I note with interest that even the New York Times understands that the Bush administration deserves credit for the European Union’s turnabout on its plans to lift its arms embargo on China. Today’s NYTimes article notes that "European diplomats cited China’s newly adopted antisecession law and intense American opposition to easing restraints on weapons sales to explain the shift. The Chinese law adopted this month threatens military action if Taiwan pursues formal independence from the mainland."

And then this:

But sentiment shifted after President Bush visited Europe in February, where he lobbied against the lifting of the embargo while also backing a highly restrictive code of conduct on arms sales to replace it. Congress has appeared ready to increase the stakes, threatening to punish any European companies that sell arms to China and seek defense business in the United States. Though European officials cited the antisecession law as the reason for maintaining the embargo for the immediate future, some Chinese analysts say it was the United States that played the decisive hand.

Jay Mathews has a smart column in today’s WaPo. He quotes, among others, John West, with whom he disagrees. Which is what makes the column smart.

Let me explain. Mathews’ big point is that by actually addressing the controversy between proponents of I.D. and evolution in biology classes, students would become better, more self-conscious scientists. The material would be more engaging, and students would be compelled to think both about the big issues underlying all of science (and all of life) and about the ways in which scientific theories are developed and disproven. This is what would make a science class something other than indoctrination, i.e., the propounding of a doctrine simply asserted to be true.

Since I think that people become more self-conscious and better informed adherents of their positions when they are "compelled" to think through the challenges to them, I find Mathews’ position quite congenial. Most of my students come into my classes as vaguely Lockeian liberals (that is, they know they have rights). We read Locke, but we also read the thinkers against whom Locke as reacting (like Aristotle and Aquinas, to name just two), and we read those who criticize Locke (like Rousseau). They leave the class having a much better sense of what’s at stake in thinking they have rights, as well as a better sense of what might be missing from a "purely Lockeian" vision of the world. Even if they remain Lockeian (most of them do), they’re more thoughtful and self-critical Lockeians. I’d rather have folks who can intelligently defend Locke’s views (even if their convictions are less passionate and more "nuanced"--a word I use with some trepidation since John Kerry so debased its currency) than folks who can simply and passionately repeat slogans.

This interview with Michael Dukakis (remember him?) might be worth a glance. Note his comments on grassroots campaigning. At first sight it seems, well Karl Rove-like and sensible, and then he confuses real mano-a-mano politics with internet fundraising. He is asked what he thought of Kerry’s campaign:

I think the one great missing piece in this campaign, and it’s something that we Democrats have got to get serious about at every level, was that we still aren’t doing the grassroots job the way it has to be done. I happen to be a product of grassroots campaigning, grassroots organization. I wouldn’t have been elected dogcatcher in my state had it not been for that. When I’m talking about grassroots organization, I’m not talking about parachuting kids in with two weeks to go from seven states over. I’m talking about a precinct organization with a precinct captain in every precinct and block captains – maybe a half a dozen per precinct – who systematically make contact with every single voting household in that precinct, beginning early. This is not something you do in the last couple of weeks. You have to start months in advance. And you do it on a 50-state basis. I don’t care if the state is red, blue or polka dot.

In Larger Freedom has been published. This is Kofi Annan’s proposal to reform the United Nations. The Belmont Club outlines the fat thing, and says this:

In my own opinion Kofi Annan’s proposals are a recipe for disaster for two reasons. His entire security model is philosophically founded on a kind of blackmail which recognizes that the only thing dysfunctional states have to export is trouble. He then sets up the United Nations as a gendarmarie with ’a human face’ delivering payoffs to quell disturbances. This is the "bargain whereby rich countries help the poor to develop, by promoting the Millennium Development Goals, while poor countries help alleviate rich countries’ security concerns." Second, his model flies in the face of the recent experience in Afghanistan, Iraq and the entire democratizing upheaval in the Middle East. It is by making countries functional that terrorism is quelled and not by any regime of international aid, inspections, nonproliferation treaties, declarations, protocols, conferences; nor by appointing special rapptorteurs, plenipotentiary envoys; nor constituting councils, consultative bodies or anything else in Annan’s threadbare cupboard.

I like Wretchard’s concluding paragraph:

It was a dictum in Field Marshal Zhukov’s Army that a good commander never reinforced failure only success. It is a maxim of the United Nations that progress is achieved by doing everything that never worked all over again. Probably nowhere is the bankruptcy of Annan’s vision (and I use that word consciously) more evident than in Paragraph 29, where he lays out the UN vision for a better world. It is a laundry list of all the special interest ’development’ goals the UN has acquired over the years where problems of different orders of magnitude and positions in the chain of causality are jumbled together; a bureaucrat’s dream and a human being’s nightmare.

Michael C. Dorf’s column contains much that is sensible, but then he invokes the ghost of John Rawls and conjures up fears of religious warfare and persecution.

Having argued persuasively that we can’t really impeach a person’s (religious) motive for supporting a particular piece of legislation, he nonethless insists that "in a pluralistic society like ours, it is fair to demand that our laws be justifiable by reference to secular ends and means." I won’t quarrel with the argument that government may pursue only secular ends, but why must the argument in defense of the secular end be a secular argument? And why must the means be secular? Why not a level playing field, offering support for both religious and secular means of addressing secular problems?

Dorf’s response to this line of argument is to point to the good old slippery slope:

what the objection overlooks is the reason we as a society have for trying to prevent public policy debates from becoming competitions between different religious sects. As the framers of our Constitution and Bill of Rights well knew, history teaches that societies in which political divisions track religious ones frequently descend into bloodletting. And sadly, our own era provides no shortage of further examples.

Of course, I do not suggest that the injection of religious arguments into American politics by evangelicals or others will plunge us immediately into a religious civil war. But the abundant lessons of the past and present do provide reasons to be wary of even the first step down that path.

Joe asks me to weigh in, so I shall. Yes, there are some striking parallels between Reagan and Carter’s idealism, especially on wanting to abolish nuclear weapons. The fundamental difference in their statecraft, though, is that Carter approached the world through a Kantian moral framework, while Reagan was more Aristotelian; that is to say, Reagan had great practical judgment where Carter had none. And look whose approach succeeded, and whose didn’t.

I am reviewing the Gil Troy book on Reagan and the 1980s shortly in The Weekly Standard, and I won’t give away much here, except to say: I really don’t like it. Stay tuned for the review.

Philip Jenkins is a bold man, arguing in his review of this book that we exaggerate the differences between Ronald Reagan and his predecessor:

just how different was Reagan from his predecessor? In terms of popular memory, the contrast seems absurd: the Gipper versus the Wimp. But Carter and Reagan had much in common. Carter was more conservative than is often recalled, and Reagan more liberal. On issues of gender and morality, Reagan had a distinctly moderate record, having endorsed the ERA and opposed California’s anti-gay Briggs initiative. His two terms as governor included liberal measures on abortion rights and no-fault divorce, not to mention a fairly progressive tax policy and a respectable environmental record. At times, he looked like the kind of politician the Reaganites were warning about. The two men also shared much in their idealistic moral vision and their religious sense of national purpose. Both saw national problems in moral terms, as issues of the human heart. Neither was reluctant to invoke moral justifications for policy or to see a divine hand in political destiny, and both were attacked for religious sentiments that the secular-minded regarded as naïve or hypocritical.

Having read this book and having lived through both presidencies (not to mention much of the Carter post-presidency at first-hand here in Atlanta), I couldn’t disagree more. Carter’s moralism was much less friendly to American patriotism than was Reagan’s and his character ultimately much less generous and patient.

Powerline is suggesting the possibility that the memo described in this article may be a fake. Here’s the text of the memo; Powerline is awaiting a facsimile. And here’s an update from Powerline casting a little more doubt on the authenticity of the memo.

Are these guys gunning for the 2005 "Blog of the Year" award, hard on the heels of their orchestration of the information necessary to discredit Dan Rather’s 60 Minutes story? Note: I’m not suggesting untoward motives on the part of the Powerline guys; their skepticism is healthy and well-informed, and plays the role the press is supposed to play in a democratic republic.

I’m not surprised by E.J. Dionne’s overall argument. But this chunk is quite revealing:

Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, called an urgent meeting last week with leaders of civil rights, civil liberties, environmental and women’s groups. His message: The Senate faces a nuclear winter that could engulf them.

What emerged at that meeting was an order of battle that could mark American politics for years. Reid told the participants that he had learned from friendly Republican senators that Bill Frist, the majority leader, intended to push forward with what has come to be known as the "nuclear option," a fiddling with Senate rules that would block filibusters of judicial nominees.

And Reid warned the groups that the Republican effort to curb the rights of the Senate minority would not stop with judges. If Frist won on judges, Reid predicted, Republicans would be emboldened to roll other legislation through on narrow majority votes.

Dionne says that minority "rights" are threatened; I’d call them "interests." And the best--indeed, the truly constitutional--defense of those interests comes through the ballot box. If the Republicans overreach, if the interests they threaten are genuinely popular, then they’ll pay at the polls in 2006 and thereafter. The Democratic "constitutionalists" are so accustomed to working around inconvenient, recalcitrant, backward-looking voting majorities that they’ve forgotten the true basis of all constitutional government, the will of the people, expressed (to be sure) through the constitution (albeit not through the judges’ "policy preferences") but also through voting.

Peter Beinart argues that times have changed in the world and at the U.N.; hence the confrontational style that worked for Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, when U.N. majorities deserved a spanking, would be counterproductive now, when the U.S. actually stands a chance to build coalitions at the U.N.

There has been much talk in Washington about using the so-called "nuclear option"--a grossly misnamed procedure designed to stop the unprecedented Democratic filibuster of judicial nominees. I must admit that I have my doubts as to whether the Republicans have the intestinal fortitude to actually force a vote. After all, they never forced a "real" filibuster for any significant length of time; and they have allowed a simple rule clarification to be dubbed an apocalyptic weapon.

But Senator George Allen’s article in the Washington Times today provides some hope. He argues that the Republicans to "go for it" without timidity. Here is a taste:

As senators, we have a constitutional responsibility to give our "advice and consent" regarding the president’s judicial nominations and that responsibility is being thwarted by a minority of Democrats who don’t agree with these nominees’ ideological positions. No senator has an obligation to vote in favor of a nominee, but every senator should have the backbone to get off their haunches and vote yes or vote no on these nominees and explain their vote to their constituents.

Diana Schaub was due for some good press. Lord knows, she was lambasted by libertarians and the science lobby when President Bush appointed her (and my good friend Peter Lawler) to his Council on Bioethics.

While not quite as puffy and fluffy as this piece or as perfervid as this one, the Baltimore Sun treats her views respectfully. She’s a conservative, yes, but not particularly religious; and she’s catholic (small "c") in her sources of inspiration--looking to Abraham Lincoln and Star Trek for grist for her mill.

You can find her two most famous or infamous bioethics articles here and here.

Schaub’s most provocative statement on cloning comes from the first of those pieces:

Cloning is an evil, and cloning for the purpose of research actually exacerbates the evil by countenancing the willful destruction of nascent human life. Moreover, it proposes doing this on a mass scale, as an institutionalized and routinized undertaking to extract medical benefits for those who have greater power. It is slavery plus abortion.

Her view, it should be emphasized, doesn’t depend upon religion, though it is certainly compatible with a religious view. In that respect, she harkens back to the early rather heterodox Lincoln, who abhorred slavery as an evil long before he began to utter vaguely orthodox religious sentiments.

The second piece, on aging, is one that I read just last week, in preparation for a paper I’m writing (on Tolkien and bioethics) for this conference. She uses two Star Trek episodes to elucidate some of the issues connected with the natural (but problematical) desire to prolong our lives. Here’s a brief snippet:

Apparently, in the research conducted thus far, the most common (though not universal) side effect of age retardation is sterility or reduced fertility. It seems as if, in pursuing an ageless body, the balance between the individual and the species is altered. When we choose vastly longer life for the individual, the propagation of the species is sacrificed. The society in the Star Trek episode is a drastic rendition of the trade-off. In pursuing immortality for themselves, the residents of the planet made clear their hostility to the succession of the generations. They sought to make themselves irreplaceable.

If I may be permitted an editorial comment based upon my reading of Schaub, the Council on Bioethics materials, and Tolkien: the desire "unreasonably" to prolong life is a selfish and distorted response to our finitude, while reproduction and child-rearing are natural and ultimately "pious" responses. The former response leads us to dwell ever more intensely on ourselves; the latter to think of our responsibilities to others.