Whatever happened to teaching people to be responsible and to govern themselves? Liberty is hard to reconcile with distrust of the citizenry.

The new (spring) issue of PERSPECTIVES ON POLITICAL SCIENCE is out!

The lead article is by James W. Ceaser--"The American Context of Leo Strauss’s NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY." There’s so much wisdom here that I don’t dare summarize. So I’ll offer a few tastes...

On Eastern vs. Western Straussians: "The East has followed one reading in seeing the American founding as reflective of Locke and modern natural right philosphy, and thus in need of direct and visible ’correction’ from without. The West has argued, in any number of ways, that this ’correction’ is already to be found inside the American founding, and in particular inside the Declaration of Independence."

"There are several versons of this [Western] thesis: that the correction in the American founding is not in Locke, whom the Americans thankfully read exoterically rather than esoterically; that Locke, if read differently from Strauss, does already contain that correction; that the whole way in which the problem is stated was transformed by the advent of Christianity, with the result that if Aristotle were to have come back in the eighteenth century, he would assume the body of John Locke."

"Leo Strauss could easily have joined this flabby [anti-totalitarian] consensus in favor of natural rights and become part of the burgeoning ’let’s pretend’ club that was spreading throughout academia....His great offense against the American intellectual establishment was his heretical suggestion that any affirmation of natural rights has something to do with restoring nature."

"Nominalism is the only philosophic category that is listed in the index of NATURAL RIGHT AND HISTORY....Every other entry is a name." (Let me know what the heck this means!)

While I was serving on Friday as a master timer (which is to say backing up the touchpads, secondary electronic systems, and stopwatches held by the lane timers), my wife had an interesting conversation with another mom. Seems her daughter, a seventh grader, had taken Georgia’s Criterion-Referenced Competency Test. While the official content description for the social studies portion of the test looks pretty impressive, the girl’s reaction was that what prepared her best for taking that part of the test was watching American Idol. I don’t mean this as an endorsement of the educational value of that program.

And then there’s this, from God and Gold, my current nightstand reading:

Like Addison and Macaulay--and like Lewis Tappan and J.P. Morgan, for that matter--A.P. Giannini believed that his business was rooted in character and morality, and inconceivable except under free and accountable government. The depositor must believe that the bank which receives his or her savings is soundly managed; lenders must seek individuals who are committed to repaying their loans.

Food for thought, eh?

Giovanni Lanaro was born in Los Angeles, grew up in La Puente, attended Cal State Fullerton, and coaches and trains at Mt. San Antonio College. Yet, when the torch is lighted during opening ceremonies this summer at the Beijing Olympics, the world’s sixth-ranked pole vaulter will be with Mexico, not the United States.

"I will always compete for Mexico," said Lanaro, whose mother was born there. "I will never compete for any other country."

Allen is the author of Talking to Strangers: Anxieties of Citizenship since Brown v. Board of Education. She spoke on the theme of the book at the Ashbrook Center in 2005.

That leads us to the "Sam’s Club Republicans," who have to be cultivated for the GOP to have a future. For them, the SOCIAL ISSUES concerning the disintegration of the family and elite contempt for ordinary virtue remain more real than ever. But so too are the issues flowing from their economic anxiety--like health care. They don’t experience their lives as on the road to some "soft despotism." For them, the individual--surrounded by collapsing "safety nets"--seems more on his or her own than ever. Sam’s Club Republicans don’t want "socialized medicine," but they also don’t want to constantly worry about access to affordable health care for themselves and their children.

The main reason for the "enthusiasm gap" in the presidential campaign so far is that McCain doesn’t yet seem to feel the pain of the "Sam’s Club Republican"--either morally or economically. Mac has to appeal to independents (one honorable maverick appealing to others), given how discredited the Republican "brand" is right now. But he also has to energize the base that reelected the president in 2004.

Kill the Wabbit!

John McCain points out that Barack Obama’s name was conspicuously missing from a bipartisan amicus brief (one that McCain, of course, signed) calling on the Court to decide the case in the way that they did today. And, of course, Chicago’s got a similar law . . . all of which led McCain to remember one of Obama’s most famous gaffes and come out of the box with this beautiful zinger: "Unlike the elitist view that believes Americans cling to guns out of bitterness, today’s ruling recognizes that gun ownership is a fundamental right -- sacred, just as the right to free speech and assembly."

I have to say that I like this side of McCain. It is refreshing (after so many years of the "new tone") to see the McCain using the words of his opponent against him and going after him like a pugilist who means to win. But I hope he will not drop it as the news cycle turns. Obama’s slippery opinions here are, more than likely, a window into his political soul. He’s hiding something of his real opinion here. Ken Blackwell noted it back in February and we had some discussion of it here. The question really comes down to something even more fundamental than Obama’s real view of gun control. McCain would do well to push this a bit.

Lincoln was a conservative, Krannawitter argues, but a conservative who believed profoundly in a future of social mobility and self-improvement, to which nothing was more contradictory than a world constructed according to fixed hierarchies of race and slavery. Progressive politics (so-called) compliments itself on looking to the future; in fact, it is promoting a restoration of patrician feudalism, and its hostility to free-market economics differs not at all from what Richard Cobden called "the mock philanthropy of the Tory landowners." No wonder Lincoln kept a portrait of John Bright, Cobden's ally, in his office.

Spain’s parliament voiced its support on Wednesday for the rights of great apes to life and freedom in what will apparently be the first time any national legislature has called for such rights for non-humans.

My only thought is to say, with Jeremiah: "They have healed also the hurt of My people lightly, saying: ’Peace, peace’, when there is no peace."

But there is an interesting irony to note in the Obama team’s Latin. They replaced "E Pluribus Unum" (out of many, one) with "Vero Possumus" (Yes, we can). The formerly "post-racial" candidate whose very existence is a kind of physical embodiment of the great motto replaced E Pluribus Unum with a mere expression of will. This famous talker and paragon of eloquence (or so we are told to believe) replaced one of the noblest expressions of political expression with the political equivalent of a grunt. Yes we can what? Well, the possibilities are endless of course. But not in the same sense that they were with E Pluribus Unum. The end of E Pluribus Unum is contained in the expression--the goal is stated. With Obama it is as ephemeral and ambiguous as the man himself. Everything is tentative and subject to "Change." None of the possibilities implied by "Yes we can!" is anywhere close to the perfection of E Pluribus Unum. I think it is telling that Obama’s team felt free to change it. That won’t be the last thing they try to change. Believe in that.

Commentators like Ed Whelan highlight the majority’s argument that the eighth "Amendment’s Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause ’draw[s] its meaning from the evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society.’" Whelan asks whether refusing to execute the barbarian who committed the crime in question really is a sign of progress or civility.

We might, however, ask another, related question. Who decides? Who judges what constitutes progress? In our system, is that not supposed to be a decision for the citizens to make, via their chosen representatives? On what grounds does the Court decide that the people no longer have the right to regard execution as the proper punnishment for raping a child?

Allow me to bring to your attention two not unrelated items. The first is a still photo of the old man quoting, "Sit by my side, and let the world slip. We shall ne’er be younger," with his son John in the May-morn of his youth; the second is a moving picture of Monty Python’s The Philosophers’ World Cup, not exactly cold wisdom waiting on superfluous folly.

Hymowitz points out that arguments about the limited sexual education of these girls and their limited access to birth control miss the bigger picture. These young women wanted to get pregnant. Their sex ed--however flawed--apparently taught them enough to get that job done. Hey, where there’s a will (and no fertility problems) there’s a way! Missing in the sexual and moral educations of these young women (and most young women growing up today) is anything that works to dissuade their natural impulse to . . . gasp! . . . like and want babies. Because it turns out that most young women do like them and do want them. It is, dare I say, only natural that they should. They are designed for the purpose. But in our wisdom and maturity as a society, we created a whole host of constraints and restraints to prevent young women (who naturally want babies) from having them too early, without adequate (male) support, and without sufficient maturity to benefit said children. We also developed some sense that it is not always in the best interest of a young woman to forgo all of her youth in childrearing . . . that perhaps she had something even more personal and important to gain from waiting. But this was all a construct. It may have been a very sensible construct and one that enhanced nature’s intentions.

Today, we still labor under the preferences created by that construct. We still think it is preferable for a young woman to wait until she is older, more mature, and more stable to have children. A good number of folks still believe that it is better if she waits until she is married or, at least, in a "committed relationship." But as a rule, we do not defend these positions very vigorously because we have torn down all the old constructs. We don’t want to judge. A case like this, however, makes us scratch our heads. Why did these girls choose to get pregnant so young and unwed? We forget that the construct of feminism--that of an empowered young woman having sex free of any consequences and, least of all, pregnancy--is also a mere construct. The difference is that this construct is at war with female nature instead of working in tandem with it. It assumes that no young woman feels a natural urge to be a mother . . . it forgets that once all choices are open for discussion, some women (particularly those women who are not educated or raised by elitist feminists) will make choices that these feminists will not like. And now these feminists are at a loss for words; wagging their fingers, clicking their tongues . . . why, they’re almost as judgmental as the traditionalists they replaced! Female nature reasserted itself in the case of these young women in Gloucester. There would be something to be applauded in that if the consequences were not going to be so devastating for these young women and their (now fatherless) children. It would have been better if they had had the benefit of a more natural (though equally judgmental) construct.

Nevermind change we can believe in. The truth is that, for Democrats, this is not really change at all. It’s the same tired, dusty old rhetoric they’ve been spewing for more than half a century. Indeed, FDR outdid Obama (in more ways than one, of course) but even in this. That’s because, as Krannawitter and Buss remind us, FDR called not only for a right to quality "healthcare" but for a right to "good health." Between the two, I think I’ll take the latter . . . won’t you? I mean, if they’re in the business of giving such boons to humanity, I guess I ought to sign up to get mine. But why is Obama such a piker? It seems he isn’t as ambitious in his call for change as we’ve been led to believe. It’s doubtful that he has suddenly been chastened by humility since he has also claimed (just a couple weeks ago) that his election will stem the rising tides of the oceans. I mean, that’s some brass . . . So why does he seem like such a chiseler in comparison to FDR?

Since all the pundits seem convinced this week that Obama is going to walk with the election, I’m going to try and get into the spirit of the thing and think the way the Dems tell me I should. I don’t want just good healthcare . . . I want him to guarantee me good health like FDR said he would do. Failing that, I demand an explanation as to why he does not respect my right to good health. And, in fact, Peter Lawler’s recent posts suggest that perhaps Obama should start thinking about guaranteeing me a right to eternal (or, at least, very long) life. And I don’t want to be disappointed in a love that lasts this long either . . . so how about some guarantees there too? What? You can’t promise these things? Oh . . . I see, it’s because I’m a woman, right?

Here’s Einstein on determinism: "Everything is determined, the beginning as well as the end, by forces over which we have no control. It is determined for the insect as well as for the star. Human beings, vegetables, or cosmic dust, we all dance to a mysterious tune, intoned in the distance by an invisible player." (Nicely said, you have to admit.)

Here’s Albert on morality: "The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in all our actions. Our inner balance and even our existence depend on it. Our morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life."

Here’s Valinius’ analysis: Einstein "seems finally to live a riven life, one of spiritual incoherence, denying freedom of choice yet preaching an exigent morality."

On a related subject, Bill Kristol nails it with today’s NYT column about what’s wrong with the new MoveOn ad attacking McCain. "Creepy" is how I felt about it, too.

1. The new NEWSWEEK poll has Obama up 15 over McCain and with a 62% apporval rating. He survived the grueling primary season (and lots of primary defeats) in good shape, and apparently the Wright stuff didn’t damage him all that much. The election seems his to lose, given his personal appeal and the desire for CHANGE. I’m not giving up or anything, but we gotta to look at the facts square in the face.

2. McCain now is only up one in Georgia. The good news, in a way, is that Bob Barr is polling at 6%, and that number will decline as the election nears. The bad is that the turnout model for the poll probably underestimates the huge African-American turnout. Clearly several other southern states--particularly Virginia and North Carolina--are also in play.

3. VP gossip: Pawlenty is back in the picture for Mac--a boring guy who was barely reelected. Webb and Rendell are both being dissed as too maverick to be safe for Obama. Good point on Webb, but Rendell is also a very competent executive, who would probably secure for Obama a state McCain has to win to have a chance.

Mirabeau said of La Fayette, ‘Il a affiche desinteressement’ and he added, ‘this never fails. You know the sense of the word ‘affiche’? It is as much to say, ‘he advertised’ his disinterestedness.” This is equivalent to saying that he employed a crier to proclaim through the streets ‘O Yes! O Yes! O Yes!’ All manner of persons may have the benefit of my services, gratis, provided always and only that they will yield me their unlimited and unsuspecting confidence and make me commander in chief., and after I shall have gained a few victories, make me a king or an emperor, when I shall take a fancy to be either. This has been the amount and the result of most of the disinterestedness that has been professed in the world. I say most, not all. There are exceptions, and our Washington ought to pass for one.

Recall here, Obama’s NAFTA kerfuffle, and the question of whether Obama means it when he says, "Look. I am a pro-growth, free-market guy. I love the market." (Quoted here), or if he’s geniunely baffled by the Laffer Curve.

One final point. There are several instances in the past few centuries of men who believed that they were free to be Machiavellians today in order to change the world into a place where such hijinks were no longer necessary. Others, like our friend John Adams, believing that the would could not be fundamentally remade, tried to burst such bubbles.

Here, for all the world to see, is evidence of the fact that I still exist on the web. That review of John DiIulio’s "blueprint" of the future of the faith-based initiative should be read in tandem with Stanley Carlson-Thies’ more sober and less partisan overview.

I have a few other things in the pipeline as well--an essay in the next issue of the Acton Institute’s Religion and Liberty (not yet online); a slightly revised version of my response to Patrick Deneen’s Berry at Berry talk, which will appear, with a very impressively revised version of Patrick’s talk, in The City, about which you can read and to which you can subscribe, here; and, finally, a book review somewhere in the Weekly Standard pipeline.

After I grade everything this weekend, I’ll have a little more time for this enterprise. And after summer swim championships next weekend (yes, our season ends by the end of June, so fleeting is the glory that smells of chlorine), I’ll have even more time.

As I have said in the past, if the Marines killed civilians in Haditha in revenge for the IED attack, they would be guilty of a war crime. But as the complete story has emerged, as opposed to the partial and leaked information from questionable sources that created the original narrative, it seems to be the case that the killings, though a tragedy, did not rise to the level of war crime or atrocity.

The military justice system agrees. Of the eight Marines charged with offenses ranging from unpremeditated murder to dereliction of duty, charges against six have been dismissed and one defendent has been acquitted. Only the leader of the Marine infantry squad involved in the incident still faces reduced charges. His court-martial has been delayed.

The disgrace here is how the Marines were treated by the press and anti-war politicians, led by the odious Jack Murtha. My discussion of the whole affair can be found here.

2. Lieberman is resurfacing as a McCain VP possibility. I assume that someone will tell Mac not to go with his gut on this. Even the convention, with good reason, would rebel against the choice of a liberal Democrat.

3. More promising is the very Hawkish and Jewish Rep. Eric Cantor, who has a very consistently conservative voting record. It’s not true that he’d get Mac significantly more Jewish vote. But right now he appears to be the most formidable Republican politician in VA--a state Mac will need to win that’s quickly trending Democratic. (Gilmore is down 30 to Warner.) Cantor also seems quite able and looks young and nerdy in a good way. Does he he have the stature and/or eloquence to escape the boring category? The written versions of his speeches are very short on nuance and poetry. Still, my 10 minutes of research suggests that Cantor is at least worth discussing (as Fred Barnes has done). My tentative conclusion is that he’s no Bobby J.

4. I have to say that Mac’s new enthusiasm for offshore drilling does not seem very authentic.

5. The betting by some today is that Obama will pick Biden--which would be seen as a solid choice of an experienced man by a candidate confident of victory.

Besides, I knew others would happily sacrifice themselves for me. Schiffren took up this cross and she tells me all I need to know about what transpired. Inane and banal. Well, I knew it would be that before it happened. I’ve never seen an episode the program that wasn’t.

But at the risk of sounding banal myself . . . may I suggest that Lisa and other commentators lay off Michelle, her sleeveless dresses, and her looks? That’s really barking up the wrong tree. The last thing I aspire to do each morning is praise Michelle Obama . . . but what’s right is right. Michelle Obama is a beautiful woman. She looks very good--and refreshingly feminine--in those dresses. Sleeveless? Well . . . it’s summer! It’s hot! And she can do it. Good for her. As my grandmother used to say, "If you’ve got it flaunt it!" Of course, there’s a limit to this (remember the flak Hillary took for showing "too much" cleavage) . . . but even then, if it were nicer cleavage she displayed, I doubt there would have been as much (negative) commentary on it. But MO hasn’t got a set of bat wings. She looks good and showing arms doesn’t reach the level of immodesty in my book. It’s not even informal. Most ball gowns are sleeveless, right? And what should she wear? A suit? I have always hated female suits--particularly pant suits. You might as well wear a habit or a berka as wear a suit. It is a uniform--and an ugly one at that. I suppose she could top it all off with a set of over-sized pearls . . . ugh. I’m sorry but if you can look pretty in a suit, you’re that special sort of woman who can look pretty in anything. That is the outfit that a younger woman can wear with impunity . . . not the dress!

I think it is wonderful and refreshing to see a woman in or around politics who strives to look pretty instead of "serious." It’s not the most important thing in the world, of course, and it can become a dangerous obsession for a women who is not, on some level, serious. But there’s no small amount of wisdom in a woman who knows that looking good is far from the least important thing in the world.

(For balance, here’s an argument against oil shale). The key question, regarding the usefulness of oil shale, not the politics of it, seems to be how much technology has improved since the 1970s.

Dionne argues that these suggestions about Barack Obama’s Fathers Day Address (press accounts called it a sermon) are cynical beyond description. Well, I don’t blame a smart liberal like Dionne for liking Barack Obama and I certainly don’t blame him for wishing to see more serious attention given to the question of parental responsibility . . . but to read Barack Obama’s speech on the subject is to stand witness to a piece of good old-fashioned political manipulation. I agree with Dionne that there is more to it than a cynical (and transparent) attempt to win white votes. Obama is too politically clever to waste his time talking for such a crude or unambitious reason. That is for lesser politicians--the likes, say, of Hillary. Obama is the man who promises to stop the rising of the oceans when he is elected. A mere ploy to "win white votes" is beneath his dignity. If that is a side-effect, he’ll take it, I’m sure. But he’s got bigger fish to multiply.

Indeed, the more I read of Obama’s speeches, the more inclined I am to say that they smack of something very old. It is an old political style--in keeping with old American liberal traditions--that of wrapping the personal around the political. Bill Clinton was quite good at this--every State of the Union Address serving as an opportunity to trot out some living testament to awesome powers of liberal political programs. But Bill is a piker (and was criticized by the left as a trimmer) by way of his ambitions; if not by way of his relative success.

Obama speaks in the grand and ambitious style of the Progressive rock stars of old. Obama doesn’t seek just to win a few white voters. He’s after all voters. He wants to remake America in his image. Observe how it is done: In this speech, for example, he moves from the "Rock" of the gospels (he was, after all, in a church) to the "rock" of family and fatherhood to the "rock" of big government programs. He makes this seamless transition by emphasizing what he sees as the central virtue of civic life: "empathy." It is "empathy" (which he distinguishes from sympathy) that demands our government should be "meeting them [fathers] halfway" if they’re doing the best they can. We have to set things up so that it is easier for people to make the right choices . . . government must be there to encourage good behavior and, what’s more, government ought to reward it (with cash, of course). Lots of carrots . . . the sticks go unmentioned. This is probably because he means to remove the natural ones from their intended targets and replace them, instead, with artificial sticks to be used on the less than empathetic.

Notice, too, the list of questions that trouble Barack Obama’s mind as a father contemplating the futures in front of his two young daughters:

But now, my life revolves around my two little girls. And what I think about is what kind of world I’m leaving them. Are they living in a county where there’s a huge gap between a few who are wealthy and a whole bunch of people who are struggling every day? Are they living in a county that is still divided by race? A country where, because they’re girls, they don’t have as much opportunity as boys do? Are they living in a country where we are hated around the world because we don’t cooperate effectively with other nations? Are they living a world that is in grave danger because of what we’ve done to its climate?

John Tierney imagines some of the difficulties the composers will face.

Also in this issue is a thoughtful essay by Professor Chris Burkett (originally delivered as an address to graduating seniors at Ashland) on the things required to construct a good student--not just at a university--but throughout life.

And you cannot put this issue aside without indulging in the reflections of Peter Schramm as he steals a little leisure. Enjoy!

George Orwell once wrote that politics was closely related to social identity. "One sometimes gets the impression," he wrote in The Road To Wigan Pier, "that the mere words socialism and communism draw towards them with magnetic force every fruit-juice drinker, nudist, sandal-wearer, sex-maniac, Quaker, nature-cure quack, pacifist and feminist in England."

"Am I disappointed by the amount of progress in cognitive science and artificial intelligence in the past 30 years or so? Not at all. To the contrary, I would have been extremely upset if we had come anywhere close to reaching A.I. — it would have made me fear that our minds and souls were not deep. Reaching the goal of A.I. in just a few decades would have made me dramatically lose respect for humanity, and I certainly don’t want (and never wanted) that to happen.

I am a deep admirer of humanity at its finest and deepest and most powerful — of great people such as Helen Keller, Albert Einstein, Ella Fitzgerald, Albert Schweitzer, Frederic Chopin, Raoul Wallenberg, Fats Waller, and on and on. I find endless depth in such people ... and I would hate to think that all that beauty and profundity and goodness could be captured — even approximated in any way at all! — in the horribly rigid computational devices of our era.

Do I still believe it will happen someday? I can’t say for sure, but I suppose it will eventually, yes. I wouldn’t want to be around then, though. Such a world would be too alien for me. I prefer living in a world where computers are still very, very stupid. And I get a huge kick out of laughing at the hilariously unpredictable inflexibility of the computer models of mental processes that my doctoral students and I codesign. It helps remind me of the immense subtlety and elusiveness of the human mind."

UPDATE: Maybe we really should be playing this to the paranoia of the left. So I think I’ll start rubbing my hands together and saying, "Ah--it’s all going according to plan!" After all, wasn’t Obama growing up in Indonesia at about the same time the CIA was carrying off coups, etc, in that region? With apologies to Manchuria, he’s the Indonesian Candidate! Rove’s mind-control ray is working to perfection! Memo to Karl: "What are we going to do now that they’re on to us. They weren’t supposed to find out until after the election."

From Japan:

Summoned by the city of Amagasaki one recent morning, Minoru Nogiri, 45, a flower shop owner, found himself lining up to have his waistline measured. With no visible paunch, he seemed to run little risk of being classified as overweight, or metabo, the preferred word in Japan these days.

But because the new state-prescribed limit for male waistlines is a strict 33.5 inches, he had anxiously measured himself at home a couple of days earlier. “I’m on the border,” he said.

Under a national law that came into effect two months ago, companies and local governments must now measure the waistlines of Japanese people between the ages of 40 and 74 as part of their annual checkups. That represents more than 56 million waistlines, or about 44 percent of the entire population.

Those exceeding government limits — 33.5 inches for men and 35.4 inches for women, which are identical to thresholds established in 2005 for Japan by the International Diabetes Federation as an easy guideline for identifying health risks — and having a weight-related ailment will be given dieting guidance if after three months they do not lose weight. If necessary, those people will be steered toward further re-education after six more months. . . .

The ministry also says that curbing widening waistlines will rein in a rapidly aging society’s ballooning health care costs, one of the most serious and politically delicate problems facing Japan today

Epitaph on a Scolding Wife by her Husband.

Here my poor Bridgets’s Corps doth lie,

she is at rest, -- and so am I.

Even so, it is worth recalling Richard Epstein’s strictures on the MCA.

If Jindal, whether of his own accord or McCain’s, doesn’t end up on the Republican ticket, maybe this is the matchup to imagine: Bobby Jindal, the brown-skinned son of immigrants, running against another brown-skinned son of an immigrant, Barack Obama, in 2012. Jindal launches into the story of meeting Obama at the State of the Union speech in 2005, when the senator introduced himself to Jindal, then a congressman. “I know who you are,” Jindal replied. Immediately, Obama offered some flattering words. Jindal responded teasingly, “Yeah, but you won’t say that to the TV cameras.” “Yes I would,” the senator said, calling his bluff. “Why don’t you do a campaign commercial for me?” said Jindal, playing along. “He said ‘I’ll do it.’ You just can’t fake that kind of earnestness,” says Bobby Jindal, sounding awfully earnest himself.

Lois Nuss
Ron Smith
Joshua Distel
Joseph Downing
Dan Rosenburg

Thanks to all who entered. An email has been sent to the winners. If you are listed as a winner and did not receive an email, contact Ben Kunkel. If you didn’t win this month, enter June’s drawing.

Here is how he introduces the site:

"Classics of Strategy and Diplomacy is a website designed to encourage the study of those books, memoirs, essays, and speeches that best illuminate the nature of international politics and military affairs. We also explore forgotten, neglected and misunderstood classics; and identify contemporary writings that we expect to have lasting intellectual and political value. We pay particular attention to significant contributions by American writers and statesmen. The Classics website links an informal network of scholars and interested members of the public, under the auspices of the Ashbrook Center for Public Affairs at Ashland University."

You should read into it, and as Fluellen says (I paraphrase), because Patrick knows the disciplines of strategy and war, and so will you when you read about William Robertson or Nicholas John Spykman, for example. But also note some of his recent short (blog-like) posts. Good start, Patrick, and thanks much.

Rewards are nice, but recognition is better. So if I’m one of Starbucks’s best customers, I want to have elite status, as I do on American Airlines. I want shorter lines, better freebies, special seating (Aeron chairs, preferably) and electrical outlets reserved just for me and my laptop.

It might be interesting to see how this tension plays out in the next several years.

Guess they need some more aggressive sex ed. classes there? Yeah . . . that’s the ticket.

From Obama’s closing remarks at his victory speech a week ago today:

"I face this challenge with profound humility and knowledge of my own limitations. But I also face it with limitless faith in the capacity of the American people. . . . I am absolutely certain that generations from now, we will be able to look back and tell our children that this was the moment when we began to provide care for the sick and good jobs to the jobless; this was the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal. . . . This was the moment – this was the time – when we came together to remake this great nation." He remakes an already great nation, he heals the sick, provides meaning in the lives of people, he beats back the oceans in a manner that would make King Canute green with envy. And he does this in profound humility.

And to think that leftist blacks used to deride Martin Luther King as "De Lawd."

American political methodology is an ontological construct. No, I don’t know what I’m talking about, but it’s true anyway. Political "science"--like that puppy from the same litter, the dismal science of economics--is not science; it’s a branch of moral philosophy. Yet try talking moral philosophy with a politician. Politicians will talk strategy and tactics and policies and programs until they’re blue in the face, or you strangle them and they turn blue.

The problem on the left is, now that Karl Marx has forsaken them, they have no philosophy. Thank goodness. Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the economy, impede the rule of law, and cripple national defense were guided by a coherent ideology instead of smug ignorance.

My own understanding is that the Left still believes that a good society is one that delivers on the promise of socialism. That’s what makes the Left the Left. At the same time, they don’t believe in the project as much as they used to. Once they are back in power, might they be forced to see the contradiction? Is that why Brown looks like he’s about to lose in Britain, and why Sarkozy, Merkel are on top in France and Germany, and why Burlusconi, however great his flaws, is, once again, in power in Italy?

If Senator Obama becomes president, and if the Democratic party has control of both houses of the legislature in 2009, as seems quite likely, governing might be a rude awakening. The benefit of being in opposition is that one needn’t be specific. The trouble with governing is that one must be so.

If part of the reason why President Bush has had such a rough time of things is that Americans are tried of the modern administrative/ bureaucratic state (even as they don’t want their own benefits cut, or many regulations eliminated), and if Democrats think that the reason why Bush is unpopular is that he’s been governing as a conservative, they could be in for a rude awakening.

1. There’s lots of talk about McCain’s inability to deliver a speech. Why does he think he would benefit from lots of events on the same stage with young and eloquent Barack? Mac will have to practice a lot to get the convention bump that always comes from nailing a stirring acceptance speech. Even our president rose to those occasions, but he’s never thought for a moment that he was above the need to practice.

2. If the election were held today, according to the various studies, Obama would probably win--unless McCain managed to sweep the rust-belt states of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Obviously regular guys have issues with bobo Barack. But will they be able to resist voting for CHANGE in the face of a weakening economy and for a man who’s virtualy incapable of seeming to feel their pain?

3. Surely the cleverest thing Obama could do with Hillary is to make it clear to the voters that she would be his first appointment to the Supreme Court. That would in a way lock her up for good. And the idea of HER on the Court would thrill feminists of all stripes.

In the meantime, Canadians have really important questions of national interest with which to concern themselves. Who can be bothered with speech rights?

Parker said that she slapped herself when she caught herself giving in to the involuntary smile. A lot of people are not going to be as disciplined as she in this respect. Can McCain win without slapping them? I’m inclined to say "no." Thing is, that’s a tricky place to be in American politics.

It wouldn’t be the 2008 campaign season, however, if I didn’t close on a note of hope. If Parker is right and a good description for McCain is "grumpy grandpa breaking up the kegger" consider this: don’t kids act out sometimes because they actually WANT to get caught? If the American people are caught up in a childish infatuation and are about to take some radical step just because it makes them feel good, a good part of them is likely to be looking back over their shoulders to see if there isn’t someone shouting to make them reconsider. A kegger can be great fun . . . and McCain ought to acknowledge this . . . but in the morning there’s always a terrible mess to clean up. And then you have to worry about the consequences of the mess and the broken stuff and the stains in the carpet that won’t go away. Perhaps there are enough sensible Americans who can recognize the virtues of a fine drink without feeling compelled to get all drunk and crazy with it? McCain has to try to break up the party by suggesting there’s a better way to the same feeling. We can be good Americans who believe in racial equality without having to drink from this particular cup.

2. The best Sixties theorists, like Norman O. Brown and Herbert Marcuse, loved to talk up "polymorphous perversity" as the alternative to "genital tyranny." Sex, freed from the imperatives of reproduction, could flourish as never before. Does that mean that we’ll we all about easygoing recreational rutting in all sorts of ways, that our whole bodies will so be AROUSED we won’t be able to calculate or consent? Or does that mean that our erotic instinct will mix with unfettered imagination to produce a new "art of life" (Marcuse) with unprecented flourishing of music, art, philosophy and the other features of high civilization? Like Marx himself, our New Lefties really thought that the conquest of scarcity by technology could free us from work and for joy. And like Marx himself, they were pretty confused about what that freedom will be like.

3. The Sixties also aimed to free sex from the constraints of love, while simultaneously teaching that love is all you need. How can love be separated from sex? Drugs!

4. On Sixties drugs: Doesn’t it seem that every work of art they inspired was curiously unerotic--nothing like the mechanical rutting of rock ’n roll criticized by Bloom? (Think the Beatles first--lots of that stuff really is beautiful and finely crafted.) LSD in particular seems to have produced a mixture of an incredibly inflated sense of oneself and a sort of loving pantheistic oneness. Drugs really are required to free the imagination from necessity and the obsessions of self-consciousness, and especially to separate good moods from the whims of other people.

5. Mood-altering drugs are bound to have a big place in our biotechnological future. More than we want to think, the soft drugs of the Sixties were the most effective feature of their liberationist utopianism.

The whole Veep business makes me wonder whether some Democratic Party reformers won’t start agitating to have Veep candidates run in primaries, too, or be chosen by the delegates at the convention. Given the growing importance and role of Veeps in office, it is an increasingly strange anachronism that we let the nominees choose them willy-nilly, without "popular" party participation. If Obama wanted to be really bold, he’d consider throwing the Veep slot to the convention, except that he knows he’d end up with You-Know-Who (hint: wears pants suits). (Of course, that might be one way to accommodate party sentiment without directly giving in--Ed. Yeah, but the result would still be the same; how’d you like to have all your food tasted twice for the next four years?)

Energy Resources

The earth’s natural resources, once in abundant and seemingly unlimited supply, can no longer be taken for granted. In particular, the United States is facing major changes in the pattern of energy supply that will force us to reassess traditional policies. By 1980, we may well have to depend on imports from the Eastern Hemisphere for as much as 30 to 50 percent of our oil supplies. At the same time, new forms of energy supply—such as nuclear, solar or geothermal power—lag far behind in research and development.

The Environment

The problem we face is to choose the most efficient, effective and equitable techniques for solving each new environmental problem. We cannot afford to waste resources while doing the job, any more than we can afford to leave the job undone.

We must enforce the strict emission requirements on all pollution sources set under the 1970 Clean Air Act.

We must support the establishment of a policy of no harmful discharge into our waters by 1985.

We must have adequate staffing and funding of all regulatory and enforcement agencies and departments to implement laws, programs and regulations protecting the environment, vigorous prosecution of violators and a Justice Department committed to enforcement of environmental law.

We must fully support laws to assure citizens’ standing in federal environmental court suits.

Strict interstate environmental standards must be formulated and enforced to prevent pollution from high-density population areas being dumped into low-density population areas for the purpose of evasion of strict pollution enforcement.

The National Environmental Policy Act should be broadened to include major private as well as public projects, and a genuine commitment must be made to making the Act work.

Our environment is most threatened when the natural balance of an area’s ecology is drastically altered for the sole purpose of profits. Such practices as "clear cut" logging, strip mining, the indiscriminate destruction of whole species, creation of select ocean crops at the expense of other species and the unregulated use of persistent pesticides cannot be justified when they threaten our ability to maintain a stable environment.

Where appropriate, taxes need to be levied on pollution, to provide industry with an incentive to clean up.

We also need to develop new public agencies that can act to abate pollution-act on a scale commensurate with the size of the problem and the technology of pollution control.

Expanded federal funding is required to assist local governments with both the capital and operating expenses of water pollution control and solid waste management.

[Health Care]

"Good health is the least this society should promise its citizens. The state of health services in this country indicates the failure of government to respond to this fundamental need. Costs skyrocket while the availability of services for all but the rich steadily declines.

We endorse the principle that good health is a right of all Americans. America has a responsibility to offer to every American family the best in health care whenever they need it, regardless of income or where they live or any other factor.

To achieve this goal the next Democratic Administration should:

Establish a system of universal National Health Insurance which covers all Americans with a comprehensive set of benefits including preventive medicine, mental and emotional disorders, and complete protection against catastrophic costs, and in which the rule of free choice for both provider and consumer is protected. The program should be federally-financed and federally-administered. Every American must know he can afford the cost of health care whether given in a hospital or a doctor’s office;"

[Other Rights listed in 1972] The right to a decent job and an adequate income, with dignity;

The right to quality, accessibility and sufficient quantity in tax-supported services and amenities —including educational opportunity, health care, housing and transportation;

The right to quality, safety and the lowest possible cost on goods and services purchased in the market place.

Further, inexplicably and notably, the brain-dead Enchanted towers over the masterful and artistically gorgeous Sleeping Beauty (long my daughter’s favorite movie). When I remember the innocent and moving "love scene" between Princess Aurora--where the Prince is captivated not only by her beauty but also by the purity of her spirit and sets about a plan to marry her despite her "lowly" status--and contrast it to the bumbling and awkward romance of the (very phony--to the point where she is a literal cartoon) Princess of Enchanted and remember that she only lands her Prince by becoming hardened and "real" (and, of course, appropriately whimpifying him) . . . I sigh. At least Beauty and the Beast still ranked high . . . that girl loved virtue and books!

And should I be embarrassed that there were only 5 films on this list that my kids and I have not seen (and most of them more than once!)? Probably. But, still, I’m not.

Next there is this odd case of the annulment of a Muslim couple where the groom was, apparently, surprised and disgruntled about the non-virginity of his bride. A French court granted the annulment on the grounds that it was a breach of contract in this particular kind of (i.e., Muslim) marriage.

But in treating the case as a breach of contract, the ruling was decried by critics who said it undermined decades of progress in women’s rights. Marriage, they said, was reduced to the status of a commercial transaction in which women could be discarded by husbands claiming to have discovered hidden defects in them.

The court decision "is a real fatwa against the emancipation and liberty of women. We are returning to the past," said Urban Affairs Minister Fadela Amara, the daughter of immigrants from Muslim North Africa, using the Arabic term for a religious decree.

"Today, the judicial system of a modern country cannot hold to these savage traditions, completely inhuman for the young woman," said the rector of the Paris Mosque, Dalil Boubakeur.

He likened the court decision to "equating marriage with a commercial transaction."

Like some others, Boubakeur, a moderate, voiced fears that Muslim fundamentalists would seek to profit from the Lille ruling "as they have done with the veil. ... Fundamentalists use (head scarves) like their flag."

"We ask Muslims to live in their era," he said.

One hardly knows how to begin to unpack all of that . . . "Savage" traditions? I thought we were not allowed to pass judgments or use words like that. Bardot found out what happens when you do that. "Commercial transaction"? I’m confused. I thought secular liberals wanted marriage to be reduced to a commercial transaction so as to keep religion and morals out of it. But now we see that treating it as a "commercial transaction" may invite some of the more undesirable aspects of some religions right back in . . . It’s a tough spot for these guys and I feel for them. Relativism is a tricky master. Ahhh . . . but I see now. It all comes down to the "live in your era" argument. Get with the times and so forth . . . But here the trouble is that it begins to be pretty clear that history does not "progress" in quite the straight line they had been willing to hope it would. Everything old is new again and, this time, they meet the argument disarmed.

She’s right that the man she knew could not possibly be the caricature painted by his political enemies--the racist and the heartless man they said he was. But you can see from this piece that she is still struggling to circle the square--to make his politics fit with the character of the man she loved. They do . . . but she doesn’t quite see how, so instead she dismisses them and talks instead of attitudes in politics and graciousness and demeanor and just "being nice." It’s a start.

Of course, in America, being a true "liberal" means you’re actually a conservative. What is it that we’re trying to conserve, after all? We are trying to conserve the ideas of Revolution . . . and it’s no accident that people talked of a "Reagan Revolution." Perhaps one day Patti will come to see that as well. And perhaps not. No matter. She gives us a beautiful reflection on the soul of the man and, though (perhaps) she misses the larger picture, she is not wrong about his good nature and his inability to be "mean." We do miss that. We ought, always, to do our best to imitate it and so honor the man who deserves our admiration and respect. Rest in peace, Ronald Reagan.

The conclusion of this campaign is a cynical betrayal of the idea of gender equality. The mean journalists and politicians who won’t wait for her to recognize her defeat until she’s good and ready, had better be careful. They’ll hurt her feelings and make her cry . . . and then make her angry. And there’s no telling how much trouble she can cause if that happens. Better to humor her.

This denouement is entirely fitting, because the premise of the Clinton campaign was also a cynical betrayal of the idea of gender equality. The historic breakthrough was always counterfeit. The first female president would have been the former first lady, whose accomplishments were entirely derived from her husband’s. Her claims to be the experienced candidate were as bogus as her claims to have faced sniper fire. She has now directed two big undertakings – the health care task force and a presidential campaign – and managed in each instance to turn an advantageous starting point into a humiliating defeat.

Good riddance.

The site has all kinds of battle maps for the major wars in which the U.S. has participated.

Beyond that, there is stuff like this animated presentation of the Southern Campaign of the Revolutionary War. Just click anywhere on the slide and follow the path to victory in the South in 1781. This one of the 1776 campaign is fun too.

In the meantime, this small note on why Sarah Palin (Gov of Alaska) should be McCain’s running mate. I am amused by a comment on a thread in the form of a palindrome, a suggestion for a perfect campaign button: "Harass sensuousness, Sarah". Another wag suggest that’s not as good a "Amabo Obama", but I like it.

Late Monday, elder Willie Jessop said the church won’t allow underage girls to marry. Jessop said the new policy will forbid any girl to marry who is not of legal consent age in the state where she lives.

Let’s pursue the logic here. If publishing things critical of Islam can be construed as a hate crime, would the very presence of churches and synagogues be hateful to muslims? Wouldn’t their very existence imply that Mohammad was a false prophet and that the Koran was written by human hands? Surely, Canada’s "Human Rights" bureaucrats ought to construe that is an insult to all good Muslims.

Such is the logic of hate crimes laws.

First of all, I’m not a market-worshipping purist. To the contrary, I’ve publicly advocated a carbon tax (http://www.aei.org/publications/pubID.26286/pub_detail.asp). But as to your question--"would you consider that the market was working 20+ years after the oil shocks of the 1970s?"--the answer is an emphatic Yes if you know what you’re looking for. This is a large story with many parts, but ask why the oil price rise of the last few years has had much less of an impact on the economy than the comparable oil price rises of the 1970s. The short answer--the full data take a while to walk through-is that oil is a much less of a factor in the U.S. economy than it was in the 1970s. One stat: in the 1970s, oil accounted for 2/3rds of total U.S. energy consumption; today it is only 1/3rd, with electricity (and gas and coal) accounting for the other 2/3rds. Between 1949 and 1973 energy efficiency in the U.S. only improved by 12 percent; between 1974 and 1999 U.S. energy efficiency improved 40 percent (usually in advance of government mandates such as auto CAFE standards); between 1949 and 1973 per capita energy consumption increased 64 percent; between 1974 and 1999, by only 2 percent. Pretty good evidence to me that markets and prices work, and that in fact we did make big changes as a result of the new energy world of post-1973. And I suspect we’re going to make big changes in the years just ahead, with or without (almost surely better without) government mandates (see: ethanol debacle). In other words, the dynamic restraints of the marketplace will almost always (note: I said "almost") be superior to politically-imposed restraints.

Regarding McMansions: many of them (not the Gore/Edwards monster-size) use exactly the same amount of energy as the average new house in 1970; in other words, we traded energy efficiency gains (better insulation and appliances, etc) for more square feet in which to live. Is this really such a sin?

I could go on and on (I’m a maven for these stats, and I’ve practically memorized the exhaustive tables of the Energy Information Administration), but let’s make this interesting: How about a Simon-Ehrlich style wager. I say that three years from now, oil will be below $75 a barrel. Let the loser of this wager buy the winner his choice of any hardbound book in the Liberty Press catalogue. Shake?

Joe Carter reviews it at Evangelical Outpost and opines that its great virtue is that it is a war movie (in the best sense) for children. I reply that he is certainly correct about it being a war movie and he is certainly correct that this is one of its great virtues. But I don’t think this is its chief virtue or that the book from which it is drawn is inferior to the movie version, as Carter claims. I think that the movie version is what it has to be in order to tell the narrative ("talky" as Carter calls it) story of Prince Caspian.

Carter further opines that "this is a Dad’s movie" because:

Moms simply won’t be able to appreciate seeing a teen boy getting thrashed in single-combat against a man twice his age. They won’t cheer heartily at seeing a teen girl expertly dehorse a half-dozen soldiers with a bow and arrow. Nor will they gasp with delight upon seeing a six-year old draw a dagger when faced with an opposing army.

Carter is critical, for example, of the Prince Caspian character and of the portrayal of the animal characters, such as (my favorite) Reepicheep. He thinks they were given too much screen time (I think not enough) at the expense of the development of the Penvensie children’s characters. He’s right that the Prince Caspian character was probably selected for his devastating good looks and he’s right that his accent was pretty stupid (Castilian? I had always pictured Miraz and his kingdom as a kind of Middle-Eastern fiefdom . . .). But Caspian is a central character in the unfolding Chronicles drama. And, eye-candy or no, Ben Barnes did a very good job of establishing Caspian’s place in the story. The back and forth between him and Peter was perfect. Peter and Susan are (and must be) fading characters. Their pride--which I took to be a kind of metaphor for the pride of the Church--must come into and pass from being. The truth remains and passes on to a new set of guardians with each succeeding generation--and once a generation master’s its pride--it is time for it to go home. Besides, I think it would have been almost impossible for the Penvensies to have been any more fully developed.

The actors who play the Penvensie children are either possessed of great genius or they were supremely directed. The Peter and Edmund characters, especially, tell so much of the story with their eyes and expressions that it makes you wonder what sort of profound wisdom informs their understanding of the story. Even the added elements to the movie version (e.g., the proto-romance between Caspian and Susan) serve the higher truth of the film. As Peter is humbled by his need for Aslan, so too Susan (the warrior queen) is humbled by her need for the intercession of a strong male. Human pride (and, in Reepicheep’s case, mouse pride), not simple war for its own sake, is the real subject of Prince Caspian. Pride brings on the war, makes it necessary, and further complicates it as it gets underway. Submission to the natural order of things and trust in Aslan’s will (and mercy) sets things aright.

There are croakers in every country, always boding its ruin. Such a one then lived in Philadelphia; a person of note, an elderly man, with a wise look and a very grave manner of speaking; his name was Samuel Mickle. This gentleman, a stranger to me, stopt one day at my door, and asked me if I was the young man who had lately opened a new printing-house. Being answered in the affirmative, he said he was sorry for me, because it was an expensive undertaking, and the expense would be lost; for Philadelphia was a sinking place, the people already half-bankrupts, or near being so; all appearances to the contrary, such as new buildings and the rise of rents, being to his certain knowledge fallacious; for they were, in fact, among the things that would soon ruin us. And he gave me such a detail of misfortunes now existing, or that were soon to exist, that he left me half melancholy. Had I known him before I engaged in this business, probably I never should have done it. This man continued to live in this decaying place, and to declaim in the same strain, refusing for many years to buy a house there, because all was going to destruction; and at last I had the pleasure of seeing him give five times as much for one as he might have bought it for when he first began his croaking.

As for Peter’s Point #4, I noted in my most recent edition of the Index of Leading Environmental Indicators that one of the most popular books of 2007 among environmentalists was The World Without Us by Alan Weisman, which projects a “thought experiment” about what would occur if human beings were suddenly or somehow removed entirely from the planet. Answer: Nature would reassert itself and remove nearly all traces of human civilization within several millennia. Naturally many environmentalists thrilled to the frisson of the book’s nightmare scenario of the ruin of mankind’s built environment, which Weisman shrewdly gilded with the standard boilerplate about resource exhaustion and overpopulation. I am often asked why so many environmentalists thrill to doom-and-gloom scenarios. The answer I finally arrive it is that it makes them happy. Go figure.

2. Prduential environmentalism is anthropocentric. Human responsibility is fundamentally personal. Thinking of ourselves as part of an impersonal whole called nature is a form of self-denial.

3. Moralistic environmentalism is quite different from previous forms of modern, secular religions. Communism etc. were HISTORICAL. Moralistic environmentalism is PANTHEISM--t’s about the end of history, about the end of distinctively human footprint upon nature.

4. Moralistic environmentalism often tends to hope for a techno-catastrophe that would return the world to the scarcity that made morality and community easier. Prudential environmentalists tend to think the bomb probably won’t fall, so to speak, and that’s good. They think about the virtue required to live well, to live responsibly with what we can’t help but know and do now. Moralistic environmentalists tend to be romantics; prudential environmentalists are realists.

5. Because prudential environmentalists are realists, they don’t really think that technology and markets can take the place of moral and political deliberation about our true situation. The prudential environmentalist is the mean between the extremes of libertarianism and moralism.

Given that scenario, if the powers that be in China conclude that the global environmental movement is a trick by the West to keep them down and, therefore, China keeps building new coal-fired plants and using gas-powered cars, thus creating environmental hazar for the rest of us. Would the U.S. have a legitimate cause of war upon China? Discuss.

For much of the 20th Century, socialism was the opiate of the intellectuals. Nowadays, it seems that environmentalism might be taking that same role. In part, the latter is merely the latest version of the former. As. P.J. O’Rourke noted, many environmentalists are “watermelons,”–“green on the outside and red on the inside.”

But is there something deeper at work here? Why socialism and environmentalism? I suspect it might have something to do with the character of modern science. If one studies history, it seems to be the case that men are, as John Adams said, “praying beings” by nature. Where men gather, there tend to be religions. If that is the case, and if our intellectuals cannot accept that reality, they must create a religion in disguise.

What is the character of this religion? It tends to be historical. Why is that the case? Perhaps it has something to do with the scientific method. The key to modern science is the method developed by Francis Bacon and others. According to that method, scientists study the world as it appears to our senses, and from repeated observations, and repeated experiments, it discovers patterns and correlations. Those patterns and correlations, plus mathematical calculations and equations are the essence of modern science. Given that, history becomes religion. What I mean by that is that since modern science is good at describing lines of force moving over time, and since science can only describe facts, but cannot account for values, the only way science can give direction to society or politics is by turning history into a religion. (The scientific method admits defeat if it truly acknowledges that the fact/ value distinction is bunk. Many intellectuals allow that the distinction is problematic, but, being pragmatists, they go along as if that were not a real problem.)

Henry Adams makes this point in the Education

Historians undertake to arrange sequences,–called stories, or histories–assuming in silence a relation of cause and effect. These assumptions, hidden in the depths of dusty libraries, have been astounding, but commonly unconscious and childlike; so much so, that if any captious critic were to drag them to light, historians would probably reply, with one voice, that they had never supposed themselves required to know what they were talking about.

Environmentalism is the latest manifestation of this phenomenon. Given increasing carbon in our atmosphere (or should I say “atmos fear”?) science can draw a line describing the likely impact of that upon the planet. Describing that impact gives scientists and those who follow them, a means of suggesting what we ought to do without admitting that they have deserted the scientific method and have entered the realm of politics and religion. Moreover, as with the socialist understanding of history, it gives a coalition of natural and social scientists an excuse to take over the political system.