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Ramesh Ponnuru also notices the Fribberish: "Re-read one of the lines in Frist's speech: '[Embryonic stem-cell research] should advance in a manner that affords all human life dignity and respect -- the same dignity and respect we bring to the table as we work with children and adults to advance the frontiers of medicine and health.' If it's going to be 'the same dignity and respect,' does that mean we're going to carve up, and kill, children and adults whenever there's a chance to make a medical advance?"
Wesley J. Smith, one of the most prolific and astute writers on the subject of embryonic stem cell research, is "not in the least surprised" by Frist's new position (and, in fact, Smith implies that it's not such a deviation from Frist's old position):
"Four years ago [Frist] stated he favored federal funding ESCR on condition that only leftover embryos from IVF treatments be used to derive the stem cell lines.
"But Frist's support for increased funding for ESCR was not supposed to be a stand-alone proposal. Rather, Frist envisioned the (then proposed) federal funding of ESCR as one part of an overarching federal policy that the good senator humbly labeled the 'Frist Principles.' Under the Frist Principles funding of ESCR was to be joined with the outlawing of all human cloning. In other words, Frist advocated trading greater funding for ESCR in return for a total ban on human somatic cell nuclear.
"One can agree or disagree with that position. But by explicitly not conditioning his support for expanded federal funding of ESCR with the passage of a cloning ban, Frist has surrendered his own supposed principles."
Without a personality transplant, the heart and lung transplant doc was probably never going to be president. This makes that just about certain. It ruins Frist with the all-important religious right, though it wins plaudits from Democrats. Whoopee.
Sizing Up the Debate
Speaking of embryonic stem cell research, Mona Charen says there is a battle between Democrats and Republicans that might be answered by science:
"[T]he argument we are engaged in concerns whether it is moral or ethical to use normal, fully functioning human embryos as mere research material. If we can produce embryonic stem cells some other way, we will be able to obtain the full benefits of medical research using these cells (bearing in mind that the potential for cures has been wildly oversold by advocates) without transgressing important moral boundaries. ...
"Advocates of unrestricted embryo destruction make two principal arguments; first, that 400,000 embryos left over from fertility treatments are going to be thrown away anyway, and second, that an embryo is not a human being because it is extremely tiny.
"As to the first argument, the RAND Law and Health Initiative examined the matter and found that while nearly 400,000 embryos remain frozen in fertility clinics around the nation, only about 11,000 of these have been designated for medical research. The vast majority are held for future family building. Of those 11,000, only about 65 percent would survive the thawing process, resulting in 7,334 embryos. Only about 25 percent of those would likely develop to the blastocyst stage, and even fewer would be able to produce stem cells. Honest proponents of embryonic research admit that cloning of embryos would probably be necessary to obtain the optimum number of stem cell lines.
"As to the second objection: Is size morally relevant? Is a 21-year-old man three times as precious as a 7-year-old boy? We can barely see an embryo with the naked eye, yet, as Dr. Hurlbut points out, from the vantage point of space, no human is visible on the Earth's surface. He quotes philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, who noted more than who noted more than 300 years ago that 'human existence is located between infinities -- between the infinitely large and the infinitely small.' Pascal continued, 'By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like a dot -- by thought I encompass the universe.'"
It Takes One to Know One
Do most liberal theologians still believe in God? Baptist minister Albert Mohler suggests that many don't in an interesting essay on essay on liberal theologians:
"'It takes one to know one,' quipped historian Eugene Genovese, then an atheist and Marxist. He was referring to liberal Protestant theologians, whom he believed to be closet atheists. As Genovese observed, 'When I read much Protestant theology and religious history today, I have the warm feeling that I am in the company of fellow nonbelievers.'
"Genovese's comment rang prophetic when Gerd Ludemann, a prominent German theologian, declared a few years ago, 'I no longer describe myself as a Christian.'..."
Ludemann, however, did not let this minor inconvenience stop him from making his living as a theologian--indeed, he went from strength to strength, producing some riveting rifts on the Christian gospel:
"Ludemann argued that Jesus was conceived as the product of a rape, and stated clearly that he could no longer 'take my stand on the Apostles' Creed' or any other historic confession of faith. He continued, however, to teach as an official member of the theology faculty--a post which requires the certification of the Lutheran church in Germany....
"Gerd Ludemann's theological search-and-destroy mission eventually ran him down a blind alley. As he told the Swiss Protestant news agency Reformierter Pressedienst, he has come to a new realization. 'A Christian is someone who prays to Christ and believes in what is promised by Christian doctrine. So I asked myself: 'Do I pray to Jesus? Do I pray to the God of the Bible?' And I don't do that. Quite the reverse.'
"Having come face to face with his unbelief, Ludemann has now turned his guns on church bureaucrats and liberal theologians. Many church officials, Ludemann claims, no longer believe in the creeds, but simply 'interpret' the words into meaninglessness. Liberal theologians, he asserts, try to reformulate Christian doctrine into something they can believe, and still claim to be Christians. He now describes liberal theology as 'contemptible.'"
LC would love to hear members of the liberal Jesus Seminar, which comes up with interpretations of Christ that seem aimed at the destruction of the gospel, think about Mohler's piece.
The Use of Force
Victor Davis Hanson, LC's favorite vineyard-owning classicist/historian, points out the contrast in hijacker Mohammed Atta's father Mohammed el-Amir's words immediately after Sept. 11--when the father declared his son could never have done something so awful--and today, when Mohammed el-Amir says he'd like to see more Sept. 11-style attacks.
Davis writes:
"The father of Mohammed Atta is emblematic of this crazy war, and we can learn various lessons from his sad saga.
"First, for all their braggadocio, the Islamists are cowardly, fickle, and attuned to the current political pulse.
"When the West is angry and liable to expel Middle Eastern zealots from its shores, strike dictators and terrorists abroad, and seems unfathomable in its intentions, the Islamists retreat. Thus a shaky al-Amir once assured us after 9/11 that his son was not capable of such mass murder.
"But when we seem complacent, they brag of more killing to come. Imagine an American father giving interviews from his apartment in New York, after his son had just blown up a shrine in Mecca, with impunity promising to subsidize further such terrorist attacks. If our government allowed him to rant and rave like that in such advocacy of mass murder, then we would be no better than he."
A Surprising Papacy?
Amy Welborn of Open Book has ferreted out a nice quote about Benedict's first hundred days from the liberal U.K. Tablet:
"John Paul II was perhaps the last Pope to embody the best of the Counter-Reformation tradition; Benedict XVI offers a link with far older roots of European civilization such as those of the Fathers of the Church, and of the founders of European monasticism, like his namesake. That may give him a deeper insight into the European soul than his predecessor, and suggests this could be a much more creative and surprising papacy than many might at first have expected."
Lose Your Faith--Get Rich
"Say you're a theologian in the religion business who's concluded that your company's oldest and most trusted product doesn't really exist. What do you do after the death of God?"
That is the godless theologian's conundrum as posed by Christianity Today. A theologian in such a spot might feign faith and wait for retirement or go into an allied line of work.
"Or," notes CT, "like Mark C. Taylor, you could become an entreprofessor, a broker in the emerging intellectual markets, trading in some of the hottest stocks in cultural capital. Pooling your dwindling fortunes in theology and philosophy with venture capital from postmodernism, you nimbly navigate the volatile and bubbling markets in profundity, hang out with the rich and famous, and after a while you're a pioneer in internet education, adulated in the Sunday New York Times. As long as the bubbles don't burst, and as long as the old business doesn't revive, you're as safe as a tenured academic-which, of course, you are already."
Taylor is author of "Confidence Games: Money and Markets in a World Without Redemption." For those of us who believe in a world with redemption, it sounds sort of awful:
"A consummate bourgeois bohemian (or Bobo, to borrow from David Brooks)," notes CT, "Taylor embodies the merger, or perhaps the now-unmistakable fraternity, of countercultural iconoclasm and late-capitalist business culture. (Call it the hipness unto death.) So even if it's read only by a few thousand academics, Confidence Games is symptomatic of the tony nihilism that pervades the American professional and managerial classes."
The bad thing about this kind of pseudo intellectualism is that it will (like so much in today's culture) be intensely appealing for the half-educated.
A final quote from CT:
"'Confidence Games' is certainly brisk and truthful enough to seduce the uninformed or the intellectually fashion-conscious. Religion, art, and economics form an 'intricate interplay.' (Stroke chin, furrow brow, don't insist on distinctions.)..."
Beware of People in Bulky Clothes
The minute I heard that "random searches" of New York subway riders would be conducted, I thought: Why bother? Random searches don't make us safer. Searches of people who arouse suspicion might save lives.
But searching suspicious people instead of grandmothers in wheel chairs would involve making generalizations--and making generalizations has been demonized as profiling. But a remarkable piece in today's New York Times (!) entitled "When the Profile Fits the Crime," Paul Sperry shows why profiling isn't racially based--and why it is needed:
"Young Muslim men bombed the London tube, and young Muslim men attacked New York with planes in 2001. From everything we know about the terrorists who may be taking aim at our transportation system, they are most likely to be young Muslim men. Unfortunately, however, this demographic group won't be profiled. Instead, the authorities will be stopping Girl Scouts and grannies in a procedure that has more to do with demonstrating tolerance than with protecting citizens from terrorism.
"Critics protest that profiling is prejudicial. In fact, it's based on statistics. Insurance companies profile policyholders based on probability of risk. That's just smart business. Likewise, profiling passengers based on proven security risk is just smart law enforcement.
"Besides, done properly, profiling would subject relatively few Muslims to searches. Elderly Muslim women don't fit the terrorist profile. Young Muslim men of Arab or South Asian origin do. But rather than acknowledge this obvious fact, the New York Police Department has advised subway riders to be alert for 'people' in bulky clothes who sweat or fiddle nervously with bags.
"Well, a lot of people wear bulky clothes."
Nunsense
The Anglican Church in England has decided that lady bishops are okay--they somehow seemed to think that ordaining women to the priesthood was one decision, while letting them be bishops was a second one.
In Loose Canon's mind this boils down to saying that a church can have invalidly ordained priests but it has to debate again before deciding to have invalidly ordained bishops.
If Anglicanism hasn't managed to be confused on its own, now Sister Joan Chittister (dubbed "Batty Old Chittister" by my favorite Anglican site) wades in to help them with a piece in the National Catholic Reporter.
Pontifications has a witty piece on Sister Joan's pontifications:
"Ever since John Paul II slammed the door shut on women's ordination with Ordinatio Sacerdotalis (1994), Chittister has been holding the candle for it even higher before many audiences--ones sprinkled, I notice in the pictures, with the same generous proportions of gray hair as she and most of the Catholic progressive wing. Her latest salvo has been launched into the current C of E flap about the looming prospect of women bishops, over which many traditionalist Anglican clergy are threatening, rather to her bemusement, to bolt to Rome. Freshly written for the National Catholic Reporter (known among non-cafeteria Catholics as 'The Distorter'), Chittister's piece is an object lesson in theological fatuity."
Blooming Church
The nomination of Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court has put a media spotlight on Little Flower Catholic Church in Bethesda, Md., where the judge and his family are communicants.
The Washington Post has an excellent piece on the altar boys and girls at the parish--they are numerous and well-trained. Interestingly, it didn't have any glaring errors (the author doesn't quite get the meaning of the word acolyte--it's still used and is an exact synonym for altar boy or, alas, girl).
Here's a snippet:
"Initially, says [Father] Stuart, 'the geography of the sanctuary, the significance of the symbols -- they didn't understand any of that.' Now, knowledge of traditions, such as the keeping of martyrs' relics, helps draw them in. 'They think it's cool that there are bones in the altar,' he says."
Quiz: Did Osama bin Laden Sign the Geneva Convention?
Loose Canon believes we should observe the Geneva Convention--with those who have signed the convention. But you don't observe agreements with those who have not entered into them.
Sounds like LC is belaboring the obvious, doesn't it? But by the time opponents of Supreme Court nominee Judge John Roberts finish muddying the discussion of his verdict in the Hamdan case, you'll need to be reminded of that very simple fact.
But, as an excellent piece on Tech Central Station by Michael Rosen points out, the Hamdan case is important for understanding what kind of justice Roberts will be. Salim Ahmed Hamdan was Osama bin Laden's personal driver and factotum. He was captured and sent to Guantanamo.
The U.S. was on the verge of trying Hamdan as an enemy combatant before a military commission when he filed a habeas corpus petition in federal court. This court said that Hamdan couldn't be tried with a conclusion that he was not a prisoner of war in accord with the Geneva convention.
But the Court of Appeals (on which Roberts sat) reversed the pro-Hamdan verdict on a number of points. It ruled that the Bush administration had the power to hold tribunals. The D.C. Circuit Court also held that the Geneva Convention does not apply to terrorist groups. They are not signatories and they do not operate in accord with the rules of war.
Tech Central notes:
"On the whole, the decision is eminently reasonable, although it will almost certainly be appealed to the Supreme Court (where a Justice Roberts would presumably have to recuse himself). It places all necessary power in the hands of the Executive Branch to carry out the war on terror. It refuses to reward terrorist groups the benefits of the international treaties and human rights they abjure. And it declines to interfere significantly with the military's establishment of tribunals designed to thwart and punish enemy combatants. At the same time, it continues to leave open the potential for relief in American civilian courts, reflecting the lengths to which our system travels to ensure justice for the accused, even if such justice would never be reciprocated by our enemies.
"By signing onto the ruling, Judge Roberts demonstrated that he can capably confront one of the most critical issues before the Court this decade: balancing the protection of fundamental liberties against the defense of our homeland.
"In short, if Roberts' foes are looking to Hamdan to undermine his nomination, they're barking up the wrong tree."
Is Diversity a One-Way Street?
Loose Canon, a genuine multiculturalist in that I appreciate the art and other achievements of various cultures, abhors multiculturalism--the notion that one can't make value judgments about cultures. The always iconoclastic Brit journalist and essayist Julie Burchill has some choice words on how the reactions to the London bombings have revealed the folly and one-sidedness of multiculturalism:
"[I]f this is such an unwelcoming, racist place to live, why do all races continue to flock here, as they do to evil, imperialist America?" asks Burchill.
"[T]here was something a little creepy about the way in which certain people went on about the diversity of the dead. For one thing, it showed a willingness to believe the best of the bombers: that if only they had known that they had murdered delegates of all creeds and colours, they wouldn't have done it.
"B-llsh-t. This sort of Islamofascist hates multiculturalism. Just you try building a church in Saudi Arabia! They won't even let our troops out there celebrate St. Valentine's Day. And as for any idea of the races being equal ... it is the Muslim world that keeps slavery alive, and Muslim governments, as in Sudan, that see nothing whatsoever wrong with ethnic cleansing. Recently a Muslim columnist wrote sorrowfully of how in her culture a Muslim girl marrying a black man was the greatest shame that could fall upon a family. So much for equality under Islam.
"There was also the implication from some quarters that if all the dead had been white Christians, the tragedy and abomination would have been somehow less. This seemed particularly inappropriate at a time when we were celebrating this country's wartime suffering and resilience. We were white then - but did we bleed less because of it?
"In an effort to fight racism, certain people like to pretend that there was no fun, no culture, no nobility here before multiculturalism - but there was. And to follow that weird logic, you'd also have to say that the Third World also had none of the above before the white man went there and interfered. And before you know it, you're making all sorts of mad claims."
Out of the Closet and Into the Frying Pan
Loose Canon is always distressed by the faulty logic by which gay people who oppose gay "marriage" are considered hypocritical. Therefore I was pleased to happen upon (via Relapsed Catholic) an anti-gay marriage piece by "Civilization and Its Enemies" author Lee Harris, who writes in the piece that he is gay. According to Relapsed Catholic, Harris "has decided to reveal his homosexuality now because gay marriage (and worse, he fears) is becoming the norm. He feels it is his duty to denounce it."
In his lengthy piece, Harris asks if tradition is valid in determining whether or not gay "marriage" should be introduced into society:
"Too often, cultural relativists cannot get beyond drawing this one conclusion, which they use as ammunition against traditionalists: 'The traditions you think of as having an absolute claim on the human race are merely those that happened to have come down to us, and which we have blindly accepted.' While this objection does follow logically from the cultural relativists' premise, so too--and just as logically--does this conclusion: If we cannot use our traditional ethos to attack another's, it is equally illegitimate for him to use his to attack ours. If our cultural relativists must forgive those who sacrifice their infants to Moloch, they must also forgive members of their own society who wish to abide by their own traditions. The cultural relativist's position, practiced consistently, collapses into reactionary obscurantism: All cultures, including his own, are incommensurable, so it is impossible to judge any of them by higher standards than those offered by the cultures themselves. The appeal to enlightened reason rings hollow, for if enlightened reason can guide us to condemn characteristics of our own culture by offering us a higher standard by which to judge them, the same standard may also be used to judge other cultures as well. The cultural relativist must make up his mind: Either there is a higher standard or there isn't. If there isn't, it is impossible to judge among competing traditions, as the cultural relativist argues; if there is, it is possible to judge tradition A to be superior to tradition B, provided A meets the higher standard and B does not....
"In the current debate on gay marriage, its advocates are cast in the role of long-oppressed suppliants demanding their just due. Indeed, the whole question is put in terms of their legal and moral rights, against which the opponents of gay marriage have nothing to offer but 'residual personal prejudice,' to recall again the memorable words of the chief justice of the Canadian Supreme Court.
"But it is a mistake to conflate the automatic with the irrational, since, as we have seen, an automatic and mindless response is precisely the mechanism by which the visceral code speaks to us. It triggers a rush of emotions because it is designed to do precisely this. Like certain automatic reflexes, such as jerking your hand off a burning stovetop, the sheer immediacy of our visceral response, far from being proof of its irrationality, demonstrates the critical importance, in times of peril and crisis, of not thinking before we act. If a man had to think before jumping out of the way of an onrushing car, or to meditate on his options before removing his hand from that hot stovetop, then reason, rather than being our help, would become our enemy. Some decisions are better left to reflexes - be these of our neurological system or of our visceral system..."
O, Israel
If any nation has suffered from terrorism, it is that of our elder brothers in the faith. Therefore, though I am a huge fan of Benedict XVI, I am very sorry that he omitted Israel's name in a prayer for countries hit by terrorists.
A Brit newspaper mapping terrorist attacks since 1993 made the same mistake. Conservative columnist Joel Morbray shows why the Palestinians who have sent suicide bombers into Israel most definitely belong on the map.
Speaking in Code
George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley has a piece ostensibly on "the faith of John Roberts"--it is actually on John Roberts and abortion. Here is the relevant portion in which a meeting with several senators is described:
"According to two people who attended the meeting, Roberts was asked by Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) what he would do if the law required a ruling that his church considers immoral. Roberts is a devout Catholic and is married to an ardent pro-life activist. The Catholic Church considers abortion to be a sin, and various church leaders have stated that government officials supporting abortion should be denied religious rites such as communion. (Pope Benedict XVI is often cited as holding this strict view of the merging of a person's faith and public duties).
"Known for his unflappable style in oral argument, Roberts appeared nonplused and, according to sources in the meeting, answered after a long pause that he would probably have to recuse himself.
"It was the first unscripted answer in the most carefully scripted nomination in history. It was also the wrong answer. In taking office, a justice takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States. A judge's personal religious views should have no role in the interpretation of the laws. (To his credit, Roberts did not say that his faith would control in such a case)."
To his credit, Jonathan Turley in his wrongly reasoned piece did not beat around the bush--he came right out and used the word abortion.
As my colleague Charlotte Allen notes in an excellent piece on Beliefnet, word combinations such as "deeply held Catholic faith" are now usually "...code for asking Roberts how he plans to vote if the issue of overturning Roe comes up before the Supreme Court again--as it most certainly will. It's also code for creating a de-facto rule that, since the Catholic Church teaches that the taking of innocent human life is a grave moral wrong that no public official should support, any Catholic who takes the teachings of his or her church seriously should be automatically disqualified from holding high office in America. That's quite a turnabout for the Democrats, who built their party's grassroots constituency among ethnic Catholic who had suffered generations of anti-Catholic prejudice from an Anglo-Saxon Protestant majority that often voted Republican. Unless it stops itself, the Democratic Party, will have become the party of bald anti-Catholicism."
But my side is speaking in code, too. The very same code words that make the other side quake with fear for Roe give us hope that Roe will be chipped away, if not overturned:
"Several press accounts have noted that John Roberts and his wife Jane Sullivan Roberts followed [prominent Catholic priest] Monsignor Vaghi from St. Patrick's, his old parish in Washington, D.C., to Little Flower, and that Vaghi presided at their wedding. This has given conservative Catholic leaders who respect Vaghi confidence that Roberts is not cut from the same liberal cloth as Catholic Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy. Observing that the Robertses are close to Monsignor Vaghi, Austin Ruse, president of the Culture of Life Foundation, told the press that 'For people like me who are reading the tea leaves, it is another marker that we can breathe easy.' Leonard Leo, who is executive vice president of the Federalist Society and spearheads 'Catholic outreach' for the Republican Party, has also assured conservative Catholics that Roberts will not follow the same path as Anthony Kennedy."
Are You Sure It's a Dentist She Needs?
Unitarian seminarian Lisa Sargent is a paid Planned Parenthood chaplain. Here's a description of her encounter with a young woman:
"Dark circles ring her eyes. Are you religious, spiritual, Sargent asks the woman after introducing herself.
"No, the woman says.
"'I believe there's a higher power. I'm not sure what it is.'
"'I hear ya,' Sargent says. 'Do you believe there's a loving God that cares about you?'
"It's hard sometimes, when bad things happen to you or other people, the woman says, looking down.
"At her annual PAP smear, she learned she had a venereal disease, from a former boyfriend, she explains. Now her fiancé has it.
"'I'm glad you're here,' Sargent says. 'I'm glad you're taking good care of yourself.' It's hard, the woman says.
"With no insurance, no dental insurance, it's hard, pointing to her decaying teeth.
"Sargent gives her information about a dental clinic that could help."
In "The Gospel According to Planned Parenthood," Dawn Eden comments on Sargent's interesting practices of handing out rocks and her ritual of washing her hands between patients:
"The Lady Macbethian hand-washing, we're told by reporter Jill Tucker, is 'a ritual. A cleansing, allowing [Sargent] to move on to the next person.'...
"[Sargent's] message to patients is simple: 'Your life is important to God.'
"Translation: 'Your' life is important to God. Your baby's is not. Here, take a nice, shiny rock."
Londonistan
"In the past two weeks," writes columnist Michael Portillo, "Britain has been stunned to discover that there are people living here who have resisted integration and who loathe this country.
"London's resilience tells a more encouraging story. The capital's population is extremely diverse. As proof of that, fewer than half the names of those killed on the 7th look Anglo-Saxon. Today's Londoners come in all colours and from every cultural background. Yet they have inherited the city's historic attitudes of nonchalance, bloody-mindedness and defiance from the generation that survived the blitz. Mass murder in London has not been greeted with wailing in the streets but with a determination to continue life as usual in this city of perpetual sirens....
"It is easy to explain how the Londonistan phenomenon (the concentration of Muslim political activists in the capital) has come about. For years foreign governments have complained that dissidents settled in Britain were using the fax and the internet to foment discontent in their countries. Our response has been dilatory. Under our asylum rules we have made no distinction between the innocent victims of persecution and others intent on bringing down states."
Can You Hear Me Now?
Cardinal Arinze spoke to a group of Catholics in Pennsylvania and gave the best answer yet to an oft-posed query:
"One question concerned whether Catholic legislators who support legal abortion should 'be refused' Communion.
"'Should the person be given [Communion]? And I ask you, do you really need a cardinal from the Vatican to find the answer?' he said to laughter and applause from an audience of 120 ardent Catholics. 'Are there no children from First Communion to whom you can pose the question and receive the answer? You do not need a cardinal to answer that. Because it is a straightforward matter.'"
Thanks to Amy Welborn of Open Book for spotting this.
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