SUNDAY,  MARCH 23,  2008

RELIGIOUS EXTREMISM

On a day filled with religious meaning, we're reminded of what happens when a great religion is twisted out of shape, and turned into a hideous political movement.

Paul Berman is one of the more interesting, and courageous, liberal writers.  He has not followed the herd that opposes everything President Bush does, and has been sane about Islamo-fascism.  In today's New York Times he explores the enduring strength of that Islamo-fascism.  And he takes to task Western "intellectuals" who seem not at all bothered.  Despite some gratuitous swipes at President Reagan and the current president, this is worth reading, if only for Berman's assault on the Ph.D. next door:

THE big surprise, viewed from my own narrow perspective five years later, has taken place in the mysterious zones of extremist ideology. In the months and weeks before the invasion of Iraq, I wrote quite a lot about ideology in the Middle East, and especially about the revolutionary political doctrine known as radical Islamism.

I tried to show that radical Islamism is a modern philosophy, not just a heap of medieval prejudices. In its sundry versions, it draws on local and religious roots, just as it claims to do. But it also draws on totalitarian inspirations from 20th-century Europe. I wanted my readers to understand that with its double roots, religious and modern, perversely intertwined, radical Islamism wields a lot more power, intellectually speaking, than naïve observers might suppose.

And...

In today’s Middle East, the various radical Islamists, basking in their success, paint their liberal rivals and opponents as traitors to Muslim civilization, stooges of crusader or Zionist aggression. And, weirdly enough, all too many intellectuals in the Western countries have lately assented to those preposterous accusations, in a sanitized version suitable for Western consumption.

Even in the Western countries, quite a few Muslim liberals, the outspoken ones, live today under a threat of assassination, not to mention a reality of character assassination. Ayaan Hirsi Ali, the Somali-Dutch legislator and writer, is merely an exceptionally valiant example. But instead of enjoying the unstinting support of their non-Muslim colleagues, the Muslim liberals find themselves routinely berated in the highbrow magazines and the universities as deracinated nonentities, alienated from the Muslim world. Or they find themselves pilloried as stooges of the neoconservative conspiracy — quite as if any writer from a Muslim background who fails to adhere to at least a few anti-imperialist or anti-Zionist tenets of the Islamist doctrine must be incapable of thinking his or her own thoughts.

A dismaying development. One more sign of the power of the extremist ideologies — one more surprising turn of events, on top of all the other dreadful and gut-wrenching surprises.

Well put.  One of the great lies is that intellectuals support human freedom.  It is equal to the great lie that universities are great bastions of liberty.  Sometimes yes, sometimes no.  The intellectual world has always had a dark side.  Its membership is subject to the same bigotries, prejudices and hatreds as beset the rest of the population.  Its occasional openness to ideas means that some very bad ideas are admitted.  Some of Hitler's greatest early successes were in universities.  Today, totalitarian ideologies are tolerated by, and even flourish on, some college campuses. 

Berman tells the truth.  Some intellectuals have become part of the problem of Islamist extremism, not part of the solution.

March 23, 2008.  Permalink

SANITY ON CAMPUS

And speaking of intellectuals and campuses, it's always a pleasure to write something positive.  There are many great things that go on within our universities, and critics should always point to them as examples of what is right.  The Wall Street Journal examines the record of Hank Brown, retiring president of the University of Colorado, and finds it good.  Brown may have saved that university from self-destruction:

The modern academy is notoriously immune from accountability, as Larry Summers so painfully learned at Harvard. So it is worth noting, and applauding, the achievements of Hank Brown, the best college president you've never heard of, who retired this month from the University of Colorado.

Mr. Brown took over as interim president in April 2005 when the school of 50,000 was in turmoil. This was a couple of months after CU professor Ward Churchill had become infamous, and a year after the school's athletic department was accused of offering alcohol and sex to recruit football players. A former U.S. Senator, Mr. Brown was reappointed in 2006 in a permanent capacity.

The public was outraged over Mr. Churchill's statements -- including that the 9/11 victims were not "innocent" but a "technocratic corps at the very heart of America's global financial empire" driving the "mighty engine of profit to which the military dimension of U.S. policy has always been enslaved." The public anger reminded politicians, and even a few academics, that public universities should be answerable to taxpayers.

Mr. Brown proceeded to oversee a complete examination of Mr. Churchill's work, and the ethnic studies professor was eventually fired because of fraudulent scholarship, not his politics. Mr. Brown then initiated a complete review of CU's tenure policies, making it easier for his successors to get rid of deadwood. He also took on the equally sensitive subject of grade inflation, insisting that the university disclose student class rank on transcripts. If a B average puts a student at the bottom of his class, future employers will know it.

And...

Anne Neal, the president of the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, recently summarized Mr. Brown's accomplishments. "In a little more than two years, he has helped restore CU's reputation for educational excellence and accountability. Alumni and public confidence quickly followed." As Mr. Brown departed, Ms. Neal noted, "CU was enjoying a record level of public support," including record increases in alumni giving the last two years.

Send that man to Harvard.

They'd never accept him.  He's a Republican.

March 23, 2008.  Permalink

McCAIN IN EUROPE

Some in the press would no doubt prefer to think of an election campaign in which Barack Obama is the only candidate.  Reality intervenes.

A guy named McCain (remember, journalists?) is touring Europe.  The New York Times, in a sometimes straightforward, sometimes spiteful report, looks at his trip, and the generally positive response he's gotten:

PARIS — Senator John McCain’s trip abroad this week — which took him from the Middle East to No. 10 Downing Street to the Élysée Palace here — was more than just a Congressional fact-finding trip, or even a candidate’s attempt to appear statesmanlike.

It was also an audition on the world stage for Mr. McCain in his new role as the Republican presidential nominee. And it offered him the chance to test his hope that he could repair America’s tattered reputation by shifting course on some of the policies that have alienated its allies, in areas like global warming and torture. But he is making his foray even as he embraces what much of the world sees as the most hated remnant of the Bush presidency: the war in Iraq.

I'm always intrigued by phrases like "what much of the world sees..."  How would anyone know?  The world is a pretty big place.  Oh, but there are "polls," you say.  Yes, but polls are based on public opinion, and public opinion in many, if not most, countries, is shaped by dictatorial governments, a controlled press, or a press uniformly to the left.  Not a great basis for public opinion. 

The fact is, we've always had substantial anti-Americanism, especially in Europe.  Reagan was despised in Europe, yet today there are Ronald Reagan squares in the eastern European countries he helped liberate.  Jimmy Carter is loved in Europe.  Draw your own conclusions.  The reporter continues:

He also denounced torture and repeated his call to close the detention center in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, that has sparked outrage around the world, writing that the United States should reach an “international understanding” about what it should do with its detainees.

Again, there's this "world" business.  Outrage around the world?  My, this reporter gets around.  What's remarkable is her failure to realize that McCain is simply speaking the language of diplomacy.  His actual policies remain tough, his attitude toward radical Islam unyielding.  Take that, Parisian left bank.  The reporter continues to drone:

Now, as the world takes Mr. McCain’s measure, one of the questions people are likely to grapple with is very much like one of the questions voters in the United States have been asking: to what extent a President McCain would represent a break from Mr. Bush’s policies, and to what extent he would be the continuation of them.

I tell you, I am so impressed by this "world," which does so many things.  And, of course, it's understood that this "world" wants a clean break from Bush...until of course it happens.  Then this "world" will still criticize whatever we do, unless we surrender.  The reporter tells us:

But, as at home, the hotly contested Democratic primary is garnering more attention in Europe than the Republican nominee, and the Democrats are widely seen as offering the prospect of a more significant break from the Bush years. As Mr. McCain arrived in London, the newspapers were full of Senator Barack Obama’s speech this week on race relations. The Times of London even ran a review of it by its theater critic.

That's probably the best line in the whole piece.  I can just see the headline:  OBAMA A SMASH IN PHILLY, ALL PERFS SOLD OUT!

I can't wait for the next report on what the entire world thinks.  Make sure to interview the political prisoners in Iran.  I wonder what they think.

March 23, 2008.  Permalink

MODERN SCIENCE?

Is this serious?  I don't really know.

We're going hot 'n heavy about global warming, but some souls wonder where all the data is really coming from.  Now we have one answer, and it doesn't exactly fill us with confidence:

It may not be the world’s most exciting spectator sport, but watching the ice melt in Alaska has become an unmissable rite of spring for two very different but related groups — gamblers and climatologists.

An annual contest to guess the exact moment the ice breaks on the River Tanana, 300 miles north of Anchorage, is attracting global interest, both as a chance to win a $300,000 (£151,000) prize and as one of the world’s most precise scientific indicators of the effects of global warming.

For 91 years the 500 villagers of Nenana, a frigid hunting and mining outpost, have been keeping records of the minute when the Tanana ice cracks. Their unusual history of climate change has provided researchers with insights into the shrinking of America’s frozen north.

And..

Betting for this year’s contest will close at midnight on April 5. “People tend to wait until the last minute to buy their tickets to get a bearing on what’s happening to the ice,” said Cherrie Forness, manager of the contest.

Finally...

“The Nenana classic is a pretty good proxy for climate change in the 20th century,” noted Dr Martin Jeffries, a geophysicist at the University of Alaska.

The Nenana records have been used by scientists studying everything from river currents and solar cycles to greenhouse emissions and local land use.

However, perhaps the most important lesson learnt is that no amount of scientific knowledge — or educated guesses about climate patterns — can assure a share of the prize. While almost a century of data yielded long-term trends, the data also revealed striking departures from the average. One of the earliest thaws on record was on April 26, 1926; as recently as 2001 the ice did not break until May 8.

This year threatens to be especially problematic — many parts of the world have experienced record spells of either warmth in January or cold in February. “Sometimes I just pull numbers out of a hat,” said Forness.

You'd better read that last part again.  Why is it that I don't feel good about the "science" of global warming getting mixed up with a betting contest?  Why do you think?

"Sometimes I just pull numbers out of a hat," the guy says. 

Maybe we'd better reconsider the whole warming business.  I wonder what other numbers are pulled from hats.

In White Plains, New York, where the temperature is now 29 degrees, I'll sign off.  I'll be back later, unless the heat gets me.

March 23, 2008.  Permalink