What's Wrong with the World

J'accuse ...!

2013-05-20T19:20:59Z

Well, the stakes might not be as high as they were in late 19th Century France, but that doesn’t mean intellectuals of goodwill shouldn’t be on record in this day and age regarding our own Dreyfus-like affair. Instead of anti-Semitism, however, our elites these days seem to suffer from a different medieval problem (with none of the greatness of the medievals!) – they are hunting for witches and if one pops up (the signs are easy to spot – anyone who professes a belief in the reality of race or the reality of racial differences in IQ) they must be discredited and hounded out of polite society.

]]> As usual, Steve Sailer* has the best recap of the Jason Richwine affair, but to their credit (after their shameful treatment of Derbyshire), National Review has also has a number of good pieces on the subject, including this piece by Jason himself, explaining what it was like to go through the madness of those days when the heretic hunters went after him.

I have no idea how my fellow bloggers feel about the Richwine affair, but I feel it is important personally to be on record as a supporter of Jason – both as someone who admires his original Harvard dissertation and as someone who supported his work with Robert Rector at Heritage. Heritage (and Jim DeMint) is one of the principle villains among all the left-wing heretic hunters. They should have never, ever backed down from Jason’s work and should have been willing to back him up as a scholar and researcher of the first caliber – which he was ever since Heritage hired him to crunch numbers for them years ago. I had high hopes for Senator DeMint when he came to Heritage and was thinking of donating money to the organization based on their impressive work on the past couple of years (including Mr. Rector’s immigration work). I can no longer link to them or think of supporting them in any way after this shameful affair.

God bless Jason Richwine and his young family – I hope he lands a new job soon and his obviously keen intellect can be put to good use for conservative causes again by a think tank or political leader who isn’t afraid (like Emile Zola?) to take on the anti-Richwine forces of our modern world.

*My favorite quote from the Sailer piece:
Q. Does the rank order of how groups perform on cognitive tests ever change?

A. Sure. When I first got interested in the social sciences in 1972, the usual rank order of cognitive performance was Oriental, then Caucasian, Chicano, and black. Now, it’s Asian, then white, Latino, and African-American. So everything is different.

Human cloning now a reality: Scientific obscurantism business as usual

2013-05-20T13:47:03Z

Wesley J. Smith has more or less beaten me to nearly all of the analysis you could want on the recent cloning dystopian “breakthrough” and on the outrageous degree of scientific obfuscation going on in the media about it. See here, here, here, here, and here. But just in case you don't read Human Exceptionalism religiously (and if you are interested in life issues, you should do so), let me give you a quick version. But really, go and read Wesley's articles. They're extremely informative and include more information than I am going to get to here.

If you read some headline that said “Human Cloning is One Step Nearer,” or something like that, it's a lie. Human cloning has now occurred. An article has just been published by scientists working in Oregon describing successful human embryo cloning followed by killing.

If you read an article that said, or that you understood to be saying, “For the first time, scientists have converted human skin cells into embryonic stem cells without killing embryos,” that's a lie. In fact, it's a lie twice. The first lie is that the scientists in the recent cloning event reprogrammed skin cells into embryonic stem cells without killing embryos. Actually, they did create embryos, by cloning. Then they killed them. Then they harvested and studied their embryonic stem cells just as they would with IVF embryos they were killing for ESCR.

The second lie is that this is the “first time” anyone has done anything that could or should be called “making skin cells into embryonic stem cells.” As a matter of fact, that's a pretty darned good description of making iPSCs, which are embryonic-like stem cells that can be made without either creating or killing embryos. It's been done already for quite a while now, but the leftists don't like iPSCs as much as ESCs just because no embryo-killing is required for them and just because cloning is more sexy and is opposed by The Right, so they'd rather mis-describe clone-and-kill and make it sound like clone-and-kill is the first-time ethical breakthrough that was actually accomplished already in the reprogramming of skin cells to iPSCs without any cloning. Are you following?

The above news-story sentence in quotation marks is not taken directly from the Fox news story. It is a combination of the implications of several sentences. The actual sentences go like this. Please notice how incredibly misleading the second one is.

In a major medical breakthrough, researchers at the Oregon National Primate Research Center (ONPRC) have for the first time ever successfully converted human skin cells into embryonic stem cells – via a technique called nuclear transfer. [snip] Fortunately, the SCNT method bypasses these ethical dilemmas, as the donated eggs are never actually fertilized. [snip] This [keeping the cell in metaphase longer] keeps the process from stalling and encourages the cell to ultimately develop into a stem cell.

Pro-lifers reading quickly might be excused if they think this was some sort of ethical as well as scientific breakthrough. The story is an instance of shameful and deceptive obscurantism.

]]> Then there was this article which made the blatantly false statement, "Researchers stopped well short of creating a human clone." Wow. Where is Pinocchio's nose growth when you need it?

I have just a few tidbits here and there to add to Smith's valuable work. First, to be fair to the MSM, I have now found a couple of articles that, unlike this one, this one, and this one describe more or less accurately what was done and that acknowledge without obfuscation that human embryos were created by cloning. The more accurate articles I've run across so far are at NPR and RT.

These articles make it a little easier to sort out how much of the obfuscation is a result of deceptive language by the main cloning scientist, Dr. Mitalipov, and how much of it is a result of deception and incompetence (probably a mix) in the media. Mitalipov has caused confusion by saying, as if it is a scientific statement on which he is competent to pronounce, that the embryos he created and killed are "not the equivalent of a human being" (that is the summary this article gives) because they weren't the result of fertilization but of SCNT. Hmmm, so Dolly wasn't a real sheep? Or wasn't equivalent to a real sheep? Or something? Obviously, this is a metaphysical evaluation masquerading as science. Or maybe Dr. Mitalipov just felt like making a metaphysical statement, and the media took it for a statement arising from scientific expertise.

Secondly, Mitalipov has given the erroneous impression that his team has not been successful in creating monkey fetuses by cloning (this reporter even erroneously reported that they did not even attempt to implant monkey embryos, which is flatly false), when as a matter of fact they have been successful in creating such a fetus, deriving an implanted monkey fetus with a heartbeat in their cloning efforts. It's true that most of the monkey embryos died or developed only into empty sacs with no fetus, but as Wesley Smith points out, the scientists cloning Dolly also had many false starts bringing a sheep fetus to birth, but they got past them. What this emphatically does not mean is that the cloned embryos were somehow not real embryos.

And that is where the media has been more misleading even than Dr. Mitalipov, implying that no embryos were created and that somehow skin cells were directly reprogrammed into stem cells, obscuring the fact that embryos were in fact cloned. As a matter of fact, the whole breakthrough here lay precisely in successful cloning producing normal-looking embryos, which they had not been able to achieve before.

I have now read the scientific paper in question, and you can, too. It's available online for free download, here. Grab a copy.

Now, what the paper itself makes abundantly clear is this: The entire major point of this research was to succeed in creating human clones by finding a technique that would make sure the process didn't “stall” too early. Secondly, the research was designed to produce human embryos of “good quality,” similar to those that result from IVF, containing a well-developed inner-cell mass that could be harvested for purposes of embryonic stem-cell research. In both of those tasks, the research succeeded. Go ahead, read the paper. It's quite clear.

This mainstream news article actually states that the embryos are "missing the components needed for implantation and development as a fetus." That might give the impression that this was an exercise in what's known as “altered nuclear transfer,” or ANT-OAR, the purpose of which is, on ethical grounds, to use a cloning-like technique to create something that is (allegedly) not an embryo. (Many people have their worries about whether that would actually work and not create a real embryo, but set that aside for the moment.) That is emphatically not what Dr. Mitalipov and his team were trying to do. Absolutely nothing they did insured or even attempted to insure that these were not “true embryos” or that they were "missing components necessary for development" or that they were intrinsically incapable of developing into a fetus and onward. On the contrary. The whole purpose of the exercise was to obtain embryos of as “high a quality” as possible.

No doubt many embryos and fetuses would die in any attempt to fine-tune techniques to the point of obtaining a live human birth. As Wesley J. Smith points out, this happened in the case of Dolly as well. But that does not mean that these were pseudo-embryos or anything of the kind. Human cloning has occurred.

One other misleading thing said by Dr. Mitalipov is his implication that ESCs from cloned embryos are definitely good candidates for “custom-made” human stem-cell treatments. The cancer concerns about that are real (see my discussion here and see the brief mention of cancer risks here), and he is irresponsibly contributing to hype (for obvious reasons of wanting to continue to get funding) by leaving out any mention of the cancer risk in talking to the press and by going so far as to suggest that people should right now create and "bank" embryonic stem cells cannibalized from their own clones for possible later therapeutic uses for themselves. Aside from being ethically monstrous, this suggestion implies that safe and successful ESC treatments using ESCs derived from cloned embryos are just around the corner, when nothing could be farther from the truth.

In short, the scientists and even more the media are up to their usual games of scientific obscurantism in this area. Don't be fooled. Especially if you are pro-life, don't think that this was some kind of breakthrough for ethical research.

Now remind me again, which side of the political spectrum is anti-science?

Tweets from @Mordor

2013-05-14T14:37:15Z

"A just verdict. The jury has rightly convicted #Gosnell for his appalling crimes, ensuring no woman is victimized by him ever again."

@PPact (Planned Parenthood), May 13.

(H/T James Toranto.)

Really, there's not in my lifetime been any bunch of people more dependent for their sustenance upon euphemism and, more than that, upon the thing not said, than the ghouls of the abortion industry and the advocates who serve as their public face. This is also noticeable in the fact that its non-public advocates are such reliable liars and systematic dissemblers.

And to think, the phrase "collateral damage" was so loudly mocked and criticized by the professional high-dudgeon specialists of the American left back in 2001-03.

A small measure of justice

2013-05-14T14:26:58Z

Last week, disturbed by the length of time the jury was taking to deliberate in the Gosnell trial, I woke up one morning, sat up, and spontaneously said aloud, "He's gonna walk."

Thank God that pessimistic pseudo-clairvoyance is not a reliable belief-forming mechanism.

Kermit Gosnell, who should have been convicted of even more, has been convicted of first-degree murder in the deaths of three infants. He has also been convicted of numerous lesser charges.

Now he should receive the death penalty. (An aside: Someone said on my Facebook wall yesterday that he hoped that Gosnell would repent and be saved instead of being executed. I do not think it should be "instead," though I'm all in favor of repentance and conversion. There is no good argument from, "So-and-so was converted after his conviction for a heinous crime" to "So-and-so should not be executed.")

I'm not really all that interested in debating how many abortionists actively kill born-alive infants a la Gosnell. My own suspicion is that most of them who perform late-term abortions either entirely dismember or else rely on aborting early enough and then simply neglecting to death those infants born alive. (Yes, I know that they inject a drug to stop the heart, but it sometimes doesn't work.) If they abort early enough, neglecting to death should take only a couple of hours, max. It's gruesome and unnecessary to ask how much "better" this is than stabbing them in the back of the neck.

However, here is eyewitness testimony against Shelley Sella, a former co-worker with the infamous George Tiller, that she committed active, post-birth infanticide (stabbing a 35-week living, born baby in the chest). Apparently she has never been prosecuted and is still practicing. Tiller was neater than Gosnell. He cremated all the bodies. There are no doubt some more Gosnells out there.

In any event, abortion consists of direct, fatal, and extreme bodily assault on an unborn child. From a moral and even psychological point of view, nobody who cuts up live babies for a living is likely to boggle at stabbing one after it is born. It would be entirely a matter of fear of prosecution that would prevent post-birth, active, bloody infanticide of infants born alive.

The conviction of Kermit Gosnell is a small measure of earthly justice. May it be only an earnest of justice to come--for Gosnell and for many others, including those who do all their killing within the womb. May the Gosnell case bring more and more people to recognize the evil of abortion.

The U.S. Military vs. the Great Commission II

2013-05-11T20:49:03Z

Sometimes, one really hates to be right. Two and a half years ago I warned that we are moving, in the United States, toward a state in which Christian witnessing is demonized under the heading of "proselytizing." My impression is that this attitude has long been held by secularists--that it is inherently offensive, even inherently deeply wrong, ever to try in any way to convince someone else to accept a religion that is not presently his religion. And my impression also is that in Europe this idea that all such behavior should be called "proselytizing" and by this means dismissed as unacceptable is more widespread than it has heretofore been in America. But, just as our current administration wants to redefine freedom of religion to mean only freedom of (private) worship, so here: If you want to be a Christian, shut up and get back in the closet, and maybe we'll tolerate you. Only private, even secret, religion is acceptable. That way we can feel proud of our sophistication and not hang our heads with shame over the crudity of religion in our country when we hang out with our British and European secularist buddies.

Now the U.S. military is getting into the act with newly published Air Force regulations designed to discourage "proselytizing" by military personnel.

Before I go any further, a few words about the alleged misrepresentations concerning the role of Mikey Weinstein of the (misnamed) Religious Military Freedom Foundation in all of this.

]]> Any of you who have been following this story know that Fox News broke the story that the military (specifically, the Air Force) was consulting Weinstein on its anti-proselytizing regulations. Weinstein is virulently, wildly anti-Christian. More quotes on that below. He also has some eccentric views of legality, regarding "proselytizing" as sedition and treason, which is pretty hard to wrap one's brain around no matter how hard one thinks about it.

You may also know that it turned out that Weinstein

a) isn't getting paid by the U.S. military for any advice he is giving

and

b) was granted a meeting with Pentagon officials at his own request, not at theirs, and hence isn't an official consultant.

These bombshell "corrections" to "right-wing fear-mongering" have evidently been spun by the left into a new meta-story: "Right Wing Misleads and Exaggerates" rather than "Military Members May be Court-Martialed for Sharing Their Faith" or "Mouth-Foaming Anti-Christian Granted Private Meeting With Pentagon Officials, Who Then Release New Policies Prohibiting Witnessing."

Russell D. Moore and Kevin Ezell of the Southern Baptist Convention are concerned about the new policy and have issued a statement about it (more about that statement in a moment), but in the spirit of not looking like those foolish Right-Wing Fear Mongers, they felt led to distance themselves from all worries about Weinstein's role in this, almost completely dismissing his involvement from their list of concerns.

So, okay, Weinstein isn't being paid as a consultant and does not have an official role. Big whoop. For a different angle, let's look at this Washington Post article by Sally Quinn, which is not Right-Wing Fear Mongering. Instead, it falls into the category of pro-Weinstein, left-wing bullying. Here is what Quinn says (emphasis added):

After demands from Weinstein, the Air Forced published, but has yet to distribute, a 27- page document, which includes a cover sheet that states: “COMPLIANCE WITH THIS PUBLICATION IS MANDATORY.”
“Leaders at all levels,” the document says, “must avoid the actual or apparent use of their position to promote their personal religious beliefs to their subordinates or to extend preferential treatment for any religion.” It even suggested that noncompliance could result in court-martial.

Oh, that's interesting. So according to Quinn, Weinstein was in some sense behind the new regulations, which were published after (and she is clearly implying as a result of) his demands. When did that happen? Did Weinstein have earlier meetings, or were his demands (her word) conveyed to the compliant Pentagon in writing only? Of course, she hastens to add that Weinstein and his friends aren't yet satisfied, because the pamphlet hasn't been released yet and because they haven't started actually "enforcing" it, meaning prosecuting people for sharing their faith:

According to Weinstein, this has not been backed up.
“You need half a dozen court-martials real quick,” Wilson said.

But there is hope, because Weinstein continues to have influence:

They [Weinstein and others on his side of the issues] were on their way to a meeting at the Pentagon on April 23 where they would discuss religious issues in a group that included several generals and a military chaplain.

At the meeting at the Pentagon, according to Weinstein, Air Force Lt. Gen. Richard C. Harding said the instruction booklet, scheduled to be released in a few weeks as a blue pamphlet, will be a panacea to all religious issues.
Weinstein’s reaction? “I said that I don’t want to hear about blue books. What is stopping Secretary Hagel from putting out a letter that this kind of behavior will not be tolerated? Where are the commanders? And [an announcement] that the moment someone goes against the ruling they will immediately be court-martialed?”

The meeting ended on a positive note, according to Weinstein. “I said, ‘What is needed gentlemen, is leadership.’ ”

So Weinstein is still making demands, and the Air Force is hurrying to distribute the new policy, apparently in response to these demands. Weinstein is merely annoyed that the witch hunt isn't proceeding fast and furiously enough.

Again, this article isn't from Fox News. This article isn't by a right-wing blogger. This article is by Sally Quinn of the Washington Post, who is rabidly pro-Weinstein, has been interviewing him, and obviously only wishes, along with him, that his blood-lust against Christians were being satisfied more rapidly and harshly. But that he is influencing the actions of U.S. military brass and that he approves of and influenced the release of the new policy is quite clearly implied by Quinn's article. So let's not dismiss this.

Moreover, what about this recent meeting? Oh, so he asked for it. Big deal. Suppose I asked for a meeting at the Pentagon with a group of military brass "including several generals." Would I get it? Are such meetings just granted for the asking? And why does this meeting appear to have had such a heavy representation of people who all agree with Weinstein about the horrible, horrible dangers of "proselytizing" in the military? (Quinn also interviews Larry Wilkerson and Joe Wilson, who were on the way to the same meeting and were singing the same song.)

Let's look at some of the things Weinstein says:

Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces.

We MUST vigorously support the continuing efforts to expose pathologically anti-gay, Islamaphobic, and rabidly intolerant agitators for what they are: die-hard enemies of the United States Constitution. Monsters, one and all. To do anything less would be to roll out a red carpet to those who would usher in a blood-drenched, draconian era of persecutions, nationalistic militarism, and superstitious theocracy.

This is a national security threat. What is happening [aside from sexual assault] is spiritual rape. And what the Pentagon needs is to understand is that it is sedition and treason. It should be punished.

If these fundamentalist Christian monsters of human degradation … and tyranny cannot broker or barter your acceptance of their putrid theology, then they crave for your universal silence in the face of their rapacious reign of theocratic terror. Indeed, they ceaselessly lust, ache, and pine for you to do absolutely nothing to thwart their oppression. Comply, my friends, and you become as monstrously savage as are they. I beg you, do not feed these hideous monsters with your stoic lethargy, callousness and neutrality. Do not lubricate the path of their racism, bigotry, and prejudice. Doing so directly threatens the national security of our beautiful nation.

This man is a complete loony. The word "unhinged" comes to mind. Can anyone imagine someone who said those kinds of things about Muslims ever being granted a meeting with Pentagon officials to discuss policy concerning religious activities in the military? You have to be kidding.

So color me unimpressed with the supposed revelations of "exaggeration" by the right on this one. Mikey Weinstein's involvement in this situation is extremely alarming, especially in light of the actual Air Force policy just now being released, which Weinstein approves and only wants enforced. So let's turn to the question of military policy.

“Leaders at all levels,” the [Air Force] document says, “must avoid the actual or apparent use of their position to promote their personal religious beliefs to their subordinates or to extend preferential treatment for any religion.” It even suggested that noncompliance could result in court-martial.

Please note, again: That quotation and summary come from Quinn, not from Fox or any right-wing source.

Here is another quotation from that 2012 (being released now) Air Force document:

Leaders at all levels must balance constitutional protections for an individual's free exercise of religion or other personal beliefs and the constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion. For example, they must avoid the actual or apparent use of their position to promote their personal religious beliefs to their subordinates or to extend preferential treatment for any religion. Commanders or supervisors who engage in such behavior may cause members to doubt their impartiality and objectivity. The potential result is a degradation of the unit's morale, good order, and discipline.

And here is a "clarification" (hmmm) by Lt. Cmdr. Nate Christensen of the DoD:

The U.S. Department of Defense has never and will never single out a particular religious group for persecution or prosecution. The Department makes reasonable accommodations for all religions and celebrates the religious diversity of our service members.
Service members can share their faith (evangelize), but must not force unwanted, intrusive attempts to convert others of any faith or no faith to one's beliefs (proselytization).

Christensen evidently emphasized that what he is expressing is long-standing military policy, but with a new pamphlet coming out, with the harrying of Weinstein behind it, in the Air Force, I think we can definitely say that, whatever official policy has been before, the AF brass is now trying to "crack down" in some special and new way on alleged violations of said policy. That this is likely to encourage new complaints of alleged "proselytizing" should go without saying.

Now, what about this distinction between proselytizing and evangelization? It sounds pretty subjective. Why do we need a special category of banned "proselytizing," anyway? (And as a passing comment, isn't it ironic that the military holds sensitivity training and other brain-washing sessions for PC attitudes, and nobody worries in that context about authority figures bullying military members to hold a particular viewpoint, but that small-print verses on rifles or chaplains who remind soldiers that they may die in battle and should think about their eternal destiny are considered a horrible threat to "good order and discipline"?)

Who decides what constitutes "proselytizing"? I note that The Tennessean quotes the following from a response the Air Force Public Affairs Office apparently made to their query:

The Air Force’s public affairs office, using the Merriam-Webster dictionary, defines proselytizing as “to induce someone to convert to one’s faith,” said Capt. Jody Ritchie in an email.
“When on duty or in an official capacity, Air Force members are free to express their personal religious beliefs as long as it does not make others uncomfortable,” he said in an email. “Proselytizing, as defined above, goes over that line.”

Now, that's very interesting. Notice that there isn't even any mention from Capt. Jody Ritchie of coercion, is there? No, according to Capt. Ritchie, it is attempting to induce someone to convert to one's faith that is prohibited. I have news for you, Capt. Ritchie: That's what Christians call "witnessing," "sharing their faith," or "evangelizing." Capt. Ritchie says only that they can "express their personal religious beliefs as long as it does not make others uncomfortable." So

1) Religious faith must be treated as a subjective matter, not recommended to others. It's just "my personal belief" which I'm "expressing," not something I'm recommending or urging as being universally true or good for anyone other than myself,

2) The minute someone else "feels uncomfortable," the religious believer has to shut up, giving the one who "feels uncomfortable" absolute veto power even over "expressing personal religious beliefs."

Capt. Christensen and all the other "move along, folks, nothing to see here" people will have to forgive me if I consider Capt. Ritchie's remarks to be more than a little disturbing. Contrary to what you might like to believe, it looks like we are not simply talking about forbidding superior officers from telling soldiers that they must kneel down and pray to Jesus. And I doubt that we have an epidemic of such behavior anyway. Indeed, the supposedly terrible and shocking examples given by Quinn of religious persecution and harassment by the "Christian monsters" of Weinstein's fevered dreams don't amount to jolly much. The most forthright one was a chaplain who preached to troops in Afghanistan that they had only a short time to live and "needed to get right with Jesus." God forbid that a chaplain should actually preach the Gospel with even a tiny smidgen of fire and brimstone.

That brings us to another point: Chaplains are, if I'm not mistaken (correct me if I'm wrong) often higher-ranking than the men they counsel. This policy may very well mean that even chaplains (chaplains!) cannot attempt to lead men to the Lord Jesus Christ lest they be accused of abusing their higher status as officers. This is a major matter. How can a chaplain carry out his duty qua chaplain if he is literally required by military policy not to urge the religion he believes to be true, the most important truth in the universe, when counseling military members or when preaching?

Joe Carter of the Gospel Coalition points out some of the issues in play here. Apropos of the analogy to alleged "workplace discrimination," Carter says, "We don’t want your boss saying you have to go to a Bible study, [b]ut what if he just invites you?” Good point. Isn't that trying to "induce" other people to accept your faith?

On this issue, Moore and Ezell explain the problem quite well:

Of the items mentioned above, we are most concerned about the language of “proselytizing” as a punishable offense. We agree, of course, that no one should coerce religious beliefs on anyone else. As a matter of fact, if the military were to allow some sort of coercive conversion—to any religion, including ours—we would object to such as a violation of both the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment and of our consciences. We believe the New Birth comes by the Spirit of Christ not by the sword of Caesar.
This behavior is, of course, clearly already prohibited as harassment. What incidents have taken place, we wonder, that would call for this seemingly arbitrary distinction between “evangelizing” and “proselytizing”? Proselytizing, after all, includes a range of meaning, encompassing a definition of “seeking to recruit to a cause or to a belief.” With a subjective interpretation and adjudication of such cases, we need reassurance that such would not restrict the free exercise of religion for our chaplains and military personnel.

After all, who defines what is proselytizing and what is evangelism? What could seem to be a friendly conversation about spiritual matters to one serviceperson could be perceived or deliberately mischaracterized as “proselytizing” to the person on the receiving end. The fact that this has been raised at all in such a subjective fashion could have a chilling effect on service personnel sharing their faith at all.

In my opinion, we should not listen to those saying "peace, peace" when there is no peace. There are so many reasons to think that the U.S. military is becoming a place that is not good for Christians to be. The new hyper-concern about the dreadful crime of "proselytizing" is just one more reason. If you have a young man of your acquaintance, especially a son, thinking of joining the military, I suggest that you attempt to dissuade him.

In case you were wondering about the "II" in the title, here is post #1.

Site Update: Database Migration

2013-05-09T15:12:26Z

Due to the errors this morning, I've migrated the site to a newer database server. There may be some slowdown while everything gets settled into the new platform.

Dearborn settles out of court

2013-05-07T15:09:42Z

This is a cause for rejoicing. Rarely do the good guys have sufficient legal oomph to push and to keep on pushing until the petty powers that be have to give in. This time, they did. Kudos to lawyers Robert Muise and David Yerushalmi.

Long-time readers will remember my coverage (see here for one of my longest posts) of the shocking arrest of missionaries Nabeel Qureshi, David Wood, and Paul Rezkallah in Dearborn, Michigan, several years ago when they were merely standing on a public street discussing the deity of Jesus Christ with a group of Muslims.

Now, three years later, the City of Dearborn has settled a constitutional lawsuit out of court for an undisclosed sum of money and an apology posted on the city's web site. The city has also revoked comments that implied that the missionaries were doing something wrong.

From last year, I already had evidence that David Wood and his companions are now being allowed to speak peacefully with Arab Festival participants. My guess is that the city will have to continue that this year and not arrest Acts 17 missionaries.

The remaining clouds on the horizon are:

--Answering Muslims has reported that there have been proposals to move the Arab Festival indoors. This might make it easier to punish those who come to speak about Christ at the festival.

--The fourth person arrested at the time in 2010, Negeen Mayel, was in fact convicted of the bogus crime of "disobeying an officer." Her "crime" was public videotaping and not instantaneously putting down her video camera when ordered to do so by a policeman. Perhaps in part because of her conviction (the three men were acquitted in their breach of the peace trials) and perhaps in part because she did not wish to pursue the suit, Negeen does not appear to have been a party to the constitutional lawsuit that has just been settled out of court.

--The American Freedom Law Center representing the missionaries is continuing to press a suit against the Arab Festival, which refused to settle out of court. This doesn't bode well for the outcome if the festival is in fact moved indoors.

Religious motivation smoked out

2013-05-03T03:37:39Z

This story evidently got going in February, but I just recently learned of it. New York City, not having anything better to do, is suing various Hasidic stores for posting the following dress code:

No shorts
No barefoot
No sleeveless
No low-cut neckline
Allowed in this store

Reports state that the ground for the suit is that the stores are allegedly discriminating on the grounds of religion! Yes, you got that right. The claim is that they are trying to impose their religious norms on customers, hence, they are discriminating on religious grounds against customers who don't share their religion.

Now, that, to me, is the story. Stupid lawsuit by city is bad enough, but that argument is extremely troubling. As others have pointed out, plenty of stores have for a long time required shirt and shoes to receive service. Moreover, fancy restaurants have highly specific dress codes. Nobody tells any of those places that they are discriminating on the grounds of religion. There are also still on the books public decency statutes that would, for example, prohibit public nudity. So evidently what is motivating this lawsuit is that the alleged motivation for this dress code is religious, which makes this dress code "religious discrimination."

That's a very bad precedent. If you tell your customers to dress in a certain way to be stylish or classy-looking or so as not to drag down the worldly reputation of your restaurant, Bloomberg's minions consider that, shall we say, kosher. But if we happen to know that you are religious and that your motive for your basic and rather minimal modesty-related dress code is religious, then you get sued. What this means is that if you try to apply any code of decent behavior or modesty in your business establishment, even a prima facie reasonable one, you will be allowed to do so only to the extent that your motive for that reasonable standard is not religious. The minute your motive is thought to be religious, then you can't ask anything of your customers.

The claim that this is an enforcement of the store-owner's religious dress norms is false in any event. Actual Hasidic women do a lot more than just not wearing sleeveless dresses, shorts, and low necklines in public! The dress code here falls far short of the Hasidic businessmen's own religious standards.

So what happens next? If public nudity becomes more common and a known-to-be-Christian businessman puts, "No nude customers will be served" on the door, is his motive presumptively religious, and can he therefore be sued for religious discrimination against all those non-Christians who want to shop in the buff? This is now not a merely satiric question.

The gendarmes of CPS

2013-04-30T20:55:49Z

I note that it has been just about exactly a year since this post and discussion of the excesses of CPS.

Now we have a new story which you may already have heard: The Russian couple, Alex and Anna Nikolayev, in California who made the mistake of checking their baby into a hospital because of his flu symptoms. Their baby was later seized from their home by gun-wielding police who roughed up Alex a bit for good measure, simply because (gasp) they had discharged their baby from Hospital #1 and taken him to Hospital #2 for a second opinion without the Almighty Permission of those Godlike Beings--the medical personnel at Hospital #1. The docs at Hospital #2 okayed him to go home, but the ego-bruised docs back at Hospital #1 got their revenge, and the parents are now, after a hearing on Monday, pathetically grateful simply to be allowed to see their baby in the hospital any time they want. For a few days there he was in "protective custody" back at Hospital #1, presumably to prevent his horrible parents from kidnapping him and, y'know, taking him to the doctor or something.

I wish I could say that all's well that ends well, but it doesn't really. Baby Sammy is now going to be taken to Hospital #3 for a second (really a third) opinion, and maybe the doctors at Hospital #3 will agree to his going home. At some point he might need heart surgery, but it's unclear whether that is needed. His parents have had to agree not to take him home without permission, though. ("I do hereby solemnly swear that I will never take my baby away from the hospital without the permission of my betters, the doctors who Know Everything.") And they have had to agree to be "monitored" by CPS and to have a CPS visit in their home after Sammy is allowed to come home. Because parents are dangerous people and must be watched carefully.

We're told that his parents now have control over his medical decisions again, but in a sense that isn't really true, because of course any doctors can always call CPS again if the parents don't agree to what they want to do, or even if they dare to question it.

This is the stuff of police states.

]]> Now that we have established that, once your child is in a hospital, he is a prisoner there and that your whole family is at the mercy of the doctors and nurses, who may sic the police on you at any moment, what are some implications of this fact?

Here's one I can think of immediately. Suppose that a child is disabled or ill and that the doctors have decided that it is time for him to die. Suppose that they want to stop feeding him and dehydrate him to death. (No, this is not entirely hypothetical. See this story about a baby with a cleft palate for whom the doctors prescribed death back in 1997. He was saved, fortunately.) Suppose that the parents will not agree. And suppose, moreover, that the parents insist on taking the child home and continuing to feed him there. Could CPS be called, just as in this case and as in the case last year, and the child seized? Absolutely. I do not consider such a scenario far-fetched. We are long past the time when, "Oh, come on, that wouldn't happen" is a reasonable response to such suggestions in the United States.

Given that doctors and CPS can seize your child simply because you won't do what you are told, even for the most trivial reasons (such as the horrifying allegation in the case last year that the mother had refused a Vitamin K shot for her baby), I foresee the day when parents will be charged with "severe neglect" for attempting to save their children's lives and when the children will be seized so that they can, in actual fact, be neglected to death by the hospital.

It gives me no pleasure to say that. Nor do I know what we can do about it. Note that nobody is considering suing the CPS in California. The parents and their lawyer are just trying to fend off CPS. There will be no repercussions or restraints on either the doctors or on CPS that would prevent them from doing the exact same thing again.

It has come to the point that I really do not feel that I can say happily to my children, "America is a free country."

GUEST REVIEW: Home is where the Truth is

2013-04-26T05:56:29Z

Home is where the Truth is

by KENNETH W. BICKFORD

Journalist Gene Fowler once found a Holy Bible in the strangest of places—on a shelf, in the library of the notoriously irreligious W. C. Fields. “What the hell are you doing with that?” he inquired. Fields replied in his characteristic drawl “Been lookin’ for loopholes.”

Aren’t we all.

Rod Dreher’s new book, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming, (subtitled “A Southern Girl, A Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life”) is ostensibly about the author’s sister, who tragically died of lung cancer at the age of forty-two. I say “tragically” because she never smoked, and I say “ostensibly” because, after all, her name is in the title and we do spend a considerable amount of time learning about her, about her relationship with her community and of the sometimes troubling relationship she had with her brother.

But there is so much more.

This is a book about loopholes. It is about humanity’s search for them, about the author’s search for them. It is about how some folks spend their whole lives looking for magical or scientific shortcuts around suffering and pain and alienation—and who receive in exchange for their troubles a spent life and a perfectly toned corpse.

It is a cautionary tale for those who have the very best things but who lack the community that perfects the enjoyment of those things.

But mostly it is a book about the example of Ruthie Leming, who refused to openly weep for her fate, who didn’t stare into the abyss of her unjustifiably shortened life with justifiable rage—who didn’t waste her time looking for loopholes that didn’t exist.

]]> The author—an accomplished journalist and sophisticated man-of-the-world—leads us to his own gut-wrenching confrontation with the troubling side of Truth: Permanent happiness is only found in a community that knows exactly how to deal with the dreadful things.

Perfect places don’t suffer from dread. There are no loose shingles or peeling paint. The landscapes are cut and clipped, the cars polished. The dogs are spiffy. And the people—my goodness, the people are so well done that they cannot be improved. And so nothing is ever changed for the better because there isn’t anything better to change it into.

Our modern world has made a considerable investment in trying to eliminate the dreadful things. And of course if such a thing were possible community would be unnecessary. It explains why the dreadful things drive us to seek the best education, so that we may have the best job, so that we may afford the best plastic surgeon, so that we might upload our consciousness onto a hard drive for implantation into a future self, or freeze our decapitated head for possible reattachment to a future body—and so on.

We achieve so that we might control, and we control so that we might literally escape the permanent dread of death. We want to achieve immortality by not dying; if we must die, we insist on being healthy when it happens, and we very much want to do it all by ourselves. That’s what control means to the modern man and woman—the independence and freedom to escape from the dreadful things all by yourself.

The paradox of Ruthie Leming was that she chose to live with the dreadful thing of her own doom. She did not fiddle with the doorknobs on metaphysical exits or frantically look for secret passages. From the beginning her exit strategy was Truth. Truth that was beautiful and happy…but also tragic and dreadful.

She chose instead to give a portion of her entire life to a particular family and a particular town so that at the moment of dread—that awful point where ashen faces come into your room speaking cruel words—she wasn’t alone. It is a small and little decision—hardly worth noticing, really—but when one simply accepts the whole of truth, one gets a whole life in return.

The insignificance and tininess of the decision is why a lot of very smart folks miss it. But as Ruthie’s sun begins to set, the decision she made to live in Truth begins dawning on her brother:

My friends and I talked a lot about the fragmentation of the modern family, about the deracinating effects of late capitalism, about mass media and the erosion of localist consciousness, about the consumerization of religion and the leviathan state and every other thing under the sun that undermines our sense of home and permanence.
The one thing none of us did was what Ruthie did: Stay.

Contemporary culture encourages us to make islands of ourselves for the sake of self-fulfillment, of career advancement, of entertainment, of diversion, and all the demands of the sovereign self. When suffering and death come for you—and it will—you want to be in a place where you know, and are known. You want—no, you need—to be able to say, as Mike (Ruthie’s husband) did, “We’re leaning, but we’re leaning on each other.”

This is also a book about the heroine’s deep Christian faith, and about the sort of grace that allows an ordinary man or woman to live the good life exactly where they are—in the valley of the shadow of death.

Heroism shows up in the oddest of places. We like to think its natural habitat is a dangerous situation such as a battlefield or a burning building. But really it’s found whenever and wherever ordinary persons confront Truth squarely and directly. The Little Way of Ruthie Leming shows that that sort of heroism can be found in the life of an ordinary schoolteacher from an obscure village. All it takes, really, is the acknowledgement that the loopholes aren’t worth your time—that indeed, if you ever actually found one your community would vanish, and along with it the good life you thought you’d secured.

Ruthie’s final blessing and gift was to reveal something simple and ordinary to her brother Rod. He and his wife do a most remarkable thing—they leave their cosmopolitan life in Philadelphia and move home.

But moving home isn’t for the fainthearted—you might just have to live with Truth. The author himself still struggles with that fact. So do we. It’s part of the reason so few of us today are at home in the world. “Maybe this time it’ll be different” we think. Maybe we’ll discover a Truth that is always pleasant and accommodating. Maybe this town will be perfect or that neighborhood flawless. Maybe this is the perfect job and that is the perfect house.

Maybe not.

Leprechaun’s gold and loopholes are very fine fantasies, but they have not a thing to do with the treasure of home. Indeed—they compromise it.

As the author remarks in his epiphany: “The little way of Ruthie Leming is the plainest thing in the world, something any of us could choose. And yet so few of us do.”

Things should be what they are

2013-04-24T21:16:06Z

What should we, as conservatives, be trying to preserve and trying to pass down to our children? Many things, obviously. One thing that gets, to my mind, to the heart of what we should be trying to teach is a love of the genuine as opposed to the fake. Our culture wallows in the fake. Everything has to be new, everything has to have been thought of yesterday. This makes it difficult for young people to appreciate anything like a genuine and valuable cultural oeuvre with a history or a tradition behind it. Many of them have never been exposed to such a thing in their lives.

A "liturgy" that you made up last year because you think you're good at writing isn't a real liturgy. The 1662 Book of Common Prayer and the Tridentine Mass are examples of real liturgy. Imperfect they may be in various ways, but they are human artifacts that represent real human history. Pastor Joe's Worship Ideas for Advent don't.

Here, however, we run into a difficulty: If you love what is real in human history and culture, you are going to come smack up against the fact that the ideas that made various undeniably real (in the sense I'm discussing here) and also worthwhile and beautiful (this may be more controversial) cultures and artifacts possible are in conflict with one another. How, then, can you give the proper appreciation to two or more traditions founded on incompatible ideas? And, if we acknowledge that all good things come from God and return to God, what does this say about God? How does God view incompatible traditions and their artifacts? And how will what is valuable in them be preserved in eternity?

]]> Let's face it: A Catholic Mass that tries to be Protestant is a mish-mash. A Baptist church service that tries to be liturgical is likely to be anemic and pathetic. Not that I've ever seen any Baptist churches seriously try to be liturgical, but I'd prefer not to. It's like good coffee and great red wine. Each is good by itself, but mixing them produces sludge. Things should be what they are and not try to be something else.

In The Personal Heresy, C.S. Lewis relates a dream: Falstaff had died, and Lewis found himself mourning over him. The people standing about consoled him by saying that Falstaff's eternal soul was in heaven. Lewis responded, "But we've lost his fatness!" Indeed.

Let's try to make this just a little more concrete. In no way am I claiming that all these examples are of equal aesthetic and cultural value, much less equal religious value. I'm just claiming that they do have aesthetic, cultural, and human value, and that the world would be poorer without them. Consider...

--Notre Dame cathedral
--A plain, white country chapel
--Rembrandt
--Fra Angelico
--An old-fashioned Quaker "silent meeting."
--The Tridentine Mass
--The Book of Common Prayer
--The hymns of Charles Wesley
--An orthodox rabbi
--A faithful Catholic priest
--A sincere Baptist preacher

Mozart's "Ave Verum Corpus"

Hymns and choruses sung by a Gospel quartet

Let's not beat around the bush: If it hadn't been for the Protestant Reformation, a number of these things wouldn't exist at all. By the same token, if the Catholic Church had never existed, a number of these things wouldn't exist at all. And so on and so forth. The people who are producing works of genius or just works of joy, who are living their faith in ways that enrich the human experience, often don't agree with each other, and the things they write, do, and produce often arise out of their disagreements in ways that cannot be simply disentangled.

No doubt there are people who would be just as happy to be without some of them. I recall one commentator (and he is entirely entitled to his opinion, though I disagree with him strongly) who would write off the Book of Common Prayer as do-without-able. Apparently what I call the liturgical genius of Thomas Cranmer just doesn't impress everybody.

A few years ago I wrote to a friend about Fr. Michael Rodriguez and introduced this very subject--that things should be what they are. I said, "I wouldn't want him to be different, even where he and I would disagree about theology." My friend pointed out, astutely, that if I thought Fr. Rodriguez were going to go to hell as a result of our theological disagreements, I would want him to change.

You are free to make up your own examples. The exercise is not really a hard one if you have a moderate degree of cultural education in a variety of traditions: Come up with a work of art or architecture, a person, or an organization whose value and contribution you appreciate. Now notice the religious (say) presumptions on which that person's life or that work of art is based. Now come up with a different work of art, person, etc., whom you also greatly appreciate but whose work or meaning is bound up with or even explicitly expresses an incompatible set of religious presumptions. Now remind yourself how easy it is to multiply such examples. Now remind yourself that, insofar as the questions at issue can be clearly stated, someone is right and someone is wrong. Now contemplate how sad it would be (in a strange and somewhat heretical sense of "sad") if everyone got it right and agreed and if we lost the variety of traditions based on incompatible assumptions.

I have to admit that I don't know what this means.

Fortunately, not all things that "should be what they are" have as clear a connection to specific theology as the examples already given. We also have bluegrass music and French cooking.

I do know one thing: To the extent that it can be squared with your conscience, teach your children and other people to appreciate the beauty of a variety of traditions and of things that "are what they are." Teach them by example to love the strong flavor of real things and to reject the fake.

It won't answer all questions. In fact, it may raise some new questions. But it's an important thing to do.

The jihad marches on (with a little Bayesianism thrown in)

2013-04-19T15:12:24Z

Well, now we all know (hopefully) that the Boston bombing was not carried out by disaffected right-wingers targeting tax day.

And let me just throw in a little analysis here, prompted by an outraged (sensible) philosopher friend who called me up to vent a bit about the denseness of left-wingers: Let us please consider that (yes, yes, you can stop saying "Timothy McVeigh" now, even taking him into account) based on our past experience, the prior probability of a so-called "right-wing" terrorist was as of the beginning of this week, even before the revelations of last night about the identity of these bombers, much lower than the prior probability of Muslim terrorists. Now let's look at likelihoods. Yes, one possible motive for "right-wing terrorists" would have been objection to high taxes, and then April 15 might well have been targeted. But there were other descriptions of both the day and the event: It was a large sporting event with crowds and it was also known as Patriot Day in Massachusetts, which might have attracted foreign terrorists. So by no means did the likelihoods favor "right-wing terrorists" over Muslim terrorists, either. In short, "Muslim terrorists" was always the way to bet, but our dear readers will have noticed the deafening silence of our restraint here at W4 in the last few days.

Now we know that the suspects, who, by their subsequent actions have left little doubt that they really are the bombers, are Chechnyans. Can you say "Beslan"?

]]> I'm going to go way out on a limb now, as the manhunt is on for Dzokhar Tsarnaev, Tamerlan already being dead in a shootout, and hazard a guess that the jihad marches on and that the Boston bombing is an instance thereof. Chechnyan Muslim terrorism was never just some sort of inter-country feud with Russia. Never. The jihad is what it is, and if we Americans don't yet know that we are a target, let's hope we figure it out fast.

By the way, please see this story, where we find Dzokhar's Russian Facebook profile (with a slightly different spelling of his first name) listing his worldview. Islam.

An impossible situation

2013-04-17T14:58:22Z

Yesterday I had been reading a rather annoying article, which I don't particularly feel like linking to, urging conservatives to present themselves (somehow) differently in the pro-marriage fight. The author was being fairly non-specific and was just urging pro-marriage activists to find a way to bill their fight as "progressive" rather than as "defending marriage." (Evidently he thinks the word "defending" won't focus-group well.)

Anyway, as I was cooking dinner I was asking myself, in a spirit of charity (!) what sort of "positive" efforts he might have in mind, so we could say we're being positive and progressive rather than negative and defensive. There was some mention of no-fault divorce laws, so I thought, well, maybe one idea was to try to roll back no-fault divorce laws. That this would be some sort of positive program of strengthening marriage that pro-marriage forces could try to take credit for. (Though honestly, in terms of self-presentation, does anyone really expect the public at large to think, "Oh, how nice, they're not just negative, they also are trying to roll back no-fault divorce laws, so now I feel better about the people who think marriage should continue to be between one man and one woman"? I don't think so either.)

Then it hit me.

]]> In jurisdictions where homosexual "marriage" is recognized by the state, we don't want to do that. I never had thought of this before.

Think of Lisa Miller. Think of others who have left the homosexual lifestyle. Do we really want to strengthen the legal ties that bind them to that lifestyle? Do we really want to make it harder for them to break away? Do we really want to require them to remain "married" to a homosexual partner unless they can prove severe abuse or infidelity?

Let's face it: The desire to strengthen marriage is at odds with anything that will strengthen the legal ties of "marriage."

A legal situation in which pseudo-marriage is put on a par with real marriage places the defenders of real marriage in an impossible position as far as trying to make positive legal attempts to strengthen real marriage. (Sermons and counseling--so long as it is counseling under the aegis of a church and can be restricted only to really married couples--are a different matter.) Think of the covenant marriage initiative. It would be an obscenity for a homosexual couple to get a "covenant marriage" making it even harder for one member to get legally free of the other. Yet I'll bet dollars to donuts that there will be some homosexual couples, probably lesbians and probably only a small number, who will get "covenant marriages" in states where they exist, if only for symbolic reasons: "See, we're using the conservatives' initiative against them."

Now, except for the covenant marriage initiative, there are very few attempts to make it harder to get out of marriage that lie within the realm of practical politics, so the whole question may be moot. From the perspective of real marriage, this is a bad thing. But from the perspective of pseudo-marriage, it is not a bad thing. It is a necessity. Repentance shouldn't be blocked by the state. And at least when we think about what to urge in the public arena and how to strategize, we need to bear this in mind.

What a mess. An impossible mess.

(Note: As usual, this is not an invitation to trolls from a certain fever swamp of the blogosphere to come in making misogynistic comments. You gents haven't been seen around here for a while, so perhaps this warning is unnecessary, but the topic of no-fault divorce may pop up on your radar somehow, and this is just a warning that such comments are not welcome.)

Various pieces of news from the medical ethics world

2013-04-16T14:38:43Z

This article confirms what I said here about the difficulty of enforcing born-alive infant protections. The testimony of many nurses shows a pervasive pattern of overt discrimination against premature babies in withholding life-saving treatment based on the fact that they have survived abortions. One of these accounts also shows evidence of an underestimate of the child's age, suspiciously given as "23 weeks," which is just under what many hospitals would consider viable. Given that abortionists' assistants deliberately manipulate ultrasounds and lie about gestational age, this is significant.

The nurse from Labor and Delivery walked into our unit carrying a blanket and stating “This is a prostaglandin abortion. He has a heartbeat so we brought him over.” The baby was placed under a radiant warmer and I was told the rest of the facts. The gestational age of the baby was given to be 23 weeks by ultrasound. The mother had cancer and had received chemotherapy treatments before discovering that she was pregnant. The parents had been told that their baby would be horribly deformed because of the chemotherapy.
I looked at the baby boy lying before me, and saw that from all appearances he was perfect. He had a good strong heartbeat. I could tell this without using a stethoscope because I could see his chest moving in sync with his heart rate. With a stethoscope I heard a heart pumping strongly. I look at his size and his skin — he definitely looked more mature than 23 weeks. He was weighed and I discovered that he was 900 grams, almost two pounds. This was almost twice the weight of some babies we have been able to save. A doctor was summoned. When she arrived the baby started moving his tiny arms and legs flailing. He started trying to gasp, but was unable to get air into his lungs. His whole body shuddered with his efforts to breathe. We were joined by a neonatalist and I pleaded with both doctors saying, “The baby is viable — look at his size, look at his skin — he looks much older than 23 weeks.”

It was a horrible moment as each of us wrestled with our own ethical standards. I argued that we should make an attempt to resuscitate him, to get him breathing. The resident doctor told me, “This is an abortion. We have no right to interfere.” The specialist, who had the responsibility for the decision, was wringing his hands and quietly saying, “This is so hard. Oh, God, it’s so hard when it’s this close.” In the end, I lost. We were not going to try to resuscitate this baby. So, I did the only thing I could do. Dipping my index finger into sterile water and placing it on his head, I baptized the child.

Note that the (female) resident in this case expressly stated that they "had no right to interfere" because "this is an abortion." No, lady, this isn't an abortion. This is a baby. The abortion is over. The story doesn't say in what year it occurred.

]]> What's particularly disturbing about this is that even a good law like Florida's proposed born-alive protection act that requires the baby to be taken to a hospital from an abortion clinic could run into this problem: Doctors who believe that it's acceptable to refuse assistance to the child precisely because it is unwanted and was born after an attempted abortion.

This is only going to be stopped when this type of discrimination is combated at least passionately and with as draconian measures as all the bajillion types of discrimination that our country already demonizes and outlaws at every conceivable level of jurisdiction and that the various levels of government make darned good and sure to prosecute or sue over. (These don't involve leaving babies to gasp out their last breaths without assistance, I might add.) Suppose, for example, that all hospitals had policies and training telling their neonatologists, residents, nurses--everyone involved--that "this is an abortion" must be irrelevant to the decision as to whether to give a baby breathing assistance. Suppose that there were penalties for such discrimination. Hospitals might also encourage nurse whistle blowing (and the evidence of the accounts we have indicates that there might well be nurse whistle blowing) of suspected cases of discrimination against babies who survive abortion.

And here's a creative idea: Carefully worded state legislation could support doctors in following such non-discrimination policy. For example, state legislation could craft an exception to the presumption of parental rights in treatment decisions and encourage doctors to render aid. The legislation could say something to the effect that a doctor who treats a newborn child against his parent's or parents' wishes in pursuit of a hospital policy of non-discrimination protecting babies who are unwanted and/or who survive an abortion shall be free from civil suit for rendering aid to the child

Could such regulations be circumvented? Of course. Deciding on what measures to take in treating a premature newborn is always a judgement call. But it sounds to me as though hospitals are not making any attempt at all to root out the division of preemies into wanted first-class citizens and unwanted second-class citizens. Direct legal and moral education is missing. Someone should have been able to speak up to that resident and to the agonized neonatologist and say, "You both know that it is against the policy of _____ hospital for you to take into account the fact that this child survived an abortion in a decision to deny treatment. You must give this child treatment if you would give it to a wanted newborn." Doctors should also be informed of the possibility that those (even in the same hospital) who performed the abortion may have underestimated gestational age and that gestational age needs to be reevaluated at birth.

I'm not holding my breath for any of this to take place, but this is what is needed.

Second item: Wesley J. Smith has discovered that, surprise, surprise, the decision as to whether a patient is a good candidate for organ donation, and the discussion of organ donation with the patient's family, is not kept hermetically separated from decisions about the patient's care. No, indeed. This doesn't come as a surprise to me, because I, like many others, have heard anecdotes about families with whom medical personnel have definitely been discussing organ donation prior to the family's having made a decision about whether to withdraw life-sustaining care such as a ventilator.

What Smith is noting, however, is that the Organ Procurement Organization Committee, which is the committee in charge of policies regarding organ donation, has explicitly rejected a proposal that it clarify its policies to make clear that there should be a firewall between decisions about care and evaluation of potential donors and discussion of donation with family. Whoever proposed the policy clarification (we don't know who it was) was under the impression, poor fellow, that such a firewall commonly exists (the proposer notes that such a firewall is recommended by the Institute of Medicine), and he was simply asking the committee to make this explicit. The committee expresses surprise that anyone should have believed this to be long-standing policy and explicitly rejects it, declaring that evaluation for suitable donor status should go on before anything is discussed with the family and that discussion with the family should be able to take place before the family has made decisions about end-of-life care for the patient! The pro-donation commentators at Smith's site are positively dismissive about any idea that this might, you know, create problems in which end-of-life care decisions are actually influenced in a pro-death direction by the desire for the patient to be an organ donor. Yet that possibility is, of course, very real.

Moreover, the OPO (the committee) says a couple of other telling things:

--They are very concerned that the patient be evaluated before discussion with the family, because the patient might have signed an organ donor card and might be in a registry as a donor. In that case, the family has no say in whether the patient is to be used as an organ donor, and the OPO wouldn't want the family to get the idea that they can veto the use of their relative as a donor! (p. 7) So the family should be presented with an evaluation first, so that they are definitely told, "Your relative can be an organ donor. Sorry, you don't get to veto this." I note that, if no organ donation card is found on the patient's person and if the person hasn't entered himself into any registry, this could be misleading in the other direction. An evaluation might proceed based on the patient's medical characteristics (the committee expressly says that this takes place), and nothing is more likely (I say) than that the family will be given the impression that they have no veto power over donation even if they do. "We've already evaluated your relative, and he is a candidate." The committee is curiously unworried about that possible confusion.

--The committee expressly wants conscious patients, such as patients suffering from Lou Gehrig's Disease (ALS) to be able to be evaluated as candidates for organ donation. (pp. 5-6) Yes, you read that right. These would be patients who are ventilator dependent but conscious and who might want to be used in what is called a non-heart-beating donation. Here's how it would go: The patient says, "I want you to take me off the ventilator and donate my organs." The organ procurement team doesn't need familial consent, because the patient just gave consent. So the organ procurement team comes in, the patient is taken off the vent., his heart stops beating for the extremely minimal time required (which could be as little as a minute and a half or two minutes), and his organs are taken.

If all of this doesn't give you pause, it should.

Third miscellaneous item: Wesley J. Smith makes the interesting point that the Kansas law stating the obvious biological fact that a new human life begins at conception could allow the regulation of the treatment of embryos conceived outside the womb.

He has a good point. Though it is true that, logically, an unborn child within the womb is worth no less than an unborn child outside the womb, legally, the treatment unborn child within the womb is allegedly constrained by the lawless Roe v. Wade, which was all based on a woman's alleged right to physical autonomy. A child outside the womb, therefore, even at the earliest stages of life, could potentially be protected more rigorously. We see this at the end of pregnancy, with the whole issue of born-alive infant protection acts and the prosecution of Kermit Gosnell for active post-birth infanticide. Ironically, we also have children outside of the womb at the very earliest stages, those stages where they "don't look like babies," because of IVF. They shouldn't be there, but there they are. Now, if a state could decisively outlaw using them for research (for example), that would remove one motive for manufacturing them. It would also allow the regulation of IVF. Unlike Smith, who doesn't want to ban IVF but does want to regulate it, I would love to ban it. A state like Kansas that has defined human life as beginning at conception could build on that in multiple ways to protect its youngest citizens outside of the womb. I hope they do so. They should start by banning embryo-destructive research within the state.

Friday miscellaneous link roundup

2013-04-12T14:37:50Z

Readers will have gathered that I am on Facebook. This sometimes presents me with an embarrassment of riches for blogging, yet it's an odd effect that actually I blog less. That's partly explicable by the fact that I do spend some time actually on Facebook, reading my friends' links and making pithy comments and "likes" and what-not, all of which takes time.

It's also a function of the embarrassment of (sad) riches itself. I say to myself, "I should blog about that...and that...and that..." and since there isn't time to write something thoughtful about all of them, I end up writing about none of them. This is unfortunate. So, rather than "saving up" stories for possible later, longer treatment, and to promote them just in case some of you haven't heard about all of them, herewith a link roundup with a sentence or two about each. This is a hodge-podge to end all hodge-podges. It also occurs to me that there is nothing to stop me or any of my esteemed colleagues from writing more about any of the stories later. Comments can be on any of the stories. In no particular order...

]]> More on the zero-sum game: A Christian florist is going to be sued doubly (once by Washington State and once by the ACLU) for refusing to supply flowers for a homosexual "wedding" in Washington. Shades of the Elaine Hugonin case. (She was the wedding photographer in New Mexico similarly fined.) In the threatened civil suit, the ACLU is attempting some pretty blatant extortion, demanding that she write an apology to the two men, promise to supply flowers for homosexual "weddings" in the future, and donate money (!) to a homosexual youth organization. Tell me again, how is homosexual "marriage" all about freedom?

In England, an undercover newswoman discovered that a sharia "court" is advising women to put up with being physically abused, not to call the police (unless the beating was really severe), and to blame themselves for what is happening to them. But anti-sharia laws, of course, are just fear-mongering and bigotry, right?

In Australia, an appeal was allowed for a rape conviction (and yes, this was forcible rape) on the grounds that the rapist, being a Muslim, didn't understand the importance of sexual consent. He was sentenced to jail, but the point is that the appeal was allowed because he was a Muslim and because of odious Muslim views concerning women, sex, and rape, which were (incredibly) considered mitigating.

As I'm sure you're all aware, the horrific facts about the trial of baby-killer Kermit Gosnell are being deep-sixed by the national mainstream media. Many comparisons have been made to other cases which were national news for months on end. Why not this one? I guess we scarcely need to ask. (No link necessary.)

The leftists in our own U.S. Senate have blocked a resolution to honor the late, great Maggie Thatcher, who passed away the other day. Stay classy, Democrats. And stay smart about history, too. I wish I could say more about Maggie, but here are just a couple of her quotations:

Socialists cry “Power to the people”, and raise the clenched fist as they say it. We all know what they really mean—power over people, power to the State.

Communist regimes were not some unfortunate aberration, some historical deviation from a socialist ideal. They were the ultimate expression, unconstrained by democratic and electoral pressures, of what socialism is all about. … In short, the state [is] everything and the individual nothing.

And, last but not least, Melissa Harris-Perry of MSNBC thinks kids belong to the collective. I find her "reasoning" interesting: We don't want to insist that children are the responsibility of their parents, because we want to demand more public funding for public schools. Because we don't want to put the responsibility for children on their parents, because we want to blame "society" for not spending enough money on public education if children are not turning out the way we want them to, we need to take the view that parental rights mean nothing. Thus the move, seamlessly and immediately, from an entitlement mindset to a loss of freedom. If you want the collective to bear the responsibility for whether your children are well-educated, you are expected to think of your children as the property of the collective. What's really frightening is that a lot of people will welcome that reasoning, because a) they want to demand more funding for public education (as though throwing more money at it has ever been helpful) and b) they like the idea of blaming other people for the way their children turn out and whether they are educated or not. Privilege implies responsibility, folks. If you want parental rights, you need to take parental responsibility.