David Frum’s Diary on National Review Online: “The economic sanctions against Iraq had begun to disintegrate as early as 1996. By 1999, they were well on the way to disappearing altogether. As soon as they did so, Saddam Hussein intended to reconstitute his weapons of mass destruction using the scientists and know-how he had carefully preserved through the 1990s.
In other words: If Iraq was not an imminent threat to the United States in 2001, Saddam Hussein fully intended for it to become an imminent threat as soon as possible thereafter. “

WMD either were (not likely at this point) or would have been (once the sanctions were lifted as they would have been). Either way, Sadaam our sworn foe would have helped our foes.

This is the key to justifying the war.

Opie Leaves Home: The Debate as Sit Com

Sadly, we saw what happened to Opie tonight. He grew up, went to college, and forgot all the home town values he learned in Mayberry. He became a trial lawyer and took fifty percent of poor people’s money to get rich. Then he exploited stories from his childhood, making his family look pathetic, to win votes. Now he has returned and the grown ups have had to put him in his place.

Tonight Opie debated Andy. It was sad to see. Andy was wise. He communicated clearly and with the wisdom learned in his small town roots.

Opie had memorized a lot of big words and facts. Sadly, he has never done much work in his life, just talked a great deal. Words without substance. Words. Words. Words. Flash for cash.

So slowly and patiently, like he has always done, Andy tried to explain to Opie how the world works. How years of public service had taught him about men and women and how to keep the peace. How people like Barney talked big, but the time would finally come for the real men to go into the tough place and do the work.

Sadly, Opie could not understand. The big lights of the city have caused him to forget all he learned. Carolina values? Gone. Small time toughness? Gone. Family values? Gone. Gone. Gone. He is still the tousled headed boy and if we were looking for someone to take to the fishing hole, Senator Opie would be a good choice. But no one should elect Senator Gone, the perpetual Opie, to any job of importance.

Poor Opie. He is a cute little man, reduced to trying to look like the prom King at fifty years of age. Sadly, he has little mind under his plastered, perfect hair and his mind is as light and airy as the spray that keeps the receding line he so fears for a short time from public view. You can’t dislike the boy, just wonder why he turned out so badly. Sounds like his folks raised him better.

ABC.com: Desperate Housewives

This has to be the worst television show of the year. Pretentious and tacky. . . it is offensive, but boring. It exploits women and liberal stereotypes about the upper middle class.

Hope and I sat down to watch what Disney thinks of my wife and her profession of homemaker. Shock. They don’t think much of it. Thank goodness for TIVO, because this show is not family friendly with a bedroom sensibility right through. Pity the middle age actress convinced that not wearing undergarments was a good career move. (”It is liberating to women!” said the smarmy producer.) A woman old enough to be a mother ought to be old enough to understand that modesty and chastity are alluring.

I would have loved to hear the marketing meeting, “It is just like cable only on mainstream television!” However, someone should point out to ABC that Emmy voters don’t have large numbers. Many of us do not get premium cable channels in part because of these “cutting edge” shows. Those cutting edge shows are cutting and edgy, but are hardly shows. There is no “there” to most of them, just one barb after another. They depend on conservative culture to mock and shock. They have done such a great job, that it is a hard thing to do now. Shows of this sort are hardly watched, but they are watched by the people executives like to have lunch with, so we get more of them. (Question: in syndication in fifty years will “Six Feet Under” get better ratings than the “Andy Griffith Show”?) Of course, the “intellectuals” in the viewing audience will love the show because it is “edgy” and because it uses plot devices borrowed from the nineties. It hits the right targets and follows the new rule on ABC “if the Bible is shown, someone is evil.” A local divorced woman seduces a man of God while a Bible flies through the air. Ho. Ho. The show has no real passion and runs the risk of making sex boring.

In addition to no moral compass, the show is witless. Hope and I could guess lines before they were delivered. Women are exploited and powerless. Motherhood is mocked, but in a LA Fitness work out room sort of way. (”Oh those homemakers say they are so happy, but can you imagine being stuck with a baby!”) Men are boorish or also objects. In short, it is an entire show about people that you ought to dislike. It is an education in immorality for people who think the LA Times Entertainment section is deep.

I loved the old Disney company and we wanted to see what Disney thought my family wanted to watch. Walt would be ashamed. He tried to avoid dull fare, but sometimes failed, but he never was wicked. Hope and I are sorry we dropped in for a viewing. . . will not make that mistake again. . . and return TIVO to taping Poirot reruns and Monk. We don’t need the networks and their hatred of red state values.

Yes, it is once again Uncle Tony time.

This week we shall be giving out an “Uncle Tony” award to those evangelical who manage to get in the highly anticipated, though a bit over due, “Look! Not all evangelicasl are conservatives!” story. The main stream media usually runs one of these hold-your-breath stories about now. They find some usual suspect like award namesake Tony Campolo who play “Uncle Tom” for the establishment. This “prophetic” voice will castigate pew sitting evangelicals while ignoring Kerry’s support of infanticide and gay rights. (Such courage!) No one in the media will ask the Uncle Tony of record if he or she actually supports evangelical doctrines (such as inerrancy). No. Instead, the Uncle Tony will get breathless admiration. Eighty percent of evangelical will vote for Bush, but the Uncle Tony will have done his or her work.

So ladies and gentlemen: the best Uncle Tony story sent to me via this web site will win the tape set of his or her choice! No points for Ron Sider. No points for the Uncle Tony himself. Extra points if the story does the “Jesus cared about the poor” routine. Double points for a story with “young people are turned off by Republican politics in church” angle.

Let the games begin!

Peter Pan - The Musical

La Mirada is lucky to host this luminous musical. Landing the brilliant McCoy-Rigby combination is a credit to the best run town in Los Angeles county.

Rigby is simply a marvel. Rigby is Pan, pulling off the difficult emotional subtext with verve. Her Pan has depth and, yes, sub-text without slowing down the action. Rigby has created the standard for the part that will last for years. Howard McGillin is the perfect Hook. Smee is ideal. The rest of the cast? Energetic and likeable (save the paint-by-numbers Tiger Lily), they know to stay out of the way of Rigby who dominates the stage with an easy grace.

The entire production moves quickly. Only the third act lags a bit, but the rest of the show and all the numbers sing. Rigby has a fine voice and her physical work as a young boy is astounding. This is her last go round and if you get a chance to see it you should. Some people do one thing very well. Rigby is an actor who was born to play Pan. . . and sadly for the rest of us has soaked up quite a few other talents as well. Take the kids. Take the grandparents. This is real theater by people who love families, but don’t equate family theater with second-rate production values.

Kerry’s fear of nuclear weapons as opposed to “conventional” weapons is either irrational or motivated by an implicit pacifism.

Bombs kill people and it does not matter to the people being killed whether they die from a “conventional” or nuclear weapon. Small nuclear weapons are in theory no more dangerous than conventional bombs and might (under some circumstances) be morally preferable. For example, the word “nuclear” causes such an irrational fear in many people that deploying one such weapon might cause panic and make using any other weapons unnecessary. Since the goal of a just war is to win as quickly as possible, with as few casualties as possible, such a thing might be allowable. Irrational fear of one type of weapon (small scale nuclear devices) unmatched by science is a sign that something else is up.

Kerry is hoping people conflate bunker busters with ICBM weapons.

The truth is that John Kerry does not like the military. He has not supported it in twenty years in the Senate. He has rarely found a US action he finds just on the fields. Only the UN can sanctify our use of force and then only in infinite “police actions.” It seems that dying one at a time in an ineffectual police action under a baby blue helmet is better from Kerry’s point of view that winning using bunker busters. Kerry can safely (he thinks!) oppose nuclear bunker busters, because of the magic word “nuclear.” So he does.

The Iconoclast: “So here’s to you, Newt. Ten years after you launched the revolution, you may have disappeared from public view, but your place in history is secure. “

Am I the only who finds Newt self-serving, hypocritical, and shallow? Sin is one thing. Thank God there is forgiveness for it and a second chance. However, Newt mocks family values in his personal life while being sanctimonious on television. Being sorry is one thing, thinking you have nothing to be sorry about is a second kind of thing, but saying what you are doing is bad and doing it anyway is bad.

Thank goodness better leaders have arisen.

When did gambling become o.k.?

California is about to vote on expanding gambling in the state. Almost no one dares oppose it on moral grounds. If you do so, then you sound like a prude. Is it moral to gamble? Before dealing with that question, let me address the question of legality. One could vote that gaming clubs should be allowed in areas, but that no one should go to them or work for them. Christian conservatives must always remember making a thing legal is not making it moral.

The best reason to make gambling legal is on the grounds of liberty. Even if immoral, what is the state interest in making it a crime? Many people want to gamble and by making them “criminals” the state runs the risk of breaking the contract it has with citizens. The state should make as few moral decisions as possible. It should not condone immorality (gay marriage) or legalize murder (abortion), but it should not make every unwise choice illegal. For that reason, I think there is a good argument for regulating gambling (and certain “soft” drugs), but allowing people to choose to be bad.

The difficulty with that position is that some folk then turn around and believe that the state allowing a thing is the same as declaring it “good.” This is a result of statist education. Most people recognize only the state as an external authority. If that state does not punish it, then no one else should. However, in a healthy society there are civic organizations (church, work, family) that can impose sanctions far more severe (in some ways) than the state. One problem in our culture has been the decline of these organizations as the state has grown. We need to be able to forcefully condemn a thing (homosexual activity) without being forced either to condone it (gay marriage) or make it illegal as the only options.

Whether legal or illegal, some drugs should not be used for recreation, for example. One cannot indulge in some substances without a fairly powerful “high.” Just as drinking is only licit without drunkenness for a Christian (a man’s rational faculties must always be in control), so any use of a substance that leads to a mind-altering high right away cannot be good. A mild lift from a cup of joe, a diet coke, or a glass of a good wine is obviously acceptable. It does not prevent rational decision making.

The best reason to make gambling illegal is its impact on neighborhoods and society. I do not know many family people who want to live near a casino. Even in states where legal, gambling attracts family unfriendly problems. People have a right not to be forced to live near prostitution and drunkenness. Property values can be destroyed by a casino. (I realize that this is hard to “prove,” since data on both sides of this issue gets manipulated. I am relying on an overview of research and common sense.) Since gambling behavior “bleeds” from one town to another, it seems like counties (at least) should be able to choose not to have such behavior out in the open. If a county wants to look like Bedford Falls in It’s a Wonderful Life before Potter, then it should be allowed to do so. If a county wants to look like the town when owned by Potter (Girls! Girls! Girls!) should also be allowed to do so. (That should not stop the church in the area from pointing out what a nasty hell hole the citizens have allowed themselves to be!)

In a state the size of California, gambling should be legal (in my opinion) on a state level, but open to county option. If LA County want to make it illegal, it should be able to do so. The state should heavily regulate gambling so that “gaming” does not end up doing illegal things to pressure counties.

On the other hand, organizing gambling strikes me as immoral. However, it is immoral in a “secondary” sense. Some things are wrong by nature (murder, stealing). Other things are wrong if done excessively that are good in moderation (eating, drinking). Other things are not wrong or good in themselves, but frequently lead to wrong behavior due to human nature. A friendly wager can add spice to a football game (”You buy the pizza!”). A card game amongst friends with a small pot that everyone can afford (poker for a fifty) seems harmless. The point of the event is not “winning the money” but adding some prize to the competition. Does anyone buy a ticket to a church raffle desperate for the prize? (If so, then they have a problem.) However, organized gaming of the sort that sucked in Bill Bennett seems immoderate. The games seem less the point than the money. It seems to feed into a love of money and an irrational belief in fortune or luck. It also wastes huge amounts of time that could be better spent. Organized gambling sites (such as casinos) also encourage other more clearly bad behaviors (drunkenness, lust) to encourage immoderate behavior that leads to losing money. In short, organized gambling depends on bad behavior (being immoderate*) to generate revenue. It has to encourage a vice to stay in business.

In short, I would never vote to legalize gambling in my own community. However, it does not seem right to make it illegal for every other community. I don’t think “gambling establishments” are good and tend in a secondary sense to lead to harm. Spending large amounts of money (Bill Bennett) or time (again Bennett) gambling is wrong, even if one can afford it. (Wrong because immoderate and a waste of time and resources. Even if I can afford to burn money in my front yard, I should not do so for entertainment. My “amusements” are disordered.)

*Immoderate: acting in an excessive (”One more drink, please!”) or defective (”Fun! We don’t have fun here! We are religious!”) way. In most things, moderation is the key to morality. Of course somethings are naturally base (murder) and some naturally good (faith).

HughHewitt.com: “My symposium questions: Did Kerry blunder in denouncing nuclear bunker busters? If so, why? If so, how great the damage to his candidacy?”

Hewitt is leading a virtual symposium (sadly no flute girls, but Kerry is our very own Alcibiades!) on this question.

I am no political expert, but let me suggest that Kerry’s self-evident blunder is a sign of his extreme secularist philosophy. That is what is costing him every Southern state and making the Mid-West tough, if not impossible to carry.

Kerry was educated to see the world in grays. Trapped by an East coast intellectualism that sees subtle nuance everywhere, he cannot help but view the United States as morally equivalent to the terrorists and to rogue states.

But to the rational mind two things are clear, black and white even. First, the United States is the good guy when it comes to using military power. It is good for the world that we have it and we almost always use it altruistically and well. There is no realistic scenario where the world would be better off with a change in our overwhelming military advantage. Second, many of the nations in Kerry’s beloved United Nations are thug states. The Chinese government is composed of butchers, most of the so called third-world nations are dictatorships with a fig leaf of democracy, and the European states like France and Germany are aging, broken socialist nursing homes waiting for their final cultural deaths . We are right to want them weak. We should have weapons that North Korea or Iran should not have, because in the respects relevant to this discussion we are good and they are bad.

Kerry has blundered badly by exposing the fact that he and a good part of his coalition cannot make such statements. They worry that McDonalds and MTV (I am a fan of neither as cultural artifacts) are somehow just as bad when it come to weighing a nation’s acceptable military strength as the slave lords of Sudan or the Butcher of Baghdad. They want to be well liked in Paris and applauded in Sweden. They are citizens of the globe first.

Earlier I compared the topic of our symposium to Alcibiades, the young Athenian who should have saved his city but ended up betraying it. He was bright and from the ruling class. However, Alcibiades had been ruined by the effete educational system of democratic Athens. The intellectual elite of that city had become trapped in a self-serving and intellectual fruitless box apart from the patriots of the city. Alcibiades was defended by folk who could not see an intellectual difference between free Athens and the Spartan slave state. The destructive leadership of men like Alcibiades, exposed in Plato’s dialogue Symposium, helped destroy the city.

Kerry was ruined in the same way by the social elites of his day. He received the same sort of morally soft education with patriotism viewed with suspicion. Kerry’s fear of the United States having certain weapons exposes this destruction. If exposed, this gaffe will cost our gawky Alcibiades by exposing John F. Kerry for the ruined man of promise that he is.

In his introduction his Spinoza’s Critique of Religion, Leo Strauss points out that liberal democracy can be good for the traditional religions (in his case Judaism) only if it allows for a clear distinction between the public and the private. Discrimination in public is forbidden. Discrimination in private affairs has to be allowed.

Strauss has made a good distinction that prior to the sexual revolution seemed sensible. Government would adjudicate as little as possible in the private affairs of citizens. It would allow even behavior thought to be bad by most (bigoted clubs in terms of membership for example). This would provide freedom for minorities (such as small religious groups) without causing the majority to have to put up with their “different” practices.

However, I think Strauss has missed something. When the consensus breaks down about the core beliefs of liberalism itself (the dignity of each human being), then the private/public distinction will also break down. Liberal democracy exists best when a broad religious consensus exists (in the United States case Christianity) that can tolerate most “different” behaviors within very broad parameters. In other words, such a liberal state does not allow public blasphemy (as most places did not until fairly recent times), but does not put microphones in your house or meeting halls. Blaspheme all you want in private, but don’t pull the rest of the community into your odd and risky behavior.

The modern Democrat party makes almost no distinction between the public and the private. Our private behavior must conform to public morality. I may feel gay marriage is bad, but I must not say it out loud. I am known to be wrong and so I will be punished (if they have their way) by the state. They wish to expand the state in every direction to the point that the private is simply nonexistent.

On the other hand, sensible conservatives in the Republican party want to preserve the public/private distinction by preserving the traditional notions of eighteenth century “liberalism.” The secular state of that era was not really secular, but a Christian state with all the trappings removed. It was very modest (at its best) about what was legally essential (laws against murder and robbery) and what was not. It assumed a Christian moral base, but foolishly believed that such morality was self-evident and so did not need any defense. Republicans are mostly pressing defensive schemes. Abortion is murder of the innocent and so cannot be tolerated. It is a wicked practice that good men cannot pass over. I can live with not being allowed to your club, but I cannot survive a partial birth abortion. In the same way, sensible men cannot allow a state blessing with benefits on unnatural acts.

In a traditional liberal democracy (in principle it does not matter if it is Islamic, Jewish, or Christian), the moral consensus was so great amongst all but a tiny few that society could work. Radical secularists who have undercut the traditional moral consensus have made liberal democracy more difficult.

George Bush seems to understand this common feature of the world’s great monotheistic religions. It is why he can say good things about main stream Islam, while condemning the terrorists. John Kerry lives in the delusional world in which his morally novel radical secularism is offensive only to those who are less clever than he. In short, John Kerry if elected will destroy any hope for a nation that can get along. All but a tiny group of Americans are like Bush on the basis for a public/private distinction: Jewish-Islamic-Christian traditional morals. Since almost all Americans are Christian, this moral consensus will have a Christian flavor, but can be broad enough to allow total free exercise to everyone else.

However, a world view in which the main religious features are a sacred right to abortion and homosexual marriage is not going to be able to govern a religious nation. It will transgress the public/private limits. John Kerry cannot govern this nation.

I am a Christian and not just any kind of Christian, but the most robust kind: a Christian who believes the creeds are true and that the Bible is infallible. I don’t think much of modernity and tradition seems a better guide to behavior than the front page of the LA Times.

I also love Socrates and Plato. If forced to take two books with me to an island (a great party game! Unless you are looking for a second date!), they would be the Bible and the Republic.

However, some of my non-Christian friends, don’t get these two passions. How can they fit together? Can I be committed to dialog when I think that Jesus is Lord?

Not only can I, but I believe Plato in his writings provided the best defense for being a Christian. In his early dialogues, Plato presents Socrates as the man of many questions. He exposes the ignorance of his friends. . . And also his own ignorance. Most “great books” programs focus on this style of education. This is an intellectual event equivalent to a total reformat of a hard drive on a stuck computer. It is painful, tedious, and hard but it clears up many problems. Questions of the Socratic sort reveal opinions disguised as truth. Inherited customs are not experiences. They can be questioned and even rejected. Seeing the good is not the same as hearing a story about the good from the fathers.

However, Plato does not end there. This reformat produces only clarity, it cannot find the truth. Truth can only be built from the strong foundation of clear thinking and best experience. As one begins to move forward, the good thinker begins to see that there is something “more.” There is a great unknown out there that human reason can know is there, but not know in its essence. (Republic, Symposium, Alcibiades) It is the known unknown.

If this is true, then one can begin to make a hypothesis about what this known unknown is. These theories can be tested against reality and rejected or accepted. They can also be examined by use of Socratic questioning to see if they are coherent.

A hypothesis is not enough. It is too flat, not part of a three dimensional story that can explain life. Life moves. It is not static. Plato describes what is needed next as a myth, a likely story. In particular, he hopes god or the gods will provide him with such a story. We need to see truth “doing things” if it is to account for the world in which we actually live and not just the ideal. Ideally, god or the gods would tell us the right story. In the meantime, Plato creates stories that can be rejected by questions, looking at the world, or by divine revelation.

These stories that Plato told tend to fall back into the old Delphic (Homer and Hesiod) myths. The great man, Plato, cannot totally escape the images of his youth. His creator is too small. His creation too powerful. This is why the truth of Christianity, when thinkers like Saint Paul revealed it, had such a major impact. Christianity is the myth that Platonism needed. It is the “likely story” that completes the search.

It is no surprise that many of us begin first with that story. We experience, after Jesus, the story first. Later we examine what we think we know about the story using Socratic questioning and hypothesis. We test each link in the chain. Many of us go through a time in which we “leave” the faith. I know I did. However, when it comes time to move philosophy from the classroom and into life, we see that the story of our childhood, our experience of God is the best myth. It is real. It is true.

I am far from being uncomfortable as a seeker, as someone who constantly checks each link in his chain of reasoning, and a Christian. I believe the Bible, because it comes to me from God. I experience truth in it. My experience when examined by reason checks out. It makes sense of life and is coherent. When I kneel in prayer and catch a brief glimpse of the verity seen and yet unseen, then I know the long road from Athens leads to Jerusalem. The questions of the Republic find their resolution in the stories of the Bible, which replaces times and Laws as the likely story that brings us home.