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Koran scholars wanted for elite anti-terror squad
This is interesting: When Judge Hamoud al-Hitar announced that he and four other Islamic scholars would challenge Yemen’s Al Qaeda prisoners to a theological contest, Western antiterrorism experts warned that this high-stakes gamble would end in disaster.
Nervous as he faced five captured, yet defiant, Al Qaeda members in a Sanaa prison, Judge Hitar was inclined to agree. But banishing his doubts, the youthful cleric threw down the gauntlet, in the hope of bringing peace to his troubled homeland. If you can convince us that your ideas are justified by the Koran, then we will join you in your struggle," Hitar told the militants. "But if we succeed in convincing you of our ideas, then you must agree to renounce violence."
The prisoners eagerly agreed.
Now, two years later, not only have those prisoners been released, but a relative peace reigns in Yemen. And the same Western experts who doubted this experiment are courting Hitar, eager to hear how his "theological dialogues" with captured Islamic militants have helped pacify this wild and mountainous country, previously seen by the US as a failed state, like Iraq and Afghanistan.
"Since December 2002, when the first round of the dialogues ended, there have been no terrorist attacks here, even though many people thought that Yemen would become terror’s capital," says Hitar, eyes glinting shrewdly from beneath his emerald-green turban. "Three hundred and sixty-four young men have been released after going through the dialogues and none of these have left Yemen to fight anywhere else." Of course, you have to catch ’em first. Read the whole thing. Hat tip:
Jeremy Lott at Get Religion.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [4] | 2/8/2005 2:19 PM
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Howard Dean is it
Howard Dean is now the only candidate for DNC Chairman. Tim Roemer has withdrawn. He offered this warning to Democrats:
"I got into this race five weeks ago to talk about the devastating loss we experienced in November. It was not about 60,000 votes in Ohio. It was about losing 97 of the 100 fastest growing counties in the country. If that’s a trend in business or politics you’re in trouble." Roemer also said that Republicans are in the strongest position they’ve been in since the early 20th century. He is right.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [3] | 2/8/2005 10:43 AM
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The Nation article
I read the Nation article about which Joseph Knippenberg blogged. His characterization of it is wrong. Most of what it says is accurate, although it, like Knippenberg, misses the point. The issue in the founding was not the status of religion but the status of revealed religion or religion beyond the bounds of reason. It is undeniable, I think, that the Founding was at best neutral to revealed religion. Religion as subordinate to the needs of politics, what Knippenberg’s snippet from the Farewell Address discusses, was fine with the Founders but that is religion within the bounds of reason. It was not revealed religion, which is always some particular religion. Anyone is free to follow particular religions, according to the Founding, but none has any political authority. Madison in fact wanted lots of sects, as he called them, so that they would counteract one another. As a historical and political fact, the Founders’ understanding of religion turned out to be wrong. This is not my opinion but that of John Quincy Adams, who, unlike the Founders he knew personally, was an orthodox Christian.
Posted by David Tucker | Link to this Entry | Comments [619] | 2/8/2005 1:48 AM
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The Nation strikes again
Some time ago, I took up for Jim Wallis against the onslaughts of Katha Pollitt. His crime? Taking religion too seriously, which would bring back the Spanish Inquisition or the wars of religion. Now The Nation is at it again, publishing a crude farrago, consisting mostly of snippets and quotations from Washington, Madison, Franklin, Jefferson, Tom Paine, and John Adams, all in an effort to expose the Bush Administration’s "lie" that America was founded on Christian principles. I must have missed something, since I don’t recall the President having made such a claim. Or is Brooke Allen taking as her point of departure the oft-repeated claim that liberty is God’s gift to humankind and making it much more robustly sectarian than it is. (Indeed, it would be ironic to invoke, as she does, Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, against this notion.) Ann Althouse begins the demolition of Allen’s argument by noting that many of the Madison quotes are wrenched out of context from his "Memorial and Remonstrance," hardly an anti-religious work. I’ll add my two cents’ worth by noting Washington’s "Farewell Address": Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, Religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism who should labour to subvert these great Pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that National morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle. ’Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free Government. Who that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric. I could go on at great length, but I’ll cite only one additional piece of evidence, a provision of
the "Northwest Ordinance", passed under the Articles of Confederation and repassed by the First Congress, which had a high proportion of constitution signatories: Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged. Allen is surely right that some of the Founders were not conventionally religious men, but many more were. And even some of the "godless" founders thought that religion had an important public role to play. Hence the First Amendment enjoined the establishment of a national religion, but did not operate in any way, shape, or form to disestablish state religions. I think that it’s important to have a debate on the role of religion in American public life, but the folks at The Nation need to do more homework before they can hold up their end of the argument credibly. By the way, most of the documents I cited in this post can be found on this totally wonderful Ashbrook site. Update: Ramesh Ponnuru can’t remember examples of the Bushian political rhetoric of which Brooke Allen complains either. And please see my response to David Tucker’s post. I don’t think we’re as far apart as he thinks.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 2/7/2005 9:45 PM
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Why I love my job
Today was a good day. In my morning class on "Moral and Political Leadership," we were discussing Abraham Lincoln, relying on William Lee Miller’s very fine Lincoln’s Virtues. Taking as our point of departure Miller’s treatments of Lincoln’s stance on the Mexican-American War (ch. 7) and his role in the 1848 election (ch. 8), we worked toward a distinction between two different moral roles in political life--prophetic witness and statesmanship. Since both episodes in Lincoln’s life have close contemporary parallels, making a case for their relevance wasn’t too terribly difficult. Since there is an awful lot of talk in contemporary religious circles about the role of the church in offering prophetic witness--speaking truth to power and letting the chips fall where they may (relying, in other words, on Providence)--I left my students with the following questions. Statesmen, who are responsible for the ongoing welfare, security, and prosperity of their communities, have to care about the consequences of their actions. They have to make decisions based upon moral principle, the best information they have available, and their best estimates of how others will respond to their actions. And as new situations emerge, they have to re-evaluate. A prophet called by God has a responsibility only to utter the word of the Lord. But how does the prophet know that he or she is called? How do we know that the prophet is called? How frequently is prophetic witness an explicitly and self-consciously political stance, in which case the same strictures regarding information, reactions, and consequences would seem to apply? In other words, is there really a sustainable distinction between prophetic witness and statesmanship, assuming that those who inhabit both roles are moral actors? And then there was my afternoon class on "Liberal Education and Political Philosophy," in which we were supposed to get to Allan Bloom’s The Closing of the American Mind, but continued a discussion (begun last week) of Leo Strauss’s "Liberal Education and Responsibility" (from Liberalism Ancient and Modern). The issue I pressed my students on is the very "political" nature of Strauss’s presentation of the role of liberal education, as he addresses himself to people living in democratic times and treats specifically of the role of liberally educated people in a democracy. Why can’t we have an "aristocracy of everyone"? Why can’t we realize Marx’s vision in The German Ideology, where everyone is a hunter in the morning, a fisherman in the afternoon, and a critical critic after dinner, i.e., where everyone acts in effect like a liberally educated person with leisure? And if we can’t realize these goals, then why shouldn’t we do the just thing and offer everyone the same "mediocre" education? How can we "justify" offering some an excellent (liberal) education that isn’t available to everyone? How can people so educated profit those who don’t share in their education? Fun stuff that makes students’ heads hurt.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [5] | 2/7/2005 8:49 PM
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D’Souza Defends Lincoln from the Right and the Left
In American History magazine (April 2005), Dinesh D’Souza (now residing at the Hoover Institution as their Rishwain Scholar) has written an excellent defense of Lincoln for those unaware of the attacks Lincoln has received recently from the Libertarian and Southern Agrarian Right and the Liberal Left. "Abraham Lincoln as Statesman" argues that Lincoln’s greatness derives from his profound understanding of, and maneuvering within, the American tension between the equality of rights possessed by all human beings and the consent of the governed that produces legitimate political action. Here’s a teaser from the end of the article: Lincoln was acutely aware that many people in the North were vehemently antiblack and saw themselves as fighting to save their country rather than to free slaves. Lincoln framed the case against the Confederacy in terms of saving the Union in order to maintain his coalition--a coalition whose victory was essential to the antislavery cause. And ultimately it was because of Lincoln that slavery came to an end...
In my view, Lincoln was the true "philosophical statesman," one who was truly good and truly wise. Standing in front of his critics, Lincoln is a colossus, and all of the Lilliputian arrows hurled at him bounce harmlessly to the ground. It is hard to put any other president--not even George Washington--in the same category as Abraham Lincoln. He is simply the greatest practitioner of democratic statesmanship that America and the world have yet produced.
Posted by Lucas Morel | Link to this Entry | Comments [13] | 2/7/2005 3:32 PM
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Reagan’s birthday
Criag Shirley’s book, Reagan’s Revolution: The Untold Story of the Campaign that Started it All, just landed on my desk and I was reminded that yesterday was Reagan’s birthday. Normally, that is, when I was younger, I would remember. Sorry about that. Shirley’s book looks pretty good, it recounts how Reagan almost won the nomination in 1976. When notified that Reagan had picked the liberal Republican Senator Schweiker as his running mate (were he to get the nomination) Congressman John Ashbrook, according to Shirley, said that "was the dumbest thing I ever heard." He also said, according to Jeff Bell, who was deputized to tell Ashbrook who the choice was, "You can tell him that he [Reagan] can go plumb f___ himself." No one ever doubted where Ashbrook stood. Anyway, a belated Happy Birthday to the Gipper!
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments | 2/7/2005 2:59 PM
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Semper fi, General Mattis
Both Ralph Peters and Mac Owens have opinions about Lt. Gen. Jim Mattis’ comment on a panel discussing the future of war (Peters was on the panel and Owens is a Marine) when he said Actually, it’s a lot of fun to fight. You know, it’s a hell of a hoot… It’s fun to shoot some people. I’ll be right upfront with you, I like brawling… You go into Afghanistan, you got guys who slap women around for five years because they didn’t wear a veil. You know, guys like that ain’t got no manhood left anyway. So it’s a hell of a lot of fun to shoot them.
Now, you can read their comments on your own; they’re both tried and true men. You don’t really need my opinion on this one. Yet, I will just say this: It is good that our military is under civilian control and it is good that we have warriors in our military who understand that war is a harsh teacher and who understand that it is best of our enemy to say of us, "it is a terrible thing to fight the Americans." And it should be added, this is true even though the Americans are not Spartans. And yet, we should not do as the Ancient Greeks did: Elect our generals, or, discard them, exile them, indict them, or fine them, over almost nothing, even less than the great Greek generals Miltiades, Themosticles, Percicles, Alcibiades, and Epaminondas were. And certainly we cannot have the MSM or CAIR play the judge, jury and executioner of those who are willing to bleed for us. The General spoke honestly. He thought he was speaking to warriors; that’s what he is used to. Imprudent, maybe, but no crime. I note in passing that the Budweiser commercial of soldiers getting off a plane, being appluaded by civilians, slowly coming to that recognition and smiling, was the best ad during the Super Bowl yesterday, according to polls. The Americans, though not Spartans, recognize the cruelty of war, as well as the need for honor. But then, the American citizen is not the MSM or CAIR, thank God.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [17] | 2/7/2005 2:19 PM
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Bill Clinton on Social Security
Bill Clinton in 2002:
When I left office, there was enough money to keep Social Security going till 2053, enough money to keep Medicare going tail 2027, through half the life of the baby boomers. I don’t know what the latest numbers are going to show but they won’t be good. If we don’t modify the tax cut to have more tax cuts now but we reinstate fiscal responsibility over the long run, we’re going to be in real trouble there. So, what’s our option? If you don’t like privatizing Social Security and I don’t like it very much, but you want to do something to try to increase the rate of return, what are your options? Well one thing you could do is to give people one or two percent of the payroll tax, with the same options that Federal employees have with their retirement accounts; where you have three mutual funds that almost always perform as well or better than the market and a fourth option to buy government bonds, so you get the guaranteed social security return and a hundred percent safety just like you have with Social Security. (via Instapundit)
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments | 2/7/2005 1:45 PM
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Movement toward Mideast peace
The White House is downplaying expectations that the invitations to both Sharon and Abbas to come to Washington this Spring (separately) will lead to peace. And they should play down such expectations. Yet, the movement toward a serious settlement is clearly on the way. Condi Rice didn’t visit with both men for nothing. The first steps have been taken. All this, of course, has to do with my prediction about Bush’s Nobel Peace Prize. My note of a few weeks ago seemed to anger a lot of people, both on the left and right. Some have misunderstood me. Let me be clear. I do not care anything about the Nobel Peace Prize. I don’t think Bush does, either. I said Bush would get it only to point to something obvious: Even the left, and the international left, even the MSM, and every other (well, almost every other) Bush hater will have to admit at a certain point (probably three years away, meybe less) that Bush might merit the Prize, if it were based on merit. Therefore, chances are very good that he will get it, if the world were just. If the Prize were based on merit he will end up getting it. That’s all I meant. Although it has to be admitted--the way the world works and all--that Jimmy Carter may get another one for his books of poems, or, that Bill Clinton will get one for helping the Tsunami victims. I hope you get it.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 2/7/2005 11:46 AM
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Blog power
Yesterday I posted on an interesting article on evangelical environmentalism. This morning I updated it to take into account Powerline’s takedown of Bill Moyers’ sloppy effort to discredit religious conservatives on environmental grounds. While I can’t at the moment take credit for Powerline’s having noticed that the WaPo article repeated Moyers’ smear of James Watt (I did send them an email, but any number of their other faithful readers might have done the same), Hindrocket updated his post and indicated that he had asked WaPo to run a correction. Roughly fifteen minutes ago, I emailed Blaine Harden, the WaPo reporter, asking if there was any evidence to corroborate the Watt story. Within five minutes, I received a reply that the quote was a phony and that the Post will be running a correction tomorrow. Checks and balances, folks. Wish we didn’t need them. Very glad we have them. Update: Bill Moyers has apologized to James Watt on the telephone and will think about ways to publicize a written apology. Enough said. Update #2: But wait, there’s more. Bill Moyers isn’t as repentant as I had originally thought.
Posted by Joseph Knippenberg | Link to this Entry | Comments [4] | 2/7/2005 1:15 PM
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No Left Turns Mug Drawing Winners for January
Congratulations to this month’s winners of a No Left Turns mug! The winners are as follows: Luke Vogt
Barbara Heran
Lori Hahn
Donald F. Hawbaker
John Rice
Thanks to all who entered. An email has been sent to the winners. If you are listed as a winner and did not receive an email, contact Ben Kunkel. If you didn’t win this month, enter February’s drawing.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 2/7/2005 9:00 AM
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Bush’s reading
Elizabeth Bumiller on on President Bush’s reading habits. She emphasizes that he has read I am Charlotte Simmons and is recommending it to friends, but she doesn’t understand why.
Also note that he has been reading Oswald Chambers. Ken Masugi understands why Bush has been reading Wolfe:
Charlotte Simmons in fact is a major work on moral and intellectual decline, the corruption of the youth, and the complicity of America’s intellectual class in this rot. That observation the President surely appreciates. Those who argue that Bush is anti-intellectual are more right than they know.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 2/7/2005 8:02 AM
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Sophistry vs. education
John Moser’s reference to the current issue of The Atlantic reminds me that a week or so ago he noted an article by Walter Kirn, "Lost in the Meritocracy," which was not available on line. I got a copy and read it. John’s right. It is a great article about the difference between sophistry and education. Very much worth reading, I recommend it as well.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [1] | 2/6/2005 4:53 PM
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The Crimes of Saddam Hussein
In this month’s issue of The Atlantic there is an article by William Langewiesche, who back in the summer of 2002 had a series on 9/11 that was absolutely incredible. Anyway, this month’s piece, "The Accuser" (sorry, access is by subscription only) deals with Hania Mufti, the Jordanian human rights activist who since the early 1980s tracked the atrocities carried out by Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq. It is not for the faint of heart, and I imagine makes particularly uncomfortable reading for those who argued that the Iraq War was unjust. When I asked her [i.e., Mufti] what she had felt in Kurdistan during the lead-up to the invasion, she did not answer for herself but described the concern of the people around her. They were worried that international opposition to the war might cause Britain and the United States to hesitate, or back down. She said, "The question about whether there were weapons of mass destruction or not, I think for many Iraqis that was just a red herring. It didn’t matter whether they were found. And there were all these antiwar demonstrations being shown on television, in Europe and the States, and elsewhere in the Middle East. And I remember sitting with various groups of Kurds watching the news, and they’d look at the TV screen and gesture in this way"—she waved her hand dismissively—"and they’d say, ’These people don’t know what they’re talking about. They should come here and try Saddam for a while, and see whether or not they like it for themselves.’"
Posted by John Moser | Link to this Entry | Comments [3] | 2/6/2005 4:41 PM
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Ten worst Super Bowl moments
Fox Sports lists the ten worst Super Bowl moments. Number one is this:
It’s still the only last-minute, game-winning field goal attempt that’s ever been missed. Jim O’Brien and Adam Vinatieri and ... Adam Vinatieri all made theirs. And those three kicks all came with the score tied. But not only did poor Scott Norwood miss wide right, but his team trailed by one, meaning the miss was the difference between winning and losing, not between winning and OT as with the others.
The important thing, though, is that coach Marv Levy’s crazily conservative play-calling that left Norwood with a 47-yard attempt has served as an object lesson for other NFL coaches.Except apparently for Marty Schottenheimer and Herm Edwards who both got bounced from this year’s playoffs by doing the exact same thing.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments | 2/6/2005 4:36 PM
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Philip Johnson as fascist
Ann Applebaum corrects the history of Philip Johnson, the architect who recently died. He was hailed as a brilliant architect and aesthete. It seems that most of his obituaries falied to mention that he was, effectively, a fascist. I didn’t know anyhting about this guy, just knew that I didn’t like what he built. Maybe my instinct was right. Johnson helped organize a U.S. fascist party. He worked on behalf of the Nazi sympathizer and radio broadcaster, Father Charles E. Coughlin. He attended one of Hitler’s Nuremberg rallies in 1938, and in 1939 he followed the German army into Poland. "We saw Warsaw burn and Modlin being bombed," he wrote afterward. "It was a stirring spectacle." Read it all.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments [4] | 2/6/2005 3:19 PM
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Democratic politics
John Edwards will head a University of North Carolina center that will study ways to lift people out of poverty. It is called the Center on Poverty, Work and Opportunity. But this doesn’t mean that his political career is over. Edwards was the featured speaker at the New Hampshire Democratic Party’s winter fundraising dinner yesterday. He spoke on poverty. Donnie Fowler withdrew from the DNC chairman race on Friday, and so did Simon Rosenberg. This means that Howard Dean has a lock on the Chairmanship of the DNC. Washington Whispers says that Dean admires Gingrich more than Bill Clinton. The latter brough defeat on Democrats, while Gingrich "created a real success for the right wing."
Todd Purdum walks us through how Dean reinvented himself, was able to persuade fellow Demos that he is not a nut job by talking to them one-on-one. You will also note that he has promised not to run for president in 2008. So, we will have an uneasy alliance between Hillary and Dean. It should be interesting. But Michael Goodwin thinks this could be death of the Democratic Party. In public, there is silence from those who know that Dean will take the party over the cliff and into an abyss of fringe liberalism that has no foundation in the American populace. Dean and the extremists he represents shouldn’t even be allowed to call themselves Democrats. Deaniacs is what they are.
Posted by Peter Schramm | Link to this Entry | Comments | 2/6/2005 2:53 PM
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