Posted 2:45 PM by Harry Niska
At least one liberal is reading this blog

On Tuesday, I wrote this about Brian Leiter and Lawrence VanDyke. Today a reader (who also happens to be a softball teammate of mine) weighs in:

Has Professor Leiter treated VanDyke and the Harvard Law Review fairly? I think not. The Law Review is certainly entitled to publish a favorable review of a creationist or any other screed. If Leiter is concerned about the low standards met by legal scholarship, he should exhort law faculty to take responsibility for it. Whining endlessly about the poor editorial skills of ignorant law students (and attacking one of them personally) solves nothing.

Did VanDyke commit "scholarly fraud"? I doubt it. He did betray a certain ignorance about evolutionary theory, and presented design theory with a sympathy few practicing biologists could muster. If "ID is not the same animal as creationism," it's not many mutations removed. Still, I doubt VanDyke understands the material well enough to knowingly lie about it. His discussion was reckless at worst, and the decision to publish it was if anything a questionable political decision.

Does dissemination of ID amount to an establishment of religion? I don't know the law well enough to say. This is, however, certainly a legal question and not a scientific one. The answer to it depends on your legal theory, not your philosophy of science.

Is dissemination of ID theory harmful to schoolchildren? Maybe. It would make them seem ignorant to students who obtained a more secular scientific education, and the appearance of stupidity is harmful. I think it's better to teach curiosity than dogmatism, and that MN is the best way to be curious in practice. Evolutionary theory is among the most successful in the history of science, behind perhaps only quantum electrodynamics. It has no real competition at this point; certainly not ID, which explains everything and predicts nothing. Arguing that we should teach ID amounts to arguing that we should teach philosophy of science in grade school. That sounds great to me, but I doubt that we have the resources to do so.

Finally, your question: Why is acceptance of the unprovable assumption that our "evidence and experience" is sufficient to allow us to really understand what is going on in nature any more scientific than acceptance of the opposite? It's not, unless you subscribe to "realism," that is, the philosophical theory that science describes the world as it really is. A lot of people don't ("anti-realists"), and there's a mountain of literature on the issue for anyone who wants to learn more. This whole controversy is another case of scientists trying to defend their turf and proponents of theology trying to defend theirs. The scientists are ahead right now, probably because they've put more men on the moon than religious theorists have. They've been winning at least since Galileo, and I'd bet on them in the long run. Still, I don't begrudge religious theorists their chance to speak. I'd just like to hear something worth thinking about.

I have a couple of reactions:

First, I think the "ID is harmful" argument only makes sense if you are talking about teaching nothing about Darwin and simply saying that everything was created and that's the end of it. I would prefer something like teaching the arguments people make about why naturalism alone is unable to explain everything (like the mathematical probabilities of spontaneous emergence of any life by random accident, or of that simple life somehow evolving into something way, way more complex) and about the problems in the scientific evidence cited as support for the theory of evolution. I think this makes students less ignorant than the way evolution was taught to me in tenth grade.

Second, my point about acceptance of the philosophical position of "realism" was not really a scientific point, but more of a legal point. When those such as Leiter try to use the First Amendment as a sword to keep particular philosophical positions out of school, they tend to try to obscure the fact that they are starting from a particular philosophical precept that is no more "provable" (and thus really no less "religious") than the philosophical precepts they think are unconstitutionally religious.

As for hearing something worth thinking about, I am not sure this is the page that will provide anything like that.

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Posted 6:29 PM by Harry Niska
What's a Republican to do?

Gregg Easterbrook presents this alternate history.

WASHINGTON, APRIL 9, 2004. A hush fell over the city as George W. Bush today became the first president of the United States ever to be removed from office by impeachment. Meeting late into the night, the Senate unanimously voted to convict Bush following a trial on his bill of impeachment from the House.

Moments after being sworn in as the 44th president, Dick Cheney said that disgraced former national security adviser Condoleezza Rice would be turned over to the Hague for trial in the International Court of Justice as a war criminal. Cheney said Washington would "firmly resist" international demands that Bush be extradited for prosecution as well.

On August 7, 2001, Bush had ordered the United States military to stage an all-out attack on alleged terrorist camps in Afghanistan. Thousands of U.S. special forces units parachuted into this neutral country, while air strikes targeted the Afghan government and its supporting military. Pentagon units seized abandoned Soviet air bases throughout Afghanistan, while establishing support bases in nearby nations such as Uzbekistan. Simultaneously, FBI agents throughout the United States staged raids in which dozens of men accused of terrorism were taken prisoner.

Reaction was swift and furious. Florida Senator Bob Graham said Bush had "brought shame to the United States with his paranoid delusions about so-called terror networks." British Prime Minister Tony Blair accused the United States of "an inexcusable act of conquest in plain violation of international law." White House chief counterterrorism advisor Richard Clarke immediately resigned in protest of "a disgusting exercise in over-kill."

When dozens of U.S. soldiers were slain in gun battles with fighters in the Afghan mountains, public opinion polls showed the nation overwhelmingly opposed to Bush's action. Political leaders of both parties called on Bush to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan immediately. "We are supposed to believe that attacking people in caves in some place called Tora Bora is worth the life of even one single U.S. soldier?" former Nebraska Senator Bob Kerrey asked.

When an off-target U.S. bomb killed scores of Afghan civilians who had taken refuge in a mosque, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Aznar announced a global boycott of American products. The United Nations General Assembly voted to condemn the United States, and Washington was forced into the humiliating position of vetoing a Security Council resolution declaring America guilty of "criminal acts of aggression."

Bush justified his attack on Afghanistan, and the detention of 19 men of Arab descent who had entered the country legally, on grounds of intelligence reports suggesting an imminent, devastating attack on the United States. But no such attack ever occurred, leading to widespread ridicule of Bush's claims. Speaking before a special commission created by Congress to investigate Bush's anti-terrorism actions, former national security adviser Rice shocked and horrified listeners when she admitted, "We had no actionable warnings of any specific threat, just good reason to believe something really bad was about to happen."

The president fired Rice immediately after her admission, but this did little to quell public anger regarding the war in Afghanistan. When it was revealed that U.S. special forces were also carrying out attacks against suspected terrorist bases in Indonesia and Pakistan, fury against the United States became universal, with even Israel condemning American action as "totally unjustified."

Speaking briefly to reporters on the South Lawn of the White House before a helicopter carried him out of Washington as the first-ever president removed by impeachment, Bush seemed bitter. "I was given bad advice," he insisted. "My advisers told me that unless we took decisive action, thousands of innocent Americans might die. Obviously I should not have listened."

Announcing his candidacy for the 2004 Republican presidential nomination, Senator John McCain said today that "George W. Bush was very foolish and naïve; he didn't realize he was being pushed into this needless conflict by oil interests that wanted to seize Afghanistan to run a pipeline across it." McCain spoke at a campaign rally at the World Trade Center in New York City.

Pretty devastating to the suddenly hawkish Dems, I think.

Link from LGF.

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Posted 7:16 PM by Harry Niska
Letter from Fallujah

Andrew Sullivan posts this letter from a Marine. It is definitely a must read.

Things have been busy here. You know I can't say much about it. However, I do know two things. One, POTUS has given us the green light to do whatever we needed to do to win this thing so we have that going for us. Two, and my opinion only, this battle is going to have far reaching effects on not only the war here in Iraq but in the overall war on terrorism. We have to be very precise in our application of combat power. We cannot kill a lot of innocent folks (though they are few and far between in Fallujah). There will be no shock and awe. There will be plenty of bloodshed at the lowest levels. This battle is the Marine Corps' Belleau Wood for this war. 2/1 and 1/5 will be leading the way. We have to find a way to kill the bad guys only. The Fallujahans are fired up and ready for a fight (or so they think). A lot of terrorists and foreign fighters are holed up in Fallujah. It has been a sanctuary for them. If they have not left town they are going to die. I'm hoping they stay and fight.

This way we won't have to track them down one by one.

This battle is going to be talked about for a long time. The Marine Corps will either reaffirm its place in history as one of the greatest fighting organizations in the world or we will die trying. The Marines are fired up. I'm nervous for them though because I know how much is riding on this fight (the war in Iraq, the view of the war at home, the length of the war on terror and the reputation of the Marine Corps to name a few). However, every time I've been nervous during my career about the outcome of events when young Marines were involved they have ALWAYS exceeded my expectations. I'm praying this is one of those times.

Link from Instapundit.

UPDATE: Actually, it looks like Little Green Footballs posted this first. They have some more details about the letter there.

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Posted 10:53 AM by Harry Niska
Power Line is live blogging Rice's testimony

Check it out here.

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Posted 8:15 PM by Harry Niska
The Eighth Circuit re-examines the Eighth Commandment (along with the other nine)

How Appealing points to this article from the Omaha World-Herald that reports that the Eighth Circuit has vacated the panel decision declaring the Ten Commandments monument in Plattesmouth, Nebraska unconstitutional and granted a rehearing en banc.

The American Center for Law and Justice, the organization representing the city of Plattesmouth, has issued this optimistic press release. The World-Herald reports the ACLU's reaction thus:

ACLU Nebraska Executive Director Tim Butz said the ruling is not a setback. "I'm sure the entire court wanted to look at it," he said. "This is an interesting case that is playing out across the country. We're not afraid of the order."

Of course Mr. Butz is going to say that, but I think this is a much worse sign for the ACLU than he is willing to admit. According to the Eighth Circuit's Internal Operating Procedures, a majority of the active service judges need to vote for rehearing to get an en banc rehearing. In this case, that means that there had to have been five of the nine active service judges voting for re-hearing.

The stated standard for approving an en banc rehearing is this:

Petitions for rehearing are not favored by the court and are granted infrequently. Petitions for rehearing en banc require substantial processing and the expenditure of time by judges who have not participated in the case, as well as by the hearing panel, and should be reserved for cases necessary to maintain and secure the uniformity of decisions or that raise questions of exceptional importance.

The en banc panel will be composed of the nine active judges (with the president who nominated them):

Hon. James B. Loken, Chief Judge (G.H.W. Bush)
Hon. Roger L. Wollman (Reagan)
Hon. Morris S. Arnold (G.H.W. Bush)
Hon. Diana E. Murphy (Clinton)
Hon. Kermit E. Bye (Clinton)
Hon. William Jay Riley (G.W. Bush)
Hon. Michael J. Melloy (G.W. Bush)
Hon. Lavenski R. Smith (G.W. Bush)
Hon. Steven M. Colloton (G.W. Bush)

In addition, the two senior judges who were on the original panel can choose to be on the en banc panel. They are Hon. Pasco M. Bowman (Reagan) and Hon. Richard S. Arnold (Carter).

This would mean an eleven judge panel, with six votes needed to uphold the constitutionality of the Ten Commandments monument in question. Although the original panel broke down on the party line of the nominating president, that can hardly be taken for granted in this case. But if it means anything, the panel would consist of 8 Republican nominees and 3 Democratic nominees. If Judge Bowman and the (at least five) active judges who voted for the en banc rehearing vote for the Ten Commandments, that would be enough to keep the monument in place.

Of course it is possible that one or more of the judges who voted for a rehearing is not interested in reversing the three judge panel and simply think this is a "question[] of exceptional importance." But my tentative (and admittedly premature) impression is that the odds favor the City of Plattsmouth and the ACLJ, and they are not in favor of the ACLU.


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Posted 11:01 PM by Harry Niska
Pepperdine finally lands their Starr

In case you haven't heard, Pepperdine today announced that their next dean will be none other than Kenneth Starr, who was a clerk for a certain Minnesotan Chief Justice of the United States before he made nightly appearances on national television during the Clinton administration. This is a pretty good article from law.com about the news.

Professor Bainbridge has this to say:

Pepperdine Law School has named Ken Starr as its new dean. Congrats to both. I've often thought Pepperdine ought to be able to move up the rankings significantly. They've got the most scenic location in American legal education (the view of Malibu from the law school is spectacular), although most faculty and students do have to commute quite a ways to get there. They're a high tuition private school, which ought to enable them to throw a lot of money into hiring top faculty. Perhaps Starr can devise a strategy for leveraging those considerable advantages into making the kind of move up the rankings that places like George Mason have pulled off.

Pejman Yousefzadeh is excited for his alma mater, and has some other interesting observations about how Starr's qualifications are often obscured by the Whitewater/Starr Report phenomenon.

This couldn't happen to a nicer guy. I had the pleasure of meeting him last fall when he came to the University of Minnesota for a lecture, and he is one of the most down-to-earth and wrongly maligned people in America. It's a shame we don't call him Justice Starr (as Ted Olson accidently did during the BCRA oral arguments), but I suppose Dean Starr will suit him just fine.



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Posted 1:12 PM by Harry Niska
Does disagreeing with Brian Leiter doom your academic career?

Apparently he thinks so. Professor Leiter continues his academic slash and burn campaign against Harvard Law student Lawrence VanDyke (who is, incidentally, quite a strapping lad, a fact that might inspire more respect from Professor Leiter if he had ever seen Lawrence) here.

VanDyke wrote a piece reviewing Francis Beckwith's book Darwinism and Public Education: The Establishment Clause and the Challenge of Intelligent Design in the Harvard Law Review which prompted Leiter to post this in which he accused VanDyke of academic fraud.

Mr. VanDyke may yet have a fine career as a lawyer, but I trust he has no intention of entering law teaching: scholarly fraud is, I fear, an inauspicious beginning for an aspiring law teacher. And let none of the many law professors who are readers of this site be mistaken: Mr. VanDyke has perpetrated (intentionally or otherwise) a scholarly fraud, one that may have political and pedagogical consequences.

This prompted an article on National Review Online by Hunter Baker, a colleague of Professor Beckwith's, expressing concern about the apparent threats Leiter was making to VanDyke's career. Leiter responded here and here.

Almost two weeks ago, on March 24, VanDyke responded on Ex Parte. Then, today, apparently Leiter noticed and continued his academic crusade against VanDyke.

Some folks don’t know how to cut their losses. Lawrence VanDyke’s complete scientific and scholarly incompetence has been so thoroughly reviewed by me (here and here), biologists, political commentators, and those concerned with science education, that you’d think he might just admit what is now obvious: that he was out of his depth, scientifically and philosophically, and leave it at that. We’re all entitled to make mistakes, after all.

Not VanDyke. After being sliced and diced, he now comes back, once again, accusing others of “ignorance” and errors: see his latest here. His new fantasy is that his critics, me prominently among them, missed the “real point” of his 8-page book review; in calling attention to his total misrepresentation of the relevant science and the scientific status of Intelligent Design creationism, we were focussing on mere “empirical quibbles” (that’s VanDyke’s new phrase to describe his quasi-fraudulent portrayal of the scientific issues, which are central to the question of the constitutional status of teaching ID in the public schools). It may be that in his initial review, VanDyke was simply handicapped by ignorance and intellectual feebleness, not intentional dishonesty; but this latest reply seems to be more clearly a case of actual fraud (it seems the most charitable explanation for the dishonest rhetoric of the piece, but perhaps there is another story to be told).

So, while Leiter is not accusing VanDyke of "quasi-fraud[]", "actual fraud", and "complete scientific and scholarly incompetence", he is doing his best to act surprised that VanDyke would even respond to his accusations. Apparently, once Leiter speaks, everyone who disagrees is expected to simply recognize their error and move on to areas in which their opinions are more in line with the Leiter Truth. And it is an interesting irony that it is VanDyke who won't "leave it at that," considering the fact that it is Leiter who is responding two weeks after what VanDyke said would be his final response, and the fact that it is not Leiter's integrity and professional career that have been called into question.

So, you would expect accusations of academic fraud to be carefully and thoroughly defended, right? Apparently that is unnecessary in this case. All Leiter thinks he needs to do is continue to repeat claims of "fraud," "dishonest[y]" and "ignorance" and drop a bunch of names, and that will be sufficient for those who have not read "Quine, Feyerabend, Bachelard, Kuhn, Hanson, Lakatos, Laudan, Kitcher, Shapin, Barnes & Bloor, and many others" to simply take Leiter's word for VanDyke's intellectual incapacity and dishonesty.

Then, Leiter begins to comment on VanDyke's "spectacular misrepresentations."

Leiter: The only thing "simply wrong" is the claim that philosophers of science believe science manifests an a priori commitment to MN. Once again, VanDyke has no idea what he is talking about; he knows less about the subject than even an undergraduate philosophy major would know.

VanDyke: “As I previously noted, John Rennie, editor-in-chief of Scientific American, has unequivocally stated: ‘A central tenet of modern science is methodological naturalism.’”

Leiter: Unfortunately, that claim, which is perfectly reasonable, doesn’t show that the tenet is a priori, which is the only issue.

VanDyke: “In fact, I could have included quotes from Churchland, Hull, Searle, Flew, Crick, Rachels, Futuyama, Strickberger, and P. Z. Meyers, to name just a few thinkers who understand evolutionary theory as applied materialism.”

Leiter: VanDyke could not have included quotes showing that the philosophers among them think methodological naturalism is an a priori dogma—that’s the issue. Evolutionary biologists pursue a research program predicated on the search for naturalistic causal mechanisms because it’s turned out, as an a posteriori matter, that such a research program produces spectacular results. By contrast, there is no research program with any research or results utilizing supernatural causal mechanisms. That is why scientists are methodological naturalists. Their reasons are a posteriori. It really is that simple, VanDyke’s astonishing ignorance notwithstanding.

The closest Leiter gets to an actual argument (i.e., something beyond name-dropping and name-calling) is this last point that: "Evolutionary biologists pursue a research program predicated on the search for naturalistic causal mechanisms because it’s turned out, as an a posteriori matter, that such a research program produces spectacular results. By contrast, there is no research program with any research or results utilizing supernatural causal mechanisms. That is why scientists are methodological naturalists. Their reasons are a posteriori."

This is basically the same as Leiter's point here.

The difficulty, however, is that science did not "a priori pick a naturalistic methodology"; they adopted, based on evidence and experience (i.e., a posteriori), the methods that worked: it turns out that if you make predictions, test the predictions against experience, refine the hypotheses on which the predictions are based, test them again, and so on, you figure out how to predict and control the world around you. This is what the Scientific Revolution, the Enlightenment, and a few other ancient events apparently not covered in Mr. VanDyke's education, were about: the a posteriori discovery of the most effective ways to predict and control the world.

Stuart Buck made a fairly lengthy response to this point here, which Leiter does not even attempt to respond to accept by making a rather insulting reference to "another non-philosopher blogger" who "appears to be equally confused on this subject."

Here's the point Buck makes (and which VanDyke apparently agrees with):

Leiter's point may be true, but it is also irrelevant. This is because VanDyke and Leiter are using the term "a priori" in two very different senses.

VanDyke meant the term "a priori" to mean that scientists today tend to approach their work having already decided to exclude any non-naturalistic causes or explanations. That's why the most common objection to Intelligent Design Theory is something along the lines of, "ID is not Science. Science is only concerned with finding naturalistic causes and explanations for naturalistic phenomena. Supernatural explanations simply can't be part of science, because they aren't falsifiable. Period." (Citations are unnecessary; anyone familiar with the ID controversy has already seen countless variations on this sort of argument.)

But when Leiter purports to disagree with the above, he is using the term "a priori" in a Kantian sense, where "a priori" means some sort of transcendental or logical truth that is ascertained without any reference to any experience. That's why Leiter refers to the historical origins of methodological naturalism, which, as he points out, arose out of successful experiences seeking naturalistic causes for things.

But VanDyke's point still holds true: Even if they came by this belief due to experience, scientists today generally determine prior to investigating any new phenomena or event that there simply must be some naturalistic cause. One way of detecting the a priori nature of the commitment to naturalism is to conduct a thought experiment: Suppose that the history of life on earth is exactly as neo-Darwinists say, but with one exception: About 200,000 years ago, God specially created the first humanoids that were capable of abstract thought (call them mitochondrial Eve and Adam). Suppose, for the sake of argument, that this is really true. God really did it. And as a result, any attempt to find a naturalistic link to other humanoid ancestors will fail. But even if this were really true, there would still be some scientists who would rule it out a priori by insisting that an explanation that relied on God could not be "science." That's is what VanDyke meant by an "a priori" commitment: Stating that a particular type of explanation is ruled out even if it might be true.

In short, VanDyke was using "a priori" as did Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin in a 1997 article from the New York Review of Books:

We take the side of science despite the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, despite its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promises, despite the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories because we have a prior commitment to materialism.

It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.

I would add to this that even if Leiter is technically correct about "methodological naturalism," it seems relatively clear to me that his defense of the a posteriori arrival at methodological naturalism is only possible if you make other a priori philosophical commitments: that our "evidence and experience" is sufficient to allow us to really understand what is going on, and that there is nothing relevant that is beyond our ability to observe and understand. I can certainly understand why people would feel that this is an attractive philosophical position, but it is hardly something that can be scientifically proven.

Perhaps my point proves too much: maybe science is, at its root, essentially unscientific. I am also relatively sure that Leiter will be able to throw a bunch of names at me of other people who have thought about this subject. I don't pretend to be the first person who has come up with this observation. But, seriously, why is acceptance of this unprovable assumption any more scientific than acceptance of the opposite?

Then Leiter talks about a bunch of people I have not read. I am not going to pretend I have anything intelligent to say about Kuhn and Laudan.

Leiter concludes:

Lawrence VanDyke has consumed more of my time than the intellectual content of his work is worth on the merits. But the good news is that his little apology for ID in the Harvard Law Review has been exposed for the piece of incompetent shilling for ignorance that it is--so much so that no one will dare cite it on behalf of teaching lies and misinformation to public school children ever again. And if they do, they will be immediately discredited as soon as someone references this whole, now extended demolition of VanDyke, Beckwith & co.

Meanwhile, some advice for VanDyke: the notoriety your incompetence has now acquired has, predictably, damaged your reputation among scholars; but there is a risk, judging from my e-mail, that if you continue, it will end up damaging your reputation among practitioners too (who, largely thanks to Kevin Drum, appear to have picked up on this debate). Let this whole topic drop. Pursue something else of legal importance, where your skills may serve you well. If you got good enough grades and high enough LSAT scores to get in to Harvard Law School, you must surely have marketable intellectual and legal skills that are unrelated to the parochial prejudices and intellectual dishonesty that have been on such prominent display throughout this affair. I wish you nothing but success in your endeavors--as long as you get out of the business of shilling for ignorance and those who want to harm schoolchildren.

I think the presumptuousness of this speaks for itself. I realize that I might now have my academic future threatened as a result of my unwillingness to quietly accept the Leiter Orthodoxy. Perhaps I am also now guilty, in Leiter's eyes, of academic fraud.

But if Leiter seriously thinks that Beckwith and VanDyke “want to harm schoolchildren,” I think he needs to look in the mirror when he wants to find “parochial prejudices,” “intellectual dishonesty,” and “ignorance.”

UPDATE: You can read more here and here.

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Posted 11:36 PM by Harry Niska
Barry Lynn, where are you?

Professor Steve Bainbridge is curious why Americans United for Church and State isn't concerned about Kerry's recent "preaching" tour.

Last year, during the California recall election, AU did stay consistent when Gray Davis did some similar preaching. Let's see if they can bring themselves to it now that the stakes are higher.

Just so it's clear that I am still being consistent: I have no problem with the churches in question allowing Kerry to campaign, er, preach. If they sincerely believe that this is an exercise of their faith, they should be allowed to practice freely. But if AU really believes that churches should be banned from politics, they need to apply this rule to left-wing churches too.


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Posted 11:24 AM by Harry Niska
Now is not the time to surrender

I just recieved this from a friend. Part of it is from an article written just after the Madrid attacks, but the sentiment seems appropriate after the Fallujah craziness.

"War is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things; the decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling which thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. A man who has nothing for which he is willing to fight; nothing he cares about more than his own personal safety; is a miserable creature who has no chance of being free, unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself." John Stuart Mill

There is no ambiguity in what has happened in Spain. The rotten heart of Europe has been exposed. The best comparison one can make is to Europe in 1940, when the entire continent had capitulated to Nazism and fascism, leaving Britain alone to fight. It thus came to be known as "Churchill's war", rather than "Hitler's war", only to revert when the Allies had won it, and a generation of Europeans, who had not lifted a finger, decided retrospectively that they had been in the Resistance.

The position of Tony Blair's government in Britain today is further undermined by the Spanish vote, so that it is quite possible that the British, too, may soon abandon what the Europeans now choose to call "Bush's war", rather than "Osama's war".

A good question might be asked of the Bush administration, in light of the Spanish election. It was articulated by an American friend yesterday: "Before we waste another drop of blood trying to create democracies in the Middle East, shouldn't we reflect a bit on how easily democracy in Spain was subverted by terrorists?"

One must not, under the present circumstances, sound an uncertain trumpet. All men of goodwill, regardless of nation, are fighting the Jihadists in Afghanistan and Iraq, as we fought the Nazis in Italy and France; and if the Americans must fight them alone, so be it. Then as now we made a lot of blather about "democracy". But screw democracy, we are fighting an enemy of civilization, an embodiment of real evil. There is no compromise with such an enemy, no capitulation to him, no way to avoid casualties, no easy way out. We defeat him, or he defeats us.

We do not retreat because our allies are cowards. We continue to fight, for ourselves, for our children, and for the cowards' children.

The part after the Mill quote is from this March 16 article by David Warren.

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