Worst Ex-President Becomes Worst Sunday School Teacher

Jimmy Carter has topped his high standard of posturing his own moral superiority.

As reported by John Sugg of Creative Loafing, Carter recounts this recent exchange from one of his celebrated Sunday School classes:

"I was teaching a Sunday school class two weeks ago," he recalls. "A girl, she was about 16 years old from Panama City [Fla.], asked me about the differences between Democrats and Republicans.

"I asked her, 'Are you for peace, or do you want more war?' Then I asked her, 'Do you favor government helping the rich, or should it seek to help the poorest members of society? Do you want to preserve the environment, or do you want to destroy it? Do you believe this nation should engage in torture, or should we condemn it? Do you think each child today should start life responsible for $28,000 in [federal government] debt, or do you think we should be fiscally responsible?'

"I told her that if she answered all of those questions, that she believed in peace, aiding the poor and weak, saving the environment, opposing torture ... then I told her, 'You should be a Democrat.'"

Partisan as we are politically, smug as we are personally, sarcastic as we are rhetorically, SWNID cannot imagine seriously saying to a teenager that one political party holds all the moral high ground on every issue, much less saying it in the context of what is supposed to be biblical instruction. We say without irony or reservation that this may be the most outrageous thing Carter has ever said.

When the party of Jackson, FDR, Truman and JFK has two living ex-Presidents, one the epitome of the moralistic prig and the other the epitome of the amoral hedonist, both self-absorbed to the greatest degree imaginable, one should fear for the health of the body politic.

Important News for Youth Ministers

Knowing the demographics of our gentle readership, we try from time to time to offer links to "news that gentle readers can use." Today we draw attention to a breaking news story on the growing trend toward hazing of youth ministers.

Beware, gentle readers, or you might be next.

Thanks, of course, go to LarkNews.com, a good source for Christian news.

On Immigration: Compassion Coincides with Self-Interest

The Washington Post today carries an article describing the refusal by the National Association of Evangelicals to sign on to a declaration on immigration policy issued by other evangelical organizations as "underscoring divisions among conservative Christians over immigration."

Not wanting evangelicals to be divided on anything of significance, we therefore weigh in at last with the SWNID position on the immigration debate, urging and expecting our brothers and sisters who are uncertain on this issue, and especially those who differ, to adopt a position that is Seldom Wrong.

Here it is:

We need a guest worker program, enforcement at points of employment, and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants that involves reasonable fines but also grants a recognition of the contribution that workers make to the American economy.

We are always delighted when positions that are in the economic interests of many people, including ourselves, also seem to offer benefits and compassion to people in need. So it is here.

There are people who want to work in the United States because they lack opportunity at home. Their work is needed in the United States, where many menial jobs go unfilled because our high rates of employment and education leave us with few willing to work for what such jobs are worth. Letting willing workers come here to work is of benefit to the worker, whose standard of living is raised, his family, who benefit from his income and potentially from present or future residence in a country with better services, and everyone who is served by the worker's labor.

The situation is a delightful coincidence of self-interest and compassion. So the right response seems straightforward enough.

This response is, of course, not without flaws. Some American workers may potentially be displaced by immigrants. However, the evidence is that such displacement will be rare. The fact seems to be that difficult, unskilled jobs are not taken by Americans because they have either (a) skills that qualify them for better jobs, or (b) social and behavioral problems that make employment impossible.

Anti-immigrationists argue that granting a path to citizenship for those who are here without documents shows disrespect for the rule of law. We would agree, were the laws broken of a serious nature that brought direct harm to victims. However, such is not the case with this country's immigration laws. We should no more permanently bar an illegal immigrant from citizenship than we should permanently bar a speeder from holding a driver's license. All current proposals for a path to citizenship involve fines for illegals, hardly the "amnesty" that opponents decry.

Some say that a guest worker program exercises racism in confining immigrants of color to menial jobs. We say that this is not racism but economic reality: people who lack skills must do unskilled labor if they are to do anything that contributes to the general welfare. But our national experience has been that immigrants of color have in large measure demonstrated admirable effort and reliability in such jobs, and have sought education and greater opportunity for their offspring. The result has been a rising tide of productivity from which all benefit.

Guest worker programs in other countries, notably Germany, have been seen by critics as failures. There is much not to imitate in what has happened in the German Gastarbeiter program, but the problems come not in the program itself but in the difficulty of immigrants integrating into the social fabric of any European country. The United States, a nation of immigrants founded on an ideal, is much different from European countries founded largely on culture, language and ethnic identity. We have our race problems, to be sure, but they aren't Europe's.

The economic reality is that people all over the world are on the move to find opportunity. The social and political reality is that nothing can stop them. And the reality of self-interest is that no thoughtful and adaptable person has anything to fear from immigration.

So ...

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me.
I lift my lamp beside the golden door.

Rationalist Explanations of Miracles Harder to Believe than Divine Intervention

Colleague Rick C gets the coveted SWNID hat-tip for pointing us to the alarming news that an oceanographer at Florida State University has scientifically demonstrated to his own satisfaction that Jesus didn't walk on the water but floated on a rare piece of ice in the sea of Galilee.

Our response cannot surpass that of the inimitable Scott Ott of scrappleface.com, whom we quote in full:

And finally, a new scientific study out of Florida State University suggests that Jesus of Nazareth might have walked, not on water, but on a rare patch of floating ice in the sea of Galilee. The alleged miracle, which the Bible says happened in the middle of the night more than three miles from shore during a violent wind storm, was likely an April foolÂ’s prank that the clever Messiah pulled on his gullible followers. Next the professor plans to test his theory that the parting of the Red Sea during time of Moses was actually the work of an army of industrious beavers.

It has been observed at least since the time of Strauss (the biblical scholar, not the composer) that rationalist explanations for miracles are harder to believe than the miracles themselves. That's no less true today than it was in the middle of the 19th century.

New Fossil a Problem for Young Earthers

The NY Times offers a helpful, if not altogether informative, report on the discovery of several skeletons that appear to be those of transitional life forms between fish and amphibians. There's enough here to make the claim credible: a swiveling head, limbs in the making, and the like.

So what does this all mean?

Well, it means that a lot of young-earth creationists need to stop saying that there are no transitional forms in the fossil record. There have been before, and this one is a doozy. Even the Times's article cites a creationist web site that makes the now-even-more unsupportable claim that there are no transitional species.

Second, this discovery adds to the reasons that young-earth creationists need to think about becoming old-earth creationists. There's nothing lost theologically, lots gained empirically, and perhaps most importantly, we can get over the idea that to believe Christianity one has to stop believing what one can see for oneself.

Third, anti-theistic evolutionists need to realize the limitations of their discovery. Granted the likelihood that these skeletons are those of life forms that could be termed transitional, we still have no notion of the mechanism that brings about such changes in the patterns of reproduction from one generation to the next. We do not resort to the "God of the gaps" when we posit that something like the present complexity could not arise by chance. Rather, we observe that with every discovery, the gaps become bigger, less likely to be closed without something as big as God in them, and so rationally asking for such a solution.

But this last point won't get discussed. Old-earth creationists and ID proponents (basically the same folk) will get lumped together with the young-earth creationists in the rhetorical blizzard that will follow this discovery. We urge readers to wear warm clothing and carry a compass until the blizzard passes.

SWNID Urban Hotel Recommendations

Having just returned from a delightful trip to Chicago for the Higher Learning Commission's Annual Meeting, we feel inspired to share our wisdom as a seasoned, happy and thrifty traveler by offering the first edition of SWNID Travel Tips. Today we detail some of our favorite urban hotels.

Traveling to any great city can be a delightful experience if the traveler takes the time to get away from the most touristy locales and rub elbows with the natives. Nothing makes that easier than staying in obscure, inexpensive hotels. That also makes it possible for those who have taken a vow of poverty, like SWNID, to actually travel.

Of course, some hotels are inexpensive because they're miserable. But some are loads of fun, and comfy for sleeping, too. We detail a few in our experience.

Moving east to west, we begin with our very, very favorite, London's Foreign Mission Club. Founded over a century ago as a hostel for missionaries transitioning through London, the club offers bed and breakfast accommodations to anyone, with discounts for ministers and deeper discounts for missionaries. The accommodations are utterly clean and totally comfortable, the breakfast is tasty, the company at breakfast is a global gathering reminiscent of Isaiah 25, and the neighborhood--one stop beyond King's Cross--is verdant and quiet while still on the threshold of central London. Note that most rooms offer utterly hygienic "shared facilities" (common bath down the hall, a feature common to all but one of these listings), only the slightest of inconveniences.

New York hotels are famous for charging high rates for tiny, shabby rooms. But what would you say to a single room for $75, tastefully decorated, comfortably equipped, and impeccably clean, about a block from Union Square? That's Hotel 17, our favorite Gotham abode. No breakfast here, and the bath is down the hall again, but when you step in from the hallway to bathe or otherwise, you'll wonder if the fixtures weren't just installed and cleaned and have never been used. We haven't stayed there, but just a few blocks uptown is Hotel 31, which we understand is a similarly comfy property for similarly little dough.

Chicago, our favorite American big city, boasts more hotel bargains than many cities its size, at least to those willing to search. Our new fave is the Days Inn Lincoln Park. The hotel is immaculate, tasteful, and remarkably roomy for an urban locale, and the staff is efficient and pleasant. The neighborhood is delightfully funky, with lots of pedestrian traffic going in and out of inexpensive restaurants, coffee houses, convenience stores, and neighborhood bars. Those who think that they must stay in the Loop or Magnificent Mile will relish the chance to be among real Chicagoans, and access to the city center is easy by CTA busses or trains (order a transit pass online before your trip or pick one up at one of several shops in the neighborhood). We do, however, recommend requesting a room away from the bus stop on Clark street; otherwise, ear plugs will be in order. But all in all, this is my kind of hotel in my kind of town.

San Francisco looks set to overtake NY for expensive hotel rooms, but Mr. and Mrs. SWNID this summer enjoyed a delightful and relatively inexpensive stay at the quaint and homey Golden Gate Hotel. Offering rooms at about two-thirds the price of others in the Union Square area, the hotel is the epitome of shabby chic, with Victorian wallpaper and antique photographs in hallways and rooms. Guests eat the best croissants outside of France each morning, sharing tables with strangers for stimulating conversation, and occasionally being visited by the hotel dog or cat. En suite facilities are available, but why not save the money you'd spend on bathrooms and enjoy even more of SF's outstanding cuisine? And don't forget to pre-order your passes for the San Francisco Muni system, the only way to get around and see the sites.

The Hammer Is Down and Out

Big political news today as SWNID returns to near-constant blogging after a brief respite. Specifically, Tom "The Hammer" Delay (R-Corruption) has withdrawn from his reelection bid.

And not a moment too soon, in the SW opinion of this blogger. Delay may have been a skilled political operative. But the party of Lincoln is nothing without its integrity. Founded on a moral crusade (the limitation and ultimate abolition of slavery), the GOP has only wielded power effectively when it did so from a moral base. It has been best served when it cleansed itself quickly, as it did with the quick resignations House Speakers Gingrich and Livingston (who didn't quite make it to Speaker) in 1998.

Delay has always postured as a religious conservative. That includes today, as he has appeared on ... you guessed it ... Pat Robertson's 700 Club to announce his plans to end his political career. But we use the derogatory and judgmental "postured" deliberately, as we point out yet again that Delay got in trouble because of his connection to Jack Abramoff's corrupt efforts at manipulating Indian gaming licenses. So much for principles.

It will take moves like this for the Rs not just to hold power in November, but to wield it effectively thereafter. We urge other Rs with the hearts of Ds to get out while the gettin' is good, so that real Rs can run and real Ds can stay comfortably in the minority.

Kasich Nails Ohio's Political Situation

John Kasich--former Republican congressman, Fox News talking head, adjunct faculty member at Ohio State University's distinguished Fisher College of Business, and throwback to the days that Ohio Republicans had intellectual heft and ethical standards--provides as accurate an assessment of the present state of Ohio's politics as one could imagine.

Ohio's Rs, notes Kasich, are divided and corrupt. But before the Ds make plans to move to Columbus, they must note Kasich's conclusion, which sings loudly a SWNID refrain:

The biggest advantage going for Republicans, in purely electoral terms, is the ineptness of the Democrats. They have a long tradition of turning sure things into might-have-beens. This, however, is simply not enough. Democratic incompetence has led to Republican domination, which, with no effective opposition, has untethered the GOP from its first principles. In the absence of these, corruption has reigned. The political lens might be clouded and growing darker; but Ohio Republicans need to decide whether or not they want to stand for something.

To Kasich's flawless analysis we will add a conjecture--or a call to action, depending on how it is read. Ken Blackwell, as a consummate insider who is also an outside, has the opportunity, if nominated for governor, to recreate the party in a more consistently ethical, genuinely conservative mold. The entire political landscape may look different in November if Blackwell gets on his political bulldozer in September.

Principled, decisive leadership can do amazing things in a short period of time. It can make the moribund vital. Since the Ds have few prospects for reinventing themselves, it's the Rs, with skilled renegade Blackwell, with the chance to get Ohio back on track, to coin a phrase.

Gurwitz on the Deadliness of Pacifism

Columnist Jonathan Gurwitz writes eloquently today on a favored SWNID theme: that pacifism is dangerous to innocent people. As usual, we urge gentle readers to follow the link but offer a quotation, this one from the column's ending:

To turn the other cheek — one's own cheek — is a principled demonstration of Christian pacificism [sic]. To avert one's gaze from evil, to divert the gaze of others and distort their perception of it, is neither principled nor does it advance the cause of real peace.

Taylor Recaptured Before Robertson Opens Mouth

Good news today from Nigeria, where deposed Liberian despot, warlord and arch-criminal Charles Taylor, who disappeared from his home in Nigeria over the weekend, has been recaptured. Taylor had been granted asylum by Nigeria as part of a deal to end the 14-year civil war in Liberia, but the Nigerian government had recently bowed to international pressure to surrender Taylor to an international tribunal to face charges of crimes against humanity.

This good news is augmented by the fact that Taylor was captured before Pat Robertson, his partner in corrupt gold mining operations in Liberia, had the chance to issue yet another embarrassing-to-Christians-everywhere statement of support for the murderous, grafting weasel of an ex-dictator.

And in that light, we thank gentle reader Dave R for directing our attention to the timely and significant "Christians Against Pat Speaking" (CAPS) online petition. We urge gentle readers to follow the link and lend their support to a brotherly exhortation to Mr. Robertson to retire from all public statements and live the rest of his life in benign obscurity. This outcome would deprive SWNID of a favorite blog topic, but we are willing to make the sacrifice for the good of humanity and especially the good of the gospel.

Abdul Rahman Free, Rest of World Isn't

The good news out of Afghanistan is that Abdul Rahman, the Afghan citizen facing execution for his conversion from Islam to Christianity, has been released. So now Rahman is free, sort of. But the rest of the world is not.

First, Rahman's situation. Court and government officials did not offer reasons for his release. There still exists no clear notion in Afghanistan as to whether the constitutional provision of freedom of religion allows Muslims to convert to Christianity. The Afghan constitution endorses Islamic law, and by some interpretations of the Quran converting from Islam is punishable by death. What might happen if another Afghan makes a complaint against a Christian convert is yet to be seen.

But what could happen to Rahman is easy to see. He went into hiding immediately, avoiding as much as he can the danger of an Islamic assassin killing him to enforce a radical interpretation of Islamic law. We may never know where he seeks asylum, and for him, that's a good thing.

But that leads us to consider the world's situation. The Rahman case makes perfectly obvious that Islamic radicalism now has all the world in the same awful predicament as children facing a gang of bullies at elementary school. Any move that is well within the children's natural rights--eating lunch, playing a game on the playground, sitting on the bus, going to the restroom--may make them the target for intimidation and violence from the bullies. And they can never know what might set the bullies off. So they live in fear, act with timidity, and limit their speech and movements only to what is absolutely necessary, all in the hope that they will not provoke the bullies.

But none of it works. Bullies need victims. They must be feared at all times. So even when not provoked, they will manufacture an offense as a basis for action. "Quit lookin' at me!" [sharp punch to the gut] "What was that for?" "I didn't like the way you were looking at me."

So now the world lives in fear of provoking another Islamic bully session. Don't publish harmless cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed, or you might be targeted by the bullies. Don't support the rights of women, or the bullies will come after you. Don't insist on freedom of religion, or the bullies will get you. Don't support the right of Israel to exist as a Jewish state, or the bullies will start a fight with you.

We commend American and European diplomats for securing Rahman's freedom, and we pray for his safety. But let's not lose sight of the issue: in the name of Islam, millions of people are being repressed as brutally as in any twentieth-century totalitarian regime. And altogether, about six billion people live in fear that the Islamic bully will target them.

There are three ways to deal with bullies.

One is to accept their presence and the restraints on freedom that they enforce. This was SWNID's approach in the 1970s, when high school toughs smoking in the boys' room prompted us to limit our intake of fluids so that we could spend an entire school day without using the facilities.

Another is to blame the victim. "Don't do things that provoke him," was the vapid advice given to many a bully's target in our school experience. But what would provoke the bully was entirely unpredictable.

The third is to stand up to the bully. This can mean fighting violence with violence. But it means first the quiet determination to go freely about one's business and when confronted not to back down. Sometimes, though not every time, that can be enough.

Free countries better decide to do the third with utter consistency, or we will see many more Abdul Rahmans.

Distinctively American Syncretism Still Alive and Well

When its web site disappeared several months ago, SWNID was worried that San Francisco's Church of St. John Coltrane, our nomination for the syncretistic religious institution most distinctly American, had ceased to exist.

But gentle reader Rustypants has directed our bloggish attention to the Washington Post's recent article chronicling the church's ongoing existence as a haven of American improvised music and eclectic, individualistic "spirituality."

If any jazz musician deserves to have a church named for him, it is 'Trane. Besides his utter virtuosity and scathing creativity, he also in his later music expressed a consciousness of things beyond the music and beyond the visible world, most clearly expressed in his epochal album, A Love Supreme. In the Ken Burns series on jazz on PBS, Branford Marsalis said that he wanted that recording playing as he dies. Such expresses the impact of John Coltrane.

Adding to the Coltrane case for sainthood are his overcoming of heroin addiction, his gentle and humble demeanor toward fellow musicians, his eschewing of commercial concerns, and especially his tragic death to liver cancer in middle adulthood.

But let's be honest. Coltrane is one if the half dozen or so most important jazz musicians ever. But he would not rank high on many lists for religious thought. His significance in that area should not be exaggerated.

But neither should it be dismissed.

As a Christian who listens to jazz, SWNID sees 'Trane as an exemplar of the deep need humans have to know God. His music moves me because in it I hear the desperate longing of the human soul that wants a home. When John Coltrane blew, he gave an eloquent offering to the Unknown God, a poignant question mark to which the gospel of Jesus is the exclamation point.

SWNID Linked on Slate, So Now Can Die Happy

The indispensable Site Meter tells us that folks have found our little blogdom via a link at Slate.

Who knew that there was so much interest in banned laptops at a law school?

We do, however, take great pride, doubtlessly sinful pride, in being linked at what some would style the internet's number one site for opinion, analysis and trends. We shall doubtless add this to our CV (a largely pointless exercise as we are divinely preordained to spend our entire working lives at one job), include it in our Christmas letter, and consider using it as an occasion to retire while still "on top."

So, gentle readers, if we stop posting, blame Slate.

SWNID Announces "Preferences for Travel Accommodations"

In light of the MSM's revelations that Dick Cheney wants Sprite and Fox News in his hotel room, and the extensive revelations of John and Theresa Kerry's travel preferences on the always-subversive smokinggun.com (no tomato products for the husband of the ketchup heiress!), SWNID is proud to announce his own preferences for food and lodging while on the road--or at home, for that matter.

Our requests reflect our sophisticated tastes and wide experience of the world. As we travel, we ask to be provided with:

• Plenty of Welch's 100% grape juice and V-8
• Bottled water chilled to 32.5 degrees Fahrenheit, both still and sparkling (French brands acceptable)
• Dry-roasted almonds, cashews, hazel nuts and peanuts (no Brazil nuts!)
• Raisins and craisins (optionally mixed with nuts above)
• Lunches and dinners consisting primarily of fresh vegetables and fruits prepared with minimal added fats, lean meats and fish, absolutely no organ meats or beets
• Breakfasts offering either oatmeal (with raisins, cocoanut and brown sugar, never instant), eggs (soft boiled or omelets), or whole wheat toast with peanut butter (Jif only)
• Late-night access to Popeye's chicken, Chinese carryout, barbecue potato chips, and high-quality local pizza
• TV tuned constantly to 24, The Simpsons, or The Godfather Parts 1-2
• Top-line audio system with a wide selection of classical music and jazz (not smooth, and especially not Kenny G)
• Rooms with outside ventilation and quiet air handlers
• High speed internet access via desktop and wireless
• Thick, solid-foam-rubber-filled pillows
• Egyptian cotton towels and sheets
• Anti-dandruff shampoo
• Magnifying shaving mirror

Or we could go with this list.

Book Announcement, Plus SWNID Shamelessly Begs and Again Explains What We Do Here

Gentle readers know that the satire of this blog is but a shadow of the masterful LarkNews.com. Since the creative demise of the Wittenburg [sic] Door, this insightful publication is the leading source of Christian parody, offering a hilarious monthly sendup of the American evangelical subculture.

And so we are pleased to announce the publication of A Field Guide to Evangelicals and Their Habitat by Joel Kilpatrick, founder of LarkNews.com. Chapters include:

• What Evangelicals Believe - Plus a Master List of Who Is Going to Hell
• How to Party Like an Evangelical - Ambrosia, Li'l Smokies, and Potluck Fever
• The Diversity of Evangelical Politics - From Right-Wing to Wacko
• How to Talk and Act Like an Evangelical Without Being One
• Evangelical Mating Habits - The Shocking Truth
• Identifying Evangelicals in the Field
• Sighting Evangelicals Overseas
• Planning Your Field Trip to an Evangelical Church
• Decorating Like an Evangelical

SWNID very much looks forward to reading this book. However, we confess to being less than fully willing to part with the $14.95 to purchase it.

So we make the following shameless appeal.

We've been blogging for free for months now. And you've been reading it, and loving it.

Unless you're one of the folks whom we've upset. We apologize to you. Whatever it was, we didn't mean it.*

But if you like what you've been reading here, and if you have a copy of A Field Guide to Evangelicals, and especially if you're going to get one because you read about it here . . .

How about loaning it to us when you're done?

Please indicate your willingness to share with your brother in need in the comments section.

_____________

*Again, to remind readers of our editorial stance: we do satire and sarcasm here, and the person we send up most consistently is the person who writes this drivel. See, we just did it. Only sinners get made fun of here, so that's everyone, including us. So if your feelings were hurt by what you read here once, we fully accept responsibility and offer our apologies. But we also invite you to see what we're trying to do and laugh at yourself as we are at ourselves.

Or as a a brother once said to us, "I've learned to take Christ very seriously and not take myself seriously at all."

Good News, And SWNID Was WRONG Too

At the beginning of the week we drew attention to the plight of Abdul Rahman, the Afghani threatened with execution for having converted to Christianity sixteen years ago. Now we update.

The good news is that CNN reports from "a source with detailed knowledge of the case" that Rahman may be released soon. If so, it will be a fine and blessed event, and we welcome it.

The bigger news is that this blogger may have been wrong. Yes, WRONG. It happens seldom, but it happens.

Specifically we wrote, "Don't expect this to get much coverage in the United States." At the end of the week, we'd say that it has received at least adequate coverage in our republic's MSM.

Of course, maybe we weren't exactly wrong. Maybe the MSM is watching this blog for story ideas.

Goldberg on Why Invading Is Still Right

The indispensable Jonah Goldberg today provides a timely reminder of recent history, largely forgotten in the incessant drumbeat of "no WMD" and "no ties to al Qaida." His reflections include Bush's recent press conference dust-up with "thespian carbuncle of bile" Helen Thomas and the "revelations" (better, "reminders") contained in Iraqi documents slowly being released to the public.

Here's the guts of the column for those disinclined to follow the link:

But what these documents--as well as other after-action intelligence gathering--demonstrate is that given what he knew at the time, George W. Bush was right to invade Iraq. We now know that the CIA bureaucracy was simply wrong to insist that "secular" Iraq would never work with Islamist terrorist groups such as Al Qaeda and Abu Sayyaf. We know that Iraq harbored and very likely supported Abdul Rahman Yasin, one of the suspected bomb makers involved in the first World Trade Center attack in 1993.

According to the Pentagon's definitive postmortem on the invasion, some of which was leaked to the New York Times, even many Iraqi generals were stunned to discover that Hussein didn't have WMD. Hussein practiced a strategy that one Republican Guard commander called "deterrence by doubt," in which he hoped to bluff the world into believing he had WMD in order to deter Iran and keep his rep as an Arab strongman with serious mojo.

And that's the point Thomas et al don't want to understand. For reasons that still baffle me, the WMD threat--never the sole reason to invade Iraq--not only became the only argument, it became a thoroughly legalistic one, as if foreign policy has rules of evidence and procedural due process. After 9/11, that kind of foreign policy by lawyers looked ridiculous, and rightly so.

The fact that Hussein turned out to be bluffing about WMD isn't a mark against Bush's decision. If you're a cop and a man pulls out a gun and points it at you, you're within your rights to shoot him, particularly if the man in question is a known criminal who's shot people before. If it turns out afterward that the gun wasn't loaded, that's not the cop's fault.

To this we can only respond, with apologies to Tim Rice and Andrew Lloyd Weber:

Go, go, go, Jonah, you know what they say.

Hang on now, Jonah, you'll make it some day.

Don't give up, Jonah, fight till you drop.

We've read the book and you come at on top.

Is the Note-Taking Medium the Message?

Gentle and faithful reader Tim asks SWNID to take up the educational question raised by a University of Memphis Law School professor who has banned laptops from her classroom. Per USA Today, Professor June Entman forbade laptops in her academic domain on March 6 with the following rationale:

My main concern was they were focusing on trying to transcribe every word that was I saying, rather than thinking and analyzing. The computers interfere with making eye contact. You've got this picket fence between you and the students.

We actually find ourselves surprised, first of all, that this was the reason for the ban. Most profs who ban the laptop do it because students "multitask" in class: playing games, answering email, instant messaging, writing papers for other classes, etc. Serving a life sentence of lecturing in higher education, we believe that professors who have students who multitask on their classroom laptops will have students doodling, writing notes, reading books, talking or staring out the window if they ban them.

But what Prof. Entman notes is about notes, and we admit to a great deal of sympathy for her point of view. Copious notes are viewed by many students as a sign of good scholarship, on the part of both the student and the professor. The student with lots of notes is to be commended for meticulous attention to detail; the professor, for delivering meticulous detail.

We, however, believe that there is something else that delivers the detail. It is called a textbook, or in law school, a case book. Classroom lectures and discussions, by contrast, are mostly about analysis, the building of generalizations, the testing of hypotheses, the formation of arguments, and the like. Such activities require more engagement than what a student can deliver who is preoccupied with transcribing as much of the lecture as possible.

We do not believe we have succeeded as a lecturer when students write down sentence after sentence of our inspired discourse. Rather, we believe we have succeeded when students stare intently at the front of the room, then turn to a student who raises a question or objection, then formulate a question or objection of their own, then sit back, stroke their chins, and write in their notes a few key words that summarize the insight they've gained through five minutes or so of classroom dialectic. It's a rare event, but most valuable events are.

So, Prof. Entman, you go, girl!

Personality and Politics, Or Why Social Science Is Sometimes Neither

The Toronto Star today reports on a longitudinal study conducted among preschoolers in Berkeley, California over the last 20 years. The study asserts that preschoolers who 20 years ago were reported by teachers as whiny and insecure have grown to become politically conservative. Confident, resilient, self-reliant kids grew up to become politically liberal.

SWNID, as an amateur social scientist, will not argue that the study was conducted by liberally biased investigators. We will instead suggest the following:

First, whatever might be true of the children in this study, it is not true of other children. We were a confident, resilient, self-reliant preschooler, who became a confident, resilient, self-reliant kindergartener, who became an overconfident, aggressive, dominant elementary student and an oppressively arrogant, nearly blasphemously self-reliant high school student, and insufferably cocksure college and graduate student and now, of course, a Seldom-Wrong-Never-In-Doubt self-proclaimed expert on everything and judge of all.

I have never whined. At least not much. Certainly not as a preschooler. As a preschooler, SWNID bossed the older kids in the neighborhood. Nothing on Fenmore Road happened without our permission.

And I have been consistently politically conservative.

So I present myself as the definitive counter-example to the results of this study: unparalleled in confidence, resilience and self-reliance, and somewhere to the right of Torquemada politically.

Second, we observe that this study was conducted in Berkeley, California, without question one of the most politically atypical spots on the planet. It's hardly surprising that children raised in Berkeley would tend towards liberal political views: they were raised on granola, Woody Guthrie and Mother Jones. To the Trotskyites typical of Berkeley, voting for Al Gore in 2000 instead of Ralph Nader smacked of fascism.

So, let's imagine a child who grows up in the People's Republic of Berkeley and whose childhood is, for unknown reasons, such that he presents whiny behavior to teachers. Years later, he asks himself why his life has been filled with misery. He associates his discontent with his surroundings. He has an epiphany: My life stinks because of all these stupid liberals in Berkeley!
Immediately, he fires his psychoanalyst, registers Republican, subscribes to the National Review, and moves to Idaho, finding happiness.

Or let's imagine this. Preschool teachers in Berkeley in 1984 have just finished leading their classes in a discussion of whole foods and the nuclear freeze. They then are asked by a social scientist to rate students as "self-reliant" or "whiny." They think back to the discussion just before. Many students cooperated with the exercise and responded that they would eat an organic, vegan diet while working for unilateral disarmament.

But a few proved recalcitrant. They insisted that they'd eat processed foods and red meat all their lives, and enjoy it too. They said that they felt safer with a nuclear arsenal keeping the "evil empire" at bay.

These had already been told that they would attend the "re-education camp," formerly known as after-school detention. But they won't conform to the revolutionary agenda.

So how does a teacher at UC Berkeley's early childhood education lab school characterize such an anti-revolutionary, reactionary, petty-bourgeois crumb-cruncher?

"Whiny."

Who Wears the Pantsuit in Chappaqua

The always-cheeky NY Daily News reports the following pillow talk:

After being surprised by her husband's role in the Dubai ports deal, Sen. Hillary Clinton has insisted that Bill Clinton give her "final say" over what he says and does, well-placed sources said.

The former President agreed to give his wife a veto to avoid his habit of making controversial headlines that could hurt her chances of returning to the White House, multiple sources told the Daily News.

"He knows it's Hillary's time now," said an adviser close to both Clintons who expects to play a key role in her likely 2008 presidential campaign.

There's no report on what the former President will receive in return.