Uncommon Knowledge - An interview with Thomas Sowell on "A Conflict of Visions"

Click the image above to be taken to Part I of V, where Thomas Sowell describes the critical differences between interests and visions. Interests, he says, are articulated by people who know what their interests are and what they want to do about them. Visions, however, are the implicit assumptions by which people operate. This idea elevates to politics, where visions are either “constrained” or “unconstrained.”

Here are the links and brief descriptions of the other parts:

Part II - Sowell describes the constrained and unconstrained visions of the law, noting that the former applies to John McCain and the latter to Barrack Obama.

Part III - Speaking of the differing visions of war, Sowell says the constrained vision is never surprised by war, while the unconstrained vision almost always is.

Part IV - Is John McCain’s the constrained vision of the economy, and is Obama’s the unconstrained? According to Sowell, the distinction is sadly not that clear.

Part V - Thomas Sowell discusses the dangerous unconstrained vision of Barack Obama and other elites. And what will happen if this vision scores a three-house sweep on Election Day? Sowell says we may have reached “a point of no return.”

'I have a plan to destroy America'

I had never read this before today. Michelle posted it this morning and I thought it was worth sharing in it's entirety here.

Richard Lamm, former Democrat Governor of CO, gave this speech at a conference sponsored by the Federation for American Immigration Reform in Washington in 2004:

I have a plan to destroy America
by Richard D. Lamm

I have a secret plan to destroy America. If you believe, as many do, that America is too smug, too white bread, too self-satisfied, too rich, let’s destroy America. It is not that hard to do. History shows that nations are more fragile than their citizens think. No nation in history has survived the ravages of time. Arnold Toynbee observed that all great civilizations rise and they all fall, and that “an autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide.” Here is my plan:

1. We must first make America a bilingual-bicultural country. History shows, in my opinion, that no nation can survive the tension, conflict and antagonism of two competing languages and cultures. It is a blessing for an individual to be bilingual; it is a curse for a society to be bilingual. One scholar, Seymour Martin Lipset, put it this way: “The histories of bilingual and bicultural societies that do not assimilate are histories of turmoil, tension and tragedy. Canada, Belgium, Malaysia, Lebanon all face crises of national existence in which minorities press for autonomy, if not independence. Pakistan and Cyprus have divided. Nigeria suppressed an ethnic rebellion. France faces difficulties with its Basques, Bretons and Corsicans.”

2. I would then invent “multiculturalism” and encourage immigrants to maintain their own culture. I would make it an article of belief that all cultures are equal: that there are no cultural differences that are important. I would declare it an article of faith that the black and Hispanic dropout rate is only due to prejudice and discrimination by the majority. Every other explanation is out-of-bounds.

3. We can make the United States a “Hispanic Quebec” without much effort. The key is to celebrate diversity rather than unity. As Benjamin Schwarz said in the Atlantic Monthly recently, “The apparent success of our own multiethnic and multicultural experiment might have been achieved, not by tolerance, but by hegemony. Without the dominance that once dictated ethnocentrically, and what it meant to be an American, we are left with only tolerance and pluralism to hold us together.” I would encourage all immigrants to keep their own language and culture. I would replace the melting pot metaphor with a salad bowl metaphor. It is important to insure that we have various cultural sub-groups living in America reinforcing their differences, rather than Americans emphasizing their similarities.

4. Having done all this, I would make our fastest-growing demographic group the least educated. I would add a second underclass, unassimilated, undereducated and antagonistic to our population. I would have this second underclass have a 50 percent dropout rate from school.

5. I would then get the big foundations and big business to give these efforts lots of money. I would invest in ethnic identity, and I would establish the cult of victimology. I would get all minorities to think their lack of success was all the fault of the majority. I would start a grievance industry blaming all minority failure on the majority population.

6. I would establish dual citizenship and promote divided loyalties. I would “celebrate diversity.” “Diversity” is a wonderfully seductive word. It stresses differences rather than commonalities. Diverse people worldwide are mostly engaged in hating each other–that is, when they are not killing each other. A “diverse,” peaceful or stable society is against most historical precedent. People undervalue the unity it takes to keep a nation together, and we can take advantage of this myopia.

Look at the ancient Greeks. Dorf’s “World History” tells us: “The Greeks believed that they belonged to the same race; they possessed a common language and literature; and they worshiped the same gods. All Greece took part in the Olympic Games in honor of Zeus, and all Greeks venerated the shrine of Apollo at Delphi. A common enemy, Persia, threatened their liberty. Yet, all of these bonds together were not strong enough to overcome two factors: local patriotism and geographical conditions that nurtured political divisions. If we can put the emphasis on the “pluribus,” instead of the “unum,” we can balkanize America as surely as Kosovo.

7. Then I would place all these subjects off-limits – make it taboo to talk about. I would find a word similar to “heretic” in the 16th century that stopped discussion and paralyzed thinking. Words like “racist”, “xenophobe” halt argument and conversation. Having made America a bilingual-bicultural country, having established multiculturalism, having the large foundations fund the doctrine of “victimology,” I would next make it impossible to enforce our immigration laws. I would develop a mantra – ”because immigration has been good for America, it must always be good.” I would make every individual immigrant sympatric and ignore the cumulative impact.

8. Lastly, I would censor Victor Davis Hanson’s book “Mexifornia” – this book is dangerous; it exposes my plan to destroy America. So please, please – if you feel that America deserves to be destroyed – please, please – don’t buy this book! This guy is on to my plan.

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum.” – Noam Chomsky, American linguist and U.S. media and foreign policy critic.

Snopes has more context here that includes a summary of the reaction from the crowd after the speech was delivered. Truth sometimes hurts.

Book recommendation...

Star Parker says Carson is a man worth listening to, and I'll take her word for it:

Here are a few snippets I've extracted from a lengthy interview done with Carson by the Academy of Achievement, in which he was inducted a number of years ago:

Growing up poor and "at risk": "Once I recognized that I had the ability to pretty much map out my own future based on the choices that I made and the degree of energy that I put into it, life was wonderful at that point. I used to hate my life up until that point because I hated being poor."

Personal responsibility: "My mother was a person who would never accept an excuse from my brother or myself. It didn't matter what the situation was. If you came with an excuse, she would also say, 'Do you have a brain?' After a while it became clear to us that no excuse was acceptable, so we became pretty creative."

Family: "The more solid the family foundation, the more likely you are to be able to resist peer pressure. Human beings are social creatures. We all want to belong, we all have that desire. If the family doesn't provide that, the peers will, or the gang will."

Priorities: "The most important thing to me is taking your God-given talents and developing them to the utmost, so that you can be useful to your fellow man."

God and America: "(God) has become an essential part of my life and my being. ... When we created this nation, we believed in God. ... .I believe that's one of the reasons ... we got to be so great, so quickly."

It'll be my next purchase.

Coulter...Setting the record straight on Joe McCarthy

Ann Coulter discusses M. Stanton Evans new book - Blacklisted by History: The Untold Story of Senator Joe McCarthy and His Fight Against America's Enemies:

... Blacklisted by History proves that every conventional belief about McCarthy is wrong, including:

-- That he lied about his war service: He was a tailgunner in World War II;

-- That he was a drunk: He would generally nurse a single drink all night;

-- That he made the whole thing up: He produced loads of Soviet spies in government jobs;

-- That he just did it for political gain: He understood perfectly the godless evil of communism.

Ironically, for all of their love of conspiracy theories - the rigging of the 2000 election, vote suppression in Ohio in 2004, 9/11 being an inside job, oil companies covering up miracle technology that would allow cars to run on dirt, Britney Spears' career, etc., etc. - when presented with an actual conspiracy of Soviet spies infiltrating the U.S. government, they laughed it off like world-weary skeptics and dedicated themselves to slandering Joe McCarthy.

Then as now, liberals protect themselves from detection with wild calumnies against anybody who opposes them. They have no interest in - or aptitude for - persuasion. Their goal is to anathematize their enemies. Blacklisted by History removes the curse from one of the greatest patriots in American history.

Read the rest in McCarthyism: The Rosetta Stone of Liberal Lies.

On boys being boys...

Ross Mackenzie writes Rallying Boys to a 'Dangerous' Standard of Normalcy:

... Feminists who would condition us all may argue that boys are doing no worse than before — it only seems that way because girls, liberated at last, are doing better; the real crisis facing boys, they say, is that they’re not enough like girls. Yet something is rendering boys enervated and effete; something is sapping their energy. Midge Decter notes a “shying away from their instinctive restlessness and competitiveness, and, with it, a fading of whatever happened to be the standards of gallantry.”

Maybe it’s the feminist revolution. Maybe it’s divorce and single(-mother) families. Maybe it’s our Spockian mores of child-rearing. Maybe it’s an outgrowth of the relativism that no longer finds innate goodness in America — and so worth defending, and its enemies worth fighting — and likewise no longer recognizes, or values, the goodness inhering in boys.

Click here for the rest of the column.

I haven't read anything from Mackenzie before, but I'm glad to have found him. Click here for Mackenzie's column archives at Townhall.com. Click the picture above to order the book.

Rudy Giuliani, and the ebbing of conservatism... (updated)

Pat Buchanan discusses the eroding soul of the conservative movement in his latest:

Sixty years ago, Robert A. Taft was the gold standard. Forty years ago, it was Barry Goldwater, who backed Bob Taft against Ike at the 1952 convention. Twenty years ago, it was Ronald Reagan, who backed Barry in 1964. Reagan remains the paragon – for the consistency of his convictions, the success of his presidency and the character he exhibited to the end of his life. About Reagan the cliché was true: The greatness of the office found out the greatness in the man.

Reagan defined conservatism for his time. And the issues upon which we agreed were anti-communism, a national defense second to none, lower tax rates to unleash the engines of economic progress, fiscal responsibility, a strict-constructionist Supreme Court, law and order, the right-to-life from conception on and a resolute defense of family values under assault from the cultural revolution that hit America with hurricane force in the 1960s.

With the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the breakup of the Soviet Union, anti-communism as the defining and unifying issue of the right was gone. The conservative crack-up commenced.

...

Gravitating now to Rudy's camp are those inveterate opportunists, the neocons, who see in Giuliani their last hope of redemption for their cakewalk war and their best hope for a "Long War" against "Islamo-fascism."

I will, Rudy promises, nominate Scalias. Only one more may be needed to overturn Roe. And I will keep Hillary out of the White House.

A Giuliani presidency would represent the return and final triumph of the Republicanism that conservatives went into politics to purge from power. A Giuliani presidency would represent repudiation by the party of the moral, social and cultural content that, with anti-communism, once separated it from liberal Democrats and defined it as an institution.

Rudy offers the right the ultimate Faustian bargain: retention of power at the price of one's soul.

Do you agree? I'm with Duncan Hunter in the primaries. We'll see from there. It'll likely be back to the same question that faced conservatives back in 2006... do you vote the lesser of two evils to defeat liberal socialism, or do you stand on conservative principle and either not vote (as many conservatives did in 2006) or vote for someone you know can't win to try and send a message to the failing GOP even though it will hurt big time in the short term?

Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters
sing "You Belong to Me" in The Jerk... just because:

And the following scene is worth watching too...

Bill Murchison discusses the Fall of the Religious Right?:

I don't see glee oozing from between every comma in David Kirkpatrick's New York Times magazine article this past weekend on the "evangelical crackup." He's a good reporter, whose coverage of conservatives I regard as generally well balanced. On the other hand, it isn't hard to visualize street dancing and fireworks displays outside Clinton headquarters. Kirkpatrick's focus is on the glug-glug sound as evangelical enthusiasm for conservatives and Republicans drains from the tub.

No one can predict, for certain, the speed or volume of the drainage. It suffices momentarily to note the potential effects of this once-unlooked-for phenomenon. Didn't Republicans used to own the religious right? They sure did.

...

The evangelical miscalculation, in my judgment, wasn't getting into politics. It was expecting that the practitioners of politics -- yea, from George W. Bush on down -- had the power to scourge the devil from his fortification in the human heart. For the harder task of cultural transformation and the spreading of Truth many evangelicals have shown scant appetite. They'd rather sign petitions and pass out campaign literature.

Sorry. The Good Book contradicts that notion. Hearken, brethren, to Psalm 146: "O put not your trust in princes, nor in any child of man; for there is no help in them. Blessed is the God of Jacob for his help; and whose hope is in the Lord his God."

John Hawkins explains liberalism...

John Hawkins does a great job of Explaining Liberal Thinking In A Single Column

Liberals love to think of themselves as intellectual and nuanced, but liberalism is incredibly simplistic. It's nothing more than "childlike emotionalism applied to adult issues." Very seldom does any issue that doesn't involve pandering to their supporters boil down at its core level to more than feeling "nice" or "mean" to liberals. This makes liberals ill equipped to deal with complex issues.

Since liberals tend to support or oppose policies based on how those policies make them feel about themselves, they do very little intellectual examination of whether the policies they advocate work or not. That's because it doesn't matter to them whether the policy is effective or not; it matters whether advocating the policy makes them feel "good" or "bad," "compassionate" or "stingy," "nice" or "mean."

Because of this, liberalism has more in common with religion than it does with other political ideologies like conservatism or libertarianism. Moreover, liberal beliefs are more like religious doctrine than any sort of battle-tested policies that bear up under logic or examination. Although the interpretation of the doctrine that the Left supports may change a bit over time, just as religious doctrine does, it's essentially taken on faith, like scripture.

That's why, for example, you may see ferocious debates on the right side of the blogosphere about the war, illegal immigration, or spending. But, with the netroots, the debates almost always revolve around the best strategy to get more liberals elected. The issues are not really up for debate, other than debate over how to get them enacted.

Mildly related: Michelle Malkin interviews columnist and author Diana West about her new book The Death of the Grown-up:


Part II:

Michelle Malkin vents with Laura Ingraham

Michelle Malkin and Laura Ingraham together in a five-part interview that Michelle did with Laura last week.

I don't listen to Laura much as she's not on here in Richmond, but I catch her when I'm on the road. She's fantastic.

Michelle is one of my favorites... from her blog, to HotAir.com, to her columns, to her appearances on The Factor... she's one of the absolute best.

Here's the interview courtesy of my favorite blog... HotAir.com. I'll add the remaining parts as Bryan posts them.

Part I:


Part II:


Bryan has some collateral video on his post that's worth checking out too.

Part III:


Update: Dennis Prager interviews Laura on her book Power to the People. Click here for the audio.

Doug Giles and Robert Spencer on Spencer's latest book: Religion of Peace: Why Christianity is and Islam Isn’t...

Doug Giles always has his own brilliant twist to add, and it's usually not subtle.

His latest column titled Christianity Sucks and Islam is Awesome? is no exception, and it pairs up perfectly with Michelle Malkin's latest Vent - an interview with Robert Spencer about his latest (7th) book.

Click the image or the link above for Michelle's interview with Spencer over at HotAir.

Here's the closing thrust from Doug Giles' column:

Listen, 21st century truth reconstructors . . . you’ve gotta relax. Please do us all a favor and go get healed from your bad Sunday school experience and lay down your church grinding axe. Thinking people aren’t buying the “Christianity = Islam” smack.

Get real, Goofy. You and I both know that regardless of what a few loopy CINO’s (Christians in name only) have done via violence in the name of the Father that it is not in the body of Christian doctrine to hack off the noggin of the obstreperous. There’s not even an obscure passage in the Book of Revelation that some demented clod could twist like your Gumby doll to make the Christian scripture green light your demise or anyone else’s. Additionally, Christians aren’t longing for TBN to replace DC as our nation’s headquarters.

So chill, you shrill shredders of Christianity.

On the flip side, it is within the pages of the Koran to convert, conquer or kill non-Islamic people. And I’m a thinkin’ that no matter how much you work to besmirch Christianity and misinform on behalf of militant Islam, that if they had it their way, you, the secularist, would be a deceased grease stain on God’s green earth.

Therefore, gay guy, loosen that neckerchief and relax on the anti-Christian rhetoric, okay? Atheists, dial down and go back to studying monkeys (or whatever you do) and secularists, switch to decaf and exhale because you guys are barking up the wrong tree in trying to paint Christians as a coercive, could-be-violent, cabal like, militant Islam.

Radical Muslims, on the other hand, are the ones you need to sweat—because their book has zero tolerance for the likes of Sully and Jay—or anyone for that matter, who doesn’t lock step. You can bet your backside that if uncut Islam were in charge, Christopher Hitchens would be history, Drew Barrymore would be nevermore and Andrew Sullivan would never be seen again.

The Judeo-Christian worldview (and subsequently, the great western traditions it under girds) is the only powerful cudgel in existence to ward off militant Islam. That’s what makes the Left’s lies about Christ’s Church and the Left’s desires to diminish it so diabolical. If the church’s presence and power gets marginalized via these secularists’s anti-Christian propaganda, then all I’ve got to say is, “I hope everyone is cool with wearing burkhas.”

Check out Spencer at www.jihadwatch.org and on HotAir video.

You can find Doug Giles columns here and much more at www.clashradio.com.

Related: The Truth about Islamic Crusades and Imperialism

Charles J. Sykes: 50 Rules Kids Won't Learn in School

Charles J. Sykes offers life lessons that are not included in the curriculum for most children today: honest advice about what they will encounter in the “real world” post-schooling and how their parents can help them best prepare—not with cushy self-esteem talks, but rather with honest challenges.

His 50 lessons are frank, sometimes harsh, and often hilarious, including:

#1 - Life is not fair. Get used to it.

#7 - If you think your teacher is tough, wait until you get a boss. He doesn’t have tenure, so he tends to be a bit edgier. When you screw up, he’s not going to ask you how you FEEL about it.

#15 - Flipping burgers is not beneath your dignity. Your grandparents had a different word for burger flipping. They called it “opportunity.”

#42 - Change the oil.

#43 - Don’t let the success of other depress you.

#48 - Tell yourself the story of your life. Have a point.

Sykes elaborates on each of his points, creating a wise, no-nonsense guide for parents to help their children help themselves. Each rule is explored with wise, pithy examples that parents, grandparents, and teachers can use to help children help themselves succeed---in school and out of it.

A few more rules kids won’t learn in school:
#9 Your school may have done away with winners and losers. Life hasn’t.
#14 Looking like a slut does not empower you.
#29 Learn to deal with hypocrisy.
#32 Television is not real life.
#38 Look people in the eye when you meet them.
#47 You are not perfect, and you don’t have to be.
#50 Enjoy this while you can.

Order here.

Excitement undermines happiness...

Dennis Prager is right and wise as usual:

(listen here!)

If you want your children to be happy adults and even happy children - and what parent does not? - minimize the excitement in their lives. The more excitement, the less happy they are likely to be.

In both adults and children, one can either pursue excitement or pursue happiness, but one cannot do both. If you pursue excitement, you will not attain happiness. If you pursue happiness, you will still experience some moments of excitement, but you will attain happiness only if happiness, not excitement, is your goal.

[...]

The solutions are as simple to offer as they may be difficult to enforce. Limit the amount of excitement in your children's lives: the amount of video games, the amount of non-serious television, the amount of music whose only aim is to excite. If they are bored, they will have to remedy that boredom by playing with friends, finding a hobby, talking to a family member, walking the dog, doing chores, reading a book or magazine, learning a musical instrument or foreign language, memorizing state capitals, writing a story or just their thoughts, exercising or playing a sport, or just thinking.

The younger the age from which children are deprived of superficial excitement, the longer they will remain innocent - i.e., not jaded - and capable of real happiness. For as long as they live under your roof, and therefore (hopefully) under your control, you can implement excitement detox. If you do, they may hate you now, but they will thank you later, which is far superior to liking you now and hating you later. And in parenting, that is often the choice we must make.

Read the entire column, or listen to him discuss the subject on his radio show.

If you want to check out more of Dennis, listen to any/all of Dennis' podcasts of his radio show... he's truly fantastic.

A gloomy prognosis for the GOP from Frank Luntz... (updated)

I didn't know much about him before, but I watched Luntz in an interview recently on Book TV. Watch it here if you have some time.

Bob Novak chimes in with his latest titled "The GOP's Cassandra":

... Like Cassandra of ancient Troy, Luntz's prophecies of impending disaster have been both accurate and disregarded. Republicans never have been that comfortable hearing critics in closed conferences. He is not invited to such meetings today. "They do not want to hear the truth," Luntz told me. While truth-telling is celebrated by Republican reformers who include presidential front-runner John McCain, it is a decidedly minority view in the GOP.

Luntz's truth is summarized in a 10-page "addendum," inspired by the 2006 election fiasco, to his new book, "Words that Work" (about political use of language). He delayed publication and lost Christmas sales in order to deliver a wakeup call to his party.

"The Republican Party that lost those historic elections was a tired, cranky shell of the articulate reformist, forward-thinking movement that was swept into office in 1994 on a wave of positive change," Luntz wrote. He went on to say that the Republicans of 2006 "were an ethical morass, more interested in protecting their jobs than protecting the people they served. The 1994 Republicans came to 'revolutionize' Washington. Washington won." ...

If the Republicans continue to flounder, the Libertarian Party may have an opportunity.

Mac Johnson's latest called "Libertarians on Drugs" points to a serious problem though:

... This debate would be just an intellectual exercise except for the fact that many of the intellectual lights of the libertarian movement waste considerable breath and ink decrying the prohibition of drugs, and that one of the nonstarters of the libertarian party growing into a real movement is people’s correct perception that libertarian control of drug laws will result in drive-thru drug-marts popping up at the state line. As much as many small government fans would like to see a viable third party arise, it cannot be one that thinks that free will and reason can govern the use of mind-altering addictive drugs.

On some issues, libertarians make perfect sense. But libertarians on drugs are simply irrational. Biochemistry trumps free will every time.

Constitution Party anyone?

Update: From Mark Alexander - Wanted: Another Reagan...

Like Ronald Reagan's foes on both sides of the Berlin Wall, these Republican leaders seem all too willing, all too often, to expand the state at the expense of liberty. With candidates aplenty and the 2008 election just around the corner, let's hope and pray that a true conservative -- a Reagan conservative -- will soon emerge.

Update: Ann Coulter fires a different kind of warning shot in her latest...

If you won't defend your own champions, conservatives, then don't sit back and wonder why so few people want to be your champions.

Tony Snow doesn't... damn.

Environmentalism has killed tens of millions of people, if not hundreds of millions, and could soon kill many more...

Joseph A. D'Agostino discusses Environmentalism's Death Toll for 'Nature':

Thanks to the lies contained in Rachel Carson’s “Silent Spring” and those, such as Al Gore, who hopped on the anti-DDT bandwagon, DDT was banned from country after country in the 1970s. As a result, malaria has made something of comeback, forcing some African nations to defy their aid benefactors in Europe and allow limited spraying of DDT—the only thing that works.

Bloodcurdlingly, Berlau cites several prominent environmentalist leaders who explained that their opposition to DDT was based on their desire for Third World people to die. For example, Sierra Club Director Michael McCloskey said in 1971 in order to explain his organization’s opposition to DDT, “By using DDT, we reduce mortality rates in underdeveloped countries without the consideration of how to support the increase in populations.” Alexander King, co-founder of the Club of Rome, wrote in 1990, “So my chief quarrel with DDT in hindsight is that it greatly added to the population problem.” That’s right — prominent and influential environmentalists oppose DDT because it saves human lives. ...

---

prominent and influential environmentalists
oppose DDT because it saves human lives.

---

... As the evidence in Berlau’s book makes clear, hatred of the human race lies at the bottom of the environmentalist agenda. This is not to say that there are no pressing environmentalist concerns, from mercury pollution to Latin American deforestation — but genuine concerns are based on human welfare, not the pagan worship of harsh, wild nature indifferent to life that not even radical environmentalists want to live in personally. ...

... It is true that we need a return to nature, but not to the primitive bestial nature that murderous environmentalists desire. We need a return to human nature, both in our interior souls and outside them, as described by Western philosophers such as Aristotle and developed most perfectly by historic Christianity. Then we will strike the beneficial balance of letting animal nature flourish under the guidance of the spirit of man.

Check out the Population Research Institute if you haven't before.

Is Susan Estrich really this lame?

I mean... really this lame? I guess so.



From NewsMax...

According to one reviewer, Estrich exposes how Coutler "has downgraded our political discourse with her irresponsible rhetoric, personal attacks, and slanderous asides."

Made me remember this fun romp through the crisp liberal mind of Estrich courtesy of O'Reilly...



...made about as much sense as anything out of Hillary's mouth on where she stands. Nice.

Books of interest...Without Roots, by Joseph Ratzinger and Marcello Pera

Europe faces the crisis of its life: birth rates are declining, immigrant Muslim populations are exploding, and the cradle of Christianity seems to have lost the will to live. In Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) and Marcello Pera detail just how bad things have become. Europe, they say, has become hollowed out from within, paralyzed in its culture and its public life, unable to face the life-and-death challenges that now confront it. These considerations, obviously, have implications much larger than Europe - many of the same challenges are being played out by aggressive proponents of secularism and relativism in our own culture wars.

Pope Benedict notes that plummeting birth rates show that "Europe is infected by a strange lack of desire for the future. Children, our future, are perceived as a threat to the present." Generation after generation of below-replacement-level birthrates have created a demographic vacuum which is now being filled by transplanted populations whose presence in Europe is a challenge to Europe's identity, and could become a threat to European democracy. Yet in the face of the growing challenge of Islam, Europe's adamant secularism and rejection of its own Christian heritage have left it helpless: unable to formulate any reasons for saying that Christianity is better than Islam or for resisting Islam at all. The West's boredom with its own principles and values couldn't come at a worse time: at the very moment in which it has been targeted by a deadly war declared and conducted by Islam.

Pope Benedict and Professor Pera argue that Europe is much more than just a great technological, economic, and political power. What gives a civilization its real identity and vitality, they argue, is its sense of the sacred. They explain that what men and women honor, cherish, and worship is the most dynamic element in human affairs, at least over the long haul, and that Europe can only survive by recovering the preciousness of its Christian heritage. It is time, they maintain, for Christian believers to help Europe reclaim what is best in that heritage and thereby place itself at the service of all mankind.

Among the insights of Pope Benedict XVI and Marcello Pera:

Why Europe is much more than merely a geographical entity

The false premises of relativism that led it to the erroneous and disastrous consequences we are seeing in the world today

How Europe's Christian identity emerged -- and why it unraveled in such a relatively brief span of time

Why neither "European civilization" nor any other civilization can be understood simply by looking at its technological and aesthetic achievements

Why Europe is in such deep crisis despite being healthier, wealthier, and more secure than ever before

What Europe's declining birthrates and disinclination to create the future have to do with its rejection of its past -- of the spiritual roots of European civilization

How Europe's relativism and rejection of Christianity threaten its commitment to human rights and equality before the law, and even to tolerance and civility among peoples of diverse convictions

How Europe's loss of values and of its sense of self even explains why so many Europeans opposed the second Iraq war and George W. Bush's Middle East democracy initiative

Why Europe commits such a grave error in believing that its institutions and values have no right or basis to be proclaimed as universal

How to oppose cultural relativism and relativism in terms of civilizations effectively

How relativism has even begun to infiltrate Christian theology, challenging both its exclusiveness and its inclusiveness

Why Catholics must admit that the inter-religious dialogue promoted by Vatican II has borne little fruit

Similarities - and key differences - between President Bush's democracy project and Woodrow Wilson's utopian vision

Why Europe cannot speak with a single voice or affirm a single strategy even when it comes to trying to secure its own survival

Why America, for all the virulence of our culture wars, is not as far gone as Europe

(Book description from Human Events Book Service)

-Home-

Top 5 Human Events Books...

The following are the Top Five selling conservative books from the Human Events Book Service:

GODLESS: THE CHURCH OF LIBERALISM by Ann Coulter.
In her most controversial book yet, Coulter shows how thanks to the liberals who dominate our courts, our government bureaucracies, our schools, and our media, liberalism is now the established religion of our country.

Winning the Future (Paperback Edition) by Newt Gingrich.
In his new book, Gingrich outlines the chief threats that could cripple our nation in the coming years: most notably Islamic terrorism, the banishing of religion from public life, and ever-growing government. These threats to America are as daunting and difficult as any America has faced. But if we want to win the future, it's time to do something about it - and Gingrich's 21st Century Contract with America is a magnificent place to start.

MYTHS, LIES AND DOWNRIGHT STUPIDITY by John Stossel.
There are lots of things "everybody knows" these days. "Everybody knows," for instance, that radiation is deadly. "Everybody knows" that outsourcing puts Americans out of work. The trouble is, in these and so many other cases, what "everybody knows" is flat wrong. Stossel exposes the errors behind hundreds of media-generated myths -- and reveals that the truth is often the opposite of what we've been taught to believe.

AMERICA: THE LAST BEST HOPE by William Bennett.
Dumbed-down and politically manipulative history, civics and social studies textbooks are leaving millions of our nation's youth ignorant of what makes America great. But here at last is an antidote. Bennett's book reveals the glory, romance, and uniqueness of the American experience. It is one of the few American histories that allow us to enjoy the story of our country, and to take pride in what we have become.

THE TRIVIUM: THE LIBERAL ARTS OF LOGIC, GRAMMAR AND RHETORIC by Sister Miriam Joseph Rauh.
The Trivium is a rigorous and utterly delightful presentation of the three areas that form the basis for all learning: logic, grammar, and rhetoric. Sister Rauh, a professor of English at St. Mary's College for thirty years, helps you see the unity and harmony of these three areas as she gives you solid and easily-grasped explanations of even their most abstruse elements.

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Books to consider...Darwinian Fairytales, by David Stove

In Darwinian Fairytales: Selfish Genes, Errors of Heredity and Other Fables of Evolution, philosopher David Stove is relentless and surgically precise in his ability to take apart the shallow and flimsy arguments that pass for Darwinian "scholarship" these days. But Stove is not your average creationist or proponent of intelligent design: he is a not a Christian (or a believer in any religion), and declares forthrightly that Darwin was a genius. That's why it's all the more compelling when Stove, working purely from sound reasoning and a sober evaluation of the evidence, explains clearly why Darwinism is unsound, overstated, and ultimately unbelievable - no one can accuse him of mere party spirit or partisan cheerleading.

Stove skewers modern defenders of Darwinism such as E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins, refuting their false assertions and faulty assumptions with blistering logic and devastating wit. He shows the hollowness of generally accepted Darwinian notions such as "Every organism has as many descendants as it can"; "Anything that hurts chances for survival will be rooted out by the process of natural selection"; "People who are prosperous and fortunate will have more children than the poor and disadvantaged"; and more.

Darwinian Fairytales breaks through the doctrinaire cant that still surrounds Darwinian myths -- making it the one book to read in order to understand how to refute the tired but still influential Darwinian arguments that continue to dominate the popular discourse.

"Darwinian Fairytales" debunked:

Why the human race wouldn't even exist today if one of Darwin's core assumptions was actually true

The Darwinian conception of life: how it rests on assumptions that are denied by Darwinism itself

How Darwin misread evidence of the differences between civilized and savage men that he found among the Yahgan Indians of Tierra del Fuego -- leading him to disastrously mistaken conclusions

How Darwinism depends on discredited Malthusian theories about how population growth would ultimately outstrip food production

Four ways in which the Malthus/Darwin theory that reproduction is the primary focus of human endeavor is false

Why even the best available explanation of certain matters may still be false and incomplete

How Darwinism overestimates human selfishness and disregards overwhelming evidence that humans are more altruistic than the theory allows for

Why the Darwinian struggle for life simply does not exist in human populations

How Darwin's theory regarding population growth is exactly the opposite of what the evidence actually shows

How the Darwinians actually overestimate the differences between human beings and animals in formulating their theories

Richard Dawkins' popular theory of the "selfish gene": why it ranks among the most absurd of the many absurd contemporary defenses of Darwinism

How Darwinians contradict themselves by describing adaptations as designed for certain purposes, while simultaneously denying that they mean that those adaptations were ever intended

The glaring factual error Darwin -- and later Darwinians -- make regarding the incidence and importance of child mortality in various species

Enlightenment views of man: how they always exaggerate quite ridiculously the amount that education can achieve

The inclusive fitness theory, which affirms a Darwinian "dog eat dog" view of human interaction: its many absurdities

Proof that - contrary to a core principle of Darwinism - cooperation has always been more common than competition among human beings

How the Darwinian idea that human life, and indeed all life, is devoted primarily to reproducing as much as possible is absurd, reductionist, and ultimately opposed to all human creativity and achievement

"Whatever your opinion of 'Intelligent Design', you'll find Stove's criticism of what he calls 'Darwinism' difficult to stop reading. Stove's blistering attack on Richard Dawkins' 'selfish genes' and 'memes' is unparalleled and unrelenting. A discussion of spiders who mimic bird droppings is alone worth the price of the book. Darwinian Fairytales should be read and pondered by anyone interested in sociobiology, the origin of altruism, and the awesome process of evolution." - Martin Gardner, author of Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?: Debunking Pseudoscience

(Book description from Human Events Book Service)

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7 books to consider...

Please check out...

Manliness, by Harvey Mansfield
A Time for Freedom, by Lynne Cheney
An Army of Davids, by Glenn Reynolds
Without Roots, by Joseph Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) and Marcello Pera
Darwinian Fairytales, by David Stove
Help Mom! Hollywood is in my hamper!, by Katharine DeBrecht
The Real Jimmy Carter, by Steven Hayward

(click on any image below for more information)










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Be a man, for God's sake... (you mean that's ok?)

"Being a Man"

Harvey Mansfield ponders the male of the species,

by Christina Hoff Sommers in the next issue of The Weekly Standard

...In Manliness, Harvey C. Mansfield seeks to persuade skeptical readers, especially educated women, to reconsider the merits of male protectiveness and assertiveness. It is in no way a defense of male privilege, but many will be offended by its old-fashioned claim that the virtues of men and women are different and complementary. Women would be foolish not to pay close attention to Mansfield's subtle and fascinating argument.

~~~
Women can be manly - Margaret Thatcher is an example - but manliness is the "quality mostly of one sex." This creates problems for a society such as ours that likes to think of itself as "gender neutral," egalitarian, and sensitive. Manliness is not sensitive. Today, we mainly cope with it by politely changing the subject. The very word is deemed quaint and outmoded. Gender experts in our universities teach as fact that the sex difference is an illusion--a discredited construct, like the earth being flat or the sun revolving around the earth.

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Manliness is not sensitive

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And yet, the complex range of behavior that "manliness" characterizes persists. It is still mostly men who embody it. We have succeeded in bringing the language to account, but we have not managed to exorcise masculine thumos.

After almost 40 years of feminist agitation and gender-neutral pronouns, it is still men who are far more likely than women to run for political office, start companies, file for patents, and blow things up. Men continue to tell most of the jokes and write the vast majority of editorials and letters to editors. And - fatal to the dreams of feminists who long for social androgyny - men have hardly budged from their unwillingness to do an equal share of housework or childcare. Moreover, women seem to like manly men: "Manliness is still around, and we still find it attractive," says Mansfield.

Click here for the rest of Sommers article on Manliness, by Harvey Mansfield.

Other works by Christina Hoff Sommers:



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7 books to consider...

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Books of interest...The Real Jimmy Carter, by Steven F. Hayward

The Nobel Prize is just the beginning: Jimmy Carter is enjoying a new day in the sun, with left-wing historians taking a "fresh look" at his disastrous presidency and trying to bamboozle Americans into thinking that it was actually successful. This ongoing Saint Jimmy campaign would be laughable if it weren't part of a larger strategy to whitewash the records of failed Democrats and justify Carter's outsize influence on today's Democratic party. Although the voters decisively dispatched Jimmy Carter in 1980, his legacy lives on in potent form today and is likely to survive his death. But now in The Real Jimmy Carter Steven F. Hayward demolishes the Carter myth once and for all.

Hayward knows a real leader when he sees one (he's the author of The Age of Reagan, 1964-1980 and Churchill on Leadership) and in this book he provides a wealth of devastating new information that proves that Carter was and is one of the worst American leaders in history. He explains why Carter's presidency really was as bad as we thought at the time, or worse. Turning to today, he details how Carter's lasting and dominant impact on the Democratic Party - the party of John Kerry and Hillary Clinton - has been calamitous, and why his supposed status as a "model" ex-president is the reverse of the truth (unless your idea of a model statesman is Jesse Jackson). Steven F. Hayward reveals:

How Carter's political persona amounts to little more than an odd combination of Machiavelli and Mr. Rogers

Why the editor of the Atlanta Constitution called Carter "one of the three or four phoniest men I ever met"

How Carter has again and again shown himself bereft of a solid intellectual foundation for his political views

Carter as a politician: his habits of exaggeration, disingenuousness, and outright deception -- belying his claim to occupy the moral high ground

Carter's weak, vacillating position on school desegregation as a member of a Georgia school board in the 1950s

Carter's 1970 run for Georgia governor: after conducting an appallingly cynical race-baiting campaign, he immediately proclaimed that the time had come for the South to repudiate its racist ways

Why Carter the renowned liberal moralist once declared that "Lester Maddox is the embodiment of the Democratic Party" and "George Wallace and I are in agreement on most issues"

Jimmy's loopy side: who's the only person elected to the presidency to have filed a UFO-sighting report with the Air Force? You guessed it

Why the national media ignored Carter's race-baiting and made him one of the darlings of the Democratic party in the early 1970s

How, despite claiming to be "above politics," Carter used the traditional weapons of power as Governor: patronage appointments, attempts to maneuver his supporters into key legislative posts, and more

False: Carter's claim, made during his 1976 presidential run, that he was a nuclear physicist

Abortion: how Carter's 1976 position on this issue vividly displayed his ability to stand on both sides of an issue

How Carter's 1976 election as president was not a fluke of the post-Watergate moment, but the fruit of his own carefully planned five-year effort

Why even Carter's notorious use of foul language in his mid-campaign Playboy interview may have been the result of careful calculation

Carter: born again? Disquieting evidence that he was not as much "one of us" as evangelical Christians assumed in 1976

The massive blunder Carter committed as President -- that was repeated by Bill Clinton in 1993

President Carter's foreign policy: "McGovernism without McGovern"

The Camp David accords: why Anwar Sadat exclaimed, "I'd just spent two years throwing the Soviets out of the Middle East, and now the United States is inviting them back in"

The Carter executive order that Barry Goldwater blasted as "the most disgraceful thing a president has ever done"

Inside the Carter White House during the disasters of the Sandinista takeover of Nicaragua, the energy crisis and the Khomeini Revolution and hostage crisis in Iran

The "malaise speech": why Carter made it, and the effect it had on his failed presidency

Global 2000: the doom-and-gloom study that Carter released shortly before leaving the presidency -- how most of its predictions have turned out to be wildly wrong

Why the Carter Administration believed that the old Cold War strategy of containment was no longer necessary

How Carter made direct contacts with Soviet officials to try to subvert President Reagan's anti-Communist policies

Revealed: the shocking extent of Carter's clandestine efforts to sabotage the first Gulf War in 1990

The Clinton Administration: how it became Carter's virtual second term, despite Slick Willie's disdain for Carter

How Carter's perspective has become dominant among contemporary liberals and his Democratic Party successors

Carter's Nobel Prize: how a Nobel official inadvertently revealed that it was actually meant as a slap in the face of the American people

Carter the meddling ex-president: how, in the words of Time magazine's Lance Morrow, some of his "Lone Ranger work has taken him dangerously close to the neighborhood of what we used to call treason"

Bank robber Willie Sutton's assessment of Carter: "I've never seen a bigger confidence man in my life, and I've been around some of the best in the business"

Steven Hayward demonstrates again and again that Jimmy Carter's failures weren't just accidents of history. They're rooted in the character and ideology of the man himself. This wouldn't concern anyone except Rosalynn and Amy if it weren't for the fact that Carter continues to insert himself in the nation's business, both at home and around the world. But The Real Jimmy Carter proves that the Emperor from Plains has no clothes -- and never has.

(Book description from Human Events Book Service)

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