"The Saudi Connection"

A blockbuster cover story at U.S. News, dated Dec. 15:

.... Over the past 25 years, the desert kingdom has been the single greatest force in spreading Islamic fundamentalism, while its huge, unregulated charities funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to jihad groups and al Qaeda cells around the world. Those findings are the result of a five-month investigation by U.S. News. The magazine's inquiry is based on a review of thousands of pages of court records, U.S. and foreign intelligence reports, and other documents. In addition, the magazine spoke at length with more than three dozen current and former counterterrorism officers, as well as government officials and outside experts in Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Among the inquiry's principal findings:

• Starting in the late 1980s — after the dual shocks of the Iranian revolution and the Soviet war in Afghanistan — Saudi Arabia's quasi-official charities became the primary source of funds for the fast-growing jihad movement. In some 20 countries, the money was used to run paramilitary training camps, purchase weapons, and recruit new members.

• The charities were part of an extraordinary $70 billion Saudi campaign to spread their fundamentalist Wahhabi sect worldwide. The money helped lay the foundation for hundreds of radical mosques, schools, and Islamic centers that have acted as support networks for the jihad movement, officials say.

• U.S. intelligence officials knew about Saudi Arabia's role in funding terrorism by 1996, yet for years Washington did almost nothing to stop it. Examining the Saudi role in terrorism, a senior intelligence analyst says, was "virtually taboo." Even after the embassy bombings in Africa, moves by counterterrorism officials to act against the Saudis were repeatedly rebuffed by senior staff at the State Department and elsewhere who felt that other foreign policy interests outweighed fighting terrorism.

• Saudi largess encouraged U.S. officials to look the other way, some veteran intelligence officers say. Billions of dollars in contracts, grants, and salaries have gone to a broad range of former U.S. officials who had dealt with the Saudis: ambassadors, CIA station chiefs, even cabinet secretaries.

• Washington's unwillingness to confront the Saudis over terrorism was part of a broader strategic failure to sound the alarm on the rise of the global jihad movement. During the 1990s, the U.S. intelligence community issued a series of National Intelligence Estimates — which report on America's global challenges — on ballistic missile threats, migration, infectious diseases; yet the government never issued a single NIE on the jihad movement or al Qaeda....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/09/03 08:59:51 PM
Categorized as International.

The Fourth Reich?

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode XXXIII

Robert B. Reich, former US secretary of Something Or Other — like, who cares now? who cared then? — defames the so-called religious right:

.... For more than three hundred years, the liberal tradition has sought to free people from the tyranny of religious doctrines that would otherwise be imposed on them. Today's evangelical right detests that tradition and seeks nothing short of a state-sponsored religion. But maintaining the separation of church and state is a necessary precondition of liberty.

Public opinion sides with the Democrats. Even though a slim majority continues to oppose gay marriage, polls show that most Americans believe that homosexual relationships between consenting adults should be legal, that the choice of whether to have an abortion should be up to a woman and her doctor, that stem-cell research should be legal, and that religion should stay out of the public schools. But unless Democrats focus the public's attention on the larger ongoing assault on religious liberty, the evangelical right will whittle away these freedoms.

Gay marriage doesn't have to be a wedge issue for the evangelicals — not if Democrats can put it where it belongs, as another front in the religious wars. The question of whether gay couples should be treated the same as married people need not and should not involve the religious meaning of "marriage." That's up to particular faiths and congregations to decide. The issue here is whether gays should have the same legal rights as heterosexuals — survivor's benefits under Social Security, alimony, the distribution of assets when relationships end in divorce and other legal privileges now conferred only on heterosexual couples.

Democrats should make clear that this is an issue about state power, not religion — and call for gay civil rights. Not "marriage," but "domestic partnership" or "civil union" or whatever words will convey the same legal rights accorded heterosexuals. Most Americans think the law shouldn't discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. It follows that gays should have the same legal rights.

The evangelicals' victory on "partial-birth" abortion proves only that gruesome pictures and inflamed comments can persuade a majority that a particular procedure is inhumane. It has no bearing on the more basic question of whether the evangelical view about when life begins should be imposed on the rest of America. Democrats should be clear that the issues of abortion and stem-cell research are about religious liberty. Tar the Republicans and the evangelicals with William Pryor and other nominees who want to overrule Roe. Show that the Senate Democrats' filibuster of these nominees is another front in the same religious war. Likewise, Democrats should hold evangelicals accountable for what they're trying to do in our nation's schools — promoting the teaching of creationism, demanding school prayer, pushing "abstinence until marriage" programs, and opposing sex education. This is all about imposing their religious views on our children....

Frankly, I think he honestly believes all that crap. Hopefully, he'll keep writing like this for a long time.

(Thanks, Jim.)

Don Feder replies at FrontPage, yesterday:

.... Reich argues that America’s only hope to defeat the coming theocracy is a Democratic Party willing to stand up to the zealots. “Democrats should call all this for what it is – a clear and present danger to religious liberty in America,” Reich writes. “For more than 300 years, the liberal tradition has sought to free people from the tyranny of religious doctrines that would otherwise be imposed on them. Today’s evangelical right detests that tradition and seeks nothing short of a state-sponsored religion. But maintaining the separation of church and state is a necessary precondition of liberty.”

But which religion do evangelicals want the state to sponsor? Evangelical Protestants (a generic term) are divided into dozens of denominations. Alan Keyes and William Bennett, icons of the religious right, are Roman Catholics. The U.S. Catholic Bishops Conference entirely agrees with evangelicals on issues like same-sex marriage and abortion.

Then there are Jewish talk show hosts like Dennis Prager and Michael Medved, who see eye to eye with evangelicals on the above issues, as well judicial nominations and school prayer. Perhaps Judaism will also receive state-sponsorship in the coming regime.

In reality, what many of us – including this Jew – seek is an America true to the vision of the Founding Fathers, what’s loosely called the Judeo-Christian tradition. Sorry, Bob, but that’s not synonymous with an “establishment of religion” prohibited by the First Amendment. If it was, the Founders would have had themselves arrested. (Washington, Adams, Madison and, yes, even Jefferson believed in public acknowledgement of religious principals, but not in public support for a specific church.) The first official act of the first Congress was to hire a chaplain.

Liberals like Reich are engaged in monumental historical revisionism. The ex-Clintonista seems to be saying that regulations on abortion, a non-denominational prayer (or a moment of silent meditation) and limiting marriage to a man and a woman constitute state-sponsored religion. If so, America was a theocracy as recently as 1962....

(Thanks, David.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/09/03 08:35:24 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.

"He Who Laughs Last........"

Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode XXXII

"Howie" Dean gets support from adolescent celebrities.

Antiwar comedians raising campaign cash for Democrat Howard Dean last night blasted President Bush as a "piece of living, breathing s - - -" at an angry X-rated fund-raiser in New York.

"We have to get this piece of living, breathing s - - - out of the office," said comedian Judy Gold whose performance — like those of Janeane Garofalo and David Cross — was liberally larded with the F-word.

Aides said that Dean didn't authorize the X-rated attacks and that the Democratic front-runner found them so "offensive," he almost refused to come out and speak at the fund-raiser, one of eight New York events that raised close to $2 million yesterday.

The X-rated fund-raiser came just days after Democratic rival John Kerry used the F-word to attack Bush in Rolling Stone magazine.

Garofalo last night described the Medicare prescription-drug bill that Bush signed yesterday as the "'you can go-f- - - yourself, Grandma' bill."

Gold ridiculed Democrat Joseph Lieberman for being unable to campaign on Jewish holidays.

Comedian Kate Lloyd pointed to Michael Jackson, now facing new child sex charges, and said, "Frankly, I'm far more frightened of Condoleezza Rice" — Bush's national security adviser — and referred to Cheney's wife, Lynne, as "Lon Chaney," a star of horror flicks.

When Dean came out after the comics, he made a vague reference to "some language that was used — I think it's wrong."

The Blog from the Core asserts Fair Use for non-commercial, non-profit educational purposes.

Aides said that Dean didn't authorize the X-rated attacks and.... found them so "offensive," he almost refused to come out and speak at the fund-raiser....?

"Almost" is the key word in that sentence.

P.S. See also Lead and Gold.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/09/03 08:13:02 PM
Categorized as Democrats in Self-Destruct Mode & Political.

If You Thought I Am Cynical

Check out David Frum today:

Add one more name to the list of those who believe that Howard Dean will prove a cataclysmic disaster for the Democratic party: Al Gore. Why else would Gore have endorsed him?....

And see also JunkYardBlog:

So Al Gore has officially endorsed Howard Dean for President. In Harlem. When his former choice for #2, Sen. Joe Lieberman, is also running.

Can you say "Democrat civil war?" Gore's endorsement is the political equivalent of firing on Ft. Sumter. Let the war for the soul of the Democrats begin....

I think both of these analyses have a lot going for them; Preston seems to think that Frum doesn't see things the way JunkYardBlog does. But I think the analyses can be complementary, not contradictory. But, hey, maybe that's just me........

P.S. Interesting.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/09/03 12:38:45 PM
Categorized as Political.

"Politics of Hate Won't Beat Bush"

From Susan "The Mouth" Estrich at The Indianapolis Star, Dec. 4, comes advice that the Democratic Establishment will blissfully ignore:

.... Under the new campaign finance laws, neither party is allowed to raise "soft" money. But independent groups can. So longtime Democrats have created two independent groups. One, headed by Ickes, focuses on providing media cover for the nominee beginning this spring, when the president is expected to start spending heavily; one headed by Malcolm and former AFL-CIO political director Steve Rosenthal will focus on field organizing in target states for the general election.

Invitations were sent to the usual Hollywood suspects, a collection of people with an interest in politics and money to give, to attend a meeting Tuesday with Ickes, Malcolm and Rosenthal. It was titled a "Meeting to Change the Leadership in America in 2004." Hardly worthy of Drudge.

Then Laurie David sent an e-mail forwarding invites to the "Hate Bush 12-2 Event," and the right went nuts.

Who is Laurie David? In news clips, she is identified as Larry David's wife. Who is Larry David? He's the star of "Curb Your Enthusiasm."

Maybe his wife should curb hers. It is only helping Republicans.

The way to defeat Bush is not to advertise how much you hate him. Hard-core ideologues who hate Bush are not going to decide this election. They'll vote for the Democrat, as they do every four years, but there aren't enough of them to elect a Democrat. You need swing voters to do that. Hatred may motivate the left to contribute money, but it is hardly an effective talking point for public consumption if you want to win elections....

(Thanks, Thomas.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/09/03 08:11:26 AM
Categorized as Political.

"Does Islam Need a Luther or a Pope?"

This essay by Edward Feser at Tech Central Station, Dec. 4, has been getting high praise around St. Blog's — and rightly so, except for a slip which I will point out:

.... Consider that the debate between Protestants and Catholics has always at bottom been about authority: does it lie ultimately in the Church or in the Bible? At first glance it might seem that the Protestant answer is a distinctly Hayekian one: the Bible, rather than the Church or the Pope, ought to be the believer's guide in all things, and as such the believer might seem to be liberated from the arbitrary will of those holding ecclesiastical power.

But appearances are deceiving. For the Bible does not, of course, in any literal sense interpret itself. And yet each believer, being his own "priest," is supposed to have direct access to the meaning of the text, without the need for guidance by an authoritative Church.

So what are believers to do when they are not sure what the Bible means, or when they disagree as to its meaning? The standard Protestant answer is that the Holy Spirit will lead the believer into understanding. But what criteria are there for determining exactly what the Spirit is saying, or whether He is really speaking to one at all? Here the believer must inevitably fall back on his own private judgment. The result, notoriously, has been the splintering of Protestantism into thousands of denominations. The Bible ends up saying whatever the individual believer thinks it says — however ill-educated or bigoted that believer might be, and whatever extra-Biblical agenda he may unconsciously be reading into it. Every man becomes, in practice, his own authority — which means, in effect, that there is no authority at all.

There is, that is to say, no rule of law in the religious sphere, but rather sheer lawlessness: the majestic and objective will of God as enshrined in the Bible is imperceptibly transformed into the puny, subjective will of the believer who interprets it.

That believer may also go on to found a sect, thereby creating a sphere within which to enforce that will — a sphere which constitutes an attempt, a la constructivist rationalism, to sweep away the institutions of the past and create a new order from the ground up on the basis of nothing more than the insight of the individual believer himself.

The revolutionary socialist or libertine has, paradoxically enough, an analogue in every sectarian who sets out for the umpteenth time to re-invent the theological wheel, promising that in his teachings we have, at long last, a true understanding of God's will. And the subjectivist and lawless consequences of sola scriptura are only exacerbated by that other great watchword of Protestantism, sola fide. "Faith alone" is for many a Protestant the ground, not only of salvation, but ultimately also of knowledge. "Reason is the devil's whore," Luther tells us, and it "must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed."

One cannot imagine Aquinas or the other great thinkers of the Medieval Church saying such things. The Catholic idea was always rather that the individual preacher, theologian, or mystical visionary cannot put aside the duty of testing his claims against the light of reason as much as against the light of Scripture. And Scripture itself must always be understood, not according to the limited perspective of the individual reader, but in the light of reason and of the Tradition of which the Bible is a part, a complex body of teaching that has come down from the Apostles and Fathers, and the contents of which have been illuminated by innumerable saints and Doctors of the Church, all of them as subject to it as the average believer.

This is a Tradition that the Church herself does not create but merely preserves and passes on — emendations to that Tradition occurring only very infrequently, deliberately, gradually, and minimally, and always in a way which merely draws out the implications of what was there already rather than introducing some novel or foreign element. The authority of councils and Popes is at bottom merely the authority of the night watchman who guards a museum whose works he could not have created himself, and would not presume to tamper with. The teachings of a Pope are never strictly his teachings, but merely those of the 2,000-year old institution of which he is a temporary steward and to which he must submit as dutifully as any of the faithful. Far from being an arbitrary despot, he is merely the servant and executor of a system of law he did not make and cannot change. He is, one might say, the very model of the Hayekian statesman, transplanted into the sphere of religion.

The rule of law, or rather its theological analogue, is thus the very essence of Catholicism — just as its rejection is of the essence of Protestantism. This essence was preserved by the Medieval Church's refusal to submit itself to the State, viz. to the contingencies of arbitrary political power. And this distinction between Church and State has survived the Reformation to become one of the most prized elements of Western Civilization. Or at least it has in those countries in which some Protestant sect or other hadn't captured the apparatus of government: it must never be forgotten that it was Calvin, and not some Medieval Catholic, who founded in Geneva the world's first Christian totalitarian state, that it is Lutheran bishops who were traditionally the paid employees of German and Scandinavian governments, and that it is the Church of England, and not the Church of Rome, whose head is a secular monarch....

Though his analysis of a fundamental difference between Catholic and Protestant positions is correct, he starts off with a mis-statement: Consider that the debate between Protestants and Catholics has always at bottom been about authority: does it lie ultimately in the Church or in the Bible?

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

The correct statement is this: Consider that the debate between Protestants and Catholics has always at bottom been about authority: does it lie ultimately in the Church or in the individual?

His discussion reveals that he knows the real difference: beats me why on earth he started off putting the debate on the wrong footing.

Even the way I have put it, though, isn't quite correct: for ultimate authority lies... not in the Church, nor the Bible, but in... God.

See also "Changing Her Religion" and "History is written by the winners."

P.S. Further see also Dave Armstrong's Catholic vs. Protestant Conceptions of the Meaning and Consequences of Private Judgment, The Protestant Revolt, and The Protestant Inquisition.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/09/03 07:50:34 AM
Categorized as Religious.

"Teacher's Union Faces Audit"

A report at the CBSNews website, Nov. 25:

The IRS is auditing the nation's largest teachers union, scrutinizing an organization that works energetically to elect candidates but files tax returns reporting zero political expenditures from member dues.

The National Education Association promised Monday to cooperate, but its president, Reg Weaver, said the union "will not be silenced" by the audit or the conservative law firm that requested it....

That "conservative law firm" is Landmark Legal Foundation.

The Associated Press, which first reported on the NEA's tax returns three years ago, has reviewed the NEA's filings from years 1993 through 1999 and hundreds of pages of internal NEA documents. The records showed the 2.7 million-member union spent millions of dollars to help elect pro-education candidates, produce political training guides and gather teachers' voting records....

Holy Cow! If CBS tells you that AP found evidence that you did indeed do what you told the IRS you did not indeed do, you are in Pretty Deep Muck.

But notice how the article concludes:

The Bush administration has been accused of ordering politically motivated audits before. Advocates for Youth, a sexual education group, underwent three federal audits within a year. The National Institutes of Health last month contacted some 150 scientists with federal grants, to check on work on sexual behavior and HIV that was questioned by some Republican congressmen.

The Landmark Legal Foundation is also a tax-exempt nonprofit.

CBS couldn't let this story end without ragging on the Bush administration. But the "Bush administration" isn't being "accused" of anything here — except in this underhanded way by CBS itself. A private organization used the law to get the IRS to investigate the NEA — a request it made in 2000, when Bill Clinton was still president.

But we wouldn't want a powerful left-wing organization to look bad without trying to change the subject, would we?

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/09/03 07:09:35 AM
Categorized as Political.