CORRESPONDENCE
CORRESPONDENCE Literary Discovery I recently became aware of the J. Gordon Coogler Award for Worst Book of the Year (“Carter’s Coogler Hat Trick,” TAS, July/August 2007). I readily admit...
...What goes, mate...
...His love of South Carolina and Columbia does shine through...
...Pat Buchanan New York Times Bestseller “Highly readable account of a remarkable journalistic career… A meaty book, full of delicious anecdotes...
...while the DNA coding for the active site of an enzyme is “highly conserved,” as biologists put it...
...Point in fact, no one possessing serious science credentials gives a whit about ID nor the unspeakable “Discovery Institute,” an appellation that would have done the old Soviets proud...
...So often the land of my birth is disparaged by writers whose view of our region is distorted by preconceived notions and prejudice...
...After living in the South for all of my many years, I still occasionally encounter the same problem with some of my brethren...
...You May Diary (“Clinton Country,” TAS, May 2007...
...He said I had no business being in his country CORRESPONDENCE taking his picture without his permission...
...Wall Street Journal “An extraordinary inside look at life in Washington over the last 50 years...
...ARTHUR COOGLER Columbia, South Carolina Art’s Descent Roger Scruton’s “Art, Beauty, and Judgment” (TAS, July/August 2007) is an admirable attempt to solve the puzzle of 20th-century aesthetic degradation, but, like a wooden puzzle ball trashed by a toddler, the critical piece is missing...
...TERRY LEE MCQUAY Marvin, North Carolina could navigate by it, but there was a simpler way” (“Einstein’s Revolution, and Counterrevolution,” TAS, June 2007...
...I said “No” and we got into a shoving match...
...It was spawned from an atheistic faith “Both a brutally candid and important book, as well as a riveting read...
...Until the arrival of GPS and other advanced systems, I flew over the Atlantic and Pacific oceans multiple times, each time calculating our position by celestial navigation using a sextant...
...There was a need for food and material all over a damaged world, and there was a demand for oil to make it all possible...
...I hope TAS can do a book review on Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution, which was briefly mentioned in Tom Bethell’s article...
...Looking back after these many years, the incident appears telling...
...Good Job, Brownie James Taranto’s “No News Is Good News” (TAS, June 2007) caught my attention...
...ThomasEWoods.com Crown Forum Available wherever books are sold SEPTEMBER 2007 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 11...
...The imbecilic drop-cloths of Jackson Pollock have superseded the supernatural magnificence of Michelangelo...
...EDWARD B. ELMER San Antonio, Texas Battle of Darwin Tom Bethell makes the assertion that “Darwinian theory is not falsifiable by any observation...
...Professor Behe—a rather sad and pitiable character who seems to revel in any attention paid him—is an embarrassment to the fine institution, Lehigh University, that employs him...
...The Arab leading the camel glanced in our direction and abruptly stopped the wagon and ran towards us with his hand extended...
...When WWII hostilities ended in August of 1945, President Truman asked merchant seaman to remain on the job because millions of troops with equipment wanted home...
...However, in today’s society, I suppose like Paris Hilton, Kato Kaelin, or Anna Nichole Smith, it is better to be remembered for something—anything—than to be forgotten...
...When fair minded people step back and integrate all the recent scientific findings, the logic points in one direction—that there is purposeful design behind life...
...The family tree of species, based on DNA, turned out to match the family tree based on anatomy...
...As you critique recent books with a political lens, I’m not sure how JGCs poetry relates since he did not write books, per se, nor did he drift often into the political realm...
...This a superb book...
...If this had not been the case—if, for example, humans had turned out to be unrelated to primates, or using a different genetic code altogether—then Darwinism would have been falsified on the spot...
...The rhetorical techniques employed by ID advocates have been extensively critiqued elsewhere and do not bear repeating here, save for their effort to create a straw man in the form of something called “Darwinism...
...It worked every time and was/is very accurate...
...Tim Russert CROWN FORUM crownforum.com SEPTEMBER 2007 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 9 CORRESPONDENCE which was loosened during the French Revolution and reached its zenith during the heyday of the USSR...
...Of course, any attempt to defend so-called “Intelligent Design” is challenged by the fundamental risibility of the subject matter, so Mr...
...True, today’s scientific community is in the firm hold of Darwinism...
...And people know this...
...Then, using scientific facts and logic, Behe shows how bacteria and viruses develop immunity to drugs and why this is the limit of “improvement” that Darwin’s natural selection and random mutations can do for them—i.e., this is the edge of evolution, beyond which is purposeful design...
...Also I had to laugh at his description of the two attractive young girls at the Waffle House whose accents were so thick that Mr...
...Mencken implied years ago, J. Gordon Coogler was one of the few glimmers of literary talent in the South in the late 1800s...
...As the two latter abominations attest, rejection of the divine has only intensified with the passage of time...
...It’s no coincidence that “art” literally went down the toilet as the West embarked on its first Godfree century...
...What was the greatest unknown scandal of Bill Clinton’s presidency...
...The more that is learned about living organisms, the more complexity and design is seen...
...The direct aesthetic corollary is infantile, moronic art obsessed with noxious bodily effluvia, such as Duchamp’s “La Fontaine,” Serrano’s “Piss Christ,” or Ofili’s “The Holy Virgin Mary...
...Thank you for lending your ear...
...Random mutations occur throughout the genetic code, but mutations in the business end of an enzyme are likely to be harmful, and thus tend to eliminate themselves from the gene pool...
...I disagree there was no simpler way...
...Now, after more than a century of assiduous attempts to rid himself of God, Western man has regressed to a state of spiritual idiocy...
...DR...
...I readily admit that some of J. Gordon Coogler’s poetry is pretty good and some is pretty bad, and some is “tongue in cheek...
...I was ready to punch him when an army jeep pulled up with two British MP’s...
...He was very angry and obviously wanted me to pay him...
...The other MP, after talking to the man, came up and said the Arab didn’t want money, he wanted my “brownie” camera...
...The part in Scheuer’s answer SEPTEMBER 2007 that made me grab pen and paper was, “He simply wants us out of his neighborhood...
...ALEX J. VOTION San Antonio, Texas Nothing Simpler I believe Tom Bethell is wrong when he writes, in the penultimate paragraph of his June column, “It is like Ptolemaic astronomy...
...But the future is not theirs...
...HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED...
...When Darwinism was originally adopted by the biological community, it was because it made sense of a welter of information about anatomy...
...This is because the USSR was the first state where atheism was the official religion...
...I proceeded to take pictures...
...As a scientific theory, Darwinism is dead man walking...
...As we walked along a very dry and dusty road towards town, we came upon a water wagon...
...one asked...
...Not long after we “docked” and all pumps were going in Port Aden, a few of us talked of going to town and looking for excitement...
...He references an exchange between former CIA man Michael Scheuer and NBC’s Tim Russert in a November 2004 interview...
...And the rash of recent books attacking religion by atheists Sam Harris, Christopher Hitchens, and Richard Dawkins is but a cry of rage from a ideology that knows it’s fading into irrelevance...
...Understand, today’s Darwinism did not evolve in a vacuum...
...Until then, Western artists tried to transcend the imperfect temporal and carnal limitations of human vision with works that aspired to the perfection of the eternal and divine...
...The less important a particular stretch of DNA, the more quickly it changes from species to species...
...The upward direction of artistic aspiration did not change even during the Renaissance, only the power and speed of the ascent...
...Parents who smirk at modern art and whisper that their child “could do better” should soberly nurture their child’s faith, for when the West is no longer embarrassed of God, its artistic embarrassment will also cease...
...His work largely supported his mother and sisters after his father died, so I tend to give him some credit for his efforts, despite the criticisms of his literary talent...
...Instead of freeing man from God and being a route to Utopia, atheism has brought unimagined grief to the world...
...Now, I have yet to meet anyone in science or the academy—in fact, no one at all other than the small cluster of ID devotees—ever to use that term...
...HENRY A. JACKSON III Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Southern Charm Please relay my thanks to Ben Stein for the very nice comments he made about the South in his Just ask...
...PETER SKURKISS Stow, Ohio P.S...
...Darwinism at AEI,” TAS, July/August 2007) This is far from true...
...The Soviet Union was a major force in the acceptance of Darwinism...
...When conservatives correctly criticize the academy for letting professors hide behind the defense of tenure—be it the selfregarding frivolousness of a Cornel West or the derangement of a Ward Churchill—they are of course correct...
...For much of the early 20th century, those of the scientific community who were mesmerized by either the USSR and/or the ideals of the French Revolution couldn’t help but have their materialistic belief shape how they formulated theories and interpreted scientific observations when it came to issues of the origins and diversity of life...
...I told him I didn’t understand Arabic but it was obvious the man wanted money for taking his picture...
...Consistency demands the same opprobrium be brought to bear on Professor Behe...
...Again, many thanks for a wonderfully warm and humorous article...
...Darwinism holds sway in the universities not due to the rigors of science but rather by the stubborn faith in materialism of its tenured proponents...
...Mr...
...But this is a legacy of the past...
...Some time during 1946 I found myself on an oil tanker in a shuttle between Aden, Arabia, and Bahrain...
...I am a retired 21-year-plus L o o k i n g r t h e t r u t haboutAme fo r i c a ? n h i s t o r y . USAF pilot, with ten of those years in the C-130 cargo aircraft...
...As pilot, I followed the navigators’ instructions of course...
...JOHN R. HAINES Philadelphia, Pennsylvania Tom Bethell is correct: Darwinism is 19th-century materialism dressed up as science...
...It barely qualifies as a scientific the8 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR SEPTEMBER 2007 CORRESPONDENCE ory for that reason...
...The experiment has been tried and has been a colossal failure...
...Just as the former Soviet Union has been totally discredited, so has its religion of materialism...
...As H.L...
...The theory is being hammered by new advances in the real sciences ranging from embryology to information theory to astrophysics to 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR microbiology...
...Divine” has come to mean its antonym, i.e., “promising supreme carnal satisfaction...
...Another oddity biologists found strengthens the argument for Darwinism (natural selection of random variations) and against design, intelligent or stupid...
...I believe Pat Buchanan and Rep...
...But the screw has turned...
...But when we started reading the genetic code itself, the theory was dramatically confirmed by the DNA...
...CORRESPONDENCE Literary Discovery I recently became aware of the J. Gordon Coogler Award for Worst Book of the Year (“Carter’s Coogler Hat Trick,” TAS, July/August 2007...
...The encounter with the Arab was not the excitement we were looking for and we were glad when we left his “neighborhood” and the Mideast...
...I would prefer to see JGC remembered for his modest successes and talents, instead of being held up for ridicule...
...Formerly intelligible words, such as “holy,” “righteous,” and “fallen,” now elicit uncomfortably blank looks or cynical sneers...
...TARAS WOLANSKY Kerhonkson, New York Tom Bethell’s “Darwinism at AEI” is one of the silliest articles to appear in your otherwise excellent journal...
...NOW YOU’LL KNOW...
...He wants us out of the Middle East...
...I suppose Professor Behe is left to comb through Darwin’s extensive writings for quotes to take out of context when his own papers languish, unpublished and unlamented, and his utterances are derided by his peers...
...Russert: But do you believe that being ‘tough on Israel’ would in any way change Osama bin Laden’s agenda or desire to destroy America...
...Did the Founding Fathers support immigration...
...Bethell, I am not sure which is worse, your cringe-making efforts to explain biology or archeology, or your fatuous devotion to Professor Behe...
...This, among other things, allowed Communism to capture the hearts of many in the intellectual class in the West, giving tremendous creditability to a dogmatic materialistic view of life...
...I also understand the Apollo astronauts flew to and from the Moon using the same “fixed Earth” calculations...
...Stein’s perception of the subtle gentility of Southerners is much appreciated, as that quality is very often overlooked or ignored by other journalists...
...I grabbed my “brownie” and a seaman friend and I went ashore...
...Ron Paul have said basically the same thing, Osama and his Jihadist have attacked us because we are there in his “neighborhood,” his “Middle East...
...Bethell has my sympathy if not my admiration...
...The most impressive part of it for me was Behe’s description of the “trench warfare” that man and the malaria parasite and HIV virus have waged against each other...
...Moreover, as a distant relative, I suppose it is only natural for me to tend to be a bit more charitable...
...The math behind the tables we used to position ourselves on the Earth assumed the sun, moon, and stars move around the Earth and that the Earth itself is fixed in space...
...Stein could not understand what they were saying...
...Did capitalism cause the Great Depression...
Vol. 40 • September 2007 • No. 7
