MoDo, Part 2. I was also intrigued by her quotation from former FDA commissioner Dr. David Kessler (of the Yale School of Medicine): "If the criteria to be on an advisory committee are based on a political litmus test, that will set this country back." Dowd no doubt has in mind the Bush administration's application of such a litmus test when making appointments to science-oriented committees--such as Dr. Hager's, or, perhaps, also in naming pro-life supporters to HHS, abstinence advocates to NIH, or opponents of stem cell research to similar entities. But abortion, for example, is a political issue, and government officials routinely apply such a litmus test when making appointments--most notably for federal judges but also in other departments, even for the president's own Cabinet (though greater leeway is granted in that instance). The point is, the allocation of funds is a political act, and the people should have input into where those moneys go. I, for one, don't want my tax dollars funding abortions or the harvesting and destruction of human embryos. I don't want my hard earned money, which, in most cases, I don't mind paying, going to legitimate government services. Not among those legitimate services are human cloning and contraceptive distribution. Not on my watch, not with my money. And if I and others feel that science and medicine should be restricted by morality--even faith-based morality, then we should support like-minded officials and appointees. And if some people believe otherwise, all the better. Let's debate it; let's vote on it. But let's not dismiss willy-nilly something because it's Christian or, even, atheist. Science is not immune to debate; it is not the be-all and end-all of our world. It is not society's arbiter of truth and justice. And it is not always (is it ever?) objective. Blind faith in science is just as bad as...well, blind faith. And contrary to what Ms. Dowd and apparently Dr. Kessler would have us believe, it is healthy to have a political debate when it comes to publicly funded science and medicine.

MoDo and Christianity. NYT columnist Maureen Dowd is up in arms once again. I usually refrain from criticism of Ms. Dowd's childish columns, which often rely on inane caricatures of political leaders and issues, but I think her assault on Christianity is symptomatic of the general anti-Christian bias which pervades the media in this country. She takes to task Dr. David Hager, the Bush administration's nominee for the chairmanship of the FDA. Dr. Hager is a practicing Christian who integrates his faith into his medical practice (as a gynecologist). Not only that, but he's also a pro-lifer who advises patients to abstain from sex and only with reluctance will prescribe contraceptives to single women. All this, of course, is intolerable to Ms. Dowd. She mockingly quotes Hager's writings: "Jesus still longs to bring wholeness to women today." Dr. Hager's Christianity is dangerous to America, Ms. Dowd says. She doesn't once, however, explicitly indicate why this is so, as though to suggest that Hager's writings and medical practices are sufficient in themselves--probably not a bad assumption, since the very mention of Christianity, especially in public matters, is enough to send many into hysterics. She merely lists some highlights of the doctor's career and approvingly quotes Drs. Koop and Kessler, before describing Hager's actions as "medievalism." Apparently, to be Christian and to believe that science should be morally limited by that faith is tantamount to Inquisition-like repression. Oh, MoDo, will you ever get it right?

The Left on the Left. After the departure of Christopher "Hitch" Hitchens from The Nation several weeks ago, the hollow nature of the Left has been more fully exposed. In a column in the New York Observer, Ron Rosenbaum, author of the controversial Explaining Hitler and also a full-blooded, card-carrying American liberal, questions the Left in much the same way that Hitchens did and does--basically, questioning the left-liberal fallacy that John Ashcroft is somehow a greater menace than bin Laden. The whole piece, while sometimes showcasing Mr. Rosenbaum's liberal credentials, contains many a priceless insight into the left. To wit:

Goodbye to paralysis by moral equivalence: Remind me again, was it John Ashcroft or Fidel Castro who put H.I.V. sufferers in concentration camps?

Goodbye to the deluded and pathetic sophistry of postmodernists of the Left, who believe their unreadable, jargon-clotted theory-sophistry somehow helps liberate the wretched of the earth. If they really believe in serving the cause of liberation, why don't they quit their evil-capitalist-subsidized jobs and go teach literacy in a Third World starved for the insights of Foucault?

Goodbye to all those who have evidently adopted as their own, a version of the simpering motto of the movie Love Story. Remember "Love means never having to say you’re sorry"?

I guess today, Left means never having to say you’re sorry.

Bow Ties. This man is a serious bow tie afficionado, possessing a whopping 147 such cravats. However, whereas he prefers Carrot & Gibbs out of Boulder, Colorado, my bow tie supplier of choice is J. Press, with branches in New Haven, New York, Washington, and Cambridge.

On War. "To frustrate any of your enemy's designs, it is best to do of your own volition what he endeavors to force you to do." --Niccolo Machiavelli, The Art of War

Big Bird. Boeing Phantom Works is developing ("studying," in their parlance) a new cargo plane, the Pelican, aka ULTRA. Its dimensions are jaw-dropping: a wingspan of over 500 feet, for starters. Flying as low as 20 feet (when over water), the Pelican would be able to transport some 1,400 tons of cargo over a range of 6,500 to 10,000 nautical miles. On a single sortie, it could carry seventeen M-1 tanks. Absolutely amazing.

You might be a liberal if... To the liberal mind, said James Burnham in Suicide of the West, "it is always preferable to settle disputes among groups, classes and nations, as among individuals, by free discussion, negotiation and compromise, not by conflict, coercion or war." Conversely, conservatives recognize that

disputes among groups, classes and nations can and should be settled by free discussion, negotiation and compromise when--but only when--the disputes range within some sort of common framework of shared ideas and interests. When the disputes arise out of a clash of basic interests and an opposition of root ideas, as is from time to time inevitably the case, then they cannot be settled by negotiation and compromise but must be resolved by power, coercion and, sometimes, war.

The Conservative's Dilemma. This isn't to suggest that the modern American conservative faces only one dilemma or challenge, but I do think it is quite an important one: making conservatism meaningful to the average person. The articulation of conservatism tends, very often, to be an intellectual, philosophical pursuit, as it should be. Twentieth-century thinkers such as Richard Weaver have correctly diagnosed the disease which infects the modern world and write elegantly about and argue cogently for the restoration of order to the world and to the soul. But Weaver's magisterial Ideas Have Consequences, while rather short, is a difficult book that assumes a knowledge of Western philosophy and its vocabulary, from Plato onwards, and tosses out, without definition, such terms as "positivism," "teleology," and "ontology"; its steps for renewal are valid for the individual, but the average person would have great difficulty ploughing through it (as I did). Russell Kirk's The Conservative Mind is somewhat easier, relying more on historical narrative with more plain-spoken analyses throughout, but I question its appeal to a broader audience. Both these books are recognized as essential works of the post-World War II conservative movement, and their ideas continue to shape conservative thought. But of what value are they to the average person? What is a conservative philosophy or worldview worth if it's not understandable to the everyday working people who--excuse the cliche--keep the country going, who fight for it on the beaches and in the trenches? And this is the dilemma--or, perhaps more accurately, the challenge. For his part, Whittaker Chambers, in his delightful collection of letters Cold Friday, saw as much: "I am trying to write a conservative position that will make sense to, that will not enrage, a marine as he steps waist-deep into the gunfire at Tarawa" (221). I, too, have observed the divide. Raised by working-class conservatives, who were themselves raised by working-class conservatives (and so on for several generations), I held a firm but not philosophically grounded conservatism (maybe more Republican than conservative) when I came to Yale, where nearly all conservatives are of an intellectual bent. Through them, I was introduced to conservative thinkers of import, all of which I found both stimulating and edifying. However, these intellectual conservatives seemed more interested in applying conservatism to abstract, theoretical situations: for example, was the American Revolution conservative? It may well be that it was--and a solid case can be made in support of that claim--but, really, who cares? The debate was fascinating, but it was merely academic. The more important questions, to me, deal with the application of conservatism to the daily life of regular people: what does conservatism, for instance, imply for corporations or taxes or schools or unions? (A difficult question, since conservatism is not an ideology, though not unanswerable.) Maybe the goal, then, is not so much making conservatism more meaningful to the average person but, rather, bridging the gap between intellectual and "regular" conservatives, people who may value similar things but who, in the end, seem worlds apart. The traditionalist-libertarian division of the 1950s and 1960s was, by and large, resolved by Frank Meyer (with the support of William F. Buckley and National Review) and his "fusionist" approach. The gap in the twenty-first-century conservative movement (probably more of a disconnect than anything else), while far less rancorous, must be closed if conservatism is to thrive.

Cold War Moments. In my Cold War history class today, we watched a clip of the Nixon-Khrushchev "Kitchen Debate" of July 24, 1959. Maybe it was Comrade Nikita's visage or his fedora or simply the absurdity of his words in retrospect, but there was something comical in the exchange over color television. You decide:

Nixon: There are some instances where you may be ahead of us, for example, in the development of the thrust of your rockets for the investigation of outer space; there may be some instances where we are ahead of you--in color television for instance.

Khrushchev: No, no, no way. We have bested you in one technique, and we will overtake you in color television, too."

While Khrushchev's claims seem almost nonsensical (since we now know his "we're turning out rockets like sausages" statement was pure bluff), Nixon's are also interesting--if in nothing else than his choice of words. By this time, of course, the US was beginning to realize that the "missile gap" was, in fact, nonexistent, so it looks like Nixon might have been doing a little bluffing of his own in conceding rocket superiority to the Soviets. Furthermore, Nixon seems to go out of his way to include the "investigation of outer space" bit, even though he knew quite well what Khrushchev's intentions were in developing missile technology; after all, Khrushchev made no secret of how such missiles were to be used, however vague his references to nuclear attacks may have been. Cold War rhetoric is absolutely fascinating, I think, so I'll probably be posting more tidbits and quotes.

The President's Speech. I hope to have more to say on this later, or maybe tomorrow. But here's a great passage:

Failure to act would embolden other tyrants; allow terrorists access to new weapons and new resources; and make blackmail a permanent feature of world events... And through its inaction, the United States would resign itself to a future of fear. That is not the America I know. That is not the America I serve. We refuse to live in fear.

By way of introduction. Well....I think this has been a long time coming, but it's been on the back-burner now for just shy of a year. Such is college life (and my wandering mind). At any rate, given the soi disant revolution in blogging, I thought I'd try my hand and enter the proverbial blogosphere. The title of the blog, of course, comes from Kafka, who wrote, "We must have those books that come upon us like ill fortune, and distress us like the death of one we love better than ourselves, like suicide. A book must be an ice axe to break the sea frozen within us." I do not deign, however, to suggest that I am at all Kafka-esque in ideas or style. I merely thought the notion of an ice axe was an appropriate, and particularly eloquent, one, especially as my primary goal, here and in other venues, is to shock people out of the complacency and general unreflectiveness of modern times (particularly as fostered by liberalism and other ideologies...much more on all that later), even--gasp!--through occasional exaggeration and hyperbole (see if you can spot them). Such will be my tack here. Criticism and other comments are always welcome.