The prospect of Iraqi elections, currently scheduled for 30 January 2005, seems in jeopardy right now.  There is the question of stability and security, so necessary for credible elections.  There is the fact that nearly 17 political/religious groups within Iraq have asked for a six-month postponement.  Finally, there is the fact that the minority Sunnis, who have held power for decades, will be marginalized by the majority Shiites, who very much want the election to occur as scheduled.  How should we think about all of this?  Several thoughts:

• First, a comment about the terrorist insurgency and the connection to the election.  Basic order in Iraq is the necessary prerequisite for both elections and a national debate about the shape of Iraq’s future government.  In many ways, the US is fighting not one but two distinct insurgencies.  The more numerous is a mobilized movement of Iraqi Sunnis, some of them former Baath Party members, and all beneficiaries of Saddam Hussein’s pro-Sunni policies.  As Noah Feldman has argued, “Motivated as much by a desire to dominate Iraq as by nationalist, anti-American ideology, these insurgents can rely on near universal sympathy in the Sunni triangle.  They want to fight until it becomes clear that they cannot make the Americans leave and that they have more to gain by joining the political process than by keeping up an indefinite and ultimately suicidal civil war.” 

Feldman also makes clear that there is a second group of insurgents--foreign jihadis in Iraq who form a separate insurgency with their own different motivations.  These insurgents seek to make Iraq into a new Afghanistan: “a venue for quasi-permanent holy war against the latest foreign invader.  The jihadi insurgents cannot be reasoned with and will never give up.  They will leave only when the local Sunnis actively kick them out, and even then will not go without a fight.”  The US must divide these two insurgencies if it is to succeed in Iraq.  What makes this rather difficult right now is the absence of credible Sunni leadership.  If the Sunnis participate in the election, then the leadership they choose may be able to function as a kind of proxy for those who are presently leading the insurgency.  Whether we like it or not, the current Sunni insurgents and the people who are sympathetic to them must be represented in the political process that will follow the elections.  Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the revered Shiite leader who insists on elections in January, must be confronted and told that there will be elections, but if the Sunnis do not participate, then there will be no doubt permanent civil war.  Once the elections are held, the difficult job of negotiating a constitutional settlement can proceed meaningfully only if all Iraqis have a voice.  Muqtada al-Sadr has given up his fight and joined the political process.  A successful constitution must preserve and recognize that there are three main groups in Iraq—the Kurds in the north, who will need some form of autonomy; the Sunnis in the center, who will demand some fair share of state resources; and the Shiites, who are the majority but who cannot lord it over the other two.  The US has a delicate task to bring all of this together.  It is not hopeless, but it will take a balance of military force, deliberate negotiations and God’s grace to make it happen.  May we be praying to that end.

• Second, the US is currently cleaning up a major offensive in the Sunni triangle, principally at Fallujah, as a costly last-ditch effort to being about a new, unified Iraq.  This effort is designed to reduce the brutal intimidation of the Sunni population by the dead-end Baathists and others seeking to retake power they enjoyed under Saddam.  But when these offensives are over, the Sunnis will need to decide:  Either they will join the new Iraq by participating in the upcoming elections or they will institutionalize the civil war that they have already started.  Charles Krauthammer suggests that the US insist that the Kurds in the North and the Shiites in the South take over major parts of dealing with the Sunni insurgency, because both the Kurds and the Shiites have a role to play in putting down the insurgency.  In one sense, a civil war already exists in Iraq and the US must use the Kurds and the Shiites to put down the Sunni-led insurgency.  If they do not, there will be no hope for a unified Iraq and all our efforts as a nation will be in vain.  This is a risky proposal, but a logical one that could bring an end to the blood-letting in Iraq.

See Krauthammer’s essay in the Washington Post (27 November 2004) and Feldman’s essay in the Wall Street Journal (16 November 2004).

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THE LIBERAL/RADICAL BIAS OF THE AMERICAN CAMPUS

George Will reports that one recent study of 1,000 professors finds that Democrats outnumber Republicans at least 7 to 1 in the humanities and social sciences.  That imbalance, more than double what it was three decades ago, is intensifying because younger professors are more uniformly liberal than the older cohort that is retiring.  Another study of voter registration records, including those of professors in engineering and the hard sciences, found nine Democrats for every Republican at Berkeley and Stanford.  Among younger professors, there were 183 Democrats and six Republicans.  The American Enterprise magazine reported on a 2002 examination of voting records in various college communities.  Some of the findings:  Cornell: 166 liberals, 6 conservatives; Stanford: 151 liberals, 17 conservatives; Colorado: 116 liberals, 5 conservatives; UCLA: 1412 liberals, 9 conservatives. 

In a powerful article in the Chronicle of Higher Education (12 November 2004) by Mark Bauerlein, the liberal/radical bias of the college campus is affirmed in a compelling manner.  Bauerlein writes that academic work today must be deemed “relevant,” which means that academic research must meet certain political orientations to be accepted.  He offers the following examples:  “Schools of education, for instance, take constructivist theories of learning as definitive, excluding realists (in matters of knowledge) on principle, while the quasi-Marxist outlook of cultural studies rules out those who espouse capitalism.  If you disapprove of affirmative action, forget pursuing a degree in African-American studies.  If you think that the nuclear family proves the best unit of social well-being, stay away from women’s studies.”  Bauerlein concludes that “any political position that dominates an institution without dissent deteriorates into smugness and complacency.  The solution is a climate in which the worst tendencies of group psychology are neutralized.”

Bauerlein shows that in most academic fields in the humanities and the social sciences, as well as some in the hard sciences, their “very constitutions rest on progressive politics and make it clear from the start that conservative outlooks will not do.”  He writes, “A fledging literary scholar who studies anti-communist writing and concludes that its worth surpasses that of counterculture discourse in terms of cogency of its ideas and morality of its implications won’t go far in the application process.”  Bauerlein concludes that “Liberal orthodoxy is not just a political outlook; it’s professional one.  Rarely is its content discussed.  The ordinary evolution of opinion—expounding your beliefs that confirm or refute them—is lacking, and what should remain arguable settles into surety.  With so many in harmony, and with those who agree joined also in a guild membership, liberal beliefs become academic manners.  It’s social life in a professional world. . . .”

Bauerlein identifies three academic protocols that characterize the Academic Community:

1. The protocol of Common Assumption, by which he means that all academics make the assumption that political and social liberalism are a given.  To dissent or to disagree with that Assumption is to be marginalized.

2. The protocol of False Consensus Effect, which means that people think that the collective opinion of their own group matches that of the larger population.  If the members of a group reach a consensus and rarely encounter those who dispute it, they tend to believe that everybody thinks the same way.  The effect, Bauerlein concludes, is “Instead of uniting academics with a broader public, it isolates them as a ritualized club.” 

3. The final protocol is the Law of Group Polarization, which means that when like-minded people deliberate as an organized group, the general opinion shifts toward extreme versions of their common beliefs.  Bauerlein concludes that “The majority expands its power throughout the institution, but its thinking grows routine and parochial.” 

The modern American college/university then is locked into a liberal/radical bias.  But it must change; it must allow greater conservative presence in its sacred halls.  To do so would provide a wider spectrum of opinion, which accords with its claims of diversity.  To do so also would allow the liberal/radical bias to face true antagonists, which should allow opportunities to strengthen one’s own position in active dialogue.  Finally, to earn a public role in American society, professors must engage the full range of public opinion. 

George Will concludes his essay by arguing that the academy has “marginalized itself, partly by political shrillness and silliness that have something to do with the parochialism produced by what George Orwell called ‘smelly little orthodoxies.’”  Academics are diverse in everything but thought—and they do so with huge state and federal subsidies paid by the taxpayer and by huge corporate grants.  Both government and the corporate world had better wake up to the liberal/radical bias on America’s colleges and universities.  They undermine the very free market, democratic order they cherish.

See Will’s editorial in the Washington Post (28 November 2004).

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BOB BARKER AND ANIMAL RIGHTS

Host of the TV game show, the “Price is Right” and former host of the Miss Universe and Miss USA pageants, Bob Barker, is using his wealth to promote the cause of animal rights.  He has established endowments at several law schools—including those at Stanford, Columbia, Duke and UCLA—for the study of animal-rights law.  Other law schools—among them Northwestern University and the University of Michigan—are also in the running for major gifts.  His idea is to train a generation of lawyers, judges and legislators in animal rights and their widespread cruelty and neglect.  How should we think about this as Christians?  Three thoughts:

1. We are the stewards of God’s world.  We do not own anything, for He owns everything.  We are therefore to manage God’s world for Him.  This includes dominion over the animals (see Genesis 1:26ff).  We are to be good stewards of all, which means we must not wantonly destroy animals or any part of God’s world.  But because we are the dominion stewards, the animals and plants of God’s world serve us.

2. It is imperative that we remember that only humans are created in God’s image.  We both resemble God in the area of communicable attributes (e.g., love, righteousness, grace, mercy, forgiveness, etc.) and we represent Him.  Only humans have God-given rights.  Animals do not bear His image and do not have such rights.

3. It is therefore difficult to argue that animals deserve the same rights as humans.  It is difficult to defend the idea that animals are to be a part of the rule of law, where they have the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as humans enjoy.  Barker’s view of the animal world is very close to a pantheistic one where all the specifics of the physical world are considered equal and all a manifestation of “god.”

In short, Barker’s plan to aggressively promote animal rights is both a tragedy and a travesty.  It is a tragedy because such money could be better spent defending the rights of humans, such as unborn babies, the mentally ill or the elderly.  It is a travesty because it minimizes the value of the human at the expense of the animals.  We must treat animals with dignity and honor, but they are not our equal. 

See the article on Barker in the New York Times (27 November 2004).

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