Eye on the Watcher’s Council

As you may know the members of the Watcher’s Council each nominate one of his or her own posts and one non-Council post for consideration by the whole Council. The complete list of this week’s Council nominations is here.

It is with genuine regret that I report the departure of Andrew Olmsted from the Watcher’s Council. I’ve enjoyed and appreciated Andrew’s short tenure on the Council enormously but he’s been called into active duty, will be shipping to Iraq shortly, and, consequently, be unable to continue his role on the Council. I wish him Godspeed and hope he stays well and safe.

Meanwhile, a billet has opened up on the Council. If you have a blog of your own, please consider applying. The rules and requirements are here.

The Glittering Eye, “Taking Responsibility”

My submission this week is a rather feeble thought on the limits of Congressional power in governing the president’s control of the military.

The Colossus of Rhodey, “Teacher Merit Pay”

Hube considers the subject of merit pay for teachers which rears its ugly head every few years.  This has been a hot topic of conversation in my family for more than 40 years so I’m pretty familiar with the subject.

Plans for merit pay inevitably compensate teachers for the wrong things or for things beyond their control or both.  It’s a plan that looks a lot better from 30,000 feet than from up close.

Our educational system, like our healthcare system, is in need of basic reform and for much the same reasons.  In the case of the educational system, the schools are a lousy substitute for parents, families, neighbors, churches, and all the other institutions that play a role in rearing children but parents persist in believing they can drop their children off at the schools and, when they pick them up 12 years later, the schools will have turned them into worthwhile citizens, employees, and people.

While I agree that “it takes a village to raise a child” anybody who thinks that DCFS or the Board of Education are villages has a screw loose.

Eternity Road, “A Mandatory Disaggregation”

I found Francis Porretto’s submission this week a mixed bag.  I think it’s possible to make vaguely coherent arguments about why, for the duration, we should be especially wary of Muslims and Islam.  The arguments include expedience, necessity, the difficulty in distinguishing between Muslim charitable organizations and terrorist cells, and the support that mosques receive from foreign governments (and individuals hard to distinguish from governments).  That’s how Francis ends his post and, as I say, it’s possible to make at least somewhat coherent arguments in that direction and what he proposes are measures that should be given serious consideration, if only to reject them.

But Francis opens with comparisons that are flawed on the face.  The games, slavery, and the Inquisition were not benign institutions corrupted by a few wicked individuals.  They were institutions that we have come to understand were intrinsically wrong.  Slavery was wrong because of the effects it wreaked both on the slave and the slaveholder, not because it was practiced improperly by a few.

I know that Francis is a devout Catholic and as such must certainly be aware that very nearly every argument he raises against Islam are arguments that have been raised by the enemies of religion as such and the enemies of Roman Catholicism in particular.  Within my lifetime it was commonly said that

• Catholicism wasn’t transparent enough
• Catholicism demanded that it was the only true religion and source of truth
• Catholicism erected barriers between Catholics and non-Catholics
• Catholics have a greater loyalty to Rome than to the United States and that Rome was reflexively anti-American

and these things meant that Catholics couldn’t be good Americans.  A lot of this talk was put aside when John Kennedy was elected to the presidency but you still hear some of it today.

The great difference is that Catholics weren’t seizing and bombing our embassies or seizing airplanes and flying them into buildings putatively in the name of their religion.

Even if every single point that Francis makes in his post were incontrovertibly true there would still be another problem with it:  we need the cooperation of moderate Muslims in the conflict ahead and the course that he proposes would alienate them.

I try my very hardest to mute my criticism of Council posts as much as humanly possible.  I hope I haven’t gone beyond the boundaries here.  If I have, I am sincerely sorry.

Rhymes With Right, “Opposing Obama Isn’t About Race”

I agree with Greg 100% in what he writes in this post and would only add a question:  why do otherwise sensible people (not Greg—the editorialist he criticizes) continue to repeat the 19^th century-esque “one drop” claim?

The Education Wonks, “No Spanky-Spanky in the Golden State?”

EdWonk is critical of California’s proposed legislation to ban parents’ spanking of their children.  I wonder how they plan to enforce it.

Done With Mirrors, “Iraqi Refugees”

Callimachus notes another consequence of allowing Iraq to become a failed state:  the flood of refugees.  While I agree with Callimachus here it’s hard for me to see how we’ll avoid accepting a lot of terrorists among the hundreds of thousands of refugees we’ll accept.

Soccer Dad, “Too Much Munich?”

Soccer Dad critiques the critiques of the movie, Munich, and observes that more reflection on the actual events of the 1972 Olympics is in order.

American Future, “On the Possibility of an Embargo of Iranian Oil”

Marc lays out the case for and considers the likelihood of an embargo of Iranian oil.  As I noted in the comments to the post that would be a hard-nosed approach to a difficult problem that might have a chance of working and, consequently, we’ll never do it.

Joshuapundit, “’Moderate Abbas’: ‘Aim the Guns Against Israel!’”

Freedom Fighter is not happy with Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas nor with the Bush Administration’s apparent attraction to him.  It’s hard for me to make an intelligent comment on this issue:  I think the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a wicked one in the technical sense, there is no solution to the problem as the term is usually used, and the most that can be hoped for is a process.   I don’t see much progress from the present players in achieving that.

Right Wing Nut House, “D’Souza and the Illiberality of Criticism”

Rick Moran comments on Dinesh D’Souza and the counter-productness of fomenting outrage.

The Sundries Shack, “Obama, the Apostate”

Jimmie Bise considers some of the more absurd criticisms of Barack Obama and asks a few pointed questions.

Well, I’ve decided which posts I’ll vote for.  Which posts would get your vote?