city is one that promotes diversity and tolerance."

Stringer has been the target of disparaging remarks by Williams for supporting the plans and has defended his position and denounced offensive speech directed at him or at Muslims.

He said before the vote that he understood the sensitivities of the families of 9/11 victims.

"I don't think anybody wants to do anything to disrespect those families. They made the ultimate sacrifice," he said. "At the same time, we have to balance diversity and look for opportunities to bring different groups together." 

The mushy-mindedness of multiculturalism revealed--"tolerance" must be extended to those who are intolerant of having their Prophet insulted, and are unable to grasp why this may be offensive to the 9-11 families.  The uproar should at least give Mr Stringer pause that no, this will not heal wounds in anyway, but cause a lingering resentment among many New Yorkers, which can precipitate even more of backlash against Muslims.  Alarm News puts it this way:

Are there Muslims who don’t support this jihad? OF COURSE. And it is a travesty that these terrorists act in their name. But that does not mean that these terrorists acts are not tied to Islam. Ultimately they are, they are, they are, and saying so doesn’t mean that I hate Muslims who live peacefully and don’t want to see me dead. It is a fact that Islam is inextricably tied to the murder of 3000 people in this one attack, and to many more dead in others.

And that is why a mosque at Ground Zero is just unacceptable. It is one thing to celebrate and worship Islam 20 blocks away in either direction. It’s another to have it at the site where the slaughter of innocents took place in the name of Islam. It isn’t a sign of openness and understanding to put a mosque in this location. It is a prize to those who hate us, it is a monument to the side that won the battle that day.

The peaceful Muslims who have no quarrel with us? They should understand that this mosque should not be built on or very near this space. Choose another location, and let’s move on.

Multiculturalism and the Rejection of Modernity

As the Feds arrest 3 men while investigating the Times Square bombing,  Fouad Ajami's opinion piece in the WSJ this week opens with a quote from Sayyidd Qutb: "A Muslim has no nationality except his belief." The article is titled: Islam's Nowhere Men, and outlines the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism we face within our own borders that will only be exacerbated by multiculturalism:

In an earlier age—I speak here autobiographically, and not of some vanished world long ago but of the 1960s when I made my way to the United States—the world was altogether different. Mass migration from the Islamic world had not begun. The immigrants who turned up in Western lands were few, and they were keen to put the old lands, and their feuds and attachments, behind them. Islam was then a religion of Afro-Asia; it had not yet put down roots in Western Europe and the New World. Air travel was costly and infrequent.

The new lands, too, made their own claims, and the dominant ideology was one of assimilation. The national borders were real, and reflected deep civilizational differences. It was easy to tell where "the East" ended and Western lands began. Postmodernist ideas had not made their appearance. Western guilt had not become an article of faith in the West itself.

Nowadays the Islamic faith is portable. It is carried by itinerant preachers and imams who transmit its teachings to all corners of the world, and from the safety and plenty of the West they often agitate against the very economic and moral order that sustains them. Satellite television plays its part in this new agitation, and the Islam of the tele-preachers is invariably one of damnation and fire. From tranquil, banal places (Dubai and Qatar), satellite television offers an incendiary version of the faith to younger immigrants unsettled by a modern civilization they can neither master nor reject.

Yet many of our elites do not want to acknowledge the fact that many Muslims view Islam as their ultimate identity; they would rather turn to ridiculous moral equivocating by pointing out that Shahzad, after all, was under much stress because he had to foreclose on his home.  Or they dismiss him as a lone extremist, refusing to examine any pattern of homegrown attacks, despite the successful attack of Maj Hassan on a US army base, or Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the unsuccessful underwear bomber.  The media seems utterly incapable of harnessing our technological advantages to examine and thoughtfully debate Islamist ideology out in the open, for it undermines their cherished narrative of multiculturalism:  that all cultural values are equal and worthy in their own right, and no values need to be promoted over each other, certainly not the white man's values. The result of such thinking is ultimately destructive to the goal of tolerance; for the determined ideologues will fill the vacuum with their own ideology, dominating the apologists who no longer have a philosophical basis for defending their own values. Freedom of speech is muzzled--after all, why provoke an aggrieved minority with your racist outbursts?

Multiculturalism is a step backwards from the values of individual freedom and modernity; it provides a deterministic context to society based on a person’s ethnic or religious origins, or gender.  It excuses tribalistic loyalties under the guise of tolerance. The idea that no absolute values should dominate in any one society flies in the face of reason.

A rejection of multiculturalism is not a rejection of cultural diversity or tolerance.  On the contrary, recognizing the contributions of different cultures can enrich society and serve as a barrier to racism and xenophobia. Immigrants and different cultural groups in democratic societies are often changed by, and change society for the better.  However, it must be done in the context of individual freedom as a cornerstone for the person's relationship to their government and to each other;  this individual freedom allows us to chose our own cultural context within the values of our society. These open debates with a strong defense of our values are the only antidote to marginalizing the lure of extremist ideology.

But in the Left's view of multiculturalism, we are a flawed nation no more special than any other; our values are specific to white Anglo-Saxen Protestants and are racist towards other cultures.  Christian expression of any sort must be banned from the public square.  Our national identity is fragmented, leaving us with an empty quasi-capitialist materialism. And young men like Shahzad will continue to turn to fill that void with a radicalized belief system we dare not critique.

New Atheism: A Noisy Fad That Will Soon Pass?

David Hart over at First Things takes on well known atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, etc) and their literature, lamenting the lack of intellectual vigor applied to any of their arguments on the existence of God:

A truly profound atheist is someone who has taken the trouble to understand, in its most sophisticated forms, the belief he or she rejects, and to understand the consequences of that rejection. Among the New Atheists, there is no one of whom this can be said, and the movement as a whole has yet to produce a single book or essay that is anything more than an insipidly doctrinaire and appallingly ignorant diatribe.

If that seems a harsh judgment, I can only say that I have arrived at it honestly. In the course of writing a book published just this last year, I dutifully acquainted myself not only with all the recent New Atheist bestsellers, but also with a whole constellation of other texts in the same line, and I did so, I believe, without prejudice. No matter how patiently I read, though, and no matter how Herculean the efforts I made at sympathy, I simply could not find many intellectually serious arguments in their pages, and I came finally to believe that their authors were not much concerned to make any.

What I did take away from the experience was a fairly good sense of the real scope and ambition of the New Atheist project. I came to realize that the whole enterprise, when purged of its hugely preponderant alloy of sanctimonious bombast, is reducible to only a handful of arguments, most of which consist in simple category mistakes or the kind of historical oversimplifications that are either demonstrably false or irrelevantly true. And arguments of that sort are easily dismissed, if one is hardy enough to go on pointing out the obvious with sufficient indefatigability.

Read it all for his specific metaphysical and logical takedowns of atheism.  The demographic trends on religion point to an uncertain future for western civilization. I do not think atheism is a passing fad as there is some evidence it is growing in America, however, atheist cultures in Europe and Russia are in a demographic crisis and dying.  On the flip side, Christianity worldwide is the fastest growing religion, followed closely by Islam.  We can't afford to simply shrug our shoulders about Europe: it's the other half of Western civilization.  The question will be what will replace western cultures, or will these cultures do an about face and begin assimilating immigrants as they had in they had in the past, or continue down the path of morally relativistic policies like multiculturalism. If current demographic trends hold, it points to an increasing Islamization of Europe, and/or balkanization of European society.


Here's a bonus video of two intellectuals going at it on the utility of religion vs secularism.  Dinesh D'Souza, author of "What's So Great About Christianity," debating Christopher Hitchens, one of the more charismatic atheists, and author of "God is Not Great." While the video is from 2007, they continue to cover the same ground in current debates across college campuses.