THE WANDERER, FEBRUARY 17, 2005
JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH
The Bush Legacy
THE WASHINGTON POST headline, February 9, top of
page one: "Blueprint Calls for Bigger, More Powerful
Government" (Subhead: "Some Conservatives Express Concern
at Agenda"). Right next to that was another headline:
"Medicare Drug Benefit May Cost $1.2 Trillion" (Subhead:
"Estimate Dwarfs Bush's Original Price Tag").
Why read on? There, in a nutshell, is the real story
of the Bush era. When the Iraq war is forgotten, the huge
apparatus of the expanded welfare state, with all its
consequences, will remain as the Bush legacy.
"Big-government conservatism" is achieving what Bill
Clinton failed to achieve. It's also likely to leave more
lasting destruction. Bush, who says freedom is every
child's birthright, is ensuring that every American child
henceforth will be born deep in debt.
This in itself is nothing new. What is new is a
Republican president, calling himself conservative,
aggravating the problem so severely. Bush and Karl Rove
(who has just been elevated to his deputy chief of staff)
hope to establish a Republican dynasty as durable as
Franklin Roosevelt's Democratic one.
In fact, Clinton, like Jimmy Carter a liberal in his
day, may be remembered, like Carter, as relatively
conservative. He did balance budgets and managed to finish
in the black. No wonder he felt entitled to take some
furniture with him when he left the White House.
Of course Clinton had some help from his opposition,
a Republican Congress that wouldn't give him everything he
wanted. Spending is out of control now because George W.
Bush is working with, not against, the Republicans. They
fought for their principles when facing a Democratic
president, but with a Republican in the White House those
principles are no longer needed.
Bush is an able politician and an audacious one.
Defying the wisdom of the ages, he's even willing to try
to reform Social Security, thereby daring the Democrats
to do what they do best: scare old people. But he knows
the dynamics of American politics are changing, and he
means to take advantage of that fact.
The question is whether he's biting off more than he,
and the political system, can chew. He proposes to cut
spending for 150 federal programs, but even if he gets
all he asks for, he won't save enough to pay for the new
Medicare benefits he's already committed us to.
Thoughts on Evolution
To my amazement, THE NEW YORK TIMES has published
an op-ed piece challenging Darwinism. I never thought I'd
see the day.
The author is Michael Behe, a biologist who argues
that the universe manifests "intelligent design." Even a
single cell, he contends, is an enormously complex
"machine" that couldn't have come about by blind chance.
It's the old argument that a clock argues a clockmaker.
The fact that design is obvious, says Behe, is no reason
to ignore it.
Behe's thesis, I gather, is not "creationism" -- the
belief that God created every species separately. That's
another matter, and as a scientist he doesn't rely on
Revelation. But of course the argument from design has
been one of the traditional arguments for God's
existence, which Darwinism has sought to undermine.
I know next to nothing about the structure of the
cell (I have only faint memories of high school biology),
but I've always had a simple, naive objection to the
Darwinian theory. If we humans came about by mere chance,
there ought to be abundant evidence of chance's operations.
Let me put it this way. If a monkey typed forever,
it's said, he (or she) would eventually produce a perfect
copy of HAMLET. But probably not on the first try. In
fact, it's safe to say that there would be a lot of rough
drafts. Perhaps trillions of trillions.
Moreover, when our simian friend had finally arrived
at that perfect copy, he wouldn't stop. He wouldn't
realize he'd written a classic. He'd keep typing more
nonsense.
So if blind evolution produced us by chance, there
ought to be traces of a staggering number of "rough
drafts." We should be climbing over mountains of bones of
Nature's "failed" (from our point of view) experiments.
In such a process of trial and error, the "errors" should
vastly predominate. Why isn't such evidence of evolution
all around us? Why does the discovery of a few ancient
fossil remains always cause such excitement?
As with the monkey, furthermore, Nature wouldn't
stop when she had (from our point of view) succeeded. She
would keep producing new and useless mutations, many of
which would presumably be visible to us. Where are they?
(Outside New York City, that is.)
Religious questions aside, the Darwinian thesis
seems to me pretty desperate on its own grounds. It seems
to smuggle in a theory of progress, or purposeful
improvement, that's incompatible with the idea of an
immensely long and mindless process.
In fact, popular science articles often speak of the
"evolutionary purpose" of some organ or instinct,
forgetting that the very premise of the theory is that
Nature has no purpose. How, then, can she be assigned such
providential wisdom?
I suppose this illustrates the irresistible tendency
to see design in Nature, and to infer some intelligence
behind it. But that turns Nature into a permissive (if
somewhat whimsical) goddess, who makes no moral demands
on us. Maybe that's the real impulse behind Darwinism.
Islam and the Future
I recently tried here to imagine how Muslims see the
modern West (especially the United States) and why they
fear it. I suggested that they may regard us as we once
regarded the Soviet Union.
Is there any reason why we should also fear Islam?
Stereotypes aside, I think there is. As Hilaire Belloc
pointed out, the Muslim world is especially resistant to
Christian evangelism. Christian missionaries are banned
in some Muslim countries and have been murdered in
others. Few Muslims convert to Christianity, and those
who do so, even in the West, risk death at the hands of
other Muslims, who regard them as apostates. The Koran
damns those who believe in the Trinity.
All this makes our duty of preaching the Gospel to
every creature problematic in the Muslim world. Our work
there has hardly begun; the job is so forbidding that it's
tempting not even to think of it. Today, as Belloc
predicted, Islam is a fighting faith; but where is
Christianity advancing?
Christians are now said to be fleeing from Iraq,
where democracy will probably mean the imposition of
fierce Islamic law. In matters of religion, at least,
Saddam Hussein was relatively tolerant; Islam isn't. What
can we expect as Muslims keep migrating to Europe and
establishing demographic strongholds there?
Maybe the Iraqi Christians can give us a hint.
Unfortunately, we are hearing almost nothing of them. The
U.S. government and the media are exclusively concerned
with Shi'ites, Sunnis, and Kurds -- all Muslims.
Even American Christians don't appear interested in
the coming collision of the world's two largest
religions.
+ + +
SOBRAN'S, my monthly newsletter, hunts down current
fallacies (Darwinism is only one of many) and seeks to
refute them with as much good humor as is still
permissible. If you have not seen it yet, give my office
a call at 800-513-5053 and request a free sample, or
better yet, subscribe for two years for just $85. New
subscribers get two gifts with their subscription. More
details can be found at the Subscription page of my
website, www.sobran.com.
Already a subscriber? Consider a gift subscription
for a priest, friend, or relative.
--- Joseph Sobran
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Read this column on-line at
"http://www.sobran.com/wanderer/w2005/w050217.shtml".
This column copyright (c) 2005 by THE WANDERER,
www.thewandererpress.com. Reprinted with permission.
This column may not be published in print or Internet
publications without express permission of THE WANDERER.
You may forward it to interested individuals if you use
this entire page, including the following disclaimer:
"THE WANDERER is available by subscription. Write
subscription@thewandererpress.com for information.
Subscription price: $50 per year; $30 for six months.
Checks can be sent to The WANDERER, 201 Ohio Street,
Dept. JS, St. Paul, MN 55107.
"SOBRAN'S and Joe Sobran's syndicated columns are
available by e-mail subscription. For details and
samples, see http://www.sobran.com/e-mail.shtml, write
PR@griffnews.com, or call 800-513-5053."
This page copyright (c) 2005 by THE VERE COMPANY.