The Dish

The drug companies are not perfect, but they have done more to advance the well-being of human beings than any other industry in the past decade or so. I am one of millions alive because of them; and countless more millions live better, longer lives because of them. That they have become demonized by the left says far more about the left than about the drug companies.

I’m struck by how my neologism still offends so many. The term "Islamist" was coined to describe political regimes or political movements that have the source of their legitimacy in the Muslim God. It wa coined in part to exclude secularized Muslims from their politicized counterparts. Wikipedia is clear enough about the accepted use of the term:

Islamism is a set of political ideologies that hold that Islam is not only a religion, but also a political system that governs the legal, economic and social imperatives of the state according to its interpretation of Islamic Law. For Islamists, the sharia has absolute priority over democracy and universal human rights: "The Islamic Shari’ah is the only source of reference for the explanation or clarification of any of the articles of this [Cairo] Declaration [on Human Rights in Islam]."

This usage is controversial. People who are labeled Islamists oppose the term because it suggests their philosophy to be a political extrapolation from Islam rather than a straightforward expression of Islam as a way of life. Some Muslims find it troublesome that a word derived from ‘Islam’ is applied to organizations they consider radical and extreme. The terms "Islamist" and "Islamism" are used often in several publications within some Muslim countries to describe domestic and trans-national organizations seeking to implement Islamic law. The English website for Al Jazeera, for example, uses these terms frequently.

You will notice no mention of terrorism or violence. My use of the term Christianist similarly and simply describes those who believe that the source of any political system should be Christian revelation, rather than the secular principles of the Enlightenment and the American constitution. A reader recently described my use of "Christianist" as a

"misguided term for people who believe in universal justice and standards that come from a universal source."

Well, yes, that is my definition. In the reader’s case, the universal source is the Bible. For Muslims, however, it is the Koran. And, of course, since both insist on the universal quality of their revelation, they are mutually incompatible, and democratic politics becomes impossible. Furthermore, since revelation of this kind is indeed the source of politics for Islamists and Christianists, I see no essential political difference between the two. The counterpoint to both is secular constitutional democracy, premised on a non-denominational achievement of individual freedom. When that freedom collides with religious truth, an Islamist or a Christianist has few qualms in squelching freedom. I differ. That’s the core of our "culture war". There is no freedom I would not grant a Christianist or Islamist in the exercize of his religious faith; but there are plenty of freedoms that he would seek to deny me in the simple living of my life.

I realize, after reading countless emails on the matter, that the real source of offense is my equating Islam and Christianity as interchangeable religious beliefs, for the purposes of politics. I see them as potentially equally threatening to freedom. History suggests that both have been deployed in the service of terrifying dictatorships, mass murder and religious war. In some ways, Christianity’s record in this is actually worse than Islam’s. This is not a reflection on the utterly peaceful intent of Jesus of Nazareth, but, then, he was also adamant on separating religion from politics. It is a reflection on the profound danger of fusing faith and power. If I’m right, the offense is mainly taken by Christians who simply refuse to see their faith as equally valid as Islam. They are offended that a Christian could even be equated with a Muslim. Which means, I believe, that they have not begun to understand the meaning of toleration at the core of Christianity, let alone the central insight of liberal constitutionalism. Hence our political and religious crisis.

Got $100 million to play with this Christmas? Here are some options.

This can’t be good news:

McCain’s favorability ratings have declined over the past nine months. Among independents, his support has dropped 15 percentage points since March. Independents were his strongest supporters when he sought the Republican nomination in 2000. The decline comes at a time when McCain is calling for sending more troops to Iraq and has aggressively reached out to conservative groups and Christian conservative leaders.

Still, if, mirabile dictu, Iraq does not descend into civil war, and Bush lines up McCain as his successor, he may still win the nomination. The Christianist wing really doesn’t have a strong candidate right now. And the GOP often rewards its elders, especially the loyal ones who run before and lost.

"Our Constitution states, "Each House [of Congress] shall be the judge … of the qualifications of its own members." Enough evidence exists for Congress to question Ellison’s qualifications to be a member of Congress as well as his commitment to the Constitution in view of his apparent determination to embrace the Quran and an Islamic philosophy directly contrary to the principles of the Constitution. But common sense alone dictates that in the midst of a war with Islamic terrorists we should not place someone in a position of great power who shares their doctrine. In 1943, we would never have allowed a member of Congress to take their oath on "Mein Kampf," or someone in the 1950s to swear allegiance to the "Communist Manifesto." Congress has the authority and should act to prohibit Ellison from taking the congressional oath today!" – Judge Roy Moore, on WND.

Jose Padilla is a broken human being:

"Jose’s experience as a detainee was so traumatic that it’s physically and mentally painful for him to answer the questions that we put to him," said Orlando do Campo, a federal public defender in Miami. "He just shuts down. We’re covering a lot of the same area as his interrogators, and he doesn‚Äôt want to relive it."

Saying that there was ‘sufficient cause" to conduct a competency hearing, the government, in papers filed yesterday, urged the judge to do so.

The government itself cited the affidavit of a psychiatrist for the defense, Dr. Angela Hegarty, who said that Mr. Padilla did not understand the nature and consequences of the proceedings against him and that he suffered "impairment in reasoning" as a result of post-traumatic stress disorder "complicated by the effects of prolonged isolation."

Mr. Padilla’s lawyers said he opposed this request that his competency be evaluated. Dr. Hegarty, one of two mental health professionals who examined him, said Mr. Padilla was "fearful of being thought of as crazy." She described him as "hypervigilant," his eyes darting about, his face twitching into grimaces, his "startle response" on constant high alert.

A brutal exchange on the Holocaust – with David Duke live from Iran, where he must feel very much at home.

A cartoon revealing the truth behind our meat industry.

This is probably close to what Bush will attempt:

First, we must commit publicly to provide $10 billion a year in economic support to the Iraqis over the next five years. In the military arena, it would be feasible to equip and increase the Iraqi armed forces on a crash basis over the next 24 months (but not the police or the Facilities Protection Service). The goal would be 250,000 troops, provided with the material and training necessary to maintain internal order.

Within the first 12 months we should draw down the U.S. military presence from 15 Brigade Combat Teams (BCTs), of 5,000 troops each, to 10. Within the next 12 months, Centcom forces should further draw down to seven BCTs and withdraw from urban areas to isolated U.S. operating bases — where we could continue to provide oversight and intervention when required to rescue our embedded U.S. training teams, protect the population from violence or save the legal government.

Finally, we have to design and empower a regional diplomatic peace dialogue in which the Iraqis can take the lead, engaging their regional neighbors as well as their own alienated and fractured internal population.

Here’s my prediction: it will be tried. And it won’t work.

The record speaks for itself. This president has enabled a KGB thug to dismantle what nascent democratic institutions there existed in that country. A reader makes a convincing case:

The lack of any coherent administration response to Russia’s backsliding on democracy may not have caused the extremely dangerous mess that we’re now faced with, but it certainly exacerbated it.  Over the past eight years, we have seen Russia’s nascent democratic institutions systematically dismantled by the Putin government, while those who seek to resist this trend find themselves threatened, assaulted and even killed.  Unfortunately, the thousands of brave democrats in Russia, whose work gives lie to the facile and condescending notion that the Russians are incapable of understanding democracy, cannot resist this well-organized, well-financed assault alone , any more than the Brezhnev-era dissidents were capable of bringing down the USSR on their own.  They must have financial and – critically – moral support from outside if their struggle is to have any chance of succeeding.

Yet the Bush administration’s reaction has run the gamut from silence to inaction; neither Colin Powell nor Condoleezza Rice has ever issued a strong statement denouncing, without qualification, the Putin administration’s actions, and our ambassadors in Moscow have been decidedly conciliatory in their public statements. (The British ambassador, on the other hand, was brave enough to read a statement defending democracy at a conference this past summer, for which transgression he has been harassed by a Kremlin-directed mob for the past five months.)  The Putin regime has been so emboldened by this silence as to attempt to assassinate a major politician, Ukraine’s Viktor Yushchenko, and as far as anyone can tell, is now doing hits in Western capitals using methods difficult to distinguish from nuclear terrorism.  Our government and others must start issuing clear, consistent and forceful denunciations of this kind of behavior, backed up with credible threats of sanctions, if possible. If not, the Kremlin will conclude, with good reason, that we are willing to tolerate this kind of behavior in exchange for access to petroleum and natural gas.

(Photo: Dmitri Astakhovitar/Tass/AP.)