Posse Incitatus

...or we shall surely hang seperately

Via the Hated Instapundit, we learn that the warmist front is beginning to crack.

The danger all along would be that, even in the face of the incriminating emails and code, the CRU conspirators would hold together and come up with a common story.  By being consistently brazen, they might have been able to stall an unwilling officialdom and at least muddy the issue enough to get away with some token reproaches for sloppy work.

But the implied destruction of Freedom of Information Act materials changes the game.  This is a criminal matter, and tenure won’t protect faculty who countenance such behavior.  Professor Michael Mann works for Penn State, a land-grant university that receives considerable government funding.  That makes him particularly vulnerable.  In times of tight budgets, it only takes a couple of enterprising legislators to force embarrassing testimony from university officials on why their employees are flouting transparency laws.

Again, the crime isn’t the issue – it’s the coverup.  The public remains divided about global warming, but there is complete unanimity in favor of obeying FOIA requirements.

Right now, in college campuses across the country (and perhaps the world), university presidents are looking with apprehension at their climate studies departments and wondering if they will be called to testify at the next state budget hearing about FOIA compliance.

As sure as the sun rises, you can bet that more than a few Republican state legislators are salivating at the opportunity to make liberal professors sweat at the next Higher Education Appropriations Subcommittee hearing.

Excrement, as the saying goes, rolls down hill.  Thus the presidents are contacting department chairs, demanding to know the full story.  The chairs in turn are pushing their underlings to come clean.  As anyone with even a passing knowledge of faculty politics knows, there are plenty of factions who would be eager to snap up funding/facilities/prime office space, and they need little encouragement to turn up the heat on their rivals.

These rivalries extend through all of academia, and one can rest assured that the case is being built that University A, which is implicated, should be punished by having its money taken away and given to smaller University B, which is untainted and would do oh so much better.

Adding to the mix is the fact that NASA is now facing a FOIA lawsuit – and unpleasant questions may surface there as well.  The fact is, there is nothing in FOIA that would exempt climate research materials – you can’t even claim that it would endanger patents.

The pressure to turn “state’s evidence” is therefore enormous.  Watch for more academics to claim that they were intemperate, perhaps a little mean-spirited, but it was the other guy who totally broke the law.

Stop me if you've heard this one...

The internet is abuzz with the startling rise of the British National Party.  Pajamas Media has one good piece (by Richard Fernandez aka Wretchard) and a much weaker one by Mike McNally.

I've noted before that Europe is a deeply fissured society.  There are the flawlessly moralistic elites, but the great masses are not so easily categorized.

Mark Steyn likes to point to shrivelling birth rates as evidence for Europe's impending doom, but I am not as convinced.

A few years ago, I was firmly in Steyn's camp.  Since then I've come to know more about Europe's social fabric and I've also actually been there.

The birth rates aren't evenly spread.  Of course Steyn brings this up often to prove that the ethnic Europeans are doomed because most of the babies being born are to non-assimilated Muslim immigrants.

But there are other groups within Europe.  I talked about this over a year ago and I stand by what I wrote then.

In fact, after visiting Europe, I remain even more convinced that there are portions of the ethnic European populations that are quite willing to do the dirty work their parents' wouldn't.

These people make up the professional long-service military cadres of the continent.  Call them the "military caste."  They hate the politicians who tie their hands and have quite a bit of nostalgia for the Good Old Days.  While I was in Germany, I was surprised at the prevalence of the old Imperial eagle.  Nazi nostalgia?  Not so much, but quite a bit of Kaiser nostalgia.

The German military types I spoke with seemed only slightly less zealous than Marines in terms of being seriously squared away and ruthlessly competent.  The Prussian pride and tradition is still there.  The same goes for the Brits, French and so on.

Our military is deeply devoted to the Constitution.  Europe's military caste is different.  Yes, they are bound to uphold the rule of law, but what if that rule breaks down?  France has had five republics.  If you are a French military professional, your loyalty is to France, not the current dusty piece of paper the politicians are using to enrich themselves.

My point is that the guardians of the current political order are increasingly less invested in that order and have more to gain by overturning it than in maintaining it.

Thus, the rise of the BNP illustrates that within the UK, there is a substantial group than wants the nationhood of the UK reasserted.  They want the immigrants to assimilate or get out - and the same ugly authoritarian impulses that currently are used to harry the foes of the current multi-culti elites can be turned around in a heartbeat to round up the new enemies of the state.

Political will waxes and wanes, and as the world economy deteriorates and public safety weakens, expect these radical nationalists to become more popular.  I would in turn expect the authorities to try to break them up.

But here lies the rub: many of police and paramilitary types probably believe in what the nationalists believe.  Maybe not as stridently, but if you can point to four or five generations of soldiers in your family tree, you may not be all that excited about annihilating your national heritage because a suit-wearing bureaucrat tells you to.

So thus you have the potential for the police to join the people they are supposed to be persecuting - the military as well.

And let me be clear - given the huge overreach that many of these governments are already making, the police would likely be fully justified in refusing to enforce the diktats of their masters. 

Whether we are talking about the enforced re-vote in Ireland or the harassment of Geert Wilders, the EU and the British government have each forfeited much of their claim to legitimately reflected the will of the people.  The latest revelations that Labour purposefully imported immigrants to bolster their political fortunes destroys any moral authority the party might have over the BNP.  Both are bigots - they simply favor different groups.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out. 

Pope: All your Anglicans are belong to us

The Posse has been following the fissures within the Church of England for some time.

Now, via The Anchoress, we learn that Pope Benedict XVI has made an amazing and sweeping move to bring traditional-minded Anglicans into the Catholic Church.

I've been a huge fan (if that's the appropriate term) of the Blessed Benedict and this latest move demonstrates his dynamism and courage.  This  could pretty much result in the end of the Church of England.

Consider:  The UK is already a very secular society where Anglican churches spend most of their time empty.  The Archbishop of Canterbury is largely treated as a joke.  Why, then, bother with the Establishment?  If traditionalist Anglicans convert en masse, the pews could get very empty indeed.  Why, in a time of deep government debt, should the Church of England receive state support?

At the same time, the tradition-minded Anglicans in the developing have been upset for years with how the leadership in the UK and the US seem determined to undermine the core tenets of the faith.  These people are on the front line against radical Islam's penetration into sub-Saharan Africa.  I am sure they find the Pope's public conversion of a Muslim far more compelling than the hip new Seattle phenomenon of an  Anglican/Muslim hybrid priestess.

Of course, this is about more than shuffling the interdenominational cards.

What it is really about is strengthening Christianity for the fundamental challenges of our time:  radical Islam and decadent secular society.

The Church has defeated Islam before, and the victory was so resounding that many historians considered the issue settled.  Similarly, the fall of Communism 20 years ago was thought to have destroyed the notion of state-run social engineering - now packaged in a bright-green eco-friendly label.  Alas, no bad idea stays forgotten forever.

His Holiness understands this.  All of his actions have been based around the central concept of strengthening the Church - not through the false comfort of numbers - but in its faith and adherence to fundamental truths.  These are the things that really matter.

Goodbye to Israel

One thing I'll say for him - President Obama keeps bloggers on their toes.

Every time I try to comment on a particular outrage, he generates another one before I can get to the keyboard.

Today I guess he outdid himself at the U.N.  My esteemed co-blogger has covered most of the major points from the president's big U.N. speech, but the part about Israel left me stunned.

For those that missed it, amidst his flowery moral equivocation, he stated that US policy is now to end the "occupation" of the Palestinian territories since 1967 and to create a contiguous Palestinian state.

Of course, there is nothing magical about Israel's pre-1967 borders.  They have no legal standing.  They actually aren't even borders - they were merely the cease-fire line from Israel's war of independence.

Nor is there any basis for a "Palestinian state."  Were the Middle East to revert to a status quo ante bellum, Jordan would get back the West Bank and Egypt would get back Gaza (and Syria would receive the Golan Heights).

So right there, any rational and knowledgeable observer knows that Obama is simply regurgitating Arab Nationalist talking points.

But he want farther.  A contiguous Palestinian state means that Israel must be dismembered.  I know that the World War II parallels are seriously overdone, but this is the Sudetenland writ large - the willful and deliberate destruction of an ally in an effort to placate hostile powers.

One can only wonder what Israel's penalty will be if it refuses.

I'm honestly staggered that any American president could seriously urge this kind of policy.  I'm not prone to millennial thinking, but selling out the Jews seems like a good way to shove us all toward the Abyss.

The end of the eco-apocalypse

Here is a thought experiment.

Imagine that a few months from now, someone somewhere makes a breakthrough discovery in energy technology that solves all of our power needs without using fossil fuels or generating carbon dioxide as a byproduct.

I’m not going to explore possible technologies that make this happen, that would be beside the point. Just assume (like any good Star Trek fan) that the technology exists and it works.

Now ask yourself: how would the environmental movement react?

I think that there would be monumental denial (in the psychological sense). I don’t mean at the instant of the announcement, I mean once the full implications dawned on us.

I mean, if fuel is essentially free of cost, why not build the biggest car you can? If energy is no longer polluting, what purpose does Earth Hour serve?

These people have a lot emotionally invested in the eco-apocalypse they have convinced themselves is just around the corner. Do they become like Shakers and gradually disappear? Do they find some new cause to champion? Do they smash the new engines that took away their favorite nightmare?

At some point, I think that the technology will be found.  And when it does, a lot of the rationale for the green movement - and the control it has tried to exercise over our lives - will vanish.

Greenpeace had better start diversifying its portfolio.

The salvation numbers game

 

One of the more fascinating aspects of religious worship here in the United States is how it often is viewed as a popularity contest.

Given that we are an elective republic where numbers equals clout, there is a certain amount of logic to the proposition that a building a larger community of believers is a good thing. However, there seems to me to be a tension between the drive to recruit converts while remaining true to the precepts of one’s faith.

This article in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye for exactly this reason. It is about a small congregation that has split (or wishes to split) from its national affiliate over the issue of same-sex “marriage.” I found the national organization’s stand on this interesting:

Center Congregational voted in 2006 to leave the denomination and join the more conservative National Association of Congregational Christian Churches, a much smaller group based in Wisconsin. The Atlantans were not alone in leaving. About 200 churches bolted over the marriage issue, says a spokesman at UCC headquarters in Cleveland. The denomination claims that it more than made up for such losses by gaining new members who were attracted by its gay-marriage stand. [emphasis added]

I have to admit that the first thing I thought when I saw this was “really?” Simply by supporting homosexual “marriage” the denomination gained 200 churches’ worth of new members? Where did they come from? Were they non-church goers who suddenly decided to start showing up again, disaffected members who came back, or disgruntled adherents of other denominations who suddenly found a home?

This may sound like I’m calling the honesty of the UCC into question, but I’m genuinely interested in this because their experience (if true) is contrary to the experience of almost all other Protestant denominations. That is, the more they have become “hip,” the more their pews have emptied.

To be sure, there are some megachurches that can pack ‘em in the aisles, but these tend to be localized and highly personality-based. I don’t know if any of them have passed the test of moving beyond the first generation.

Digging a little deeper, I am kind of fascinated by how churches can change their doctrine – and that they would cite more members as a reason for doing so. After all, if one believes that religion is a form of revealed truth, numbers should not mean all that much. In fact, I would think just the opposite: the degree of truth in a faith is often revealed by how much privation its followers are willing to endure because of it. The whole history of the early Christian Church is filled with tales of martyrdom, which continues (unfortunately) to the present day.

Still, there is an undeniable temptation to play to the crowd in order to keep the pews full. I'm curious as to the theological arguments in favor of watering down the liturgy in order to bring in more tithes.  Are people who join only after you've diluted the dogma still fully saved - as saved as those that died before it was changed?

The empty tomb

The Posse wishes a happy Easter to our readers.  Holy Week was particularly busy (and MSU's loss didn't do us any favors in terms of energy levels) but we hope to pick up the pace next week.

One thing that stood out in church this weekend was the number of seminarians sponsored by our diocese: it keeps going up.  We take this as a good sign.  While there is still a priest shortage, at least the numbers are moving in a positive direction.

Truly, a great blessing.

Mark Steyn meets the Veggie Tales

Mark Steyn has been talking about courage of late, particularly its apparent absence in the civil societies of both Canada and England.

His most recent - and harrowing – example is how a family literally burned to death in front of the police and horrified onlookers.

The police not only refused to help, but they prevented bystanders from attempting to render assistance.

This is an incredible situation, but it is in fact the inevitable outcome of a society where rules and order are more important than human lives.

Which brings me to Veggie Tales.

Some years ago Veggie Tales produced an Easter Carol dvd, which (you guessed it) uses Dickens’ Christmas Carol as a framework to discuss Easter. It’s quite funny and the kids love it, but it also makes a very good point by demonstrating what the world would be like without the hope of salvation that Easter brings.

In the alternate future shown to the Scrooge-like character, a masked bandit snatches a kid’s cup of pencils in broad daylight on a crowded street and runs away. A nearby policeman says a perfunctory “Stop, thief,” but when challenged, lets the criminal get away.

When Scrooge asks the spirit guide (actually an angel) why this is so, the angel explains that in a world without Easter (that is, without any hope of reward or afterlife), there’s no reason to show courage. If the policeman actually does his job, he could get hurt. Better to do nothing.

Which is exactly what is happening in the U.K.

Here is a country burdened by an ever-growing code of rules and regulations – and enforcers - but is not getting any safer. In fact it is getting less safe.

In Canada things aren’t much better. This piece by Steyn is wickedly funny – I particularly like his description of the Mounties showing up in their “superbutch combat gear” to watch the killer finish off his victim and start to eat him – and doing nothing but providing running commentary.

Like the bystanders, the cops decided it was easier not to get that involved.

I think the 9/11 attacks shocked America out of this passive “wait-for-the-experts” mentality, and the numerous accounts of aircraft and bus passengers attacking and subduing potential hijackers is proof of this.

Of course the U.K. had its own terror attacks, but the difference is that the U.K. no longer has faith to sustain it.

The Easter Carol is right: faith is what causes the cop to risk his life. Even if the cop is an atheist, American society as whole still lives by these words:

Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends. (John 15:13)

It’s hard to find that sentiment in the post-modern West. Both Canada and U.K. seem to be in the brink of banning the Bible as a hate crime. No wonder that those words are largely forgotten outside of the U.S.

I’ll leave to the evolutionary psychologists to argue whether physical courage is learned or inherited, but there is no argument that societies that demonstrate it survive and those that shun it are destroyed.

I think it is a mixture of both. In stressful situations, people do what comes naturally to them. If they have been conditioned to be alert, to look for an opening and to act quickly, they will do so.

If they have been conditioned to sit passively and wait for everything, than they will do that.

What makes police, firefighters and soldiers different from the rest of us? Training. They train to operate in stressful environments. If you ever read stories about how they survive harrowing situations, in nine out of ten cases they will say “I just fell back on my training.”

Merely being active in society is a form of training. We know (without really thinking about it) how to cross the street, pay for something in a store, etc. Most of parenting is really training your child to function in society.

In the U.S., we still train people to be brave. In Canada and the U.K., they don’t.

If you haven’t seen the Easter Carol, or know kids who would appreciate it, snag a copy (and hey, give the Posse some business). Pay close attention to the segment where there is no Easter. It’s already happening in the U.K. and Canada.

UPDATE:  Watched it again tonight.  Great DVD, edited the above since my memory was a little fuzzy.

Let none get out alive

 

Growing up as I did in a liberal town, it was not surprising that tended to see things through the liberal lens. Let there be no mistake, I was never a liberal myself – I was always a fierce anti-Communist and thought highly of Reagan – but I internalized many of their concepts.

One of those was the pro-choice notion that abortion would ensure that only “wanted” children were born. Why it made perfect sense! And since we were overpopulated anyway, the more kids that didn’t happen, the better. (I can recall a conversation in high school where I noted with pride that I was an only child – and that I too would have only one, ensuring a net population decrease. Wasn’t my family virtuous?)

But one thing that I never fully grasped was what abortion actually was. The literature ran eavy on the “keep your laws of my body!” and very light on the specifics of the various procedures.

Part of this was the willful deception used by the abortion lobby to conflate abortion with all birth control. They argued that anyone who objected to the slaughter of infants also wanted to ban condoms and pretty soon we’d be in some bizarre world where women were treated as reproductive slaves. I think they made a book and movie about this. I watched the movie in Sci-Fi Club and was really, really bored by it. That’s what I remember: boredom.

Anyhow, the more I learned about abortion – what it was, how it worked – the more grisly and morally reprehensible I found it.

All of this leads to this article which I found via Best of the Web about a “botched” abortion, that is, a procedure where the baby didn’t die inside the mother.

Apparently the child was born and then killed, which of course is wrong. The “right” thing was for it to be killed and then pulled out in pieces. If that had happened, we’d all be none the wiser. A human life would have been snuffed out, but no big deal.

If nothing else, it illustrates the moral depravity of the abortion movement.

On the one hand, we are told that children are precious and that all manner of things need to be done “for the children.” I recall Bill Clinton using this phrase to justify just about everything he wanted.

Yet the same folks treat children with a degree of gruesome callousness that boggles the mind.

Let there be no mistake: this was not a “botched” abortion. It was a successful one. The baby died. Mission accomplished.

Increasingly, whether the child is killed inside or outside the mother doesn’t matter – it’s a mere technicality, a regulation to be waived or a law in need of a loophole. They’re already working on protocols to make that line easier to cross.

Reading this article, I can understand what the abolitionists felt all those years ago: that our nation, for all its faith, its good deeds and its kindnesses, was so steeped in evil that we were beyond any divine forgiveness. That the horrific cost of the Civil War – two percent of the entire population dead, entire regions devastated – was lenient punishment for what we had done.

Deterrence

The Posse was too busy enjoying the Thanksgiving holiday and doing our Advent housecleaning to pay much attention to world events.

When I finally got a chance to catch up, we had company, so I haven't had a chance to post about the Mumbai terror assault until today.

What do I take away from it? That armed citizens are essential to fighting terror.

We are seeing a return to the normal state of man. For the last 50 years, our unprecedented prosperity has allowed two generations to assume that this is the way things are supposed to be. Not only have our citizens become docile and obedient, even our criminal class understands there are certain rules which must be followed.

Now all of that is changing.

Militant Islam is shredding these assumptions. They tie us up in our own legal codes (“lawfare”) and use our scruples against us.

At the same time, our weakened society craves a return to the days without fear, so we vote to give what we thought was an all-powerful government even more authority.

Consider what we now expect government to do.

It can rebuild the economy through limitless bailouts. It can solve energy problems by investing in “green technology.” It can alter the very climate of the earth through various carbon schemes.

Yet these same omnipotent bureaucracies are unable to stop a relative handful of bandits from crippling global trade through piracy and terrorism.

Thulsa Doom had it right: What is steel compared to the hand that wields it? Our blades are sharp indeed, but we no longer have the strength to swing them.

Of course, all is not lost. The military caste of the West remains strong and confident. I say “caste” because this group includes not just currently serving soldiers, but veterans, their friends and family. Basically, anyone with the will to use violence to defend themselves or others.

This is the military “tribe.” They are the antidote to terrorism.

Which target is easier and therefore more inviting for a would-be terrorist:

1. A gathering of suit-wearing eunuchs used to doing what they are told and relying on people in uniforms to protect them, or

2. A group of self-reliant individuals who are prepared to act decisively when danger threatens?

To ask the question is to answer it.

I think one of the reasons the US has been spared terrorist attacks since 9/11 is that we have been hardening ourselves on an individual level. People are learning to shoot, keeping spare food and supplies handy and – most importantly – thinking about what to do in an emergency. The government cannot save us. We know that now. Multiple hijackers have found out that Americans are willing to bum-rush them rather than go down without a fight.

Adding to this is America’s much-publicized (and condemned) private ownership of guns. While it may embarrass effeminate elites that a major party candidate for vice-president actually owns and uses firearms, it is actually a good thing. I can live with European disapproval if it also means that Islamofascist terrorists think twice about attacking us.

You see, being known as a nation of gun nuts has its benefits. It may be fashionable to sneer at gun-owning middle America in the salons of Paris and Georgetown, but they are a powerful deterrent to radicals across the globe. Americans are gun-crazy, and if you try to take hostages, some irate Texan is likely to blow your brains out.

If it makes our enemies think twice about attacking us, I’ll take it.