Frank’s Case Book

The observation is trite, but nonetheless true. It often takes an outsider to appreciate the value of the happy circumstances and good fortune we all too often take for granted. Dinesh D’Souza is one such person.

D’Souza grew up in a middle class family in India. When he was seventeen, he managed to attend a high school in Arizona as a foreign exchange student. He was so taken with the US that he enrolled in Dartmouth College in 1979, where he majored in English. Once there, he help found the Dartmouth Review, a Conservative gadfly publication that ultimately found itself embroiled in campus controversies. After graduation, he wrote for a number of Conservative publications and by 1986, he was on the White House staff for President Ronald Reagan. It was a remarkably far trip from India to the White House taken in a remarkably short time.

Recently, the University of California at Berkeley came under criticism when students decided to issue white, rather than red, white, and blue ribbons in remembrance of the attacks of September 11. Ostensibly, red, white, and blue ribbons would be exclusionary. Fortunately, adults intervened and red, white, and blue ribbons will also be issued.

D’Souza recognized the silliness and meanness of political correctness on campuses earlier than most. He became a conspicuous personality when he wrote Illiberal Education: Political Correctness and the College Experience in 1992. There is no quicker way to be embraced by Conservatives and reviled by Liberals than to poke fun at the pretentious and closed-minded political correctness on college campus.

Even the title of D’Souza’s new book, What’s So Great About America, causes irritation among some who question that there is anything of America worthy of emulation. D’Souza systemically plows through the conventional criticisms of America. While acknowledging that the US, like all human institutions is imperfect, over the last 200 years, the government and culture has proved to be self-correcting. One and a half centuries ago, it fought a bloody civil war to rid itself of slavery and forty years ago it largely rid itself of government sanctioned racial discrimination. In the last century, it also managed to play a pivotal role in defeating Nazism and in the collapse of Soviet Communism.

D’Souza has been most loudly criticized for his treatment of slavery, largely because he has drawn from his own ethnic roots. D’Souza explains how his grandfather retains a strong animosity for white people, particularly the British. No doubt this feeling is explained by the arrogant and racist treatment his grandfather received at the hands of the British.

D’Souza recognizes the reasonableness and rationality of this attitude. However, he also acknowledges that democracy and respect for individuality introduced by the British radically increases the personal opportunities for him.

By analogy, D’Souza argues that American slavery was an immoral, brutal, and cruel institution, but two hundred years later the descendants of the slaves that suffered so much are economically better off and politically freer than most of their counterparts in Africa. D’Souza has been unfairly criticized as an apologist for slavery.

The rancor surrounding this discussion, unfortunately, has clouded the real thesis of his book. His argument is far more important, subtle, and directed at the critique of America and the West in general by fundamentalists in the Islamic World. There is no real dispute that countries that have adopted tolerant and commercial societies that respect individual rights have been more materially successful. The wealth disparity is apparent to all.

The critique is that in the process of creating wealth, Western societies have contributed to personal alienation, attenuated important family ties, and nurtured decadence and indulgence and other self-destructive behavior. The West may be free, but it is not virtuous. Islamic fundamentalists argue that Islamic government would serve the higher value of virtue, not freedom.

This argument is not trivial or unimportant. Western culture as projected in music, movies, and television can promote violence and casual promiscuity, as well as nurture an adolescent preoccupation with self-indulgence and the ethos of materialistic accumulation. You do not have to be an Islamic fundamentalist to acknowledge that respect for individual choice means enduring the consequences of many bad choices.

D’Souza’s response is that a society that tries to impose virtue by creating a theocracy does not produce virtue at all. If behavioral norms are externally imposed, rather than rise from within, they cannot truly be a sign of virtue. Virtue must be freely selected. It is only by allowing the freedom to be evil, that there can be virtue. D’Souza’s argument echoes the words of John Locke who aptly pointed out, “Neither the profession of any articles of faith, nor the conformity to any outward form of worship … can be available to the salvation of souls, unless the truth of the one and the acceptableness of the other unto God be thoroughly believed by those that so profess and practice.”

The response of the West and D’Souza is that the choice is not between freedom and virtue. Rather, one cannot have virtue, without respect for individual freedom. The most important thing that the state can do to encourage virtue is to provide for freedom. Thus, D’Souza reminds us of something we should have remembered all along.

By the last months of 1966, the Israelis were growing increasingly impatient and frustrated by a series of attacks initiated from the West Bank. Though the area was under the ostensible supervision of Jordan, the attacks were largely instigated and supported by Syria.

On November 10, 1966, three policemen were killed when their vehicle struck a mine. The attack occurred on Israeli land near the West Bank city of Hebron. Michel Oren in Six Days of War describes Jordan’s frantic effort to conciliate and calm the Israelis. “[King ‘Abdalla] Hussein penned a personal condolence letter to [the Israeli Prime Minister Levi] Eskol along with a reaffirmation of his commitment to border security.”

Since there was no direct diplomatic contact with Israel, the King’s letter was rushed off to the US Embassy in Amman, Jordan. From there, the message was cabled to the US Ambassador to Israel in Tel Aviv, Walworth Barbour. The normally efficient and well-respected ambassador tragically decided there was no particular urgency to the cable. He did not convey the letter to Israeli authorities until Monday. Monday was too late. Over the weekend, Israel launched Operation Shredder.

The operation involved 400 soldiers and 10 tanks. Israeli forces plunged into the West Bank town of Rujin al-Mafa’ and destroyed the local police station. In Samu’, the Israeli Defense Forces rounded up the residents and dynamited the homes of those suspected of involvement in attacks.

However, what began as a surgical strike mushroomed out of control. A convoy of 100 Arab Legionnaires stumbled into the area and was decimated by the Israelis. Fifteen Legionnaires died and 54 were wounded. The resulting riots against King Hussein threatened his regime. Rather than punishing the perpetrators of the attacks, the Israelis managed to undermine the most moderate of their Arab adversaries.

With the same insight and illuminating detail and drawing upon recently released archival information, Michael Oren chronicles a detailed and definitive history of the Six Day War. The war is crucial to understanding present day Middle East politics. It is tragic and ironic that the current publicly claimed aspiration of Palestinians (at least for the benefit of the West) is to return to the 1967 borders. If they had been willing to settle for such an arrangement more than thirty years ago, much bloodshed would have been averted and fewer histories written.

Even a third of a century later, Oren’s Six Days of War reminds us of at least three relevant and important lessons now.

Lesson One: It is dangerous to depend on the United Nations (or even friends) for security.

Following Egypt’s defeat in the Suez War of 1956, UN troops occupied the Sinai, separating Israeli from Egyptian troops. Ten years later, both to improve his military position and standing in the Arab world, Nasser demanded that UN peacekeepers vacate the Sinai. U Thant could have postponed and delayed to prevent the UN withdrawal in an effort to stabilize the situation. Instead, U Thant decided that since the Egyptians had invited the United Nations in originally, the UN troops had to leave immediately.

The UN’s precipitous withdrawal from the Sinai helped to set up the chain of events leading to the Six Day War by emboldening Egypt and frightening Israel. Egyptian troops filled the vacuum left by the United Nations, even occupying Sharm Al-Sheikh overlooking the Straits of Tiran. The straits connect the Gulf of Aquaba and the Red Sea. Egyptian control of this strategic point prevented navigation of Israeli shipping. With Egyptian troops on their border, freedom of navigation to the Red Sea threatened, and bellicose statements pouring from Arab capitals, Israelis reasonably feared for their safety and even survival. This fear impelled the Israelis to launch the preemptive attacks that marked the beginning of the Six Day War.

Israel could not even rely on its allies and friends. The US, still trying to be an honest broker, refused to guarantee Israeli security. Tangled in Vietnam and unable to garner support from other western powers, the US would not manage to use its Navy to challenge freedom of navigation in the Straits of Tiran.

Lesson Two: Intra-Arab political bickering manifests itself in anti-Israel actions.

Syria sporadically attacked Northern Israel from the Golan Heights partially as a way to challenge Egypt’s Nasser as the erstwhile leader of the Arab world. Jordan, fearful of its own Palestinian population and a reluctant combatant was pressured to avoid accommodation with Israel. To a large extent, Egyptian truculence and aggressive actions in the Sinai were an effort to recapture Egyptian leadership in the Arab World. Its prestige had been severely tarnished in an ongoing and frustrating war in Yemen. Unfortunately, prestige in the Arab World accrues to those most successfully belligerent to Israel.

Lesson Three: Arab dictators cannot even be relied upon to act in their own or their own country’s self-interest. The allure of self-delusion is often too powerful.

The Israelis were afraid that a modest strike against their adversaries would only embolden them. After the initial attacks, the primary strategic Israeli fear was that Egypt, Syria, and Jordan would petition the United Nations to pressure Israel into a premature armistice. If the war ended too quickly, their adversaries might still be in a position to threaten Israel. Israel could not even depend upon the United States to block any cease-fire resolution in the United Nations Security Council. Fearful of destabilization in the area, the Johnson Administration in the US wanted a cease-fire as soon as possible.

Despite the experience of the Israel War for Independence and the Sinai War of 1956, Nasser was convinced of Egypt’s military superiority. After all, he had recently been able to garner significant military support from the Soviet Union. Syria’s Salah al-Jadid felt safe in Damascus, behind Syria’s fortified perch in the Golan Heights. In the first days of the war, both Syria and Egypt broadcast victorious reports to their people. The reports on Arab radio boasted of troops on the outskirts of Tel Aviv. The “Arab Streets” were alive in joyous anticipation of final victory and revenge for the past two wars.

From a military standpoint, the best move for Egypt and Syria would have been to call for an immediate cease-fire. But the self-delusion of their leaders combined with the inflamed public made this move politically difficult. Israel desperately wanted to avoid a cease-fire before their military goals were accomplished, while their adversaries desperately wanted to avoid the ignominy of acknowledging their need for cease-fire. For a few brief days, both the Israelis and Arabs resisted outside pressure for a cease-fire. This strange alliance of purpose between Israel and its neighbors was in the best interest of Israel.

Jordan was the least belligerent of the Arab countries. Ironically, despite the loss of the West Bank, the Jordanian military acquitted itself better than its larger and more aggressive Arab neighbors.

Oren’s chronicle of the period presents a balanced and honest history that puts the period into perspective. It documents much of the predicate of the current situation in the Middle East. Without the conquest of the lands, there would have been no “land for peace” possibility. Immediately after the war, Israel offered such a proposition to each of its neighbors. It would take a decade for Egypt under Anwar Sadat to accept such a proposal. The Palestinians in the West Bank have not yet figured out how to accept a land for peace proposition. Syria still provides support for terrorist attacks. They will not likely soon regain the Golan Heights.

“What we have done for ourselves alone dies with us; what we have done for others and the world remains and is immortal.” — Albert Pike.

There seems to be a basic human aspiration for some level of immortality. Save for those few eccentrics who chill their bodies into Popsicles in the hopes of being defrosted in the future, many try to leave some sort of permanent mark that will live on beyond them. Perhaps this desire is only a manifestation of an even more primal urge for a life of meaning, to have one’s life make a difference. The Egyptian pharaohs were perhaps the most successful in creating tangible legacies in the form of gigantic pyramids that have endured millennia.

Most important legacies are less tangible. We influence the people in the world around us in little ways that propagate outwards for good or for ill. Good people tend improve the lives of those who surround them, while others make the lives of those around them more difficult. These influences live on past us. Children are perhaps the greatest connection to the future. How we raise and nurture our children will have measurable, noticeable, and, for those concerned about immortality, traceable effects on the future. Many of us will be a living connection between our grandparents and our grandchildren, a familial connection extending five generations.

For many, making a difference means simply being remembered. Personal likenesses, paintings or photographs, are one vehicle for extending memory. A couple of hundred years ago, likenesses were only available to the wealthy that could afford to commission paintings. Photography was not invented until the nineteenth century and it was not until the twentieth century that photography was used as a regular and common method of documenting everyday life. It is now a common family ritual at gatherings to look at old family photographs. These photographs provide a semi-permanent record and a small measure of immortality.

Does digital photography challenge this immortality? Paul Rubens of the BBC News in “No Home for Digital Pictures” argues that new digital photography offers an ephemeral illusion of permanence comprised of ghostly bits and bytes. Although less than 10% of homes currently have digital cameras, 33% percent of homes with a connection to the Internet do. The technological stragglers will soon follow. Market analysts predict that film camera sales will begin to decline in the face of digital competition by 2005. Disposable cameras may be the only niche remaining for film. Rubens is concerned about the implications of this transformation for the photographic record. For Rubens, it is a recipe for disaster.

One imagines prying open a dusty old trunk stored in an attic and uncovering those long lost photographs of great grandpa’s wedding or of the old farmstead. Enjoying these images requires no special equipment. By contrast, what happens 100 years from now when some comparable trunk is opened and our descendents discover a CD full of images? Will there be an equipment to read the CD? Will our descendents even recognize the CD as a digital storage medium? Will digital images be lost in the rapid evolution of digital storage technology?

I think not. First, the permanence of film images is overestimated. The chemical processes that make photographs possible are not permanent. Photographs do fade over time, while digital images, so long as the files remain intact, they contain the same information as they originally did. Moreover, photographs are more easily lost or discarded than those saved on a hard disk.

The easy replicability of digital files is their greatest insurance of longevity. As increasingly important data are stored on personal computers, there is greater and greater need to back up information in the face of a possible hard disk failure. It is now relatively inexpensive to purchase separate disks to act as backups. As good a solution as this may be, few of us have proven to be sufficiently disciplined to either regularly backup to alternative disks or create copies on more permanent media like tapes or CDs.

Broadband networks may solve this problem. As more and more of us have our computers online 24 hours a day, seven days a week, remote nightly backups will become possible. People will find it economic, convenient, and safe to have their important files backed up remotely on a regular basis without personal intervention. Hence, digital images will exist in at least two places, on personal hard drives and on the storage media of remote backup companies. As computers evolve, these backups will make it trivial to move data to newer systems. You purchase a new computer and download your files from the network.

Networks also make is easy to share digital images with relatives further insuring long-term image survivability. Each image file attached to an e-mail provides, in essence, another file backup.

Under these scenarios, digital images are far safer than their chemical counterparts are. Now when your house is burning down, you can run in to save the family dog instead of the family photos. All your digital data having been safely store offsite, your legacy is safe.

The hulk of the battleship Arizona, sunk in a surprise attack by the Empire of Japan on December 7, 1941, lies at the bottom of Pearl Harbor. Over 1000 sailors are still entombed there. Thousands of miles away, in the middle of a large non-descript field near Shanksville, PA on September 11, 2001, Flight 93 was brought down in a struggle between Islamic terrorists and passengers. All 44 on board die. The crash may have prevented many more deaths on the ground if the plane had made its way to Washington, DC.

It has been over sixty years since the attack on Pearl Harbor and there have been many years in which to construct a formal memorial. Before embarking on the ferry that takes visitors to the memorial sitting a stride the frame of the Arizona, guests can visit a museum. The museum tells the story of the attack on Pearl Harbor and of some of the individual sailors who died. With the distance of sixty years, there is little animus toward the Japanese. Indeed, many Japanese visit the site.

The formal memorial for the victims on Flight 93 is awaiting construction. Getting to the site requires travel on small Pennsylvania roads, but one can tell one is nearing the site by the increase in the density of already ubiquitous American flags adorning homes and businesses.Presently, there is only a small parking lot that can accommodate perhaps 10 cars. There are a couple of small professionally made memorial stones. One lists all the victims killed. However, the eye is drawn to a temporary 2-meter high 5-meter long fence. To the fence visitors attach small flags, mementos, little placards of thanks, wishes for the families of the deceased, and bible verses.In many ways, the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor and the crash site of Flight 93 are very similar. Not many people travel to Hawaii just to visit the Arizona Memorial or travel to Pennsylvania just to see the site of the crash. However, people seem to gravitate there. They come clad in their shorts, T-shirts, and baseball caps. Despite the informality of their dress, people instinctively quiet down. No one needs to remind them. They realize they are in a sacred place deserving of respect and show it. People wander quietly around.

If you are afforded the opportunity, take the time to visit both sites. Over both, an American flag stands proudly above atop a flagpole. The sound of the flag fluttering in the wind masks the quiet whispers between visitors. Even more eerily, the clanking of the clasp of the rope used to raise the flag against the metal flagpole maintains a rhythmic cadence as a vigil for those who have died.

Sometimes a cup of coffee represents no more than a refreshment. Other times, coffee fills up more than a little cup of irony. In 1000 AD, an Arab would indulge in a cup of sweetened coffee from Ethiopia. Islamic culture introduced coffee to the world. Without its discovery, there would be no Starbucks and Seattle would be much more laid back.

By the eighteenth century, Europeans had found they could grow the “devils drink” more cheaply in its colonies than could be produced in Ethiopia. In What Went Wrong? eminent Middle Eastern authority Bernard Lewis, points out that by the eighteenth century a typical Turk or Arab would sip coffee that was imported from Dutch Java or Spanish America. For Lewis, coffee represents a metaphor for the decline in the dominance of the Islamic world. This decline and its impact on the western world is the theme of Lewis’s book.

If one visited the world at the beginning of the second millennium, the case could easily be made that the Islamic World was the most powerful, dynamic, advanced and progressive culture on the planet. The Islamic World extended into Europe from both the east and the west, controlled all of Saharan Africa and the east coast of Africa, the Arabian Peninsula, east into Asia. Much of ancient Greek knowledge had been assimilated and new insights were learned in contact with the Chinese civilization.

The Islamic culture was self-confident and thus was, for its time, tolerant of other ideas and faiths. Although they would not accept attempts at proselytization, Christians were permitted and Jews prospered and occupied positions of prominence.

The Islamic powers had reason to be confident. They dominated the world militarily, eventually expelling Crusaders from Europe.

Somewhere around the time of the European Renaissance, it became apparent even to Muslims that something was changing. European science and technology was improving, largely due to imperatives of trade and exploration of the New World. The Reformation in Europe alleviated the hegemony of thought, with an emphasis on individualism.

Gradually, Europeans pushed back the geographic limits of the Islamic World, largely expelling it from Europe. As the military superiority of the West improved, Muslims found it essential to adopt Western military weapons and tactics, but felt no real necessity to incorporate large elements of Western culture. Much of the Islamic World believed it could modernize without Westernizing. Ultimately, even these efforts failed.

In the late eighteenth century, Napoleon with superior arms blasted into Egypt and quickly overcame a power at the core of the Islamic World. Ultimately, Napoleon was forced to leave, not by an Islamic power, but by another Western one. Soon much of the Islamic world would become part of the colonial empire of one or another European power.

Today, much of the Islamic world is in poverty, ruled by tyrannical and oppressive leaders, and is technologically and economically far behind the West. If it were not for Western addictions to oil and opium, there would be little of export value from the Islamic World. Muslims also cannot fail to notice that the Eastern powers, Japan and the rest of Pacific Rim, have somehow been able to embrace Western economic culture and in some cases even surpass Western powers in terms of prosperity.

Of course, as Lewis points out, the human response to this conspicuous decline is to ask “Who did this to us?”

According to Lewis, for a long time, the Islamic world blamed the invasion of the Mongols in the thirteenth century. However, this explanation is unpersuasive given that many Islamic cultural achievements came after the expulsion of the Mongols.

Many in the Islamic World blamed Western imperialism, particularly by the British and the French. However, this explanation begs the question. It was the decline of economic and military power that allowed Western imperialism to succeed.

After, the formation of a tiny Israeli state in the center of the Middle East, the Muslim world tried to blame Zionism for their humiliation. As Lewis puts it, “… it was humiliating enough to be defeated by great imperial powers of the West; to suffer the same fate at the hands of a contemptible gang of Jews was intolerable. Anti-Semitism and its image of the Jew as a scheming and evil monster provided a soothing antidote.” The Jews were to blame.

Tolerance has come full circle. For much of the last millennium the treatment of Jews in the Islamic World was far more exemplary than their treatment by Christendom. Now Jews are hated in much of the Islamic World. It is ironic that perhaps the best indicator for the success and prosperity of a society and culture may be its treatment of Jews. If this historically persistent minority is tolerated, it implies that the dominant culture is sufficiently self-confident and prosperous that it sees no threat in the acceptance of Jews. It is an unmistakable sign of decline when this tolerance is abandoned.

Most recently, some in the Islamic world have blamed Western culture, and it chief symbol, the United States for undermining Islamic religious values. Islamic fundamentalist seek to explain decline in the Islamic World, by the abandonment of traditional Islamic practices.

The true reason for the decline of Islamic civilization has been its growing calcification and refusal to recognize the importance of individual freedom necessary for a modern economic state. Interestingly it may have been the early phenomenal success of Islam that cemented it into rigid religious structures. At the outset, Islam spread quickly and relentlessly. Within a century of Mohammed, Islam extended from Spain to the Caucuses. Islam washed over other local religions like a tidal wave and immediately dominated religious and government structures. Indeed, there was no perceived difference between the civic culture and religious culture. The law was Islamic law and carried the weight of Allah’s authority.

The Christian and Jewish religious traditions arose in a culture of the oppressed. The Jews were enslaved in Egypt and the early Christians were persecuted by the Roman Empire. Mohammed was triumphant on Earth, while Christ was put to death by local government authorities. From the outset, Christians and Jews realized that the kingdoms of the Earth and religious authority were not co-extensive. In the West, secular and religious power was often allied and sometimes synonymous, but the idea of two separate spheres of authority was at least possible. After the Reformation and a series of religiously-based European wars, it became evident that some mutual distance between the state and church could provide lasting peace. Indeed, with the rise of commercial society, the question of religious affiliation diminished in importance.

The laws and institutional arrangements of man were thus accepted as largely empirically based. What worked to produce civility and prosperity was sufficient. Arrangements could be temporary and flexible according to the needs of the time. Appeals to immutable religious authority were not necessary. This emancipation of the individual and associations of individuals to seek their own goals ignited the growth in wealth and military power that has left much of the Islamic world behind.

There is nothing inherent in the Islamic faith that prevents it from embracing Western culture. The relative prosperity of Turkey is a consequence of its adoption of Western economic and cultural institutions. Nonetheless, there remains a broad sympathy in the Islamic World with the notion that freedom, particularly the freedom that separates civil from religious authority, makes Western powers debauched and self-indulgent. The ultimate fall of these powers under the weight of their own decadence, in the minds of some, will mark Islam’s return to ascendancy.

However, as Lewis concludes:

“If the peoples of the Middle East continue on their present path, the suicide bomber may become a metaphor for the whole region, and there will be no escape from a downward spiral of hate and spite, rage and self-pity, poverty and oppression, culminating sooner or later in yet another alien domination-perhaps from a new Europe reverting to old ways, perhaps from a resurgent Russia, perhaps from some expanding superpower in the East. But if they can abandon grievance and victimhood, settle their differences, and join their talents, energies, and resources in a common creative endeavor, they can once again make the Middle East, in modern times as it was in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, a major center of civilization. For the time being, the choice is theirs.”

The popular vision of scientists as wise, well read, erudite, Renaissance men is largely a throw back to the nineteenth century, at least as portrayed in the movies. The truth is that most scientists have narrow fields of expertise. Many scientific disciplines are so academically demanding and time consuming, scientists generally have time for little else than the study of their fields. The scientist with a deep knowledge and appreciation of history and literature is rare. Rarer still is a scientist who can speak and write eloquently for the lay audience about topics as disparate as the Flamingo’s Smile, Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms, or Crossing Over Where Art and Science Meet. Harvard paleontologist Stephan Jay Gould, who recently succumbed to a rare cancer, was just such a scientist.

Although his primary expertise was in West Indian snails, Gould became an important voice in many national debates. Gould was blessed with the dual gifts of raising the level of the discussion and of reducing the temperature of discourse. The 1981 book, The Mismeasure of Man proved to be an important cautionary tail. In the book, Gould warned of the inherent difficulty and aborted efforts in classifying human intelligence with a single numerical measure, the so-called Intelligence Quotient, IQ. There is still considerable controversy about measures of intelligence and the final chapter has not yet been written. In 1994, when Richard Hernstein and Charles Murray, published The Bell Curve suggesting correlations between race and measures of intelligence, Gould was a voice of calm and studied critique. However, Gould’s most important contribution in this debate was to explain how even well-meaning and honest scientists can inadvertently bend interpretation of the data to fit preconceived notions and prejudices. It is not that science cannot be neutral; it is just that scientists must be vigilant to maintain objectivity.

Gould had his flaws. His politics were left of center and worst yet he was a life-long New York Yankees fan. Yet, these could be overlooked in light of his persistent honesty in pursuit of the truth.

Gould has always been something of an agnostic with respect to religion, but has never carried an anti-religious chip on his shoulder like other scientists in the manner of Carl Sagan. Indeed, later in life in his book, Rock of Ages, Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life, Gould seemed to reach a permanent accommodation with religion arguing that religion and science address different human needs and realms. Gould asserted the Principle of NOMA, Non-Overlapping Magisteria. Specifically:

“[the] magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the universe is made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value.”

Nonetheless, Gould’s field is evolutionary biology and it is here that he has been most vocal. He was one of the first to recognize that biological evolution may not proceed at a slow regular pace, but proceed in fits and spurts as species respond to dramatic changes in the environment in a process known as “punctuated equilibrium.” For example, after an asteroid impact, species may quickly change until a new equilibrium is reached.

Recently, Gould has argued that biological evolution is not directed and evolution does not necessarily imply progress. Evolution is popularly portrayed as a progression from simplicity to complexity, culminating in humans. If you measure evolutionary success by ubiquity, Gould argues, bacteria are the evolutionary success story, not humans. Humans are a recent evolutionary development, whereas bacteria have existed for hundreds of millions of years and will likely outlast humans. There is no inherent reason why humans were an inevitable development. A few environmental changes here or there, fewer or more asteroid impacts, and humans would not exist now.

To some, Gould’s argument diminishes the dignity of humans by portraying them as mere evolutionary accidents. If, indeed, the emergence of an intelligence conscious enough to consider its place in the universe is a rare random event that would seem to make its development even more precious. If, in the enormous universe, conscious intelligence is not inevitable, if four billion years of development on Earth does not guarantee a sentient and self-aware species, it seems like an awful waste of time and space.

If humans are an unlikely accident, then any single human is far rarer. Given the 23 genes donated by each parent, over 8 million genetically different children could result from any set of parents. In one such accident in 1941, Stephen Jay Gould was born and we have all been the better for this rare conjunction of genetic material. We are all diminished by the all too early loss of his voice.

The statistics are clear to everyone with even an approximation of an open mind. The presence of a father in the home is highly correlated with the well being of children. Children fortunate enough to have both a father and a mother in the home perform better is school, are healthier, are less likely to live in poverty or commit suicide, and are less likely to become involved in drugs, than children raised by a single parent. On Father’s Day, it is important to emphasize the importance of fathers.

This strong positive social effect does not necessarily mean that the relationships between fathers and sons will always be smooth and easy. Indeed, the father-son relationship can be complex and define the way both interact with the rest of the world.

In an article in the National Review, Mark Goldblatt ruminates over the relationship with his own father. He argues that the natural competition between fathers and sons explains why “Sons are their fathers’ only natural predators.” Goldblatt suggests that the following dilemma confronts fathers and their sons. If a son fails to become as accomplished as his father, the father is disappointed. If on the other hand, the son is more successful, the father is left with sour envy. It is as if the success of the son somehow acts as a reproach of the father. It is almost certain that Goldblatt’s generalization is overly tainted by the relationship he describes with his own father in National Review. Goldblatt’s father lacked a college education and was apparently unsure of his own intelligence. The young Goldblatt was afflicted with the natural arrogance of youth and confident in his own abilities. Perhaps the young Goldblatt even deliberately aggravated his father’s sensitivity. As Goldblatt explains,

“[My father] looked up from dinner one evening and said, `You probably think you’re smarter than me, don’t you?’ So I glanced up at him and replied, `No, not really.’ This was a lie: Of course I was smarter than he was! The issue had been settled so long ago in my mind that I thought he was asking a trick question.”

Goldblatt story is a sad one. Apparently, he has spent the time after his father’s death trying to reconcile himself to the relationship he had with his father.

However, the fallacy of the father’s dilemma as posed Goldblatt lies in the assumption that the success and challenges faced by sons can be separated from those of the father. If a son is very successful, then the father is successful as well. If a son is struggling, then the father shares in the struggle.

It is not that fathers fail to compete with children. Fathers should compete with their sons (and daughters) as a means to build up the competence and confidence of their children, butnot as a way to demonstrate their own vigor and superiority. Children need the challenges posed by parents to develop a sense of their limits and strengths. But their successes and failures are shared by their parents

Nonetheless, when children get a little too confident, it is wise to provide them a little perspective. To my children, I often find myself paraphrasing the words of Sir Isaac Newton. If my children can see farther than their parents, it is because they stand on the shoulders of giants.