David Aikman
Musings and commentary on the world scene from Senior Fellow David Aikman
Israel-Lebanon: A Clash of Cultures
Fri 18 Jul 2008 by David Aikman
The biggest loser in the “transaction” between Israel and Hezbollah is Lebanon.
In the Middle East last week, no two scenes could have highlighted more vividly the clash of cultures in the Arab-Israeli dispute than the contrasting events in Lebanon and in Israel. In Beirut, there were shouts of acclamation, brass bands, and kisses on the cheek for the returning heroes—along with crowing signs in Arabic that read “humiliation” across a photograph of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. In Israel, the return of the bodies of two Israeli soldiers, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev, was followed by the mournful sounds of funerals conducted with quiet dignity in Nahariya and Haifa for the two men. The exchange of two dead soldiers for five living prisoners and 199 dead Lebanese and Palestinian fighters was the fruit of some eighteen months of painful negotiation between Israel and Hezbollah that followed the 33-day “July War” in 2006 between Israel and Hezbollah.
Aikman on the New Atheism
Thu 10 Jul 2008 • Responses: 3 • by TTF Staff
Senior Fellow David Aikman, who is also Professor of History at Patrick Henry College, spoke in February for the college’s “Faith and Reason” lecture series on the “New Atheism” of writers including Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens.
A press release, with links to the transcript of the text (PDF) and a free MP3 recording of the lecture, is on the college web site.
The lecture, “Weaknesses of the New Atheism,” anticipates arguments in Dr. Aikman’s new book, The Delusion of Disbelief: Why the New Atheism is a Threat to Your Life, Liberty, and Pursuit of Happiness, and will be a good introduction to that volume for people considering its purchase.
China’s Olympics: The Earthquake Dividend
Mon 30 Jun 2008 by David Aikman
The long run-up to the opening of the Summer Olympic Games in Beijing in August has been more volatile than for any Olympics since the U.S.-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics. First were the serious questions about the degree of pollution in China’s capital city and pollution’s potential effect on athletes and their performance. Then came the controversy surrounding the much-publicized journey to Beijing of the Olympic Torch. Protesters in several countries tried to snatch or douse the torch because of sympathy for Tibetans who rioted against the Chinese in March this year. Counter-protests brought hundreds of Chinese into the streets of Western cities and inspired often vicious Chinese Internet blog posts against the West in general.
Zimbabwe, the Scandal of Africa
Tue 24 Jun 2008 by David Aikman
It certainly looks as if the Almighty’s help will be needed in removing Mugabe from power.
The average American—or average Irishman or Frenchman, for that matter—could be forgiven for not knowing the answer to the following question: which country in the world has inflation of more than 15,000 percent, unemployment of 80 percent, and the lowest life-expectancy rate in the world (age 37 for men)? The answer—Zimbabwe—is not only the scandal of Africa today, but also the current scandal of world politics.
The immediate crisis in Zimbabwe is that the country’s president, Robert Mugabe, seems quite determined not to permit opposition leader Morgan Tsvangirai to assume political power in the country. In an initial election March 29, Tsvangirai, leader of the political party Movement for Democratic Change, won 47.9 percent of the vote, to Mugabe’s 43.2 percent. The election results, however, were not released until May 2, however, leading the opposition to charge that Mugabe’s party, ZANU-PF (Zimbabwe African People’s Union—Patriotic Front), had suppressed the results.
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Supernatural
Thu 19 Jun 2008 by David Aikman
Despite Lucas’s New Age leanings, he firmly sides with traditionalists in the view that ancient religious artifacts of traditional religions contain real powers that should not be tampered with by human beings.
Warning: This commentary contains spoilers for the latest film.
After nineteen years of absence from movie screens around the world, the re-appearance of Indiana Jones in a new movie, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was accompanied by security precautions worthy of a new Pentagon weapons project. Movie extras were required to sign a non-disclosure agreement about the content of the movie, and one actor was allowed just a few hours to read the script in London prior to contract-signing before a courier flew it back to Los Angeles to re-deposit it in a safe. In Los Angeles, in a police sting operation, a man was arrested for trying to sell production photographs that he had allegedly stolen from the offices of producer George Lucas.
Australia’s ‘National Sorry Day’
Fri 30 May 2008 by David Aikman
It’s always risky for nations to apologize, but Kevin Rudd’s act of contrition for Australia was based in Christian conviction.
On May 26, while Americans were barbecuing hot dogs and collectively grumbling over their beers and Cokes about the outrageous price of gasoline, Australians, fourteen hours ahead of America’s East Coast, were reflecting on their tenth annual commemoration of National Sorry Day.
To most Americans, that phrase might sound like a cynical skit from TV’s Saturday Night Live. But for Australians it is deadly serious. For ten years Australians have been annually reflecting upon the suffering that the country’s white settlers imposed on the indigenous Australians, also called Aborigines.
Lebanon on the Brink
Thu 15 May 2008 by David Aikman
The international community is proving feckless in restraining the influence of Hezbollah and thus Iran in Lebanon.
Has Lebanon, one of the few states in the Arab world with a free press, free elections, and a broadly pro-Western orientation, finally plunged into the abyss of an Islamofascist dictatorship? It looked very like that last week as Hezbollah gunmen, well-armed and well-trained, poured into the streets of Beirut and for a while controlled the city and much of the country. Lebanon appeared about to resume the civil war that ravaged it between 1975 and 1990. More than fifty people died in clashes between rival militias.
China, Tibet, and the Olympics
Mon 05 May 2008 by David Aikman
Placing the Olympics above world politics is a valiant but vain hope.
When the French nobleman and historian Baron Philipe de Coubertin revived the idea of the Olympic Games in Paris in 1894, he was motivated by both nationalism and idealistic internationalism. He felt the French had lost their war with Prussia in 1870 because of their poor physical conditioning. But de Coubertin had also been inspired by an English physician, botanist, and magistrate, William Penny Brookes. Another eccentric idealist and philanthropist, Brookes had first organized an “Olympian Games” in 1850 in the English rural village of Much Wenlock, Shropshire. De Coubertin visited the Much Wenlock Olympics in 1890, and returned to France inspired.
Obama’s ‘Bitter’ Comments
Sun 27 Apr 2008 • Responses: 3 • by David Aikman
The rigors of the campaign lead to what may be a landmark moment.
Every presidential campaign cycle has its landmark moments. Television viewers watching the debate in 1960 between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy were shocked by how unattractive Nixon’s five-o’clock shadow appeared. He lost the debate on television, even though those who heard the debate on the radio thought Nixon had scored more points. Then there was the moment when Ronald Reagan seized the microphone during a 1980 Republican primary debate in New Hampshire and announced that he had “paid” for the microphone and was going to hold onto it. And who can forget Michael Dukakis, George Bush’s opponent in the 1988 election, trying, by driving a tank on camera, to look manly and in-charge and to demonstrate he was commander-in-chief material? Unfortunately, he simply looked absurd.
Barack Obama and Rev. Jeremiah Wright
Tue 01 Apr 2008 by David Aikman
By many observers’ reckoning, Senator Barack Obama’s major speech on race in the U.S. at Philadelphia’s Constitution Center March 18 was one of the rhetorical highlights of the 2008 presidential election season. Obama’s 5,000-word address was skillfully crafted, eloquent, and a powerful attempt to bring balance—and the views of both blacks and whites—into discussion of “America’s original sin” of racial injustice over the centuries. As the son of a white woman from Kansas and a black man from Kenya (which raises the question why people of mixed race with one black parent and one white parent are almost always deemed to be black and not white), Obama is certainly in a good position to shed light on this often poorly illustrated topic.
