Happy birthday, Abe and Chuck

So, if you were invited to simultaneous birthday parties today, for Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, and the actual honorees would be there alive and participating in the celebration, which one would you go to?

Me, I'd pick Lincoln. They say he was a lot of fun at parties. Also, I look up to him and what he did more. Nothing against Darwin, but I suspect that if he hadn't worked out natural selection, someone else would have. But if Lincoln hadn't been president, the union would have fallen apart -- nobody else would have been as single-mindedly stubborn about holding it together. I mean, why do you think so many of my fellow South Carolinians are still ticked at him? And even though all of my ancestors that I know about fought for the opposite outcome (five great-great grandaddies that I know about), this Southern boy is glad that the U.S. of A. is still around. So it all worked out well in the end.

All of which reminds me that I need to get back to reading Obama's favorite, desert-island-must-have book, Team of Rivals. I've let myself get sidetracked with re-reading O'Brian, and reading Moby Dick for the first time, so I need to buckle down and get back to Goodwin.

As for Darwin, I thought I'd share this interesting piece that I saw in The New Republic, headlined "Charles Darwin, Conservative?"

Basically, it examines the great irony of modern politics, which is that conservatives tend to snub Darwin, even though his idea of order arising from nature without a guiding plan fits THEIR ideas about how society can produce civilization without guiding government.

Meanwhile, liberals who honor Darwin act as though they don't believe in that principle one bit, since they think you need a strong guiding hand of government to have order.

George Will made much the same point in his column that we ran Sunday, but I think the point is made more clearly in the TNR piece.

By the way, I side with the modern-day liberals on this point: I don't think you can have order without government. Take away the guiding hand, and you get Somalia -- warring militias running around firing AK-47s at everybody. But you know already that I thought that. I'm a rule-of-law guy.

As for the thing that everybody fights about over Darwin... Well, I'm a Catholic, and I hear the pope made peace with Darwin awhile back.

You know what I think about evolution, and natural selection? I think that is just exactly the way God would create the world. I don't see Him doing it like Cecil B. DeMille, six days and abracadabra, here's the world. I think He'd do it the slow, majestic, complicated way. Evolution seems just His style, to me. But what do I know?

(Now watch this: The controversial part of this post won't be the Darwin stuff; it'll be that I said nice things about Lincoln.)

Comments

[Lee Muller]

Abe Lincoln was forgotten, merged into "Presidents Day", for retail sales, until Hussein Obama, man without identity, decided to attach recast himself as Lincoln II, after riding the MLK II, and JFK II acts for a while.

Next, he will drop Lincoln and start acting as Roosevelt II. Let's hope it stops there, before he moves on to Castro II.

[bud]

I don't understand how anyone can be a member of the Catholic Church. Aren't there other religous options that aren't tainted by their vile leaders (priests)? From the Chicago Tribune:

Ex-priest gets 25 years for 'a very, very serious sin'
February 11, 2009
A prominent former Roman Catholic priest convicted of taking a boy on religious retreats to have sex with him was sentenced today to 25 years in prison by a federal judge in Chicago.

Calling the crime "a very, very serious sin," U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer went above the maximum of what federal sentencing guidelines called for in sentencing defrocked priest Donald McGuire, 78.

Pallmeyer said the sentence was meant as a message to anyone who would abuse children through a position off "power, respect and love."

"I want any such person to know the system of justice and this judge personally finds it absolutely abhorrent." Pallmeyer said.

McGuire did not apologize and described himself as nearing the end of his life. He has diabetes and heart problems.

"I will continue to pray and praise God and beg him to bless all who participated in the trial as well as their families," he said.

At the sentencing hearing, McGuire was confronted by parents of two victims.

The mother of one victim who had testified at the trial faced McGuire and condemned him for robbing her son of his joy while calling himself a representative of Christ.

"You were the vilest of traitors," she said.

Five of McGuire's victims addressed the judge, describing how they have lived with years of depression and pain because of his abuse. Dominic, 23, whose assault was at the center of the federal case, said he remembered telling his wife about the abuse.

"It was the lowest point in my life," he said, fighting back tears as he described how the molestation had given him "a life without happiness."

But Dominic did smile later after the sentence was handed down, telling reporters the long sentence should encourage other victims of other priests to come forward.

"I think this case has proved the truth will set you free," he said.

Jurors deliberated less than three hours in a 2 1/2-week trial. Several boys testified that McGuire had engaged in sexual conduct with them.

In 2006, McGuire was convicted in Wisconsin for child molestation and sentenced to seven years in prison. He has appealed that conviction. He was also indicted in Arizona for child molestation and faces lawsuits in a series of new child molestation accusations.

-- Jeff Coen

[Lee Muller]

Over 95% of the child molestations by Catholic priests were homosexual.

The investigation showed that homosexuals sought to join the priesthood in order to stalk boys.

That's why the media doesn't like to discuss these cases anymore - one of their pet groups was found guilty.

[Phillip]

OK, let's send this thread even further astray...

Count me now as a new skeptic about Darwinism and evolution and natural selection...it couldn't possibly be true, otherwise we wouldn't have reached the stage of human existence where such creatures as Leon Lott and the entire Richland County Sheriff's Office could exist. Surely levels of stupidity such as this Lott creature (latin name: Sherrifus Moronus Publicitus-Seekum) displays, would have been "selected out" were Darwin's theories really true.

[bud]

Phillip, you got that right. Of course I knew way back that ex-narc Leon Lott has a mania for go after drug offenses, no matter how minor the crime. I feared Lott would act this way once he became Sheriff and for the most part I have been pleased that his focus was on serious crime.

But this whole Michael Phelps incident reveals the real Leon Lott. This is not about law and order, this is about wasting valuable public resources. Besides, how did this get to be a Richland County jurisdiction? Didn't the incident occur in the city of Columbia?

[Doug Ross]

Phillip,

Didn't you hear? There's no more gang activity in Richland County... no ATM robberies... no drugs being sold on the streets...

It's pretty bad when Jay Leno the other night mentioned the arrests and said "So, I guess we've caught Bin Laden?"

[Weldon VII]

Bud, when three decades ago the Methodist preacher assigned to our church was convicted of shoplifting, should we have disbanded our church and become Baptists?

In light of Blagojevich, should all Democrats change party?

Let he whose church is without sin cast the first stone.

[Weldon VII]

Oh, boy. This is interesting. When I tried to post as p.m., Typepad changed my ID to the one under which I used to post, Weldon VII, after it refused to accept one post and made me sign in, which I didn't think occurred successfully until my post above showed up.

The blog is evolving before my very eyes.

[Brad Warthen]

OK, so I say to myself, tomorrow is the 200th birthday of these major figures, and maybe some folks on the blog would like to discuss that. I can link them to an interesting article I read. So I stay here late at the end of a tiring day and post something to publish after midnight, so my dear readers will have this interesting topic before them when they get their sleepy little heads up in the a.m.

And what do I get? An anti-Catholic diatribe and an anti-gay one. Total non sequiturs. By this standard, what Phillip just said stands as a model case of sticking to the point.

Why do I bother with this, folks? Why don't I just put up a blank post once a day, and everybody can just jump in and exorcise their personal demons as they see fit? Really, why try?

[Brad Warthen]

Oh, and thanks to Weldon for trying to turn back to the subject, too -- his comments and mine crossed paths.

I don't know what the trouble is with "p.m." I haven't changed anything on my end...

[Birch Barlow]

I don't think you can have order without government.

I think you'd be pretty hard-pressed to find anyone in this country who disagrees with this statement.

The controversial part of this post won't be the Darwin stuff; it'll be that I said nice things about Lincoln.

Well it is interesting that a newspaper editor would praise a man who threw newspaper editors in jail for being critical of him.

[Lee Muller]

Brad, it is not "anti-gay" to point out the fact that the child molester were almost all homosexuals. It is not the fault of God or the Church that these men chose to live in disguise and attack children.

I posted first about Lincoln, who is mainly remembered because of Obama claiming to be the second Lincoln, second MLK, and second JFK, all rolled into one, come to free non-whites of having to work like white people in order to have the wealth of white people.

I could post a commentary on how the Theory of Natural Selection did not originate with Darwin, or how the concept of "survival of the fittest" was adopted by Darwin from the libertarian economist Herbert Spencer, or on Darwinism as a secular religion.

But if you don't want to defend your Church from the lies and attacks of haters like 'bud' and 'Rich', I will.

[Weldon VII]

I read a dandy article on evolution this morning in the Washington Post which focused on the methodology of natural selection and didn't waste time on spitting at creationism every other paragraph.

I'm like you, Brad, in that I don't see creationism and Darwinism as mutually exclusive by necessity. If God created the heavens and the earth, things certainly have evolved since, just like college basketball has evolved to include the three-point shot and rock 'n' roll has evolved to where Little Richard must surely be shaking his head.

I watched a National Geographic channel show the other night on how whales evolved from a land mammal similar to a large dog beginning 49 million years ago when climate change left the doglike creature with too little food on land.

To say the fossil record had some contentious gaps in it would be an understatement, and the first couple of links toward the whale appeared to have no chance of surviving, really, so awkward did they appear, but there they lay in the fossil record, two or three million years later, complete with one telltale bone in the ear that turns out, according to other sources, to be not so telltale after all.

So when it comes to Darwin, we will always have something to argue about. Evolutionary changes require 200 generations to stick, according to that Washington Post article, so no one will ever live 4,000 years to see a mutation genuinely become permanent.

Of course, when it comes to Lincoln, there's not much to argue about at all, unless someone wants to bring up states rights vs. central government and the horrible irony of how the war Lincoln found it necessary to pursue industrialized America to the point that the agrarian world Lincoln preferred, the land of his childhood, no longer existed.

Yep, Lincoln had a lot to do with America's evolution, and apparently he's still having his effect. Two hundred score years from now, we'll be able to see if it stuck.

[bud]

Well, I'm a Catholic, and I hear the pope made peace with Darwin awhile back.
-Brad

My little digression was my way of saying I don't give a damn what the Catholic Church thinks about Darwin, or anything else. You happen to believe what they say is important. I don't. That's all I'm saying and I presented a good story to support my position.

[Brad Warthen]

Actually, bud, I was making the point that while some see Christians and Darwinists as being at odds, I belong to a group that doesn't see it that way. And I went on, in case you wondered what I think as opposed to what the pope thinks, to SAY what I think. My point being to lead to a discussion of what Y'ALL think. I didn't imagine that my aside about the pope would lead to a rhetorical waving of the middle finger at my faith.

And thank you, weldon, for advancing the topic at hand, although I'll quibble with one of your examples: Is the three-point shot evolution or devolution? Is it survival of the fittest, or an inappropriate stacking of the deck to ensure the survival of players who can't drive for the basket?

But don't suppose I'm encouraging a digression. Back to Lincoln and Darwin (and between the two of them, I'd pick Lincoln for MY basketball team, based purely on height) ...

[Greg Flowers]

I have to admit that I am dubious of the claim that Lincoln was the only man who could have held the nation together. I would think that any leader of a force possessing a far larger population and stronger and more diversified economic base would have the cards stacked in their favor. This is not to say that Lincoln was not a strong leader, just that he was not sine qua non.

[Lee Muller]

Lincoln obviously split the nation apart.
His election with less than a majority of votes caused the immediate creation of the Confederacy.

Lincoln was infatuated with socialism, corresponded with socialist leaders of the 1848 revolutions. He recruited thousands of German socialists to America to fight for the North.

[Weldon VII]

Be it evolution or devolution with respect to driving the basket, Brad, the three-point shot is evolution in terms of ESPN making money televising games.

Believe me, I realize that, back in the day, yours and mine at Carolina, John Roche could have scored 40 points a game if all the 22-footers were worth three points.

The three-point shot also makes the inside-out game (in to Owens, back out to Roche) more valuable.

The jump-stop is the basketball change I hate.

But I digress. I think Darwin would have like the three, but Lincoln would have preferred a world where the Civil War wasn't necessary. :)

[Rich]

Lee,

My beef is with religion in general, not Catholicism in particular. I firmly respect a person's right to believe whatever he/she wants and to attend or not attend the religious institution of their choice. But freedom of religion also includes freedom from religion, if a person so desires. There is no constitutional requirement to treat religious beliefs with respect, and I admit that I frequently do not. I find any assertion without empirical evidence to be suspect.

The diatribes against religion and gays in this blog were definitely "off task." The concern here is the memory of Lincoln.

Clearly, he was ahead of his time, but he shared at the outset of the civil war many of the prejudices of his countrymen with regard to African Americans, he just did not think that these prejudices merited for them the yoke of slavery.

Lincoln made clear in a speech from the White House shortly after Appomatox how much his thinking had evolved. Like the Radical Republicans who would follow him after his death, he envisioned the progressive education and enfranchisement of the freedmen and envisioned a day when fully social and political equality would be realized.

It took the Radical Republicans in Congress under Thaddeus Stevens to realize his vision. Of course, that was back in the day when the early Republican Party represented free soil, free labor, the preservation of the Union, abolitionism, and civil rights. Let's not forget that there were black Republican Reconstruction governments all over the South and it was a Republican Congress that imposed the 13th,14th and 15th amendments on the South as conditions for an enforced reunification of the state.

Very different from today's Republicans, don't you think?

Let's remember that Lincoln kept the Union together, and for that we should remember him with the utmost gratitude as our greatest president ever.

Barack Obama is right to draw inspiration from this greatest of Republican presidents.

[Brad Warthen]

As to the assertion above that, given the resources at hand, someone else could have done what Lincoln did -- I most emphatically disagree.

The war was prosecuted as long as it was, and as successfully as it was -- and against the most vehement kind of antiwar sentiment (W. only had MoveOn.org; Lincoln had the deadly New York Draft Riots) -- because of Lincoln's unwavering vision of the importance of preserving the union, and his iron will and perseverance. To my reading of history, almost any other American politician would have let things putter along under the ineffectual McLellan until public revulsion became so great that he had to give up and let the nation split, which would have been fine with a lot of people in the North.

Someone mentions arresting newspaper editors. Lincoln was prepared to bear any burden, pay any price to preserve the union. If that meant hundreds of thousands of casualties, if it meant a temporary suspension of habeas corpus, then that was the price. For that matter, if it meant keeping slavery, that's what he would have done (or so he said; fortunately, he arrived at a different conclusion). You can either despise him or respect him for that. I respect him, because I think that through it all, he had his eye on the highest ideals of our nation and what it meant to people then living and those to come.

[Birch Barlow]

Phillip, you got that right. Of course I knew way back that ex-narc Leon Lott has a mania for go after drug offenses, no matter how minor the crime. I feared Lott would act this way once he became Sheriff and for the most part I have been pleased that his focus was on serious crime.

But this whole Michael Phelps incident reveals the real Leon Lott. This is not about law and order, this is about wasting valuable public resources. Besides, how did this get to be a Richland County jurisdiction? Didn't the incident occur in the city of Columbia?

Bud, I'm sure Phelps will think twice about smoking it up around here again, especially with this monster rolling down the streets.

Seriously, is this necessary? Did I miss something or are we not in a war zone?

[Greg Flowers]

OK then, let's say that you are right and no one else could have preserved the union. Why would two nations have been a bad thing? Until 1783 the thirteen colonies were on equal footing with Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland as British colonies. We were essentially in a civil was with them and the approximately 1/3 of the population in the thirteen that were pro-British. After the War many loyalist fled to what is now Canada. Bitterness remained for some period but by some period in the early 19th century (though Canada did not become a nation until 1867 excluding PEI and Nwfld. but that's another story) the two began to coexist, both were successful democracies who became one another's biggest trading partners. Industrialization would have led to an end to slavery by 1885 or so. Both nations would have had civil rights revolutions, one obviously before the other. The USA would have been an international power of much the same magnitude as it is today while the CSA would be much like Canada. So, if Lincoln were the only man who could have saved the union, saving the union was not a necessity. Much like the English kings losing their extensive holdings in France. Bad for England at the time, but in the grander scheme of things, at worst, neutral (except those Frenchies are all damned socialists (kidding, of course)). Developing the theory of evolution is something of immeasurable benefit to all of mankind, a gateway event that has led to so many ways to improve life. I vote for Chuck.

[Brad Warthen]

Thanks for engaging the subject, Greg. I'll take your word for it that Darwin's ideas have led to immeasurable benefit. Personally, I haven't seen it. Not being a biologist or anything, I see mostly the political manifestation, and it seems to me that what has been generated there is mostly hot air. I mean, do I really care what my ancestors of a million years ago were like, enough to argue with somebody about it? No, I don't.

Here's how much of a scientific philistine I am: When someone figures out that there was a genetic "Eve" from from whom we've all descended (nothing like the babe we think of with the blonde hair flowing on her breasts chatting about fruit with a snake, by the way), first I don't understand how such calculations are made, and then immediately after that I realize that I don't care. So you tell me that people with red hair are the products of long-ago dalliances between "our" people and Neanderthals, and I go, "Huh. You don't say," and quickly move on to something relevant. (I'm not interested in John Edwards' philanderings; why would I care about some caveman's?) It's interesting to speculate about things, such as the theory that we became farmers instead of hunter-gatherers because we figured out that if we did then we could make beer. But is that as relevant to me as, say, debating what the Framers intended in the Constitution and whether we should be bound by that? No. Frankly, if I think about the way our ancestors lived in a world red in tooth and claw, starving for long periods before gorging themselves on whatever they had managed to kill, looking forward to dying before they turned 30, I find it depressing. And then I look around and see millions, if not billions, of people live that way still or not much better, and I'm more concerned about that than the forces that shaped us what, 10,000 or 40,000 years ago? (I read a review today of a book that dealt with the controversy over whether we have advanced in evolutionary terms at all since 40,000 years ago; I would bet not).

I'm interested in history. I'm VERY interested in history. Not so much in PREhistory, though.

[Birch Barlow]

Someone mentions arresting newspaper editors. Lincoln was prepared to bear any burden, pay any price to preserve the union.

So do you also respect this act of false imprisonment in the wake of another national emergency that threatened this nation?

[bud]

I feel safer knowing that we have a .50 caliber armed tank going after the bad guys. What is the budget of Richland County anyway? They have a tank and can afford a half dozen detectives to go after one stoned swimmer. Apparently Richland County is suffeciently stimulated without help from the U.S. government.