The following two articles demonstrate acts of modern heresy on the part of the authors.

The first article, by Christopher Hitchens, dares challenges the Church of Obama and the recent Greatest Speech Ever Given™. He offered his usual attacks on religion (as a whole) that I didn’t care for, but the rest of the article is superb.

…Sen. Obama has long known perfectly well, in other words, that he’d one day have to put some daylight between himself and a bigmouth Farrakhan fan. But he felt he needed his South Side Chicago “base” in the meantime. So he coldly decided to double-cross that bridge when he came to it. And now we are all supposed to marvel at the silky success of the maneuver.

You often hear it said, of some political or other opportunist, that he would sell his own grandmother if it would suit his interests. But you seldom, if ever, see this notorious transaction actually being performed, which is why I am slightly surprised that Obama got away with it so easily. (Yet why do I say I am surprised? He still gets away with absolutely everything.)

Looking for a moral equivalent to a professional demagogue who thinks that AIDS and drugs are the result of a conspiracy by the white man, Obama settled on an 85-year-old lady named Madelyn Dunham, who spent a good deal of her youth helping to raise him and who now lives alone and unwell in a condo in Honolulu. It would be interesting to know whether her charismatic grandson made her aware that he was about to touch her with his grace and make her famous in this way. By sheer good fortune, she, too, could be a part of it all and serve her turn in the great enhancement.

This flabbergasting process, made up of glibness and ruthlessness in equal proportions, rolls on unstoppably with a phalanx of reporters and men of the cloth as its accomplices. Look at the accepted choice of words for the ravings of Jeremiah Wright: controversial, incendiary, inflammatory. These are adjectives that might have been?and were?applied to many eloquent speakers of the early civil rights movement. (In the Washington Post, for Good Friday last, the liberal Catholic apologist E.J. Dionne lamely attempted to stretch this very comparison.) But is it “inflammatory” to say that AIDS and drugs are wrecking the black community because the white power structure wishes it? No. Nor is it “controversial.” It is wicked and stupid and false to say such a thing. And it not unimportantly negates everything that Obama says he stands for by way of advocating dignity and responsibility over the sick cults of paranoia and victimhood.

…To have accepted Obama’s smooth apologetics is to have lowered one’s own pre-existing standards for what might constitute a post-racial or a post-racist future. It is to have put that quite sober and realistic hope, meanwhile, into untrustworthy and unscrupulous hands. And it is to have done this, furthermore, in the service of blind faith. Mark my words: This disappointment is only the first of many that are still to come.

The other heretical article I wish to highlight involves a direct attack on the foundational pillars of the Goracle and his cult of Global Warming Alarmism.

…These 3,000 yellow sentinels –about the size and shape of a large fence post — free-float the world’s oceans, season in and season out, surfacing between 30 and 40 times a year, disgorging their findings, then submerging again for another fact-finding voyage.

…When they were first deployed in 2003, the Argos were hailed for their ability to collect information on ocean conditions more precisely, at more places and greater depths and in more conditions than ever before. No longer would scientists have to rely on measurements mostly at the surface from older scientific buoys or inconsistent shipboard monitors.

So why are some scientists now beginning to question the buoys’ findings? Because in five years, the little blighters have failed to detect any global warming. They are not reinforcing the scientific orthodoxy of the day, namely that man is causing the planet to warm dangerously. They are not proving the predetermined conclusions of their human masters. Therefore they, and not their masters’ hypotheses, must be wrong.

In fact, “there has been a very slight cooling,” according to a U.S. National Public Radio (NPR) interview with Josh Willis at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a scientist who keeps close watch on the Argo findings.

Let the inquisitions begin!

The Institute for Defense Analysis recently released the first volume from the Iraqi Perspectives Project (IPP) look at Saddam’s terrorist connections, which set out to review over 600,000 documents captured following the fall of Saddam’s regime. The media, predictably, ignored the totality of the report’s findings and choose instead to focus on one single sentence: “This study found no ’smoking gun’ (i.e, direct connection) between Saddam’s Iraq and al Qaeda.” This lead to a flurry of media headlines as war critics rushed to be the first to breathlessly denounce President Bush, yet again.

From NRO:

ABC: Report Shows No Link Between Saddam and al Qaeda
CNN: Hussein’s Iraq and al Qaeda not linked, Pentagon says
New York Times: Study Finds No Qaeda-Hussein Tie
Washington Post: Study Discounts Hussein, Al-Qaeda Link
AFP: No link between Saddam and Al-Qaeda: Pentagon study
McClatchy: Exhaustive review finds no link between Saddam and al Qaida

The media seems to be operating under the false assumption that Al Qaeda is the only terrorist group we are interested in. A more honest headline would have said something like: “Report finds Saddam supported Islamic terrorism,” since that’s what it actually said. Here are some quotes:

“Saddam’s interest in, and support for, non-state actors was spread across a variety of revolutionary, liberation, nationalist, and Islamic terrorist organizations.”

We aren’t at war with just Al-Qaeda.

Hmm, sounds like that should make Saddam a reasonable target in a “War on [Islamic] Terror.” Too bad the media and so many on the left seem to be under the mistaken impression that we’re really just in a war on Al-Qaeda, as if no other terrorist organization has ever attacked us, or wants to (they have, and they do). Back to th quotes:

“Despite their incompatible long-term goals, many terrorist movements and Saddam found a common enemy in the United States. At times these organizations worked together, trading access for capability.”

“Saddam’s regime often cooperated directly, albeit cautiously, with terrorist groups when they believed such groups could help advance Iraq’s long-term goals. The regime carefully recorded its connections to Palestinian terror organizations in numerous government memos. One such example documents Iraqi financial support to families of suicide bombers in Gaza and the West Bank.”

“Evidence of Saddam’s continuing interest and support for global terrorist activities is found in a 2002 annual report of the IIS M8 Directorate of Liberation Movements.”

“The IIS hosted thirteen conferences in 2002 for a number of Palestinian and other organizations, including delegations from the Islamic Jihad Movement and the Director General for the Popular Movement for the Liberation of al-Ahwaz.”

“In return for financial support, Palestinian terror groups, particularly Hamas, were willing to do Saddam’s bidding. Aftr the September 11th attacks on the United States, a Palestinian representative informed the Iraqis that Hamas had thirty-five armed terror cells around the world, mingled with refugee populations. These cells were in ‘France, Sweden, Denmark, and other places.’ The Palestinian boasted that these cells could shake America and force the United States to back out if it ever invaded Iraq.”

“Saddam supported groups that either associated directly with al Qaeda (such as the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, led at one time by bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman al Zawahiri) or that generally shared al Qaeda’s stated goals and objectives.”

“Evidence that was uncovered and analyzed attests to the existence of a terrorist capability and a willingness to use it until the day Saddam was forced to flee Baghdad by Coalition Forces.”

Obviously, the fact that no ties were found between Saddam and Al-Qaeda is newsworthy. But focusing on only that, and pretending like it’s the most important aspect of this report, does a disservice to the truth. We aren’t at war with just Al-Qaeda. There were a lot of important findings in this report that have been largely ignored. The overarching theme is clear: Saddam was willing to utilize, fund, support or train Islamic terrorist organizations when it suited his purposes. Removing regimes engaging in such behavior is of strategic interest to the United States.

But don’t take my word for it, read it yourself:

Tom Coburn took to the Senate floor yesterday to discuss government waste. The $360 billion he talked about is just the tip of the iceberg, however, because he considered only those items in which governmental failure was so massive that even government could see it. In other words, there are numerous other programs which are accomplishing little to nothing, or shouldn’t be the business of government in the first place, which account for who knows how many more hundreds of billions. Here’s some of what he had to say:

…One of the things I hope to do tomorrow is to outline for the American public and this body everything I found in the last 3 years in terms of waste on an annualized basis. I want my colleagues to hear that again. Everything I have found in terms of waste where we do not do it right, where we are wasting taxpayers’ dollars every year, and I can conservatively, just on what I found and I can fully document–I want you to understand that, Mr. President; it is not Tom Coburn’s opinion, it is the opinion of the GAO, the CBO, oversight committees, and other committees of Congress that are documenting what I am about to share.

What I am going to share tomorrow is how we fail because we are talking about a budget today–I told Kent Conrad, I am not out to game his budget. It will spend more money. That is not a whole lot different from what we have been doing. But how dare we spend another penny when I can document, and none of my colleagues can refute, $366 billion a year of waste or fraud, $366 billion a year. Let me explain what that means to the average consumer.

…The interesting thing is that not since 1995 has the Congress done any rescission spending. Let me explain what that is. That is the Congress looks at our budget and says: Are there any areas where we can save money, where we are not doing well, where we can be more efficient, where we can improve things? We haven’t had a rescission package since 1995. That is 13 years that we have not had a rescission package. There are lots of reasons for that, none of them good. It does not matter which party is in control. There has not been a rescission package for 13 years. So it is not about parties. It is not about gaming somebody because somebody is a Democrat or somebody is a Republican. Our problems in our Nation today are much more serious than partisanship. They are much greater than the beneficial effects of winning an election based on how you can make somebody else look lousy.

…So as we come to a budget for the United States and we pass one–which we will, probably–we do it absent the light of looking at $360 billion-plus that is wasted every year–$360 billion. People might say: What is that? It is pretty easy. How about Medicare fraud, $80 billion a year. How about Medicare improper payments? We pay people when they do not deserve to be paid–not fraud, just incompetency–$10 billion a year. There is $90 billion in one program…

…What we are going to do is outline thoroughly what just one office, just one Senate office, has found over 3 years, and it is all going to be fully documented, with footnotes, so you can see exactly where it came from. It is going to be indisputable.

We look forward to seeing the full list of waste that Senator Coburn is going to release.

One of the themes we’re hearing about this year, ad nauseum, is the idea that the nation is presently besieged by extreme partisanship, and that little more than a timely dose of bipartisanship is needed to cure all our ills. This is pure hogwash.

The late William F. Buckley correctly opposed this poison pill in his founding of National Review.

The most alarming single danger to the American political system lies in the fact that an identifiable team of Fabian operators is bent on controlling both our major political parties(under the sanction of such fatuous and unreasoned slogans as “national unity,” “middle-of-the-road,” “progressivism,” and “bipartisanship.”) Clever intriguers are reshaping both parties in the image of Babbitt, gone Social-Democrat. When and where this political issue arises, we are, without reservations, on the side of the traditional two-party system that fights its feuds in public and honestly; and we shall advocate the restoration of the two-party system at all costs.

Democracy is about choices. It functions best when people have real ones to make. If elected officials are just going to get together behind close doors and pass out favors until a grand “compromise” is reached on every issue, why should we even bother with elections in the first place? If the people’s ideological preferences are irrelevant, let’s cut the charade and just appoint a permanent class of liberal experts (which is the objective behind this ‘bipartisanship’ claptrap).

Democracy is about choices. It functions best when people have real ones to make.

It is important to remember that partisanship is not synonymous with dirty tricks or excessively negative campaigning, despite the conventional usage. That kind of partisanship, and “gotcha” game playing in Washington, is counterproductive. But partisanship as a whole is about having ideas and standing up for them. It’s about not betraying those who voted for you precisely because they believed in the views you campaigned on.

Americans are, as a matter of instinct, distrustful of government. Like Adam Smith said of business leaders who operate in the same industry, we know that when politicians of both parties get together it will inevitably end in a conspiracy against the public. We want our politicians competing against one another, not patting each other on the back. It keeps them in line. We want to feel like it’s the will of the people that ultimately decides an issue and not what favor was promised to whom behind closed doors in Congress.

The modern left is reaching back in time to the days when social engineering was in vogue, when all kinds of “experiments” were undertaken at the slightest whim, and any change was automatically better than status quo.

In tribute to the late, great William F. Buckley, I thought I’d forgo the usual reminiscing and discuss instead an issue which Buckley considered of great importance. Though he did not coin the phase “immanentize the eschaton”, he was responsible for its popularization and fought vigorously against its implications. The phrase refers to the efforts by some to bring the eschaton (the transcendent, i.e. heaven) to the immanent (within worldly limits). The utopian visions of communism and all other collectivist ideologies constitute attempts to immanentize the eschaton.

In founding National Review, Buckley made opposing “Social Engineers” one of the magazine’s core convictions, along with the need to oppose utopian communism:

2. The profound crisis of our era is, in essence, the conflict between the Social Engineers, who seek to adjust mankind to conform with scientific utopias, and the disciples of Truth, who defend the organic moral order. We believe that truth is neither arrived at nor illuminated by monitoring election results, binding though these are for other purposes, but by other means, including a study of human experience. On this point we are, without reservations, on the conservative side.

3. The century’s most blatant force of satanic utopianism is communism. We consider “coexistence” with communism neither desirable nor possible, nor honorable; we find ourselves irrevocably at war with communism and shall oppose any substitute for victory.

Sadly, many in America still strive to immanentize the eschaton. Barack Obama, the likely Democrat nominee for president, has fashioned an entire campaign on the concept. He has declared a desire to “create a Kingdom right here on Earth.”

Ancient history is the DLC, along with Bill Clinton’s declaration that “the era of big government is over”. The modern left is reaching back in time to the days when social engineering was in vogue, when all kinds of “experiments” were undertaken at the slightest whim, and any change was automatically better than status quo. Who now will take Buckley’s place “standing athwart history, yelling Stop” at this time when we need it most?

Hillary’s latest ad against Barack Obama is a bit odd not so much because of what it says, but what it makes you think. Watch:

Who could possibly watch that and think of Hillary Clinton instead of John McCain? McCain’s fight against the FEC to allow him to spend more money isn’t going to much matter so long as Hillary is running free ads for him.