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This article is a must-read for anyone who believes a better understanding of the current tension in the Muslim world can lead to solutions that will work.  Problems can not be addressed effectively without understanding the cause(s).

The Pope vs. Islam: Who Stands for Reason?

by Edward Hudgins

September 19, 2006 — In a long, scholarly dissertation on “Faith, Reason and the University: Memories and Reflections,” Pope Benedict quoted a Byzantine emperor as saying “Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.” While the Pope was not endorsing this view of Islam, Muslims across the world immediately took to the streets in violent, murderous rampages to prove the old emperor right.

As a matter of record, whatever else he was, Mohammad was a man on horseback with a sword who killed people to spread his faith. Of course, during much of its history Christians spread their faith through similar means as well. The example of the sword-wielding Mohammad clearly inspires those Muslims in the streets today demanding death to the Pope, those who demanded the death of the Danish cartoonists who depicted their prophet, those who are calling for the death of the West and the imposition on all of Islam and its totalitarian Sha’ria dictates, and those who are butchering by the thousands one another and anyone else with whom they disagree in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

So why are these Islamists not happy that the Pope, perhaps inadvertently, has captured the spirit of their culture so well?

Perhaps it’s just the description of these actions and attitudes as “evil” that bothers them? Of course, one wonders whether, when evil individuals are acting in an evil manner — when a concentration camp commandant is marching Jews to gas chambers or a jihadist is blowing up innocent children — they think of themselves as “evil”? The key here is that they don’t think. They use ideologies and religions that explicitly reject reason and thinking to block out from their minds the nature and full context of what they’re doing. They thus fly into emotional rages when someone tries to shine the light of clear thought into their self-generated mental and moral fog.

After all, in the Netherlands Theo van Gogh produced a short film with actual footage of Muslim women being beaten on their naked backs on which passages from the Koran had been scrawled as the Muslim religious fanatics who were tormenting them read out loud those passages that seems to justify this treatment. Rather than thanking van Gogh for spreading their self-professed belief about how women should be treated, Islamists murdered him.

We always hear the objection that most Muslims don’t endorse beating women, killing the Pope or putting to the sword all who don’t accept Allah. True! But in the Middle East and among Muslims in Europe especially, these attitudes are what bring Islamists into the streets. Why aren’t there far more counter-demonstrators calling for tolerance? After all, in America if ten neo-Nazis stage a rally, a hundred anti-Nazis will be there to counter them. If moderates in these countries fear violence against themselves because they call on all individuals to respect one another’s liberty to think as they wish, that fact is a statement about Muslim culture that screams as loud as the fanatics in the streets.

The Pope’s address does deserve attention, but not based on the rage it motivates among Islamists. In his talk Benedict makes another try at the millennia-old task of squaring reason with faith. He acknowledges the importance of reason in human life. He also maintains that experimental science cannot help us with many of our most important problems, for example, our search of meaning in our lives. He rejects the notion that the “subjective” conscience of each individual should be the sole arbiter of what is ethical. The reason for this rejection is that such an approach would rob ethics — and religion — of its power to create a community. The implication is that faith is fundamental part of the path to ethics and community.

But what the Pope fails to appreciate is that one can have an objective ethics based on our nature as rational creatures with free will. We discover our ethical standard through reason, not the application of reason that is most useful for experiments in science laboratories but through the application of logic to observable facts of reality. Further, the ultimate purpose of ethics is to help each individual to live a happy and flourishing life and to define the relationship between individuals within a community, a relationship based on mutual respect of the liberty of others.

It is just this concern with community first — which can subject and subsume the individual — and reliance on faith — the notion that something in addition to our reason and observations is needed to determine the standard of values and right and wrong — that the Islamists take to their logical conclusion.

The Pope wants to reason with them but they have rejected reason. The Pope wants to argue that neither Islam nor Christianity should endorse violence but Islamists don’t argue, they take up the sword. There is indeed a tradition in Islam that looks to rational thought; indeed, it was civilized Muslim scholars who re-introduced the works of Aristotle into backwards, Dark Age Christian Europe nearly a millennium ago. But too few of the Muslim scholars in that tradition today influence the culture of their co-religionists.

The Pope is discussing the right issues. The nature and direction of our world today is the result of the conflict between reason and individualism on the one hand and faith and collectivism on the other. But what all must understand is that the problems in today’s world are caused by the latter and can find their solution only in the former.

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by Michael D. Tanner

News that the poverty rate remained at 12.6 percent last year, statistically unchanged from the year before, has set off a predictable round of calls for increased government spending on social welfare programs. From the New York Times to the Democratic Leadership, we hear familiar complaints about how George W. Bush and congressional Republicans have “slashed” anti-poverty programs.

Yet, last year, the federal government spent more than $477 billion on some 50 different programs to fight poverty. That amounts to $12,892 for every poor man, woman, and child in this country. And it does not even begin to count welfare spending by state and local governments. For all the talk about Republican budget cuts, spending on these social programs has increased an inflation-adjusted 22 percent since President Bush took office.

Despite this government largesse, 37 million Americans continue to live in poverty. In fact, despite nearly $9 trillion in total welfare spending since Lyndon Johnson declared War on Poverty in 1964, the poverty rate is perilously close to where it was when we began, more than 40 years ago.

Clearly we are doing something wrong. Throwing money at the problem has neither reduced poverty nor made the poor self-sufficient. But government welfare programs have torn at the social fabric of the country and been a significant factor in increasing out-of-wedlock births with all of their attendant problems. They have weakened the work ethic and contributed to rising crime rates. Most tragically of all, the pathologies they engender have been passed on from parent to child, from generation to generation.

Welfare reform was supposed to fix all that. And, indeed, it has had some positive effects. Welfare rolls are down. Since 1996, roughly 2.5 million families have left the program, a 57 percent decline. Critics predicted that welfare reform would throw millions into greater poverty. Instead, it led to modest reductions in poverty, particularly for children, black children, and single-mother households. Most of those who left welfare found work, and of them, the vast majority work full-time. As you would expect, studies show that as former welfare recipients gain work experience, their earnings and benefits increase.

But whatever successes welfare reform has brought, more can be done. And if we have learned anything by now, it is that there are limits to what government programs—even reformed ones—can do to address the root causes of poverty.

Observers have known for a long time that the surest ways to stay out of poverty are to finish school; not get pregnant outside marriage; and get a job, any job, and stick with it. That means that if we wish to fight poverty, we must end those government policies—high taxes and regulatory excess—that inhibit growth and job creation. We must protect capital investment and give people the opportunity to start new businesses. We must reform our failed government school system to encourage competition and choice. We must encourage the poor to save and invest.

More importantly, the real work of fighting poverty must come not from the government, but from the engines of civil society. An enormous amount of evidence and experience shows that private charities are far more effective than government welfare programs. While welfare provides incentives for counterproductive behavior, private charities can use their aid to encourage self-sufficiency, self-improvement, and independence. Private charities can individualize their approaches and target the specific problems that are holding people in poverty.

One definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Perhaps that’s something to keep in mind the next time we hear a call for more welfare spending.

Money is not the problem, government is!

“A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government.”

Thomas Jefferson (First Inaugural Address Given at the Capitol Building, Washington, DC
Wednesday, March 4, 1801)

As you are reading this, the Bush administration is pushing for more latitude in the treatment (torture) of suspected terrorists.

OTTAWA, Sept. 18 — A government commission on Monday exonerated a Canadian computer engineer of any ties to terrorism and issued a scathing report that faulted Canada and the United States for his deportation four years ago to Syria, where he was imprisoned and tortured.

For the life of me, I do not understand why Bush is not under more pressure and is not the subject of impeachment hearings.