Today Dennis Prager, during the third hour of his broadcast, hit on the topic I most emphatically disagree with him on. As usual the disagreement occured while Prager was discussing a concrete issue with which I do tend to agree. Somewhere in a Quaker elementary school in Pennsylvania, second graders were asked by their teachers to write letters to the President calling for an end to the war in Iraq. I completely concur with Prager's point that this propagandizing to young children is wrong. Children at that age should be taught primarily reading, writing, and arithmetic. If they ask a question, the teacher should certainly answer it honestly, but the teacher should not assign letter writing based on political points of view the children may or may not understand.

Prager's second point about this letter writing assignment was the fact that Jesus and Christianity were used as arguments against the war. Prager asked Christians to call in to give their views as to whether such an interpretation of Christianity was justified. The Christians who did call in argued that individuals using Christianity and Jesus in opposition to war were engaging in a rather selective reading of the New Testament, and several cited sections of the New Testament that do lend support to governments engaging in wars to root out evil. Prager added that they were completely ignoring pro-war sentiments expressed in the Old Testament.

It was during a call by a Christian expressing his frustration with "humanist" opponents of war and other issues that Prager made a comment to which I am utterly opposed. The caller described situations in which policy issues were discussed with secular people and whenever the Christian would offer his faith as a justification for the policy, the secular side would argue that they would only accept secular arguments and any policy arguments backed by faith are by that very fact invalid. To this Prager responded that all moral evaluations whether secular or religious are based on faith.

It is to this last statement I have to respond. Let's take this seriously for a moment. Prager claims that all moral evaluations are based on faith. Faith is basically belief in the absence of evidence. This means that faith is the feeling that something is right without any rational reason to support it. And how is the feeling that war is right to be justified? How can any appeal to feeling be justified? It cannot. Not if feelings are claimed to be the fundamental basis our moral judgements and on which all our subsequents argument for or against an issue are depend. Imagine any argument of a high level of complexity. The argument begins with both sides making the case rationally but according to Prager necessarily ends with both sides reaching their fundamental feelings on the matter about which they cannot argue at all. So basically the secular Pragmatists like Dewey and Peirce who argued that moral pronouncements amount to emotional ejaculations are correct. I thought Prager's reason for support of religion over secularism was that religion provides an objective basis for moral values. But clearly Prager has now entirely conceded the case to the moral relativists. Their positions are based just as much on feelings as Prager's faith. Who's to say who's right? I do feel Prager is right most of the time but others feel differently. Why are some people's feelings better than others? Is there no way in which feelings can be judged rationally?

Make no mistake about it, this is precisely the reason why our culture is in the mess that it is. The religious and the secular, despite some vigorous denials to the contrary primarily from the religious side, agree entirely with the statement that Prager made which basically means: There is no rational, objective, scientific basis for morality. There are only faith and feelings. Faith that God's pronouncements are correct, the feelings of the majority or the feelings of the individual. This is the great myth of the present culture. Only the remnants of the Enlightenment ideas of the founding of this country are keeping it from turning into the moral wasteland of Europe. The fact is that it is possible to base morality on something other than faith. And this fact has been known since the publication of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged in 1957 where Ayn Rand first offered her Objectivist ethics, the first truly objective, rational, and scientific morality in history, to the world. I will not attempt to reconstruct her argument for it here. In the early sixties Ayn Rand published an essay called Introduction to Objectivist Ethics, in which the argument is clearly presented. The essay is reprinted in her book Virtue of Selfishness. In addition Leonard Peikoff in his 1991 book Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand gives a complete and thorough presentation based partly on a lecture course authorized by Ayn Rand that he gave in the seventies. Tara Smith's Viable Values published in 2000 gives a detailed academic presentation of the metaethics of Objectivism with some important criticisms of non-Objectivist alternatives. Finally, Craig Biddle's Loving Life: The Morality of Self-Interest and the Facts that Support It published in 2002 gives a complete, easy to read, presentation of Objectivist ethics for the educated layman and demolishes the false alternative of religion vs. relativism.

Just a slight clarification to what I wrote below. I wrote "we seem to value Iraqi civilian casualties higher than we value casualties among our own troops." Of course, what I meant was we seem to value Iraqi civilian lives more than we values the lives of our own troops. The irony with such an attitude is that critics never quite believe it no matter how many of our soldiers are lost compared to the number dead and injured Iraqi civilians. The Israeli experience here is instructive.

While I still have no doubt about our ultimate victory certain things about this war do irk me. It does appear that we seem to value Iraqi civilian casualties higher than we value casualties among our own troops. This no doubt derives partly from our attempt to completely separate the Iraqi people from its government. While President Bush has been admirably on target when it comes to the correct justification of the war, namely, the intolerability of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of a terrorist sponsoring regime like Iraq, particularly in the shadow on the 9/11 massacre, others such as Dennis Prager seem to focus primarily on the benefits that the overthrow of the regime would have for the Iraqi people. Unfortunately, there is some reason to belive that his war is being fought more in line with Prager's assumptions than our own national self-interest. Particularly relevant is the following column, which concludes rather thoughtfully: "The declarations of respect for Iraq look like a cover for the U.S. administration's own uncertainty - reflecting a desire not to be seen launching an American war in the name of American interests." It is truly a sad day when the greatest and most powerful country in history cannot proudly assert its own self interests.

Of course, this should all sound very familiar, as that is almost exactly how the Afghan war was fought, and, I might add won, despite various politically correct efforts which seemed to undermine it. It does appear that we have some leeway in the extent to which we can undermine our own efforts, at least up to a certain point. An interesting thought experiment would be to imagine how the battle would go if we did not engage in these pc shenanigans. I suspect it might just go a lot better than people would expect (not that things are going particularly bad at the moment).

During his second hour today, Dennis Prager conducted an interview with a Jordanian businessman who runs the largest Arab language online community. The Jordanian man had clearly been to the West, had contacts with Israeli businessmen, and regularly watches the western media. Nevertheless his opinions were eye-openers for people overly optimistic about "democracy" in the region. He thought Al Jazeera was a source of greater truth than the Washington Post. He thought the Iraq war is a tragedy and big mistake for the United States and that support for Saddam among Arabas was increasing as he is increasingly seen as defending the Iraqi people from American agression. He thought that one of the reasons the US is hated in the Arab world is its support for Israel. He blamed the US and Israel for the millions of Palestinian refugees still in camps after 55 years. While he thought that peace with Israel was ultimately necessary, he rejected Prager's characterization of Israel having offered the Palestinians 95% of the West Bank and Gaza and instead asserted that what was in fact offered was 10-20% of the original territory lost (clearly referring thereby to the 1948 conflict in which Israel was established). At the same time and somewhat in apparent contradiction he thought that Israel at minimum should withdraw from all the territories conquered in 1967. He thought that while the 9/11 terrorist attack was to be condemned, the US made a mistake by overthrowing the Taliban regime and should have instead looked at the "root causes" of the hatred generated by American policies with respect to Israel and the Arab states. For example, he thought that the main reason that there are Arab dictatorships is that the US supplies them with weapons.

What is one to say to such fantasies?

Add to that Barry Rubin's column titled "Can the 'wall of lies' be breached?" Rubin recounts his participation in a "a panel discussion on the US war with Iraq, facing journalists and academics in three Arab capitals." Here are some choice excerpts of some of the assertions he encountered:



* The United States was leveling Baghdad, deliberately attacking residential areas and hitting such buildings as hospitals. One panelist said he knew Baghdad well and that the neighborhood being hit was a place where many people lived.

* The plan for the attack had been set at a 1997 meeting to honor the centennial of the first Zionist Congress.

* Americans hated Arabs and Muslims.

* Bush was the true leader of the Axis of Evil, and basically the United States was seeking world conquest. Of course the widespread opposition to the war in Europe and even in the US was cited in this regard.



I can only echo Rubin's conclusion:


What remains so disturbing is the disconnection between reality and the beliefs and ideas offered up by most of the Arab world. What will it take to shake these misperceptions, which have led to so much suffering and failure? Perhaps Iraq, at least, might escape the treadmill to nowhere.

Here's a good article about war casualties and another one about so-called Operation 'Setbacks'? Both articles are from Tech Central Station.

A U.S. pilot flashes a victory sign. (AP)

Having watched the watched the war coverage since its inception about 5 days ago, it is still amazing to me how quickly some of the coverage has turned negative, implying that the war is not going as well as it in fact is. For an excellent analysis of this kind of coverage see James Lileks blog. I will just add that I still expect the actual major fighting in this war to be over in a matter of weeks, not months. I expect the casualties to be in the hundreds, not thousands. And yes, I do expect most Iraqis will cheer us when we finally liberate them from Saddam's grip. Unfortunately most still means "not all" and thus there will be some Iraqis who will fight us for various reasons. As I was telling my wife the other night, a country is not held in terror by one man alone. Saddam had numerous henchmen and they feel in many ways more sympathetic to Saddam than we do. So it is not surprising that not everybody has surrendered just yet. Saddam also has access to various hired goons and terrorists as we are already seeing in Northern Iraq. None of that will help him. We will be victorious.

Prager's quality deteriorated severely during the third hour. He had on a guest, a Rabbi Mark Gaffney (sp?) who had written a new book called "Mystery of Sex." The book was apparently published by Simon & Schuster though during a quick search I could find no trace of it on the Internet. According to the author, the book is about the relationship between the sexual and erotic based on Kabbalistic stories. Kabbalistic refers to deriving from Jewish mysticism. Since the first ten or so minutes of discussion lived up to the author's mystical intent I stopped listening so my comments are only based on these minutes. Religion is still the original mysticism and mysticism by its very nature is irrational. It's a confusing statistic today that many self-proclaimed mystics are more rational (at least in their moral conclusions) than many so-called scientists and that has to do with the corruption of reason in the sciences over many centuries but it does not make the original mystics at base any more rational. It simply means we should not be fooled by either.

During the second hour of the Dennis Prager show, Prager spent some time trying to discredit the efforts of the "Peace Activists." Prager expressed his wish that eventually when people hear the words "peace activist" they will equate them in their heads with "torturer protector" -- something I think has already happened in my mind.

Prager read detailed excerpts from an essay by Daniel Pepper a former "human shield." The essay was appropriately titled "I was a naive fool to be a human shield for Saddam". Mr. Pepper describes that upon his encounter of real Iraqis supporting a war by the US to overthrow Saddam he began to question his assumptions and change his mind about the war to the point where he is not "exactly pro-war - no, [...] ambivalent - but [with] a strong desire to see Saddam removed." It is certainly to Daniel Pepper's credit that he did change his mind and was willing to admit he was wrong. But I can't help but wonder why it took going to Iraq to figure this all out -- after all the information of which Mr. Pepper speaks is widely available in the West. I have to conclude that people like Mr. Pepper are so completely distrustful of their goverment and any sources to the right of Noam Chomsky that they have to actually have people in Iraq tell them personally that they are wrong.

Today's Dennis Prager show coverage

During the first hour Prager talked about the spectacle of the academy awards which could not find time for any supportive comments for the troops presently fighting for their freedom. He also talked about Michael Moore's statement against the President and the war, as well as about Adrien Brody's statement. Ironically, my wife and I while sitting in the kitchen eating dinner couldn't find anything interesting on TV so we tuned to ABC to watch the Oscars just as the nominations for Best Documentary Features were announced. To our great dismay Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine won at which point we immediately changed the channel.


If we had stayed tune, we would have heard Michael Moore say the following:


"We live in the time where we have fictitious election results that elect a fictitious president," Moore said. "We live in a time where we have a man who's sending us to war for fictitious reasons, whether it's the fiction of duct tape or the fiction of orange alerts. "
AP via Yahoo News


Fortunately, Moore was booed by the crowd.


Meanwhile Adrien Brody, upon winning the Academy Award for best actor in the movie The Pianist said the following:


"After making this film, I am aware of the sadness and dehumanization of people at times of war and the repercussions of war. Whatever you believe in, whether it be God or Allah, may he watch over you and pray for a peaceful and swift resolution."


Let me begin by saying that I saw The Pianist with my dad. Neither of us thought it was a particularly good movie. While the acting was good, the main character in the story is not much of a protagonist and is simply moved about by events entirely outside of his control. A minor point was that according to my dad, some of the brutality of the Nazi soldiers seemed to be slightly exaggerated for effect. The movie was definitely in what Ayn Rand called the naturalistic tradition and thus portrayed events rather journalistically. Of course this is not surprising since this movie was attempting to portray a real person's life. Nevertheless, it does not make for particularly appealing drama.

Now, as Prager pointed out with respect to the comment that Mr. Brody made, Mr. Brody does not seem to have understood anything from making this film. Prager asserted that it is not war that dehumanizes people but Evil. "Were American soldiers who freed concentration camp inmates in Europe dehumanized?" Prager asked rhetorically. I couldn't agree more. There was no war within the areas under German control, yet one could hardly imagine a group of people more dehumanized. As a wise woman once pointed out there is something worse than war -- dictatorship. And dictatorship is the cause of war. Free people do not initiate wars against other free peoples.

Unfortunately, Brody's comment, having a neutral air about it, was cheered by the crowd at the Oscars, indicating that the above subleties entirely escaped their understanding.

Let me also comment on something that Prager didn't. Last night a confessed rapist received the academy award for best director. I was vaguely aware of the rumors surrounding Roman Polanski before watching The Pianist. However, it was only recently that I was able to read Grand Jury testimony of his victim. Reading it made me ashamed of having seen any movie by that monster. And it is a further shame on the Academy that they ignored this man's criminal history in their award selection.