The Dish

A conservative blogger denies charges that the rightwing blogosphere jumped to unsavory conclusions about Jill Carroll – before all the evidence was in. Make your own mind up.

One of the merging memes on the social right is that you judge a society by its fertility rate. It’s argued that Western Europe is a failure because its population is aging and will soon begin falling; ditto Russia and Japan. The implication is that modern secularism, with its encouragement of individual freedom, ignores the injunction to go forth and multiply, and is thereby doomed to the dustbin of history. But check out this interesting graphic of reproduction rates. Look where the highest birth-rates are: Niger, Yemen, Uganda, Rwanda, Zambia, Afghanistan, to name a few. A quck hands up: who wants to move there?

At one end, high birth rates are an indication of social collapse and desperation: people are having kids in order to maximize their survival chances. Maybe there is some spiritual benefit to living in such dire need, but I fail to see a simple connection between high birth rates and social health. In fact, declining birth-rates are almost always a sign of economic and social success, not failure, as we’re seeing in China and India. As long as the infrastructure exists for maintaining economic growth, the number of people in a given society is not that important an issue. Fewer may well be better. I’d rather live in Germany than Kazakhstan, wouldn’t you? Yes, there comes a point at which demographic imbalance with too many old people can strain a system. But this is a transitional problem, not a permanent predicament. Wealthier societies with fewer people and continued growth are – or should be – a goal for most of us, not a threat. They help spread wealth more widely, will eventually ease environmental strain, and make for more comfortable living in a less crowded Western Europe or Japan. Numbers don’t equal wealth or military power, given technology and the new brain-driven engines of economic growth. Instead of bemoaning population decline, why not celebrate it?

The GOP would do well to heed Bill Kristol’s advice on this one.

The British government continues its internal soap opera. The Labour party may well pay for it during the upcoming local elections.

"I saw the – what this town is known for, spin, cherry-picking facts, using metaphors to evoke certain emotional responses or shading the context. We know the mushroom clouds and the other things that were all described that the media has covered well. I saw on the ground a sort of walking away from 10 years‚Äô worth of planning. You know, ever since the end of the first Gulf War, there‚Äôs been planning by serious officers and planners and others, and policies put in place – 10 years’ worth of planning were thrown away. Troop levels dismissed out of hand. Gen. Shinseki basically insulted for speaking the truth and giving an honest opinion.

The lack of cohesive approach to how we deal with the aftermath, the political, economic, social reconstruction of a nation, which is no small task. A belief in these exiles that anyone in the region, anyone that had any knowledge, would tell you were not credible on the ground. And on and on and on, decisions to disband the army that were not in the initial plans. There‚Äôs a series of disastrous mistakes. We just heard the Secretary of State say these were tactical mistakes. These were not tactical mistakes. These were strategic mistakes, mistakes of policies made back here. Don’t blame the troops. They‚Äôve been magnificent. If anything saves us, it will be them." – Gen. Anthony Zinni, former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East. Three words: Fire Rumsfeld Now.

The retiring editor of the Economist makes one of the best defenses of having backed the Iraq war that I have yet read. Money quote:

"This will outrage some readers, but I still think the decision was correct‚Äîbased on the situation at that time, which is all it could have been based on. The risk of leaving Saddam in power was too high. Outside intervention in other countries’ affairs is difficult, practically, legally and morally. It should be done only in exceptional circumstances, and backed by exceptional efforts. Iraq qualified on the former. George Bush let us‚Äîand America‚Äîdown on the latter. So, however, did other rich countries: whatever they thought of the invasion, they had a powerful interest in sorting out the aftermath. Most shirked it.
The only argument against our decision that seems to me to have force is that a paper whose scepticism about government drips from every issue should have been sceptical about Mr Bush’s government and its ability to do things properly in Iraq. This is correct: we should have been, and we were. But when the choice is between bad options and worse ones, a choice must still be made. Great enterprises can fail‚Äîbut they fail twice over if they take away our moral courage and prevent us from rising to the next challenge."

Wise, honest, serious words. I second every one.

President Bush’s predicament – and his party’s. My take in the Times of London.

Yes, he reiterates the official doctrine about the exclusivity of heterosexuality for the God-given state of matrimony. But the logic of "Deus Caritas Est" can be read to include gay love as well, and lose none of its power. A Catholic blogger elaborates:

"I believe you will find that reading this encyclical letter through a series of substitutions, essentially by substituting homosexual love for heterosexual love, does nothing to alter the truths under discussion. And I go further: Deus Caritas Est carries as a mustard seed the implication that it is the unitive dimension of human sexuality and marital love, not the procreative dimension, that is fundamental to their sacramentality."

My own view is that those of us who hold that homosexual orientation is far from an "objective disorder" have nothing to fear from all and any inquiry into the subject. The truth is on our side. And in so far as the Pope speaks the truth, and approaches the truth through reason, he advances the cause of gay equality. Because we are human too. And God loves us as God made us. One day, the Church will proclaim that loudly as well.

"[Bill Clinton] is the most gifted politician of, certainly my time. He generates a kind of a vibrant goodwill with a capacity for mischief which is very, very American," – William F. Buckley Jr. Here’s my rash prediction. In future generations, Bill Clinton will be regarded as a talented conservative president, and a complete scoundrel.

A tentative piece of good news here. Deeply troubling trends here. Greg Dejerejian ponders U.S. strategy here.