tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-102626622024-03-08T03:56:49.288-05:00The Cocktail HourPolitics and CultureMartin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.comBlogger243125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-62852625471866897272020-11-17T15:40:00.002-05:002020-11-17T15:40:16.843-05:00The Return of The Cocktail Hour<p>Fifteen years since the last post.</p><p>My thanks to Blogger for keeping my chair warm.</p><p>More to come. Later. </p>Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1115476048726330452005-05-07T10:27:00.000-04:002006-11-05T18:24:57.533-05:00The end of WWII in EuropeWe're at the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe. Arthur Herman <a href="http://nationalreview.com/comment/herman200505060807.asp">reflects</a> on how close it came to going the other way:<br /><blockquote>It is important to remember how many people, especially Europeans, wanted democracy to lose and hoped Hitler would win. They included the world's Communist parties, who followed the directions of their leader Josef Stalin in enthusiastically embracing his alliance with Nazi Germany. They included politicians and intellectuals who, after Hitler's lightning victories in Poland and France, saw a new world order arising and wanted to be part of it. Denmark's elected government enthused in July 1940 that Hitler had "brought about a new era in Europe, which will result in a new order in an economic and political sense..." France's Robert Brasillach saw Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin as the men of the future and Roosevelt and Churchill as "grotesquely antiquated" relics of the past. Catholic mystagogue Teilhard de Chardin proclaimed that "we are watching the birth, more than the death, of a World....the Germans deserve to win..." Holland's Paul de Man, later the darling of the deconstructionist Left at Yale and other universities, announced that Europe's future under Nazi rule was brighter than ever and that "we are entering a mystical era, a period of faith and belief, with all that this entails," with the Third Reich at its center.<br /><br />Today, it is sobering to contemplate how close Hitler came in the early summer of 1941 to achieving that new order. Had he followed the advice of his naval advisers and completed his rout of the British from the Mediterranean by seizing the Suez Canal and the Persian Gulf, Germany would have secured control of the world's oil supply and the world's sea routes to India and the Far East. After Pearl Harbor, Hitler and the Japanese could have divided the resources of Asia — from Bombay and Afghanistan to Australia and Singapore — between them.<br /><br />But Hitler was not interested in following in the footsteps of the British and Americans, in building an empire built on economic power instead of conquest. Instead, he turned on his ally Stalin and invaded Russia — again hoping this would complete the isolation of Britain and deter the United States from going to its aid. Like all totalitarians, he assumed the democratic response to forthright force would be hesitation, weakness, and retreat.</blockquote>Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1115474535334498252005-05-07T10:02:00.000-04:002006-10-09T10:44:23.420-04:00What's wrong with the Democrats?Victor Davis Hanson knows. America's most important writer, in an article titled "<a href="http://nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200505060805.asp">Democratic Suicide</a>," says that Democrat won't start winning again until they start acting like normal folks. Here's his take on why Democrats can't get away with their old class warfare routine:<br /><blockquote>The old class warfare was effective for two reasons: Americans did not have unemployment insurance, disability protection, minimum wages, social security, or health coverage. Much less were they awash in cheap material goods from China that offer the less well off the semblance of consumer parity with those far wealthier. Second, the advocates of such rights looked authentic, like they came off the docks, the union hall, the farm, or the shop, primed to battle those in pin-stripes and coiffed hair.<br /><br />Today entitlement is far more complicated. Poverty is not so much absolute as relative: "I have a nice Kia, but he has a Mercedes," or "I have a student loan to go to Stanislaus State, but her parents sent her to Yale." Unfortunately for the Democrats, Kias and going to Stanislaus State aren't too bad, especially compared to the alternatives in the 1950s.<br /><br />A Ted Kennedy, John Kerry, John Edwards, Howard Dean, George Soros, or Al Gore looks — no, acts — like he either came out of a hairstylist's salon or got off a Gulfstream. Those who show up at a Moveon.org rally and belong to ANSWER don't seem to have spent much time in Bakersfield or Logan, but lots in Seattle and Westwood. When most Americans have the semblance of wealth — televisions, cell phones, cars, laptops, and iPods as well as benefits on the job — it is hard to keep saying that "children are starving." Obesity not emaciation is the great plague of the poorer.<br /><br />So the Democrats need a little more humility, a notion that the country is not so much an us/them dichotomy, but rather all of us together under siege to maintain our privileges in a tough global world — and at least one spokesman who either didn't go to prep school or isn't a lawyer.</blockquote>Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1115310310400150112005-05-05T12:24:00.000-04:002005-05-05T12:25:10.420-04:00"The Perfect Child"George Neumayr <a href="http://spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8127">points out</a> the mainstreaming of eugenics in America. He doesn't quite get at the utter monstrosity of it, but he comes damn close:<br /><blockquote>The slogan, Every Child a Wanted Child, always gave off a eugenic chill, implying that unwanted children weren't fit for life. But it didn't quite spell out what makes a child unwanted. Were the meaning of the slogan unpackaged and given more eugenic precision, it would read: Every Child a Perfect Child.<br /><br />Imperfect children aren't wanted children -- this is the logical terminus of a society obsessed with choice and control, and the culture is hurtling towards it. If you doubt this, note the growing impatience with imperfection in children, both unborn and born, that increasingly dominates the culture of reproductive choice and control. The New York Times ran a story earlier this week titled, "Ugly Children May Get Parental Short Shrift." The article doesn't even mention the shortest shrift they receive: eugenic abortion. To the extent that the numbers are known, most unborn children deemed ugly by virtue of a disability detected through prenatal screening are aborted, and research surveys have shown that many parents will choose abortion once doctors become able to diagnose nothing more than "obesity" prenatally.</blockquote>You should read the whole thing, of course. I just have to wonder what people think they are doing. Do they understand that to get at the child who looks perfect in his blue blazer at prep school that they might be "weeding" out the most special human talents, gifts, and genius, hidden in the genes of the "imperfect," and mocking human posterity.Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1114609805905943432005-04-27T09:48:00.000-04:002005-04-27T09:50:05.906-04:00Jay Nordlinger delivers......a good <a href="http://nationalreview.com/impromptus/impromptus200504270756.asp">Impromptus column</a> today. It hits several marks dead on. Here's his item on historian Paul Johnson:<br /><blockquote>This week in <a href="http://www.spectator.co.uk/index.php">The Spectator</a>, we find Paul Johnson at his most cheerful: “I foresee a sorrowful procession of events in which the triumph of the Darwinians may ultimately lead to the extinction of the human race. Evolution to destruction, or self-destruction, is part of the Darwinian concept, but if the theory itself should bring it about, that indeed would be a singularity. Not inconceivable, though.”<br /><br />Thanks, Paul! See you next week.</blockquote>Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1114516477637132132005-04-26T07:54:00.000-04:002005-04-27T22:13:04.226-04:00A three-packMaking my usual rounds through the conservative sites this morning I found three articles, all on completely different subjects, that shared an off-beat sensibility. Thomas Sowell <a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110006608">writes</a> about "black rednecks." William Voegeli <a href="http://www.opinionjournal.com/extra/?id=110006605">takes a chop</a> at the "cynical idealism" of Social Security. And in an occasionally overwrought piece at the American Spectator, James Poulos <a href="http://spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=8064">riffs away</a> on Hunter S. Thompson as a "reactionary." All three make interesting reading, if you're in the mood.Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1114257190381636272005-04-23T07:53:00.000-04:002005-04-23T07:53:46.903-04:00Even Maureen Dowd......should eventually be made nauseous by the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/23/opinion/23dowd.html?hp">infantile column</a> she wrote for today's <em>New York Times.</em> If one wonders why self-identifying liberals are down to about 20% of the population in America, embarrassment over the likes of Maureen Dowd might be a good reason.Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1114176338733722082005-04-22T09:25:00.000-04:002005-04-22T09:25:38.736-04:00VDH on the lessons of the war that began on 9/11The most important writer in America, Victor Davis Hanson, <a href="http://nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200504220743.asp">assesses</a> the lessons of U.S. engagement with Islamic fascism. Lesson number five:<br /><blockquote>5. Do not look for logic and consistency in the Middle East where they are not to be found. It makes no sense to be frustrated that Arab intellectuals and reformers damn us for removing Saddam and simultaneously praise democratic rumblings that followed his fall. We should accept that the only palatable scenario for the Arab Street was one equally fanciful: Brave demonstrators took to the barricades, forced Saddam’s departure, created a constitution, held elections, and then invited other Arab reformers into Baghdad to spread such indigenous reform — all resulting in a society as sophisticated, wealthy, free, and modern as the West, but felt to be morally superior because of its allegiance to Islam. That is the dream that is preferable to the reality that the Americans alone took out the monster of the Middle East and that any peaceful protest against Saddam would have ended in another genocide.<br /><br />Ever since the departure of the colonials, the United States, due to its power and principled support for democratic Israel, has served a Middle Eastern psychological need to account for its own self-created impotence and misery, a pathology abetted by our own past realpolitik and nurtured by the very autocrats that we sought to accommodate.<br /><br />After all these years, do not expect praise or gratitude for billions poured into Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, or Palestine or thanks for the liberation of Kuwait, protection of Saudi Arabia in 1990, or the removal of Saddam — much less for American concern for Muslims in Bosnia, Kosovo, Chechnya, Somalia, the Sudan, or Afghanistan. <em>Our past sins always must be magnified as much as our more recent benefactions are slighted.</em></blockquote>Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1114000832370641642005-04-20T08:40:00.000-04:002005-04-20T08:40:32.370-04:00Beck meets the entrenched entrenchment<a href="http://www.two--four.net/weblog.php?id=P1646">Beck had an e-mail exchange</a> with a "professional philosopher" that left him with that empty feeling one gets around empty heads that are stamped with the academic seal of approval.<br /><br />I suspect, but have no certain knowledge, that Beck's interlocuter was Keith Burgess-Jackson, who runs a blog called The Conservative Philosopher. Anyway, the professional philosopher, whoever he might be, sounds very much like he, like Burgess-Jackson, is from the reduced-to-very-little-at-all "Analytic" school of philosophy, which is a name change designed to protect the guilty from being accused of logical positivism. Other aliases include “linguistic analysis” and “logical empiricism.”<br /><br />In very limited circumstances these people can be of some use. Having a discussion about philosophy with them is not one of those circumstances.<br /><br />The line of descent of positivism, in modern terms, is from David Hume, a radical empiricist and skeptic who doubted the possibility of knowing very much at all about the world. As this peculiar insight evolved, metaphysics as the pursuit of ultimate meaning, essence as the source of immediate meaning, and transcendence as the very key to the power of ideas were all barred from the philosopher's lounge. What was left over is what Beck got from the professional philosopher in his exchange with him: philosophy reduced to logical statements about not much.<br /><br />When these guys try to go outside of their small pens in the academic farmyard, they wind up all goofy and foolish.<br /><br />Where, therefore, does one start philosophizing for real: By turning to the things themselves, by turning to them in their immediacy in search of their essence and therefore their meaning. Philosophy is about meaning and from meaning is derived its vector, purpose. When you get there, "moral oughts" are not simply "sentiments," as the modern originator of hard skepticism, Hume, observed. They are formidable and objective modes of essential human being.<br /><br />That's the short answer.Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1113858283875942052005-04-18T17:04:00.000-04:002005-04-18T17:04:43.876-04:00Andrea Dworkin and Cathy Young<a href="http://www.two--four.net/weblog.php?id=P1638">Billy Beck</a> points out a bit by <a href="http://www.reason.com/hitandrun/2005/04/the_dworkin_whi_1.shtml#009179">Cathy Young</a>, the summary of which is that Cathy Young makes a reasonably good case that Andrea Dworkin was insane -- based on all that man hatred Dworkin espoused. It was some seriously nasty stuff.<br /><br />On the other hand, Cathy Young doesn't sound too well herself, yielding to her own psychological imperative to drag in, via an update to her original post, conservatives like Terry Jeffrey of <em>Human Events</em> and someone named Charlotte Hays from the Independent Women's Forum for a short flogging. It seems that the New York Times collected a handful of brief but kind words for Dworkin from conservatives like David Frum and Richard Brookheiser, who met the old hag in her later years and found her to be....a human being, well-read, capable of flattery, etc.<br /><br />Was the sexual revolution the equivalent of "violence against women" as Jeffrey once said, earning Young's contempt? No, but neither does that make the sexual revolution a good thing nor Jeffrey someone who has earned a mention in a post-mortem attack on Dworkin.<br /><br />Young's charge is the equivalent of the "all sex is rape" equation attributed to Dworkin (as the essence of her feminism, not something, apparently, that she actually said). Young similarly equates conservatives' respect for women, their virtue, their traditional roles with "neo-paternalism." If that's not as wacky as Dworkin, it's still just as stupid.Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1113832926962688052005-04-18T10:01:00.000-04:002005-04-18T16:05:30.676-04:00The terror of stupidityPeople not thinking leads to a culture of people unable to think. By thinking I don't mean having thoughts and the will to express them. By thinking I mean the commitment made to sorting things out carefully, seeing them in as much context as possible from one's vantage point, and then weighing whatever needs to be weighed against whatever it needs to be weighed against and arriving at a rational conclusion. This precludes laziness, as it precludes believing that whatever happens to pop into one's mind is worth expressing.<br /><br />This <a href="http://www.townhall.com/columnists/pauljacob/pj20050417.shtml">piece</a> by Paul Jacob made me think of politics, and the name Rudolph Giuliani came to mind. Jacob's piece is about cops and the fact that "a dominant strain of contemporary police culture wants citizens to limit their involvement in their own protection." When Giuliani ran for Mayor of New York City he made a huge compromise, typical of the compromises that New York City mayors make that essentially make the job a political dead end. In New York City abortion is a sacred practice, central to the well-being of everyone, especially men, who don't want the vicissitudes of women's bodies controlling a man's life.<br /><br />Giuliani is a Catholic who did a turn in the Reagan-era U.S. Justice Department, including a somewhat celebrated stint as a U.S. Attorney. When he ran for mayor of New York City, he examined his conscience and discovered that he could not get elected mayor without changing his position on abortion. So he moved from the pro-life position to the pro-death position and was thereby made acceptable, minimally, to the local priest- and priestesshood. For his late adaptation to the pro-death position, Giuliani and all New Yorkers were penalized by him losing his first bid for mayor to David Dinkins, about whom the kindest thing that can be said is that he looked good in a strong aftershave lotion.<br /><br />But if statecraft is soulcraft, as George Will once contended, Giuliani had made a trade on the level of soulcraft that allowed him to be elected mayor of New York City, where he actually succeeded at a job that no one succeeds at, which would make his success extraordinary in the highest sense of the word.<br /><br />After he was elected but I think before he was actually sworn in Giuliani expressed another view that was more than a little offensive to the local priestcraft: he thought that it ought to be made easier for citizens to own and carry guns in New York. So out of tempo was this sentiment that it got stepped on by none other than Giuliani's brilliant, but subordinate to him, police commissioner, William Bratton. Bratton simply said something like "no, that would endanger cops," etc., and Giuliani never said another word about making it easier for citizens to have guns.<br /><br />But, Giuliani and Bratton, both brilliant men, did go on to make the need for citizens having guns in New York City less immediate. They did what they said they were going to do, which was cut the crime rate in the city dramatically. And that reduction has lasted, long enough that some people, mostly transplanted out-of-towners and people in their 20s and younger, probably don't remember how bad it had been, and how it looked like it was only going to get worse.<br /><br />Then again, Giuliani had made a second compromise, this time trading the personal security of every New Yorker, including those who would reflexively refuse to exercise their right to defend themselves, in order to stay on the good side of "a dominant strain of contemporary police culture." Giuliani needed cops on his side to do what he wanted to do in New York, and thus he contributed to a growing everyday culture where only the cops and the criminals have guns. That formula works something like this: Criminal A shoots Citizen B, after which Cop C arrives and says: "a shooting has taken place, let us analyze the bullet."<br /><br />Thus any woman working the evening shift in Manhattan can arrive by subway train after midnight back in her Brooklyn or Bronx neighborhood safe in the knowledge that any bullets found in her body will be carefully scrutinized by trained experts in criminology.<br /><br />Now, every once in a while someone will be working somewhere in the city late at night and someone with a gun will try to rob him and the working stiff will pull out an illegal, unregistered, unsavory handgun and shoot the filthy robber right dead, or maybe just wing him good. The working stiff is invariably placed under arrest for the illegal handgun, put through the usual legal ringer, and only after his heart has been made to skip many beats will he be verbally chastised and "let off" for protecting himself. In the future, however, We may not be so lenient.Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1113577578525253032005-04-15T11:06:00.000-04:002005-04-15T11:06:18.526-04:00Richard John Neuhaus......is <a href="http://www.firstthings.com/romediary/romediary.htm">blogging</a> from the Vatican, with insight into who the leading candidates are to become the next Pope.Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1113569001489982162005-04-15T08:43:00.000-04:002005-04-15T08:43:21.490-04:00VDH gets rough with foreign policy expertsThe most important writer in America, Victor Davis Hanson, <a href="http://nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200504150749.asp">turns over the tables</a> in the temple of the foreign policy establishment. Following what is excerpted below, Hanson analyzes a series of five policy options, so you should follow the link and read the whole thing:<br /><blockquote>Brent Scowcroft predicted on the eve of the Iraqi elections that voting there would increase the risk of civil war. Indeed, he foresaw “a great potential for deepening the conflict.” He also once assured us that Iraq “could become a Vietnam in a way that the Vietnam war never did.” Did he mean perhaps worse than ten years of war and over 50,000 American dead, with the Cambodian holocaust next door?<br /><br />Zbigniew Brzezinski feared that we could not do what we are in fact presently doing in Iraq: “I do not think we can stay in Iraq in the fashion we’re in now…If it cannot be changed drastically, it should be terminated.” He added ominously that it would take 500,000 troops, $500 billion, and resumption of the military draft to achieve security in Iraq. Did he mean Iraq needed more American troops than did the defense of Europe in the Cold War?<br /><br />Madeleine Albright, while abroad, summed up the present American foreign policy: “It's difficult to be in France and criticize my government. But I'm doing so because Bush and the people working for him have a foreign policy that is not good for America, not good for the world.” Elections in Afghanistan and Iraq, troops out of Saudi Arabia, democratic demonstrations in Lebanon, West Bank voting, promises of change in Egypt — all that and more is “not good for the world”?<br /><br />For the last year, such well-meaning former "wise people" have pretty much assured us that the Bush doctrine will not work and that the Arab world is not ready for Western-style democracy, especially when fostered through Western blood and iron.<br /><br />But too often we discuss the present risky policy without thought of what preceded it or what might have substituted for it. Have we forgotten that the messy business of democracy was the successor, not the precursor, to a litany of other failed prescriptions? Or that there were never perfect solutions for a place like the Middle East — awash as it is in oil, autocracy, fundamentalism, poverty, and tribalism — only choices between awful and even more awful? Or that September 11 was not a sudden impulse on the part of Mohammed Atta, but the logical culmination of a long simmering pathology? Or that the present loudest critics had plenty of chances to leave something better than the mess that confronted the United States on September 12? Or that at a time of war, it is not very ethical to be sorta for, sorta against, kinda supportive, kinda critical of the mission — all depending on the latest sound bite from Iraq?</blockquote>Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1113487220783242232005-04-14T10:00:00.000-04:002005-04-14T10:00:20.783-04:00Some serious questions about AIDS in AfricaMichael Fumento <a href="http://www.townhall.com/columnists/GuestColumns/Fumento20050414.shtml">argues somewhat persuasively</a> that the prevailing idea that the AIDS epidemic in Africa has been spread mainly by heterosexual sex is wrong. If Fumento is right, then the future of Africa might depend on uncovering the real routes of transmission.Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1113407181278111212005-04-13T11:45:00.000-04:002005-04-13T11:47:47.733-04:00You've read novels or seen movies......where the hero is a scientist who works like a detective to find the source of a disease and/or the cure?<br /><br />Well, <a href="http://nytimes.com/2005/04/12/national/12hilleman.html">here is</a> that scientist: Maurice Hilleman. He died a couple of days ago at the age of 85.<br /><br />Listen to this from his <em>New York Times</em> obituary:<br /><blockquote>Much of modern preventive medicine is based on Dr. Hilleman's work, though he never received the public recognition of Salk, Sabin or Pasteur. He is credited with having developed more human and animal vaccines than any other scientist, helping to extend human life expectancy and improving the economies of many countries.<br /><br />Dr. Hilleman probably saved more lives than any other scientist in the 20th century, said two medical leaders, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Dr. Paul A. Offit, chief of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital in Philadelphia.<br /><br />"The scientific quality and quantity of what he did was amazing," Dr. Fauci said. "Just one of his accomplishments would be enough to have made for a great scientific career. One can say without hyperbole that Maurice changed the world with his extraordinary contributions in so many disciplines: virology, epidemiology, immunology, cancer research and vaccinology."<br /><br />Dr. Hilleman developed 8 of the 14 vaccines routinely recommended: measles, mumps, hepatitis A, hepatitis B, chickenpox, meningitis, pneumonia and Haemophilus influenzae bacteria (which brings on a variety of symptoms, including inflammation of the lining of the brain and deafness). He also developed the first generation of a vaccine against rubella or German measles. The vaccines have virtually vanquished many of the once common childhood diseases in developed countries.<br /><br />Dr. Hilleman overcame immunological obstacles to combine vaccines so that one shot could protect against several diseases, like the MMR vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella.<br /><br />He developed about 40 experimental and licensed animal and human vaccines, mostly with his team from Merck of Whitehouse Station, N.J. His role in their development included lab work as well as scientific and administrative leadership. His colleagues said he routinely credited others for their roles in advances.<br /><br />Vaccine development is complex, requiring an artistry to safely produce large amounts of weakened live or dead micro-organisms. "Maurice was that artist: no one had the green thumb of mass production that he had," Dr. Offit said.<br /><br />The hepatitis B vaccine, licensed in 1981, is credited as the first to prevent a human cancer: a liver cancer, known as a hepatoma, that can develop as a complication of infection from the hepatitis B virus.<br /><br />One of Dr. Hilleman's goals was to develop the first licensed vaccine against any viral cancer. He achieved it in the early 1970's, developing a vaccine to prevent Marek's disease, a lymphoma cancer of chickens caused by a member of the herpes virus family. Preventing the disease helped revolutionize the economics of the poultry industry.<br /><br />Dr. Hilleman's vaccines have also prevented deafness, blindness and other permanent disabilities among millions of people, a point made in 1988 when President Ronald Reagan presented him with the National Medal of Science, the nation's highest scientific honor.<br /><br />Dr. Hilleman also discovered several viruses and made fundamental discoveries about the way the influenza virus mutates.<br /><br />Because scientific knowledge about viruses was so limited when he began his career, Dr. Hilleman said that trial and error, sound judgment and luck drove much of his research.</blockquote>Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1113403460337237282005-04-13T10:44:00.000-04:002005-04-13T10:44:20.336-04:00An upbeat report on Iraq......from Col. Jack Jacobs, U.S. Army, retired, on <em>Imus</em> this morning.<br /><br />He spent two weeks in Iraq in the Sunni Triangle, touring places like Fallujah and Tikrit.<br /><br />First, he says that U.S. troop morale is remarkably high. Whether regular service or National Guard the soldiers are synched to the mission.<br /><br />Second, Jacobs reports that the relationship between the troops and Iraqis <em>in the Sunni Triangle</em> is excellent.<br /><br />Third, the Iraqis are, as a result of that excellent relationship, supplying the troops with good intelligence on insurgents.<br /><br />Fourth, U.S. troops routinely thwart the tactics of the insurgents. For every roadside bomb (IED) that explodes, nine more are destroyed before they can do harm. This is the result of good intel and surveillance. Also, advanced radar technology instantaneously plots mortar and rocket fire and returns automated fire to the precise location from which the attack is launched before the mortar shell or rocket even hits. This limits the enemy to one shot per attack and eliminates barrages.<br /><br />Overall, Jacobs says that he was surprised at how well things are going and that the situation even impressed him despite his generally cynical outlook on all things.Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1113398880378480162005-04-13T09:27:00.000-04:002005-04-13T10:23:52.966-04:00Britain at NightfallBelmont Club has a <a href="http://belmontclub.blogspot.com/2005/04/nightfall-theodore-dalrymple-describes.html">magnificent presentation</a> of, and commentary on, excerpts from an article by Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal. It's about the "end of evil" in the U.K., and how that is the evil that will finally lay the place to rest. It will send a chill through your bones.Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1113315267890379072005-04-12T10:14:00.000-04:002005-04-12T10:14:27.893-04:00This article by......George Neumayr, <a href="http://spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7994">last Thursday</a>, stopped me in my tracks. It reaches back into modern history to the Enlightenment, the French Revolution, and the early moments of liberalism. Just two paragraphs from it:<br /><blockquote>Why would people who hate the Church pose as reformers who know what's best for it? Why would they care so passionately about the direction of a religion to which they don't belong? For the same reason the French philosophes and revolutionaries monitored and pressured the Church: it is a force that they must either neutralize or hijack in order to achieve their designs for the world. Look at the immense, obsessional energy that the left spends on trying to pressure the Church into green-lighting their favorite sexual sins. Why do they care so much about what the Church teaches? The reason is that they know that if they could just get the Catholic Church's imprimatur on the Sexual Revolution it would spread everywhere. A liberal Pope, as far as they are concerned, would be even better than a liberal Chief Justice on the Supreme Court.<br /><br />Modern liberalism is an acid that burns through everything it touches. The Church has shriveled in proportion to its exposure to it. Now those who have long sought its death present themselves, carrying more of this acid, as its healer, and even, as Thomas Cahill <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/04/05/opinion/cahill.html?pagewanted=all&position=" target="BLANK">wrote</a> in the New York Times, finger Pope John Paul II, who resisted it, as the Church's enemy. "He may, in time to come, be credited with destroying his church," writes Cahill, who blames the Pope for "intellectual incompetents" and "mindless sycophants" in the episcopate. "The situation is dire. Anyone can walk into a Catholic church on a Sunday and see pews, once filled to bursting, now sparsely populated with gray heads." He then proposes a "solution," which amounts to trading the teachings of Jesus Christ for modern liberalism.</blockquote>Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1112745465120366162005-04-05T19:57:00.000-04:002005-04-05T19:57:45.120-04:00"Missing His Holiness"George Neumayr has a <a href="http://spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=7985">brilliant column</a> on the liberal media's need to use John Paul II for it's own purposes:<br /><blockquote>Pope John Paul II knew that a worldly liberalism had derailed the Church and was trying to remove it. The project of the next pope is to finish that job. The media's "whether or not you agreed with them, you respected the intensity of his principles" formulation is nonsense: they didn't respect Pope John Paul II for his principles but for his power, a power they have long wanted to appropriate for their own liberal purposes.<br /><br />Their idea of honoring Pope John Paul II is to mau-mau the Church into embracing heresies that he deplored. The greatness of his life consisted in what the press ignores and seeks to undo in the Church: holiness, the measure of which is never the will of men but of God. The Pope made such a powerful impression on the world not because he was wordly but because he was otherworldly. A godless age had left an enormous vacuum; only a man who conformed his life to God could fill it.</blockquote>Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1112706795516716382005-04-05T09:13:00.000-04:002005-04-05T09:37:53.113-04:00Billy Beck is rightI have to distinguish between Beck's anarcho-capitalist tenets and his passionate defense of American, and human, freedom. I don't agree with the former, but I readily understand the latter. To the extent that he thinks the two are inseparable is the extent to which we disagree.<br /><br />But <a href="http://www.two--four.net/weblog.php?id=P1607">right here</a>, in this post to his friend and gentleman scholar Bruce McQuain, Beck makes the case in irrefutable terms that the American system of governance -- federal, state, local -- has lost any sight of its moorings in freedom and that about as close as it gets to freedom at this point is a free floating drift toward technocratic oblivion if not stampeding socialism. The one-step ahead, two-steps back efforts of conservatives since Reagan (inclusive of their libertarian instincts) to bring it under control have failed. The extent to which conservatives have had to adopt the practices of liberals in the effort to defeat them has in itself been a defeat for conservatives.<br /><br />I have noted that the best that can be claimed for it is that it has been a holding action against a historical tide, and that if the levee holds there might be a path back. But from an immediate objective viewing, that is not a good prospect.<br /><br />Conservatives are not only about economics, just as America is not only about economics. But when it comes to property and wealth and the way it's treated by the various governments (it's theirs, not yours), there can be no mistaking that Beck is right. That's the main reason that I consult his blog every day: he has a clear conscience about what <em>they</em> are doing to America. On other points we don't agree. But on the question of owning what one owns and what one produces, Beck is saying that tolerating a lifetime of government taking as it pleases is too long. Just as John Brown looked around and saw that it was intolerable to him that men should be owned as slaves for another day, let alone their whole lives, until the "process of law" discovered that they were free.<br /><br />I'm not taking sides in the usual libertarian schismatic troubles. I'm not a libertarian because I don't believe that liberty survives as liberty when it is framed as an ideology. But the truth is the truth, and Beck is telling the truth about what has happened to freedom in the United States. Measure it by Europe or China and say it is still the best in the world if you like, but in its own terms it has been in the red zone of disaster at least since the 1970s and the best efforts of sincere men to compromise on a road out of the red zone of disaster have been inadequate, to put it mildly.Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1112629561619179522005-04-04T11:45:00.000-04:002005-04-04T11:46:01.620-04:00"Be not afraid"Larry Kudlow <a href="http://nationalreview.com/kudlow/kudlow200504041030.asp">writes</a> a very touching and very personal tribute to John Paul II:<br /><blockquote>It was sometime in 1993 when I first read the great papal encyclical “Splendor of Truth,” written by Pope John Paul II. The slender book was recommended by Fr. C. John McClosky while he was counseling me during the worst personal crisis of my life: Alcohol and drug abuse were dragging me down. The problem got much worse before I finally surrendered to God, literally on my knees, and began a new life of faith — and sobriety.<br /><br />John Paul’s book had no direct advice on drugs or alcohol. But, then again, as I came to realize later, it had everything to do with these things. The book is about the need for spiritual and moral courage in choosing good over evil in our daily lives. It is about being personally accountable for our actions. It is about abiding by our conscience so that we may hear the voice of God and follow His direction.<br /><br />As a full-fledged member of a twelve-step fellowship, I later learned that the biggest problem facing all those who suffer from chronic addiction is “sickness of the soul.” That’s exactly what John Paul II talks about in “Splendor of Truth.” He tells us to “be not afraid” in pursuit of the life of faith. Be not afraid to trust God. Be not afraid to stand for the right values. Be not afraid to be faithful to your spouse, or unselfish to friends, or diligent in work and the many duties of everyday life.<br /><br />On a much grander scale the pope tells us to pursue right values concerning the sanctity of human life, human rights, freedom, democracy, and the redemptive value of suffering in life. He preaches a moral theology that applies to everything: Be not afraid in the pursuit of God’s will and the teachings of Jesus Christ. To live such a life requires courage, but it is precisely this moral courage that gives our lives meaning and purpose.</blockquote>Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1112472493209963292005-04-02T15:07:00.000-05:002005-04-02T15:11:35.433-05:00John Paul II, 1920-2005<div align="center"><span style="font-size:180%;"><strong>"Moral good is objective and a properly formed conscience can perceive it."</strong></span></div><div align="center">--John Paul II, August 14, 1993, 10:30 p.m.</div>Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1112374416217791682005-04-01T11:53:00.000-05:002005-04-02T17:00:30.486-05:00As he passes......The Holy Father, as theologian and philosopher:<br /><br /><div align="center"><span style="font-size:180%;"><a href="http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/encyclicals/documents/hf_jp-ii_enc_15101998_fides-et-ratio_en.html"><strong>Fides et Ratio</strong></a></span></div><div align="center">(Faith and Reason)</div>Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1112373673347721782005-04-01T11:40:00.000-05:002005-04-01T11:41:13.346-05:00"The Humane Holocaust"George Neumayr on the killing of Terri Schiavo:<br /><blockquote>The initial event that disabled Terri Schiavo didn't end up killing her. But in her obituary notice, what will the cause of death read? Will it read: murder? It should. The heart attack that disabled her didn't doom her; a husband without a heart did.<br /><br />Under judge-made law, euthanasia has become America's most astonishing form of premeditated murder, a cold-blooded crime in which husbands can kill their wives and even turn them into accomplices to it through the telepathy of "their wishes." To wonder if we're on the slippery slope sounds like an obtuse moral compliment at this point. The truth is we're at the bottom of the slope and have been for quite some time, standing dumbly as the bodies of innocent humans pile up around us. As we sift through them -- puzzling over how they got so numerous -- we're reduced to mumbling sophistries about compassion and consent.<br /><br />This is the "humane holocaust" of which Malcolm Muggeridge wrote, a culture that kills the weak, from deaf unborn children to mute disabled women, and calls it mercy. Those responsible for this humane holocaust look into the mirror and see Gandhi, but it is Hitler who glances back. If someone had taken the passages of Mein Kampf that speak of euthanizing "unfortunates" and inserted them into the columns from newspapers and magazines cheering Schiavo's death, would anyone have known the difference?</blockquote>Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10262662.post-1112302601928134912005-03-31T15:56:00.000-05:002005-03-31T15:56:41.933-05:00A long morning's journey into late afternoonThe most horrible thing about the death of Terri Schiavo was how everyone who wanted her to live, who might have done something about it, got to stand around with their dicks in their hands.<br /><br />They can't be blamed, of course, for letting this Judge Greer character nail the woman's casket closed while her parents stood there begging to be allowed take care of her. There were three very funny moments throughout this episode that made me want to just puke until I got down to that green stuff that my mother told me was bile, but maybe isn't.<br /><br />The first hysterically funny moment came when Judge Greer (is that how his name is spelled? if not, I could care less), was offered affidavits wherein witnesses claimed that Terri had tried to speak when asked if she wanted to live. It was one of the many last minute attempts to save her. Greer complained that he should have been told about it a week earlier, when it happened, and rejected the new evidence as suspiciously late. How funny is that? Hysterically funny when you consider that Michael Schiavo waited about seven years before he made it known that Terri had once told him she didn't want to be kept alive in the condition that she was in.<br /><br />The second hysterically funny moment (a few different moments to be more exact) came when the various appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court were rejected unanimously, without a single voice of dissent. Here's a tip of the hat to the "natural law" justice, Clarence Thomas, who clearly didn't want to step out of his federalism garment to opine against the deliberate killing of a non-terminal patient whose parents wanted to care for her. It looks like you've finally "evolved," Justice Thomas, and just in case you're nominated as the next Chief Justice, at least one embarrassing question has been foreclosed. Those hearings are going to be difficult enough, for certain.<br /><br />The third hysterically funny moment came when Laura Bush was interviewed while Schiavo was still dying and she repeated one of my favorite conventional responses from the whole ordeal. She noted how important it was for everyone to have a "living will." Well, isn't that nice. Not important to save the life of an innocent person being sentenced to die by a judge as the parents of the person begged for her life and said they would take care of her. No, what this was really all about was the pain caused by the absence of a living will. It was a great First Lady moment.<br /><br />All are forgiven, of course. Even the stupid prick judge whose "legal process" processed someone to death.<br /><br />As damaged as she was, Terri Schiavo had the aura of personality. As limited as her life was, that life might have been very precious to her. She might well have had a very rich consciousness that had triumphed over her profound impairments. Her parents and her brother and her sister loved her, felt her presence, and wanted to care for her. Yet the dubious claims of the husband and some doctors with queer antiseptic charts overrode the love of the loved ones. Ignominy. Disgrace. Hysterically funny moments. Ignominy. Disgrace. Forgiveness because this Dredd Scott II called a vital moral question and morality lost, in our faces, and the grudge is simply too big to hold.Martin McPhillipshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02702640115003772857noreply@blogger.com0