AL GORE: BLOWING SMOKE

From THE DRUDGE REPORT: SEPTEMBER 30, 2006:

Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore warned hundreds of U.N. diplomats and staff on Thursday evening about the perils of climate change, claiming: Cigarette smoking is a "significant contributor to global warming!"

Gore, who was introduced by Secretary-General Kofi Annan, said the world faces a "full-scale climate emergency that threatens the future of civilization on earth."

Gore showed computer-generated projections of ocean water rushing in to submerge the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, parts of China, India and other nations, should ice shelves in Antarctica or Greenland melt and slip into the sea.

"The planet itself will do nicely, thank you very much what is at risk is human civilization," Gore said. After a series of Q& A with the audience, which had little to do with global warming and more about his political future, Annan bid "adios" to Gore.

Then, Gore had his staff opened a stack of cardboard boxes to begin selling his new book, "An Inconvenient Truth, The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It," $19.95, to the U.N. diplomats.

GLOBAL WARMING: A CHALLENGE AND MY RESPONSE

Here’s an ANONYMOUS POST that was written in response to the INHOFE GLOBAL WARMING ARTICLE linked below. Since the post raises points worth addressing, I’m publishing it here. My response follows.

From ANONYMOUS:

Part of the problem with public debates about complex scientific subjects like the anthropogenic cause of global warming is that non-experts think they are qualified to make judgments based on simplistic reasoning and incomplete evidence. “Of course there can’t be global warming,” lay critics claim, “because the East Antarctic ice shelf actually expanded.” The truth is that you and I are not able to make knowledgeable judgments about the specific claims of science, and that facts, like the growth of the eastern ice shelf, that would seem on the face of it to contradict the science in fact do not. Instead, the public must rely on the scientific community to inform us of the state of research and the degree of consensus and uncertainty. Certainly there are respected academic scientists—especially Richard Lindzen of MIT—who strongly disagree with the claims of many researchers in the field, and we need to be aware of such dissent. However, a great majority of the relevant scientific community believes that global warming is at least in part human caused, and that the environmental repercussions have a significant chance of being disastrous. One only need turn to journals like Nature or Science, rather than to the NYT, Gore, or Inhofe to get a more firm understanding of issues and the state of the scientific community.

Now Lindzen’s claim that funding issues promote BS science is certainly on some level legitimate; but how much is it impacting the science of global warming? Don’t forget that Lindzen himself is one of few prominent scientists on record against global warming, one who owes his popular fame precisely to his opposition: he is the darling of all those who are critical of anthropogenic global warming precisely because there are so few of his kind. If we are going to let conspiracy theories rule the debate, it would be all too easy impugn his motives. How do you suggest that we weigh Lindzen’s claim in assessing global warming science? Scientific truth-claims can only be validated by specialized scientists working in a related set of disciplines. I cannot, for instance, form my own informed opinion on the problems that string theory analyzes. Certainly we should be aware of and to the extent possible fix structural biases, but just because Lindzen claims large-scale bias does not in fact mean that there is one. Only the scientific community can evaluate such claims. To the extent that Lindzen helps to exhort scientists to greater disciplinary rigor, the better; but we should not mistake his accusations as reason to dismiss global warming science.

If liberals sometimes overstate the claims of the scientific community on global warming, it is because the public is too addicted to their prolific consumption, and Republicans too addicted to oil money and corporate interests, to care. We have a serious problem here, Mr. Kirk: the scientific community thinks there could be a real chance of major environmental consequences deriving from our current practices. Scientists aren’t sure of the extent of those consequences (a few admittedly think it will be zero), but many think there is real probability of disaster: the results may not just be ruining La Jolla’s year-round surfing weather, but large-scale displacement of populations in those areas least able to handle it: the third world. How then can we get this issue before the public in all its complexity? We need real public debate on this issue. Too often, the conservative tactic is too dismiss the near consensus in the scientific community, claiming that the science is insufficiently developed while simultaneously providing scant funding for further research.

My point is not engage in political scorekeeping. Both parties have serious problems and moral failings. Rather, I want to know what you think should be done about global warming given the issues at hand. I would argue that: 1) there needs to be significant public airing of the state of climate science, the degree to which consensus exists, the uncertainty of models and predictions; the potential impact of various likely scenarios; 2) that there needs to be large-scale public debate around acceptable strategies for reducing greenhouse gas admissions given the risks and likelihoods of various scenarios. Unfortunately, the radical skeptics of climate science, of those who seek to dismiss the issue as purely conspiratorial, are major obstacles to such discussion. Let us not forget the global consequences that will follow if certain models prove right. The stakes for the future COULD be extremely high.

MY RESPONSE:

The first point on which we differ is the deference you show toward scientists who presumably deal with matters about which laymen must be silent. This reverential attitude is a serious mistake that puts scientists on an almost superhuman level. In my prior blog posting, INCONVENIENT TRUTHS—FOR AL GORE, I argue that the consensus of scientific opinion is as susceptible to social influences and self-delusion as the general populace. That article refers specifically to the “scientific” backing for eugenics that was common in the 1920’s. I’m glad that folks back then weren’t as deferential to the “men in white” as you seem to be. C.S. Lewis’ classic work, THE ABOLITION OF MAN, is a helpful antidote against this attitude, as is also Aldous Huxley’s BRAVE NEW WORLD.

Secondly, you suggest that Richard Lindzen is almost alone in his views and you confidently assert that a “consensus” exists in the field of atmospheric science on global warming. Additionally, you imply that Lindzen objects to that consensus because of the publicity he’s getting. (Using your own standard of expertise, I think you ought to refrain from engaging in psychological analysis unless you have the appropriate credentials.) What you don’t acknowledge is that a large number of “dissidents” exist, scholars mentioned specifically by Senator Inhofe. These scientists emphasize specific data that is ignored by global warming enthusiasts and, of course, by the media. Your willingness to leave the hashing out of these matters to folks in the discipline, without any “outside” interference betrays, I think, a naïve view about the sociology of science. You are happy to let scientists do their thing (by majority vote of “those that count,” presumably) in a way you would never agree to if the professionals wore business suits. (Scientists are different!) At the same time you ignore the role that media coverage has on who is and who isn’t considered a credible spokesman and on what evidence gets prime time coverage and what evidence never sees the network light of day. (Who made CAIR the go-to organization on all things Islamic in America?) Do you expect the media to “stand back” patiently while “objective scientists” huddle up and observe “the evidence”?

It has been my experience that most scientists are as abysmally ignorant about the history of their enterprise as they are about its philosophical premises. Most of the rank and file (This isn’t true of many of the best scientists.) assume, as perhaps you do, that science proceeds incrementally, adding bit by bit to a store of “facts” that just keep getting better and better. As Thomas Kuhn, among others, has noted, science proceeds incrementally (to the extent that it does at all) only within the framework of fundamental paradigms. These paradigms, however, are subject to radical changes that often redirect and revolutionize the interpretation of prior data. Thus, epicycles within a geocentric universe gave way to a heliocentric universe with planets following slightly out of kilter circular (and later elliptical) orbits. Likewise, Newton’s infinite, uniform, mathematical universe was replaced by a universe where time is relative and space warped.

More importantly, the less “fixed” paradigms are within their disciplines, the more “facts” and “theories” become intertwined. This observation is fairly obvious in the field of psychology but it applies just as well to “dynamic” and highly unpredictable models within disciplines that focus on the earth’s atmosphere. Here one model produces results that are touted as facts. A different model produces a different set of facts. If ever there was a scientific situation that lends itself to manipulation and wishful thinking and political skullduggery, this is it—dynamic variables, a vast number of variables, and the promise of being at the center of an effort to “save humanity”--with the help of generous foundation and government grants.

It is the myth of “incremental” knowledge that leads ignorant laymen to assume that any consensus hypothesis, no matter how ephemeral, moots any historical objections. Science, on this view, is always advancing and, thus, always “closer to the truth.” This worshipful StarTrekism confers practical infallibility on scientific opinions of every stripe since the time of the Enlightenment and ignores the fact that a litany of radical reversals is incompatible with the notion of incrementalism.

Senator Inhofe, who (contrary to your implication) doesn’t claim technical scientific expertise, does possess the ability to read and to publicize an historical record that many scientists and the mainstream media gladly ignore. That record shows an almost humorous movement, back and forth, on the issue of global cooling-warming-cooling-warming. And with the last two theoretical scares, active government intervention and suspension of industrial development was touted as the “cure” for both these maladies—global cooling and global warming! As Karl Popper observed, when any possible scenario fits your theory, what is at work isn’t science, it’s ideology. And the ideologies at work here are political and anti-industrial.

Since I have a fairly respectable background in the philosophy of science, I am reluctant to put myself on the same level of scientific ignorance that you place yourself. I suspect you have never taken post-graduate courses in the Philosophy of Science or read Karl Popper’s contributions to the subject or persevered through Alfred North Whitehead’s “Science and the Modern World.” Perhaps you’ve looked at Thomas Kuhn’s work, “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” but probably not “The Copernican Revolution.” Nor, I dare say, have you ever had a post-graduate class that correlated scientific perspectives with the cultural milieus in which those ideas flourished. As a “semi-professional” philosopher of science I think I have enough expertise to distinguish between highly tentative theories that are hugely susceptible to political manipulation and more reliable theories that exist in a calmer social atmosphere. I think I understand fairly well the psychological, sociological, and political dynamics that are in play when it comes to the global warming issue.

As to the “cost” of being wrong on this issue, the question assumes there is no “cost” to a policy that would divert trillions of dollars toward an effort that “might” be environmentally useless, or even harmful. If you bothered to read the Inhofe speech carefully—a proposition for which I have no tangible evidence—you would see that the funds that “may” be squandered on a political boondoggle could unquestionably be employed to address a number of needs around the globe—starting with the eradication of malaria. That is the priority of one group of scientists who aren’t on the media’s call-for-comment list. Furthermore, the “anti-industrial” Kyoto agenda of eco-fascists will surely, in any case, condemn billions of human beings to a life of impoverishment and disease—all to the greater glory of Paul Ehrlich and his loyal band of misanthropes.

As for your suggestion about open discussion of the global warming issue—that is precisely the position I am advocating. YOUR side claims, via its delusional demagogue, Al Gore, that the question has been settled. Read Karl Popper’s THE OPEN SOCIETY AND ITS ENEMIES to see what label he would attach to global warming’s biggest mouthpiece. Whitehead refers to such statements—proffered frequently by a “consensus” of scientists—dogmatism.

GLOBAL WARMING: AN ANALYSIS OF SCIENCE AND THE MEDIA

This speech by Senator Inhofe is a much-needed corrective to the media's global warming blitz.

BENEDICT XVI: FAITH, REASON, AND VIOLENCE

Joseph Stalin famously discounted the power of the pope by asking how many troops he had. The Soviet dictator shared the belief of his soul-mate, Mao Zedong, that power comes from the barrel of a gun. The final leaders of the Soviet Empire were less sanguine about the uselessness of spiritual weapons. Witness the conspiracy to assassinate John-Paul II.

The recent comments that Benedict XVI directed to the “representatives of science” at the University of Regensburg concerned a similar topic—the relationship of faith and reason to violence. Based on news snippets, one might think the talk was an extended harangue against Muslims.

In fact, the address was over the heads of 99% of reporters who bothered to read it. Fortunately for them, the inflammatory sound bite they crave came toward the beginning of the talk. That remark was a quotation “by the erudite Byzantine emperor Manuel II” to “an educated Persian on the subject of Christianity and Islam, and the truth of both.” Manuel II, Benedict noted, “addresses his interlocutor with an astounding harshness on the…relationship between religion and violence in general, saying: ‘Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’”

The reason for this “astounding harshness” [wrongly translated “startling brusqueness”] doubtless had something to do with the fact that these remarks were set down by the emperor shortly before or during the siege of Constantinople by Muslim Turks from 1394 to 1402. Manuel goes on to explain why violence is incompatible with God’s nature: "God is not pleased by blood, and not acting reasonably is contrary to God's nature. Faith is born of the soul, not the body. Whoever would lead someone to faith needs the ability to speak well and to reason properly, without violence and threats.”

Benedict proceeds to argue that there is an essential continuity between rationality itself and the God that transcends human reason. Were this not the case, an unbridgeable chasm would arise between faith and reason—a chasm that consigns faith to the sphere of individual subjectivity or opens the door to a religion spread by force of arms.

The irony of Benedict’s address is that he was speaking to two groups who posit an absolute fissure between faith and reason. The first group consists of modernists for whom all talk about God is balderdash—folks who think ethics can be reduced to an evolutionary bi-product and who accept without comment those rational structures that make science possible. The second group consists of believers (Christians and Muslims) who reject links between reason and faith as an infringement on God’s sovereignty. Strange bedfellows. For both sides, reason yields to irrationality—and often to brute force.

FORGETTING 9/11

“She would have been a good woman,” the Misfit said, “if it had been somebody there to shoot her every minute of her life.”

The line occurs near the end of Flannery O’Connor’s short story, “A Good Man Is Hard To Find.” It refers to a self-absorbed grandmother who had just been murdered (along with her son and his family) by a religiously reflective killer. Sadly, the poignant observation seems to fit many Americans’ relationship to the events of 9/11/2001.

For some weeks following that infamous date, Americans focused intently on things that matter: courage, honor, integrity, especially patriotism. An inconceivable tragedy highlighted the tenuous nature of the blessings we take for granted--family, peace, freedom--and temporarily diverted attention from the superficial, vile, or self-serving activities which preoccupy so many of us.

During that time firemen and cops replaced movie stars and pop divas as society’s most admired individuals. Anonymous heroes without Malibu mansions or drug rap sheets were honored instead of their celluloid counterparts. People were jolted into
asking serious questions: “What is really important? What is worth dying for? Why am I here?”

As months wore on, however, it became obvious that many individuals-- especially the rich and famous camera cult--were eager to reinstitute the old regime. Where, after all, would MTV be if youngsters began to idolize Todd Beamer instead of Eminem or Madonna? Where would Hollywood’s hedonism rank in a world where integrity was defined by virtue and self-sacrifice instead of doing whatever the heck you please? And how could Leno and Letterman deliver nightly monologues for audiences that weren’t tawdry and cynical?

Where would the talk-show Lilliputians be in a world where national leaders aren’t caricatured as blithering idiots who deserve nothing but contempt? And what would happen to that cohort of intellectuals whose sense of moral superiority rests solely on acts of vicious criticism--folks physically revolted by exhibitions of patriotism and profoundly depressed at the prospect of restraining their venom another day?
A world where personal virtue is taken seriously isn’t to the liking of these groups. Like the children of Israel in the book of Exodus, they long to return to the “fleshpots of Egypt”--to revel in the thoughtless security of a society where matters of life and death are reduced to vulgar punch lines in yet another South Park episode.

They wish to “get on with their lives”--to forget the truths of death, heroism, and evil and to slide back into a world of cheap sex, cheap talk, and cheap rebellion. They crave a life of comfortable celebrity devoid of nobility and moral earnestness.

As the memory of 9/11 fades, “American Idol” replaces the World Trade Center on pop-culture’s jumbotron. Too many Americans, it seems, need to be shot every day to avoid reverting to lives of brutish pettiness.

THE SHADOW PARTY by David Horowitz and Richard Poe

A month after John Kerry’s narrow loss to George W. Bush in 2004’s Presidential election, Eli Pariser boasted to his MoveOn associates, “Now it’s our party. We bought it. We own it.” The huge question raised by this audacious declaration was, “Who are ‘we’?” That query is answered in David Horowitz and Richard Poe’s new book, The Shadow Party—a work that also explains how this political takeover was accomplished. In the authors’ own words, “This book documents how, through an extraordinary series of political, legal, and financial maneuvers, an unlikely network of radical activists and activist billionaires gained de facto control over the Democratic Party’s campaign apparatus….”

The eminence grise lurking behind these machinations was and is George Soros, the billionaire financier and founder of the Open Society Institute. It was Soros who declared in November, 2003, that defeating President Bush was “the central focus of [his] life” and “a matter of life and death”—then devoted twenty-seven million dollars to accomplish that goal during the 2004 campaign cycle.

That figure was almost matched by Soros’ friend, Progressive Insurance Chairman Peter Lewis, who channeled $24,000,000 into supposedly non-partisan “527” organizations. Donations by three other Soros associates, Hollywood mogul Stephen Bing ($14,000,000) and Golden West Financial Corporation’s Herbert and Marion Sandler ($13,000,000), brought contributions by the Soros five to a staggering $78,000,000. The Machiavellian quality of these massive donations becomes apparent when one discovers that Soros was also an influential figure, and possibly the key figure, behind the push for campaign finance reform.

This multi-year conspiracy to pass a law for which there was no electoral constituency was dubbed “Pewgate” by the New York Post’s Ryan Sager—a Bronx tribute to the Charitable Trust whose Program Officer made public the covert strategy. A centerpiece of this top-down scheme was Senator John McCain, the “maverick Republican” whose adulatory press was matched by a spate of large gifts from left-wing foundations to his “Reform Institute for Campaign and Election Issues.” Other media icons like Bill Moyers, with substantial foundation backing, joined in conjuring up an illusory popular demand for campaign finance reform. Even a bogus academic study was part of the mix.

In the end, as Horowitz and Roe note, the McCain-Feingold legislation succeeded only in regulating political speech—not at limiting campaign finances. Indeed, the law created a funding crisis for Democrats since they relied more heavily on large “soft-money” contributions than Republicans did. Into this financial breach stepped Soros and company—not with contributions doled out to party regulars, but with an avalanche of funds to establish organizations of their own. Thus did campaign finance legislation and lawyerly accounting methods facilitate a political coup staged by billionaires. Machiavelli, the authors suggest, could only gaze in admiration at this cynical feat of ideological misdirection.

Connected at the hip to Soros’ archipelago of non-profits is the Byzantine political structure known as “Hillaryland”—a secretive world dedicated to the aspirations of the junior senator from New York. Needless to say, “Hillaryland” is generously supported by the former First Lady’s “good friend George Soros.” According to Horowitz and Poe, the “unofficial CEO” who coordinates the activities of all these “independent” and “non-partisan” groups is Harold Ickes—another “good friend” of Hillary and, for a time, Bill Clinton’s Deputy Chief of Staff. Of Ickes’ White House job description, Dick Morris commented in 1997, “Whenever there was something that…required ruth­less­ness or vengeance or sharp elbows… [Clinton] would give it to Harold.” This was a job for which Ickes had been well trained, having spent years providing legal representa­tion for union bosses with purported mob connections. Ickes, it seems, thrives in the shadows.

Among the groups that Horowitz and Roe link to the Shadow Party are a klatch of non-profits known as the “Seven Sisters.” These include MoveOn.org (the feisty brainchild of Wes Boyd and Joan Blades that was transformed into a political player on steroids by infusions of Soros cash), the Center for American Progress (headed by Bill Clinton’s White House Chief of Staff, John Podesta, and known as “the official Hillary Clinton think tank”), America Votes and America Coming Together (organizations focused on voter registration and turnout), the Media Fund (an in-house advertising agency), the Joint Victory Campaign 2004 (a funding conduit), and finally, Thunder Road Group (a powerful organization that combines planning, polling, opposition research, and PR).

While Horowitz and Roe focus much attention on the top of the political ladder, they also show how those players employ, sometimes illegally, grassroots activists. The use of Soros money to fund the successful campaign of David Soares for Albany County District Attorney is an instructive case in point. Even more disturbing, however, are indications that coordination exists to implement a new version of the radical Cloward-Pivin strategy. In the seventies this tactic resulted in dramatically expanded welfare rolls that brought New York City to the brink of bankruptcy. Today, a similar plan of attack is being used “to overwhelm the nation’s understaffed and poorly policed electoral system.”

The disdain that radical leftists have for the democratic process, Horowitz and Roe suggest, may not be an attitude that is anathema to Soros—who from 1959 to 1965 lived among Greenwich Village’s socialist bohemians and later became a close friend of the poet Allen Ginsberg. Evidence from Soros’ revolutionary undertakings in Serbia and Georgia also implies a greater concern for Soros-approved results than for strictly democ­ratic methods. Furthermore, the fact that Soros views the United States government as an oversized bully isn’t encouraging—especially in light of the legion of lawyers that were poised to challenge 2004’s Presidential election results and Congressional proposals for U.N. oversight of elections. Such tactics suggest, at the least, a cavalier attitude when it comes to undermining public confidence in the democratic process.

The Shadow Party’s most intriguing pages provide an ominous portrait of the Hungarian-born billionaire who, in one interview, expressed his wish to become “the conscience of the world,” but on another occasion coolly observed that taking “social consequences” into account would throw off his financial calculations and reduce his profits. Put more bluntly, the latter statement means that Soros wouldn’t have netted two billion dollars from “breaking the Bank of England” in 1992 if he thought about the pain his currency play would bring to British citizens. Similar contradictions attend the man who, until the Tax Reform Act of 1986, sheltered his Quantum Fund from U.S. taxes but now wishes to create a global economic system that would prevent others from doing the same.

Intellectually, Soros declares himself a disciple of Karl Popper and of his former prof’s “open society” philosophy. Yet Soros has little sympathy for an America that is clearly more “open,” by Popper’s standards, than the one the philosopher praised in the early 1950’s. Furthermore, Soros works, often surreptitiously, to establish open societies around the world, yet he opposes the “imposition” of values on foreign cultures. What Soros most clearly despises is “American Supremacy”—a political state of affairs that he likens to a stock market bubble. It’s no wonder that Soros gave up serious philosophizing when he was unable to make heads or tales of comments he had committed to paper the previous day.

The arrogance suggested by Soros’ hopeful self-designation, “the conscience of the world,” is echoed less benevolently in a comment made to The New Republic in 1994: “Just write that the former Soviet Empire is now called the Soros Empire.” Additional doubt is cast on Soros’ philanthropic motives when, as in Kosovo and Russia, the global mogul mixes open society initiatives with shady financial deals. Soros at times acknowl­edges his schizophrenic persona, but then rationalizes this duplicity by observing that a wealthier Soros can do more good than a less affluent billionaire. For many observers, Soros’ will to power reveals itself as the majority shareholder in an uneasy psychological partnership.

Stories that describe Soros’ tenuous relationship to the Jewish community are also instructive. They include anecdotes that go back to his father, a well-to-do lawyer who exchanged the surname “Schwartz” for an Esperanto appellation based on the verb “to soar.” Soros describes his non-practicing, globalist upbringing as “Jewish” and “anti-Semitic.” When the Nazis overran Hungary in 1944, the Soros family assumed Christian identities and later split up. “Gyorgy’s” safety was secured by paying an official in the fascist regime to take the fourteen-year-old into his home. During the next months this man’s presumed “godson” often accompanied him as he delivered deportation notices and confiscated Jewish property. Decades later, when Soros was asked in a Sixty Minutes interview if this experience had created feelings of guilt, he replied, “Not at all,”—strange words from “the conscience of the world” but not unexpected from an individual who once lectured a group of American Jews on their contributions to anti-Semitism.

Blaming the victim, it seems, is typical for Soros, who immediately rejected a military response to 9/11 and articulated instead a policy of self-scrutiny. For Soros, the best way to retaliate against terrorism is global redistribution of wealth—a policy that a few years earlier (inasmuch as he and Harvard economist Jeffrey Sachs redistributed multinational funds in the new Russian state) resulted in “one of the greatest social robberies in human history.”

Viewing events through the lens of moral equivalence is another Soros trademark. This trait was on full display when the billionaire equated the murder of thousands of civilians on 9/11 with the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib: “I think that those pictures hit us the same way as the terrorist attack itself, not quite with the same force because in the terrorist attack we were the victims. In the pictures we were the perpetrators….”

Even if the Horowitz-Poe portrait of Soros isn’t the whole story, their work certainly raises profound questions about the man’s psychic shadow. The billionaire promoter of “open societies” is also, it seems, an opportunistic financier and stealthy kingmaker—a man whose globalist fantasies and contempt for America are matched only by delusions of grandeur rooted in a desperate lack of self-awareness and moral perspective. Such is the mind of the man who, more than anyone else, dominates the Shadow Party.

WESTERN SECULARISM AND ISLAM

What a culture embraces most deeply is seldom articulated. It is, rather, presupposed. The spirit of the times, as Alfred North Whitehead observed, permeates human activity without itself becoming the subject of discussion. People in America, for example, take the notion of freedom for granted and argue about the best way to define and secure it. The West’s secular culture is even less likely to ponder its fundamental convictions.

That culture is given expression via thousands of media messages every hour—in film, television, CDs, magazines, and iPod presentations—but its philosophical roots are largely invisible. The reason for this state of affairs isn’t just the inherent difficulty involved in stepping back to look at the ground upon which one stands. It also involves the fact that, nowadays, there’s so little of substance to see once one attempts that daunting philosophical two-step. There has never been, I think, a culture erected on such a shallow and flimsy foundation.

Freedom is certainly an essential dogma of secular life, as it was of the culture that preceded it. But the purpose of post-modern freedom is largely undefined. Within secular culture the idea that individuals can do “whatever they want” is reiterated ad nauseam—a mantra that makes self-actualization a vacuous objective. Correspondingly, the idea that people “should” do certain things, except for recycling, is given short shrift. Even the much-touted virtue of “tolerance,” analyzed critically, turns out to be a non-negotiable demand that non-secular folks give up their beliefs about how people “ought” to behave.

This purposeless freedom, freedom for its own sake, is a concept that feeds into the popular notion of “pushing the envelope.” Those who employ this phrase typically do so with the tacit assumption that destroying taboos is a “progressive” enterprise—an activity that puts taboo-breakers on a higher plane than individuals who dwell in the passé world of moral restriction.

Accordingly, not being able to pillory moralists represents an intolerable inhibition on “artistic freedom” among bi-coastals who view cultures that take blasphemy seriously as primitive and theocratic. What one expects to gain by normalizing cultural depravity, exhibited most completely in gangsta rap, need not be articulated beyond vacuous clichés like “openness” and “freedom of expression.” A vague romantic hope persists that, somehow, with the aid of science and midnight basketball, utopian bliss will break out once nine-year-olds can swear proficiently and are no longer naïve about the varieties of sexual expression.

The apotheosis of “individual freedom” also requires the abolition of concepts like natural law. There are, it seems, no self-evident truths. Even distinctions between male and female are treated as arbitrary constructs. Just as individuals can be whatever they want to be, so families and marriages can be constituted in ways restricted only by our capacity to imagine them.

Tepid and unimaginative formulations that concern direct harm done to other individuals (“My freedom to swing my fist ends at your nose.”) limit the possibilities of self-expression under this cultural myth that also embraces a godless universe that is itself devoid of freedom.

Scrutinized rationally, the “rights” that are constantly touted in secular culture turn out to be a function of raw power. This fearful symmetry explains the fondness antinomians have for elaborate government structures that both bear the blame for individual sins and constitute the awesome Leviathan that keeps anarchy at bay. These Hobbesian “rights” aren’t derived from a Creator. Rather, they emerge from the struggle of individuals against each other in a world defined primarily by the “sovereigns” Pleasure and Pain.

Youngsters raised within this cultural framework are told to view nature as a meaningless fluke that must, nevertheless, be revered and preserved; they are told to view their existence as accidental and their desires as “rights”; they are told (dozens of times every day) to look down upon religion as a childish delusion rooted in wish fulfillment; and they are told that corporate pimps must be allowed to corrupt the souls of children for the sake of “freedom.” Is it any wonder that many of these persons, as young adults, find more nourishing, and even more reasonable, an intransigent religion that boldly preaches the exact opposite?

AN ESSAY ON GAY MARRIAGE (REPOST)

“Why shouldn’t gays be allowed to marry?” Nowadays, the question has a prima facie persuasiveness that’s akin to the popular rhetorical challenge, “Who’s to say what’s right and wrong?” Another trait these queries share is the likelihood that persons confronting them will be reduced to stammering incoherence. The main reason for this detour into dementia isn’t that opponents of gay marriage are idiots. It is rather that the case against same-sex unions requires more strenuous philosophical lifting than the case for it.

Rhetorical Challenges

Proponents of this radical domestic innovation possess a pocketful of bumper sticker appeals--including the aforementioned “Who’s to say” argument. “It’s not fair” and “It’s discrimination” are two other easily developed themes. Then there’s the protest that people who “love each other” should be encouraged, not discouraged, to commit themselves to their male-female, male-male, or female-female partners. Why, after all, should heterosexuals who decry the social damage caused by divorce be in the business of discouraging commitment among homosexual couples? Finally, there is that familiar prosecutorial inquiry, “How does it hurt you if someone else marries a person of the same sex?” Several decades earlier Phil Donahue and his talk-show pals touted sexual license by employing similar questions: “Why would you stand in the way of someone’s happiness?” So much is presupposed in these “beating-your-wife” challenges that no simple reply is possible.

Glibly articulated sound bites work well in mass media. By contrast, when one is obliged to defend an institution that has never been challenged and ideas that have almost always been taken for granted, the speaker faces a daunting task. Quickly! Why must women marry men? Who is hurt if you let people marry whomever they want? Who made you the marriage czar?

When Socrates, in Plato’s Republic, explored the nature of justice, his arguments rested on assumptions that he shared with his interlocutors. In Book One of this extended dialogue, the impetuous Thrasymachus, after having been argued into a corner by his verbal sparring partner, rashly asserts that justice is bad and injustice good. This novel perspective, Socrates declares, makes his own task much more difficult. Most persons take for granted that justice is good and argue over its proper definition. Socrates, however, is now forced to demonstrate for his auditors something more fundamental--the superiority of justice to injustice.

Defending male-female marriage is akin to defending the value of justice over injustice. It’s seldom done, and the issues are so basic that people are inclined to fall silent. Certainly, no simple slogan serves as an adequate defense of this previously unquestioned proposition. Replying that “God created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” isn’t compelling--especially when addressing secular audiences inclined to equate religious faith with stupidity.

As Socrates was forced to ponder the essence of justice and injustice in response to Thrasymachus’ assertion, so advocates for the traditional definition of marriage are faced with the task of explaining to short-attention-span Americans plausible reasons why male-female unions ought to remain the norm. Those explanations, however condensed, must include an analysis of the essential nature of marriage.

Marriage: Procreation and Commitment

Marriage is a institution that ties procreation to commitment. This newly-minted but long-presupposed definition should constitute the heart of any defense of traditional marriage. For centuries marriage has revolved around pledges of loyalty made by husbands and wives to each other. “In sickness and in health, for richer or poorer” are words familiar to all Americans. Until recently the phrase “as long as you both shall live” was part of most wedding ceremonies. These vows of commitment aren’t important simply as expressions of the love that two individuals have for each other. They are also significant because marriages are consummated, and those sexual unions produce babies. Marriage, therefore, not only links two people to vows of commitment, it also links commitment to family.

Not all marriages result in children, but marriages aren’t complete--according to law and language--apart from consummation. And acts of consummation produce, for most couples, the children that Roman Catholic theology has rightly linked to acts of intercourse. Indeed, this link between consummation and reproduction is so pronounced that husbands and wives go to considerable contraceptive lengths to frustrate it. With same-sex couples the situation is reversed--and more so. Not only are biological offspring never a result of sexual intimacy, the acquisition of children is an arduous process fraught with legal hurdles. No matter how committed the parties, same-sex unions can never be linked, via consummation, to the creation of a family.

Heretofore, marriage has provided a framework, rooted in vows of commitment, for the raising of children. Though imperfectly realized, that ideal has served to sublimate--to place within the bounds of exalted purpose--mere acts of propagation. Absent this larger framework, intercourse tends to assume the raw visage of animalian instinct. C. S. Lewis once observed that a single man’s desires, freely indulged, would soon suffice to populate a small village.(1) Traditional marriage restrains such impulses because it sets forth the expectation that father and mother will provide a home for the fruit of their passion.

Same-sex marriage, by its very nature, dismisses this link between marriage and propagation. Few heterosexual unions remain childless. All same-sex unions are barren. This biological fact of life renders the term “shotgun wedding” meaningless as regards an entire class of persons--individuals who say their marriages are based on the same principles as everyone else. Though hardly a happy image, this coercive practice (based on whatever stigma still attends out-of-wedlock birth) bears further witness, alongside the term “illegitimate,” to the essential link between marriage and children.

Should marriage be forced to accommodate same-sex commitments, it is hard to believe that this revised institution will continue to be viewed as the ideal framework for raising the offspring that same-sex couples cannot, by themselves, produce. Marital unions will likely focus even more exclusively on the feelings that two people have for each other--and even less on the children that one class of married pairs can, and another can’t, produce. This intensified focus on feelings will expedite the delinkage of sex, marriage, and family that began in the 60’s with the era of convenient birth control. Such marriages, lacking the substantive bond between feelings and family, are destined to be as short-lived as nuptials sealed with a vow to be faithful “as long as we both shall love.”(2)

For some time it has been fashionable to disparage couples who look to maternity as a way to save their marriages. The problem with this desperate logic, however, isn’t that it’s totally benighted. Instead, this reasoning puts the child at the wrong end of the marital relationship--as glue to mend what is already broken. Ideally, children are mutually desired centers of affection that serve to strengthen existing bonds. The spilled-milk approach to parenthood recognizes, only belatedly, the ephemeral nature of feelings not tied to something as tangible and enduring as “our baby.”

Marriage and Child-Rearing

It is hard to fathom the intellectual obstinacy needed to deny what seems a prima facie argument on behalf of male-female marriage—namely, that children are best raised within two-parent, male-female homes. Yet individuals frequently cite a handful of limited and ambiguous studies in order to “prove” the opposite of what nature and common sense would suggest.(3)

What is incontrovertible, however, even within the dubious world of social science, is that children raised by two parents (who, as of now, “happen to be” male and female) are more successful on measures of social, emotional, and educational welfare than children lacking one or the other parent due to divorce or abandonment. What I think is equally plain is that a definition of marriage that ignores male-female consummation, and thus the link between marriage and family, will open the door (or rather, the floodgates) to a view of sexual relations that ignores children altogether.

Same-sex unions need not worry about having and educating offspring--a fact that clearly contributes to the short-term character of most homosexual pairings.(4) Until recently opposite sex couples were obliged by society to worry about such matters. Under a regime of same-sex marriage, men and women will doubtless think less about these duties than they do today. After all, so goes the self-interested logic, if “studies prove” that kids are OK with same-sex guardians, why shouldn’t they be OK in less controversial domestic arrangements that also fall short of a presumably-discredited ideal?

Some homosexual advocates agree that, optimally, children should have two, married, male-female parents. They concede that it makes sense to prefer intimate role models of maleness, femaleness, and male-female domestic relations. But they deny that same-sex marriage undermines this ideal. This optimistic assessment seems implausible given the positive public attention already received by gay couples--and even gay singles--who go to great lengths to birth or adopt children. On the contrary, what seems to be emerging is a view of marriage that ignores not only the connection between marriage, procreation, and child-rearing but also the link between male-female parents and domestic training. This is precisely the scenario suggested by relevant statistics following the institution of gay marriage in Scandanavian countries.

In Sweden, where gay unions were made legal in 1994, marriage rates hit an historic low in 1997.(5) Meanwhile, out-of-wedlock births in 2001 rose to a record high of 55%. In Norway, where elites foisted gay marriage upon a reluctant country in 1993, illegitimate births rose from 39% to 50% by the end of the decade. Finally, in Denmark, which provided for gay unions in 1989, the out-of-wedlock birth rate for first-born children has increased to 60%--a figure that indicates a growing wall of separation between marriage and procreation in the minds of young Danes.

These numbers provide convincing evidence that under a regime of same-sex marriage even more children than today will be raised in homes that have no intimate male-female model. We should not pretend, for the sake of tolerance, that such homes are “just as good,” psychologically speaking, as homes where children see mothers and fathers interacting almost every day. Children who grow up in fatherless or motherless homes know that something is missing. If it is missing because of an accident, that’s tragic. If it is missing due to divorce, that’s regrettable. But if it is missing by design, then that situation is a socially sanctioned form of child abuse.

People might argue, based on the preceding observation, that same-sex marriage should be legal just as divorce and single-parenthood are permitted. This comparison is misleading. The latter circumstances are not (at least not yet) viewed as ideals to be celebrated. Instead, they are concessions to weakness and occasions for grief. The same-sex equivalency argument would transform all these domestic arrangements into joyous states mirroring a bride-groom wedding. Only minds untouched by divorce, clouded by the rigors of single parenthood, or blinded by ideology could seriously entertain such an empirically unwarranted equation.

Furthermore, children actually reared within same-sex households are not only deprived of male-female domestic models, they are also deprived of a family within which reproductive desire is channeled into a framework of familial affection. After all, no homosexual union, within or without marriage, has reproductive significance. Consequently, children raised in these environments will almost certainly be less prepared for male-female relationships, less likely to view those relationships in the context of a family, and more likely to indulge the variety of impulses that constitute the erotic profile of most humans.

The Fish or Fowl Myth

Over the last two decades we have been given to understand that each person is “straight” or “gay” in the same way that people are born with blue or brown eyes. Sit-coms (today’s preferred propaganda tool) assert this notion with a repetitive vengeance. Yet no body of evidence comes close to confirming this dogma. Meanwhile evidence for the malleability of sexual expression is right before our eyes--yet ignored in the name of political correctness.

It is now fashionable for Hollywood types (as with Jerry Springer guests) to declare themselves “bisexual”--a term that raises huge problems for devotees of the I’m-just-that-way school of thought. Also increasingly prevalent are stories about “gay” celebrities who later link up with members of the opposite sex. Ellen DeGeneres’ one-time partner, Anne Heche, is a prominent example. Diversity of this stripe leads individuals who embrace the fish or fowl dogma in disconcerting directions.

Is bisexuality genetic? If so, are bisexuals condemned by their chemistry to be promiscuous? Are threesomes and groups the next “progressive” innovations? How does “being who I am, sexually” differ from sheer indulgence of whatever erotic urges happen to emerge from regions just south of the navel? Is self-restraint always verboten--or only sometimes? And how is one to know which impulses are “me” and which are gratuitous?

People more intent on being non-judgmental than on providing guidance for the next generation aren’t inclined to ponder these questions. They would rather blindly embrace what is politically palatable--that children’s sexual habits are inflexibly set--than confront the “lesbian chic” experimentation that now pervades college life. Cognitive dissonance is resolved by denying or ignoring the evidence at hand.

Here’s the bottom line of this train of thought. The popular idea that boys and girls aren’t affected by their sexual environment is clearly a myth. Even a recent study conducted by researchers sympathetic to the gay agenda now says as much. These sociologists admit, gingerly, what was previously denied because most folks would have found the conclusions highly objectionable. Today, however, in a society where “gay marriage” is promoted on a par with “straight marriage,” the aversion to homosexuality has been so minimized that the air-brushed truth can be told. Children raised by homosexual partners “seem to grow up to be more open to homeoerotic relations.”(6)

Sex-Ed and Gay-Marriage

What is true for children raised in same-sex households is true to a lesser extent for all children--boys and girls who may soon be forced by avant garde health teachers to ask themselves at the age of ten just which sex they think about marrying. That’s a perverse load to put on kids who have yet to reach puberty. Only ideological zealots, moral ostriches, and confirmed couch potatoes could possibly think a “freedom” of this sort is anything but an invitation to social chaos.

Progressive views of sex have taken us from an illegitimacy rate of 4% in 1950 to 33% today--and from under 20% to almost 70% among blacks. The idea that legitimizing homosexual marriage will stanch or reverse that trend requires a degree of self-deception that borders on the psychotic. Adolescents invited to explore their sexual identity will not sit quietly in the corner until they choose A or B-- especially not when “bisexual” or “polymorphous” are among the options that a society bereft moral backbone is putting on the table.

At a meeting of very tolerant church folks, I was discussing, as politely as possible, some of the off-putting and dangerous practices that are erotic norms among male homosexuals. [I invite readers to peruse the NARTH website.(7)] The general reaction ranged from denial to disbelief. One commentator went so far as to assert that homosexual sex and gay marriage had nothing to do with each other--an assertion equivalent to denying that consummation is linked to marriage. Most of these people seemed to believe that same-sex intercourse involves no greater medical risks than heterosexual relations and that only a geographical accident caused AIDS to be vastly more prevalent among America’s homosexuals than among heterosexuals.

If putative adults are abysmally ignorant of the nature and medical consequences of male homosexuality, how much more are their media-molded children kept in the dark about the dangers of acts that constitute an open invitation to disease and death. The portraits that children constantly see and hear in the media falsely portray gay sex as a benign variation of heterosexual relations. About nothing are same-sex proponents so deceptive as the normal erotic practices of homosexuals. Any culture that puts a seal of approval on gay marriage is as much as inviting its children to engage in forms of sexual expression that are both sterile and dangerous--practices that have no natural connection to the creation of a family.

Arguing for Armageddon

The philosopher Edmund Burke would sympathize with those who face the task of painting a plausible portrait of a hypothetical future. There are so many subtle interconnections that one can hardly imagine the impact of even minor changes. Despite the assurances of pundits whose views are assiduously attuned to tenor of the Times, a change of the magnitude now contemplated will surely have enormous consequences--consequences that may dwarf even the devastating effects of the sixties sexual revolution.

Bumper-stickers can proclaim the onset of Armageddon, but they cannot make an argument for it. It is incumbent upon defenders of traditional marriage, therefore, to ponder realistically and rationally, the shape of a culture that has rejected one of history’s most fundamental assumptions--an assumption rooted in the reproductive facts of life.

Marriage has been at the heart of our rise from savagery to civilization. I do not think that future generations will bless us for severing its already damaged root--the one linking propagation to commitment.

(1) Mere Christianity, Book III, Ch. 5, “Sexual Morality.”

(2) William Bennett relates the story of a couple who pledged to stay together “as long as we both shall love.” His suggestion for a wedding gift was paper plates.

(3) The tenuous and even contradictory nature of these very limited studies can be seen in Charlotte Patterson’s highly tendentious article summarizing studies prior to 1992, “Children of Lesbian and Gay Parents,” Child Development, V. 63, 1992.

(4) McWhirter and Mattison, The Male Couple: How Relationships Develop (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1984). Gay authors Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen observed, “Alas, it turns out that, on this point, public myth is supported by fact. There is more promiscuity among gays...than among straights.” Even among committed partners, they observe, “the cheating ratio, given enough time, approaches 100%.” Cf. After the Ball: How America Will Conquer Its Fear and Hatred of Gays in the 90's (Doubleday, 1989).

(5) All Scandanavian figures come from Stanley Kurtz, “Beyond Gay Marriage,” The Weekly Standard, August 4, 2003.

(6) Stacey and Biblarz, American Sociological Review, 2001.

(7) National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality, John R. Diggs Jr., “The Health Risks of Gay Sex.” Cf. also R.S. Hogg, et al., International Journal of Epidemiology, Vol 26, No. 3, 657-661. “In a major Canadian centre, life expectancy at age 20 years for gay and bisexual men is 8 to 20 years less than for all men.”

THE NEW ELECTRONIC DECALOGUE

Ask youngsters weaned on electronic communications what they believe is morally important, then buckle your seat belt if you happen to believe in such antiquated notions as fixed moral standards. It will become painfully clear that a new electronic decalogue has replaced the set-in-stone tablets published by Sinai Press. Though specific versions vary, all closely resemble the following list:

#1 Be yourself.
#2 Follow your feelings.
#3 Do what makes you happy.
#4 Like yourself.
#5 Don't let anyone tell you what to do.
#6 Never impose your values on others.
#7 Beware of guilt.
#8 Blame authority figures.
#9 Be politically correct.
#10 Be open.

Most of these injunctions are, to put it mildly, flexible. But that's the point. Morality is, more or less, whatever you want it to be. It's up to you to set your own rules. What's important is being “true to your own values” and doing what you feel is right. The only limitations placed on this unrestrained freedom are commandments which forbid “imposing” your own views on others and the largely implicit requirement that youngsters follow the Hollywood line in political matters--liberal, socially libertarian, and greenish.

The self-contradictory “don't-impose-your-values” commandment--an imperative which requires nonimposition--appears to be a barrier against the chaos that would result if people actually gave free reign to their feelings. Unfortunately, this decree ignores the very real harm that results from the reckless behavior it also encourages. When “doing your own thing” is the cultural expectation, many more children, for example, are raised in fatherless homes. Yet this “practical imposition” of fatherlessness is of no concern to folks whose primary goal is to reject the ethical claims that others have on them. To employ a vehicular analogy, the contemporary rule of nonimposition implies that freeway speedsters don’t affect traffic flow or endanger lives until they begin to bark orders out the window. This rule also discounts the immense power of example and peer pressure. As far as these new-age lawgivers are concerned, each person is “an island, entire of itself” who influences and is influenced by no one else. Ironically, everyone in this imaginary society of unrelated atoms is expected to embrace the same absurd ethical paradigm. Though each person supposedly “has his own opinion” about morality, everyone is expected to accept this basic philosophical principle without further ado.

Another exception to the “doing your own thing” rule is the requirement of openness. This new commandment doesn't mean that people must tolerate or be polite to persons with whom they disagree. Instead, it means acceptance of practices at odds with traditional beliefs. Openness, in other words, is a one-way street. People are expected to regard as morally acceptable lifestyles inconsistent with orthodox Islamic, Jewish, or Christian teaching. But to assume such an attitude logically means that one must reject traditional religious teachings--teachings which are now portrayed as closed-minded by pop-cultural missionaries.

In truth, openness is a code word for political correctness. Thus, this tenth commandment amounts to little more than a covert reiteration of the ninth. Together these imperatives transform ethics from an endeavor focused largely on personal actions to an enterprise which emphasizes political belief. Morality becomes the province of “macro” issues--often economic. “Micro” or personal matters such as illegitimacy, drug addiction, and crime are seen as problems that will automatically disappear once evils such as unemployment, poverty, and racism are properly addressed. At least so goes the party line.

In effect, political correctness provides an ideological fig leaf for self-indulgence--a means to divert attention from matters that concern us intimately and toward things that concern us indirectly. Whether one commits adultery or lies to a spouse becomes “a private matter” and “nobody's business.” Likewise, under this new regime, having an abortion is called “a personal choice.” But woe be unto the person who veers from the party line when it comes to rain forests, animal rights, or alternative lifestyles.

INCONVENIENT TRUTHS--FOR AL GORE

In 1950 a book came out sporting this provocative title: Science is a Sacred Cow. That reverential attitude is still reflected in most reportage and certainly on CNN’s News from Science and Medicine. Discouraging words about the enterprise are about as frequent as tropical storms in San Diego. Every wonder-filled syllable fosters the impression that truth reigns supreme in this discipline where the foibles of human nature have been, for all practical purposes, overcome.

Enter Richard Lindzen, a professor of atmospheric science at MIT. A few months ago Lindzen composed an article for the Wall Street Journal that put another face on the work of his colleagues—a very human face.

Specifically, Lindzen pointed to institutional forces that work to silence dissenting voices in the global warming debate. Editors of professional journals, he charged, regularly discouraged papers that did not reflect what was becoming the “party line” on the topic. Moreover, articles that took a contrary position on the topic were subjected to prejudicial treatment and “discredited” without providing time for reasonable dialogue. Persons once considered authorities were suddenly ignored or even vilified.

The reason for this rush toward consensus, in Lindzen’s view, is simple. Ideas that promote a crisis mentality generate greater publicity and funding, just as ideas that undercut a crisis mentality threaten to separate researchers from their cash cows.

Lindzen notes that federal climate research dollars have grown from “a few hundred million dollars” before 1990 “to $1.7 billion today.” That’s 1.7 billion reasons to join the bandwagon. And one can be sure that those incentives will grow as more studies come out with the “proper” results.

The notion that scientific communities are somehow above the social and psychological dynamics that function in every other area of human activity is an illusion rooted in ignorance and wishful thinking. Viewed in historical perspective, science frequently exhibits the typical philosophical excesses of its era. The works of German and American eugenicists, circa 1920, are instructive in this regard.

Furthermore, just a little historical knowledge is all that would be necessary to dispense with the ridiculous phrase “we now know” that regularly accompanies reports that contradict studies broadcast with the same triumphant phrase ten years earlier.

What most people don’t know is that “absolute proof” is next to impossible in an enterprise where “models” or “paradigms” regularly figure prominently in the investigative mix--determining both the terms to be used and procedures to be followed. Accordingly, the philosopher Karl Popper emphasized the “falsifiability” of scientific assertions and stressed the importance of maintaining an open society where questioning is encouraged.

The tentativeness of scientific assertions and the humanity of scientists are two facts that are inconvenient for Al Gore—a politician whose zeal to shut down debate betokens not a passion for truth but rather raw ambition.

MAKING MORALITY POLITICAL

In the opening scene of Sex, Lies, and Video-Tapes Andie MacDowell ponders for her psychiatrist the fate of a trash-filled barge cruising the high seas in search of a friendly port-of-call--a mental voyage that steers her thoughts away from a troubled marriage. In similar fashion the new electronic decalogue focuses attention on large political issues and thus allows people to ignore problems closer to home.

This new ethic puts the ego right where it wants to be--center stage. It is an ethic that demands virtually nothing of the individual and transforms matters of moral import into either personal choices or political causes. It is an ethic that turns on its head the notion that morality primarily concerns personal obligations toward others. It is an ethic that becomes tongue-tied when asked to produce a single non-political imperative that might inconvenience the practitioner--an ethic whose most significant personal prohibitions forbid self-hatred and the “imposition” of values. In other words, a person is commanded to “like himself,” no matter what, and to make sure that he doesn’t disturb the serenity of individuals whose actions would warrant censure in a morally serious culture.

A clear example of this shift from the personal to the political can been seen on an old PBS series entitled Ethics in America. These programs, aired initially in 1989, encouraged journalists, government officials, and other professionals to tussle with their consciences and an adversarial moderator while addressing various hypothetical situations. The first in this series, Do Unto Others, featured such luminaries as Justice Antonia Scalia, C. Everett Koop, and journalist Linda Ellerbe. During this program Ms. Ellerbe refused time and again to make onerous moral demands on persons involved in personal malfeasance. Concerning a young man who, with his friends, cheated on a college entrance exam, Ms. Ellerbe stated, “No, I don't believe you should turn in the other students.” About telling her friend, Carol, that her husband was cheating on her, she commented, “Are you certain she has a right to know? There's a right to innocence.” Concerning the same unfaithful man's affair with a 15-year-old girl, she observed: “This is tough. . . . I wish I had the answer to this. I don't.”

Finally, however, Ms. Ellerbe's moral juices were stimulated when she decried the judgments other panelists were making on a man panhandling for booze. Indignant at last, Ms. Ellerbe said, “The man needs a drink. . . . I would also give money to defeat the policies of the government that wants to use our money for defense weapons instead of funding houses for these people. . . . It's not up to me to judge how the man is going to spend the money any more than it is to judge how the man got there . . . if I've got fifty cents he can have it.” In Ms. Ellerbe's moral universe, cheating, lying, and adultery are nothing to get very upset about, and moral judgments directed toward individuals are verboten. But political matters constitute an arena in which nuclear rhetoric is permitted and moral judgment comes easy as pie.

According to this popular perspective--as rock, rap, and heavy metal songs declare unremittingly--world problems, as well as my own personal problems, are basically “their” fault. If I behave immorally, it's nobody else's business. But if there's blame to be borne, society and government must take the rap. Politicians and moralistic adults are the only appropriate targets for judgment--not me, my friends, or immoral individuals. This point of view is so pervasive that it is difficult to find any rock or teen-directed pop songs in which singers scrutinize their own actions or take moral responsibility upon themselves. Jimmy Buffet's “Margaritaville” was the only pathetic example I and a class of high school seniors could think of.

Under the canons of this new electronic ethic, moral stature comes cheaply. One need only attend concerts in support of media-approved causes and wear a ribbon. The trouble involved pales in comparison with the feeling of moral superiority it brings. After all, it's not like anyone is expected to give up anything or to suffer. As Van Halen's video, Right Now, suggests, it's always some old dude's fault.

WHO OWNS YOUR BODY? JOHN STOSSEL VERSUS JOHN LOCKE

“It all comes down to one simple question: Who owns your body, you or the government?” That’s the bottom-line question that John Stossel poses in “Myths, Lies, and Downright Stupidity.”

Stossel’s libertarian viewpoint is that you own your body and should have a right to put your parts on an organ market if you wish. The other side of the same coin says that government should butt out of transactions freely entered into by consenting adults. Accordingly, ABC’s 20/20 co-host quotes a patient needing a kidney transplant as follows: “If I make a deal with you, why is it the government’s business?”

The rest of Stossel’s utilitarian argument notes that 6,000 persons die every year while languishing on a wait-list that’s 30,000 names long. If pure capitalism can reduce that number significantly, then why not put kidneys on a commodities board alongside pork bellies and soybeans?

Before getting carried away with the notion that “the market” is the answer to every question, it would be wise to note that more fundamental building blocks stand at the base of American institutions and society—including an ethic that embraces those “unalienable rights” listed in the Declaration of Independence.

According to that document these rights come from a “Creator” and, as such, are not subject to contractual alienation. Thus, while a person can agree to work for another individual for nine dollars an hour, he can’t sell himself into slavery—not even for nine hundred thousand dollars. (In this case, of course, philosophy preceded its historical realization.) Likewise, under the doctrine of unalienable rights, individuals aren’t permitted to put their lives on the trading block, no matter what the incentives.

(Readers might recall the 2001 case where a fellow in Germany consented to be cannibalized—a contract that was discounted entirely by a retrial judge who in May upped the "Rotenburg cannibal's" 2004 sentence from eight years to life in prison.)

John Locke, a philosopher not known for religiosity, observed that humans are God’s “property, made to live for his, not one another’s, pleasure.” This comment, which has a distinctly creedal ring, puts one’s body in a different class from used Hondas or laptop computers. It also recognizes the indissoluble bond that exists between body and soul—a bond that is obscured when one reduces the former to a piece of real estate marketable by a disembodied agent.

The effects of a kidney exchange wouldn’t stop with eyes and other organs. Such markets would also alter our basic notions of who we are. The idea that life is “unalienable” has already been drastically undermined by legally transforming unwanted babies in utero into valueless appendages. The notion that human life is a sacred gift will surely collapse once the vessel within which and by which that life exists is treated as a rack of meat. Indeed, if one’s own body is imagined thus, how much less respect will individuals have for strange cuts of beef?

Book Review: IN DEFENSE OF HYPOCRISY by Jeremy Lott

If “patriotism” is the last refuge of scoundrels, “hypocrisy” is surely their first, second, and third hiding place. Nowadays, it isn’t being hypocritical that provides safe haven for unvirtuous folk but rather the practice of pinning the label on others. When it comes to sleaze, the best defense is a good offense.

Jeremy Lott’s literary response to this orgy of blame-shifting is to expose the duplicity of accusers and to argue that hypocrisy isn’t as bad as most folks think. Indeed, the author even shows how the much-maligned characteristic can create positive outcomes.

Lott’s first case in point concerns the hypocrisy charge giddily leveled against Bill Bennett when political opponents discovered that the former Secretary of Education was a high-stakes gambler. Critics were indignant that a man who presumed to tell others about virtue was engaging in a putative vice.

Instead of directing scorn at Bennett, Lott focuses attention on the duplicity of his critics—folks who ignored the fact that Bennett had never criticized gambling per se and that his moral perspective was broadly consistent with Catholic teaching on the subject. Lott also notes that these anti-moralists exaggerated their personal objections to gaming while abandoning their very real convictions about privacy rights—all in order to skewer a political opponent. An awful lot of hypocrisy, in other words, was involved in these charges of “hypocrisy” lodged against Bennett.

Lott’s remarks about Howard Dean, on the other hand, show how an individual can deliver the most damning moral judgments while claiming not to be morally judgmental. “Look, we’re not going to stoop to this kind of divisiveness,” Dean said to Tim Russert after observing that Tom Delay should resign from Congress and serve his (nonexistent) jail sentence in Houston.

As these examples indicate, the anecdote is Lott’s preferred method of inquiry. Using this technique the author comments on, among others, Newt Gingrich, Michael Moore, Britney Spears, and a cast of Hollywood stars. Special attention is lavished upon Casablanca’s Captain Renault and the sham revivalist played by Steve Martin in Leap of Faith. Unfortunately, Lott’s book is longer on examples than on systematic analysis.

Little attention, for example, is given to the proper (or traditional) definition of the word “hypocrisy.” That classic definition (as illustrated in the Oxford English Dictionary) focuses primarily on pretended virtue—not, as is common today, on failing to live up to the standards one professes. While Lott acknowledges the former definition, he effectively dismisses it by observing that distinctions having to do with motives and moral weakness make identifying hypocrisy “a mysterious, almost occult activity.”

Consistent with this definitional lassitude, Lott throws into his inquiry any permutation of deceit that strikes his fancy—keeping vices private, being polite, protecting state secrets, being inconsistent, obeying unwritten (as opposed to written) rules, and lying in order to protect innocent victims from tyrants. Nor are these variegated activities analyzed systematically. Instead, the author alternately condemns and defends a concept that has been stretched beyond recognition. Thus, Lott says near the end of the chapter on Bill Bennett, “…the whole episode was shot through with hypocrisy. Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

A more careful presentation might have focused on the reason that Francois De La Rochefoucauld’s 17th century view of hypocrisy (“the tribute that vice pays to virtue”) strikes many people today as odd. It might have noted that modern societies, suffused with existentialist clichés, no longer presuppose the objective view of virtue that informed the French nobleman’s dictum. In its place stand only personal beliefs to which one may, or may not, be true. Consequently, consistency and authenticity are prized above any “real” morality. Being “true to oneself” or “to one’s own beliefs” is cherished—not being, or pretending to be, virtuous. In such a context, Jesus’ admonition to his disciples to follow the Pharisees’ teachings, but not their deeds, has little resonance. What does resonate in modern ears is that gladly misconstrued injunction, “Judge not!” (I should note that Lott offers some helpful exegetical remarks on the aforementioned biblical passages.)

This philosophical retreat from objective morality also explains why those who vociferously denounce hypocrisy are pleased with a “saint or shut up” standard for moral discourse—a rule that creates a society in which, as Lott rightly observes, morality is easily “shouted down.” Such ground rules also satisfy the druthers of those who seek social transformation via political means. Indeed, both neo-Marxists and mall-rat Sartreans are happy to embrace the popular proviso that allows anyone to denounce the personal foibles of moralists—and moralists alone.

One can at least be grateful for the insights that In Defense of Hypocrisy does contain. Despite the fact that it is neither topically focused nor philosophically sophisticated, the book does serve to undermine the popular presumption that hypocrisy (broadly defined) is the worst of all moral failings and to point readers in another direction. What exactly that direction might be is material for another book.

ACADEMICS AND LINGUISTIC OBFUSCATION

My favorite example of academic pretense involves a spoof instigated in 1996 by Dr. Alan Sokal, a physicist at New York University.

Sokal was concerned that a good deal of what passes for scholarly discourse in the humanities was nothing more than leftist politics gussied up in ostentatious language. So the good professor proceeded to put together an article comprised mostly of gibberish but punctuated with assertions that would warm the hearts of partisan intellectuals.

The title of this piece was “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.” Its thesis was that gravity was merely a social construct arising from phallocentric hegemony.

Sokal submitted the article to a prominent, peer-reviewed journal, Social Text, whose editorial board was sympathetic to its warrantless conclusion: “the content and methodology of post-modern science provide powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project.” Not entirely to Sokal’s surprise, the article was published.

Not long ago I was reminded of Sokal’s ruse when I attended a seminar at a local university. The “topic” was the loosely-defined discipline of phenomenology. It was easy to see, at least for someone with more than a layman’s knowledge of philosophy, that most of the professional energy going into this enterprise was devoted to verbally decorating a few unspectacular ideas.

One after another, speakers put forward syntactically complex propositions shrouded in jargon (“intertextual narratology”) and punctuated with leftist dogma (e.g. using the word “fascist” to describe any position to their political right). Two-dozen adults were pretending (not very well) to congratulate each other on their brilliance while painfully enduring one plodding presentation after another.

The obvious value of using words only a few folks understand is that the practice gives initiates a sense of superiority over the hoi polloi (the masses). The practice thus fosters the illusion that jargonistas possess insights that extend far beyond those of Joe Sixpack, Bonnie Businesswoman, or Peter Politician.

Like the Gnostics of old, for whom the secret word Abraxis held the key to reality, these pitiful polymaths are unwilling to present ideas without linguistic enhancements. They pretend, instead, that intellectual precision requires them to speak as they do.

Hollywood actors, deprived of makeup, don’t look so hot. Similarly, plain speech makes many ideas seem awfully quotidian (i.e. ordinary)—even refutable. Clarity of speech also raises unpleasant questions—like why we pay handsome salaries to folks whose words represent little more than Marxism in post-modern terminological drag.

One of my best graduate-school teachers, Ivor Leclerc, was a model of clarity. He castigated instructors (especially theologians) for employing muddled jargon. Sokal’s article would never have passed muster with him, nor would he have been caught dead pretending that a tarted up pig was a white stallion. Such pretense is pervasive, however, among academic Wizards of Oz who hide behind the smoke and mirrors of superfluous neologistry (i.e. unnecessary, made-up words).

GODLESS: THE CHURCH OF LIBERALISM

What’s most amazing about Ann Coulter’s book, Godless: The Church of Liberalism, is the amount of intellectual meat she packs into 281 breezy, barb-filled pages. Among the topics the blonde bomb-thrower discusses in some depth are the following: liberal jurisprudence, privacy rights and abortion, Joe Wilson’s modest career and inflated ego, and the solid record of failure in American public schools. The topics of Intelligent Design and Darwinism, to which the last eighty pages of text are devoted, are analyzed in even greater detail.

As one would expect from an author with a legal background, Supreme Court cases are high on Coulter’s hit-list—especially the idea of a “living Constitution.” Citing various cases-in-point, Coulter shows that this popular doctrine is nothing more than a paralegal pretext for making the Constitution say whatever liberal judges want it to say. Though such a philosophy grants to the nation’s founding document all the integrity of a bound and gagged assault victim, it at least has the virtue of mirroring liberals’ self-referential view of morality.

Another dogma that Coulter skewers is the liberal commandment, “Thou Shalt Not Punish the Perp.” This counterintuitive principle not only rejects the link between incarceration and lower crime rates, it also permits benevolent judges (like Clinton federal court nominee Frederica Massiah-Jackson) to shorten the sentence of child rapists so that other innocent children can pay the price for society’s sins.

An unexpected bonus in this chapter is the author’s extended sidebar on Upton Sinclair, the muckraking author of Boston who, as his own correspondence shows, knew Sacco and Vanzetti were guilty but chose, for ideological and financial reasons, to portray them as innocent victims. In a related chapter, “The Martyr: Willie Horton,” Coulter provides detailed information about Horton’s crimes, Michael Dukakis’ furlough program, and the precise nature of the Horton ads aired in the 1988 presidential campaign

Continuing the religious imagery, Coulter asserts in chapter five that abortion is the “holiest sacrament” of the “church of liberalism.” For women this sacrament secures their “right to have sex with men they don’t want to have children with.” A corollary of this less-than-exalted principle is the right to suck the brains out of partially born infants. How far liberal politicians will go to safeguard this sacrament whose name must not be spoken (Euphemisms are “choice,” “reproductive freedom,” and “family planning.”) is shown by an amendment offered by Senator Chuck Schumer that would exclude anti-abortion protestors from bankruptcy protection. How low these same pols will go is illustrated by the character assassination of Judge Charles Pickering—a man honored by the brother of slain civil rights leader Medgar Evers but slimed by liberals at his confirmation hearing as racially insensitive. Coulter notes that the unspoken reason for this “Borking” of Pickering was the judge’s prior criticism of Roe v. Wade.

The single chapter that Coulter’s critics have honed in on is the one that exposes the liberal “Doctrine of Infallibility.” This religiously resonant phrase applies to individuals who promote the Left’s partisan agenda while immunizing themselves from criticism by touting their victim-status. In addition to the 9/11 “Jersey Girls,” Coulter identifies Joe Wilson, Cindy Sheehan, Max Cleland, and John Murtha as persons who possess, at least by Maureen Dowd’s lights, “absolute moral authority.” Curiously, this exalted status isn’t accorded victims who don’t push liberal agendas. Perhaps the fact that Republican veterans outnumber their Democrat counterparts in Congress, 87 to 62, has something to do with this inconsistency.

Coulter’s next chapter, “The Liberal Priesthood: Spare the Rod, Spoil the Teacher,” focuses on the partisanship, compensation, and incompetence level of American teachers. A crucial statistic in these pages concerns the “correlation [that exists] between poor student achievement and time spent in U.S. public schools.” Comments by Thomas Sowell and Albert Shanker also stand out. Sowell notes that college students with low SAT and ACT scores are more likely to major in education and that “teachers who have the lowest scores are the most likely to remain in the profession.” From a different perspective, the late President of the American Federation of Teachers stated, with refreshing bluntness, “When school children start paying union dues, that’s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.” The words of John Dewey, a founder of America’s public education system, also fit nicely into Coulter’s state-of-the-classroom overview: “You can’t make Socialists out of individualists—children who know how to think for themselves spoil the harmony of the collective society which is coming, where everyone is interdependent.” Coulter responds, “You also can’t make socialists out of people who can read, which is probably why Democrats think the public schools have nearly achieved Aristotelian perfection.”

The last third of Godless focuses on matters scientific. Chapter seven, “The Left’s War on Science,” serves as an appetizer for Coulter’s evolutionary piece de resistance. Prior to that main course, Coulter provides a litany of examples that illustrate the left’s contempt for scientific data that doesn’t comport with its worldview. Exhibits include the mendacious marketing of AIDS as an equal opportunity disease, the hysterical use of anecdotal evidence to ban silicon breast implants, and the firestorm arising from Lawrence Summer’s heretical speculation about male and female brain differences.

The remaining chapters of Godless all deal with Darwinism. Nowhere else can one find a tart-tongued compendium of information that not only presents a major argument for intelligent design but also exposes the blatant dishonesty of “Darwiniacs” who continue to employ evidence (such as the Miller-Urey experiment, Ernst Haeckel’s embryo drawings, and the famous peppered moth experiment) that they know is outdated or fraudulent.

Within this bracing analysis, Coulter employs the observations of such biological and philosophical heavyweights as Stephen Gould, Richard Lewontin, Richard Dawkins, Michael Behe, and Karl Popper. The price of the whole book is worth the information contained in these chapters about the statistical improbability of random evolution, the embarrassing absence of “transitional” fossils, and the inquisitorial attitude that prevails among many scientists (and most liberals) when discussing these matters. Unlike biologist Richard Lewontin, who candidly admits that a prior commitment to materialism informs his allegiance to evolution, most of his colleagues (and certainly most of the liberal scribblers Coulter sets on the road to extinction) won’t concede that Darwinism is a corollary, rather than a premise, of their godlessness.

Coulter’s final chapter serves as a thought-provoking addendum to her searing cross-examination of evolution’s star witnesses. “The Aped Crusader” displays the devastating social consequences that have thus far attended Darwinism. From German and American eugenicists (including Planned Parenthood’s Margaret Sanger), to Aryan racists, to the infanticidal musings of Princeton’s Peter Singer, Darwinian evolution boasts a political and philosophical heritage that could only be envied by the likes of Charles Manson. Yet it is a history ignored by liberals for whom Darwin’s theory provides what they want above all else—a creation myth that sanctifies their sexual urges, sanctions abortion, and disposes of God.

Coulter’s book is clearly not a systematic argument for the idea that liberalism is a godless religion. Indeed, prior to the material on evolution, the concept is treated more as a clever theme for chapter headings than as a serious intellectual proposition. In those final chapters, however, Coulter manages to present a cogent, sustained argument that actually begins to link modern liberalism (or more specifically, leftism) to an atheistic perspective. At the very least Coulter succeeds in raising an important issue—namely, that American courts currently ignore the religious or quasi-religious character of a philosophy that pervades public institutions and is propagated with public funds. This fact, if honestly recognized, would render contemporary church-state jurisprudence untenable. The Court would have to recognize, as a clever man once said, that the elimination of metaphysics equals a metaphysic of elimination. Put more simply, judges would have to come to terms with the fact that every philosophy, including “liberalism,” swims in the same intellectual current as religion.

Thus far, the mainstream media have focused almost all their attention on Coulter’s take-no-prisoners rhetorical style—and particularly on the “insensitive” remarks about those 9/11 widows who seem to be “enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much.” Clearly, diplomatic language is not Coulter’s forte, as one would also gather from this representative zinger: “I don’t particularly care if liberals believe in God. In fact, I would be crestfallen to discover any liberals in heaven.”

What undercuts the liberals’ case against Coulter, however, is their own (not always tacit) endorsement of vile epithets that are regularly directed against President Bush and his supporters by the likes of Cindy Sheehan, Michael Moore, and a gaggle of celebrity politicos. Coulter employs the same linguistic standard against liberals (with a touch of humor) that they regularly use (with somber faces and dogmatic conviction) when they accuse conservatives of being racist homophobes who gladly send youngsters to war under false pretences to line the pockets of Halliburton. Hate-speech of this stripe is old-hat for leftists.

Until Air America, Helen Thomas, and most Democrat constituencies alter their rhetoric, I see no reason for conservatives to denounce Coulter for using, more truthfully, the same harsh language that leftists have employed, with no regard for accuracy, since the time of Lenin. When liberals denounce communist tyrants as fervently as they do real Nazis, then it will be time for Coulter to cool the rhetoric. Until that time her “verbal reprisals” serve a useful function within an intellectual marketplace that resembles a commodities pit more than a debating society.

THE PROFESSORS by DAVID HOROWITZ et al

Slogging through The Professors: The 101 Most Dangerous Academics in America is a bit like taking in the Interstate scenery between Abilene and El Paso—a whole lot of the same thing. Orchestrated by David Horowitz and largely carried out by an ensemble of assistants, this book consists, in large measure, of a succession of ideological portraits culled from campuses across the country. Profiles of anti-American Marxists who employ classrooms to advance their radical social agenda are interrupted by profiles of anti-American queer theorists, anti-Semitic Islamists, and anti-Caucasian racists who all exhibit contempt for ideas other than their own. Amid the mind-numbing repetitiveness of this serial critique of academic bigotry and incompetence, a few cases do stand out.

Take, for example, Bernardine Dohrn and her husband Bill Ayers. Dohrn is a law professor at Northwestern, while Ayers holds the title “Distinguished Professor” at the University of Illinois, Chicago. In their youth both joined the Weatherman underground, a group that “managed to bomb the U.S. Capitol building, New York City Police Headquarters, the Pentagon, and the National Guard offices in Washington, D.C.”

Far from being on the periphery of this organization, Dohrn and Ayers were active members. Indeed, both were pursued by the FBI throughout the 70s. According to a Horowitz researcher, only a “technicality” for improper surveillance prevented the pair from receiving serious jail time for their crimes. Moreover, neither professor has denounced the activities they supported years ago.

Of his bomb-detonating days Ayers commented, “I don’t regret setting bombs. I feel we didn’t do enough.” That comment, ironically enough, was published by the New York Times in the edition that was delivered to the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. Dohrn, by contrast, claimed to be “joking” when she celebrated the brutal Sharon Tate murders that were carried out by members of Charles Manson’s clan: “Dig it! First they killed those pigs, then they ate dinner in the same room with them. They even shoved a fork into the victim’s stomach! Wild!” This same person now directs the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern and spends her professional time, along with her husband, working to prevent the punishment of violent juvenile offenders.

Then there is the inventor of Kwanzaa, Professor Ron Karenga. In 1971, Karenga and two other members of his “United Slaves” organization were convicted of felonious assault and false imprisonment. Karenga, who bestowed the title “Maulana” or “Master Teacher” upon himself, spent four years in prison for these crimes before being released in 1975. This resume blemish didn’t prevent Karenga from securing a faculty appointment at San Diego State University shortly thereafter. In 1979 Karenga moved to Cal State Long Beach where, in 1989, he was named head of the Black Studies Department. That’s an amazing career track--fourteen years from prison inmate to department head of a state university!

(Meshing nicely with this case of affirmative action for criminals, researcher Thomas Ryan notes that Kwanzaa’s seven principles are the same principles embraced by the Symbionese Liberation Army—the domestic terrorist group that kidnapped Patricia Hearst in 1974 and employed a seven-headed snake to symbolize their collectivist philosophy.)

Having run for vice-president on the party’s ticket in 1980 and ’84, Angela Davis is probably the most famous Communist now teaching on American campuses. But she is surely the only “University Professor” in the University of California system who boasts that title despite a complete absence of serious scholarship. Davis does, of course, possess the distinction of fleeing from the FBI and being tried for involvement in a 1970 plot to free her imprisoned lover—a Black Panther awaiting trial for murder. This plot resulted in the death of four people, including Judge Harold Haley, whose “head was blown off by a sawed-off shotgun owned by Professor Davis.” Davis, however, acting as her own lawyer to avoid cross-examination, was found not guilty of the conspiracy charges against her—thus setting the stage for the honors that were lavished upon her by both the Soviet Union (the International Lenin Peace Prize) and the University of California system.

Horowitz’s well-written introductory chapter contains the most egregious example of academic preferences for imprisoned radicals. That case concerns Susan Rosenberg, who, in the fall of 2004, was invited to join the faculty of Hamilton College as a “Visiting Professor.” Twenty years earlier Rosenberg, another member of the Weatherman underground, had been apprehended and sentenced to 58 years in prison for helping move hundreds of pounds of explosives into a New Jersey warehouse. A midnight pardon issued by Bill Clinton, however, made all the difference between doing time in a federal prison and teaching a course on “Resistance Memoirs” to students at Hamilton.

Rosenberg’s invitation to Hamilton was only withdrawn when a student, Ian Mandel, brought intense public scrutiny to her background—a history that also included an indictment for the murder of two Nyack, New Jersey police officers whose memorial stood a mile from Mandel’s home. As if to indicate their contempt for public standards of decency, the Hamilton organization responsible for inviting a convicted terrorist to the faculty followed that fiasco with a speaking invitation to Ward Churchill—an offer that was reluctantly rescinded after Churchill’s “little Eichmanns” comment about the innocent victims of 9/11 was publicized.

The conclusion one must draw from such examples isn’t that every institution has its bad apples but rather that, at least in the liberal arts in America, moral turpitude and political hucksterism pervades higher education. Radical criminals with questionable academic credentials flourish in a milieu that bristles with hostility toward real scholars who don’t toe the party line—witness the case of former Harvard President Lawrence Summers.

Individuals with prison records or FBI rap sheets don’t get into major educational institutions because they fudge their resumes. They get in because they share the political dogmas of those who hire them—and they flourish for the same reason. Angela Davis isn’t a “University Professor” because of her scholarship. She is there because of her politics.

What The Professors ultimately reveals isn’t a list of instructors that students can avoid, but a corrupt, politicized system that has contempt for the very idea of liberal education.

THE DA VINCI CODE: IT'S NOT "JUST A MOVIE"

“It’s just a movie.” That’s the nonchalant retort that elites employ to mollify people who object to the venomous calumnies that are directed against the Catholic Church in Dan Brown’s now-it-is, now-it-isn’t fictional story, The Da Vinci Code.

It’s curious how this sophisticated observation is only employed when a movie offends certain sensibilities. No critic, for example, would have thought to downplay the significance of Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ by saying, “It’s just a movie.” On the contrary, indignant commentary alleging anti-Semitism was ubiquitous.

Likewise, when United 93 was released, the mainstream media were atwitter with angst over whether Americans were “ready” for the film. No one, to my knowledge, pooh-poohed this psychologizing based on the fact that United 93 was “just a movie.” (Not surprisingly, no traumatological speculation has accompanied Oliver Stone’s soon-to-be-released 9/11 flick.)

Apparently there’s an unwritten rule for invoking the “It’s just a movie” clause that limits its use to scripts that slander military officials (JFK) and Christians or glamorize depravity (Pulp Fiction). In the unlikely event that a movie portrayed some Jesse Jackson double in a less-than-sympathetic light, one can be sure that industry flacks would never let these same words fall from their lips.

That little word “just”—as movie moguls prove when they tout their Brokeback achievements at award ceremonies—is a lie. Film, television, and other media shape public sensibilities—a point Plato made long ago when he discussed the impact that arts have upon character. “In music…lawlessness easily creeps in unseen…in the form of play, when it seems likely to do no harm.” Cultural elites know the power of mass communication—but deny it selectively.

Imagine a movie in which a priest is mysteriously murdered at Lincoln Center. As he dies he shreds his robe suggestively over a CBS camera. Subsequently, a polymath professor, dismissed from a prominent Catholic University for having anti-abortion views, begins to put together, at his great peril, the pieces of a vast, left-wing conspiracy.

The CBS eye turns out to be the symbol for an elite group that shapes public opinion by manipulating media messages. Moreover, this cocktail-swishing coven has a pedigree that extends through Jean-Paul Sartre and Sigmund Freud to the Marquis de Sade. Its ultimate goal is the destruction of the Judeo-Christian conscience that has informed Western society for the last 1500 years.

You can create the climax of your choice for this whodunit. But you can’t imagine any critic saying of such a film, “It’s just a movie.” Instead, this slick flick would be vilified as the paranoid fantasy of a mentally deranged individual with lifetime memberships in both the NRA and 700 Club.

Secular critics don’t pretend that movies of this sort are unimportant. They only pretend when movies vilify people or institutions that they hate.