I love West Virginia.

It is beautiful. . . not in the awe inspiring way of the Grand Canyon that calls for thoughts of God, but on a more human scale. You go to the Grand Canyon, but you can live in West Virginia.

The hills are not mountains if you have been to Colorado. In Colorado the mountains seize you and do not let you look at anything else. In West Virginia the hills are not so grand, but nestle you. As a little boy I remember rolling down the lawn (something you can do in almost every yard in West Virginia!) after the grass had just been cut. My skin would turn green.

And then you could catch fire flys and keep them in a mayonnaise jar with holes punched in the top.

All my life there was one place that did not change. 1908 Preston Street was the home of Father’s family. There Papaw and Granny, and later just Granny, sat in the home they had built. It was all hard wood and solid, but nothing so fancy.

I have been in many finer houses, but no finer home. You could, on a very rare and lucky day, get a pillow and lay down on the rug in front of Papaw’s chair. There might be cartoons on! Papaw and Dad would be telling stories and you could listen as well. You might have gotten a book at K-Mart or even a comic! Original multi-tasking. Granny, if you were really blessed, might make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with lots of jelly and cut off the crust. She would bring it with a glass of soda (rare treat!) that tinkled with ice as she walked. I still love a “tinkly glass” of soda.

There was nothing great about any of us, I suppose. Our stories were not Homeric. We talked too much and all at the same time. My cousin Kelly and I could talk a lot even by the standards of the family and we always had something to say. I wish we would have listened more, but then we would have been Wise and not ourselves. In those days before DVD, Ipod, and the internet, talking was an art. My grandfather was good at it. . . again in a homely way.

My grandmother was the rock on which the home was built. Nobody will remember her, I suppose, for any great deeds. Perhaps, at times, she loved the house too much, especially when Papaw died. She could be stubborn, but she had lived a hard life.

Granny never had much time for feminist complaints. She and Papaw had raised two kids, both with serious illnesses, by the force of her will. She had helped raise her sisters before that running a household at an age when most moderns still are called “babies” by their doting bobo mothers.

There was a time before people were taught to sneer at middle class living. Granny recognized the value of comfort, because she knew what it was to go without it. Granny had no time for social experimentation because the hard life of the country had taught her how fragile civilization really is.

She was as a real a woman as you could know. She had her truth and was not afraid to express it. I am not sure she ever voted for a Democrat and George W got her last vote. If the force of one mark on a piece of paper elected the President, then I would pick hers as that mark.

John Kerry never had a chance in her mind.

Sibyl Reynolds (Granny had a name! I still remember the shock of finding this out.), born a Lanham, was the last of my grandparents to die. I was lucky to have all four right up to college.

It is unfair to complain, but some sort of center is gone from my life. Preston Street is sold. My grandfather’s chair does not sit in the corner. The fridge, always full, is empty and there is no Pepsi in a carton by the door.

It would have been selfish to want her to stay. She was ready to go to the next life. Still what will we do without her?

Most of my memories are from the time in childhood when being self-centered is natural. It was only as I grew up that I came to recognize the simple power of an intellect fed on a daily reading of the King James Bible for more than eighty years. It was only when I grew older that any of us could recognize the sacrifice, the labor, the heroic doing of duty that made that home possible.

I get it now, but am not sure I ever could express it to her. Perhaps it is best that I never tried. It would have sounded like foolishness to her, talking about what everyone did in her world (how blessed she was to be able to take duty for granted!), but few do in mine.

The last time we were alone together, Granny and I, we talked and talked. She could not clean like she used to do and that gave her more time to sit. At last. She knew my love. . . and that was enough. In her world she could assume that love because she was born in a generation before love had to be packaged and sold to youth. Her generation earned it through quiet sacrifice.

Granny was like my home state. She was beautiful, but not like a film star. She was strong, but not in a buff LA Fitness way. She was wise, but had little formal schooling. There are none like her to take her place.

Except perhaps there will be. Maybe all over the United States young women, home school mothers and hard working single ladies, are turning from the packaged and cheap. They are denying self and finding love in family. They are making food, like Granny’s apple butter, instead of packaged stuff. They have traded grand visions for smaller ways. These simple heroes are trading Big Dreams for Mary’s “be it done unto me.”

And so my own family Sibyl speaks to me today. She rests now waiting her sure and certain hope of better things to come. The wise Sibyl of old saw the first coming of the Christ. Our own Sibyl waited every day for His Second coming.

Her job and place now must be taken by another. Who will dare to do it? Who will lay down power and great glory for family and faith? Who will trade all the wisdom of this age for the wisdom of the age to come in “the old black book?”

I can sense the rise of the old Feminine Power. Thank God for it.

Heaven is a great and glorious place. It shines like a Celestial Rose and great men find their highest power failing when trying to describe it, but even Dante knew there were spots reserved in the great chain of being for simpler folk like I am. There are great heights, but also homely hills. There are sublime pleasures, but also simple stories to hear.

There will be spot in heaven, I trust, where the mountains are low, but green. There will be lawn chairs (white and made of metal that rock a bit when you sit in them) and memories. There will be fire flies that do not die! There will be a feast of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches when we tire of the great food at the High and Royal feasts. I am sure there will be comics and cartoons.

And in that place the Sibyl that was will be Sibyl that is. Good-bye Granny. I will see you in the Morning.

Harris Says Newspapers `Colorized’ Photographs, Distorting Her Makeup: From The Tampa Tribune: ““But they’re outrageously false, No. 1, and No. 2, you know, whenever they made fun of my makeup, it was because the newspapers colorized my photograph,'’ Harris said.”

I am a fifth generation Republican.

I am glad Bush won in 2000.

However, isn’t this a bit weird? Does this do Harris any good? Shouldn’t she just laugh it off?

Much as I hate to admit it. . . this is weirder than the Clinton “vast right wing conspiracy” quote.

Why?

There were actual right wing groups who disliked Bill Clinton and opposed his policies. Sometimes they even got organized and worked together.

Calling it a conspiracy was way over the top. . . but at least there were groups to cite when Hilary (!) was asked whom she meant.

It appears that Congressman Harris cannot name a single source for this off the cuff remark. What paper did this? When?

Why does she still care?

I am beginning to understand why she is not the White House preferred candidate for the Senate race.

Center for Naturalism

Here is a group that is advancing their world-view. They state it carefully and well.

Aren’t you glad you live in a nation where these folk can express their point of view?

Now ask yourself:

Why is this groups point of view the only one allowed in your child’s tax-payer funded classroom?

Bush Remarks On ‘Intelligent Design’ Theory Fuel Debate: “Bush Remarks On ‘Intelligent Design’ Theory Fuel Debate

Before wading into the details of this article, praise is in order. This is a far better piece than would have been written about “creationism” ten years ago. It seeks to give both sides of the issue. It mostly avoids loaded language. It goes to good spokespeople on both sides. There is no lazy search for extremists to represent the right.

Most Americans are theists. Most thoughtful Americans are theists. Americans pay for government schools. They have a right to expect that their schools will present their ideas in all but extraordinary cases.

Some secularists seem to think mentioning that an idea is “Christian” or supports a religion is enough to taint it. Notice that in the old days religious freedom was properly understood to mean that I was not forced to follow your religion or practice it. Now it seems to be (for some of the folk on the left) the “right” to never hear any religious idea at all. Does this include the Declaration of Independence? Extremist Christians are wrong when they try to control the marketplace of ideas that way, so are radical secularists.

No atheist will die if forced to hear a careful argument against naturalism and for design.

Theism is an intellectually respectable position with first rate philosophers (such as Al Plantinga) offering support to it. At the most basic level Americans do not want philosophic naturalism enshrined as our state religion. The idea that nature is all there is may be true, but it is not self-evident. Perhaps only “natural” causes should be considered in science, but that idea is not self-evident as it begs the question of what a personal cause is. Are human persons for example only matter and energy in mindless motions? Are there souls? If so, then Intelligent Design (ID) is seen every day in the works of humans!

My thoughts on the story below are as usual in italics.

By Peter Baker and Peter Slevin
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, August 3, 2005; Page A01

President Bush invigorated proponents of teaching alternatives to evolution in public schools with remarks saying that schoolchildren should be taught about ‘intelligent design,’ a view of creation that challenges established scientific thinking and promotes the idea that an unseen force is behind the development of humanity.

This is not a great definition. However, we must be fair to a reporter! Blogging has taught me great definitions do not get read! This definition seems good enough. It seems broadly accurate and is not couched in the sort of “devil words” that make the reader hate ID before the article really begins.

Note the Phillip E. Johnson inspired language in it that ID “challenges established scientific thinking.” Johnson has been more than vindicated in his desire to broaden the terms of debate and argue for a libertarian marketplace of ideas in all levels of education. Freedom is a good thing. It works.

Although he said that curriculum decisions should be made by school districts rather than the federal government, Bush told Texas newspaper reporters in a group interview at the White House on Monday that he believes that intelligent design should be taught alongside evolution as competing theories.

‘Both sides ought to be properly taught . . . so people can understand what the debate is about,’ he said, according to an official transcript of the session. Bush added: ‘Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. . . . You’re asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes.’

Take a deep breath and read what Bush said.

There is a debate. Who can doubt it?

The “establishment” keeps telling us there is no debate, but it goes on in academic meetings, journals, and publications. Theism is growing in philosophy. More and more scientists are willing to risk their careers by speaking out. What is wrong with giving the points of view of both sides?

Kids care. They know about the debate. Must we just ignore it or give only one side?

These comments drew sharp criticism yesterday from opponents of the theory, who said there is no scientific evidence to support it and no educational basis for teaching it.

Notice how brittle the comments of the opponents are. They will not concede any scientific evidence for design. This is more than Darwin would say or Dawkins in his honest moments.

Nature shouts “design” both concede.

The beauty of Darwinism, and it is a powerful idea, is that it tries to explain that what appears designed actually is not. But after all what if (contrary to Darwin) nature is what it appears to be? Surely that can never be a stupid idea!

Science was born in design and many scientists still use it in their work. Can’t their voice be heard?

These comments also assume that “philosophy” has no place in schools. Of course that itself is a philosophy of education. Call it the philosophy that “science does not deal with any issues, ever, that fall outside of our narrow definition of science.” That seems self-evidently false to me, but there you have it. I disagree with the establishment.

The difference is that I am not trying to impose my own philosophy of education on goverment schools and the other side is.

The “evolutionism/creation” debate is not just about science, because “science” is not just some pure set of facts and untainted-by-philosophy theories. Science is constrained (as it must be) by the world-views of those that hold it. Isn’t it possible that a different world-view would see the facts differently?

As a result of an educational philosophy being imposed on us by the establishment, naturalism and reductionism are taught (both philosophical views) without any attempt to mention that many philosophers think both ideas applied to science are wrong headed.

Much of the scientific establishment says that intelligent design is not a tested scientific theory but a cleverly marketed effort to introduce religious — especially Christian — thinking to students. Opponents say that church groups and other interest groups are pursuing political channels instead of first building support through traditional scientific review.

This is an excellent paragraph. First, it is true. Much of the establishment does say this. This goes a long way to explain why people who do not agree with the establishment keep their mouth shut. To agree with the establishment leads to praise. Dissent leads to hyper-scrutiny. Who wants that?

Second, note the terror that is supposed to result in our minds from the radical notion that students would be exposed to Christian thinking. “By the dog, expose those students to Aquinas and the next thing you know there will be riots in the street!”

Third, the idea that parents would want a say in how their children are taught is now made to sound frightening. Pursuing “political channels” used to be called “democracy.”

Now, if non-secularists do it, we are supposed to worry about being one step from the Taliban. Here is a good idea: when my kids are exposed to atheist views (as they are) in the marketplace of ideas (especially in the media), I will not scream that we are about to enter Stalin’s Russia, if secularists will not see the Taliban behind civil discourse about religious ideas.

Yes?

Don’t hold your breath. These folk do not want any ideas that disagree with their deeply held secularism taught.

The White House said yesterday that Bush’s comments were in keeping with positions dating to his Texas governorship, but aides say they could not recall him addressing the issue before as president. His remarks heartened conservatives who have been asking school boards and legislatures to teach students that there are gaps in evolutionary theory and explain that life’s complexity is evidence of a guiding hand.

“Conservatives” are not the only ones who favor ID. Ask the African-American community. Check out the position of the new pope (no “conservative” in the modern American political sense).

“With the president endorsing it, at the very least it makes Americans who have that position more respectable, for lack of a better phrase,” said Gary L. Bauer, a Christian conservative leader who ran for president against Bush in the 2000 Republican primaries. “It’s not some backwater view. It’s a view held by the majority of Americans.”

This is one of the few weird sources in the article. Why Bauer? How many votes did he get? Is he an expert on this issue? Why not call an African American congressperson and ask their views on ID? I bet it would not be hard to find a Democrat who supports ID.

If you must talk to a Republican (it seems to fit the slant of the story) then why Bauer? I would have started with Rick Santorum, the sponsor of the Santorum Amendment on teaching intelligent design. He has national ambitions and is more like the mainstream of the ID movement.

John G. West, an executive with the Discovery Institute, a Seattle-based think tank supporting intelligent design, issued a written statement welcoming Bush’s remarks. “President Bush is to be commended for defending free speech on evolution, and supporting the right of students to hear about different scientific views about evolution,” he said.

Opponents of intelligent design, which a Kansas professor once called “creationism in a cheap tuxedo,” say there is no legitimate debate. They see the case increasingly as a political battle that threatens to weaken science teaching in a nation whose students already are lagging.

Translation: we are already doing a bad job teaching your kids science. Please trust us to know how to best teach them science.

One good thing about the article is that it rightly measures the level of debate. Most foes of ID do little more than think of clever shots to throw at their foes. Why?

When they engage the ID crowd in a serious way (as published books from University presses are already doing) they lend iron-clad proof that there is a real academic debate.

For example, the world-class philosopher Al Plantinga has attacked the naturalism in “evolution.” His paper has drawn respectful criticism. Plantinga has responded. The debate continues in philosophy. Why not tell kids, most of them from ID friendly homes, that is true? Why not spend a day or two reading the papers from these leading thinkers?

Students would be interested.

It would spark debate in classes.

What is the other side afraid of?

“It is, of course, further indication that a fundamentalist right has really taken over much of the Republican Party,” said Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.), a leading liberal lawmaker. Noting Bush’s Ivy League education, Frank said, “People might cite George Bush as proof that you can be totally impervious to the effects of Harvard and Yale education.”

Check out the number of liberals who voted for the Santorum Amendment. Look it up!

When did Barney Frank become mainstream? Google him.

If the notion that God had something to do with creation is “fundamentalism” then almost all Americans are “fundamentalists.”

Note again that when pressed foes of ID can only insult the intelligence of those who disagree with them. Many fine philosophers do not think ID is sound. They argue strongly against it. (One thinks of Michael Ruse.) No ID person thinks anti-ID people are idiots since most of us earned our doctorates under the tutelage of very bright members of the establisment!

We just do not agree.

Why must the “other side” assume the worst of all their foes?

Bush’s comments were “irresponsible,” said Barry W. Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State. He said the president, by suggesting that students hear two viewpoints, “doesn’t understand that one is a religious viewpoint and one is a scientific viewpoint.” Lynn said Bush showed a “low level of understanding of science,” adding that he worries that Bush’s comments could be followed by a directive to the Justice Department to support legal efforts to change curricula.

Barry Lynn does not think “religious view points” should be heard. Schools must not even present the POINT OF VIEW of religious people. Most folk think “separation of church and state” means the government will not make them go to church or practice a religion, but Lynn does not want religious ideas heard. Period.

Notice that “science” and “religion” are treated by Lynn as if they existed in two air tight compartments. What happened to the unity of truth? What happened to the beauty of “inter-disciplinary” study? If it were not “religious” ideas, then Lynn would support talking about where two disciplines touch and inter-mingle.

Science is not an air tight compartment. It touches on ethics. It touches on religion.

Teach the controversy.

Bush gave no sign that he intended to wade that far into the debate. The issue came up only when a reporter from the Knight Ridder news service asked him about it; participants said the president did not seem especially eager to be asked. “Very interesting question,” he told the reporter playfully.”

At a morning briefing yesterday, White House press secretary Scott McClellan said Bush was simply restating long-standing views. “He has said that going back to his days as governor,” McClellan said. “I think he also said in those remarks that local school districts should make the decisions about their curriculum. But it’s long been his belief that students ought to be exposed to different ideas, and so that’s what he was reiterating yesterday.”

But it’s long been his belief that students ought to be exposed to different ideas, and so that’s what he was reiterating yesterday.

Oh the horror! The President wants students to be exposed to different ideas! That Socrates must die! He will fill the youth of the city with his fiendish ideas and undermine the scientific establishment!

In comments published last year in Science magazine, Bush said that the federal government should not tell states or school boards what to teach but that “scientific critiques of any theory should be a normal part of the science curriculum.”

The president’s latest remarks came less than two months after Cardinal Christoph Schonborn, archbishop of Vienna and an influential Roman Catholic theologian, said evolution as “an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection” is not true.

“Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science,” Schonborn wrote in the New York Times. He said he wanted to correct the idea that neo-Darwinism is compatible with Christian faith.

This is a lovely citation. Schonborn is a very serious thinker. He is a blue-blood European and fits no ones notion of an “American fundamentalist.” The fact that Schonborn even exists denies most of the lies told about ID by the other side. He is: not an American, not a fundamentalist Christian, not badly educated, and understands the issues.

Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences, warned this year in a “Dear Colleagues” letter of “increasingly strident attempts to limit the teaching of evolution.”

Alberts manages to spin his call to ban ID into the other side wanting to “limit teaching evolution.” Here is a deal my ID friends would accept Mr. Alberts:

1. Let us expand the teaching of evolution in American schools.
2. Let us also include 3 days exploring the philosophical arguments advanced by Plantinga and his critics regarding mainstream science as a way of showing where science impacts other disciplines.

O.K.?

Of course, he will not agree because the science establishment cannot stand even one mention of non-naturalism in the class. Ask yourself why?

What harm would it do for students to be exposed to this high level philosophical debate?

The most prominent debate is underway in Kansas, where the conservative state board of education is expected to require the teaching of doubts about evolution to public high school students. A challenge to the teaching of intelligent design is scheduled for trial in Dover, Pa., while a federal court in Georgia said textbook stickers questioning evolution were unconstitutional.

‘Mature conservatism,’ continued - Altercation - MSNBC.com: “The guy who said that was slapped with a ten day suspension. But what about these guys?”

How can one account for the unhinged ranting of otherwise interesting folk like Eric Alterman when George Bush is the subject?

If there is one thing you learn from teaching college students, it is that people are often much simpler than you think. Bright ones often have long and elaborate reasons for what they do, but it usually comes down to the same simple motives, things like love and hate, charity and greed.

Eric Alterman rages against George Bush. His rage has become irrational. Why? What could his motive be? The very anger in this postings betrays him. He cannot persuade for sneering. He cannot make a good argument against the President for falling into bad ones.

Today was a good example. Alterman has an excellent education and yet he still compares lying to Congress about steroid use to quotes about WMD by the White House.

It appears the simple distinction between knowing that one is doing steroids and lying about it and being wrong about one’s rational beliefs regarding WMD escapes him.

His rage makes him irrational.

What is one to make of this?

I think the simple answer is that there is not much left of the Left. They are reduced to their last bastions, certain parts of the Academy and Hollywood. Folk attracted to these areas are the very sort that hate people like George W. Bush. This allows folk like Alterman to exist as “leaders” of the Left without any other group checking the natural blind spots of the class. There just are not enough Leftist business leaders or traditional religious left to balance out the small mindedness of what is becoming a movement with one dimension.

Talking to each other, they feed their prejudices and begin to sound unhinged to outsiders.

Academics, film stars, rock stars, writers, and a few politicians are not going to point out when your views go too far.

And Geoerge Bush is the kind of kid that as a student drives most of the younger version of the Alterman’s mad.

George Bush is the sort that did not take Mr. Alterman or his report card seriously in school. He may have shown disdain for the things Alterman takes most seriously. I don’t think Mr. Alterman likes George Bush. . . and a primary school level and it is leaking out in irrational outbursts.

How else to explain juvenile nicknames for the President repeated over and over? How else to explain the failure of a bright man to use even a bit of reason in dealing with the White House?

If Bill Clinton was the type of man conservative leaders naturally loath, then George Bush is the very sort of man the last liberals are used to sniffing at. The fact that he is winning. . . and the leader of the Free World. . . drives them mad. The frat boys, the jocks, and the lads living on Dad’s trust fund were supposed to fail and leave the world to Alterman.

The fact that frat boy Bush was saved by Jesus Christ and a good wife from certain ruin is even worse.

Watch for Alterman to keep lashing out and shouting. The cosmos was supposed to punish men like Bush in Alterman’s view of things. It did not and he cannot take it.

Steroid shocker: Palmeiro suspended - Baseball - MSNBC.com: “The 40-year-old Palmeiro became the seventh player to fail a test under the toughened major league policy that took effect in March, rules criticized by Congress as not being stringent enough.”

Today I called my thirteen year old daughter from a conference in San Diego.

She knew about Palmeiro, of course. Mary Kate is the biggest baseball fan I know. She knows the sport and reads the paper with the avidity of an eighty year old with memories of looking for news of the War.

So she saw the news well before I did.

There was disappointment in her voice. She was sad, there is no better word. Why? One of the clean players had been caught lying.

She knows people aren’t perfect. Living with me would impress on her the fact that forty year olds aren’t all they wish they were.

What is hard to deal with, I think, is that her perfect game, which should be about her Sox destroying the Yankees, is now about cheating by stars. Men paid millions to play a game cheat and lie to make millions more.

Her softball coach, paid nothing to do great things with girls, taught her cheating does not pay.

Well, does it Mr. Palmeiro? Who is right: the mother coaching girl’s softball in La Mirada or the superstar from the Majors?

I am not here to judge Palmeiro. What he has done, assuming he has done it, is no greater than the evils most of us do. Today, however, a dad had to hear disappointment in his daughter’s voice. One of the good guys was not good. I know she has to learn that lesson. People are not always what they say they are. They often say that they are doing one thing, but then do something else. (And now the anguish of knowing my own failings! Lord be merciful to me a sinner!) This is a trivial thing compared to the lessons that will come.

That is my problem. Palmeiro made a small joy a sorrow for no good reason.

I doubt in his mansion, Palmeiro cares he took a bit of my daughter’s joy in his game. I doubt he will ever know the pain. It is not so great, not so important in a world where terrorists roam, babies starve, and Sudan allows slavery. But isn’t that what makes me so bad?

It is Palmeiro’s rare and beautiful gift to live in one of the last gardens in this troubled old world. We do not envy him his life, at least very much. It gives us joy to know that somewhere there is a place where men play games and other men watch for the sheer pleasure of it. It is a peaceful place where arguments go on peacefully, because they are half the fun of it. Baseball is a game in a very serious world.

Palmeiro has made a game “serious.” When a game is serious, then it is no longer of any value.

Palmeiro has brought his trivial evil, his petty lies, to the game. And he made my daughter sad about something that is supposed to have few meaningful tears. She should cry over the playoffs, not drug use by aging athletes who will not accept their own mortality. Must Palmeiro force me to have a serious discussion about everything?

I know such small heartbreaks must come and