Now It's Atheist Summer Camp

Thank goodness for professional atheist Richard Dawkins. Like God, if he didn't exist we'd have to invent him.

According to Michael Deacon, Dawkins is helping inaugurate a kids' summer camp. For atheists.

Professor Richard Dawkins, the author of The God Delusion, is helping to launch Britain's first summer camp for young atheists. At Camp Quest UK, children aged eight to 17 will be given lessons in evolution and rational scepticism.

As if. As if children aged eight to 17 are not already getting lessons in evolution and rational skepticism 24-7 from their government schools, from the liberal media, from the hedonistic culture!

Actually, more fun than the article are the comments, a slug-fest between folks stuck in the Reformation and folks stuck in the French Revolution.

Not that there's anything wrong with that.

But what the atheists miss, I suspect, is that the idea of summer Bible camp that they want to compete with is to get kids out of the me-me-me culture of daily life and think a little about the higher things.

As Charles Taylor, the center-left Catholic philosopher might say: There seems to be a universal human need for something other than ordinary human flourishing. You can call that something the Higher Things, God, Genuine Democracy, Peace and Justice, the Non-dual, or even the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

But I'd say that there is something to life other than evolution and rational skepticism.

The problem is that the "something other" presents itself as an irreducible mystery, a riddle wrapped in an enigma. And so people tend to argue about it.

Duke Part Deux

Let's face it. The original Duke rape case, the white-boy lacrosse team raping an African-American stripper was too good to be true. Too good to be true for liberals.

It hit all their liberal hot buttons: South. Whites. Frat boys. Traditionally marginalized race, gender, class, etc.

The new Duke Rape Case, reported by conservative criminology prof Mike Adams, is too good to be true as well. For conservatives. Look at the ingredients

• A liberal gay social worker who's worked on "health-disparities researcher" studying HIV/AIDS in the South
• Employed by Duke University
• Accused of offering his adopted underage son for sex
  
• Accused lives in a liberal enclave "co-housing community... which emphasizes communal life"

So let's not rush to judgment, folks. Unlike our liberal friends in Duke Part One. Just because the case seems to confirm everything we suspected about what goes on behind closed liberal doors.

Especially because the case seems to confirm everything we suspected about what goes on behind closed liberal doors.

America Starts to Rumble

What's wrong with me, she asked in the email? I've got "increasingly angry," and it seems like in the Obama world WASPish values like "hard work, integrity, initiative, accountability, self-determination... have been rendered totally worthless in the blink of an eye[.]"

Reading stuff like that makes me have faith in America. You see, the United States is built upon a faith, a reckless faith, in the idea of a government of limited and specifically enumerated powers. It is built upon the notion that hard work, integrity and the rest will trump power every time. But only if you let it.

We few, we lucky few who believe in this incandescent faith, stand against almost all of history--of power, piracy, and plunder.

But this faith is not just wishful thinking. It is based on the revolution in human affairs since the rise of the commercial city.

In the countryside, land is life. You must have land to survive, and to keep land you must fight for it, or pay someone else to fight for it. In such a world power is everything, for he that does not have power does not have land, and he that does not have land does not eat.

But in the city not power but trust is king. You can only get power by serving your customers, and that power is good only as long as you continue to serve them. It is not collateral that is needed when a banker makes a loan but trust. Said J.P. Morgan, on oath: "Because a man I do not trust could not get money from me on all the bonds in Christendom."

The entire program of our lefty friends is built upon the notion that this is rubbish. Marx insisted that the history of mankind is the history of class struggle. Al Gore promised in the election of 2000 to fight for the people against the powerful. President Obama has launched the federal government upon a massive grab for power.

But we say that the spirit of democratic capitalism is that if you limit power, if you separate political power from economic power and moral/cultural power, then you will flood the world with prosperity, with liberty, and with moral elevation.

We conservatives should thank President Obama. He is helping Americans reach clarity on the power and scope of government.

He is proposing to change health care provision in this country to a system in which government experts will decide what kind of health care you will have. Do you think that is a good idea, or do you think that people should have the right to make their own decisions on the matter?

He is proposing a radical change in the way we produce and use energy with a heavy tax on fossil fuels. Do you think this is a good idea, or do you think that the social system of property and the market, under law, should be the way forward?

And let us not imagine that, if Hillary Clinton or John McCain had been elected in November 2008 that we would be in a different place today. President Obama represents the consensus of the ruling class in America, the progressive educated elite. Not surprisingly, the elite believes in elite power, and they believe that they know, based on the knowledge of the experts they have retained, that they know what is best for us.

There is another way. It is baed on the idea that no elite, no experts can know enough to know what is best for us. It is that discovery is the way forward, by individual discovery by ordinary men and women and social discovery in the marketplace. And that means learning from our mistakes. We have all the tools we need to make this system work, and they work every time they are tried. They are law, markets, prices, money, credit, equity, trust, mercy, service, "hard work, integrity, initiative, accountability, self-determination."

They worked for us before, and they will work for us again. But first we have to have the courage and the determination to take our country back.

In my judgment we are seeing already that the courageous and detemined people are already organizing to do just that.

The Hit-the-wall President

You really can't blame President Obama. It's not his fault. After all, what is the leader of the Democratic Party for?

His job is to implement the policy nostrums of the liberal world.

Right now, liberals want, in foreign policy, to negotiate rather than fight a war on terror. In health care, they want to implement their dream of a universal health care program. In energy and environment, they want to force-march the nation away from fossil fuels and towards a planet-saving renewable future.

OK. Let's check the half-time score on these liberal dreams.

In foreign policy, the negotiate-with-dictators policy is dead, as Jonah Goldberg as pointed out. The Iranian regime now has blood on its hands, the blood of the Martyr of Tehran, a beautiful young woman, Neda Salehi Agha Soltan. No American president can now negotiate with the Iranian regime, whatever his ideas on "soft power."

So the Obama foreign policy has hit the wall.

On energy and environment, the energy-tax bill is in deep trouble, and looks like it will barely make it out of the House of Representatives. It would be best for Democrats if it did stay there, because if the energy tax ever gets into law it will wreak havoc on the economy and on the political future of the Democratic Party.

So the Obama energy and environment is about to hit the wall.

On health care, President Obama made a damaging admission on TV, reported by ABC News. A physician asked him what he would do if medical care he needed for his wife and kids was disallowed by government gatekeepers.

Dr. Orrin Devinsky, a neurologist and researcher at the New York University Langone Medical Center, said that elites often propose health care solutions that limit options for the general public, secure in the knowledge that if they or their loves ones get sick, they will be able to afford the best care available, even if it's not provided by insurance.

Devinsky asked the president pointedly if he would be willing to promise that he wouldn't seek such extraordinary help for his wife or daughters if they became sick and the public plan he's proposing limited the tests or treatment they can get.

The president refused to make such a pledge, though he allowed that if "it's my family member, if it's my wife, if it's my children, if it's my grandmother, I always want them to get the very best care.

Er, just a moment, Mr. President. Isn't that game, set, and match? The whole point of the Obama plan is to impose government rationing. It has to do that if it refuses to ration by price. But if rich Democrats can dodge the limits, then where's the justice, where's the equity?

So the Obama health care policy is hitting the wall.

So it looks as though the Obama administration is hitting the wall on three separate signature issues.

I've always said that this is why we needed the Obama administration. The only way America is going to get beyond the folly of liberal ideas and liberal policies is when they hit the wall.

We've tried being nice about it. We've tried a national conversation on the issues. But we have found out that liberals just won't listen.

So now we've got to do it the hard way.

And by the way, the score still isn't in on the Obama administration's economic policy. Remember this. When the economy last hit the wall in 1980-82, the policy of the Reagan administration was to cut spending and cut tax rates. The policy of the Obama administration is the exact opposite. Increase spending and increase taxes.

I'd say that both policies can't be right.

How They Treat the Servants

Even in these modern days, you still want to know if you can trust someone. The trouble is that you can't tell from outward appearance. And you can't tell a dog when it's out hunting. You can only tell when it's being hunted.

Of course. some people tell you all about themselves even when they are out hunting. They mistreat the servants. We've had occasion to visit this subject before.

Agatha Christie has a memorable commentary on that in her Autobiography. A friend was visiting Agatha as a girl and behaved rudely to a servant. Never treat a servant like that, the girl was told. Servants are professionals and they work hard. And because of their position, servants cannot talk back.

So when we read about Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) humiliating a Brigadier-general in the armed forces of the United States, we know what to think. The brigadier answered her as "ma'am" according to the culture of the military, where all superiors are "sir" or "ma'am."

But that wasn't good enough for the senator, as reported by Fox News.

"You know, do me a favor," an irritated Boxer said. "Could say 'senator' instead of 'ma'am?'"

"Yes, ma'am," Walsh interjected.

"It's just a thing, I worked so hard to get that title, so I'd appreciate it, yes, thank you," she said.

"Yes, senator," he responded.

Now you know all you need to know about Senator Barbara Boxer.

Because now you know how she treats the help.

Two Welfare States, Both Heading for Ruin

There are two welfare states in America, according to Robrt J. Samuelson. Both of them promised more than they could deliver.

Broadly speaking, the U.S. welfare system divides into two parts -- the private, run by firms; and the public, provided by government. Both are besieged: private companies by competitive pressures; government by rising debt and taxes.

GM is your typical private welfare state, and it is in ruins. The public welfare state will end up in ruins. But its collapse is still in the future.

We've known that the GM welfare state was bound to collapse--for nigh on 25 years. It was pretty easy to figure out what had to be done. In fact other corporations are doing it. They are abandoning defined-benefit pension plans and retiree health care. But the UAW had the power to stop that kind of reform. It had the power because the Democratic Party backed it up.

On this view, you can see that the Obama administration has done the sensible thing with GM and Chrysler. It has given them to the UAW. If the UAW loots them before their members die off, well, they have only themselves to blame.

The same scenario seems likely to play out with the government's public welfare state.

The U.S. welfare state is weakening; insecurity is rising. The sensible thing would be to decide which forms of public welfare are needed to protect the vulnerable and to begin paring others.

But we probably won't do the sensible thing because liberals are powerful enough to stop us. Anyway, you think that all the people who have gotten benefits over the years are going to give them up for the sake of the greater good?

It's a pity, isn't it. The people that will be hurt by this will be the people, the Democratic faithful, that put their trust in the government. "Put not your trust in princes:" That comes from Psalm 146. Presumably politicians were just as two-faced then as now.

Meanwhile the job for conservatives is to develop the ideas and the reforms that will be needed in the post-welfare state. And where we can, in the here and now, we should push through reforms that will help mitigate the awful suffering of the government program beneficiaries, after the Fall.

None of this is rocket science. We know exactly what needs to be done. No more government pensions. No more government health care. No more government education. No more government welfare.

But wait, you say! What will happen to the poor and the vulnerable if there are no government programs to take care of them?

How about this? They will be better off in the conservative sociable state than in the cruel, corrupt, unjust, wasteful, and deluded welfare state.

Not Really Too Smart

At the six-month checkpoint in the Obama adminstration, Michael Barone has a few thoughts.

1. Obama is a long-range strategy guy who is flummoxed by events that threaten the plan.
2. Obama leaves the details to others (e.g., Congress)
3. Obama thinks Chicago-style that "there will always be a bounteous private sector that can be plundered endlessly on behalf of political favorites."

To me, this is a recipe for disaster, and it shows that the Obama people really aren't that smart.

First, the long-range strategy, to grow government. It may not be obvious to people inside the liberal bubble, but the century-long expansion of government, already complained about by Herbert Spencer in the 1880s, is about over. Growing government is the natural thing for a politician to do, but it also creates opposition. The century-long ascendancy of the progressive educated class is starting to get people really angry. And it is anger that fuels political change.

Second the details. Details matter. Every successful businessman is a details man. You can have all the business plans in the world, but without execution of the details it will remain a glorious vision. Politicians have a problem here, because their principal expertise is getting elected. But the success of government is doing the boring, gritty details. If Obama doesn't want to bother with the details then that is the best news that conservatives have heard yet.

Third, the Chicago style. We are getting numerous sightings of Chicago-style politics, from the overall strategy of piracy and plunder to the recent flap over the firing of the inspectors general. This sort of thing may go down without a murmur in Chicago but ordinary middle-class Americans hate it. Democrats know this. That's why they made such a big deal of Bush and Republican corruption in 2006-08, and were full of talk about transparency. The truth is the Obamites don't believe in any of that transparency and good government stuff. They believe in power.

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard," said H.L. Mencken. A gentler version of that is that people need to experience things to find out whether they really like them. In 2008 people were really fed up with Republicans and decided it was time for a change.

Chances are that the change they had in mind is not the change that President Obama has in mind, neither in the grand vision, in the gritty details, or in the Chicago style.

In the next six months to a year, the American people are going to wake up to that. The president won't like it; liberals won't like it; Democrats won't like it; the mainstream media won't like it. But it won't make a bit of difference.