At the basis of much of the debate which goes on the subtext at which we worry was highlighted in a little book. Then Cardinal Ratzinger and philosopher Jurgen Habermas debated the following question:

Does the free secularized state exist on the basis of normative presuppositions that it itself cannot guarantee? This question expresses a doubt about whether the democratic constitutional state can renew from its own resources the normative presuppositions of its existence, it also expresses the assumption that such a state is dependent on ethical traditions of a local nature.

I wrote of that here (check it out, a few interesting quotes from the book The Dialectics of Secularization: On Reason and Religion are included). Herr Habermas (here I diverge from my Mr/Mrs/Ms nomenclature as a reference merely to his Deutsche origins) argues (of course) the affirmative and Fr Ratzinger the latter.

Fr Ratzinger notes that there are pathologies of religion which are quite dangerous. It is this in fact which the atheist apologists over emphasize often and key upon, most recently JA noted “zeal” as peculiar religious problem, setting aside for some reason that other ideological zeals have been at the root cause of most of the 20th centuries mass killings. However, this misses the point. The vast majority of both the faithful and the secular are quite non-violent. The question isn’t about the fringes, although those should not be ignored, but the central question is can society function without without religious ties binding it? Charles Taylor in the book A Secular Age noted the important and central role the church had in the softening and civilizing of our social behavior over the last 600 years. Compare for example ordinary behavior by the elite between the 15th century (War of the Roses) and the Elizabethan 100 years later and then to the Victorian in the 19th. They are like night and day. The conventional wisdom was that this was driven by the Enlightenment and the secular (reason-based) move. But that doesn’t pan out to a careful examination. There was no “enlightenment” occuring in the 15th century that gave rise to the vast differences seen in that period.

But the question of whether a large scale national enterprise can hold together its society in the absence of any faith is unresolved. The French reformers of the 19th century attempting to craft a brave new world thought that the rites and rituals of the religious world gave continuity and permanence to daily life that a purely materialist secular world could not. They attempted to craft similar rituals to replace them, but as Mark Twain noted when his wife attempted using off-color language that “she’d had the notes but didn’t make music.” That is, they tried to make rituals but they, much like Mr Obama with his “clinging to guns and God” remarks, didn’t have the connection to the common man that was need to make music (rite/rituals) that the common man wanted to hear.

The demographic crises in mainly secular Western Europe, which afflicts our (secular) subcultures in the States, is not affecting the non-secular societies world wide. One of the commonalities in secular points of view that might be important to this question is how the secular culture promotes a radical individualism … and how that individualism is not very conducive to the sacrifices and commitment required of marriage and family. Without marriage and family raised as a linchpin or centerpiece of ones society, the same demographic crises will occur. People will go their individual ways and eschew raising families. Birth rates will drop and a generation or two later … the Piper will have to be paid for that particular indulgence.

So, to focus the question a little further, I might restate Herr Habermas’ eloquent question as:

Can the free secularized state exist on the basis of normative presuppositions that it itself cannot guarantee? This question expresses a doubt about whether the democratic constitutional state in the absence of religion eschew radical individualism and recall the necessary importance of stable marriage and family.

So if you disagree, and think that a secular society can in fact put family and children ahead of ego … tell me why and where are the clues that point to that notion.

Mrs Palin is widely attacked on by those on the left. We’ve heard over and over how Mr Obama’s experience is far more applicable to serving in their respective offices. As well, various criticisms of interviews and tidbits from her past which cast here in a unfriendly light have dominated the press. At the Hugh Hewitt blog, I’d like to highlight two posts from last week which I think might elicit comment. I’ve asked in the past, in regards to her overwhelming negative portrayal in the press how she comes to be our most popular governor (when the Senate from which the other candidates derive their past has a collective approval rate in the low teens).
Read the rest of this entry

• You can actually buy these for the office, we had some up at ours for a while.
• One way to view the debate … which I hope to view on the weekend.
• On a report on Afghanistan.
• But … will we be able to buy it in the states?
• A Catholic philosophers blog to mark … (HT: The H of C)
• RvW illiteracy as a main stumbling block to its overturn.
• Devils Dictionary updated … for the online dating community.
• I can’t imagine why Mr Obama is taking that course.
• That bailout bill … the pdf.

No matter who you are, the current credit crunch does affect you, even if you don’t have a penny in the bank or a stock.  Never mind (for now) the domino effect of the credit market seizing up, if you vote, it should affect you.

Item 1:  Rep. Barney Frank has called this current crisis two things that are both flat-out lies; a failure of the free market and the result of Bush administration policies.  Frank should, and likely does, know better, since he’s the chair of the House Committee on Financial Services.  There has been video all over the blogosphere, and linked here as well, that show he and his fellow Democrats denying any problems at all with Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, and now he’s trying to solely blame Republicans.  There’s plenty of blame to go around in both parties, but he’s in a unique position, as committee chair, to pronounce the truth of the matter to us.  Instead, he’s politicizing this huge issue for partisan gain.  If you’re from Massachusetts and you vote, this should affect your vote.

Item 1a: Senator Joe Biden said the same thing about it being all about Bush administration policies.  This should affect your vote.

Item 2:  At the foundation of this crisis is an abandonment of free market principles, not the failure of them.  Republicans have (more often) been the keepers of the free market flame.  (That’s not been a constant by any means, but a good generality.)  The Community Reinvestment Act is a Carter-era program to basically force lenders to give home loans to those who would otherwise not qualify, and the default rate of these loans is higher than normal.  That, along with the Gramm-Leach-Billey act which allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to write or buy up these loans in a bigger way, released other banks from this higher-risk paper and continued us down the primrose path.  Again, videos highlighted here showed, one of Obama economic advisors Franklin Raines, who at the time of the video was CEO of Fannie Mae, insisted that home prices would always go up.  Now, there is no doubt in my mind that Wall St. greed fueled this as well, but with a government mandate to write high-risk loans, and a (for all intents and purposes) government agency ready and willing to buy them up, this was a recipe for disaster.

The point is, as honorable and as high-minded the intentions were to try to get more people into their own homes, it set more people up for failure.  You can say that the number of foreclosures wasn’t enough to be a problem, yet here we are, the engine of commerce about to seize up over securities backed by mortgages.  This started when Democrats decided that the free market wasn’t working and instituted policies to, in their eyes, fix things.  While it did get many into homes that might not have otherwise been able to, does it really help us in the long run when Congress has to eventually bail us out to try to avoid a recession or worse?  (And the jury’s still out on if the bailout will really do it, or if it’s just a short-term band-aid.) 

Those who think that the free market failed us then, and are now ironically blaming the free market again, are running for President in November.  This should affect your vote. 

It does affect you.  Or it should.

Continuing to chew the abortion issue with some amiable conversation partners, Mr Boonton suggests that there is a significant problem for the pro-life communities seeming disregard and nonchalance over the fact that a significant fraction of conceptions result in no implantation (naturally) and that even after implantation spontaneous abortion remains a possibility in a significant fraction of pregnancies. Often the parents are unaware that they have conceived and a essentially symptomless termination of the pregnancy occurrs. He suggests that money well spent on natal care of ailing infants is rightly not diverted to research and development to halt this, apparent, outrage … if after all if early fetal life is worth “the same as an adult (or infant)” then not wanting to halt this outrage is … outrageous (or hypocritical). Read the rest of this entry

A recent commenter to my Comparing Alaska and New York City; Does size matter? post has taken issue with my extended comparison of infrastructure requirements between Illinois and Alaska, and how such requirements relate to experience in one who governs Alaska vs. in one who is a US senator for the state of Illinois.

Ansley stated,

…There’s not even 700,000 people in Alaska. The mayor of New York City has big fish to fry, my friend….each city has its own unique challenges, but the fact is, the more people you have in an area, the trickier things become.

My first reaction would be to wonder whether or not the critic has been to Alaska and seen, firsthand, how they deal with the logistics of managing such massive sea and air travel, in such extreme locations and weather conditions? Winter conditions that shut down most US airports are simply business as usual in Alaska. While working in Valdez, I was sent home only once, due to weather (and that was because the snowstorm had been dropping snow at the rate of 1 foot per hour for more about 4 hours). It’s not unusual for a typical Valdez snowstorm to drop 4 feet of snow. Once, when landing in Anchorage, the pilot informed us that the current temp was 0 degrees F. He also noted that the current ambient temp in Fairbanks, where the plane was headed, was -43 F. Did you catch that? It’s -43 F, yet they’re going to land and disembark because… it’s business as usual.

Simply put, you don’t manage that type of infrastructure, in that kind of weather, over that expanse of territory, unless you know exactly what you are doing.

But, to address the nonsensical population argument, let’s take a nonsensical look at it in terms of how it supposedly applies to the running of various countries, states, or cities. First, let’s use the following population values, from Wikipedia:

• US = 305,312,000
• China (PRC) = 1,321,851,888
• India = 1,132,446,000
• Russia = 142,008,838
• Canada = 33,390,000
• California = 36,553,215
• Illinois = 12,852,548
• NYC = 8,274,527
• Alaska = 677,000
• Illinois(2) = 642,627

Using the Deepak Chopra / Ansley argument, it appears that running the US is roughly 1/4 the job of running China or India (I’ll give you 4 US presidents for your 1 Chinese premier – and I’ll throw in an extra president for half a dozen Chinese gymnasts). Yet, we see that running the US is about 2 times the job of running Russia (that must explain why Putin has the time to go tiger hunting!), 9 times greater than running Canada (yet another reason for our friends up north to hate us), 8 times greater than California (so former / current actors shouldn’t have a problem running Cal-ee-for-nee-uh?), 24 times greater than Illinois, 37 times that of NYC, and a whopping 451 times more complex than running Alaska!

Case closed? End of story?

Not so fast, census breath.

Isn’t the point here to compare experience levels with regards to being in charge of – as in – managing and running something (i.e., executive experience)? While Palin is actually running Alaska, Senator (did you catch that? – “Senator”) Obama is not running Illinois. In fact, he is only one of two senators, along with around 18 congressmen. Surely we can’t take Illinois’ total population of 12.8 million when comparing Obama’s responsibilities with that of Palin’s, can we? So, let’s do an Obamadjustment to the population of Illinois. First off, since he’s one of two senators, we need to cut the 12.8 million in half, to 6.4 million. And, since he shares responsibility with all those congressmen, let’s half the 6.4 to 3.2 million. Finally, since Obama isn’t really running the state (that’s left for the… ahem, governor), let’s take only, say, 20% of the 3.2 million. Now we’re left with an adjusted population (Illinois(2)) of 642,627 that we could reasonably attribute to Obama’s non-executive responsibilities.

Well, using our adjusted number, we see that running the US is 475 times greater than Obama’s current non-executive role. That puts him behind the governor of Alaska, in terms of population comparisons.

The thing is, Obama isn’t running for VP.

• One useless movie noted.
• The Christian carnival.
• Mr Obama and the 1st Amendment.
• Two posts by a real economist on the economy.
• Mary Poppins … Time Lord?
• The non-centrality of Afghanistan contra Mr Obama and the left’s assertions to the contrary.
• Very Cool.
• Connections and the singing kids thing.
• Earmarks.

So, Sarah Palin is taking some heat for not answering Katie Couric’s question regarding which Supreme Court decisions she disagrees with.

Well, I suppose she could have stated that answering that question, with any degree of specificity, is above her pay grade.

But, then again, she’s not running for president.

It’s just a debate moderator, the lefty blogosphere tells us.  She’s just asking questions.  What’s the big deal about her book?  Well, just a few questions.

1. So then, the next Presidential debate can be moderated by John Stossel and the Democrats would be fine with that?
2. If all the moderator does is ask questions, why wouldn’t Democrats even debate themselves on Fox News?

Either blatant partisanship, real or perceived, is to be avoided at a debate, or it isn’t.  Either moderators with their own biases, plain or hidden, can be fair questioners, or they can’t.  Just pick an answer and stick with it, or don’t be surprised when Republicans ask for the same deal the Democrats ask for.

Boonton has asked, and I’ve been temporizing:

A good question that ended up getting EO to ban a commentator was based on a hypothetical fire. You rush into a IV Fertilization clinic that is on fire. There happens to be a live baby in a crib crying. There is also a heavy 60 pound mini-freezer whose label says it contains 150 frozen fertilized eggs. There are only moments to spare and you can only carry one out. Which is it?

It is my understanding that typically 10 blastocysts are implanted with an average of one about one “taking” and producing a child per attempt. So, in for purposes of discussion consider that, if implanted, here we are talking about an average of 15 potential children “frozen” and one in the crib. What would I do in this case is the question. Now, we really have no way of knowing in the heat of the moment what we would actually do, but for purposes of discussion I’ll try to imagine what I’d do. There are a number of possibilities here I think that are all reasonable.

1. If I knew nothing about the situation, and was a complete stranger.
2. What if one of the freezer (or infant) had blastocysts all “assigned” to someone you knew. That is the freezer was IVF product for just one couple. What if you knew either mother? Would that affect your decision?
3. If I knew of two or three women to whom those blastocysts belonged and didn’t know the mother of the infant …
4. Another variation of the question, what if it was not a living baby vs the frozen blastocysts but a heavy valise carrying cash. How much money would it have to be before you’d leave the freezer?
5. How about if it was the infant? How much money to leave the infant?
6. Numbers, I think matter. Blastocysts themselves are very small, I think. Just a cluster of a few dozen to a hundred cells. What if it was a 30 kg freezer with a million blastocysts. Would that matter? How about a 100 million? What if those blastocysts were 150 T-Rex bastocysts recovered by genetic archeology. What if there were a thousand and they were the last survivors of a racial subtype, such as a ethnicity facing extinction?

My answers:

1. (unknown) I’d save the infant. The infant more than likely has a mother and a family. Most blastocysts are abandoned. For IVF techniques produce and excess of blastocysts, and understandably parents stop trying to have more children … when they achieve pregnancy. Why the rest are not then immediately destroyed is of course because such destruction is felt by most people to be morally problematic.
2. (known mom) This would certainly matter. I’d save the freezer or the infant if I knew the parents … unless the parents where the parents of the “freezer” blastocysts and I knew that they had no intention of having a child.
3. (prospective parents known) I’d likely save the blastocysts. That would likely be at least two or three babies to the one …. on average. If it was “even”, I’d likely save the infant.
4. (money) I’d save the freezer.
5. (money for infant) I’d save the infant.
6. (numbers) At some number it becomes highly likely that more lives will be spared if the freezer is saved. A million makes it almost certain that the freezer has more value. T-Rex … -> the infant. I have no idea where I’d fall on the racial question. But if I thought that prospective mothers would be found, I’d favor the freezer.

Finally, I’ll note, I am one of the pro-life persons who think that IVF is morally problematic in and of itself … for what it’s worth.

To mix a metaphor.

The Media Research Center has the details on how Katie Couric treated Joe Biden vs. Sarah Palin. 

Y’know, there’s nothing wrong with having a bias.  We all do.  But be up-front and honest about it, eh?