NASCAR

NASCAR:

It's official: NASCAR rules.

Nasi Lemak

Nasi Lemak:

So here is a left-liberal blog called Nasi Lemak attempting to slander George Bush, and Republicans generally, as racists. The occasion for doing so is what must be the least racist remark of recent political history, when GWB said that he and Dr. Rice had, while sneaking to their plane, looked "like a normal couple." How can this remark be turned into a vision of racism? Well, it's a little complicated:

1) Two conservative bloggers (OxBlog and the regrettable Andrew Sullivan) said they thought that GWB's remark was awfully nice, and a positive step.
2) Both of these two bloggers had quoted the Honorable Zell Miller at length on occasion.
3) Zell Miller worked for Lester Maddox, who was a racist, and...
4) ...also said some kind words at Maddox's funeral.

Therefore: Miller is a racist by association with Maddox, the conservative bloggers by association with Miller, and GWB (and conservatives generally) by association with the bloggers. Quod erat demonstrandum.

There's a small problem with the analysis (leaving aside the larger problem, which is that it is an ad hominem attack which is furthermore guilty of the fallacy of guilt-by-association, when the association is extremely tenuous). The small problem is this: Zell Miller is not a racist. Miller, in spite of being the most popular governor in Georgia history, very nearly lost his 1994 bid for re-election for one reason: he pushed with all his political capital to remove the Confederate battle-flag from the Georgia state flag. This was the least popular position any politician could undertake in Georgia. Support for the battleflag remains extraordinary. In fact, when it was finally removed from the state flag, it was done by a legislative trick that precluded debate or a public referendum. The governor who executed that trick was voted out at the next opportunity; his successor, who ran in part on restoring the flag, has instead pursued several tricks to prevent a public referendum. It is without doubt that, should there ever be a public referendum, the battleflag is going right back up on the state flagpole.

But Zell stood up for changing it. It almost cost him the election, and would have sunk any other politician. Yes, he ran against the Civil Rights Act in 1967--most Southerners were opposed to it, including very many black Southerners, as it promised radical change in a hurry in their states, which is always a frightful prospect. Yes, he worked for a racist--it was hard not to in Georgia, once. Yes, he said kind words over the grave of a dead man, as a gentleman ought.

When it counted, though, he put his weight in the right place. He did, and still does. He has earned the respect that we show him who hold high his opinion and counsel.

Just what we've been saying...

Communists:

Just what we've been saying all along, but now the Guardian agrees: the Commies have hijacked the peace march movements.

Say, How Much Does A "Uranium Enriching" Laser Cost?

Say, How Much Does A "Uranium Enriching" Laser Cost?

It's a question worth pondering:

"Follow the money" is an old adage, and it means that economic interest will eventually explain much human behavior. That France opposed the removal of Saddam Hussein because he owed millions to French banks is proof of this. Less well known, but much more troubling, are key French financial links with other U.S. enemies. They raise the belief that the Franco-American conflict over Iraq was just one slice of the action. For France was not just Baathist Iraq's largest contributor of funds; French banks have financed other odious regimes....

In Castro's sizzling gulag, French banks plunked down $549 million in the first trimester this year, a third of all credit to Cuba. The figure for Saddam's Iraq is $415 million. But these pale in comparison with the $2.5 billion that French banks have lent Iran.

Not that this is a terrible surprise.

This is an Attack Site?

This is an Attack Site?

Dick Gephardt is running a website called DeanFacts. It's meant to show that Howard Dean is unsupportable for the Presidency by citing Dean's actual positions on issues. If I knew nothing else about Dean than what's here, though, I'd be half-inclined to vote for the boy. Dean on Medicare, Social Security, balancing the budget, and so forth and so on: it all sounds pretty good to me.

The only issue is that, even on this site, there's the constant invocation of the need to cut defense spending. That is, in the middle of a war, insane. And the war is, of course, why Dean can't win this upcoming election. There's simply no way that a majority of Americans will vote for the anti-war candidate, or for cuts in military spending at this juncture. The GWOT trumps everything right now, and rightly so.

Need more proof that Dean is doomed? Try FundRace, which has this handy money-map. Dean--or any other Democratic candidate for the Presidency--will need to split the South. It doesn't have to be a big split, if they do well everywhere else, but they will need to win at least one Southern state because, if they win no Southern states, they have to win fully 70% of the races in the rest of the country to get enough electoral votes. Donations are a good indicator of where the candidates are going to find solid support--people who send cash will support you at the polls, too. Select "Howard Dean" in the money mapper, and then compare with GWB. There are two things to notice:

1) Dean, at his darkest, is a full shade lighter in every area from Texas to the Carolinas. In most parts of these states, he doesn't register.
2) The only reason it's even that close is that the money-mapper uses different scales for different candidates. GWB has to raise $3.2 million from a county to get the darkest green; Dean only needs $1.4 million, less than half that. If you plotted it on the same scale, Dean would hardly register in the South at all, excepting a few urban areas like Dallas and Atlanta. Some of that will be because Dean is having to compete with the other Democrats for monetary support, whereas Bush is getting all the Republican money. Even factoring that in, though, it looks like a solid South again in 2004.

I think Dean could have won in a non-wartime election year. I don't think people will take him seriously as a wartime candidate. Excepting those who were always opposed to the war--if we're talking about the Iraq war instead of the GWOT, which is where anti-war sentiment was highest, that's about twenty percent--Dean's not going to draw a lot of support. He's certainly not going to win in the South.

UPDATE: I'm apparently not the only one who thinks this way. This is from the Seattle Times:

"Anybody could win," said Merle Black, political-science professor at Emory University. But "right now, with the economy improving as it is, if Howard Dean is the nominee, he'd have a very hard time winning any of the Southern states."

And more...

"There's a lot of money in Texas to be donated to both political parties, so Dean had to come drag the bag," said Court Koenning, executive director of the Harris County Republican Party. But "he's gonna get his clock cleaned in the general election. I'll run around naked and you can call me Sally if Bush loses Texas."

And then there's this, from the world's most trusted news source.

NBS:

This week I vote for Joe. It's a simple thought, but good enough.

My Endorsement:

The exclusion of Joe Lieberman from the recent presidential debates seems to have doomed his candidacy. Of the nine Democrats currently running, and the others who might consider running, he was the only one that I believe could have saved the party from electoral disaster.

The Honorable Senator Zell Miller endorsed George W. Bush in early November. Zell and I represent the same wing of the Democratic party--the James Jackson wing. Even so, I have held off following in the good Senator's footsteps, in the hope that the Democratic party might be saved.

I still hope it might be, but I do not think it will be in this election. It may be that, in the aftermath of the loss the Democratic party is racing toward, the survivors will finally be willing to listen to their Southern cousins when we say, "The party of the American people must love America with all depth and purity of heart; for the American people do. The party of the American people must trust the American people with their freedom and their money; for the American people trust themselves." Not this time, but perhaps the next.

I might have waited longer, but today a man did something brave, to warm the hearts of fighting men. Consider our President:

With the president out of sight, L. Paul Bremer, the chief U.S. civilian administrator, told the soldiers it was time to read the president's Thanksgiving proclamation and that it was a task for the most senior official present.

"Is there anybody back there more senior than us?" he asked. That was the cue for Bush, who promptly stepped forward from behind a curtain, setting off pandemonium among the troops.

"I was just looking for a warm meal somewhere," Bush joked to some 600 soldiers from the 1st Armored Division and the 82nd Airborne Division, who were stunned by the appearance and applauded wildly while giving Bush a standing ovation.

"Thanks for inviting me. I can't think of finer folks to have Thanksgiving dinner with than you all."

That it was courageous to take Air Force One into Baghdad only a few days after the DHL flight was attacked goes without saying. That it was the right thing to do, to greet our fighters as they spent a lonely holiday on a distant front, goes likewise. What impresses me is not that; it is the humor. A brave but stern man can be terrible. A jolly coward is useless. A brave man with a laughing heart, though, is a man indeed.

In light of this act, I have now no more trouble than our Senator had in endorsing George W. Bush for re-election to the Presidency in 2004. Zell Miller was correct, as he usually is: Bush is the right man, at the right time.

Let us be thankful to have found him. Enjoy the holiday.

The Crusades:

Historian Thomas F. Madden speaks to the Crusades as wars of defense instead of wars of aggression:

Misconceptions about the Crusades are all too common. The Crusades are generally portrayed as a series of holy wars against Islam led by power-mad popes and fought by religious fanatics. They are supposed to have been the epitome of self-righteousness and intolerance, a black stain on the history of the Catholic Church in particular and Western civilization in general. A breed of proto-imperialists, the Crusaders introduced Western aggression to the peaceful Middle East and then deformed the enlightened Muslim culture, leaving it in ruins. For variations on this theme, one need not look far. See, for example, Steven Runciman�s famous three-volume epic, History of the Crusades, or the BBC/A&E documentary, The Crusades, hosted by Terry Jones. Both are terrible history yet wonderfully entertaining.

So what is the truth about the Crusades? Scholars are still working some of that out. But much can already be said with certainty. For starters, the Crusades to the East were in every way defensive wars. They were a direct response to Muslim aggression�an attempt to turn back or defend against Muslim conquests of Christian lands.

Christians in the eleventh century were not paranoid fanatics. Muslims really were gunning for them. While Muslims can be peaceful, Islam was born in war and grew the same way. From the time of Mohammed, the means of Muslim expansion was always the sword. Muslim thought divides the world into two spheres, the Abode of Islam and the Abode of War. Christianity�and for that matter any other non-Muslim religion�has no abode. Christians and Jews can be tolerated within a Muslim state under Muslim rule. But, in traditional Islam, Christian and Jewish states must be destroyed and their lands conquered. When Mohammed was waging war against Mecca in the seventh century, Christianity was the dominant religion of power and wealth. As the faith of the Roman Empire, it spanned the entire Mediterranean, including the Middle East, where it was born. The Christian world, therefore, was a prime target for the earliest caliphs, and it would remain so for Muslim leaders for the next thousand years.

With enormous energy, the warriors of Islam struck out against the Christians shortly after Mohammed�s death. They were extremely successful. Palestine, Syria, and Egypt�once the most heavily Christian areas in the world�quickly succumbed. By the eighth century, Muslim armies had conquered all of Christian North Africa and Spain. In the eleventh century, the Seljuk Turks conquered Asia Minor (modern Turkey), which had been Christian since the time of St. Paul. The old Roman Empire, known to modern historians as the Byzantine Empire, was reduced to little more than Greece. In desperation, the emperor in Constantinople sent word to the Christians of western Europe asking them to aid their brothers and sisters in the East.

That is what gave birth to the Crusades. They were not the brainchild of an ambitious pope or rapacious knights but a response to more than four centuries of conquests in which Muslims had already captured two-thirds of the old Christian world. At some point, Christianity as a faith and a culture had to defend itself or be subsumed by Islam. The Crusades were that defense.

Pope Urban II called upon the knights of Christendom to push back the conquests of Islam at the Council of Clermont in 1095. The response was tremendous. Many thousands of warriors took the vow of the cross and prepared for war. Why did they do it? The answer to that question has been badly misunderstood. In the wake of the Enlightenment, it was usually asserted that Crusaders were merely lacklands and ne�er-do-wells who took advantage of an opportunity to rob and pillage in a faraway land. The Crusaders� expressed sentiments of piety, self-sacrifice, and love for God were obviously not to be taken seriously. They were only a front for darker designs.

During the past two decades, computer-assisted charter studies have demolished that contrivance. Scholars have discovered that crusading knights were generally wealthy men with plenty of their own land in Europe. Nevertheless, they willingly gave up everything to undertake the holy mission. Crusading was not cheap. Even wealthy lords could easily impoverish themselves and their families by joining a Crusade. They did so not because they expected material wealth (which many of them had already) but because they hoped to store up treasure where rust and moth could not corrupt. They were keenly aware of their sinfulness and eager to undertake the hardships of the Crusade as a penitential act of charity and love. Europe is littered with thousands of medieval charters attesting to these sentiments, charters in which these men still speak to us today if we will listen. Of course, they were not opposed to capturing booty if it could be had. But the truth is that the Crusades were notoriously bad for plunder. A few people got rich, but the vast majority returned with nothing.

But were they worthwhile? In his summation, Madden gives two reasons that we should be grateful for the Crusades:

Whether we admire the Crusaders or not, it is a fact that the world we know today would not exist without their efforts. The ancient faith of Christianity, with its respect for women and antipathy toward slavery, not only survived but flourished.

There is more, if you like. Hat tip: LGF.

NASCAR:

John Derbyshire reports from Talladega. It was his first NASCAR race, and he provides a description with all the insight of a genuine newcomer. My favorite line comes from the part describing the appeal of the sport, which is in rooting for favorite drivers, he says:

A few [drivers] are widely disliked. Kurt Busch, a fast-rising young star known for . . . unorthodox driving tactics, is a villain to traditionalists, and to the kind of Southerner who believes in maintaining the exquisite manners of the region even when you are trying to kill someone.

Ah, yes. That kind of Southerner. It's a description that seems somewhat familiar to me, although I can't think just why.

The Raving Atheist:

The Raving Atheist has decided to break lances with me over this post. I've promised him a reply, and I am a man of my word. It will be a bit lengthy.

The Easy Stuff First:

First, RA suggests I "didn't get" his point, which was that if Forn Sidr should spread into the USA, "American schools might soon be compelled to 'respect' ridiculous gods such as Thor and Odin in the same way that they now respect the ridiculous Christian god �- they would no longer be able to disparage the Norse deities as 'mythical.'" I did get the point, but did not bother to reply to it, since it is wrong on the facts:

1) "Forn Sidr" does exist in the United States, and has for about thirty years. It's recognized, under a variety of names, by the US military--you can find the chaplain's reference guide here. So, in fact, it's been around for quite a while, and no such troubles as RA forsees have erupted. I might have spent more time explaining this point, if I had expected to draw an audience who was unaware of heathenry.
2) Furthermore, as I did point out, I recall from my own schooling that the Christian Bible was taught as "literature," or as a source in history that could be questioned and analyzed as other sources. In those classes, the "Christian creation myth" was in fact discussed, using exactly that term--except that it was not "myth" but "myths," as there are two of them in Genesis. Analysis included an examination of why these two myths were probably not written in the order presented, and why the first one in particular was probably the work of a formal priestly class rather than a single author (such as Moses). Now, I went to school in the great state of Georgia, way down South in the Bible Belt. If Georgia can handle doing it that way, I think RA's complaints against the system may be a bit overheated.

Second: there is not in fact a constitutional right to avoid being disparaged. RA demonstrates this fairly clearly by carrying on as he does every day. No one has yet arrested--nor even sued him, so far as I know. The First Amendment protects my right to believe as I wish, but also his right to call me "crazy," which he does a bit later on down the blog. (A tip: if you are going to cite logic as the core of your belief system, it is a good idea to avoid the better known informal fallacies, e.g., ad hominem).

Third: I hardly suppose that "all religions are equally true." I do assert that Atheism is false. We'll get to that momently.

What I assert on the question of the truth of religion is this: excepting Atheism, it is not possible to say with certainty that any religion is false. That does not mean that they are all true; in fact, it does not mean that any of them are true. It means, only, that so long as the believer behaves himself honorably and doesn't cite his beliefs as a good reason for attacking me, my family, or my country, I'm glad to extend him the benefit of the doubt. If he does cite his beliefs as a reason for attacking us, I am glad to extend him the benefit of a burial according to the tenets of his faith.

With the easy stuff out of the way, we'll carry on to the harder stuff.

Forn Sidr:

Since it was Forn Sidr that was the inspiration for his original post, we'll start with that. RA links to his "proof of Atheism." I'll quote the first point in full, since the argument hinges on it:

First, there is no God. In fact, all definitions of the word �God� are either self-contradictory, incoherent, meaningless or refuted by empirical, scientific evidence. Although the nature of the disproof will necessarily vary with the god under review, I will usually be raving against the modern monotheistic (or triune) Judeo-Christian-Islamic God, having (in various permutations) the characteristics of being, conscious, all-powerful (omnipotent), all-knowing (omniscient), all-good (omnibenevolent), immaterial, transcendent. immutable, immortal, infinite, omnipresent, disembodied and eternal.

Such a god is as much a contradiction in terms as a square circle, and thus logically impossible, for numerous reasons including the following:
1) Omnipotence is impossible because God would, at a minimum, be unable to limit his powers, e.g., make a stone he cannot lift; if he could make such a stone, then his inability to lift it would defeat his omnipotence;
2) God's omnipotence conflicts with his omniscience, because if God knows everything that is going to happen in advance, he cannot do anything in the present; he must simply watch the future unfold as previously foreseen, because changing anything would falsify his prior belief concerning the future;
3) God's omnipotence precludes him from having knowledge of any sensations or emotions associated with weakness, e.g., fear, frustration, despair, sickness, etc., and thus conflicts with him omniscience;
4) God's omniscience precludes him from having knowledge of any emotions associated with surprise or anticipation, and thus conflicts with itself;
5) God's omniscience conflicts with his disembodiedness, since a being without a body could not know how to drive, swim, or perform any activity associated with having a body;
6) God's omniscience conflicts with his omnibenevolence, since a morally perfect god could not have knowledge of feelings of hate, lust, or envy, or cruelty, etc.
7) God's omniscience and omnipotence conflict with his omnibenevolence, since a god who could prevent evil would do so unless he were unable to do so or unaware of the evil.

The gods of Forn Sidr--the Aesir and the Vanir--actually take part in none of the categories RA finds demonstrably impossible. None of them are all powerful, all knowing, all good (some of them, in fact, aren't particularly good at all), immutable, immortal, infinite, ominpresent, or eternal. They may be transcendent, depending on what you meant by the word; and as to whether or not they are immaterial or disembodied, that is I gather the subject of some debate.

Regardless, the various "omni-" aspects, on which the "proof" relies, simply aren't a problem for Forn Sidr. They make no claims to those properties. This "proof" that they do not exist doesn't touch on them at all.

Yet RA's original post on the subject said that this was "the one form of theology that can safely be declared false." Now, I understand RA himself is prepared to declare all forms of theology false. Still, it's interesting that he's chosen to pick on one that is not touched by his arguments.

On Atheism Generally:

RA holds: "To disprove atheism, one would have to prove the existence of a particular God of a particular religion." That is not true, however. The claim that "you can't prove that God exists" belongs to the Agnostic, an honorable fellow with whom I have no quarrel. The Atheist's claim is that "We can prove God does not exist." I admit that I am not able to prove the existence of any god. However, I can prove that it is impossible to prove the nonexistence of God.

Let's return to the claim that "god is as much a contradiction in terms as a square circle." Indeed. Here's the problem, though, lad: where can I find a square, or a circle?

This is not a flippant question. It touches on the limits of human knowledge. Both the square, and the circle, belong to the realm of mathematics. Mathematics only models the world. If you hand me a child's puzzle piece, and say that it is square, I'll point out that it is not, as it has three and not two dimensions. If you draw one on paper, it will still have depth (if you draw it with ink, which soaks into the paper) or height (if you draw it with a graphite pencil). Examine it closely, and you will find that its edges are not perfectly straight, as a the sides of a "square" must be. Draw a "line," if you will, and you'll append arrows to each end to show that it goes on forever--which it does, but only in theory.

The mathematical certainty you want to apply to the world applies only to the realm of math. In fact, it doesn't even apply there:

Thus, it came as a great surprise in the 1930's when it was formally proven that there exists an unlimited supply of math problems that fundamentally cannot be solved, whether by human or machine. Furthermore, it was shown that the very problem of determining if a math problem can be solved is undecidable.

Even in the realm of math, which is a wholly human creation, and deals exclusively with human concepts, certainty about the absolutes is not possible. Mathematics is a tool--it is, as I said above, a model. Its categories, though, do not accurately portray the world--they only model the world, simplifying it to keep the calculations manageable to human minds and such tools as we can build. Still the ultimate questions are beyond us, even in the simplified realm of math. Things become far more complicated when we pass beyond math into physics, biology, or history.

By the same token, it is not possible to prove the non-existence of God. Yes, it's true that "omnipotent" is a contradiction in terms. The terms, however, are human. They are limited, even as mathematical concepts are limited; and they break at the limits, even as our mathematical concepts prove finally unsolvable. Like mathematics, too, these concepts only attempt to model the world: they are not, in fact, the world. Not only are our concepts imperfect in themselves, but they are imperfect in their attempts at modelling reality. If you find that there are questions about the world you cannot answer, not even in theory, it is foolish to speak of proving that there is nothing beyond the edges of the universe. It is whistling past the graveyard.

The world is too big, and too strong, for us to hold it in our heads. Faced with that, there are no alternatives but three: to pretend it is not so, and that you can possess ultimate knowledge; to shriek in despair; or to bow your head with reverent awe. The first--Atheism falls here--is falseness and self-deception. The second is madness. The third alone allows proper respect for the power of the truth of the world, without destroying the man who recognizes it.

It is therefore the case that none of the religions of Men can be proven false, except Atheism, which has been.

No, You Asked For It:

So, a young lady has been suspended for a pseudo-lesbian highschool kiss:

Inspired by a high school assignment, Stephanie Haaser leaped onto a cafeteria table, shouted "End homophobia now!" and kissed classmate Katherine Pecore.

Not actually a lesbian, the girl in question was suspended for two days. The principal offers what is, at first glance, a reasonable explanation:

"It's highly inappropriate to stand on a table in the cafeteria and make out, whether the kiss was heterosexual or homosexual," said River Hill High School principal Scott Pfeifer. "I don't think there's a school in the country where parents would consider that appropriate behavior."

Right. No problem. Except...

Haaser, a junior, said she chose to make the statement as part of an English class assignment, which required that she engage in a nonconformist act in the tradition of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Ah! I see! So, the school officially tasked teenagers with engaging in an act of rebellion. What brilliance! What an astonishing grasp of the teenage mind!

Sorry, bucko. You asked for this, and now you can reap the whirlwind. You're lucky this is the worst you got.

For Sovay:

I thought you'd like to see this other entry into the Last Words of Uday & Qusay contest. It's in the style of Dr. Seuss.

My favorite Seussian poem, though, will always be "Norse, Of Course."

Happy National Ammo Day!

Today's the day. Go out and pick up some ammo.

Any Stick:

Today, Mark Steyn defends America:

The fanatical Muslims despise America because it's all lapdancing and gay porn; the secular Europeans despise America because it's all born-again Christians hung up on abortion; the anti-Semites despise America because it's controlled by Jews. Too Jewish, too Christian, too Godless, America is also too isolationist, except when it's too imperialist.

This echoes G. K. Chesterton, defending Christianity in the masterful sixth chapter of Orthodoxy:

One accusation against Christianity was that it prevented men, by morbid tears and terrors, from seeking joy and liberty in the bosom of Nature. But another accusation was that it comforted men with a fictitious providence, and put them in a pink-and-white nursery. One great agnostic asked why Nature was not beautiful enough, and why it was hard to be free. Another great agnostic objected that Christian optimism, "the garment of make-believe woven by pious hands," hid from us the fact that Nature was ugly, and that it was impossible to be free. One rationalist had hardly done calling Christianity a nightmare before another began to call it a fool's paradise. . . .

I felt that a strong case against Christianity lay in the charge that there is something timid, monkish, and unmanly about all that is called "Christian," especially in its attitude towards resistance and fighting. . . . The Gospel paradox about the other cheek, the fact that priests never fought, a hundred things made plausible the accusation that Christianity was an attempt to make a man too like a sheep. I read it and believed it, and if I had read nothing different, I should have gone on believing it. But I read something very different. I turned the next page in my agnostic manual, and my brain turned up-side down. Now I found that I was to hate Christianity not for fighting too little, but for fighting too much. Christianity, it seemed, was the mother of wars. Christianity had deluged the world with blood. I had got thoroughly angry with the Christian, because he never was angry. And now I was told to be angry with him because his anger had been the most huge and horrible thing in human history; because his anger had soaked the earth and smoked to the sun. The very people who reproached Christianity with the meekness and non-resistance of the monasteries were the very people who reproached it also with the violence and valour of the Crusades. It was the fault of poor old Christianity (somehow or other) both that Edward the Confessor did not fight and that Richard Coeur de Leon did.

It is well to love those, and defend them, who are beaten with every stick. At the least this practice exhibits the virtue of mercy; and, as no one is so bad that any stick is good enough to beat them, it is apt to exhibit the virtue of justice as well.

NBS:

I'll vote with the Alliance this week.

Uday & Qusay Speak:

The last words of Saddam's sons:

Uday: "Good news! I just got off the phone with the Information minister! He says all the Americans have been routed from Iraq by a popular uprising! Mobs are roaming the street, chanting our names!"

Qusay: "Great! That must be them at the door, even now."

Credit for this really belongs to Sovay McKnight, who is much better at parodies than I am.

Who is John Derbyshire?

Why, a friend of mine, and a correspondant, bless him for the time he wastes on it. Certain persons who hate him have set up a page about the fellow. You may find a link to his own web page listed to the right, under "Admired Voices," on Grim's Hall.

UPDATE: It has come to my attention that John has given an account of the reasons why the author of the above page hates his guts.

Gay Marriage! Today!

Well, 180 days from yesterday. You've probably heard that the Mass. State Supreme Court has construed a Constitutional right to gay marriage. I am astonished, as always I am when the court finds a constitutional right to something that has been illegal since long before the Founding--a capital crime, in this case, since long ago.

I have argued before that, as marriage as an institution predates the Federal Constitution and the various state constitutions, the power to alter its basic nature is one of the powers reserved to the people by the 9th and 10th amendments.

Since the judiciary has decided to take it upon itself to do so, I see nothing untoward about putting the question to the people. The amendment process it the proper one for assigning new powers to the state that have hitherto not belonged to it; or, if the state is arrogating powers it does not deserve, to clarify the limits.

I personally feel that, whether we decide to legalize or to ban gay marriage�I will abide the democratic process with only an idle eye, having no interest in gays either way�the constitutional amendment is the only legitimate way to do it. The power to alter marriage as an institution was never granted the state; and if it is to become a function of the state, it must be sought, and granted or denied, by the people.

Human Decency, II:

I send thanks to everyone who joined in contributing to the Lester Campbell self-defense fund. The pictures through that link show the old fellow getting his money order, which hopefully will help him out in days to come. It is not the state but the citizenry who have righted this wrong, just as it was the citizen--Mr. Campbell--and not the state who fought against the mugger.

This story has a mostly happy ending, but the neighborhood in which Mr. Campbell lives is not secure. The state will not, and apparently can not, fix that larger problem. It is imperative, then, for the good of the people, that men like Mr. Campbell be allowed to exercise their right to self defense. Those of you who have a voice in the elections of that legislature ought to join the effort to make that right unencumbered by burdensome regulation.

Human Decency Rights A Wrong:

Last week, we learned that an 89-year-old woman had her farm sold out from under her by the county to pay about $600 in back-taxes. The county sold her property, worth more than a million dollars, to a land developer for $15,000. Mrs. Shue was to be evicted at the age of almost ninety, and also robbed of about $984,000.

Today, we learn that the deal is off: the county will reimburse the land developer, and the widow gets to keep her farm. Whose work was this?

The developer's own, who gave back the land even before he learned that the county would repay him. I don't recall having ever said a kind thing about a land developer before, but this was an act of fine, human decency.