Discovery Blog

What Tim Egan writes about in The New York Times--the survival risks facing newspapers --is notably true of The New York Times itself.

There are many reasons for the decline of advertising and readers, but one that is almost always neglected in stories like Egan's is that many center-right readers finally have had it with the bias of much news coverage. Bias is understandable on editorial pages, although the Times' unintentionally droll quarrel with Barack Obama today surprises one by the extent of the paper's dogmatic liberalism. It is that dogmatic liberalism, unfortunately, that spills readily into other sections of the paper and alienates conservatives and many moderates. You just can't count on the Times for objective news coverage, and that goes double for feature stories.

Some people take their view-cues from the Times and will never notice when the paper is factually unfair. Others recognize the lack of objectivity when they see a story on a subject they know personally, but they wrongly assume that other stories probably are accurate. Still others--including a body of readers who would like a national paper of serious depth, but have come to believe that The New York Times simply cannot be trusted--don't read it at all.

Editors and owners of the Times don't care, of course. They are willing to write off such readership. But they can't expect others to care, either, when their flagship runs into rough seas.

In an important Washington Post inside story Robert Mugabe is thoroughly and unmistakably displayed as a particularly ruthless, thuggish dictator. Which apologists can pretend otherwise now?

It was a fine accomplishment to get such detailed accounts of Mugabe's internal organization and its deliberations. Did the CIA possibly hand this story to the Post?

The more significant question is why all African states have not cut off ties with Zimbabwe and begun to assist what will have to be a guerrilla movement. Mugabe effectively has closed the door to lawful and peaceful change.

"Scientists" are always right, right?

Lawrence Solomon, author of The Deniers (on global warming), has an accurate and trenchant piece on National Review Online about the deceits of Wikipedia. As he says, what is true of the global warming debate (where no "debate" in to be acknowledged by the Left), is true of many other issues that Wikipedia supposedly covers, including abortion and intelligent design.

Discovery fellow John Wohlstetter opens his book, The Long War Ahead and the
Short War Upon Us, with a catastrophe scenario in which the Iranians use
EMP – electromagnetic pulse – technology against the United States.
Disguised as a tanker, a ship releases a missile from international waters
off the Atlantic coast. It detonates approximately 300 miles above Kansas.

No one instantly dies, vaporized by the mini-sun, no one is ignited in
flames from the blast’s thermal pulse, no buildings collapse due to the
blast’s immense over-pressure shock wave. But the lights goes out and
computers crash by the millions, from Boston to Phoenix, from New York to
Washington, DC, to Los Angeles and San Francisco, from Miami to Seattle.
Seventy percent of America’s electrical grid is fried by the powerful pulse
of electromagnetic energy that suddenly surges through the American electric
power grid. With a 360 degree radius of 1,470 miles from the detonation
point, the pulse disables America from coast to coast.

It would seem that the danger is being heard. An editorial in the Wall
Street Journal this morning echoes many of Wohlstetter’s concerns:

Iran may already have the capability to target the U.S. with a short-range
missile by launching it from a freighter off the East Coast. A few years ago
it was observed practicing the launch of Scuds from a barge in the Caspian
Sea.

This would be especially troubling if Tehran is developing EMP –
electromagnetic pulse – technology. A nuclear weapon detonated a hundred
miles over U.S. territory would create an electromagnetic pulse that would
virtually shut down the U.S. economy by destroying electronic circuits on
the ground.

Discovery Senior Fellow John R. Miller, a long time friend and ally, as well as a much-appreciated colleague, has an oped in The New York Times today that ought to embarrass the Bush Administration. It takes up over half the oped page, so let's see whether the White House and Congress even notice.

Miller tells as story that is sad on several levels: 1) The slavery issue is real and dramatic and yet is is still under-reported. Opponents of the Wilberforce Act of 2008--the anti-slavery bill now stuck in Sen. Biden's committee in Congress--seem to see it mainly as a U.S. issue, but it is world-wide and much more serious overseas in Africa and Asia. You can't just wish this subject away and claim you care about human rights. 2) Some supposedly sophisticated people insist on thinking that forced prostitution is such an ambiguous concept that it should not be included in the slavery issue. But they simply don't grapple with the facts of how young girls, even in this country, are dragooned into demoralizing, dangerous and often-fatal "sex work." 3) President Bush really does deserve credit for moving forward on this issue, but he now either is backing away from more serious enforcement or his own White House staff (not to mention the Department of Justice that is holding up the Wilberforce Act) is not keeping him abreast of developments on the issue. 4) There may be valid bureaucratic reasons for resisting some of the provisions in the new act, but, if so, the Administration and Sen. Biden in the Senate aren't ventilating them. There is no move to engage the bill's proponents in discussions about a reasonable compromise. Conservatives in particular should be sympathetic to the objectives of the Paperwork Reduction Act, but conservatives and liberals alike should be willing to find reasonable ways to deal with that act within the policy goal of combating involuntary servitude.

I suspect that the Administration has been distracted on this issue, what with the crisis in the Middle East, Iran and North Korea, not to mention the economy. The bureaucrats at DOJ are left to call the shots. Surely it is time for the big boys to get into this matter. What is missing is some clear direction from the top.

John Miller has a longer piece on slavery that just came out in The Wilson Quarterly.

One final thought. As president of Discovery Institute I am moved to action by the question John Paul II asked when he was a bishop in Communist Poland and later, in different contexts, when he became pope: "What does it mean to be human?" This is a question that really might be addressed to all people in Western societies today. It applies to the slavery question, where numerically there are more people--many of them children--physically forced into demeaning or degrading service than even at the height of the slave trade in the 17th and 18th centuries. Why should such people be regarded, in effect, as sub-human?

The question applies, also, to unborn children, aged people in their terminal phase of illness (targets now of euthanasia in the Netherlands and assisted suicide in this country), or embryonic stem cells (if they are not human, what are they?). Meanwhile, the reductionist morality of the Cultural Left is trying to assign human rights--literally--to great apes! This is a program promoted by such worthies as Richard Dawkins and Stephen Pinker and various radical animal rights activists. Get it? People are losing their exceptional dignity, while animals are elevated to human status. Somehow, human dignity always suffers in this exchange.

The key participants in Discovery Institute's program on Human Rights and Bioethics are John Miller, Wesley J. Smith and John West. The issues they handle are separable and it should not be assumed that each is responsible for the views of the others.

Nonetheless, it is hard not to see the linkages. Further, one would have to be obtuse not to see the way that Darwinian science (covered by the Discovery Center for Science and Culture, has contributed to the confusion over "what it means to be human".

I don't shirk here from telling you that this program is badly underfunded at Discovery Institute and is mostly absent in the attention of other think tanks. If you know anyone who would like to help us, please let us know!

Canada jokes are funny the way WASP jokes are funny--the lack of self-awareness on the part of the joke target is what makes you laugh.

Currently, our Northern Neighbor is making news around the civilized world for its growing intolerance of diversity of views, including on matters regarded by some as fit subjects for satire. It is all done in the name of political correctness, of course. Apparently there is a new human right in Canada called "the right not to be offended," and it is being vigorously--almost relentlessly and ruthlessly--pursued by groups of official Human Rights Commissions that have been established at the national and provincial levels.

The witch hunts started on the subject of sexuality (of course) and then politics (a great subject on which a democracy should promote anti-free speech campaigns, right?). Now they are going after (hold your chuckles) the comedians. It's all good, I say, because finally the HRCs may have gone over-reached. Professional jokers are taken very seriously in Canada. After all, other than oil, gas and wood products, comedians are Canada's biggest export. Just ahead of beer.

Denyse O'Leary's Post-Darwinist news blog is a must-read for anyone trying to follow the battles over evolution and design, but now she has added coverage of the whole travesty of speech codes enforced by kangaroo courts, which is what the Human Rights commissions have become.

Read down a couple items in this link and you'll be richly rewarded.

Then, I have two cents of my own to add (currently worth about 1.9 cents Canadian): When governments set up grievance panels for any protected class, whether racial, gender or almost anything else, the people who want to be appointed almost always turn out to be passionate backers of one particular point of view. That is, they are ideologically disposed to see the complainant as always in the right. Who else would volunteer to serve on such a panel? Therefore, give these organizations real power, as has happened in Canada, apparently, and you are in for a battle if you want to preserve your constitutional rights.

Here in the land of God and Guns, at least, we have a Bill of Rights that courts usually feel obliged to protect against all well-meaning attempts to stifle the unpopular idea and to enforce the Common View. The Canadians (again, for my two cents) have written rights, too, but nonetheless are not as well protected.

But Canadians also do have great, square, normal common sense, and huge numbers of them already are rising up to protest the HRC's and the little opinion minders who run them. The HRCs lately are on the run for most of the most ridiculous cases they have brought. But it remains to be seen if popular opinion will come to see that the problem is not just bad judgement in one case or another, but the whole idea of having extra-legal enforcement panels that are allowed to act as prosecutor, judge and jury all rolled into one.

Shayan Arya is part of the remarkable Iranian community in this country that numbers over a million and is unmatched for its love of freedom and support for the democratic institutions of America, its adoptive country. The activism of Arya and his colleagues is an underappreciated asset in the U.S. struggle against the mad mullah regime in Tehran.

Here is a significant article by Arya and Nir Boms on the horrific state of human rights in Iran.

Discovery Institute presents Mathew Manweller at a book party (4:30 p.m., July 17, DI headquarters, 208 Columbia, Seattle) to herald his new book, The Right Opinion. Whether or not you can join us, pay a quick visit to Dr. Manweller's website, www.mattmanweller.com, and buy the book--reviewed below by my assistant, Alex Lykken.

The Right's Man with The Right Opinions

Dr. Mathew Manweller is an anomaly. That isn’t the obvious conclusion one usually makes upon meeting him. That’s because the soft-spoken, down-to-earth political science professor at Central Washington University doesn’t act like a professor at all. With beer in hand, he could easily blend into any backyard barbeque in rural America. He listens to country music. He voted for Bush. Twice. He drives an SUV - a red SUV, no less – tucked alongside a half-dozen Priuses (Prii?) in the campus parking lot.

Manweller is that rare species - the conservative academic. He's young, freshly tenured, and increasingly viewed as a rising star in a rarified Western political and academic firmament. It isn’t that Dr. Manweller is the only conservative professor in modern academia. Dozens of academics quietly harbor conservative values, but, unless they’ve secured tenure, they crouch quietly in the corners of the ivory tower. What makes him stand out is his brazen, unapologetic defense of conservatism in a liberal department in (another) liberal university. He writes monthly columns - often excoriating the Left - chairs the local Republican Party, and co-hosts a polemical talk radio show called “The Right Opinion.” Figuring he couldn’t possibly do more to damage his career, he wrote a book about it all. Say what you will about his opinions – the guy has courage.

"The Right Opinion: A Heretic’s Voice from the Ivory Tower is a compact but enlightening collection of Dr. Manweller’s best columns. Published in Ellensburg’s Daily Record, his opinions often don’t reach beyond the Kittitas County border. While Dr. Manweller is no stranger to publishing, The Right Opinion represents his first stab at the polemical side of politics.

Combining rousing rhetoric with irrefutable facts, Manweller is persuasive on every subject he touches. From Guantanamo to multiculturalism, Social Security to healthcare, immigration to economics, her sheds light on some of the most difficult issues of the day. Despite his obvious intellectual abilities, he makes no effort to appear smarter than the rest of us. He doesn't need to hide behind academese. His articles are written in easy-to-understand language, with logic so clear and concise that it becomes hard to disagree without changing the subject.

Despite the uproar of the Abu Ghraib scandal, Manweller steadfastly defended the detention center at Guantanamo Bay. Reacting to Amnesty International’s “self-congratulatory posturing” and references to Guantanamo as “the gulag of our time,” Manweller writes:

I often try to imagine how Amnesty International would like to see interrogations take place. I think it would go something like this:

Interrogator: Tell us who your associates are and what they are planning.
Terrorist: No.
Interrogator: Please.
Terrorist: No.
Interrogator: Pretty please.
Terrorist: No.
Interrogator: Well, this guy is just too tough a nut to crack. Send him back to the spa where he can wait for his private jet ride back to Afghanistan. Bring in the next guy.

Or, here is the way most Democratic senators would like to see Guntanamo Bay run:

Interrogator: Tell us who your associates are and what they are planning.
Terrorist: No.
Interrogator: Don’t make me go to the UN and get a resolution demanding you tell me.
Terrorist: You wouldn’t dare!
Interrogator: I will. In fact, we may go for a Security Council resolution condemning the fact you’re not talking.
Terrorist: OK, OK, I give. Here is what I know.

On health care he gives three reasons for soaring costs.

Take a moment to think about the way you buy groceries. Everything you put in the basket you pay for. The more you put in, the more you pay. This is what keeps you from putting everything in the basket (and leaving some for others). But imagine if we changed that. Instead, at the first of each month you wrote one check for $250 to Fred Meyer and then you were allowed to shop as much as you want, as often as you want, and take whatever you wanted. Would your shopping habits change? Facing no incremental costs due to increased consumption, you would take more and more. Take the good beer. Take more beer than you need. Let’s raid the electronics section. Who cares? Once you pre-paid your $250 you can take whatever you want without feeling any extra costs. Well, Fred Meyer would care and they would increase to $1000 your flat monthly fee, and then we would start complaining about the high cost of food. Democrats would start calling for national food insurance!

This may sound crazy in the grocery industry, but it’s exactly how we buy healthcare. It’s why we don’t ask doctors “how much is that x-ray?” In the short run, it doesn’t matter. Nor does it matter if I go to the doctor once or ten times. The system encourages over-consumption until insurance companies have to raise premiums because of our shopping behavior.

Like any good teacher, Manweller gives the reader the necessary tools to look for solutions to whatever public policy is raised.

After his first event with Discovery last August, I spoke with a fellow audience member. He was excited to see a conservative academic who was and smart, lucid, and down to earth as Manweller was. His summation of his lecture is a fitting conclusion to his new book, as well: "He made me want to go back to college again."

A Rassmussen poll indicates that increasing numbers of Americans (now up to 40 percent) realize that conditions in Iraq are improving and victory is possible, but a plurality (44 percent) still believes that the United States is doomed to lose the war in that country.

However, public opinion often changes more slowly than objective conditions. People think there is a recession for months after one is declared over by economists. So eventually, the bulk of the public will realize, as even many in the MSM are beginning to note, that America is likely to prevail in Iraq. That doesn't mean all will be rosy or victory will be permanent. Success is always tenuous in the Middle East. But it does mean that U.S. casualties are most likely to continue to drop and that the U.S. will be able to diminish its troop presence. Somewhere along the continuum of news developments one might be able to say, we have won. And as the realization sinks again--countering years of almost overwhelming efforts to discredit the Bush Administration on every aspect of the Iraq War --it will make a huge difference to our foreign policy and our standing in the world, almost like the toppling of the Berlin Wall.

Read this piece by Michael Totten in Commentary, citing, in turn, the remarkable Michael Yon. The latter, by the way, should be winning journalism awards for prescience and courage. Instead, he is largely ignored by the elites. Victory will be declared when they decide to declare it, I guess.

Meanwhile, what happens when U.S public opinion fully swings on this war?

Michael Medved, now a Discovery senior fellow, has noted often that outsiders imagine that Hollywood's god is money; but it's not, it's the approval of one's peers. A fine piece by pajamas media shows how this is playing out now. Note that Expelled did uncommonly well for a political documentary, but not only was it not reviewed much when it came out, but even its financial records are ignored now.

The government has no business trying to set gasoline prices or chasing phantom speculators. It does have a business trying to run a railroad. It is called Amtrak.

Yet neither party nor presidential candidate has made Amtrak reform and expansion of passenger rail in this country a major campaign issue. This despite the energy "crisis". This despite the frustration of urban dwellers nation-wide who find it hard to get to work or to fly to nearby cities in a timely fashion.

There are bills in both houses of Congress that address the subject, but they are not getting adequate attention.

Amtrak has real problems and needs to be reformed: a combination of privatizing aspects of the service, while backing government funds to match state efforts and for improved track and hardware as part of a transition to a bigger, more robust system.

Even as is, inter-city ridership is up in most parts of the country. Here is an AP story from Illinois where the number of trains is relatively plentiful (it is part of my old stomping grounds--from once upon a time) and where train travel is relatively painless.

Amtrak's Midwest ridership continues to rise

July 18, 2008
GALESBURG, Ill. - If there is any good news about $4 per gallon gasoline, The Galesburg Register-Mail says, it is that ridership on Midwest Amtrak trains is booming and that U.S. Sen. Dick Durbin, (D-Ill.), is working with Amtrak's CEO to set up a summit to discuss the future of the state's passenger service.

Eight Amtrak trains stop in Galesburg daily and Durbin wants to ensure there is enough rail capacity to handle ridership on Illinois' state-subsidized routes, including the Illinois Zephyr and The Carl Sandburg, which make four combined stops there each day while traveling between Chicago and Quincy.

According to the newspaper, during a meeting earlier this week, Durbin and Amtrak CEO Alex Kummant agreed to gather rail experts and advocates to discuss Amtrak's future in Illinois. Durbin and Kummant also agreed a plan was needed to deal with Amtrak's severe shortage of passenger cars in Illinois and around the country.

Ridership on the Illinois Zephyr and The Carl Sandburg routes was up 41.4 percent in fiscal 2007, compared to fiscal 2006. Ridership on Illinois state-subsidized routes increased another 180,823 passengers during the first two-thirds of fiscal year 2008, to a total of 670,605.

Durbin asked Kummant to allocate five more passenger cars to Illinois to add capacity to those routes, as well as ones between Chicago and St. Louis and Chicago and Carbondale. Kummant has agreed to have cars rehabilitated and ready for immediate use on those routes by the end of this year.

The news from Iraq remains under-reported. Three days ago, terrorists succeeded in bombing the house of Mital Al-Alusi, the courageous member of parliament who, in 2004, nearly signed his own death-warrant by urging that Iraq recognize Israel. Many attacks have been made on him since and one of them killed his two sons and a driver. There is no word yet on what has happened in the latest attack to Mr. Al-Alusi's wife and grandchildren.

Meanwhile, the best reporting by Iraqis comes, as it often does, from Iraq the Model website. Here it describes the domestic politics in Iraq had a lot to do with the Iraqis' reactions to the visit of Barack Obama.

The reason that many if not most of the leading Darwinists are so passionate about suppressing critics is that they really are practicing their own religion, crusading atheism. Richard Dawkins is again on public television in the U.K. denouncing foes of the theory that seems to constitute his liturgy and his eschatology. Meanwhile, Dawkins' favorite side-kick in America--the activist who joined him in attempting to crash an invitation-only preview of the film Expelled last spring in Minneapolis--has made a public show of desecrating the Eucharist, what Catholics accept as the body of Christ. P.Z. Myers, a Darwinist cult figure in his own right, teaches and preaches atheism in the Biology Department of the University of Minnesota. From there he composes Pharyngula, said to be the most popular "science blog" on the Internet. There, too, he has just posted a photo of a consecrated communion wafer. He says he drove "a rusty nail" through it and then threw it in the garbage. He hints that there are more to come.

If you are a Catholic, this is a sacrilege. Even if you are not a Catholic, it exhibits disgusting bad taste.

To answer charges that he would not dare do any such thing to Islam, Myers threw some pages torn from the Quran into the garbage, too. Give him credit; he's an equal opportunity destroyer.

Myers is jubilant. The Eucharist is "just a cracker," he keeps writing, just as the Quran pages are just "paper." He will decide what is offensive and what is not.

What does offend him is that a large number of people have emailed him to protest and denounce him. He also says he has been threatened physically. If so, shame on anyone who did so. Even threats of that sort are against Christian teaching, not to mention stupid and possibly illegal.

However, I have been threatened for far, far less--just expressing dissenting views on evolution.

Words physically weigh less than the consecrated Host. They are "nothing". And yet words that offend Myers and his fellow Darwinist apparatchiki can drive them to deeds of vigorous punishment. Restraint and scholarly good will are for other people. The mere words that Darwin doubters have raised in schoolrooms and lecture halls incite P. Z. Myers to call for punishments of flunking for students, expulsion for graduate students and firings for professors.

So words apparently matter in those cases. What gets thrown in the trash then are normal rules of civilized discourse, followed by people's careers.

William Donohue of the Catholic League is on Myers' case. So is columnist Mark Shea. But the University of Minnesota, which normally is P.C. with a vengeance, apparently doesn't think P.C. applies to P.Z. The New York Times that loved it when Myers crashed the pre-screening of Expelled, can't find any news in this. The National Center for Science Education, whose leaders often have lauded and applauded Myers--all the while professing to assorted school boards and legislative committees that Darwin's theory is "perfectly compatible" with religious faith--now is silent.

Here is Bill Donohue's latest:

MYERS DESECRATES THE EUCHARIST

University of Minnesota professor Paul Z. Myers made good on his pledge to desecrate the Eucharist today. According to his statement on the subject, “I pierced it [the Host] with a rusty nail (I hope Jesus’s tetanus shots are up to date). And then I simply threw it in the trash.”

Saying he did not want to “single out just the cracker,” Myers also tore pages from the Koran along with a few pages from Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and nailed them to the Host. He then said, “They are just paper. Nothing must be held sacred. (His emphasis.) Question everything. God is not great, Jesus is not your lord, you are not disciples of any charismatic prophet.”

Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded as follows:

“A formal complaint against Myers has already been made. What he did—in both word and deed—constitutes a bias incident, as defined by the University of Minnesota. The policy says that ‘Expressions of disrespectful bias, hate, harassment or hostility against an individual, group or their property because of the individual or group’s actual or perceived race, color, creed, religion…can be forms of discrimination. Expressions vary, and can be in the form of language, words, signs, symbols, threats, or actions that could potentially cause alarm, anger, fear, or resentment in others…even when presented as a joke.’

“The University must now take action and apply the appropriate sanction. We are contacting the president, Board of Regents and the Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action Office at the school, as well as Minnesota’s governor and both houses of the state legislature; the Catholic community in Minnesota is also being contacted. Moreover, we are also contacting Muslim groups nationwide.

“It is important for Catholics to know that the University of Minnesota will not tolerate the deliberate destruction of the Eucharist by one of its faculty. Just as African Americans would not tolerate the burning of a cross, and Jews would not tolerate the display of swastikas, Catholics will not tolerate the desecration of the Eucharist.”

Contact Myers at myersp@morris.umn.edu

Contact President Robert Bruininks at bruin001@umn.edu

See Wesley J. Smith's article in today's Dallas Morning News.

The University of Minnesota has now made clear that it is within the orbit of academic freedom at that institution to engage in active religious bigotry--in the case of P.Z. Myers, desecrating the Eucharist from a Catholic Church--while it is not within the reach of academic freedom to teach any criticisms of Darwinian evolution or the scientific case of intelligent design. This comes from the Catholic League:

UNIV. OF MINN. REFUSES TO PENALIZE MYERS

The Chancellor of the University of Minnesota, Morris (UMN) released a statement today regarding the intentional desecration of the Eucharist by Professor Paul Z. Myers. “I believe that behaviors that discriminate against or harass individuals or groups on the basis of their religious beliefs are reprehensible,” said Jacqueline Johnson. Importantly, she added that the school’s Code of Conduct prohibits such behavior. However, she also stressed that academic freedom allows faculty members “to speak or write as a public citizen without institutional discipline or restraint….” Nowhere did she say Myers would be disciplined.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue responded as follows:

“This is classic: Johnson admits that Myers has violated the UMN’s Code of Conduct and then proceeds to tell us why he is being allowed to do so with impunity—it’s a matter of academic freedom.

“Academic freedom is not the issue: academic malpractice is. For example, Section 10.21 (b) of UMN’s Tenure Code explicitly says that a tenured faculty member can be terminated or suspended for ‘unprofessional conduct which severely impairs a faculty member’s fitness in a professional capacity.’

“In 2001, this part of the Tenure Code was invoked against a professor at UMN because he had images of child porn on his computer. It should now be invoked against Myers, and that is why we will appeal to UMN’s Board of Regents to do just that. It strains credulity to maintain that Christian students can expect fair treatment by a faculty member who has publicly shown nothing but contempt for their religion.

“It is a sure bet that UMN would not tolerate a white professor who worked a comedy club on weekends trashing blacks. Indeed, it would say that such behavior disqualifies his ability to be objective. In many respects Myers is worse, and that is why sanctions are warranted.”

Contact Myers at myersp@morris.umn.edu

Contact President Robert Bruininks at bruin001@umn.edu

Susan A. Fani Director of Communications Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights catalyst@catholicleague.org New York, NY 10123 212-371-3191 212-371-3394 (fax) http://www.catholicleague.org/release.php?id=1467
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