Adult stem cells are safe as well as feasible for treatment of stroke in patients, according to the published results of a ground-breaking Phase I trial from the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston. Looking at ten patients in this first study, the researchers found no study-related severe adverse events, and while the study was not designed to determine effectiveness, the team found that most of the patients did better compared with matched untreated patients.

Dr. Sean Savitz, first author, said:

“In order to bring stem cells forward as a potential new treatment for stroke patients, we have to establish safety first and this study provides the first evidence in addressing that goal. Now we are conducting two other stroke cell therapy studies examining safety and efficacy, one of which can be administered up to 19 days after someone has suffered a stroke.”

Results of the study were published in the journal Annals of Neurology.

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Fortunately, last week’s earthquake near Richmond was incapable of producing a damaging tidal wave.  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Washington’s massive bureaucracies and, most specifically, the Environmental Protection Agency.

According to House Speaker John Boehner, the Obama Administration has a regulatory agenda that includes at least 219 new rules that could each impose a regulatory burden of 100 million dollars or more. Such rules are called “major” rules.  (See David Boyer’s article in the 8/31/11 Washington Times.)  Also, EPA is going ahead with seven rulemakings that the agency estimates will together cost over $125 billion (with a “b”) annually – yes that is annually.  (See Conn Carroll’s story in the 8/30/11 Washington Examiner.)

According to an editorial in today’s Wall Street Journal (behind its pay firewall), Speaker Boehner asked the administration for a list of rules it had in the works with potential costs exceeding one billion dollars per year.  The administration responded providing a list of seven rulemakings – four from EPA and three from the Department of Transportation.

Speaker Boehner’s overarching point was that the “economy cannot withstand the barrage of major new federal regulations planned by the administration.”  Of course, the Obamacare and financial industry regulations are also on the drawing board somewhere.

Mark Levin had an excellent commentary on our state affairs at the beginning of his 8/30 broadcast.  He believes that we no longer have a “representative republic.”  This condition exists in large measure, Levin argues, due to unchecked regulation.  He also thinks that we now have an “Imperial Presidency.”

That said, Levin later gave a boldface example.

Listen to the absolutely chilling interview Levin conducts with the CEO of Gibson Guitar who was raided on 8/24/11 by federal agents. (Start at minute 92:00.)  Here is John Hayward’s Human Events background article.  The federal government claims that Gibson is illegally importing wood to make its guitars from India and Madagascar.  Gibson claims that officials from those countries have certified the legality of these exports from their nations.  Additionally, Gibson’s competitors apparently use the same woods from the same sources and have not been raided.  Only time will tell how this will turn out, but this iconic company may not be able to survive the legal costs of fighting a criminal investigation while its productive activities are interrupted.

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There are no less than eight stories dealing with the religious beliefs of President Obama and his Republican challengers on RealClearReligion today.  By historical standards, this is extraordinary: In no previous election season have the faith-related convictions of presidential candidates been so scrutinized.

The scrutiny comes primarily from a secular media mystified, and in some cases, plain disturbed, by the notion that personal faith might affect public policy decisions.  In a much-discussed op-ed, New York Times Executive editor Bill Keller claims that “Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann are both affiliated with fervid subsets of evangelical Christianity — and Rick Santorum comes out of the most conservative wing of Catholicism — which has raised concerns about their respect for the separation of church and state, not to mention the separation of fact and fiction.”

“Fervid subsets?”  Does Keller envision Mrs. Bachmann handling rattlers, or Gov. Perry levitating?  “Raised concerns” where, and who has raised them?  Certain residents of Manhattan’s Upper East Side, whose understanding of the role of faith in American life is defined not by experience but the occasional PBS documentary?  Certainly, if a politician claims to hear audibly the voice of God and asserts divine direction for highly specific policies (e.g., liberal Democrat Woodrow Wilson’s astounding comment that to oppose U.S. entry into the League of Nations was to oppose God), any reasonable person – believer or non-believer – would be justified in feeling uneasy.  Yet to assert, as Keller does, that the faith of a Bachmann, a Perry, or a Santorum might be “a Trojan horse for a sect that believes it has divine instructions on how we should be governed” is both to mis-comprehend orthodox Christian faith and also to disparage the beliefs of most of one’s fellow countrymen.

Perhaps Mr. Keller and his jittery colleagues in the Fourth Estate should reflect on something then-Sen. Barack Obama said in a speech in 2006:

“Americans are a religious people. 90 percent of us believe in God, 70 percent affiliate themselves with an organized religion, 38 percent call themselves committed Christians … the discomfort of some progressives with any hint of religion has often prevented us from effectively addressing issues in moral terms. Some of the problem here is rhetorical – if we scrub language of all religious content, we forfeit the imagery and terminology through which millions of Americans understand both their personal morality and social justice … to say that men and women should not inject their ‘personal morality’ into public policy debates is a practical absurdity. Our law is by definition a codification of morality, much of it grounded in the Judeo-Christian tradition.”

I agree, for the most part; however, the discomfort of liberals with religion goes beyond the scrubbing of language.  It goes to the heart of one’s philosophical basis for life itself: Is there, or is there not, an infinite but personal God who has communicated truth in understandable ways to human beings?  Christians say yes; the irreligious cultural elite would say, “You’ve got to be kidding.”

In 2004, then-Times ombudsman Daniel Okrent – a liberal with an honest conscience – penned these lines about the Gray Lady; they could have been written about much of the “mainstream” press and, much more so, the shrill complainers of Left-wing blog sites and editorial commentary generally:  “Is the New York Times a liberal paper?  Of course it is … These are the social issues: gay rights, gun control, abortion and environmental regulation, among others. And if you think The Times plays it down the middle on any of them, you’ve been reading the paper with your eyes closed.  But if you’re examining the paper’s coverage of these subjects from a perspective that is neither urban nor Northeastern nor culturally seen-it-all; if you are among the groups The Times treats as strange objects to be examined on a laboratory slide (devout Catholics, gun owners, Orthodox Jews, Texans); if your value system wouldn’t wear well on a composite New York Times journalist, then a walk through this paper can make you feel you’re traveling in a strange and forbidding world. Start with the editorial page, so thoroughly saturated in liberal theology that when it occasionally strays from that point of view the shocked yelps from the left overwhelm even the ceaseless rumble of disapproval from the right.”

In his second inaugural address, which is more of a meditation on the sovereignty and justice of God than a political speech, Abraham Lincoln observed, “if God wills that (the Civil War) continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether’.”

In 1865, the New York Times praised Lincoln’s speech for its “calmness, its modesty, its reserve,” and said, “We have a President who will be faithful to the end.”  What would Mr. Keller say of them, and of Lincoln himself, today?

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 According to an AP story by Tom Coyne,Indiana’s new educational reform law appears to be producing good effects in only its first year:

Weeks after Indiana began the nation’s broadest school voucher program, thousands of students have transferred from public to private schools, causing a spike in enrollment at some Catholic institutions that were only recently on the brink of closing for lack of pupils.

In this, the first year under the new law, more than 3,200 students are receiving vouchers to attend private schools.  

The article gives some interesting facts about Our Lady of Hungary Catholic School in South Bend.  It was being considered for closure, but is now being revived as some parents flee the local public schools and the school’s enrollment swells.

Of course, the unions and the religionphobes are apoplectic.  Hopefully, as the program expands in future years, as set forth in the statute, Indiana voters and the rest of the nation will understand why voting by “exiting” a bad school is much more potent than voting in a school board election in which there is really only one choice.

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The Washington Times published an important op-ed about national security today by Brig. Gen. Thomas C. Pinckney (USAF, Ret.) who argued that mandatory budget cuts from a supercommittee deadlock would excessively cut spending on America’s next generation fighter, the F-35.  Pinckney makes the correct point that American military success since Vietnam has depended greatly on air superiority and fighter dominance in our diverse wars.  He talks about how our fighter fleet is aging and many countries are beginning to catch up.  Here are two stunning paragraphs:

Today, countries including Iran, North Korea and Pakistan have fighter jets that match the capabilities of the workhorses of the U.S. fighter fleet, which were designed during the 1970s. The Indian air force surprised many by defeating American fighters during recent war games. Russia and China are developing fifth-generation stealth fighter aircraft that will rival our most advanced fighter jets.

Even small countries can create a formidable air force on the cheap by buying Soviet-made MiG-21s on the global weapons market for the low cost of $100,000 each, upgrading the engines and avionics and outfitting them with self-guided missiles. Coupled with ever-more sophisticated anti-aircraft batteries, determined despots the world over could soon be capable of shooting down any American fighter jet that dares enter their airspace.

I hadn’t heard about the war games with India.  I find it alarming that we would lose war games to any nation, but India is not known for being a military titan.  I guess it is changing with China so close, but this is not an encouraging sign.

America’s military families give us their best, and they deserve our best.   We are spending nothing like the share of GDP that we did on defense during the Cold War, we can afford to purchase air superiority for our air, sea, and land forces.  And, while we are at it let’s bring the F-22.

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A few years ago the New York Times ran a story about a new social phenomenon:  Couples, who claim to love each other, who have an exclusive sexual relationship, and who share financial expenses, are choosing not to live together.  The arrangement is called “Living Apart Together,” and apparently it’s on the rise.  The couples interviewed spoke of their need for “alone time” and “personal space” and a desire not to “wait on” the other person they claim to love.  “Why bother joining households and lose a great city apartment?” one suggested.

Reading that story brought to mind how Woody Allen once described the perfect arrangement he had with Mia Farrow:  separate apartments on opposite sides of Central Park where they could see each other’s lights go off at night.  But we know how that ended.   (For those too young to remember:  Woody ended up having an affair with, and then marrying, his own stepdaughter, and in his defense famously said, “The heart wants what the heart wants.”)

Last week the London Telegraph reviewed another new social relationship trend:  people who are neither married nor in love (nor, in some cases, even acquainted) are apparently having children together through the use of in vitro fertilization.  Why?

The story leads with examples of homosexuals who wanted to have a child of their own partnering up with people of the opposite sex to share biological material.  But also interviewed was this single heterosexual woman, approaching the end of her fertile years, who explained:  “In a worst-case scenario I would seek an anonymous donor, but I’ve always thought a child needs a father.  At the very least I wanted a donor who would visit regularly.”

What kid wouldn’t want Daddy Sperm visiting regularly?  But why does little Johnny hide under the bed when the door bell rings?

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Adding a specific gene to adult stem cells from bone marrow might be used to increase cancer resistance of transplant patients. A University of Kentucky team led by Dr. Vivek Rangnekar studied bone marrow adult stem cells from mice, that were genetically engineered to express a cancer-killing portion of a protein known as Par-4. Par-4 is a “tumor suppressor” protein that selectively induces cellular suicide (known as “apoptosis”) in cancer cells, but not normal cells. The scientists found that the mice were resistant to the growth of various types of tumors. Further, the cancer resistance could be transferred to other, normal mice by a bone marrow adult stem cell transplant. The scientists said that optimizing the adult stem cell transplant of genetically modified cells might be used to treat various tumors, including metastatic tumors.

The study was published in the journal Cancer Biology & Therapy.

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Commuting to Washington, D.C. can be nerve-wracking on the best of days. But when the hour-long commute drags on for more than two hours—as it did this week on the day of our earthquake—it might be especially trying. Motorists are not happy campers when traffic approaches gridlock downtown in the Capitol.

I go slightly out of my way, however, to drive daily down Pennsylvania Avenue. I count it a privilege to pass by the stately Capitol dome with its Statue of Freedom standing proudly on top. The Capitol was planned by George Washington. Hard to believe now, but there were no great domed buildings in America when His Excellency opted for a Roman architectural style. His favorite play was Cato, an English tragedy about a great Roman champion of republican virtue.

As trying as the drive on earthquake Tuesday might have been, the way was eased by my carpooling with George Washington. I’ve been listening to Ron Chernow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book-on-disk, George Washington: A Life.  It’s a wonderful book and the latest of some seven hundred I’ve been able to “read” during fifteen years of commuting.

Chernow’s Washington is a full-blooded figure. He has faults, to be sure, but his virtues shine forth. Chernow describes Washington’s incredible bravery. Young Col. Washington dashes into the teeth of battle during the French & Indian War. He even rushes into a hail of bullets, slashing with his sword against the muskets of British regulars to keep them from shooting their allies, the heroic Virginia militiamen.

Washington studiously avoids all boasting of his military exploits, but in a private letter to his brother Jackie, he notes that he had two horses shot out from under him on the Pennsylvania frontier and four bullet holes in his coat following the 1755 battle that left nearly 700 British and Virginia militiamen dead. It was the worst defeat British arms had suffered in the history of North America.  Washington organized the retreat after the death of Gen. Edward Braddock. He even ordered his wagons to drive over Braddock’s grave so that Indians would not find it and desecrate the body.

Ron Chernow follows Washington’s life where the evidence leads. We wince when we read that the young Washington sold recalcitrant slaves for shipment to the West Indies. That’s where the expression “sold down the river” comes from. And it’s terrible to read that he hanged two deserters from his Virginia militia company. Washington was a stern taskmaster. He expected to be obeyed. But everyone respected him for his justice and growing humanity.

Chernow gives us Washington’s religious views. You would not find him leading prayers, as Gov. Rick Perry recently did. But neither would he spurn public expressions of fidelity and duty to God.

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Stress can stimulate production of new adult neural stem cells. An area of the brain known as the hippocampus responds to environmental conditions, including stress such as being held in isolation, and produces new neural stem cells that are stockpiled for later use. As conditions become more favorable, such as being moved to an enriched environment with various stimuli, the neural stem cells can be used to produce new brain neurons. The new study, published in the journal Neuron, shows that adult stem cell production in the brain is responsive to experience and the environment, indicating that this may act as a form of cellular plasticity for adapting to environmental changes.

A new paper published in the journal Nature further suggests that if those stored neural adult stem cells are not used to produce new neurons, you could be more susceptible to depression. NIH researchers found that new neurons formed by adult stem cells in the brain could protect against depression and stress in a mouse model. However, mice that could not form new neurons had elevated levels of stress hormones and showed more depressive behaviors. The authors note that their results provide evidence to support a direct role for adult neuron formation in depressive illness.

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Think positive, Eeyore! Optimism may lower the risk of stroke. Stroke is the third leading cause of death in the United States. The study published in the journal Stroke, looked at 6,044 adults over the age of 50, and correlated their self-reported optimism with a decrease in acute stroke risk over a two-year period. For every point increase on a standard cognitive test for optimism (a 16-point scale), stroke risk decreased by 9 percent.

The researchers note that the protective effect of optimism may be due to behavioral choices, such as taking vitamins, eating a healthy diet and exercising, but some evidence suggests positive thinking might have a strictly biological impact as well. Previous research has shown that an optimistic attitude is associated with better heart health outcomes and enhanced immune-system functioning, among other positive effects.

After a stroke, keep a positive attitude as well. Promising early results have been seen using adult stem cells to treat stroke.

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I read in a recent issue of the Washington Post that the newspaper’s future is being firmly staked on going “populist.” (I scan the Post, dear reader, so you don’t have to.) The column ran on the editorial page of the capital’s hometown paper, so it must be important. The writer was Patrick Pexton. I’ve never heard of this estimable fellow before, but Mr. Pexton is identified as the Ombudsman for the Post.

Now, an Ombudsman is someone hired by a newspaper to keep it fair, balanced, and not easily swayed. Ombudsman is a Swedish word, imported into our country by those dear Social Democrats who flock to book-signings by Garrison Keillor and who like to think of themselves as populists, not liberals. They think that taxing the people to keep NPR on the air is just another example of good government. Ombudsmen are people who cheer when they see you putting out your re-cycling bin. Shoveling public monies for their pet projects is something they regard as populist, a shovel-ready project if ever there was one.

I was intrigued by the idea of the Washington Post going populist. Does that mean that former Post editor Ben Bradlee will hold his 91^st birthday party in, say, Williamsburg or Annapolis, instead of where he held his 90^th—in the plus chic Ile de Re, off France’s Atlantic coast? (What, Ben, has Martha’s Vineyard become passé?)

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The central irony of Christian citizenship is that no country will find better citizens than those willing to defy its laws if those laws demand a loyalty to the state greater than that owed to the God of the Bible. As Declaration of Independence signer and Princeton president John Witherspoon put it,

Another reason why the servants of God are represented as troublesome is, because they will not, and dare not comply with the sinful commandments of men. In matters merely civil, good men are the most regular citizens and the most obedient subjects. But, as they have a Master in heaven, no earthly power can constrain them to deny his name or desert his cause.

In other words, to be good citizens in time, Christians must be ever mindful that they belong to an eternal kingdom.

Political engagement by Christians is, at a foundational level, unavoidable. If you pay taxes, if you serve in the military, if you get a driver’s license, if you sign a property deed, if you have medical or life insurance, if you turn on the shower or pay a heating bill, what you are doing is in some way touched by government regulation and law.

This engagement does not need to be consuming, of course.  Not everyone is called to be equally active in the public square. However, the other extremes — of passivity and pretending politics neither matter nor really exist, or of withdrawal and despair after one’s (false) expectations are dashed – are a matter of either an impoverished grasp of Scripture or, worse, mere religious pretense, not fidelity to the Bible. Never to vote, never to speak, never to defend those without a voice, the weak and powerless and helpless, is to accede to evil.

“Do good unto all men,” writes Paul the Apostle (Galatians 6:10). This is a charge with an active voice. Christians cannot fulfill this command unless, in the public arena, we stand for truth with a gracious but undauntable spirit. Our fellow citizens, and our country as a whole, deserve no less.

Sincerely,

Rob Schwarzwalder
Senior Vice President
Family Research Council

P.S. What is the status of conservatism in America?  Family Research Council’s Senior Fellow for Family Empowerment, Ken Blackwell, appeared on CNS News August 12, 2011 to discuss the conservative movement in our country today.

Educational Freedom and Reform

Homeschooling

• “DNPE Softens Impact of New Policy,” Home School Legal Defense Association
• “Why choose to homeschool?,” Kate Kerman, Sentinel Source
• “Home school students learn year round,” CBC News

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It seems that many observers have come to the conclusion that the regulatory state is wildly out of control.  Today, Senator John Barrasso pointed out in a Washington Times column that President Obama’s regulatory review has only caused one regulation to nullified.  It was an EPA rule that “treated spilled milk like an oil spill.”  Barrasso also noted that “since the start of the year, the administration has proposed 340 regulations at a cost of more than $65 billion to job creators.”  He then points to two rulemakings that will be incredibly costly: 1) the first is an EPA rule targeting utility companies; 2) the second is “literally unprecedented” and “regulates mileage for medium- and heavy-duty trucks.”  Looming in the distance is EPA’s ozone rule which will be “the single most environmental regulation in history.”  Needless, to say jobs will be lost, businesses destroyed, wealth annihilated, and families crushed economically as no jobs are created.

Next to Barrasso’s is a column by Richard Rahn who offers a suggestion for a statutory change that might help.  He argues that “before any regulation (not just major ones) is promulgated by any government department (including theIRS) or independent agency, the department or agency must have done a competent, complete and independent cost-benefit study.”  His proposal also contains an innovative proposal for allowing the public to sue and stop a regulation if they can show that its costs exceed its benefits.

If we are going to curb the excesses of the regulatory state we are going to have to many more ideas like Rahn’s (i.e., aggressive, non-deferential to agencies), but the most important steps we can take are to repeal the statutes that give sweeping regulation-making powers to government.

Economic policy has been measured in terms of consumption, government spending, investment, and monetary policy for many years.  We have reached the point where more precise measures of regulatory burden are going to need to be developed and added to this mix if we are to have an accurate idea of the nation’s true level of economic activity and potential for growth.

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The annual American migration to schools of all kinds begins in earnest next month.  So it might be a good time to consider the educational bona fides of those aspiring to be our President.

Several of them (Obama, Romney, Huntsman) are Ivy Leaguers.  That’s fine, but a degree from a “prestige” school is no guarantee of character, conviction or competence.Clearly, Mr. Obama will be the nominee of the Democratic Party.  Occidental, Columbia, and Harvard Law: An impressive list.  Yet the current crop of Republican contenders has a wide educational background:

• Texas Gov. Rick Perry hails from Texas A&M, where he served as both a member of the Corps of Cadets and a yell leader at sports events.
• Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, while not formally a candidate, might well become one.  She graduated with a degree in communications with an emphasis in journalism from the University of Idaho after a varied undergraduate career that took her as far as Hawaii.
• Businessman Herman Cain went to a historically black college, Morehouse, before getting a graduate degree from Purdue.
• Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann: Winona State (Minnesota), the O.W. Coburn School of Law at Oral Roberts University; and William and Mary for a post-graduate law degree.
• Newt Gingrich went to Emory and Tulane, where he received his Ph.D.
• Ron Paul, M.D., went to Gettysburg College in his native Pennsylvania before graduating from Duke University School of Medicine.
• Pennsylvania native Rick Santorum stayed local for his BA (Penn State), MBA (Pitt) and JD (Dickinson).

So, other than an interesting exercise in trivia, what’s my point?  Simply that in a country as diverse and educationally rich as ours, it’s good to know that a non-Ivy League President — like, perhaps, Eureka College grad Ronald Reagan — can emerge from the people and do rather well.

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Here is an interesting piece from Saturday’s Wall Street Journal.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks posits that it is the breakdown of the family and, even more fundamentally, a turning away from its Judeo-Christian faith, that has created a moral crisis in the West of which the London riots are a symptom.

I do not agree with everything he says (when he calls the rioters “victims” and says it’s “not their fault,” that is a bridge too far for me), but his broader argument for the moral reinvigoration that a return to religion can bring to society, and its necessity in bringing about a common good, is persuasive.

An interesting quote from the end of the piece:

One of our great British exports to America, Harvard historian Niall Ferguson, has a fascinating passage in his recent book “Civilization,” in which he asks whether the West can maintain its primacy on the world stage or if it is a civilization in decline.

He quotes a member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, tasked with finding out what gave the West its dominance. He said: At first we thought it was your guns. Then we thought it was your political system, democracy. Then we said it was your economic system, capitalism. But for the last 20 years, we have known that it was your religion.

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For those keeping track, late yesterday NIH Director Francis Collins approved four more human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines for the embryonic stem cell registry. The four newest approvals are sold by the company BioTime, Inc., which had two other hESC lines approved June 2, 2011. Details of the embryo destruction and hESC derivation (including from siblings) were published by ESI and Sydney IVF workers in 2007, around the time that ESI abandoned its schemes for therapies based on hESC. BioTime subsequenctly acquired ESI in 2010.

The total number of approved hESC lines is now 132, after a push of approvals earlier this year at NIH. While NIH continues to waste more taxpayer funds on destructive embryo research, adult stem cells are the only stem cell treating patients, with more and more published evidence accumulating every week. Published scientific evidence over the last few months shows effectiveness of adult stem cells in helping patients with angina pain, aggressive multiple sclerosis, enlarged hearts, systemic sclerosis, and creating new windpipes, to name just a few examples of adult stem cell successes.

Adult stem cells remain the gold standard for actual patient treatments.

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Scientists at Harvard today have published a new report in the journal Cell Stem Cell, showing that ordinary fibroblasts can be directly converted into functioning motor neurons. Starting with easily-accessible mouse fibroblasts, a common cell type found in connective tissue and skin, they added a set of genes that induced generic neuronal specialization, as well as a set of genes specific for a specific nerve type, the spinal motor neuron. The initial combination of eleven genes directly converted the fibroblast cells into specific neuronal cells. In the end, a set of seven genes added to common fibroblast cells was sufficient for direct conversion to functional spinal motor neuron cells. The converted cells not only looked like neurons, but showed a gene expression pattern similar to normal spinal motor neurons, were electrically active like normal nerve cells, and could form connections in the lab dish with muscle cells and stimulate muscle contraction. When injected into developing chicken embryos, the converted cells took up normal residence in the spinal cord.

The group verified that the formation of the spinal motor neurons was due to direct conversion, and did not go through any stem cell intermediate stage. They also showed that human fibroblasts could be directly converted into functional spinal motor neurons using a set of eight neuronal genes. The ability to make specific neurons directly from common adult cells, in an ethical manner, could allow production of patient-specific cells for study of specific motor neuron characteristics, disease susceptibility, and potential drug therapies. There has been a spate of papers showing direct conversion of normal cells to nerve cells. This new paper makes the eighth paper in the last three months. That’s a lot of nerve!

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A study released earlier this week by sociologists at the University of Buffalo shows an area where men and women are NOT equal: oversexualization in the media. “Opportunity Objectification? The Sexualization of Men and Women on the Cover of Rolling Stone”  reveals that women have become increasingly overly-sexualized by the media over the last few decades whereas men are not increasingly viewed in this demeaning and harmful way.

This is a “lose-lose” in that not only does the oversexualization of women have negative ramifications for a healthy understanding and anthropology of the dignity of women, and ultimately lead to exploitation of women and girls with such as things as child pornography and sex trafficking, but it is getting worse and worse as time goes on.

For more information you can read the study here.

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Millions of American school children are preparing to go back to school this week.

I rebel against it. Growing up inNew YorkState, we never had to think about school until Labor Day. Of course, we had to stay in school until the third week in June. Still,

I remember that about the third week in August, the weather would turn. There would be a marvelous crispness in the mornings. You felt like going back to school refreshed and ready to take on new challenges.

Next year is the fiftieth anniversary of the Supreme Court’s banning the New York State Regents Prayer. I remember it still:

ALMIGHTY GOD:
WE ACKNOWLEDGE OUR DEPENDENCE UPON THEE
AND BEG THY BLESSINGS UPON US,
OUR PARENTS, OUR TEACHERS, AND OUR COUNTRY.

Years later, a colleague of mine at the U.S. Education Department commented on the late, great Regents Prayer: “It never helped anybody, but it never hurt anybody, either,” said this thoughtful Southern friend. I considered this sincere Christian’s words seriously. Never helped anybody? But wait, it helped me.

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In The National Interest, respected historian Walter Laqueur has posed a most somber question: Is Europe headed for what he calls “a slow death?”   Dr. Laqueur outlines several possible scenarios, concluding that “the scenario most likely to happen and least likely to succeed: a bit of reform and a bit of business as usual. The richer countries will help the poorer ones to muddle through. It may work this time, but it is unlikely to be sufficient to deal with the next crisis.”

Dr. Laqueur, who is Jewish, knows something about Europe: As a teenager, he managed to escape just before the Holocaust began in earnest.  Both of his parents died in it.  In addition, his academic credentials are formidable: director of a program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, professor at both Brandeis and Georgetown university, and visiting professor at Harvard, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, and Tel Aviv universities.

His analysis is sobering: “The outlook is bleak. But it is also true that nil desperandum, never say die, is a better guide to action than the violent changes in mood about the future of Europe that we have witnessed over the years.”  Well, that’s true, to a point: Hopelessness is no catalyst for confidence.

Yet hope not grounded in reality is mere wishful thinking, and Dr. Laqueur‘s analysis disinvites realistic hope.  But perhaps the most intriguing sentence in his article is this one: “Given its demographic weakness,Europe will need immigrants.”

Indeed: According to the official Website of the European Union, here is what the continent is facing in coming years:

• the average number of children per woman, which stands at 1.5 children in the EU whereas the population replacement level is 2.1. The rate projected by the EU for 2030 is 1.6;
• the decline in fertility (“baby crash”) which followed the baby boom is the cause of the large proportion of 45-65 year-olds in Europe’s population, and poses a number of problems in terms of pension funding;
• life expectancy (which rose by eight years between 1960 and 2006) could continue to increase by a further five years between 2006 and 2050 and would thus result in a larger proportion of people surviving to the ages of 80 and 90 – an age when their health situation can often be delicate;
• immigration (1.8 million immigrants into the EU in 2004, 40 million in 2050 according to Eurostat’s projections) could offset the effects of low fertility and extended life expectancy.

Put simply, Europeis running out of indigenous people.  No economic plan, however, artfully crafted or bravely implemented, will substitute for the failure of Europeans to replenish their population.  As Bret Stephens wrote recently in The Wall Street Journal,Europe’s “demography also prevents reform … The demographic balance … will change only when younger Europeans decide that children, plural, are worth having.  What that will take, only a faith in future prosperity – and in God – can provide.”

Such faith seems substantially lacking.  Unless something dramatic occurs to alter the mindset of its young and childless, Europe will grow based only on immigration – and, given that virtually all of this immigration will be from Islamic countries, it will, thereby, cease being the Europe we have known.

Not all observers are worried.  Justin Vaïsse, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United Statesand Europe, argues that the threat of “Eurabia” is dramatically overstated, that Muslims are assimilating intoEurope and that the prevailing problem is one of racism, not religion or culture.

Let us hope he is right. A Europe in which Islam is dominant is a troubling phenomenon.  Only a small minority of Muslims are terrorists or authoritarians.  Yet as evidenced by Iran, Taliban Afghanistan, and the fundamentalist-leaning Muslim states in countries as diverse as Malaysia,Pakistan, and Nigeria, when Islamists seize power, they use it – and don’t easily give it up.

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