Discovery Blog

George W. Bush was supposed to cut taxes and spending as president, appoint able constitutionalist judges, open America more to Latin America and avoid "nation building" exercises overseas.

He did cut taxes, which helped spur huge economic gains for over five years. He appointed many excellent judges, though Democrats held up numerous other worthy appointments. For several wasted years Republicans in control of Congress actually joined Democrats in promoting higher spending, including a new entitlement (the prescription drug program for seniors). They thought they would get great political benefit from such spending, it seems. They got none.

We still have done far too little to engage Latin America--our home region--and, thanks to 9/11, and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, we certainly are engaged in "nation building" on a grand scale elsewhere. History handed G.W.B. and all of us a number of unwelcome surprises.

In the course of time, the tax cuts, the wise judicial appointments and the war on terrorism, despite many missteps, will be regarded as a serious and sound legacy for Bush. If the new president doesn't mess up, Iraq in particular will result in a hugely important foreign policy success with excellent long term consequences. Too bad the president's critics won't give him now the credit that he deserves.

There probably were other policy successes. (One thinks of the historically high commitment to fighting AIDS in Africa, for example.) It would be nice to say that there were many such examples. But the truth is that the Administration has been so concentrated on the huge issues of the war on terror, taxes and judges that it has neglected other areas where it could have accomplished without too much strain. Obviously, Bush should have pushed harder for reform of Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac. He tried, but weakly. The crash we have endured and which is undoing conservative government, however, is not the fault of this Administration. On the contrary, as a host of yet-unwritten books will show, under-regulation in some areas and over-regulation in others were the products chiefly of 15 years of liberal interest politics.

Still, as the nation votes tomorrow for his successor some of us should pause and reflect that President George W. Bush has received a bum rap from adversaries and the media,(as some of his staffers say). I trust that history will treat him much better.

My preliminary account of the Bush Legacy (yesterday) did not really include the recent economic meltdown. That meltdown was not Bush's fault, but his appointee, Alan Greenspan, certainly bears some responsibility. Steve Forbes tells the tale in his column in the November 17 Forbes. The worst misjudgment was "regarding the integrity of the dollar. Greenspan treated it like a yo-yo. The dollar is the world's principal currency, and its instability has wreaked havoc."

Forbes points out that the "real price of oil" is not necessarily higher than it was five years ago. "On paper oil does look higher, despite its recent tumble from the summer's peaks. But consider this: In 2003, when oil was $25 to $28 per barrel, an ounce of gold bought 12 barrels. Today, with oil at $65 to $70, an ounce of gold buys about 11 barrels."

Forbes, in a companion editorial on Henry Paulson, faults him, too, for "his support of the Fed's weak-dollar policy," along with his "refusal to modify the mark-to-market rule that was gratuitously destroying the balance sheets of banks and insurance companies."

The whole awful story of the stock market collapse will employ a number of able writers in the months and years ahead. Meanwhile, we must deal with a potential follow up catastrophe: a new Congress and (likely) President that think that higher taxes on business and investment is the way to get the country out of a recession.

There is a grim fascination these days with stories about the Depression of the '30s and how it really developed and continued for a full decade.

The Vatican has still not really dealt adequately with the issue of Darwinian evolution, but on evolution broadly Pope Benedict XVI continues to make more sense than anyone else in the hierarchy. His greeting last Friday to the Pontifical Academies of Science conference that is now concluding in Rome is well worth reading.

The conference as a whole appears to have been something of a dud, perhaps because it is a closed affair and--more to the point--it has been used to showcase a viewpoint spectrum that ranges only from ardent materialism (Stephen Hawking) to various forms of theistic evolutionism/Deism. Intelligent design was slated for an attack by one participant (Maxine Singer of the United States), but the abstract of that attack betrayed another straw man argument of the kind that Darwinists typically construct in order to avoid real debate. No scientist who supports ID was invited to attend or speak.

That is not the fault of the Holy Father, however. The Academies of Science is a small, mostly self-perpetuating advisory group that does not require members to be religious, let alone Christian, let alone Catholic. It obviously does not command much attention in the Vatican, or, it seems, even the media.

Nonetheless, the Holy Father's welcoming remarks to the conference deserve attention. I particularly liked the image of evolution as a "scroll"--a book--to be read. That sounds like ID to me.

Here are some added thoughts from a friendly, but anonymous, critic:

1. There is a clear affirmation by the Pope of the doctrine of creation: the universe is contingent and had a beginning, it is not something that is self-sufficient and eternally existent. We cannot understand the universe, he says, exclusively on the "horizontal” level of “mutation and transformation,” but rather we must acknowledge the vertical or “transcendent origin of participated being.”...“In order to develop or evolve, the world must first be, and thus have come from nothing into being.” This is a clear affirmation of the orthodox doctrine of creation ex nihilo.

2. By stating that “the Creator founds these developments and supports them, underpins them and sustains them continuously,” the Pope is clearly foreclosing on any deistic interpretation of science. God is involved in Creation for, if He were not, it would not and could not continue to exist. In speaking of Aquinas’ views here of the Creator as “the cause of every being and all becoming,” the Pope is clearly saying that God is the First Cause of the universe and that the universe is under His intelligent direction – God is the primary cause of everything that happens, while causes operating on the level of the “horizontal origin of the unfolding of events, which is history,” are only secondary causes. Furthermore, in stating that “the notion of creation must transcend the horizontal origin of the unfolding of events,” there is the suggestion of an Augustinian and Thomistic conception of eternity in which God transcends time entirely and views the universe as a whole from Creation to Consummation as one creative act.

3. The etymological discussion of “evolve” as meaning “to unroll a scroll” as in reading a book is highly unusual and intriguing. The clear reference is to God as the author of nature in the same way that He is the author of Scripture. The book of nature is then read “according to the different approaches of the sciences, while all the time presupposing the foundational presence of the author who has wished to reveal himself therein.” As a consequence, the world, rather than being chaotic, “resembles an ordered book.” It is cosmos, not chaos. What is more, this book is legible, since it is written in the language of mathematics.

This is similar to how Galileo framed the question. The “legibility” of matter is found in the mathematics that describes it and reveals “the visible inner logic of the cosmos.” Naturalism has no explanation for why nature should be intelligible on the basis of mathematics, indeed, for why it possesses any order at all. That the book of nature is written by its Author in the language of mathematics, which is readable by man, is therefore an instance of God’s revealing Himself in nature. It is furthermore the only reason that nature is intelligible, for when we study it in such a way, we are seeking to “think God’s thoughts after Him.” Here the Holy Father is using another interesting expression, one that is usually credited to the astronomer Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) (“I was merely thinking God's thoughts after him. Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature," wrote Kepler, "it benefits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God”)

4. Although a bit unclear in his meaning, the Pope states that “there always remains a broad range of intelligible events, and the process is rational in that it reveals an order of evident correspondences and undeniable finalities.” The correspondences in the natural world are clear enough: In the inorganic realm there is a relationship between microstructure and macrostructure, and in the organic realm there is a correspondence between structure and function. “Undeniable finalities” should probably be understood in the Thomistic-Aristotelian context of final causes, that is, purposes. The reason that microstructure has the mathematical description it does is found in the macrostructures it thereby makes possible; the reason that biological structures have the form that they do resides in the functions that they are intended to perform. In the spiritual realm, there is a correspondence and purpose revealed between knowledge of the truth and freedom. I can only interpret this in light of John 8:32: “Then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” This is an oblique reference to Christ as the Light of the World who releases us from darkness and bondage into knowledge of who God is.

5. Finally, Pope Benedict reaffirms John Paul II’s reflections on the origin of the human soul and the Magisterium of the Church in stating that “every spiritual soul is created immediately by God” and is not “’produced’ by the parents.” This is an affirmation of (theological) creationism over traducianism as an explanation of the origin of the soul. The Pope furthermore affirms the immortality of the immaterial soul. Both of these affirmations make it clear that there is a distinction to be made between human beings and the rest of the biological world – there is a spiritual break in continuity between humanity and others of God’s creatures. As the Pope says, “[t]his points to the distinctiveness of anthropology, and invites exploration of it by modern thought.” Humanity has a unique place in the cosmos.

In short, the Pope seems not only open to intelligent design, but he affirms it in the sense that nothing takes place in the universe apart from God’s sustaining life and authors it--that order being revealed in our study of nature through the language of mathematics. The Pope is rejecting the neo-Darwinian view that humanity is the end result of blind processes that did not have him in view.

Am I the only person around who objects to the length of the recently concluded presidential campaign? Doesn't it bother anyone that pundits are now boasting that they were writing two columns a week about the 2008 race since this time in 2006?

I like politics. I used to think I loved it. But there is a time to attend to the nation's business. Already the Grotesque Excess School of Political Obsessions has been cranking out stories about Gov. Sarah Palin being greeted in Alaska by supporters of her running for President four years from now. Writers are telling us that new members of Congress are going to be wary of taking controversial votes on issues because they are thinking ahead to the mid-term elections of 2010. There are websites set up to handicap the 2012 race. Don't these people have anything else they can think about?

What has been called "the permanent campaign" is unfair to office holders. It subtly detracts from the legitimate authority of incumbents and distracts voters from the here and now by focusing on a distant election date. Serious issues are reduced to political slogans. The damage of the the permanent campaign is serious and real.

Hello? Does anyone else care?

And the winner is...(envelope please).....Sarah Palin's expensive campaign wardrobe!

The Governor and her glad rags

It is almost unimaginable that anyone tried to make this an issue, let alone that the media covered it as if it meant something. Even more astonishing is the performance of the backstabber on the McCain staff who leaked--or made up--more of a story on it after the campaign, and, yet again, that FOX or anyone allowed such a pseudo-scandal to keep going after the election.

Forget all the price tag numbers and the disparaging language by the "leaker": On the campaign trail, a candidate (let's face it, especially a woman, even now) has to look good every day and for several appearances a day. During the primary season even males typically take weeks to get into the sartorial rhythm of having clean, presentable clothes available for every occasion, But at least people don't normally critique men's suits. If Palin had been stuck with any normal woman's wardrobe and yet had tried to look fresh and well-groomed on the road, public event after public event, it would have led to amused press comments stories about her inadequate style. In fact, that is where the press was headed before Sarah headed for Neiman Marcus. It's a funny thing how ordinary, middle class people on a budget seem to have such "poor taste", isn't it? Why some are even "second homeless"! It makes them unqualified for high office, don't you know?

Therefore, as in many campaigns, Gov. Palin's personal costs--in this case her handsome dresses and suits--were appropriate campaign expenses. Most campaign supporters undoubtedly would have been delighted to know that their contributions went to such a useful purpose. It beats having your cash used for, oh, say, a $700,000 rally in Berlin, or another television ad to match the one that just ran 90 seconds earlier.

Most important, Palin's wardrobe was a campaign expense, not a taxpayer expense. The faux-furor in the media made some people think it was somehow a public cost. The proper reply to the story right from the beginning should have been, "So, what? This is an expenditure the Republican National Committee was pleased to make. And, by the way, we absolutely expect Gov. Palin to keep the clothes after the election. Why not?"

Finally, we are left with the pitiful spite of whoever brought this story to the media from inside the Republican camp. What odious political gnome would refer to the Palins as "Wassila hillbillies"?

This year we seem to have conquered racial bigotry, but not class and regional bigotry.

Overall, Gov. Sarah Palin rose admirably to the challenge suddenly thrust upon her at the Republican Convention. She and Todd, her dignified, yet cheerful husband (who comes across as a natural gentleman, savvy and decent), managed to leap into campaign mode from a standing start. Good for them. Which of the fault-finders could have done as well?

Mohammed Fadhil of Iraq the Model has a useful post on Iraqi reactions to the American election. What is most useful about it is the open spirit with which Iraq's most famous bloggers approach the new Obama Administration. Mohammed and his brothers are grateful to President Bush for liberating their country and they liked Sen. McCain. Like most Iraqis, they are looking forward to the departure of the Americans, but they do not want to have that happen too soon. The relative peace that has raised hopes in recent months since the Surge succeeded is fragile and could collapse, precipitating an Iranian-influenced civil war.

So, we'll see. Certainly it is to America--not Bush, McCain or Obama per se--that Iraqis look for helpful leadership. It is America that will get the credit or the blame for coming events.

And, to borrow a malaprop from the new Obama Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, we can't just kick the future of Iraq down the can.

I can hardly stand to tune in to the totally predictable and largely unproductive debates over what individuals or groups caused the Republicans to lose the election. Actually, the Democrats won the election. And the Wall Street crash certainly helped them, didn't it?

This election will be chewed over for months. Books will be written, but they probably will be out of date shortly after they are published. We will soon be in different times, staring into new elections. New ideas will be needed by both parties.

Meanwhile, those on the right would be well-advised to cease finger pointing. It is hard to imagine a successful Republican candidate for President without conservatives behind him. And it is hard to imagine a successful conservative movement without economic conservatives, foreign policy/defense conservatives and social conservatives working together. The attempt to read one group or another out of the coalition is bound to be frustrating and ultimately self-defeating.

The biggest effort just now is to kick out the social conservatives. Pundits who couldn't get elected to the town council in Darien or Palo Alto, let alone in Manhattan, think they know all about the electorate that resides psychologically, and often physically, in middle-America. This piece in The American Spectator is a welcome repost to elitist tomfoolery.

It has been almost a curse. Wherever Al Gore shows up to speak on global warming a cold front moves in. The former Vice President is responsible for many a record low.

Now the temperatures for the year so far show the continuing cooling trend that began a decade ago. (Wouldn't you know that one of the few warmer spots would be the Washington, D.C. area?)

Philadelphia wants a bailout, so does Phoenix. New York City relies overwhelmingly for its tax revenue (as does New York State) on Wall Street millionaires, and they don't have a lot of income to declare these days. Instead they have losses. New York needs a bailout.

California, Washington State, the list goes on and on. Everyone seems to need a bailout.

Detroit carmakers certainly do. I'll bet that a number of distressed newspapers that are covering all this would like bailouts. Soon someone will produce a T-Shirt with the inscription, "Where's MY Bailout?"

After the banks got relief--some of them--it became clear that we would soon have a very long line forming at the Federal Bailout Window. That now has happened. Obviously, this particular window is closing, however, if it hasn't closed already.

The stock market crash in September hit just at the moment the campaign promises, especially from the Obama camp, were flying forth at top speed. John McCain kept saying that he would not raise anyone's taxes, while Barack Obama said he would give "95 percent" of the people tax cuts and only raise taxes on those families earning over $250,000. Exit polls showed that people in that top category voted Democratic this year by large proportions, so, presumably, few of them will mind getting a stiff tax increase very soon.

The trouble is, the amount of money being earned above $250,000 per household is about to crater. You could take all of those people's income (leaving just a little to pay state and local taxes), and you still couldn't stop the runaway federal budget. Tax increases in a recession, moreover--the real Herbert Hoover lesson--would be counter-productive. Likewise, new tariffs on imports. Yet both those simplistic ideas have been part of the Obama plan for "change".

But the realities of "change" have now changed. The rhetoric of only a couple of weeks ago is already out of date.

Things could calm greatly if the President-Elect would get together with the current President and leaders of both parties to find a common ground on tax and spending policy. People on the far left will complain loudly if their favorite new projects are held up, but their point of view will have almost no political clout if the new president has a more or less united Congress behind him.

I am tempted to say that President-Elect Obama should adopt Sen. McCain's agenda--at least short term, until there is some economic revival, and new money, to be spent on all the promises that the Democrats have made. But, I can't say that, because even some of Sen. McCain's proposals of the campaign are too expansive for this environment.

But he was right that we don't need tax increases, we need tax cuts. We need some public spending (on infrastructure and the initial safety bailouts to provide liquidity for the financial system), but we also should expect serious belt-tightening by governments at all levels. After Ronald Reagan put through his reforms during the recession of 1981-83 the economy roared back, despite furious opposition from the Democrats and the media in the early years. In the end, as George Schultz told someone who asked about the condition of the country (I paraphrase), "The government is bad shape, but the country is doing great." He added that it had been the opposite under Jimmy Carter.

Barack Obama and his team have huge Congressional majorities. They can impose their issues and they can have the illusion of government "change". Then a recession could well become a depression. Some change.

Or they can get our finances under control and free the private sector to grow again. They also should hold off on new regulations that will make it difficult for businesses to start up and expand. Only then will there be substantial revenue wealth generated--however you want to spend it.

Computers operate on technology with a solid scientific basis. Computer modeling is an interesting and often useful tactic for finding patterns and trends. But computer modeling is not pure science and at its best it is only as good as the information programed into it. That is true for wild claims made for computer models of evolution and it is true of climate modeling.

What is remarkable is the straight, high profile coverage.
The Seattle Times ran this as the top feature, page one, above the fold. The Seattle Weekly ran a story that also, overall, was fair. KOMO-TV picked it up.

How do readers (and viewers) handle this? If they are pro-choice they can treat it as merely an interesting human interest story about the individuals involved. Or they can trivialize it. (As one critic says, three quarters of human embryos are not viable. Never mind that of the 400,000 frozen embryos in the country the other quarter represents 100,000 human beings . Or they can grouse to themselves, "There probably is something wrong with this that they are not reporting," and turn the page.

Or they can have an epiphany moment and look reality in the face. This is another demonstration of what it means to be human.

Does one have to be a couple longing to adopt a child--and finds it possible through this service--in order to accept the truth? The mind having seen clearly, what does it take to have a conversion of heart?

For the first time that I can remember, wealthy voters appear to have voted for a Democrat rather than a Republican for President. Nationally, exit polls showed that Obama got 52 percent of the votes of voters with incomes over $200,000 a year, while McCain got 46 percent. In contrast, the two candidates roughly tied among the middle class ($75,000-150,000 income).

Popularity in Silicon Valley, Manhattan’s East Side and the Chicago North Shore is also one reason Barack Obama was able to more than double John McCain’s campaign spending. Among the plushy elite, the Obama-Biden ticket was fashionable, McCain-Palin, emphatically déclassé.

This changeover of party identification began several years ago and has many ingredients: fatigue with fighting Iraq and terrorism, agitation over the presumed verities of global warming and other environmental crises, the long cultural march of race and gender and sexual identification, the left’s increasing monopoly of the high arts, media and academia, and an open disdain for the cultural voice of conservatism (GWB’s drawl, Sarah Palin’s baby, the religious right). For the first time, Democrats are the “party of the rich.”

It is not clear, however, that the rich-as-investors are as pro-Obama as the rich-as-voters. They mutter, these former Republicans and Independents, that the new President surely will not actually do what he promised to do. They hope for hypocrisy. Privately they advise: don’t bail out Detroit. Don’t “renegotiate” NAFTA (remember Smoot-Hawley?). Don’t implement card-check. Don’t raise taxes on investments in a recession or you’ll turn it into a depression. We love you, but we want McCain’s policies.

So, from Palm Springs to Palm Beach, the Transition mystery is, will the “Change” Obama promised turn out to be as cosmetic as the President-Elect’s first appointments suggest? Will “BB” acknowledge that there isn’t any money for universal health care and that card check will destroy business confidence? Happy to take credit for an exit from Iraq that is already negotiated with the Iraqis by the departing Bush Administration, will the President add troops to Afghanistan and confront Iran and its surrogates? Maybe, as someone has suggested, he will announce that he is going to introduce “John F. Kennedy’s tax reforms,” which turn out to have been supply side.

That would be well-received in Shaker Heights and Potomac. Announce pro-growth budgetary austerity and tax cuts at night and watch the DOW rocket 1,200 points the next day.

Or will he do what he promised? Cut taxes for “95 percent of Americans” and help the “rich” learn to share? Pass one new entitlement and works project after another? If so, he’ll need to tax and print literally trillions of dollars and order Dante’s sign to be posted at the entrance to Wall Street: “Abandon Hope, all ye who Enter Here.”

The protracted hard times would be full of gallant Administration gestures, sporting public-mural artist gigs on every civic wall of every hamlet. Millions of Conservation Corps waifs would be busied learning about the evils American history while they undertook assorted forms of community organizing. And there would be Fireside Chats, of course, to raise our morale. It might help the Democratic Party politically as it helped FDR in the long, cold slog of the 30s. But it would be hell for pension funds and other investments that everyone counts on. It also wouldn’t be so good for the people in non-profits, churches, tourism, home remodeling and various service industries who have counted “the rich” as patrons heretofore.

But, meanwhile, the rich wouldn't need to fret about tax increases for households making more than $250,000 a year. Fewer and fewer would find themselves in such a vulnerable category. With a sinking stock market and businesses closing, the “rich” would become a smaller and smaller constituency.

The December First Things, edited by Fr. Richard John Neuhaus and Joseph Bottum, carries a very satisfying article by Anthony Flew rebuking Richard Dawkins as a "secularist bigot". That is about right, and it is time that this view was expressed by someone who knows the man personally.

Flew is the famous atheist philosopher who announced in 2004 that he had been persuaded by intelligent design arguments to abandon the faith of no-faith and accept a deistic God. It was an honest affirmation by an honest intellectual. For his pains Richard Dawkins, his one-time ally, pilloried Flew in The God Delusion, implying that the old man (85) was senile.

Flew's witty reposte is not yet available online (you should subscribe to First Things anyhow), but I will note especially his takedown of The God Delusion as so lacking in useful content that it shows Dawkins "to have become what he and his fellow secularists typically believe to be an impossibility: a secularist bigot."

"Helpfully," he adds, "my copy of the Oxford English Dictionary defines a bigot as an 'obstinate or intolerant adherent of a point of view.'"

On a more academic plane, Flew finds Dawkins guilty of an unforgivable failure in anyone seeking truth in a subject, a "scandalous and apparently deliberate refusal to present the doctrine that he appears to think he has refuted in its strongest form."

That is, Dawkins, unlike, say, Michael Behe, does not play fair with his opponents. He is a propagandist.

The same may be true, sadly, of some otherwise fine people in an obscure office down a Vatican corridor that is so long it isn't even part of St. Peter's Square. I am talking about the Pontifical Council of Culture that is holding a conference on evolutionary theory next March. Commenting gently but firmly--also in the new First Things--Fr. Neuhaus follows the press comments of a Council spokesman, Jesuit Fr. Marc Leclerc, who explained that an express decision not to invite proponents of "creationism and intelligent design" (which he ties together) is because sponsors "wanted to create a conference that was strictly scientific."

Fr. Neuhaus analyzes the reasons and excuses proffered and concludes that the real aim seems to be to "secure for the Catholic Church a clean bill of health from....(those) who condemn any deviatiion from scientistic ideology as anti-intellectualism."

Here is my take on the opportunity ahead to use the stimulus bill in Congress (and local matching money) to promote short term economic growth and long-needed infrastructure improvements. I am not arguing for a stimulus bill, only that since one is coming, we might as well make it produce short term benefits in service of long term transportation and other infrastructure purposes.

Richard Rahn, former DI fellow now at CATO, has several trenchant recent columns on the economic crisis and they make unsettling reading. If you have the feeling that the Federal Government is making up policy as it goes along and that we are in uncharted territory--with no one fully aware of what is happening--Rahn will not cheer you up.

Further, Dr. Rahn calls our attention to the prospects of truly violent international mayhem as the economic crisis becomes a political and military crisis worldwide. People here are worried about their jobs and their retirement accounts, and those are serious concerns. But people in some emerging market countries are becoming worried about their next meal, and their physical safety as dictatorships squeeze and anarchists activate. (Shades of the '30s!) The Somali pirates story is an example of what has occurred in recent years because the West (including Washington) has been unable to deal with the root sources--in this case, Somalia. History suggests that we are for much more of this.

None of this is pretty. But surely the first objective of any correct policy is to understand the nature of reality. That objective is still illusive. Many are yet luxuriating in the afterglow of a domestic election shift.

You should read Sr. Fellow John West's account of how the Pilgrims and Thanksgiving are being treated in Plymouth, Mass. It would be funny were it not such a sad commentary on our culture.

The Left wants to turn Thanksgiving--one of the most gentle and inclusive holidays on the calendar--into a feast of guilt and remorse, with the spiritual and democratic associations Thanksgiving carries turned upside down.

As for me and my house, we will say grace before dinner tomorrow, as usual. Giving thanks to God for life itself, for the good people who have influenced us, for all those with whom we share this world, for the American system of constitutional democracy that preserves our liberties, and for "all the blessings we have at your hand"--that is the path of happiness and peace.

Over the Thanksgiving holiday you can't just have serious public policy thoughts. You have to leave room after turkey for some serious food thoughts. One of mine is inspired by discovery of "Peaks", a new shop on 65th Street in the Ravenna District of Seattle, where, as of yesterday, you can buy real frozen custard, the old fashioned taste that takes you back in time, but does it in a crisp modern setting.
(1026 N.E. 65th Street. Telephone: (206) 588-2701.)

Frozen custard is not for the person who takes dessert lightly in any sense. You have to know, for example, that the egg-yolk enriched frozen custard should be left standing for ten minutes after you take it hard-frozen from the fridge. You have to know, in other words, that it behaves more like gelato than ice cream.

You can hardly find the treat any more. Most people under 50 don't even know what it is.

"Custard's Last Stand" is how I described it in a school paper when I was a boy in downstate Monmouth, Illinois. It was the late '50s and a fancy new Dairy Queen came to town and drove out the Real Thing. The same thing happened nation-wide and represented a loss. True frozen custard is to a serving of Dairy Queen what a Starbucks latte is to a cup of instant Folger's.

But Seattle, the town that brought sophisticated coffee styles to America, then European bread-baking, then fine micro-beers, then wine bars, then gourmet chocolates, and then old recipe donuts, now is getting a reputation for gourmet ice creams. Snoqualmie and Cascadia are two notable brands. Italian-style Gelato from Gelatiamo (Third and Union) has broken out of the store trade and into many finer restaurant menus. I expect that the same may happen to Peaks. Some such gustatory innovations and re-discoveries may become the basis of new chains, but others will simply supply models for local imitators elsewhere.

Meanwhile, the vanilla frozen custard at Peak's evokes poignant palate memories, but the butter pecan actually exceeds them: spectacularly tasty bites of pecan speak freshness as well as savory spice. You can also buy Oreo-cookie and chocolate, but no lemon custard, at least yet. On a cool Sunday afternoon, Peaks was packed.

It is hard to see the recession lasting long in the Puget Sound region when such sound entrepreneurial enterprises keep enlivening life's hedonistic possibilities. Sybaritic Seattle will not suffer boredom long.

Our friend Mustafa Akyol again has a wise and irenic perspective on terrorism, this time in the aftermath of the killings in Mumbai (Bombay).

I wonder if it will register with the American left now--as a Democrat of their choice is about to enter the White House--that terrorism has to be met with force? That does not mean that one loses the ability to distinguish Islamist fanatics from ordinary Muslims (as Akyol makes clear) or to give up on diplomatic efforts, even with largely extremist elements in Iran. It does mean realism and a recognition that we are not the problem, the adversary is. You would have to be a fanatic yourself to blame America for the attacks in India.