The Best Among Us

On Memorial Day I unfurled a flag on my porch to honor the service of those who died, were wounded, or otherwise sacrificed for something greater than themselves. I do the same on the 4th of July as a token of my appreciation for the advantages of democracy. We don't have a perfect country, but its better than most of the alternatives that I can think of. Having hung the flag the other day, I surveyed the streets in four directions and saw one other flag. One flag - as far as the eye could see on the Palisades, on Memorial Day, in this corner of the nation's capitol. I don't see flags as a token of patriotism. Like the flags that fly in every military cemetery; it’s simply my family’s way of saying thank you - and remembering.

Several days later, I picked up a copy of the neighborhood paper, The Northwest Current, and was greeted with an editorial headline; "Rolling Blunder," a snarky put down of the annual Memorial Weekend tribute to veterans known as Rolling Thunder. Originally a remembrance of Vietnam era POWs and veterans, the "thunder" refers to the number of taxpayers who arrive each year on motorcycles. The complaint, apparently endorsed by the paper, concerns street closures and other inconveniences; including a "traffic nightmare" with "flags waving and motors roaring".

The author of this polemic is a reporter for the local ABC affiliate. He gets two columns of opinion space in most editions of The Current where he holds forth on every subject imaginable. Yet, I don't recall any complaints about street closures for rallies, marches, and marathons for every cause under the sun; including, most notably, a "million" man march organized by one of the nation's most noxious bigots. Hardly a month goes by in the District of Columbia without street closures for some special pleader, yet we should move the vets to "Hains Point," a place most tourists couldn't find with a map and compass. Suggesting this venue, the District’s most notorious open air drug market, adds insult to injury.

Journalists and TV networks often lament the recent decline in news readers and viewers. Yet, they seldom look to themselves or their product for an explanation. Consumers have not stopped reading or listening; they may have just stopped buying or reading slanted products that sneer at values or insult common sense. On the latter we could ask; what parade or demonstration doesn’t inconvenience someone?

Like most urban journalists, the author of “Rolling Blunder,” was probably opposed to the Vietnam War in particular; and my guess is today he would be opposed to war in general. For many like him, anti-war sentiment often morphs into a low key and patronizing contempt for servicemen and veterans. This seems to be the subtext of that recent editorial. This phenomenon, blaming the military for unpopular wars, is kin to blaming crime on cops or arson on firefighters.

Having done its best to sugar coat an insult, the “Rolling Blunder” harangue also presumes to instruct us on the difference between Memorial and Veteran's Day, as if self-evident were not a synonym for obvious. Indeed, Memorial Day commemorates those who died in battle or as Pericles, and later Lincoln, put it; “given the last full measure of devotion" to their country.

If we only preserved one holiday where we close streets, wave flags and make noise; I would choose Memorial Day. I would choose to honor the memories of those who paid so dearly to preserve the right of journalists and their editors to be small minded, self-absorbed, and insensitive to real inconvenience and true sacrifice. I would choose to preserve the minor inconveniences of Memorial Day because we need a visible reminder of the best among us so that we do not succumb to the worst.

Sister Mary Wisteria

Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great and Bill Maher’s Religulous are hysterical, not hysterically funny, just frenzied. If you didn’t know better, you might think that rabbis and priests were pursuing these guys through the salons of Georgetown and the gin mills of West Hollywood threatening them with bris, baptism and brimstone. They protest too much. Indeed, they seem to be self anointed; bi-coastal evangelists for nihilism.

So let us review their arguments for rational atheism, their theology if you will. In the first instance, they reject the historical consensus on God. Never mind that every culture, large or small, has believed in some sort of deity. Secondly, they reject the common consensus (and common sense); that is, the faith of their peers. As a practical matter, see Pascal’s Gambit, the vast majority of people believe in some kind of superior being. They do so, not out of fear or ignorance, but also out of the certainty that humans can not be ‘as good as it gets’. Experience and common sense tells them that Bill Maher and Christopher Hitchens can not be the apex of evolution.

Another axiom for militant atheists is invective; laying the history of bad behavior at the feet of traditional religion. This is more than a little like blaming war on soldiers and crime on cops. The corollary of invective is ad hominem attacks; cherry picking religious figures to vilify. The Pope and Mother Teresa come to mind; every contemporary liberal’s favorite whipping posts – as if name calling were an argument.

Yet, Hitchens saves the best of his worst for Blaise Pascal, the brilliant 17th Century mathematician and physicist who questioned the uses of reason, especially in matters of faith. Pascal celebrated and defended “the expected value of faith” and the “infinite” value of belief against any utility of relying on reason alone. Pascal argued that reason provides neither certainty nor truth. Hitchens calls this “sordid” and likens Pascal to “hypocrites and frauds” who abound in the “Talmudic Jewish” tradition.

Polemicists like Maher and Hitchens confuse God with religion. Our entire ethical, legal and democratic tradition is a direct descendant of Judaism and Christianity. A Church is only one of many public institutions; each is populated with saints and sinners. Yet, without these influences, democratic capitalism is impossible. Indeed, it was an Augustinian monk who raised the most profound and lasting defense of free will and choice.

Rational atheism is a kind of moral anarchy. Ethical autism has a long history with science; now compounded by the electronic autism of Eric Schmidt (Google as God). George Orwell could take another bow!

Many missionary atheists, unlike Pascal, are not tempered by the humility of doubt. They can not say; I do not know. The can not say; I may never know. What they do say is that all that will be known shall be known by people like me; an enlightened, progressive, liberal, rational, scientific, intellectual elite. This group will take all of the credit and none of the blame for the mixed record of humanity and science since the Enlightenment. The ABC’s of modern warfare (atomic, biological and chemical weapons) were not created by nuns and rabbis.

The heart of evangelical atheism is cowardice. What many can not say is what they truly believe: they believe that they and only they know the way forward – all else is backward; they believe that they should not be constrained by “arbitrary” ethics, morality or law; sounds too much like religion. Hitchens uses the phrase “unfettered scientific inquiry” to describe his vision of the future. Josef Mengele would be comfortable this euphemism.

A profound, some would say fatal, conceit infects secular rationalists; the belief that there could not be any intelligence that is superior to their intelligence. They also believe what tyrants and oligarchs have always believed since the birth of philosophy; they are the philosopher kings (Plato); they are the vanguard (Lenin); and they are the master race (Hitler). They believe that they should do the thinking for the rest of us. They believe that men like Karl Marx and Noam Chomsky are as godlike as it gets. Hobbes called them necessary and Nietzsche called them supermen.

Hitchens disinters Marx, Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg in his rant against religion. This is typical Left logic; one which confuses secular saints with significance. The only possible service Trotsky and Red Rosie provide is to illustrate how the Left usually deals with apostates. Someone might also point out to Hitchens that Marx was not so much a descendant of the "rabbinical line" as he was a product of Teutonic philosophy and a virulent anti-Semite to boot.

Things get very unscientific very quickly when you ask many atheists to define objectivity and reason. How do we separate our minds from the things we try to understand? Are rationalists capable of some out of body experience where they are devoid of inherited knowledge, historic influences, emotions, bias, prejudice and all the other sensibilities and tangential influences that plague ordinary mortals?

If you listen carefully, you would never know that reason is just one tool, like arithmetic, that we use to understand. And you will seldom hear that most scientific method is a smoke screen for junk science – derivative research. Original research and controlled experiments are rare, very expensive and time consuming. Yet as long as academics get something into print, nobody seems to give a damn.

In their hearts, these intellectuals do not believe in consensus; they do not believe in the wisdom of crowds; they do not believe in history or tradition; and if you have visited any modern American university campus recently, you will understand that they sure as hell do not believe in tolerance or democracy – at least not in any form you would recognize.

Truth is what we choose to believe. The most difficult challenge for all study is to bridge that gap between analysis and acceptance. Any belief is more potent than any idea. And what we believe always has more to do with faith than reason; we can not test every premise for every action. We believe in something or trip over everything. The alternatives are chaos and autism.

Here’s a common sense test for all those who think that reason trumps faith. If you have a choice between a committed rationalist with a PHD and a nun with a high school diploma; who would you trust to instruct your child? Sister Mary Wisteria wins this contest every time. Even community organizers send their kids to ‘religulous’ schools. Faith is just another word for trust; civilization is impossible without it.

Thank God!

Thin Ice and Electronic Autism

A woman bore two children eight years apart. When the second child was an infant, mom was a little reluctant to leave her alone with the older girl. The mother feared her first born was jealous of the baby. Nonetheless, after constant pleading, the older girl was allowed to baby sit. Still fearful, Mom left the nursery door ajar, but stayed within ear shot. After a long silence, she heard her eldest whisper to the baby; “Tell me about God, I’m starting to forget”.

Children are born believers. They have to be. No creature is more dependent on others to survive the rigors of infancy. Trust is the primal virtue that makes any society possible; family, enterprise or nation. Religions take advantage of these early inclinations with rituals of initiation: circumcision and baptism are examples. In time, an adult may choose from various degrees of observance, but they are not choosing among religion, faith or reason. Religion is cannon or cant, organized or not: faith or trust is a component of adult character; and reason is merely a tool – like arithmetic. The so called clash between “faith and reason” is a false dilemma. The first is a belief, the other is an instrument. There is no conflict.

Atheism is a simple religion; a disbelief in God. Many who think of themselves as atheists also subscribe to subordinate doctrines such as secular rationalism or secular humanism; that is, all that we can or should know can be induced or deduced with the aid of scientific method or reason. As logic or even arithmetic, this is very thin ice.

There are many roads to knowledge; reason is just one. We are born with a degree of inherited information, conscious or unconscious. Indeed, we stand on the shoulders of thousands of generations of ancestors. Call this information instinct, DNA or the collective unconscious (thanks to Carl Jung); it’s all the same. My neighbor has a terrier. The first time it got out of the yard, it caught and killed a squirrel; a blessing on my block. This dog did not have to learn to kill rodents. That skill is hard wired by generations of experience and breeding.

Could we say less about humans? The English language is rich with patronymics that
suggest skill sets passed from generation to generation; Carpenter, Harper, Driver, Smith, Farmer, Butcher, Cantor, Levy, Knight, Mason, and Fisher - just to name a few. Call it heritage or genetics, these veins of inherited knowledge play a powerful role. And ground truth exists long before “science” examines it. If you’re broke, balancing your check book doesn’t change truth or reality. A little arithmetic merely confirms your poverty.

Our senses are another way of knowing; what we see, hear, touch, taste, smell - and feel emotionally. Common sense, although not as common as we would like, is a way of knowing to often ignored or devalued by science. Senses and emotions are critical to human intelligence. Indeed, we all would like to be associated with “sensible” people. If we do not learn from what our senses tell us, no tool like reason will compensate. Indeed, academic rationalists and computer “geeks’ are notorious for their common sense deficits. This is no accident.

Our true sixth sense is our feelings or emotions. Emotional responses, intuition, hunches, and gut feelings often guide what we accept or believe. If you can’t see a role for emotional knowledge, just talk to your daughter, sister, mother or wife. Indeed, the most difficult problem of human intellectual history is the chasm that separates analysis and acceptance. How we feel about thing is often more important than what we think. No amount of fact finding and logic will overcome a strong belief. Truth is simply what we choose to believe: reason is simply one of the tools that get us there.

Any belief is more potent than any idea. An idea can turn on a dime: a belief is truth derived from ideas. If you don’t believe in something, you will probably fall for anything. This American mantra can be traced to ancient Greece, the trail of Socrates. He was tried for lack of piety and corrupting his students. He questioned the Athenian belief in democracy; he challenged the very freedom that made his questions possible. Unfortunately, Socrates didn’t have the benefit of Aristotle’s logic. Socrates wasn’t executed; he swallowed his foot and died from internal contradictions.

Democracy assumes a culture of belief, faith and morals; atheism is a kind of moral anarchy. All of what we think of as the best of Western culture, including our legal system, has proceeded apace with the evolution of the ethics associated with Judaism and Christianity. Indeed, democratic capitalism (are you listening Noam?) is impossible without these influences. The moral code that these great forums continue to debate, imperfect as it may be at times, is our cultural cement. The most advanced and just societies on earth are the product of these ideas. None of this proves a thing about God.
Yet, it illustrates the value of faith. Cotton Mather is as American as popcorn.

Mather likened mankind to a spider suspended by a thread over the fires of hell. Science tells us that we literally float on a sea of molten lava below and we are dependent on the fires of the sun above. We are also told that a meteor could end life as we know it in an instant. A few nuclear weapons might do the same. As Jared Diamond points out; our world will end with a bang or whimper (some unknown pathogen). How do scientific assessments differ from Mather’s spider or the horsemen of the apocalypse?

In several respects, reason is, and maybe should be, a last resort. The most important questions facing humanity will not be answered by mathematicians or engineers. Further, reason it is a relative newcomer – Aristotle forward. Our moral and genetic heritage, our common sense and our emotions have been with us from the beginning. We were a race of thinkers long before Plato’s pupil formalized logic. In recent memory the luminaries of rational atheism include Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Adolph Hitler, Josef Mengle, and Joseph Stalin - and now we have Christopher Hitchens, Bill Maher and Eric Schmidt, just to name the celebutantes.

If you read Hitchens’ latest polemic (God is Not Great), you might suppose that priests and rabbis were pursuing him through the salons of Georgetown – somehow infringing on his right not to believe. You might also think invective was a logical argument. The name calling is directed at all manner of secular apostates like Mother Teresa. Ironically,
Christopher Hitchens’ atheism mirrors the certainty of orthodox clerics.

The Maher film (Religulous) fails as logic or humor. A Borat derivative, his film allows an edited selection of unwary and inarticulate ‘marks,’ including his aging mother, to be ridiculed on subjects religious. ‘Foot in mouth’ as science and art seems to be Maher’s strong suites.

Hitchens and Maher might be dismissed as media clowns, but Schmidt’s influence has Orwellian import. His faith in Goggle, engineering and digital technology has messianic dimensions. Yet, when Schmidt is confronted by ethical questions about data collection, storage and potential political abuses he takes a pass. “Trust me,” he says “we have the appropriate internal controls”. This is where binary logic leaves the track. If we couldn’t trust the government (i.e. NSA, the FBI and the IRS) not to use personal data for political purposes; why should we trust ‘.Com’ billionaires or Google? Unlike Hitchens and Maher, Schmidt has the cash to buy the political support he needs.

Digital evangelists are notably tone deaf to internet ethical sensitivities like exploitation, predation (economic and sexual) and electronic autism. The autism is not limited to the ethical blind spots of science and engineering, but the more widespread symptoms of obsessive and compulsive electronic addictions among users. Follow the logic! Government should not regulate, police or tax the internet; but, at the same time, .Com moguls shouldn’t play cop either! Even if you ignore the circular logic, this is just another version of the Hitchens “unfettered scientific inquiry” dogma. If you combine the ethics of evasion and known political cant, in Schmidt and others, you have a critical mass.

Indeed, if we examine most of the ‘Google as God’ arguments, they are similar to historical variants of political rationalism; National Socialism and Communism just name two. It might also be prudent to recall that there isn’t a dimes worth of difference
between National Socialism and Communism; except that one is a virulent nationalism and the other is ecumenical totalitarianism. The legacy from this toxic mix includes infanticide, racial genocide, euthanasia and the ABC’s of “unfettered” science – atomic, biological and chemical weapons. In fairness, we should point out that science also gave us Diet Coke, panty hose, U Tube, digital porn, Bart Simpson and Noam Chomsky’s web site.

Indeed, the danger of rational atheism (aka religious rationalism) in the 21st Century is that it is capable of producing a digital or binary science that is both indifferent and imprudent. Scientists are uncomfortable with the unquantifiable; morality sounds a little too much like religion. In another era, a complete education would have included ethics, rhetoric and the sciences. Ethics was not only the first condition of enlightenment, it was first among equals. The sciences were listed last for a reason. Historically, should do has been more important than can do.



Modern atheism and “unfettered scientific inquiry” is the flotsam left in the wake of Karl Marx and the fall of Communism. Along with “democratic” social engineering, it was the great secular religion of the 20th Century. Rationalists see traditional religions as kinds of pious bigotry. Worse still, they conflate God, religion and faith - things that can be as different as day and night. Faith is a complex phenomena; religion is not.

Indeed, the crisis of faith, or ‘revolution,’ that began with Luther and Calvin fell off the cliff and brained Nietzsche, Marx, Lenin, Hitler and Stalin. The German monks dismissed free will and good works; and introduced the notion of predestination – an elect. Calvin’s elect morphed into Nietzsche’s “superman”. Marx dismissed the values of Judaism and Christianity whole scale. Indeed, he was a virulent, self-hating, anti-Semite. Marx’s “internationale”, Lenin’s “vanguard of the proletariat” and Hitler’s “master race” are the logical outcomes of “objective considerations” unfettered by moral traditions.

It also takes a special arrogance to claim to know what you can’t possibly know; to assume that reason trumps faith. The notion that truth (or progress) will emerge from the mouth of a test tube or a computer program is an assumption, nothing more. You may recall that Einstein was for nuclear weapons before he was against them. Einstein’s dilemma is an eloquent testimony to the binary simplicity and subsequent danger of many science projects. Unfortunately, courage is not a required course for science or engineering.

Rationalism often flies in the face of history and consensus; and atheists often confuse apex predator with apex of evolution, a dangerous proposition indeed. Humility has never been a strong suite for science. In contrast, people of faith have the modesty to admit that humans may not be the top of the food chain and there are things we do not and may never know. The recent play and film adaptation of Doubt is an excellent treatment of ethics leavened with uncertainty - an intramural moral struggle between two Catholic clerics. Say what you will about the progressive religious views of the priest and the conservative religious views of the nun; in the end, you would still trust your kids to their school. Faith and trust are synonymous.

Finding Hollywood and virtue in the same argument may give you a bit of jolt. Nonetheless, theater and film frequently treat ethical questions with candor not arrogance. Art is always more candid than science. If ignorance is simply the absence of knowledge; stupidity is the absence of faith in spite of knowledge. The question has never been faith or reason; but the answer has always been - faith and reason - in that order. Thank God!

Reform and Accountability?

Politicians have a lot of annoying habits. Presuming to tell us what we think and then validating that opinion with some selective poll are two of the worst. Before the election, the senator from Illinois told us that "corruption" was the grievance most frequently cited by voters (Washpost, 04 Jan 08). By that account, you might think the economy and the war were small potatoes.

Since then, the President has frequently said; "it's not enough to change the players, we have to change the game." Game is the key word in the argument. Hearing about ethics from a chap who represented a state where his vacant Senate was put up for auction is a little like hearing from Harry Reid about the evils of gambling and prostitution.

Whenever politicians start to preach about ethics and accountability, we need to recall Mark Twain's observation that politicians are the only permanent class of organized criminals. We are told daily that draconian measures are necessary to “recover from the mismanagement of the last eight years”. Polosi, Reid, Frank, and Dodd were the financial management of the last decade. Where’s the accountability in this group? Congress proposes; a president merely disposes.

The recovery plan (aka bailouts) has drop-kicked all moral hazards out of the financial arena. To be replaced with what? The fatal flaw of all government roles in commerce is the assumption that politicians or federal bureaucrats are moral and competent; at least more so than entrepreneurs and the titans of industry. All those who believe politicians and integrity belong in the same sentence, raise your hand!

In short, on the oversight front, President Obama wouldn't do more with less; he would do less with more. The “unprecedented effort” to be led by the Vice President is a cipher. Biden’s first effort was to strong arm governors into accepting funds they do not want. Surely the President knows that a deeper oversight matrix makes any corrective action less likely. Joe Biden has spent his entire career inside the Beltway. Should we believe he’s about to have an epiphany?

Here's a thought. Instead of new bureaucracies, boards and commissions; let's disband all the inert oversight and ethics monitors that aren't doing the job and let the Justice Department do its job. Revive the ABSCAM stings if you will, with apologies to Representative Murtha and Senator McCain of course. If we must have another "people's public watchdog," let's keep the varmints out of the hen house - no politicians on the oversight dais. The solution isn’t bipartisanship; the answer to oversight is no partisans - citizens who have never held office.

It's hard to believe that smart people like Obama and Pelosi do not understand all of the above. We are left to conclude that, like the McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform, we can look forward to a lot of moral sizzle, but no steak. Creepier still is the similarity of Obama's proposals to Marion Barry's recent stunt. Councilman Barry introduced legislation, since withdrawn, to the DC Council that would prohibit employment discrimination against ex- convicts. Presumably that would mean the guy who gave your neighbor a lead pipe lobotomy might someday return to your street as the beat cop. When the President and the Speaker have their way, the folks who stole your chickens will get to watch the hen house.

The War on Prosperity and Others

There are three things we know for certain about Barrack H. Obama – maybe four. The first is that he is our President; he just won the most expensive bull shit contest in the free world. The second is that he has a good rap; that’s how he won the contest. Indeed, even when he shades or ignores the truth, he is so sincere and so articulate that we give him a pass on candor. A Press corps whelped by Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky is unlikely to hold his feet to the fire. NBC’s Chris Matthews admits to being “tingled” by Obama. Stimulus indeed! The third thing we know for certain is that Obama has written two books – mostly about himself. The fourth is a little sensitive; he doesn’t like to use his middle name, a least not in public. Obama seems to be more than a little cagey about his Muslim heritage. If character is destiny, we may be headed for the ego abyss. Picture Carter(D) policies fronted by Kennedy(D) rhetoric.

All of the air in the room is being sucked out by the economy at the moment. For the near term, our dismal science is the sum of bail-outs, stimuli, political pork, affirmative action mortgages and earmarks – although the later, henceforth, will be known as investments. No one seems to know whether a trillion large will work, but let’s not sweat details like effectiveness. Using more deficits and more debt to “stimulate” may be a little like hiring Maynard Keynes to diddle your furnace and expecting it to heat the house.

On a daily basis we are told that draconian measures are necessary to recover from the “mismanagement of the last eight years”. Never mind that Nancy, Harry, Barney, Chris and Maxine were our management in that decade. Does Congress still propose and the President still dispose? If Maxine prevails and we nationalize everything; we will still be the most prosperous nation on earth – until Halloween.

All this economic heat is more notable for smoke than fire. And national security seems to be receding into the miasma. Wars with real bullets have fallen off the radar. Some might argue that the first priority of national security is the domestic piñata. Fair enough, but those gifts are already on their way. Our domestic vector is set. We are going to pig out as far as the eye can see and then make a date with Jenny Craig – a date uncertain. We have launched the war on prosperity and that’s that!

But what about those other wars that were so worrisome during the late great campaign? Is it two or three wars? Harry said we lost one. We need to do the math.

There is the bad war in Iraq that the President ran against; and the good war in Afghanistan he says we should be fighting. Never mind that many of Obamas’s acolytes never met any war they approve of. Then there is the “war on terror” which apparently has fronts in places like New York, Karachi, London, Madrid, Beirut, Tel Aviv, Aden, Somalia, and recently, Mumbai. Let’s end the confusion and call it the “whatever” war. But who the hell are we fighting?

Making war on terror is out; nobody makes war on a tactic. And then there’s the Carlin (bless his soul) corollary: “Beware of those who speak euphemism”; they say not what they mean nor mean what they say. We can’t call it the war on Islamofascists. That’s an affront to National Socialists and Communists every where. After all, Fascism has been in decline while Islam has been growing like, well, the Later Day Saints. National security mavens such as Sally Quinn assure us that terrorists are just a small minority, not representative of Islam – never mind that Islam is exactly what they have in common. Nobody ever asks Ms. Quinn how many followers the Bolsheviks had in 1916 or the Nazis had in 1932.

Now that the Congress and the White House have Democracy and Capitalism on the run, what are we going to do about the enemy whose name we dare not speak? America may be suffering from sacrifice fatigue. What with going from jumbos to hail Mary mortgages, Hummers to hybrids, Deer Valley to the Delaware Shore, Feragamo to flip flops and most worrisome of all, from plastic back to paper. If the President opens another front on the Great Salt Lake, we should put down our dopio, pull up our panty hose and just say no!

Enough is enough!

Dear General

We haven’t heard much from you since that last piece of performance art at the United Nations. Now it seems that we hear from you once a month. First there was that endorsement of Obama and then, after the election, there was the condemnation of Republicans, Sarah Palin and, of all people, Rush Limbaugh. Let’s start with the Republicans.

You jumped ship at the eleventh hour before the election. And now you give Republicans advice on how to get well? This is a little like Colonel Arnold giving war counsel to General Washington. You recommend that they dump Palin and stop listening to Limbaugh! You may lose your RINO card.

You also seem to laboring under the illusion that the ‘community organizer’ won because he was a better choice, more accomplished than, or had a better program than McCain/Palin. Bravo Sierra, sir!

Any honest observer would have to admit that Barrack’s only concrete accomplishments to date are two books – about Obama. Now granted he has a good rap. But it’s not like someone hasn’t said it all before. The only difference between B.H.O. and Jesse Jackson is that Obama doesn’t patronize us with rhymes. And by-the-by, should you ever decide to counsel the president, you might want to point out that hope is not a strategy and change is not an objective.

The Republicans could have run Pericles and still lost. The Republicans lost because Hilary blew the primaries. The Republicans lost because the economy fell into the crapper just before show time. The Republicans lost because a left-leaning congressional circle-jerk successfully, if not fairly, hung the affirmative action mortgage debacle on Bush and by implication, McCain.

‘Twas unfair to link Obama with Wright and Farrakhan, but somehow not unfair to claim a McCain victory (guilt by association) would be a third term for Bush. The Republicans lost because a vote for Obama was a vote against Bush. The Republicans lost because McCain looked and sounded like yesterday.

But why do you have Sarah Palin in your cross hairs? By any metric, she is an accomplished lady; athlete, wife, mother, business woman, volunteer, municipal and state-wide office holder. Unlike the usual political groupies and bimbos inside the beltway, she’s also a babe. Ms Palin favors and actually does justice to a skirt.

She is ridiculed for her performance on the gas bag circuit. Compared to whom? Surely you can’t be thinking about Joe (“I’ve forgotten more about foreign policy than most people know”) Biden.

Biden’s singular accomplishments are tenure and an overwrought ego. He is an inside baseball, inside the beltway diva. His only qualification to be chair of anything is 35 years at the Senate trough. Change my ass! Let’s put aside for the moment his hair plugs, teeth by Steinway, plagiarism and chronic foot-in-mouth problem and look at his grip on history and current issues. He doesn’t know when Roosevelt (D) served or when television began! Entertainment is the only value added that Senator Malaprop brings to this administration.

His one recent foreign policy initiative was to suggest we divide Iraq into ethnic and religious cantons! Such a policy would reinforce not eliminate the divisions that fuel conflict in the Levant. Such nonsense would also torch relations with at least four other nations in the region. As we used to say in boot camp; “this guy doesn’t know shit from Shinola (an excellent shoe polish I might add)”.

The real difference between Palin and Biden deserves a hockey analogy; good prospect versus no prospects. Before I leave Sarah, one more thought. If we compare you, Obama, Biden and Palin, we can say with certainty that Governor Palin has reached her high station without benefit of political tenure or an affirmative action tailwind. You will note that my remark about you and the President is conditional, yet if the shoe fits, I’m sure it’s a size ten.

Let’s move on to Limbaugh. You suggest that Republicans need to stop listening to El Rushbeau? Whatever for? He is their most caustic critic;
flailing the flaccid on an equal opportunity basis. Take the McCain case. Limbaugh may have lost several million votes for Republicans before the recent election by suggesting that McCain was a political hermaphrodite.

You must appreciate that the Left makes Limbaugh and talk radio possible! Newspapers and networks are loosing clients while conservative talk radio is growing. There is only one possible message here. Talk radio is providing facts and a point of view that “mainstream” outlets, including CPB, are unable or unwilling to provide. The issue here, sir, is bias and in too many cases “cooking (Janet you know who you are) the books”. The mainstream keeps telling itself that it is loosing ground because of technology. Their real problem is integrity. Readers, viewers and listeners are literally not buying crap anymore - or corvettes, it seems.

Just a few examples would include Mike Wallace, Janet Cooke, Stone Phillips, Dan Rather and Jason Blair. We might even throw in Woodward and Bernstein now that we know that their source for Watergate was a highly placed FBI fruitcake with an ax to grind. Cooke and Blair, you may recall, were two investigative “journalists” caught lying for the Washington Post and NY Times about conditions in black communities – as if the truth were not bad enough. Old school editors like Ben Bradley (WP) Hal Raines (NYT) underwrite questionable journalism with bad conduct medals. Cooke received a Pulitzer Prize.

But your personal favorite should be Mike Wallace. Do you remember how CBS tried to smear Danny Graham and William Westmoreland on their Vietnam era order-of-battle assessments? CBS and Wallace had to be taken to court before the truth was told. Blaming soldiers for an unpopular war is a little like blaming crime on cops.

Conservative media is a growth business because they put their politics and their agenda up front. The so-called mainstream is committing suicide (no offense, Mr. Wallace) in slow motion because they continue to lie about their agenda and cook the books in an era when such duplicity is quickly exposed. Leftist, liberal and socialist journalists never admit to an agenda or admit who they are. Say what you will about Limbaugh’s politics; you don’t have to take him to court to know from whence he comes.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must say that like you, I‘m a product of the Bronx, a proud graduate of Cardinal Hayes High. Indeed, I was also born into the Democrat Party. As a youth, I was a big fan of Tip O’Neil and Pat Moynihan. I lost my progressive cherry when Moynihan was thrown under the bus for telling the truth about welfare and affirmative action hustles. Since then, my misgivings about liberals have been validated.

Today, the Democrat Party is led by a botox bimbo, a sin city shill, a hysterical sodomite (who ran a boy’s bordello out of his basement) and two philandering boozers, one of whom may be a homicidal drunk. Please fill in any names that fit. The governor of California recently characterized legislators as girlie men. Here in Washington we actually have three types; there are women who want to be men, men who want to be women and the rest don’t seem to have the giblets to make either team. Calling this crowd a “parliament of whores” (thanks PJ) is an insult to honest hookers everywhere.

Not that any of this drove me into the arms of Republicans. In my Bronx neighborhood we thought Republicans had died off with Teddy Roosevelt, if not Lincoln. I had a short hot-flash of deja-vu during the Reagan years, but I recovered. Yet the real problem isn’t Party; its propriety.

So I was more than a little concerned the other day when you trashed the good lady from Alaska because you thought she had slighted your “Bronx values”. I applaud your concern with values but let me say a few words about the use of “Bronx” as an adjectival salutation.

The Bronx is a place people come from, not a place people go to. Even when New Yorkers talk about “the city”, they mean Manhattan not the Bronx. If you were to go to the Bronx today there a five things you would not bring; your wife, your kids, your wallet, your watch and certainly not your automobile. If you were to ask citizens of the Bronx where they would like to live, 75 percent would say “anywhere else” and the remainder would be unresponsive due to mind numbing chemicals. Let’s be serious, neither of us would go back there to vacation, buy property or to retire. Just as surely, the best day of our lives was the one when we saw the Cross Bronx Expressway in the rear view mirror.

They say you can take the boy out of the Bronx but you can’t take the Bronx out of the boy. As a soldier and citizen, I tried to refute this canard daily. You shouldn’t be defensive about the Bronx and I don’t think Governor Palin ever mentioned your values or lack of them. Yet I think she has a point about small state, small town values. And she always makes her point with gentle, humorous Thornton Wilder aplomb.

Considering recent political values on display in New York, Connecticut, New Jersey and now Illinois, we should all worry. Yet, you say that big cities are where the votes are. So what! Does this mean its OK to sell a Senate seat if enough like-minded idiots agree?

Seeing that you have brought up this values thing, let’s talk about them in important venues like a president’s character - the economy and in national security matters.

People like us who grew up in the Bronx can’t afford to believe in guilt by association. Good folks should be willing to overlook those unsavory characters that dog Obama’s character. At the same time, you know that were he a GS-6 looking a security clearance, he wouldn’t get past hello. Nonetheless, he should be judged on his contemporary associates.

The first that come to mind are the Clintons - the last pair of breeding lawyers in the White House. You may recall how that played out. Now Obama brings this circus act back to the national stage under the flag of “change you can believe in”. Hello, general, are you still there? Good, let’s continue the values chat.

We now live in a single-trade oligarchy, a culture where almost all elected and too many appointed officials are lawyers. The law trade is like the psycho babble business. Their ethic is the game – keeping the ball in play, not unlike scoreless soccer. Lawyers and psychiatrists don’t care who wins or looses as long as they get paid or laid (sorry Bill). In Barack’s old neighborhood it’s called pay to play. Do you think it’s an accident that even judicial pay raises get pasted into unrelated bail-out bills?

So when I think about the economy I’m having another hot flash of deja-vu. Plan Obama calls for massive spending to be followed by a fiscal diet at a date uncertain. Seems to me that massive spending is what got us here in the first place. Using deficit and debt and to stimulate the economy may be a little like having Maynard Keynes diddle your furnace to heat the house.

Politicians never see any problem that can’t use more money. That’s where the votes really hang out. Conversely, they never have the stones to end programs that don’t work. I live in a town where health care, education, housing and policing receive massive taxpayer support. If any of these programs were dependent on values or effectiveness, they wouldn’t merit another nickel. A century and a half after Lincoln’s death, too large a part of the nation’s capital is still a dangerous slum. Values for lawyer/politicians, sir, are about arithmetic not ethics.

Barney Frank and Chris Dodd couldn’t manage a trip to the toilet without staff assistance. Yet we have to watch Obama’s Hill colleagues lecture Wall Street and Industry on accountability. This may be change you can believe in. I’m still stuck on the hope thing.

And finally, there is national security. I’m concerned that a guy who thinks his grandfather liberated Poland doesn’t have a firm grip on reality or world history. You know, those Nazis, fascists, communists and like-minded totalitarians in the Muslim world. When he meets Putin, Obama may have to apologize to Marshal Zuchov’s memory. Nonetheless, today’s war is more to the point. Not once in the recent campaign did I hear Obama say the word Islamist. Is courage one of those values that concern you? Does he plan to beat the bad guys by never speaking their name?

When you chat with the commander-in-chief you might also point out that we are not fighting “a war on terror”. Nobody makes war on a tactic. We are fighting Muslim fanatics. You might also disabuse him of the notion that we have two wars; a bad war in Iraq and a good war in Afghanistan. There may be two major theaters and numerous minor fronts but the war is singular and it’s world-wide. Does Mumbai ring a bell? If he thinks he can jawbone this growing movement of religious crazies, I suggest he hang onto those smokes and one of your flak jackets. He’s going to need them.

You know, general, the beauty of democracy is that sometimes we get the kind of government we want and sometimes we just get what we deserve. Back in our active duty days an SOS (save our ship) was a distress signal. But for troops in the mess hall it also meant chipped beef on toast (shit on a shingle). For bored grunts in the barracks, it simply meant “same old shit”. So I’m thinking that Jeremiah Wright might be right no matter how you read the SOS. The chickens have come home to roost.

Before I wrap this up, let me apologize to you on behalf of George Tenent and the Intelligence Community. Yes, I’m a twenty five year Intelligence veteran. Old George hung you out to dry. Guys that work both sides of the aisle don’t have values. But they get medals too. That Iraq speech CIA wrote for you to deliver at the UN could not pass muster at a cadet beer bust. But you gave it anyway. So we all understand how you might be in the mood for a little pay back.

But lay off Sarah Palin! She has already been slapped silly by the deficit side of the values spectrum - for trivial reasons in most cases. She is a role model for any American girl. And compared to Caroline Kennedy, Sarah Palin looks like Elizabeth the First.

And it’s not like you didn’t shoot yourself in the foot at the UN. At the time, you had 50 thousand gofers that could have done some Iraq fact checking or a little in-house analysis at the State Department. But that’s another story. Until next time, let me leave you with a few lines of poetic consolation: “Of all the words to come from mouth or pen, the saddest are these, what might have been”.

On Education

(This is the first in a series of essays prepared for a couple of beginning college freshman – one at American University and the other at the University of Southern California. The assumption that proceeds all of these is that true education comes after class.)

If you are looking for an education, you probably will not find it at the schoolhouse. For too many Americans, the mandatory 12 years and the optional four years of schooling is a deferment from life. A high school diploma does not guarantee you can read. A college degree will not guarantee you can write. And no number of advanced degrees can certify that you will ever be able to think for your self. Education can not be forced. Universal “education” (aka the public school system) is predicated on two flawed assumptions: all people can learn and all people want to learn.

So before you squander part of your lives and all of your youth, we should make a few distinctions.

School is not a synonym for education. In the last 60 years, the object of schooling has morphed from learning to credentials. Thus, diplomas and degrees are not necessarily accomplishments. Today, there are institutions where a well matriculated hamster could get a diploma or baccalaureate. You already know the mantra. High school graduates make more money than dropouts; college graduates make more than high school grads. There may be a link between learning and earning but it has nothing to do with schooling as we know it.

Learning has been subverted by credentials. Grades, promotions, diplomas and degrees are often a function of social concerns and misguided notions of affirmative action. An illiterate professional footballer recently enrolled in the adult literacy program at the Lab School in Washington, DC. He was a graduate of primary, secondary, and college programs in the State of Texas. Academic credentials often represent social ransom not achievement. Feeling good is the new being good. And you seldom hear about the home scholars and drop outs that change the world or become billionaires. If urban public schools could be sued for malpractice, the system would collapse in a year.

Public schools at the primary and secondary levels are government monopolies, a kind of municipal day care. They are also a civic tautology; mandatory taxes for mandatory schools. They exist because the law says they must. And because attendance is compulsory, their fist mandate is custody – learning is optional. Armed guards and metal detectors are standard features of the urban school. The public community college and university is an extension of primary and secondary school logic. If twelve years in public custody are good, sixteen must be better. Education is possible in a public school; it is likely almost anywhere else.

The so-called “education system” is the largest single private and public employer in the country. If your parents send you to private school, they pay twice. First for the public school you don’t attend and then for the private school you do attend. Such a hustle is bound to attract grifters: school systems are magnets for fraud and mediocrity.

An old adage says that those who can, do; and those who can’t, teach. There is much more than a grain of truth in this folk wisdom. A brief survey of public school teachers and text books tells the tale.

An Education degree or “certificate” is the necessary credential for primary and secondary school instructors. Indeed, most administrators and principals possess advanced Education degrees. Thus at every level, the “how” of teaching is emphasized at the expense of the “what”: method trumps substance throughout. The substance vacuum is compounded by the devalued currency of Education degrees. Consistent research finds that Education majors test well below the bottom of the academic pile. The dregs of academia are thus preordained to become primary, middle and high school teachers, and principals – the untutored leading the uneducated.

Conditions are not much better at the college and university level – for different reasons.

We now have a very large class of instructors who have no life experience but every academic credential. Indeed they spend their entire life at the academy. And substantive superstars in the cloisters do not teach; they spend as little time in the classroom as possible. Such savants are expected to research or write. Most of the research is derivative and most of the writing is drivel - resume fodder or text books.

The text book racket is notorious. Over-priced books, most of which have no use beyond the class room, are the mandatory expenses for a captive audience. Assistants on the make and tenured professors regularly commend each other’s texts to the various departments. Every few years, Professor Avarice changes ‘happy to glad’ and a new edition and another revenue stream is created. Never mind that definitive classics already exist for most subjects. Never mind that these might be available on line or in any library. Need we mention that the campus book store is a revenue stream for the school. Text books are the perfect cash cow - or circle jerk – depending on whether you’re buying or selling.

Nonetheless, the most pernicious influences on schools are tenure and unions. At all levels, tenure is a euphemism for permanent employment devoid of merit. Two examples are definitive. In Manhattan there is a high rise in New York City where teachers who have been removed from the classroom, for cause, are warehoused at taxpayer expense. Some are child molesters. They have been removed from class but not from the payroll. They are protected by contract, union mandates and tradition. Children, unfortunately, have no similar protection.

Tenure is no less of a problem for higher education. In the nation’s capital, a school president was recently removed from office for making obscene phone calls to a day care center. After several months of “rehabilitation”, he was returned to the classroom at full salary with all the perks of academic tenure. Ironically, the school in question calls itself American University. Such is the way of American tenure.

This quality deficit is compounded by toxic politics. Almost every text used at the primary and secondary level is tainted by political revisionism. At higher levels the American academy has been hijacked by the totalitarian left. The recent fiasco at Harvard is instructive. The president, a male, was fired because he had made some innocuous remarks about differences between males and female. The only politically correct vision of women in the academy is that they are men without giblets. They only correct view of men is that they are not women - and therefore clueless brutes or gay.

Ironically, academic feminists are captive to a kind of self-serving sexual hypocrisy. When coeds fall under the spell of some male lecturer with a good rap, the next thing they are likely to hear is the sound of a zipper going south. Male academics have traditionally seen female students as one of their academic perks. Indeed, a Georgetown scholar once observed: “The advantage of teaching, over other professions, is that, unlike your wife, the girls never get any older”. It’s not just that women tolerate this kind of exploitation; they now seem to participate with gusto. If we can believe what we read in the Press, the distaff pedant has few boundaries – including sex with minors.

Beyond the politics of sex, many campuses have become permanent refuges for all manner of neo-Marxist ideologues. These are not just the Chomskys (University of Chicago) who rave against democracy and capitalism – the very things that make his brand of political nihilism possible. Worse still, many universities actually seek out former criminals, terrorists, ‘community activivists’ and assorted bomb throwers and give them tenure in the name of diversity. The line between professor and propagandist has been obliterated. Many a campus has become the employer of last resort for the social flotsam and political bong resin of the last century.

So what’s a girl to do? Can you swim in this sludge? Is it possible to learn and get an education? Ironically, even in a swamp, the good bits float to the top. Today, any student with a modest triple digit IQ has a leg up when you consider the caliber of peer and pedagogue you are likely to encounter.

Nonetheless, forewarned is forearmed. In another time, there was a clear consensus on faculty qualifications and student study requirements. Until the turn of the last century a genuine scholar might speak the vernacular and Latin - and have a working knowledge of Greek and Hebrew in addition to some specialty expertise in the natural sciences. Don’t look for any of these guys in your faculty lounge.

A serious student would be required to master ethics and rhetoric before dabbling in the natural sciences. Back in the day, rhetoric would include logic, reading, writing and public speaking. The natural sciences are all those ‘ics’ and ‘ologies’ parsed by Aristotle and refined during the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. A classical education would also include the great books – the canon of “dead white men.”

Given the circus of political correctness and assorted distractions on today’s campus, you could do worse than model your personal academic goals on the classic model.

If you have no sense of ethics or morals, you will be rudderless before you leave port. Ethics is simply an understanding of the historical consensus about right and wrong; indeed, the basis of all law and civil behavior. In the old school, ethics was first among equals; should do was always superior to can do. You might have to transfer to Hillsdale College to find an ethics course.

Rhetoric was the anchor for all specialized learning. Thinking logically, reading critically, writing coherently and speaking persuasively are the real prerequisites for any field of study or profession. Master these rhetorical skills and the world, academic or professional, is your oyster.

If you are ever to be truly learned, you must also get up to your ear lobes in the dead man’s (or women’s) canon. Classics on any subject are classics for a reason. Two illustrations follow.

If you were to explore the subject of atheism, you could do no better than to read Graham Greene or Dostoyevsky. Their life’s work is an exposition of the subject. The value added with dead authors is that they are always more entertaining than live professors.

And so it is with subjects like poetry, prose and stage craft. You can do no better than to read Shakespeare. (He never went to college.) And the value added here is not just entertainment, but a slow epiphany that will allow you to see that the bard is a lot like your mother and father; as you get older, they get smarter.

One more dead white guy until our next conversation. Hemingway believed that the secret of good prose was knowing what to throw out. In the next four years or more you will encounter a blizzard of bravo sierra and a host of charming charlatans. Please, know what and who to throw out of you lives. Good luck ladies!

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G Murphy