Believers in the nonsense of "global warming" have managed to get polar bears declared a threatened species, although they have survived for millenia through many actual warmings and coolings, are highly  adaptable, and more numerous now than ever before to human knowledge.

This is a prize example of public sentimentality. Why choose polar bears to pity? Because they are like big cuddly toys, all furry and white. And so appealingly photogenic.  To preserve such darlings we should change our whole way of life to something far less free and comfortable,  in obedience to the commands of the prevailing ALGORITHM.

Yet the chance that they might be destroyed as a species is so remote as to be negligible.

George Will, writing in Townhall (May 22, 2008) puts the case this way: "The bears will be threatened  IF the current episode of warming, IF there really is one, is, unlike in the previous episodes, irreversible, and IF it intensifies , and IF it continues to melt sea ice vital to the bears, and IF the bears, unlike in many previous warming episodes, cannot adapt." (My emphases.)

He also points out that this kind of prediction influencing government action is what Friedrich Hayek called THE FATAL CONCEIT: the idea that government can know the future and control it. And he reminds us that the THE FATAL CONCEIT IS THE AGENDA OF THE LEFT.

We cannot provide a link to the article but recommend that you read the whole thing.

In an article in Townhall (May 21, 2008), Chuck Colson asserts that recent research into phenomena such as religious experience  corroborates the "biblical idea" that we are "hard-wired" (!) for spirituality and God.

So it is human nature to believe in God, just as it is human nature to walk upright on two legs, to speak, and to use tools (my examples).

But if this is the case, how does he account for the untold millions of us who do not believe in God (but do walk  upright,  speak, and use tools)?

In defence of Christianity as the one true religion he goes on to deny that the hard-wiring is so general that only a vague spiritual mysticism is implied by the research, not particular doctrines.  He demonstrates this by  saying that Buddhist claims (for instance) of reincarnation cannot be substantiated. Presumably he means substantiated by reason.

Can virgin birth and resurrection in the flesh be substantiated by reason?

Tony Blair, erstwhile Prime Minister of Britain, toils away like Sisyphus trying to get the Palestinians to build a viable economy.  He finds how they defeat all efforts and sabotage themselves. 

"It is important to emphasize to the outside world that we are trying to urge Israel to get fuel into Gaza, and then the extremists come and kill the people bringing the fuel in."  (Jerusalem Post, May 15, 2008)

He calls it "a crazy situation". 

The "extremists" he speaks of are, needless to say, Palestinians. He seems reluctant to  blame them directly so he blames an abstraction, a "situation".

Is there any precedent in all human history for a people under continual attack by an implacable enemy supplying  that enemy with fuel, food, and medical treatment at their own expense and at risk of their own lives;  being fiercely berated by other nations, who would never consider doing anything of the sort themselves, if they even pause in supplying them; and getting no credit whatsoever for their generosity and heroism? In fact, the Israelis get the opposite – recrimination, blame, threats to their very existence, and even from their "best friends" endless insistence that they  make ever more concessions while their enemies never make any at all. 

Blair, as the representative of the interfering "Quartet", is not "trying to urge Israel", he is nagging it without any difficulty, because the Israelis are doing what he is urging them to do anyway, of their own accord. The present Israeli leadership, the Olmert-Livni-Barak government,  is to be blamed, not for refraining from keeping their vicious enemy alive and well, but for doing so.  

The "Quartet" knows that it is pointless to urge the Palestinian leadership to do anything at all because they just will not do it. So they nag the all-too-pliant Israelis to concede and concede. 

May Israel, as soon as possible, have new leaders who understand that the first duty of a government is to protect the nation!

Michael Medved opines that an atheist president would be bad for the country (Townhall.com, April 9, 2008). He gives three reasons. 

First: He (or she) would be guilty of "hollowness and hypocrisy" when state occasions oblige him to swear oaths or pledge allegiance to God or sing patriotic songs that praise God. Not so. For any atheist the god concept is a nullity, a mere syllable of sound. When an atheist swears an oath by or on anything, with whatever form of words, as long as he says he intends to tell the truth and tells it, he is in no way being hypocritical.  The form of the sworn oath is irrelevant to the intention of speaking the truth and to the understanding that breaking the oath is punishable by law. If tradition or convention requires a legally binding oath to be of the form:  "By hocus, by pocus, by holy smokus, I shall not lie",  then  that is the oath that an atheist may honestly swear. A conservative atheist values tradition. Many old forms are worth clinging on to for the sake of continuity and affection for old ways.

          Similarly, the Pledge of Allegiance  may be sworn by an atheist even though it contains the words "under God".  Again, as the word "God" is a nullity to an atheist, he cannot be offended by its mere presence in public oaths and pledges. Activist atheists schooled in the militant civil rights ethos of victimhood may pretend to take offense for political purposes, but that is expedient hypocrisy. Very often a reference to God is a way of expressing humility. "One nation under God" expresses the equality of the government and the governed by pointing to a higher authority (whatever it may be) above them both. It is essentially the idea of the rule of law.

           As atheist conservatives appreciate the formal traditions that pass down through the generations and which provide a sense of continuity with the past,  they can and almost certainly do respect old-fashioned customs of piety as part of our civic institutions and because they recall our history to us. How sad that "sensitivity" (that is to say, political correctness) prevents a rousing traditional hollering of "Onward Christian Soldiers" in times of war.  What a tragic loss it is that the Bible is not taught in schools. It is among the greatest of literary works, especially, among its translations, the King James version.  It contains beautiful poetry, much wisdom, some history, memorable tales, and it preserves myths which are milestones in the ever-unfolding drama of human thought.  It is extremely important in the culture of the West which is soaked in the Judeo-Christian inheritance.

Second: "Disconnecting from the People". Because the US is a religious society,  a leader who "touts his non-belief will give the impression that he looks down on the people who elected him". A weird argument.  Why should an atheist necessarily be so arrogant? One might suspect that deep down Medved himself thinks or fears that the atheist position is intellectually superior.

Third: "Winning the War on Islamo-Nazism".  Medved thinks one must have another faith – Christianity or Judaism? – to defeat aggression carried out in the name of Islam. My answer to this is that one cannot fight one irrationality with another irrationality. It is the pointless clash of virtual swords.  Fight the jihadists with real weapons until they are defeated.

           Medved believes that only a believing president can show "sympathy, not hostility, to the generalized value of faith".  Any faith? Would he extend his argument to include sects that practice human sacrifice? No, of course not. There is no such value.  A preference for rationality is a value, and a presidential candidate who demonstrated that he held it would get my vote.

By C. Gee

One often hears religious persons assert that Einstein ‘believed in God’. When challenged for proof they cannot produce it. The only thing Einstein ever said which could possibly be interpreted as a belief in God was his statement: ‘I believe in Spinoza’s God’ – and then only by the ignorant, for ‘Spinoza’s God’ was the Laws of Physics.  

Now there  is proof positive that the greatest thinker in history was not a believer.  Read what he wrote in a letter here.

This is what our enemy is capable of, and why we must fight him to utter defeat

Obama knows and understands nothing about the Middle East, though he keeps a wary eye on Jewish voters.  Read about his platitudes and empty policy proposals here.

A Muslim-born critic of Islam writes here of Lebanon’s defeat.

Another excellent article here on the take-over of Lebanon by Iran’s proxy army, Hezbollah.

Read here how the West has betrayed would-be democratic Lebanon to our most dangerous enemy.