Discovery Blog

The Wall Street Journal comments on recent Census-derived numbers that show a continuing decline in poverty rates among Hispanics--from 21.8 percent in 2005 to 20.6 percent in 2006.

I love these numbers in part because they show, indeed, that social mobility is alive and well in America.

But with another Decennial Census coming up in 2010 I also would like to raise again the fact that the way we count the Hispanic population itself is not altogether reliable. The reason is simply that the Census Bureau--one of the most professional and well-motivated collection of government officials you are likely to find--is obliged to list people by self-identification. You are "Hispanic" if you say you are.

The trouble is, people the government considers Hispanic sometimes don't think of themselves that way, even if they have, say, a mother who emigrated from Mexico. Perhaps the father was a Norwegian-American. Maybe they never speak Spanish in the home. Maybe the person in question doesn't even speak Spanish (or Norwegian, for that matter). He decides accordingly not to list himself as Hispanic.

Or perhaps his family came from Argentina or Brazil and the members don't think of themselves as Hispanic--a term they associate with Mexico and Central America. For comparison, think what confusion would arise if you were to ask someone on a Census form if he was "European".

There is another and almost opposite reality; namely, that some people identify themselves as Hispanic even though they have only the most tenuous claims to Hispanic ethnicity (say, they came from Spain, which doesn't count, oddly enough, or their Spanish surname represents only a tiny fraction of their family background). They may regard the identification as advantageous for affirmative action purposes or simply think it is more fashionable these days than other ethnicities.

In any case, the truth you don't read about much is that America is still a "melting pot," and only a "salad" of ethnicities in certain respects (e.g., first generation immigrants). The reality isn't very P.C., I'm afraid. But maybe "diversity" even these days is less valued than unity. "E Pluribus Unum," I believe, is the hallowed term on our coinage.

LifeWay Resarch--an organization that The Living Church magazine (Episcopal) says is affiliated with the Southern Baptist Convention--apparently has produced a report showing that young people 18-30 may be dropping out of regular church attendance in increasing numbers. The cohort of the study was young Protestants of various denominations, but I suspect that similar findings could be produced for Catholics and, for that matter, Jews.

Most common among the reasons for poor church attendance by youth, according to the survey, are (in the words of The Living Church), "life changes, unhappiness with the clergy or other people at church, and ethical or political reasons."

Personally, I suspect that another and possibly connected reason is that the age cohort in question includes a lot of students who have been propagandized against faith in college (or even high school) classrooms, not least of all by Darwinism. Certainly doubts are raised. The host of New Atheist books make it clear that Darwinism, in fact, frequently has that intended purpose. Unfortunately, few churches even recognize this problem, let alone have a clue about how to defend their flock against creeping agnosticism.

Many young people are serious about religious faith, of course, and for that you usually can credit various para-church organizations, not the churches in which the young adults were raised. These same faithful kids are put off by science in college, however, once they realize how hostile many of their professors are to religion. Unfortunately, their discomfort not only is real but also justifiable. Students who might question Darwinian theory on scientific grounds are likely to get down-graded. If, with such views being known, they want to major in science or aspire to an advanced degree in one of the natural sciences, many of them realize that their chances are compromised by the prejudice of their departments. (Please don't contest this; there are plenty of statements by Darwinist professors themselves that make the institutional hostility plain.) If somehow they get an advanced degree while it is known that they harbor scientific doubts about Darwinism, they are unlikely to get hired as teachers or professors, or later to get tenure, or (if already tenured) promoted or given pay increases. The academic career ladder is slippery enough with out greasing it further with ideologically unacceptable views.

So how many are such turned-off students? Is it enough to help explain why the United States is doing so poorly at producing young scientists? Surely it is at least a contributing factor. The Darwinists will hate this argument, but maybe a few of the more honest ones will own up to it.

Dogmatic Darwinism kills rather than excites curiosity. It blights science as well as the culture.

One has to be careful about accepting the accuracy of news articles that describe scientific papers, so bear that in mind in my mention of a new paper by "scientists" at UCLA and NYU. Their actual paper in Nature Neuroscience (unavailable online so far) is reported in a joint Chicago Tribune/Los Angeles Times article today . It claims that people's political convictions derive from (you guessed it), differences in biology. "..(A) specific region of the brain's cortex is more sensitive in people who consider themselves liberals than in self-declared conservatives," they advise us.

As as result, liberals (among other things) "are more flexible in their thinking", while conservatives are "more rigid and close-minded."

What do you want to bet that the paper's co-authors, UCLA neurologist Dr. Marco Lacoboni and NYU psychologist David Amodio, would personally consider themselves liberal?

The test group was composed of "college students", so it just has to be objective, right? (There is no mention in the news article about the numbers included in the study group.)

Here is a tip to the media. When you get a story like this that sounds far-fetched, try getting a contrary opinion; in this case, say, from someone like professor of neurosurgery (SUNY) Michael Egnor. At least let a little skepticism escape into the ebullient scientific ether.

As is, we seem to have yet another self-serving bit of ideological propaganda dressed up as "science" and sold to the rubes. And science, of course, cannot be questioned.

Who pays for this stuff, anyhow?

Of course, maybe conservatives should hail the report and adopt it. Then when liberals complain about some conservative policy--like attacking terrorists in Iraq, say, or reducing tax rates--conservatives can reply, "Well, gosh, you don't have to be so nasty about it. It's just that you have your brain reactions to such policies and I have mine. You should learn to be more tolerant."

Discovery Institute's own Logan Gage has a great column in today’s DC Examiner which takes an insightful look at what ethnic diversity means to American society. To the dismay of many on the left, a recent study by Harvard professor Robert Putnam claims that “ethnic diversity actually harms community.”

Not only that, but as Gage puts it, “… doubly disturbing for many secular liberals, it turns out that one of the only places in America defying these results — where true diversity and community thrive — is evangelical megachurches.”

(Try telling that to anti-religious alarmist Lauren Sandler.)

Churches seem to provide an answer to this riddle of social fractions by encouraging interaction across ethnic and cultural barriers. Why this doesn’t happen as often elsewhere is another puzzle which Gage addresses:

As cosmopolitan urbanites, even the conservative among us like to think we are more tolerant, more liberal-minded than backwoods red-state America. And maybe we are. But perhaps this is only because it is easy for us to tolerate neighbors we do not know.

Ironically, perhaps in the heartland where there is less ethnic diversity but more communal interaction, we would be forced to actually converse, at the local fair or PTA, with those different from ourselves.

British historian Paul Johnson once wrote of “The Heartless Lovers of Humankind,” by which he referred to intellectuals like Karl Marx, who waxed eloquently of the plight of the common man and claimed to love “humanity,” yet was nearly a monster to his servants. Perhaps we who claim to love “the city” or “diversity” but do not know our neighbors’ names are a little like that.

Decades before Paul Johnson, C. S. Lewis noted the tragic irony of those who profess a deep and abiding love of humanity yet are cold or even cruel to the individuals with whom they are in contact. His poem “The Genuine Article” puts it thus:

You do not love the Bourgeoisie. Of course: for they
Begot you, bore you, paid for you, and punched your head;
You work with them; they're intimate as board and bed;
How could you love them, meeting them thus every day?

You love the Proletariat, the thin, far-away
Abstraction which resembles any workman fed
On mortal food as closely as the shiny red
Chessknight resembles stallions when they stamp and neigh.

For kicks are dangerous; riding schools are painful, coarse
And ribald places. Every way it costs far less
To learn the harmless manage of the wooden horse

-So calculably taking the small jumps of chess.
Who, that can love nonentities, would choose the labour
Of loving the quotidian face and fact, his neighbour?

Spin as you will, the long term prospects in Iraq are positive, assuming the United States stays with the war. Today, U.S. and Iraqi forces killed three al Qaeda operates and captured 80 others in the Diyala region--some of them in leadership positions--and captured another 12 in Salah al Din.

These are big numbers. Imagine if al Qaeda had captured a third that many Americans! What a fuss there would be.

The war really has turned around, though the crucial change is not what is happening in Iraq (important though it is), but in American public opinion. It finally has dawned on elites as well as ordinary people 1) that we cannot just leave; and 2) that we can win.

The President is about to put that into perspective in his broadcast address.

You probably are aware of the mini-scandal over discovery that the New York Times ran an ad by MoveOn.org that not only described Gen. Petraeus as "General Betray Us", but also managed to finagle a cut-rate on its ad space purchase from the Times. It may be illegal, and it certainly raises questions about the integrity of the Times.

Hand it to Ruddy Giuliani. He not only denounced the ad, but demanded to run one of his own in the Times at the same price. Surely, one thought, the Times will explain that there was some perfectly understandable reason why MoveOn.org got such a low price ($65,000). But, no, it now appears that they are going to sell an ad to Ruddy for the same amount.

How embarrassing. It would appear that the Times really does let editorial policy dictate how other departments of the paper behave. One might alert the Ombudsman (reader rep), if one thought that column might do anything.

What will happen, I submit, is that the Times will hold an "investigation," decide they had made a mistake--and THEN let any and all presidential candidates rent their page for at least one time at $65 K.

Well down in the Times' blog on politics today you can find most of the story.

The New York Times ran a reduced price ad ($64,575) for the Giuliani campaign today attacking a similar ad Monday by MoveOn.org that called General Petraeus "General Betray Us". Guiliani's campaign also chastised Sen. Hilary Clinton for declining to distance herself from the ad. The price of both ads was far below the standard full-page price most often quoted for the Times ($181,000).

Rather late in the discussion, the Times now says that it merely gave MoveOn.org a rate it gives other non-profits if they are willing to let the Times decide what day (within a week's schedule) an ad will appear. That makes sense as a negotiating practice, actually.

However, somehow the MoveOn ad appeared on the very day that General Petraeus testified before Congress and MoveOn.org knew ahead of time that it was running (it told people so). This suggests a certain amount of cooperation that, in fact, negated the whole idea that the "cheap" price was due to scheduling uncertainty.

This raises the question of how cozy the Times was with MoveOn.org and whether the group did, in practice, get special consideration.

However, suspicion about the ads should probably be set aside at this point. Real life often fails to support a suspicious interpretation of events. (Oh, that Times reporters themselves had that attitude more often.) One thing is clear, though, we now know how much a Times full page ad really costs! It is fungible. As I wrote below, in coming months you probably will see a whole parade of candidates and groups taking advantage of the suddenly visible "special" New York Times rate.

Momentous news is often hid in the "no comment" file. And no comment (or hardly any comment) was what Israel was making after its recent and mysterious air and commando raid inside Syria. The Syrians weren't talking much either. No one was. Why not?

Today's Sunday (London) Times has a fascinating explanation of what may have been going on here. It is about the real game that is being played in the world, in contrast, for example, to what appears on most television news programs. It is about some remarkable military derring-do, some international conspiracies and ultimately about the possibilities of nuclear war.

Crucially involved, you'll notice, is the question of Iran. And the question of North Korea. Not small topics.

It is a grave sign of a lack of moral sense to equate immoral actions with morally neutral ones.

And thus The Washington Post’s moral sense can be measured from its equation of the disenfranchisement of African Americans in the 1950s and 1960s (largely by Democrats, as they note) to Republicans’ refusal to unconstitutionally grant voting “rights” to D.C. residents.

The Post's editorial board is not the only one confused. Senator Hatch, D.C. Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton and others also recently equated lack of support for the current unconstitutional Senate bill, which I expect will fail on a cloture vote today, with the morally imperative bills of the 1960s ending clear, purposeful racial discrimination. Even worse, their op-ed implies that the same forces of racial discrimination are at work from today’s Republicans as was at work with Democrats in the 1960s filibusters.

My own thoughts on the D.C. voting bill appear the September 18 D.C. Examiner: “No taxation without representation? How ‘bout no taxation!”

A parade of cut-rate ads for politicos and causes--accompanied by all kinds of controversy--probably has been avoided now as The New York Times admits that it mishandled the "General Betray Us" ad by MoveOn.org. The impetus was a column by the Times' ombudsman; however, it could not have been entirely unwelcomed by management, which has found itself facing criticism for unfairly giving a more than 50 percent price reduction for the cuttting political ad, and also facing a likely demand from a string of candidates and others for comparable price breaks. Presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani was only the first in line to take advantage of the hole the paper shot in its own ad policies (and hats off to him for doing so at once).

So "The $64,000 Question" that I asked earlier has been answered. How cozy was The Times with MoveOn.org in giving a special rate and a set date for the "General Betray Us" ad? The answer is...very. The timing concession was one indication. But another is the publisher's rueful statement that whatever mistakes were made, it is important to keep in mind the important goal of encouraging robust public speech. That seems like an attempt to offer at least a partial excuse for the decision to print the ad, even though it contradicted The Times' policy on price, timing and ad hominem content and put competitive points of view at a disadvantage.

So one cannot now assume, after all, that the ad's acceptance and placement was just an accident. Contrary to what I was prepared to grant, one probably can assume bias was involved. The very fact that The Times didn't acknowledge any error for days gives credence to that conclusion, and so now do Mr. Zulzberger's comments.

The paper should be embarrassed and should apologize. (What a thought for a newspaper that routinely demands apologies from others!)

Meanwhile, what The Times did importantly accomplish for itself was the refreshment of a rationale for keeping further political ads at reduced rates out of the paper.

In the latest (October 8, 2007) issue of National Review, Jonah Goldberg takes my idea of trading no taxation for representation and runs with it. He thinks it would turn D.C. into "Monaco on the Potomac" nearly overnight. Did Jonah read my recent D.C. Examiner piece "No Taxation Without Representation? How 'bout no taxation?"

No. As it turns out, he wrote on this issue, unbeknownst to me, way back in 2000.

Screw representation. I want the license plates to say “No Taxation. Period.” Personally, I don't see the burning need for another Democratic hack Senator. I'd much, much, much, much, rather not pay federal taxes at all.

There are several reasons why this idea has merit. First and foremost, it would be very good for me. This point really cannot be overemphasized.

There is a long record of conflict and persecution in the history of science, as in any area of endeavor. Scientists are given to the same failings as other human beings: greed, status anxiety, envy, and fear. To believe the pious statements by professional organizations about the enlightened way “science works” is comparable to accepting the civics textbook renderings of “how a law is made.” There is a way, all right, that science is supposed to work (and laws supposedly are made), and then there is reality.

One can be grateful that there are so many cases where science does proceed along the ideal path, but there is no excuse for trying to fool the public into thinking that great injustices and bad judgments don’t occur, too.

I asked Steve Martyn, a summer intern from Seattle Pacific who was at Discovery Institute this summer to research some historic examples. He came up with a number; in fact, he could have found scores.

Take, for example, the shameful cases of the “Vanguards of Germ Theory” (see the paper and footnotes here), including Dr. Ignaz Semmelweiss, the Hungarian working to solve the problem of puerperal fever (childbirth fever) in Vienna in the early 1840s. Before the work of Louis Pasteur, Semmelweiss correctly identified the solution if not the exact diagnosis: thorough cleanliness on the part of doctors delivering babies.

Semmelweiss showed that requiring doctors to wash up between operations and deliveries could sharply reduce mothers’ deaths in childbirth. Nonetheless, his strictures offended the medical establishment and he was driven from his hospital. It is a long, gloomy story of harassment that ended in a mental breakdown by Semmelweiss.