From a reader:

You have an interesting take on God and morality because it is completely contrary to the ideals of God and morality I and millions of people in America believe in.

Probably, because you've been so influenced by the National Review's
Catholic hardliners, you seem to believe that abortion and only abortion
matters. You question Kerry's God talk because he says he is opposed to
abortion but won't legislate against it. That's a fair criticism.

My God and morality--as opposed to the Opus Dei version parroted by your
colleagues--also says capital punishment is immoral (esepcially executing
children), that poverty is immoral, that unjust war is immoral. Based on
those principles, a president who relished in having the highest execution
rate as governor while professing faith and waging an unjust war based on
crumbling evidence is incredibly immoral. The fact that more people live in
poverty today then they did four days ago seems like another strike to my
God and my morality.

So, let's be honest. Bush courting religious voters while shaming God is as
reprehensible as Kerry arguing social justice while backing abortion. In
fact, it's more immoral and vile.

Last one:

Dear Mr. Goldberg,

Sounds like your Georgetown correspondent has been reading John Rawls
and a curious inversion of Nietzsche--Nietzsche despised the
untermenschen priests who create religion as a way to keep down the
strong blond beasts; our Georgetownian seems to think binding the beast
is a good idea. He identifies precisely why I don't trust atheists: the
only reason he will support my freedom is his self-interest, and I have
rather less confidence than he does that his perception of his
self-interest won't change someday to accomodate enslaving me. I rely
for my freedom on those who believe that freedom is God-given, and will
not take it away no matter how advantageous they would find the prospect.

From another reader;

Jonah, To hell with self-interest! I'm a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania and cringed when reading the Georgetown student's derivation of morality from self-interest. Self-interest does not account for any of the most important things in life. Why do soldiers die for their country? Why would anyone die for anything, if self-interest reigned? A parent for a child? A husband for a wife? Sane people will acknowledge that these actions are "good". But they glorify a radical rejection of self-interest for a higher purpose. As your first correspondent correctly pointed out, morality cannot be explained without reference to an Absolute -- i.e., God. You cannot say, `this is good' and `that is bad' without implicitly relying on a standard of perfect goodness. Suppose you just bought a $100 pair of Gucci shoes. You're walking along and see a child drowning in a lake. You don't have time to take off your shoes, and they'll be ruined if you jump in. Do you jump in, save the child, and lose your hundred bucks? or do you continue walking, let the child drown, and preserve your investment? Self-interest seems to suggest the latter. Conscience, on the other hand, demands the former. The self-interest theory may sometimes account for why we don't do bad things. But it doesn't account for why we do good things. It doesn't account for charity at all. Morality often involves an overcoming of self-interest. Moral reality doesn't point backward to our socio-historical development; it points upward to a higher, greater purpose that gives meaning to life. It is a purpose worth living and dying for. (You should read Prof. Peter Kreeft's "A Refutation of Moral Relativism". It's short and sweet.) [Name withheld]

From a reader:

Jonah: The folks at Georgetown must be mighty proud. They've got a student who has already figured out the linchpin of human civilization just two months into his freshman year. It's hard to know where to begin addressing someone possessed of such airtight intellectual self-sufficiency. I think the Apostle Paul has your freshman pegged, though: "Professing to be wise, they became fools" (Rom 1:22). I'm sure the more learned and articulate Corner theologians can do a better job with this kid than I, but it seems to me that his argument about self-interest proves nothing. If you define it broadly enough, anything can be said to be done out of self-interest. For me, the salient point is that God challenges His people to define self-interest in a new way, apart from secular standards of morality. If I act according to self-interest as God defines it, I will inevitably act against self-interest as the secular world defines it. That we have continually failed to live up to God's standard throughout history is clearly right and just as clearly irrelevant in determining the existence of a divine moral standard. Thanks for your writing.

Bush up by 6% according to Newsweek. But to be perfectly honest, I've thought Newsweek is the single most unreliable national poll on any issue since I started paying attention during the Clinton impeachment. But, while I doubt the size of the lead I find the directoon of the trend pretty encouraging.

Meanwhile, the Washington Postdaily tracking poll has Bush up 3 after two days of a tie.

From a reader:

I'm a freshman at Georgetown, and this is a favorite topic of study for me; how morality, and things such as rights for human beings, arise assuming that there is no supreme being, and that humans have no inherent value from their existence, no moreso than an animal.

The linchpin is self-interest.

Everyone does, for better or for worse, what they believe is in their own self-interest. However, us being more advanced cereberally than animals, we've discovered that forming social covenants (i.e. government) that cause us to pledge to respect, in a variety of ways, the self-interest of others, is in all of our self-interests. Because, given the uncertainty of the future, even if we're strong today, we could be weak tomorrow -- or given our biological urge to procreate and pass on our genetic code, our offspring generations from now could be opporessed by those who are stronger in the future, if we do not form a society to protect their freedoms.

And thus, from self-interest, are derived concepts such as Fairness, Equality, Liberty, and Freedom.

People operate in their own self-interest regardless of a revelatory standard. As an agnostic nontheist who was not raised in Christianity, the contrast between the revelation of Jesus imparted in the New Testament (Where Jesus' words seem more akin to Buddhism than anything else) and the actions of his followers over the past two thousand years is... staggering, to say the least.

The world is as we know it today largely based on the actions of billions of people, over the course of history, all working according to their own self-interest as best they've understood it.

We have a standard of morality in the world, and while not perfect, it's a damn good one. But we have six thousand years of human thought to thank for it -- not a supernatural deity.

From a reader:

I find myself in agreement with a lot of your article. However, let me just say how I believe liberal Democrats would rebut your argument: They would say that opposition to abortion, particularly opposition to abortion during the very early stages of pregnancy, is based entirely on faith -- that is, that the vast majority of pro-lifers view the unborn child as having a soul, while others look at scientific evidence and ponder whether the unborn child should constitute life in a legal sense. Anti-slavery, anti-poverty measures, and equal rights, on the other hand, are not just based on Christianity or other religious beliefs; they're part of an appeal to "social justice" (abstract, I know) and are universally accepted as good. I would take issue with this type of argument, because I don't think you can just say something is "morally right" if you don't acknowledge where that morality came from (God.) But it is the distinction that Democrats like Kerry would draw between abortion and the other issues you mentioned.

So, Teresa has deigned to release exactly two pages of her tax return. Turn to, um, page 10, (the story is, ahem, tucked away below the fold) of the New York Times for details of what is missing:

“Nothing about the trusts that benefit Mrs. Heinz Kerry herself and her three sons was disclosed.”

Why not? These trusts are, wrote the New York Times, “believed to be worth about a billion dollars.” That’s not exactly an immaterial amount when it concerns a possible First Lady, a woman who, we must assume, has some influence on her husband.

No details of her charitable donations were disclosed.

Again, why not? Were some of those donations to causes that might be politically embarrassing, or were they perhaps to organizations that have supported, directly or indirectly, her husband or his campaign?

If these suggestions are unfair, they should be easy enough for Teresa to refute. All it would take is full disclosure of those returns. How about it, Teresa?

From a reader:

Your logical construction as always is dead on here with Kerry and his faith.

You are without doubt my favorite pundit, needs saying cause now I'm gonna rip you on this one bud.

You would rather drop a bowling ball on your foot rather than admit that a higher power than homo sapien sapiens is required for morality to even exist. If this world is an accident and life the same then there is NO morality. It's all just choices. I read dozens of perfectly logical points from you totally in denial of this while being internally consistent otherwise.

However you repeatedly try to add a dash of morality to your very pretty, tight, and concise logic thus often ruining them, because, you have not thought that, the morality you are trying to add can only come from said higher power and we must all agree on what said higher power has or has not told us about whatever your issue is. Yet you try to add it in ala carte and without mentioning what references or lack thereof from this creator(s) you are referring to.

You ask the folks to accept that say murder is wrong without backing why. This may sound dumb but the fact of the matter is that is utterly unacceptable to appeal to this morality in a vacuum. You, Jonah Goldberg do this ENDLESSLY. I agree vast majorities of us accept my example here as morally wrong but even in the example of murder, let alone when you try to add morality to vastly grayer issues, it strikes me as tremendously weak in this day and age of the 10 commandments being barred from court rooms and suit after suit from atheists trying to keep even the word God from being mentioned on the street, that you see fit to not show where your moral arguments are based.

You would NEVER find it acceptable if you were talking about economics to leave loose ends unsupported. You would NEVER find it acceptable if you were making arguments about the relative merits of which Simpson’s season is the best. You would NEVER find it acceptable if you were making logical statements concerning any major issue of our time.

Please, please, please quit appealing to something called morality without backing up what you are saying. The problem is of course what it has been for all of human history. If you make an appeal based on the creator of the universe you may get hugely different interpretations of whether the communications you are speaking of are from the true God(s) or even if we agree there are being correctly interpreted by you.

The thing that gets me you would never do this if we were discussing Locke. You would mention the passage, give it context, and make statements concerning their meaning in the modern world.

You NEVER do this with morality because you know the pitfalls and just want a sharp looking, sweet smelling garnish for your dishes, and don't want to spend all day slaving for it.

In the words of David Alan Grier to Jim Carrey playing you and me in the car trying to sing R.E.S.P.E.C.T.:

For God’s sake, STOP IT!

There was one reference in a New York Times piece on the Christian left that was too good not to repeat as an example of the lazy assumptions that saturate (if assumptions can saturate), the paper of Walter Duranty. The article includes quotes from a Reverend Jim Wallis. He’s described as the convener and president of an organization by the name of Call to Renewal. Now, Call to Renewal does what it does, and people will have different views as to how benign it is, but note how the Times uncritically describes it as “a group committed to reducing poverty.”

No word, however, where Call to Renewal stands on apple pie.

UPDATE: It should be Ridge Watch. These days the TSA is part of Tom Ridge's empire. Apologies for the error.

Four years ago, the French government paid to set up a museum in the town of Sarran. Its purpose? Housing gifts given to Jacques Chirac by various foreign dignatories (the gifts he declares anyway) but no-one seems that impressed. The Daily Telegraph has more:

“[It] has gone almost three times over budget and is steadily losing money as admission figures slump.”

No surprises there, but then an official, a “senior county councilor”, no less, gives this horrifying glimpse of the bleak, joyless existence of the tots, crones and geezers of Sarran saying, well, this:

"The museum is a superb tourist and cultural asset, both in terms of the permanent exhibition and the temporary presentations as many visiting schoolchildren and elderly people would agree."

Is there really nothing else for these wretches, some of the most vulnerable members of society after all, to do?

But perhaps this takes self-deprecation a little far:

"It's a place where there's constant sunshine. Everyone's incredibly beautiful, skinny and tanned. Basically, it's nothing like England."

Not partisan?

Oh, sure...

I have found it most enjoyable to put the burden of proof on them. The key is to avoid anything remotely confrontational or partisan or they automatically turn into Righteous Angry Kids. When they ask, "Hi! Would you like to help defeat George Bush?", I pretend to have been living on another planet and respond with, "The President? Why? What's he done wrong?" The sputtering and eye-widening alone is priceless-but the payoff really comes when I ask them to give me an example and they find themselves a few sentences into an illogical and unsupportable allegation. I don't let on though-I keep a poker face as long as I can , accented by a few Socratic questions. Once they're softened up, a quick peppering with statistics or facts leaves them absolutely bewildered.

The best one was when the volunteer told ME that she didn't have time to talk right now!

Vermont is a state I love.
I could not look upon the peaks of
Ascutney, Killington, Mansfield, and Equinox
without being moved in a way
that no other scene could move me.
It was here that I first saw the light of day;
here that I received my bride;
here my dead lie, pillowed on the
loving breast of our everlasting hills.

From a reader:

Jonah:

I'm an ex-Jesuit, and a still-devout Catholic.

Let's be clear about what Catholicism actually believes. John Kerry is the
second worst public spokesman for Catholicism, right behind JFK.

Catholics don't oppose abortion because it conflicts with some uniquely
Catholic teaching, like the rules for being a godparent. No Catholic expects
the internal rules for godparenting to apply universally to everyone, just
because we say so. If we did, then Kerry has a legitimate point. But
Catholics oppose abortion, and we expect others to oppose it also, because
it violates humanity.

Now one may argue that it doesn't violate a basic human principle, and
that's a fair argument. But the point here is that when Catholics oppose
abortion, they aren't imposing anything Catholic on anyone. Instead, we're
arguing for fellow humans to oppose abortion on moral grounds which apply to
everyone.

From a reader in response to today's column:

Hello Mr. Goldberg, Great column. As a pastor, I get a little nervous when candidates TRY to wear their so-called religion on their sleeves- especially when it sounds as lame as JFK's. He talked about a "clause" in the bible he liked. (Most of us who read the good book call them "verses") He plays the private faith /public policy split to his advantage when it comes to his faith- as you so adroitly pointed out, and he confuses the right of his church's bishops to censure him or prevent him from taking communion- ("for the good of his own soul" as one bishop put it-) with entanglement of Church and state. And he takes scripture that is aimed at the believing church, not the political system, and seeks to give a "biblical" rational for his positions. Last I looked, the USA was not the same as the Catholic church, the UMC, PCA, ELCA, or any other church body. I would imagine he flusters not only himself, but many people of faith with these oddities. . .

When I was a young Marine officer in Vietnam I had to write after action reports. They were usually based on casualties sustained and bodies found. The actual action took place while most of us had our heads down catching only occasional glmpses of what was going on beyond our fighting hole. Each Marine was given a field of fire to concentrate on so when he was firing his focus was pretty narrow. The fog of war was just a natural result of trying to figure out what was going on when every instinct told you to keep your head in your hole.

But it is relatively easy to tell who is winning most wars. Who is able to engage the enemy forces and destroy them. In Iraq, the US troops are the only force that can do that. Winning is not determined by who can prevent random bombings. That would be a very poor test of military strength. For example, can the insurgents in Falluja prevent, US bombs from dropping on their "safe houses"? In war you win by controlling real estate that you think has some value to you. The amount of real estate controlled by the insurgents is small and shrinking. In every engagement witht he enemy, the inurgents lose. When the US finally decides to take Falluja, the insurgents will be destroyed or flee, but Fallujah will be taken.

The reporter you describe [the Wall Street Journal’s Farnaz Fassihi] appears to be much like someone in combat trying to keep their head down while figuring out what is going on. She needs to look at who can destroy the military of the other. If she focuses on that point she will recognize that the insurgents are losing badly.

I've never emailed before but I am an avid corner fan. This caught my eye today and reminded me of a line in a recent debate.

From today's NYTimes editorial on the Sinclair group's airing of "Stolen Honor: Wounds that never heal":

"Unfortunately, this film is not news, and not journalism. It makes no attempt at balance or fairness. "

The NYTimes lecturing about balance and fairness is a little like Tony Soprano lecturing about law enforcement...

John - I have definitely had the same experience with word-of-mouth reactions. Lots of friends with liberal family members who aren't beltway types, for example, all said Bush won. And most of these people dislike Bush and thought Bush was trounced in the first two. People I've talked to in Ohio and now California (where I've been travelling this week) mostly felt the same way. My email from readers who've canvassed their liberal spouses often back that up (with heavy mentions of Mary Cheney and Kerry's ode to his mom as examples). Who knows if this can withstand the media reaction to the "Who won the debate?" tracking polls but as I argued in my column I think lots of people said "Sure, Kerry won the debate, but I like Bush more" after the final debate.

That's why I'm so psyched about the Zogby tracking poll -- though it would be nice to hear about others. From the partisan pro Kerry crowd I received a fairly brutal deluge of email saying I was fool for writing this:

Here's my meager prediction: The polls will show Bush "lost" the debate, but the polls will also show Bush gained ground because of it.

I present to you the best evidence of Bush's re-election yet - the Mom watch. I work in an office with four mature ladies. Relatively close quarters. They speak not a whiff of politics.Didn't watch on Weds. This morning's topic of conversation ? "How dare they bring up that man's daughter in the debate. You DON'T go there. I can't vote for somebody like that." My confidence has never been higher.

Our friend Robert George isn't voting for George W. Bush. More comments to come.

Clarification: That's Robert A. George not Robert P. George.

I think you're hyperventilating a bit.

As I recall, there was *not* a trail of human rights groups whining. There were spokespeople from at least two organizations (not counting the trade group), and I *think* both of them were directly involved not in human rights monitoring stuff but in direct aid programs of some type.

One was the [spokesman from a] Roman Catholic group. That guy gave, I thought, a very lucid explanation of the difficulties involved. He was just surprised to be having a conversation with a defense contractor. I would be, too. But he gave the clearest explanation of both the difficulties in large-scale relief efforts, and by implication of why defense contractors might be ideal vendors for this AIDS project.

The second...[spokesman] DID make my teeth grate. The "unilateralism" charge was totally unsupported, and the reporter is clearly to blame for that, for not asking for examples, and then not following up with an administration response. And the Halliburton reference was clearly nothing more than a slander.

Teresa Heinz Kerry (speaking last April) on making her tax returns public:

"If some god of taxes would want to come in and look at all of my portfolio, I'd let them...but I don't think I have the right to put my children's privacy out into the open."

Some politicians' children, it seems, are more equal than others.

Or is it just that Mrs Kerry, to follow, Mrs. Edwards' twisted logic, is "ashamed" of her children's finances?

If Mrs Edwards is being obtuse, that's nothing compared with the 'senior Kerry aide' also quoted in the story. Kerry's comments were not inappropriate, she said. "The woman is in her thirties. She's public about her sexuality. It was brought up in the last debate. So, what the hell?"

"It was brought up in the last debate." Brought up by whom, I wonder.