Trent Lott's Gaffe

The only openly systematic discrimination based on race done these days is done with the support of liberals, i.e., affirmative action, which in practical terms means that a white applicant to a major university has less than one tenth the chance of gaining admission than a black applicant with the same qualifications. And the situation is similar in hiring for jobs with major companies.

So why did Lott's gaffe hit such a nerve? Not because Lott has proposed pro-segregation laws, and not because any such laws would be supported by anyone currently in congress. And not because such paleo-Southern sentiments would have any purchase on any conceivable policy.

(The only segregationists pushing their agenda these days are black segregationists.)

No, these charges of crypto-racism coming out against conservatives are the result of the fact that the conservatives are now in power and do not support affirmative action, and they won't confirm judicial appointments likely to support affirmative action. Affirmative action in college admissions is very likely to be struck down or severely modified by the Supreme Court of the land, and certainly one cannot expect any legislation that is going to shore up affirmative action coming from the new congress. And, for that matter, one hasn't heard much about repariations since the last election, either.

And in the minds of the left wingnuts, opposition to affirmative action and reparations can only be due to crypto-racism. It couldn't possibly be due to discomfort over the idea that we are systematically discriminating against white and asian young people, young people that haven't done anything wrong, on the basis of race. It couldn't possibly be that the idea of reparations is seriously flawed with all sorts of problems of fairness, penalizing people who are blameless of the sins that reparations are supposed to address. No, it can only be because we are trying to keep blacks down. And this is due to the fact that whites are still all damnable, evil racists in their hearts. And what Lott said proves this.

But there is nothing that they can do about it for a while other than throw these tantrums whenever they get the chance.

And there is the fact that this all happens just as is appears that Republicans are making some progress in reaching out to minorities. I'm sure that it causes the Democrats some anxiety to see minorities respond to these feelers from Republicans, so they were eager to take the opportunity to say, "See? They're just racists. Nothing that they say or do can change that. You can't ever trust them, don't even talk to them." when they got the chance.

Tort Reform in Mississippi

From an article in the Wall Street Journal...

The impasse in the legislature was broken when it came out on national television that plantiffs attorneys were bribing juries. In addition, several pro-trial lawyer judges, including a sitting Supreme Court justice, were defeated in the recent election.

It just goes to show that parasites who tax their host too much can find themselves put at a disadvantage.

...But last week the trial bar suffered a major defeat in Mississippi, and if reform can happen there it can happen anywhere.

The state legislature in Jackson voted to tighten rules on where cases can be tried, cap punitive damage awards, limit the state's joint-and-several liability rule so that companies with little blame can't be soaked as deep pockets, bar advertising by attorneys who aren't licensed to practice in Mississippi and slap a fine on the filing of frivolous lawsuits. That's not bad for government work, especially in a state renowned as the home of "jackpot justice."

...There are lessons here for national reform efforts. The prevailing view is that no reform can get past a 60-vote filibuster by Senate Democrats. But Mississippi proves that a long educational campaign, and a business and consumer movement that sticks together, can create the political climate for change. The battle won't be fast or easy, but the tort bar can be beaten.

Islam = Arab Imperialism

Religious scholars who have dissected or deconstructed Christian religious beliefs to the delight of critics of Christianity have begun to turn their attention on Islam.

Scholarship in this area is difficult because of a lack of cooperation from Muslim scholars who are either afraid of the violence of radical Muslims or are radical Muslims themselves. Muslims who opine, for example, that historical events might not have been exactly as written in the Koran are likely to get death threats or worse, and they are considered legitimate targets of officially sanctioned violence by Muslim clerics who incite others to violence against the apostate scholars.

Nevertheless, there is an increasing body of this sort of scholarship, and, as you might expect, a critical review of historical events shows that the Koran is not the most accurate description of events around 600 to 700 AD in the middle east after all. For one thing, it is likely that Mohammed did not even exist or that the reality of his ministry was quite different from that described. The Koran was probably written well after the events described transpired, not at the time as has always been claimed. The religious precepts of the Koran were probably formulated well after the expansion of the Arab Empire, and they were formulated to explain and justify this Imperialism, not the other way around.

It is not surprising, therefore, that right conduct according to the Koran very closely resembles pre-Islamic Arab tradition, including the tradition of conquest.

It is the most complete sort of conquest that makes the defeated believe that they have been spiritually saved by the culture and beliefs of the conquerors.

Arabs came in to a region by force or by threat of force and proceeded to completely replace the defeated culture. This is what happens to peoples taken over by Islam today. Islam replaces everything native. Islam supplants native customs, beliefs, dress, diet, language, naming conventions, everything. Islam moves the people to destroy all vestiges of their past religions and customs including shrines, images, scriptures, and memory. That transformation is so complete that Malaysian Muslims will tell you that their favorite fruit is the date rather than the native mango even though the date is not native to their country and has to be imported from the middle east.

Thus, to be Muslim is to be Arab: it is quite literally to dress like an Arab, to act like an Arab, to think like an Arab, to speak like an Arab, to write like an Arab, to have an Arabic name, to eat like an Arab. It is in essence to want to be an Arab.

Islam is Arab Imperialism from 600 AD to today, and it is very little more than that.

An Insult to Science

Global warming, that is. Which is to say that the projections concerning global warming are based in large part on assumptions about trends in industrial activity and other human activites that generate greenhouse gasses. These assumptions are based in economic predictions. It turns out these assumptions are seriously flawed in that they grossly over-estimate future green house gas production.

Anyone puzzled by the science behind Kyoto should take a look at the economics. In the words of one leading economic modeller, the central 100-year economic projections behind Kyoto and global warming policymaking is an "insult to science" and "an insult to serious analysis." And that's probably the good part of any criticism. It is also clear that the economic work of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is driven by systemic ideological preferences for state intervention.

A vocal group of economists around the world -- including some of the leading figures in the field of global economic modelling -- believe the core economic analysis behind the United Nations climate change initiative is based on seriously flawed modelling principles. If their analysis is correct, the central scientific tenets of global warming, including 100-year carbon emissions forecasts and temperature increases, are likely grossly exaggerated.

Freedom, More or Less

An argument has broken out in the pages of conservative publications of whether or not Americans as a people are freer now than we were, say, 50 years ago. Many conservatives think we are less free, and they seem quite adamant about it, based mainly on the expansion of the government that intrudes on our lives.

I have long called the people who are critical of the idea that we are a nation of increasing freedom “victim conservatives” because they are so wedded to the idea that they are victims of an oppressive government.

What this usually misses is that conservatives are all for government where it is necessary, and it is often necessary to safeguard the rights and freedoms of the people.

For example, those who think that we were so much freer in the 1950’s should talk to Catholics, blacks, Latinos, gays, and lesbians from that era.

It reminds me of the point made by one historian (I forget who) who pointed out that when the founding fathers talked about “freedom” they were talking about markedly different things: In New England they were talking about freedom of (not freedom from) religion; in the South they were talking about freedom to run their plantations the way they liked, which included keeping slaves; in the West they were talking about freedom from taxes and laws; and in no case were they talking about freedom for everyone.

No doubt when Southern slave owners had to give up their slaves they bemoaned their loss of freedom even though there was an obvious increase in freedom for all the people. When New Englanders lost the ability to exclude people with other religious beliefs from their communities they bemoaned their loss of freedom to do as they pleased in one particular area even while their right to continue to believe as they wished was more solidly established in the law. And, when people in the West started having to pay revenue on whiskey they bemoaned their loss of freedom even as their taxes went to pay for roads and other things that expanded their horizon and increased their overall freedom. And I suspect that this is where the victim conservatives are coming from -- it is a kind of tunnel vision that misses the forest of overall freedom for the trees of particular types of freedom.

GOP vs Trial Lawyers

The Democratic Party these days is not much more than a collection of special interests -- unions, feminist organizations, the NAACP, gays and lesbians, and, most of all, trial lawyers.

Politics in this country is down to them against all the rest of us.

PEOPLE who say, "There's not a dime's worth of difference between the two political parties," or "It doesn't matter who wins," are in for a big surprise watching the 108th Congress tackle tort reform. Right out of the box, there's terrorism insurance. Presidential advisor Lawrence Lindsey says Congress' failure to provide coverage is delaying more than $10 billion in construction projects and holding us on the verge of a double-dip recession. New York City is being particularly hard hit because of the risks of covering high-rise and "trophy" buildings.

The problem is the usual one: Trial lawyers insist on punitive damages.

The Bush administration is willing to commit the federal Treasury to coverage because private firms can't be expected to pay the damages if al Qaeda sets off a nuke in Lower Manhattan. But the trial lawyers and their representatives in Congress (a k a "The Democrats") aren't satisfied. They want to be able to blame someone - insurance companies, the government, anyone with money - if terrorists strike. That will enable them to blow the combination at Fort Knox.

http://www.nypost.com/postopinion/opedcolumnists/50522.htm

Quotes

"The 'real' terrorist threats are George W. Bush and his band of brown-shirted thugs."

Sandra Bernhard

Comedian and Activist

"Anyone that would blow up the Pentagon would get my vote."

Richard Berthold

U-NM Professor

"[catching illegal immigrants] is a very, very low priority, and I think it should be a low priority."

Doris Meissner

Former Clinton INS Commissioner

"This New York thing is being blown out of proportion... Who gives a f***about New York when elephants are being killed?"

Lee Ryan

Boy Band, "Blue"

"Hunting is just a wonderful opportunity for someone who would want to do a terrorist act. They don't have to report their whereabouts and can be lurking anywhere. They can lurk in groups."

Anne Muller

Wildlife Watch

"[the American flag] is a symbol of terrorism and death and fear and destruction and oppression."

Jennie Traschen

MIT Professor

"The Pentagon as a legitimate target? I actually don't have an opinion on that."

David Westin

President of ABC News

"We know we can't make the world risk free, but we can reduce the risks we face, and we have to take the fight to the terrorists. If we have the will, we can find the means."

Bill Clinton (1997)

Former President

"The war against terrorism is terrorism. The whole thing is just bullsh*t."

Woody Harrelson

Actor and Activist

"The Bush foreign policy team seems to be suffering from untreated bipolar disorder."

Madeleine Albright

Former Secretary of State

"If I see someone that's got a diaper on his head, and a fan belt around that diaper... that guy should be pulled over and checked."

John Cooksey

Congressman

"When I see the American flag flying, it's a joke."

Robert Altman

Movie Director

Data on Ice

A recent book review in American Scientist is interesting for what it reveals about the global climate change crowd. It covers the autobiographical account of Paul Mayweski, a scientist widely regarded for his work in climate change, concerning his work in analyzing core samples of ice from Greenland.

Mayewski begins his story with his training, which is when he became conscious of the political importance of his work(!) By his own account Mayewski sat in a weather station in Antartica as a graduate student and dreamed about how the work that he was doing would have tremendous social relevance. From the beginning his aim was not just to become a good scientist, recognised by peers within his own field. He was "driven by the hope" that he could make what he was doing "have a practical value for all humanity". That a student in an obscure science in the middle of Antartica was thinking in those terms speaks volumes about Mayewski. Indeed, his book is in large part a manifesto for making science socially important.

Consider the reality of the scientific work that Mayewski is now doing: He examines ice core samples from ice sheets over Greenland and other places. Since the ice was deposited over thousands of years the impurities within the ice can provide information about the atmosphere in the past. This data can be added to what else is known about past climate changes and could serve to help develop a comprehensive theory or model of climate change that would have real value as a means of predicting future climate.

While Mayweski has had great success in collecting data and detailing the history of past climates, the data has not been enough to allow for the discovery of the desired weather model. A more modest scientist would be content to conclude that the task of providing answers that drive national policies and the like is beyond his grasp, but this modest course is not for Mayweski.

Instead, he attempts to make his data relevant to his political needs. Mayweski strains to make the case for why his work in ancient climate change has lessons for society today. He speculates at length about how climate changes he charts in the ice core samples would have affected ancient civilizations. Then he tries to make the case that the same is in store for us. In doing this Mayewski stretches his science far too thin.

Mayweksi is really not able to say what caused the climate changes he observes in the ice nor is he able to say what, if anything, man has to do with the current climate, Nevertheless, he goes on to say that if climate change did occur in the modern age, well, it would be really bad, which adds an alarmist flavor to his writing. He spurs us on to do something but is unable to tell us what is likely to help with any certainty. The implication is that we should be following the agenda set by the global warming crowd, but he fails to provide us with the science that upholds that agenda.

The reviewer, Martin Seigert, another climate change person, tipped his hand in the first paragraph of his review.

The science of climate change is a funny business. Some people (Paul Mayewski, for example) prove it happens, show the impact it has had in the past, and use this information to judge the future. Nonetheless, others (President George W. Bush, for example) remain reluctant to acknowledge the seriousness of what global climate change has meant for society in the past and will mean in the future. There is clearly an information transfer problem.

The reviewer makes it political right off the bat by taking a gratuituous swipe at the President. Bush has never denied the climate change has occurred in the past, nor has he denied that it will occur in the future. What he has done is ask whether or not climate change over the past 100 years is really due to human activity. He has questioned the accuracy of predictions made about climate change in the immediate future, and he has asked if changes in human activity will really have any effect on future climate. Neither Mayweski nor anyone else has been able to answer these questions, but that does not stop him from using tales of climate change disaster to stir up the political pot.

The reviewer makes the unintentionally comical observation that Mayewski's book "does not appear to be pushing any preconceived agenda." This after having praised Mayewski's openly political and social aspirations. He fails to see that political passion kills the dispassionate stance that good scientists must take.

Expanding Diseases

From a story in the Globe and Mail:

A group of U.S. psychiatrists wants to create a new category of disorders that would let them diagnose couples who squabble constantly, parents and children who don't get along — even siblings who clash — as mentally ill.

Those who might be treated under the proposed "relational disorders" category could be otherwise perfectly healthy and stable: hold steady jobs, have lots of friends and be generally good citizens, pillars of the community and models of balance.

The shrinks changed the definition of mental illness so much that almost half of all people now have problems that fall into the category of mental illness. Having deliberaly expanded the definitions to include more people, the "doctors" go to Washington to lobby for more money because the problem of mental illness, they claim, is so much worse.

I'm pleased to note that few people are fooled by this ploy. Most of the time public officials are not fooled by it either, which is why support from the govenment and the insurance industry for treatment of mental illness is so "poor". The government and insurance companies have learned that psychiatrists and psychologists have a knack for drawing the maximum out of any form of insurance that covers mental illness.

Most diagnoses of mental illness are based on purely subjective findings, which means that the diagnoses can expand to eat up whatever money is available.

Only a small percentage of the people who are called mentally ill would benefit from any kind of therapy, drug or otherwise. And so any money spent on treatment for the rest of the people, who don't want treatment anyway, is wasted.

The Reparations Movement

...is a symptom of the fact that the civil rights movement is intellectually bankrupt. They are old, they are out of date. They haven't got any ideas left, and yet they are desperate for attention.

The civil rights movement made progress mainly because a lot of whites agreed with them back in the 60's. On the reparations issue, there is no agreement, therefore it will not happen, nor will it even get close to happening.

Actually, whites are the least of the reparations advocates' troubles. The reparations people can actually sell that stuff to at least some whites. It's the other ethnic groups that are rabidly opposed to it. No evil genius of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy(TM) could possibly have come up with a better plan for wrecking the Democratic Party coalition.

If it is the aim of black civil rights leaders to be totally marginalized and politically irrelevant they could not have dreamed of a better idea.

Right Wing Envy

From an article in Slate:

The LA Weekly's astute John Powers, a self-described economic lefty, expresses his envy of right-wing journalism in his column this week. Powers celebrates the Weekly Standard, which "woos you by saying, 'We're having big fun over here on the right,' " over The Nation, which he mocks as "a profoundly dreary magazine" that is as "gray and unappetizing as homework."

...How the anything-goes drug-and-sex party that the cultural left threw in the '60s segued into an Amish wake featuring stern readings from the joyless work of Barbara Ehrenreich, the scoldings of Todd Gitlin, and the catechisms of Richard Goldstein is anybody's guess...

No mystery here. Back in the '60's the stern reactionaries were on the right. Now they're on the left.

Cowboy Bebop

Cowboy Bebop the movie is set to open in New York this year for a silver screen debut. This will be the biggest opening for a Japanese Anime movie I've heard of, and it is one more reason that Hollywood ought to be a bit concerned about losing their hegemony.

The Bebop series debut in Japan in 1998 and quickly became the #1 anime series on Japanese TV. It has become monsterously popular in the US since appearing here. Unauthorized versions of the movie with English subtitles have been making the rounds, and the anime faithful have dubbed it worthy of the Bebop name.

The movie is neither a prequil or a secquil to the series, but is a story that might have fit anywhere within the middle ten or so episodes, when the entire cast of characters was assembled aboard the spaceship Bebop. As such, it might have been just another especially long episode in the series, which included a number of episodes that built on the characterizations without touching on the plot themes undergirding the series. Thus, one problem with the movie is that it does not attempt the level of story development that the series does

However, the movie does much to satisfy in the Cowboy Bebop way, with plenty of action, snappy characterizations that build on the profiles established in the series, and a winning plot.

You Don't Say

Husbands forget spats, wives never do

ASSOCIATED PRESS
Husbands never remember marital spats. Wives never forget.

A new study of that ancient matrimonial given suggests a reason: Women's brains are wired both to feel and to recall emotions more keenly than the brains of men.

A team of psychologists tested groups of women and men for their ability to recall or recognize highly evocative photographs three weeks after first seeing them and found that the women's recollections were more accurate by 10 percent to 15 percentage points...

The Gay Culture

Camille Paglia is writing again. This time with a review in FrontPageMagazine.com.

A View from the Bridge

A post by XaosSurfer, a member of the Political Asylum board of fool.com:

I have been reading some of the threads on Political Asylum recently. Being a Canadian it gives me a good view into the political views and the politcal process on America.

I think, that for all the shouting, you can miss the true wonder that is America. I look at America with awe everyday..

It is a country that allows, encourages and rewards the type of debate that happens of this board. Try to rouse a group of Canadians into a passionate debate about our Politics. Hah, everyone sucks there is no hope. Didya see what the Leafs did, eh? Lots of interest but no passion.

This is a country that has technology bubbles. Celebrate. Of the 14 technology bubbles I can find since the beginning of the Indrustrial Revolution, 12 happened in America. Bubbles are an awesome force of innovation and progress. They build railways and canals in just a few years. The wire the country for electric light in a decade. The only major public infrastructure that was not built by the awesome force of a bubble was the national highway system. The military took care of that one. Bubbles come and go about every 15 years but they leave behind a nationed transformed.

Name the other countries in the world where the people are so free to pursue their desitiny that Americans are lined up to get work visas to move? It all happens, right next door in America and the world knows it. The may envy or hate the system but no one ignores it.

Look at the 2000 elections. What a mess. We could recount it forever and come up with a different winner each time. In the face of a breakdown of this magnitude, a solution emerged. Half the country hated the solution. Half the country loved the solution. On Jan. 20th they all shook hands and then saluted the new president. Not a shot fired in anger. Not a thought that maybe the generals would take contol. Order out of the most extreme chaos. A nationed did itself proud but has yet to learn that lesson.

There are problems, no doubt. The people in the inner cities have been forgotten and they need to be invited back into the flow and even then, their children don't die in childbirth and the can count on living to a ripe old age.

On Sept. 11, firemen and policemen turned around and ran back into the WTC after the first tower fell. The nation paid tribute in a way that did every American proud.

The American people and their systems are the most innovative, productive people on the planet but they sometimes forget. This was a reminder.

Putting My Marker Down

The Dow dropped to below 8500 today before rebounding back to where it started the day. All in all, a movement of more than 4% on moderately heavy volume.

For what it's worth, I'm putting my marker down here. This is the bottom, in my humble opinion. It may churn for a while, but from this point there will be a steady climb that will pick up speed as the earnings reports come out mostly better this quarter.

All of this wailing and gnashing of teeth, of course, is due to the discovery of the horrible truth, unforeseen by so many, that businessmen act like, like, (gasp!) businessmen! Naturally, it will take investors some time to get over this.

The New York Times Lies About Global Warming Again

Not to long ago the New York Times put forth a breathless headline story claiming that the ice was melting at the north pole. Open patches of water had been found there, the Times panted, more proof that global warming is here.

It turned out that open patches of water are often found at the north pole normally, and the Times story was just another example of global warming hype.

Now the Times claims that temperatures in Alaska are more than 7 degrees Fahrenheit higher than normal due to accelerating warming. A long article in the Times and subsequent editorial page articles went into great length about the effects of the warmer weather on the US's northern most state. The Times subsequently corrected the figure down to a 5.4 degree increase.

But, once again, it turns out to be false. Even the corrected value was much too high. The real figure is down around 2 degrees, putting the "increase" well within the range of normal variation.

According to Andrew Sullivan:

I've had a chance to read closely the report cited by the Times as showing a 5.4 degree Fahrenheit increase in mean annual temperatures in Alaska over the past thirty years. No such figure is in that report. Anywhere....

To recap: the Times got it wrong on the front page; wrong on their editorial page; wrong in an op-ed column; and wrong in the Corrections column. Is it too much to ask that they eventually put it right? Or would that be too humiliating for what was once a paper of record?

JC Watts

JC Watts, the only black republican in the US House of Representatives, announced his retirement amid charges that his white peers in the House did not give him enough respect.

It's amusing to see liberals who acted as if Watts didn't exist suddenly discovering him to bemoan his retirement. He got almost no press at all for being elected the only Republican of his ethnic group, and certainly no one in the mainstream media wanted to help him get his viewpoint out. Now that he's quitting the liberal media wants to make political hay from it.

In a House with over 200 Republican members not everyone can be a star and not everyone is going to agree with you. Watts was the number 4 man on the Republican side, which is pretty good treatment whether he thought so or not.

Bushisms

A quote from President Bush published recently:

"And so, in my State of the — my State of the Union — or state — my speech to the nation, whatever you want to call it, speech to the nation — I asked Americans to give 4,000 years — 4,000 hours over the next — the rest of your life — of service to America. That's what I asked — 4,000 hours."

Leftists, especially Noam Chomsky, for example, often sound like this when they talk informally. So did Clinton on occasion. So would almost anyone. However, in the case of Chomsky and Clinton, the media always does their subject the courtesy of editing his responses so that they read in a coherent manner. They respect Chomsky and they buy into the idea that he's brilliant even on those days that he's sounding like an imbecile, and they want his comments to read like he's intelligent.

By contrast, the left has taken to quoting Bush verabim when he speaks off the cuff in an informal situation so that it makes him sound stupid. They simply don't extend the same courtesy to Bush that they do to people who's politics they like.

That's one of the reasons that these quotes from Bush, collecting Bushisms, and the like do not impress many people. They know what the game is. They don't regard the news media as being credible, and they don't regard the left as credible.

Postmodernism's High Priest

Jonah Goldberg writes in National Review Online:

...Stanley Fish has a long defense of postmodernism, which has been under assault since September 11. The doctrine that there are no moral absolutes, it seems, is fun to play with when arguing about the president's pants or the meaning of "is." But when thousands of Americans are murdered by zealots, the demand for postmodern analysis over the last few decades all of a sudden seems like the intellectual equivalent of the tulip-bulb craze of the 17th century: a huge market built up around an amusing but essentially valueless commodity. Fish, the George Soros of the PoMo market, has been working overtime to protect his investment.

I'll leave it to others — Peter Berkowitz, for example — to take Fish's efforts head-on (though you might take a gander at my "Facts and Firemen"). But what's set me off is Fish's claim that postmodernism is simply "a rarefied form of academic talk." Fish would have people believe that postmodernism is simply what postmodernists do in their hidden English-department laboratories.

Well, not only did the virus of postmodernism escape Fish's lab, but he and his henchmen ground it up into fine particles and sent aerosolized packets of it to every magazine, newspaper, publishing house, and movie studio in America. Fish's hypocrisy is stunning. The PoMo virus has infected millions, destabilizing traditional institutions across the social landscape. And yet when confronted, he says "I'm not responsible for what happens in the real world, I'm just a lab technician." Well, this high priest of the cult of the twelve monkeys is responsible.

When Fish is on the defensive he can make postmodernism sound humble and useful. Postmodernism, he says, merely holds that people from different or opposing belief systems cannot appeal to objective truth in order to persuade each other who is right and who is wrong. "Postmodernism maintains only that there can be no independent standard for determining which of many rival interpretations of an event is the true one," he writes. Assuming he's not being an intellectual Arafat, saying one thing in English to the American public and another thing in his "rarefied academic talk" to his minions, that actually sounds somewhat reasonable. It certainly isn't a radically destructive idea.

But whether that's the truth or just a propagandistic lie is entirely irrelevant. Fish damn well knows that millions of people think postmodernism means something very, very, very different — even if they don't know what postmodernism is. For lots of Americans, the idea that there are no objective standards of truth or morality is incredibly sophisticated and intelligent. The authors who write the clever novels, the film directors who get awards and rave reviews for blurring the lines between good and evil, the professors who claim George W. Bush and Osama bin Laden are morally indistinguishable: These are the "thoughtful people" in our culture. Meanwhile, the people who talk in terms of right and wrong are ridiculed by the sophisticates.

Call it feminism, critical race theory, critical legal studies, queer theory, whatever: It's all shrapnel from the same postmodern bomb, broadly speaking. These doctrines haven't all been terrible for America, but their misapplication and over-application have. Scientists take responsibility for the damage they do. English professors take speaking fees. Conservatism, which does not fetishize the masses, understands that even an intelligent idea can have horrific consequences if let loose upon a society. The uninformed, the lazy, the affected, the ambitious, and the dumb can adopt sharp-edged ideas and use them as blunt cudgels if we are not careful. The authors of postmodernism have not been careful.

I keep thinking of the exchange in the film A Fish Called Wanda. Otto, played by Kevin Kline, is an idiot and a bully who also fancies himself an intellectual (he thinks the central message of Buddhism was "every man for himself"). Wanda, played by Jamie Lee Curtis, says to him: "To call you stupid would be an insult to stupid people! I've known sheep who could outwit you. I've worn dresses with higher IQs, but you think you're an intellectual, don't you, ape?"

Otto objects, "Apes don't read philosophy."

To which Wanda replies, "Yes they do, Otto, they just don't understand it!"

There are legions of Ottos out there who believe postmodernism means there is no truth, no right, no wrong, no good, no bad. They believe it because they either misunderstood Fish and his disciples or because they understood them all too well.

Stanley Fish knows all this. And, a few throwaway lines notwithstanding, he clearly thinks it's great. Indeed, if he didn't think so he would not devote his energies to defending postmodernism. Rather, he would, like Dr. Frankenstein, run through the village trying to make amends for the damage all of his Ottos have done.