The estimable Professor Friedman (to whom I wish a happy new year) calls our attention to this survey, described in this press release. Those affiliated with the First Amendment Center wring their hands over the percentage of respondents who regard the U.S. as a Christian nation and would permit, for example, teachers to lead prayers. I’d focus on the overwhelming support for the freedom to practice one’s own religion (97% say it’s "essential" or "important") or to practice no religion (89%), though (to be sure) only 56% believe that the freedom of religion applies to all groups and 28% believe that fringe groups shouldn’t enjoy that freedom. 60% of respondents agree that "people should be allowed to say things in public that might be offensive to religious groups," up from 46% in the 2000 survey. Whatever the respondents mean when they say "Christian nation," it’s a far cry from a theocracy. I also suspect that the "fringe groups" that the respondents had in mind are not Buddhists or Hindus.

I’m actually more troubled by other responses. For example, while 64% of the respondents could identify freedom of speech as part of the First Amendment, less than 20% could name any other specific right listed. Furthermore, despite the focus on freedom on speech in this particular snapshot of the public mind, 62% of respondents strongly or mildly agree that the government ought to be able to restrict the amount of money a candidate contributes to his or her own campaign; and 64% agree--strongly or mildly--that the government "should be able to place restrictions on the amount of money a private individual can contribute to someone else’s election campaign." Equality trumps liberty here.

And then there’s this: while 57% of the respondents don’t think that government content regulation of television should be extended to cable and sattelite systems, slightly over 60% strongly or mildly support some version of the fairness doctrine, even applied to newspapers. I can only hope that the explanation for this willingness to support the abrogation of the freedom of the press is connected with the perception, held by roughly 60% of the respondents, that the news media are biased in their reporting of stories and that “[t]he falsifying or making up of stories in the American news media is a widespread problem.” At least then it would be a (mistaken) response to a perceived problem, rather than mere support for a kind of paternalism.

Serendipitously today, I had contact with two former students who are both serving in the Army.

I received an email from a young man who graduated in 2000 and joined up after 9/11. He’s on his second tour in Iraq, serving this time as an advisor to the ISF. He’ll be in Atlanta next month, and I’ll share with you anything he’s willing to share with me (and the wider world).

A young woman--currently in the reserves while finishing up law school--visited with a class (after which we had lunch). She has the opportunity, while in law school, to do some work on the Hamdan case, working with this professor. I’m not fully in agreement with what I know of her views on the case, but I respect her immensely, both for her willingness to serve in the military (eventually as a reserve JAG officer) and to take serious and principled positions that might well not be popular with some of her military colleagues. She made a tough choice in school (Oglethorpe isn’t exactly overrun with ROTC students) and another one now.

Claremont’s John J. Pitney calls our attention to a very, very widely reported study that, in the words of its authors, concludes:

Political scientists and psychologists have noted that, on average, conservatives show more structured and persistent cognitive styles, whereas liberals are more responsive to informational complexity, ambiguity and novelty. We tested the hypothesis that these profiles relate to differences in general neurocognitive functioning using event-related potentials, and found that greater liberalism was associated with stronger conflict-related anterior cingulate activity, suggesting greater neurocognitive sensitivity to cues for altering a habitual response pattern.

In other words, self-described "liberals" (among the 43 college students tested) are more responsive to changes in stimuli than are self-described conservatives.

This will surely, and has already, led to all sorts of liberal triumphalism about how liberals are "smarter," more open to ambiguity, and more willing to change as circumstances change than are conservatives. Of course, this presumes (as the authors would have us presume) that the change in stimulus is connected with a real-world event. It could also be a change in mere appearances or a change that isn’t itself central to the phenomenon on which we’re supposed to focus. And, even if the events are "real," Aristotle long ago noted that willingness to change may be a virtue in "science" without being a virtue in politics.

Another implication of this research is that "liberal" and "conservative" dispositions may, in a sense, be "hard-wired." We’re liberal or conservative--more precisely, more or less open to change--not because we’re persuaded by argument, but because of the way our brains work. I guess we can all stop arguing.

But seriously, this line of analysis would seem to make it easier to explain how one-time conservatives become liberal (they are exposed to evidence that their brain functions predisposed them to respond to) than how one-time liberals become conservative. It also would seem to have a hard time explaining how some "liberal" politicians stuck with old policy prescriptions that had apparently been discredited by the evidence. Or might it be the case that people with "liberal brains" are "conservatives" in the face of an entrenched "liberal" orthodoxy?

One last point: one of the principal authors has spent a lot of time studying the social psychology of conservatism, attracting the attention of The New Atlantis with this piece, and defending himself here. He also summarizes some of his work here. I wasn’t shocked to learn that he’d made a modest donation to HRC in 2005; he’s just wired that way.

The Israelis apparently conducted a major operation against Syria in recent days, but since there is no video, we aren’t hearing anything about it in the American press. Bears watching. Warm-up for a raid on Iranian nuke facilities?

Here’s the latest Pew poll (pdf form here; the questionnaire is here), focusing on the religion of the candidates and of the respondents.

Note that the presumptive frontrunners from New York are regarded as the least religious of the major candidates (the respondents are probably correct about RG, but not about HRC, who is a garden-variety liberal Methodist). Of course, those who are more suspicious of her religiosity are disinclined to like her on any ground; they just can’t believe that she’s got faith in anything other than herself. The report’s authors note that religiosity has a positive valence: those who regard a candidate as religious tend to like that candidate. But that may get the order of causality wrong; at least for a certain proportion of the people, the affection precedes the ascription of religiosity. In other words, for many people the candidate’s religiosity isn’t the first thing they look for, and they don’t look too closely in any event.

Allow me to draw a conclusion about this for HRC: emphasizing her religiosity isn’t going to help her with the faith-based anybody-but-Hillary crowd. With others, if she can overcome the challenge of likeability, she doesn’t need to stress religion; if they come to like her, they’ll by and large think of her as "religious enough."

It’s also noteworthy that in August 2007, more people perceive the Democrats as unfriendly to religion than in August 2004, when John Kerry was displaying his incredible ineptitude at appealing to religious voters. The concerted efforts to portray the party as "faith-friendly" don’t appear to be working very well.

Thanks to Peter for linking to my piece on 9/11 and the meaning of victory against the "new " terrorism.

I thought I would share this post to NRO’s military blog, The Tank, regarding my impression of yesterday’s Petraeus/Crocker hearing.

As I watched Gen. Petraeus and Amb. Crocker field questions during the House hearing yesterday, I was reminded of a personal experience. As a young Marine captain, I was assigned to the US Army Field Artillery School to teach artillery tactics. My mentor there was an Army captain who remains the best teacher I have ever known. Before I actually got to teach, I observed my mentor as he took a class of brand new lieutenants through the course. During one session, a student asked him a question. I’ll never forget Howard’s reply. "Lieutenant, we all know that there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but I want you to know that yours is the closest to one I have ever heard."

Today is six years after the event that, even if we will otherwise, can’t leave behind us simply as a memory. I was in class when someone ran in and told us that something was going on. We ran to a TV and started watching right after the first plane hit. I didn’t understand. I remember the confusion and the tears of students when it became, somehow, clear to everyone that this was an attack. Someone pointed to spots on the screen that seemed to be falling from the still-standing buildings. It was breath-taking when we realized that they were people jumping from the burning buildings. Hearts stopped and grown men wept. That’s when I realized that I probably would not have made a good general.

I saw some of Petreus’(and Crocker’s) testimony yesterday, and there was more today which I haven’t seen. There is no need to re-work the political jockying and the short and self-serving speeches by politicians (or the screech of the MoveOn.org crowd). I merely want to say that I am impressed by the general’s seriousness, and am glad he is in charge of operations (and too bad he wasn’t fully in charge at the start of things). His careful articulation of the situation as it is now and the possibilities were good, and hopeful (and not utopian). Also prudent. Make some bow to getting some Marines out pretty quickly and then some soldiers, this gives everyone a little room for movement (and rhetoric) and allows him some six months to get back to work. Congress will not be able to prevent that; the withdrawal debate will be cut short. And that is all good. I do hope we don’t pretend to be Athenians and treat him as one of our generals who has displeased us. I think the American people are too sensible for that. And I am grateful.

Congratulations to this month’s winners of a No Left Turns mug! The winners are as follows:

Ben Robinson
Ivan Kenneally
Stacy Maxey
Ken Limmer
Emilia Rose Kette

Quite a number of NLT discussants are incensed over my post blow, The NYT Speaks: Osama Listens. (See the comments thread.) Well, they better fire up their indignation engines for David Brooks’ comments on the New Hour the other night:

But you read this thing, and it’s like he’s been sitting around reading lefty blogs, and he’s one of these childish people posting rants at the bottom the page, you know, Noam Chomsky and all this stuff.

You can’t help read it and not laugh at it, occasionally, because it is just absurd. It’s flying this way, and that way, weird conspiracy theories, and mortgages, global warming. He throws it all in there.

The one thing that leapt out -- and Bruce Hoffman and the others mentioned this -- was how Western it is. And a friend of mine, Reuel Gerecht, points out that there’s this argument that Western ideas never permeated into the Arab world, but in fact it’s all -- I mean, a lot of the worst ideas from the West have permeated in, and he’s picked up Noam Chomsky, and he’s picked up some of the anti-globalization stuff. And that’s what infuses this.

I’ve been neglecting my duties as NLT’s wine and food editor for months now, and the news gets worse, as I am on a diet and have given up all alcohol for a while. But I did stumble on a great new Paso Robles area winery over the summer that is worth ordering from (if your state allows shipments, as most now do): Denner Vineyards.

Back during the Cold War, and especially in the 1980s, you could pick up the editorial page of the New York Times and the news/editorials of Pravda, and you couldn’t tell the difference. (Sometimes Pravda would save its own writers the bother and just quote the western press for denunciations of the United States.) And Soviets always seemed to take their talking points for summits with Reagan from the American left. Gorbachev, for instance, in his first meeting with Reagan tried out the feminist chestnut that "by law" women in the U.S. could only make 60 cents for each dollar a man earned. This should have been embarrassing to the left, but wasn’t of course.

So says Peggy Noonan about the now not-so-distant (though seemingly endless) primary campaign. This week, she argues, belonged to the Republicans between the debate and Fred Thompson’s long-awaited entry into the race. She seems underwhelmed by both Romney and Thompson for now, however, and says Guiliani needs to start showing us that he’s thoughtful (rather than simply indignant) about foreign policy. McCain--now that he’s seen to be less dangerous--draws out some justly deserved praise and the whole field is rightly admonished to stop snickering at Ron Paul. She argues: "When a thousand Republicans are in a room and one man of the eight on the stage takes a sharply minority viewpoint on a dramatic issue and half the room seems to cheer him, something’s going on." Huckabee, alone, seems to earn her unqualified praise. She wonders why he is not top-tier and wistfully speculates, "Maybe he is and we don’t know it."