Month: January 2007

The Pew Research Center has just done their latest survey (PDF) of attitudes among the young. They are markedly less religious than their elders – and previous generations. The percentage claiming they are agnostic or atheist has doubled in twenty years to one in five today; they regard heavy drinking as worse than smoking pot; they have become much less Republican than they once were. George W. Bush has persuaded most of the younger generation to vote Democratic, reversing Reagan’s gains among the young. They are much more pro-immigrant than their elders and 74 percent favor some privatizing of social security (yay!); but they’re dovish on the use of military force. They are divided equally on gay marriage (47 – 46 in favor, compared to 64 – 30 against among those over 25) but overwhelmingly support gay adoption. I find myself sympathetic to most of their views. Maybe my views are getting younger as my beard gets grayer.

Conservative columnist Ben Shapiro at least has the courage of his convictions:

McCain brings his massive popularity and media-darling status. He also brings his advanced age, his campaign finance reform record, his Gang of 14, his wishy-washy stance on homosexuality (including a vote against a constitutional amendment to protect marriage), his anti-conservative economic populism and his anti-torture positions.

My italics. Good to see plain English being used on the right. Pity the use of torture is now a plus for some in the Republican primaries. But, hey, that’s what American conservatism now stands for.

He’s saying a minimum of seven more brigades are needed for an indefinite period of time. That translates to roughly 18,000 up to 35,000 more troops as a minimum. I think he’s being too modest and we need more. But at least we have a bar to judge the president’s speech by.

Three Rivers, California, dusk.

A reader writes:

I lived in Pulaski County, Kentucky for 20 years and am not at all surprised that they are the subject of a blog entry entitled "Christianism Watch". I married, raised my children and divorced in that county. A beautiful and thriving community nestled a bit outside of the Appalachians, the county seat of Somerset is one of those places where one could image all the grass grows in one direction. But that illusion is quickly shattered when one becomes familiar with the area – it has quite a dark Christianist underbelly.

My daughter, who has Tourettes Syndrome, was unable to progress well in public school and I had little option but to place her in a "Christian" private school – that is until I went to pick her up one day and the staff and several students had her in a bathroom stall trying to "pray the demons out of her".

I taught youth Bible classes and Vacation Bible School at a southern baptist church for years until one of the very devout young men complained that he was now 18 – a man – and it was against scripture for me to teach him because I was a woman.

A reader of the book writes in:

I agree with the reader who found your book more valuable in the later chapters. For me, most of the pearls, and there are many, reside in Chapter 5. Your view of Jesus’ incarnation as God’s desire to be with us was revelatory and thrilling. (I am just a religious neophyte so this is a fresh concept for me.) Also stunning is Oakeshott’s account of history as a series on contingencies, something I apprehended instantly and completely as a central truth, but when does one hear this? I also loved your elucidation of Plato’s parable of the cave.

By the way, your conservatism of doubt strikes a chord with a book I read a few years back, America’s 30 Years War by Balint Vazsonyi. His main thesis was the superiority of pragmatism to ideology, practice to theory. In his analysis, Anglo-American history showed a greater inclination to pragmatism in its philosophy, laws and government; continental Europe a greater inclination to ideology.

I’m immensely encouraged by the continuing conversations the book has spawned.

There’s more to the story I wrote about in my column last Sunday. One of the Oregon Health and  Science University researchers, Jim Newman, emailed me to clarify:

Of course we realize that your article is based on a recent Sunday Times news story. While your piece was much more thoughtful than the Times, It was based on an article literally filled with errors. The source of many of these untruths is PETA – the animal rights group. Six months ago PETA started the campaign against this 5-year-old research. Here’s a link to one of PETA’s initial false postings for the research. PETA crossed the line and accused our scientists of being homophobes. They did this by making baseless assertions.

See here and here for more. Here are some more errors in the original news story:

– The Times article repeatedly states that the research is being done to cure homosexuality in either animals or humans. This is not true. The universities have never tried to turn a "gay" sheep straight. The researchers were interested in learning whether hormones played a role in  the development of partner preference. They blocked  hormone action (testosterone) in pregnant sheep to test this hypothesis. However the research was inconclusive. However the research was inconclusive. If it had provided conclusive results, the sheep would have preferred a same-sex partner, not an opposite sex partner as stated by the Times. NOTE: Also, human sexuality is much more complex than that of rams so we don’t refer to the animals as gay. That reference was created by the press.

– Based on this former point, the Times assertion which you repeated, that we have had "success" is wrong. The paper incorrectly reported the opposite of what was studied and the study was to test of a hypothesis. It was not a search for a "cure," a truly offensive suggestion that is not backed up by the facts.

– The Times article says the research is being conducted to improve the productivity of herds. This is not true. It is a basic science study merely aimed at understanding the role of brain structure and chemicals involved in partner preference. The National Institutes of Health funded the study. It is not being done for farming purposes.

I am hopeful that based on this information, which is all verifiable and based on documented fact; you will assist in clearing our name. We also ask that you join us in telling PETA to stop hijacking science and distorting it for their own political reasons.

I’m glad to post the scientists’ self-defense. It both allays some of the obvious worries but also confirms the gist of my column: that we should not fear such research but encourage more of it. As for PETA, I’m a defender of animal rights – but not their tactics in raising awareness.

Michael Totten sends another grim despatch from Southern Lebanon.

Stephen Bainbridge proffers another test to see where you fit ideologically. I fear I have been outed as a "moderate libertarian". Here’s where I end up on the ideological grid. Try it yourself.

I fear the debate over the surge is beginning to resemble the debate over whether to go to war in the first place. One assumption in particular has been set in stone – just as the WMD assumption was taken for granted in 2002 and early 2003. Here’s the new orthodoxy: If we were to withdraw now, it would mean a huge victory for the Jihadists who would use their new bases in Anbar to directly threaten us. I certainly don’t think this is an idle worry. It may be the best argument for starting over, as the president seems to want. But it’s worth airing again a counter-factual on this. If we withdraw from Iraq cleanly, it seems to me that the narrative of the war on terror also changes – in ways potentially beneficial for the West. Until very recently, the narrative of this war followed Osama’s script: the world of faithful Islam versus the corrupt West. But the unleashing of sectarian warfare in Iraq makes the story something else: not Islam against the West, but Islam against itself. If we can change the narrative of this war to one of a battle within Islam, which in essence it is already, we will have pulled off a major victory in the world of ideas. And ideas matter in long wars.

Or look at this another way: what is the greatest weakness of our enemy? The answer is fanaticism. It was fanaticism that prompted bin Laden to attack on 9/11/2001 before he had access to WMDs. He struck too soon, because he couldn’t help himself. His rage forces him to make mistakes. Same with Zarqawi, who alienated all of Jordan with bombing a wedding, and who even promoted bin Laden to worry about killing too many Muslims in Iraq. Al Qaeda hates the West, but their main beef is with fellow Muslims who will not bend to their extremism or persist in what they see as Shiite blasphemy. So let them hang themselves by this rope. By leaving Iraq, we create a dangerous civil war that nonetheless has huge propaganda potential for changing the entire game of this war. It takes the West much further out of the picture, and focuses the mind where it truly belongs: on current Muslim pathologies, paranoia and self-hatred. We can still prove our pro-reform bona fides, by concentrating on Afghanistan, where we still have a chance to turn things around. And we also give Iran a huge headache in grappling with the chaos on its border.

The other likely result of a Sunni-Shia war is serious damage to the world’s oil supply. But isn’t that just what the West needs? Don’t we desperately need to wean ourselves off oil – and wouldn’t $100 a gallon be the best way to accelerate that? I’m not saying leaving a civil regional war in Iraq is not dangerous. But so is staying. And the upsides of leaving haven’t been fully thought through yet. So let’s think them through, shall we?