mark-up

Paying for Politics, Not Cures

2008-05-02T09:13:00.000-07:00

The Family Research Council draws on a recent Nature report that shows how political ideology controls the purse of medical progress in California. Dr. Bertram Lubin, a pioneer of ethical sickle-cell anaemia treatments, saw his research request for $5 million turned down by a 10-5 vote of the purse-keepers at California's Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) because, in part, he "lacked work on embyronic stem cells." No matter that he's already treating patients and seeking only to perfect his treatments through stem-cell research. What matters is that his research and treatment by-passes embryonic stem cells in favor of what happens to be the most promising path of stem-cell research -- adult stem cells. But the CIRM, with its $3 billion fund, is more committed to embryonic stem-cell research than to whatever line of stem-cell research is most effective. So the already-promising therapies are denied funding that would improve them and cure patients within a couple of years!

"We're not part of the 'in' crowd," Dr. Lubin told Nature. FRC President Tony Perkins' "Washington Update" for May 1, 2008 continues: "Even though embryonic stem cell therapies haven't yielded a single clinical trial, CIRM is willing to hold patients hostage who could be helped now by alternative research. It should be noted that one of the most controversial issues surrounding CIRM is that it has stacked its board with members who stand to benefit from ESC funding."

Chalk it up to ideology/political correctness and . . . "follow the money."

The Right Standard

2008-05-02T06:35:00.000-07:00

Worthy of considering in a full essay is this thought: What is the right standard for Americans to use in all kinds of daily judgments, from deciding how much to trust someone selling a used car to choosing the next U.S. President? Here I begin considering this question, but only as preliminary notes toward a draft of such an essay.

The force of political correctness pushes us to apply the standard of proof required to convict a felon in court: proof beyond reasonable doubt. So if I don't trust Sen. Obama or Sen. Clinton to be our next President -- but especially if I don't trust Obama (an anti-Clinton feeling is not politically incorrect for all kinds of reasons) -- I have not been righteous in that secular sort of righteousness that the PC crowd demands of us. I, as a white guy, must support Obama in order to prove, apparently, that I'm not racist. To be truly righteous is to be truly tolerant, open-minded, willing to ride roughshod over all kinds of yellow and red caution flags popping up inside my head (even, as pertains to approving homosex in our society, over conscience itself) to show that I've been washed in the . . . well, I'm not sure what, since the blood of Jesus is anathema to secularists . . . but to show that I've been, I suppose, truly enlightened.

And if I choose not to vote for Obama, the only way to justify it is to establish it "beyond reasonable doubt." No, his association with Rev. Wright and aging Weathermen, etc., don't rise to that rigorous standard. All these can be explained, and I should accept the explanations and ignore the enduring lack of trust I feel toward this man as President.

But this standard is wrong for everyday life and a whole range of decisions, including choosing a President. It is the right standard for criminal conviction because what's at stake is the depriving of the convict's liberty, property, and perhaps even life. And our religiously-rooted conviction about the inherent dignity of each person requires us to prove that he is guilty in order to justify taking any of these inalienable rights from him.

But not so for the used car purchase or the election of a representative at any level, from local school board to US President. For these, all our resources of judgment, including and especially those pre-philosophical sensors of knowledge -- those feelings that point toward trust or mistrust -- are part of our God-given apparatus for living well in His world. We should use them. Refine and improve them, of course. But not squelch them by insisting on using only the most rigorous standard we know. We are foolish to squelch them under pressure from culturally suicidal PC, unless we want to join the suicide.

Barack Obama's Muslim Past and the Question about His Truthfulness

2008-05-02T06:28:00.001-07:00

I'm not interested in mudslinging, and Sen. Obama may be our next President, although I dread that possibility. But evidence suggests that he has not been honest about his Muslim past, which Daniel Pipes has patiently documented without histrionics or overreaching judgments. His conclusion from an article sent by e-mail today summarizing the evidence from a wide range of sources:

"Obama's having been born and raised a Muslim and having left the faith to become a Christian make him neither more nor less qualified to become president of the United States. But if he was born and raised a Muslim and is now hiding that fact, this points to a major deceit, a fundamental misrepresentation about himself that has profound implications about his character and his suitability as president."

Is this the "mighty, rushing wind" like Pentecost?

2008-04-03T10:02:00.000-07:00

Probably Descartes and surely Hobbes and Hume would not, but John Locke and Blaise Pascal would join these believers' tears, and I too. I believe!

Why We Whisper: Restoring Our Right to Say "It's Wrong"

2008-04-03T08:23:00.000-07:00

Watch Sen. Jim DeMint (R-SC) speak about his new book Why We Whisper: Restoring Our Right to Say "It's Wrong," coauthored with Clemson University professor Dr. J. David Woodward. It "examine[s] how government-imposed secularism and government-promoted destructive behavior have [since the 1960's] been the primary cause of [the] dangerous and costly deterioration of the character and values that have defined our nation." Why We Whisper "examine[s] how our First Freedoms and foundational virtues are being undermined by an intense, politically correct assault and argue that Americans who believe in traditional values cannot let this secularist agenda go unchallenged." --Amen.

Rally for Sally Succeeds

2008-04-03T07:59:00.000-07:00

Some 1,500 filled a floor of the Oklahoma State Capitol yesterday (April 2) to stand by State Representative Sally Kern. Her opinion that the homosexual social and political agenda threatens our nation more than Islamic jihadists had evoked thousands of hateful responses. Most seem to have come from pro-homosex persons who, on other matters, would insist that they are committed heart and soul to the generous expansion of human freedom (read "same-sex marriage" or "four-sided triangle") -- except for the freedom of conscience-prompted speech that names their practices immoral.

Rep. Kern and her husband Pastor Steve Kern made clear that they oppose the homosex social-political agenda, not homosex persons, and that their ultimate purpose is to communicate the saving, life-changing gospel of Jesus Christ. They and Pastor Paul Blair, organizer of Reclaim Oklahoma for Christ (reclaimoklahoma.org) and of this rally, have my deepest respect for their courage and obedience to God in "speaking the truth in love."

Goodbye, Micky D's

2008-04-02T08:31:00.000-07:00

I am saddened by McDonald's decision, reported by today's American Family Association's Action Alert, that McDonald's will put full resources behind the homosex agenda, including $s for the homosex Chamber of Commerce (NGLCC) and a top executive for its board.

Here's my response, and I encourage you to respond as well:

Mark E. Roberts, Ph.D.

[home address]

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Andrew J. McKenna, President

McDonald's

McDonald's Plaza

Oak Brook, IL 60523
(Phone: 1-800-244-6227 or 630-623-3000

Fax: 630-623-5004)

Dear Chairman McKenna:

I am disheartened to learn from today’s American Family Association e-mail alert that McDonald's has decided to promote the homosex agenda in America. Contrary to your opposite claim, it is absolutely irresponsible of you to help make socially normal the immoral, perverse, and life-shortening homosex behavior by financial gifts to and through and participation in the NLGCC.

Did you not learn from Wal-Mart's failed marriage to the NLGCC?

As you think of the millions of kids who play at your stores and eat millions of Happy Meals, have you considered how many of them were produced naturally by a homosex couple? Answer: not one.

What other defining feature of “natural” do you need in order to know (as you and all humanity know, even when they suppress the knowledge for, say, monetary rea$on$) that the life the homosex promote is thoroughly unnatural. It is in no way good for the human species; and, you will see, sooner or later, less painfully now and more painfully later, it is not good for business, which benefits in every way from more, not fewer, births.

Mr. McKenna, McDonald’s is in for a pushback the likes of which it hasn’t ever seen. I've had my last McDonald's product ever until it publicly reverses this immoral decision completely. And I will encourage everyone I know to eat elsewhere.

Our boycott will hurt thousands of franchise owners, managers, and crew; and for that, I am very sorry, but your foolish decision is the cause, its reversal the solution. Many of these McDonald's partners will not support this action. Have you consulted them? Dare you? Now they’ll be forced either to put up with your gamble or to quit McDonald’s. Many of those who stay will work with divided, offended consciences. Do you care? And for what? Do the homosex really buy that much from McDonald’s? Or are you paying “protection money” to pacify a threatening group? Tell the truth. America will stand with you if you are feeling homosex heat and resist their bullying. But rank-and-file America will leave you – wait and see to your own peril – if you continue and squander McDonald’s funds and cultural influence.

McDonald's should remain neutral in the culture war. Continue providing the best fast food. Don’t fly the flag of homosex activism; don’t promote the aberrant and destructive behavior that cannot, on its own, procreate new customers. You’re now in danger of losing many of your old ones and will need new ones very, very soon. They won’t come from the homosex.

Best wishes,

[signed]

Climate change not a global crisis: Gore's Inconvenient Snowjob

2008-03-15T12:45:00.000-07:00

The 2008 International Conference on Climate Change, sponsored by The Heartland Institute, met in Times Square, New York, March 2 - 4, 2008, and, on the basis of participation by hundreds of scientists whose work pertains to analysis of climate, released The Manhattan Declaration. Its major finding: "That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis." And "a new survey of 51,000 professional engineers, geologists, and geophysicists in Alberta, Canada found only 26 percent believe global warming is caused by human activity, and 68 percent disagree with the popular statement that 'the debate on the scientific causes of recent climate change is settled.'" http://www.canada.com/edmontonjournal/news/story.html?id=1d688937-54b7-48f4-a4be-d6979dada5df&k=65311

First, he gave us the Internet; now it appears that his "inconvenient truth" is a snowjob. Thank you, Mr. Gore. Retirement fits you nicely.

STDs in 1/4 of American teen girls: Scientistic ideology blinds to the truth

2008-03-13T07:35:00.000-07:00

We are told that 1/4 of American teenaged girls likely have some form of an STD; and then come the predictable and inadequate proposals of solution(s). What might you guess could save future girls from this fate? Our secularist culture has only one string on its guitar: (from today's New York Times)
“'High S.T.D. infection rates among young women, particularly young African-American women, are clear signs that we must continue developing ways to reach those most at risk,' said Dr. John M. Douglas Jr., who directs the centers’ division of S.T.D. prevention.
"The president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Cecile Richards, said the new findings 'emphasize the need for real comprehensive sex education.'
“'The national policy of promoting abstinence-only programs is a $1.5 billion failure,” Ms. Richards said, “and teenage girls are paying the real price.'”

How rich!

Yes, reach those most at risk. Yes, truly comprehensive sex education. But guess what PPF's notion of comprehensiveness manages to omit: yes, the transcendent ethical component of human sexuality that nearly all humans admit to knowing (even when they violate such norms routinely).

PPF swipes at abstinence education, as if the $1.5 billion spent (if true) failed. Well, not exactly, when that amount is (1) a pittance compared to everything else done under the veneer of sex ed; and (2) when whatever is done to urge youths to abstain from sex outside of marriage happens in combat-like conditions. That is, the abstinence message, when voiced, is preceded, threaded through, and followed by stronger voices that undermine it. It's like being given a grant to teach virtue in Madame Reno's brothel. Abstinence education is continously attacked and marginalized with the hopes of the likes of PPF that it will go away.

We've known for millennia that effective communication requires credibility -- both of the message itself and of the messengers. I don't trust PPF to make any kind of case for abstinence; their "non-profit" profit from operating abortuaries would nosedive. They ooze "conflict of interests" when it comes to advocating abstinence. And when credible communicators offer their message in our public schools today, it's like they're standing on the brothel's front porch. No wonder it's less effective than we'd like. Abstinence education will be quite effective when the messengers truly believe the abstinence message and speak it into a context of similar belief. Ideas do have consequences, and chief among such consequential ideas are those deeply, sincerely held beliefs. And failure to live up to such beliefs is evidence not against their truth but instead of the real moral conflict in which all of us live. But in our post-Enlightenment world, such deeply held beliefs about morality and ethics are poo-pooed as merely subjective values, about as close to knowledge as your preference for chocolate over vanilla ice cream.

What we face is the strength in their prime of some of the bastard children of the Enlightenment. That 17th-and-18th-centuries revolution in western thought had the effect (not intended by all who produced it) of devaluing and ultimately dismissing the moral sense common to all human beings remotely normal. It pushed common sense out of the throne room of knowledge, and crowned only the following with the Culture's Seal of Approval:

that which is self-evident to all, publicly (such as the law of non-contradiction, whether or not someone can state it; but not the contents of your or my conscience, since we do disagree, sometimes to often, about that);
that which is deduced from such self-evidence by moves of logic that we can't doubt (e.g., the classic syllogism: All men are mortals; Socrates is a man; therefore, S. is mortal -- no one can imagine doubting the conclusion or the reasoning);
and that which is verified empirically, that is, laboratory-style.

Notice what is left out: our perhaps most important pre-philosophical intuitions about right and wrong and reality itself, the stuff we used to refer to -- and expect everyone else to acknowledge -- as "common sense." What is left out is the pre-philosophical knowledge of God, which tradition and Scripture claim to be universal. What is left out -- or at least hedged about quite a bit -- is this ineradicable sense that we ought to do and seek the good and not do and avoid the wrong and the evil; and that we should nourish and not suppress this strong compulsion toward good and be willing to discipline our appetites as needed to help us proceed on this path; and that we should use all the powers of reason and observation and all means of extending knowledge to likewise help us on this path. And so forth.

But in the Enlightenment world that continues to grip our cultural authorities (the learned societies, king of which is anything "scientific"), anything that has to do with ethics or religion is, by ideological stipulation, incapable of being classified as "knowledge," usually being allowed to survive in polite company under the patronizing, condescending notion of "one's private beliefs and values," which are fine to have and hold -- privately -- but which should never intrude into the world of real knowledge. With this comes the dualisms of Secular (where the truly important stuff happens) vs. Sacred (which is the realm of private delight and guilt but banished from the Realm of Knowledge). Also comes the ideology of secularist education: that just the correct knowledge will produce the right affections and behaviors; or, worse, the correct knowledge plus the momentarily correct social affections and behaviors will condition those immersed in this witches' brew to think, feel, and act in conformity with the authorized social norms, regardless of whether those norms are true or truly good.

So, PPF's comprehensive sex ed will not take seriously, if at all, what the vast majority of human beings worldwide know and have known: that the human sexual act ought to be reserved to marriage (even if polygamous). The scientistic ideology born of the Great Moral Darkening (aka Enlightenment) denies that people know any such thing. If it mentions abstinence until marriage, it won't assert with confidence, "this is how you and all of us should behave," but it will mumble something smarmy like "get in touch with your values and decide what's right for you and your partner," which constitutes the wholesale abdication of adults from their most important role: that of confidently guiding the young into maturity. We've been doing this culturally at least since the 60's, since those lame university administrators (and faculty -- of which I am one today) capitulated to the petulant, insufficiently spanked hoodlums posing as college students and let "the inmates run the asylum" and replace the curriculum fashioned by those who were in a position to know better than their juniors with the smorgasbord approach to learning that presumes that students already know what they need to learn and will choose the right course for their education without anyone's having to say "you must study x and y."

See J. Budziszewski's What We Can't Not Know: A Guide and Michael Wittmer's "God Exists" for more thoughts along these lines. And weep for the children we have abandoned and continue to abandon, even as we ply them with iPods and You Tube and watch more and more of them reach their twenties with bodies (and souls) already as spent as those we used to think populated only sailors' ports of call.

Support OK Representative Sally Kern

2008-03-12T06:47:00.000-07:00

Our sister in Christ, OK State Rep. Sally Kern, needs her family of faith to stand with her right now. She has expressed the truth with gentleness and love about the personal and social sin and threat of homosexuality and is reaping thousands of hate-filled responses from pro-homosexual persons, including some wishing her death. (These are the same folks clamoring to pass "hate crimes" legislation that will gag free speech. Translated, their double-talk means, "Naming immoral sex as immoral and empiricially harmful shall be a criminal act, but we can vaporize you with our verbal hatred whenever we wish.")

You can familiarize yourself with some of the facts at the places listed at the bottom of this post; but please send her an e-mail of support (sallykern@okhouse.gov) right now, pray for her, and do whatever else God may lead you to do.

I met her at a Reclaim Oklahoma for Christ event last year, and I was impressed by how humble, straightforward, and non-politician-like she is. She is a lifelong believer, wife of a faithful Baptist pastor in Oklahoma City, career public school teacher, and grandmother (I believe). Nothing I witnessed in her marked her as a politico. How did she end up in the Oklahoma legislature and now at the center of this all-too-predictable storm? Because, as I recall her testimony, God spoke to her repeatedly through prayer and moved her to serve Him through serving the citizens of her district and state.

We need many, many more public servants like Representative Sally Kern. Maybe God is calling you? I am sure He is calling you to stand with Rep. Kern, His Esther for today. She is standing for us on the front lines of the battle for righteousness. Let's join her: sallykern@okhouse.gov. (You can also vote at a local TV station for her not to resign from office.)

First, for the absolute best biblical resources about homosex, see www.robgagnon.net. No one has researched more fully and debated more effectively the incursions of Scripture-twisting into the church and academy to support homosex practice. Dr. Gagnon often finds opponents who, when defeated in scholarly debate, finally say "Well, it's really not about Scripture and its authority anyway. It's about what I want to do." I don't quote this in glee, because it is in the heart of every human until God graciously regenerates him or her: "the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and wickedness of men who by their wickedness suppress the truth" (Romans 1:18 RSV).

Second, here are links to more information:
Oklahoma legislator under attack for saying H-Agenda is destroying the nation March 10, 2008
Oklahoma legislator's anti-gay comments stir hostile reaction March 10, 2008

Open Letter to Mr. Ibrahim Hooper, Communications Director, CAIR

2008-01-10T08:34:00.000-08:00

[CAIR is the Council on American Islamic Relations.]

Dear Mr. Hooper:

Your e-mail message yesterday, 8 January 2008, began with this: "Anti-Muslim bigotry is at an all time high with politicians and radio talk show hosts leading the way. What should we do in response? What can we do?"

In this open-letter response, with the help of Mr. David Rusin, I point out lots of things Muslims can do to receive more favorable media coverage and the pointlessness of your media reformation efforts. It's really pretty simple: Have Muslims stop behaving badly, from routine incivilities to intimidation, maiming, and murder. Stop that, and what you wrongly call bigotry will stop. There's your job, not changing politicians and radio hosts, but changing Islam. I wish you well.

Mark E. Roberts, Ph.D.

------------------------------------

MEF News Mailing List January 10, 2008

"Portrait of the Artist as a Dhimmified Man"

by David J. Rusin
Pajamas Media

http://www.meforum.org/article/1825
[Visit this link to see many links in the following article that did not copy onto this blog.]

"Art is not what you see," noted Edgar Degas, "but what you make others see." Ninety years after his death, a new maxim applies to Europe: The art that you do not see reflects what everyone already sees. And what we see is the preemptive surrender of public freedoms in the name of appeasing the continent's restive Muslim underclass.

Grayson Perry serves as the ideal poster boy — or perhaps poster girl — for this discomfiting trend. A Turner Prize recipient and England's most famous cross-dressing potter, Perry has been heralded for his controversial explorations of religious imagery, which include a vase entitled "Transvestite Brides of Christ" and a portrayal of the Virgin Mary that is best left to the imagination. Yet apparently there are some boundaries that even groundbreaking artists dare not cross.

"I've censored myself," Perry told the Times, admitting that he treads lightly around radical Islam. "With other targets you've got a better idea of who they are but Islamism is very amorphous. You don't know what the threshold is. Even what seems an innocuous image might trigger off a really violent reaction so I just play safe all the time." Self-censorship thus boils down to self-preservation. "The reason I haven't gone all out attacking Islamism in my art is because I feel real fear that someone will slit my throat." [Mr. Hooper: I won't be subtle: here's your Islam/Muslim PR problem: murder, allegedly in the name of G-d. Until that stops, worldwide, Islam will be revealed for what it is -- not what pundits opine it to be, but what these who fill graves have experienced the religion of the crescent and scimitar to be -- to many thousands of victims worldwide -- angry and unmerciful.]

His fears are not without logic. On the morning of November 2, 2004, hours before Americans would vote in an election shaped by the conflict between radical Islam and the West, that conflict violently manifested itself on the streets of Amsterdam. There, filmmaker Theo van Gogh succumbed to a rain of bullets from the gun of Mohammed Bouyeri, a Dutch Muslim of Moroccan extract. Bouyeri proceeded to slash his victim's neck to near decapitation before leaving a pair of knives impaled in his chest. [Mr. Hooper: Does the press malign Islam when it reports the truth about this murder; or does Islam prolong its record of unjustified, vigilante violence, motivated not by God but by the one who has been a killer and deceiver from his beginning, the satan?] One pinned a letter outlining his grievances and threatening ex-Muslim activist Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

The controversialist's life and death form a microcosm of Europe's new realities. An equal-opportunity offender, van Gogh loathed all religions and never missed a chance to insult the faithful — Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike. However, his demise was directly linked to Submission, a short film written by Hirsi Ali that depicts the abuse of women in Muslim cultures. The contrast is striking. Christians and Jews responded to van Gogh's provocations with the occasional letter or picket sign, but a young Muslim chose an HS 2000 firearm as his instrument of "protest." [Mr. Hooper: Here's the challenge for you and any Muslims motivated by sincere good will toward infidels {if such good will toward infidels is even virtuous in Islam. Is it?}: Can Islam contribute to contemporary life, outside the lands where it dominates, civilly? Or does it play a temporary role on the stage of western democracy, biding its time until armed jihad will seek to grasp power in today's non-Muslim lands? The evidence worries Christians and Jews, who are learning to live together peacefully, without diluting their sincere religious convictions.]

Van Gogh's murder was neither the first nor the most recent case of Islamists employing violence to intimidate the Western creative class. Just ask Salman Rushdie, the British author of The Satanic Verses, who is now completing his second decade of sequestration following the death sentence pronounced by Iranian clerics. Renewed pledges of retaliation rose up on the heels of his knighting in 2007. The danger is undeniable. Several translators of Verses were assaulted at the behest of the 1989 fatwa; one, Hitoshi Igarashi, was killed.

Violence also erupted in the wake of the infamous Mohammed cartoons, first printed by the Danish broadsheet Jyllands-Posten in fall 2005. Dozens perished across the globe, consulates were set ablaze, threats of murder and kidnapping were issued, and several of the artists went into hiding. Islamists also marched on Denmark's London embassy, raising placards that read "Europe you will pay, your 9/11 will come," "Behead those who insult Islam," "Freedom go to hell," and "Be prepared for the real holocaust." [Mr. Hooper, are you there? What treatment would you ask of the media for this barbarism?]

Ironically, the cartoons were put forth as a protest against the type of self-censorship described by Grayson Perry. Jyllands-Posten editor Flemming Rose commissioned them after learning that a Danish writer had been unable to find an artist willing to illustrate his book about the life of Mohammed. A report noted that "one [declined] with reference to the murder in Amsterdam of the film director Theo van Gogh, while another [cited the attack on] the lecturer at the Carsten Niebuhr Institute in Copenhagen." The latter victim was assaulted for reading passages from the Koran to an infidel audience. [Mr. Hooper, Couldn't Muslims find a way to rejoice that infidels are reading the Koran; or is this another event that the media got all wrong in its, according to you, intent to malign Muslims?]

The cartoon controversy has only accelerated self-censorship. A museum in The Hague recently declined to display a photograph by Sooreh Hera that shows two gay men wearing masks of Mohammed and Ali, based on fears that "certain people in our society might perceive it as offensive." Though critics of this action were assured that "all Dutch museums are free to choose what they exhibit," Hera disagreed. "Apparently a Muslim minority decides what will be on display in the museum." The artist has now retreated to an "unspecified location" following emails promising to "burn you naked or put a bullet in your mouth."Similarly, in October 2006 London's Whitechapel Art Gallery removed erotic works by the surrealist Hans Bellmer. According to the curator, "the motive was simply to not shock the population of the Whitechapel neighborhood, which is partly Muslim." The pictures were pulled merely one week after a Berlin opera house had cancelled — then sheepishly reinstated — performances of Mozart's Idomeneo, in which the title character grandstands with the severed heads of Poseidon, Buddha, Jesus, and Mohammed. Needless to say, the severed heads of Poseidon, Buddha, and Jesus were never an issue.

Amir Taheri has compiled other disturbing cases from across the continent: German carnivals prohibiting costumes that might look "Islamic," Spanish towns canceling traditional festivals marking the victory over the Moors, the blacklisting of books deemed critical of Islam, and the removal from public view of illuminated manuscripts that feature images of Mohammed. [Mr. Hooper: Should journalists vet their articles with you or CAIR and receive your Islamic imprimatur before publishing anything that might touch on Islam? Is this what you mean by a free press; or are you seeking a free pass?]

Even art aimed at children has not been immune, as evidenced by a British school that excised the pigs from The Three Little Pigs to forestall Muslim objections. "If changing a few words avoids offense then we will do so," a teacher explained. The school later reversed the decision. Likewise, British author Kes Gray just postponed a reprinting of his "inclusive" children's book so that Mohammed the Mole could be renamed Morgan. "I had no idea at all of the sensitivities of the name Mohammed until seeing this case in Sudan," he said, referencing the teacher imprisoned over a class teddy bear. "As soon as I saw the news I thought, 'Oh gosh, I've got a mole called Mohammed — this is not good.'"

Particularly "not good" is the preemptive nature of these capitulations. "At this point, it seems, terrorists don't even need to issue a specific threat in order to intimidate us," observed Der Spiegel. Indeed, many of the above productions or exhibits faced no threats at all. Some Muslims are even helping to expose the hypersensitivity for what it is. Regarding the Pigs fiasco, the Daily Mail reported that "Islamic leaders condemned the politically correct move as misguided and said decisions like this were turning Muslims into 'misfits' in society." [Mr. Hooper: Have you joined -- or will you join -- these Islamic leaders in condemning such intimidation? If not, don't ask the media to favor you with puffery that air-brushes Islamic incivility and worse into coffee-table art.]

There can be no true freedom in a climate of fear. Given the history of Islamist violence directed at European artists, a significant portion of that fear is justified. However, the continent's groveling cultural elites have needlessly exacerbated this atmosphere. Their inability or unwillingness to distinguish between Islam and Islamism magnifies the perceived strength of the radicals, while their eagerness to assume the role of dhimmis — subjugated infidels living under Islamic rule — can only demoralize the population and embolden the extremists. [Mr. Hooper: How are you, and how is CAIR, distinguishing between Islam and Islamism? And in what ways is it using its PR megaphone to condemn Islamism? If it is silent when condemnation is called for, why should its own misuse of media warrant CAIR's insistence that non-Muslim media portray Islam more favorably?]

Will Europe ultimately choose to preserve the foundational values of classical liberalism forged during its Renaissance and Enlightenment? Or will it suffer a long, slow decline into the dark ages of dhimmitude? For now, only one conclusion appears certain: somewhere in a Dutch prison cell, Mohammed Bouyeri is smiling. [Mr. Hooper: I truly wonder -- behind the web sites, the restrained press releases, the game face on camera and microphone, away from the PR/media machine, are you secretly smiling with Bouyeri? Here's where you and CAIR can do some good: Say and do the truth. That's what freedom in and of the West is for. Join us in this noble endeavor, and you and we may be able to mutually enrich our lives, to the glory of God.]

David J. Rusin is a research associate at Islamist Watch and a Philadelphia-based editor for Pajamas Media.
He holds a Ph.D. in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Pennsylvania.
Please feel free to contact him at djrusin@gmail.com.

Refresher Course for 2008 Politics: 24 Truths

2008-01-07T08:50:00.000-08:00

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul
can always depend on the support of Paul.
--George Bernard Shaw

A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man,
which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.
--G. Gordon Liddy

Democracy must be something more than
two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.
--James Bovard (1994)

Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer
from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries.
--Douglas Casey (1992)

Giving money and power to government
is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
--P.J. O'Rourke

Government is the great fiction, through which
everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.
--Frederic Bastia

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases:
If it moves, tax it.
If it keeps moving, regulate it.
And if it stops moving, subsidize it.
-- Ronald Reagan (1986)

I don't make jokes.
I just watch the government and report the facts.
--Will Rogers

If you think health care is expensive now,
wait until you see what it costs when it's free.
--P.J. O'Rourke

10.

If you want government to intervene domestically, you're a liberal.
If you want government to intervene overseas, you're a conservative.
If you want government to intervene everywhere, you're a moderate.
If you don't want government to intervene anywhere, you're an extremist.
--Joseph Sobran (1995)

11.

In general, the art of government consists in taking as much
money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other.
--Voltaire (1764)

12.

Just because you do not take an interest in politics
doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you.
--Pericles (430 B.C.)

13.

No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.
--Mark Twain (1866)

14.

Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress.
But I repeat myself.
--Mark Twain

15.

Talk is cheap--except when Congress does it.
--Author Unknown

16.

The government is like a baby's alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end
and no responsibility at the other.
--Ronald Reagan

17.

The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings.
The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
--Winston Churchill

18.

The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist
is that the taxidermist leaves the skin.
--Mark Twain

19.

The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.
--Herbert Spencer (1891)

20. There is no distinctly native American criminal class save Congress.
--Mark Twain

21.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you please.
And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
--P.J. O'Rourke (1993)

22.

We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity
is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.
--Winston Churchill

23.

What this country needs are more unemployed politicians.
–Edward Langley O'Rourke

24.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation,
the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
--P.J. O'Rourke (Jack Carey)

Bloggers, Unite (or stay Untied?)

2007-04-13T07:40:00.000-07:00

"The Scout Report," a weekly e-mail I receive from the good folks at http://scout.wisc.edu/ includes the following about blogs. I haven't posted for over a month, while life has speeded up a bit, but I hope to resume soon. These resources and suggestions are worth considering as we watch and participate in the amazing blog explosion.

"Code of conduct proposed for blogs

Web pioneers say code of conduct needed to clean up manners online http://news.scotsman.com/uk.cfm?id=547872007

Bloggers disinclined toward suggestion of Net civility http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/04/10/BUGH4P5G1S1.DTL

Bloggers code of conduct http://blogging.wikia.com/wiki/BCC

Blog 100 http://news.com.com/2310-10784_3-0.html

BuzzMachine http://www.buzzmachine.com/

Electronic Frontier Foundation: Legal Guide for Bloggers http://www.eff.org/bloggers/lg/

Internet Scout Project Weblog http://scout.wisc.edu/Weblog/

The modern blog evolved from the online diary, and reasonable estimates of the number of blogs approximate that there are over 60 million blogs. While most of the discourse and commentary on blogs remains civil, there have been a number of recent events that have caused some to wonder whether there should be an official blogging code of conduct. This past Sunday, Tim O’Reilly who is both a conference promoter and a primary figure in the Web 2.0 world posted some initial suggestions for just such a code. Of course, shortly after Reilly posted these suggestions, there was a veritable snowstorm of responses posted within the blogosphere, some of which were quite vitriolic, and others which were a bit more detached, but still upset. Jeff Jarvis, a professor at City University (and an active blogger), responded after hearing about this proposal by stating “I’m rather resentful of someone who has the temerity to tell me how they think I should behave.” Some of Reilly’s initial suggestions included banning anonymous comments, and he also called on bloggers to not post material that harasses others or is knowingly false. Not surprisingly, Reilly’s own blog was quickly filled with a variety of comments, including one user who quoted Benjamin Franklin and another who referenced the Council of Nicea and its attempt to reform the Christian church in the 4th century. [KMG]

The first link will take visitors to an insightful piece about this proposed code of conduct offered in this Tuesday’s online edition of the Scotsman. On a related note, the second link leads to a fine piece by the San Francisco Chronicle’s Verne Kopytoff on the reaction of bloggers to this proposed code. The third link whisks users away to the proposed code of conduct, which is referenced as a “starting point for discussion” on the whole matter. Given the sheer number of blogs, the fourth link will be most welcome. It is a listing of the top 100 blogs as determined by CNET News.com, complete with a smattering of recent posts. The fifth link leads to the very compelling blog of Jeff Jarvis, who is the director of the interactive journalism program at the City University of New York’s Graduate School of Journalism. The sixth link is definitely worth a visit, as it contains a number of helpful sections on the legal liability of bloggers, and a FAQ on both intellectual property and defamation. Finally, the last link leads to our very own blog here at the Internet Scout Project. [KMG] "

Dean of Islamic Scholarship: Europe Doomed, Israeli Leaders Must Wake Up

2007-02-07T07:34:00.000-08:00

Professor Bernard Lewis, a Brit teaching for years at Columbia University, is probably the foremost western scholar of Islam. Among his many writings is The Crisis of Islam: Holy War and Unholy Terror . Unquestionably informed, he is also even-handed, irenic, and calm -- no enemy of Islam, while opposed to Islamism -- which makes his opinions about the dire condition of Europe (especially its Jews) and of Israel's tepid response to Islamism important and urgent. Read excerpts of a recent interview with The Jerusalem Post.

More Politics Than Science, Again: Global Warming

2007-01-29T11:53:00.000-08:00

On PBS' "Now" last Friday, Laurie David, producer of Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," proclaimed, with the certainty of a Puritan preacher, that the science is settled, global warming is happening at crisis levels, human activity is to blame -- and anyone who disagrees is sub-humanly ignorant (asserted in perhaps milder words pointing to a similar judgment). Passionate she was and attractive, because I think she's sincere in her passion.

But two people and a few facts leave me thinking she's two-thirds (or more) wrong: yes, global warming is happening (about 1 degree Fahrenheit over the last century, pretty much everyone agrees) but no, not at crisis levels and not caused primarily by human fossil-fuels emissions.

The two people?

(1) Emeritus Professor William Gray, hurricane researcher at Colorado State University, Ft. Collins, who knows that surface global temperature rises and falls for reasons that, as yet, we don't understand. He produces a graph showing such temperatures falling from the mid-1940s through the mid-1970s. Newsweek in 1975 (28 April) warned that lowered temperatures could result in lower harvests, leading to resulting famines that "could be catastrophic."

Let's see: I graduated from high school in 1974, and the only shortage that stands out from that time in my mind today is the humanly contrived gasoline shortages of 1973 and later. I don't remember missing a meal or any empty grocery shelves. Temps fell, yes; but no, no crisis, and no, human activity did not cause the fall.

Gray acknowledges that temps have been rising since the 1970s, but he attributes the current media-and-political "climate" about the rise to, well, forces driving media and politics. Media profits from crisis, which raises not temperatures but media and advertising $ale$. And, whatever viewpoint controls government agencies ends up controlling the intellectual output of researchers who profit from government-grant revenues.

Gray should know. After winning government NOAA grants for 30 years, after the Clinton administration arrived in 1993 (and gave the global-warming-crisis theory a home in government), his grant applications have been rejected. Every time. 13 times, to be exact. "A mild form of McCarthyism" he says, against anyone skeptical of the "crisis."

(2) Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT (now there's a title to kill for). He is an often-cited early voice debunking climate-change hysteria. And he's not cooling his debunking. The earth's "always warming and cooling," and the increase we've seen over the past century "is much smaller than (computer climate) models predict we should have seen" given the amount of CO2 we've added. And adding more CO2 may amplify the greenhouse effect less than the earliest additions of CO2 because it's "like painting a window with black paint. The first coat blocks out most of the light; adding three times as many coats doesn't do a heck of a lot."

Now the facts, quoted straight from Stuart Shepard (from whom the above, except for my opening paragraphs, is summarized):

"You've heard there's a consensus among scientists concerning catastrophic human-induced global warming.

"Let's knock that down in three steps.

"One, while there is consensus that the average global temperature has increased, there is not a consensus on:

* How much it has gone up.
* Whether it will continue to go up.
* How much humans are responsible.
* Whether warmer temperature presents a crisis of a benefit.
* Whether increased CO2 levels cause the warming or follow the warming.
* What public-policy action we should take, if any.
* Whether anything we do would have a significant impact.
* Whether anything we do might have the opposite of the desired effect.

. . .

"Two, when someone trumpets a consensus, they're taking the general agreement concerning warmer average temperatures and stretching it to fit everything they are about to tell us we should do -- which is deceitful at best, sinister at worst.

"Three, as Lindzen expressed it, 'Science, first of all, is not conducted by consensus and science is not a matter of authority; it's a process. And so whenever [people] hear politicians declare "the science is settled, the debate is over" and so on, they should be aware, they're not hearing about science.

"He said 'the debate is over' line may be a good political technique, but it's dishonest."

(S. Shepard, "Hot Air: Global warming is more about politics than science," Focus on the Family Action, Focus on the Family Citizen, November 2006, pp. 22--23.)

Concerning the politics of it all, E. Calvin Beisner, associate professor of social ethics at Knox Theological Seminary, believes that recent attempts to get evangelical Christians on the warming-crisis bandwagon express "an intentional effort . . . to split the evangelical vote that has tended to be fairly strong pro-Republican in order to return control of the Congress to the Democratic Party" (Shepard, p. 23).

The Dems now control Congress, but I hope that the cautions Beisner and others of the Interfaith Stewardship Alliance urge will help cool the hysteria (the real warming crisis!)

before it brakes economies, which will certainly hurt the poor (at home and abroad) far more than the middle class and the rich. Why don't we hear Al Gore et al estimate what their global-warming mitigations will cost the most vulnerable among us? (Watch Beisner et al present "Call to Truth, Prudence and the Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming" at the Heritage Foundation, July 25, 2006.)

Political Correctness Gags Campus Health Services

2007-01-25T09:49:00.000-08:00

UNPROTECTED: A Campus Psychiatrist Reveals How Political Correctness in Her Profession Endangers Every Student, by Anonymous, M.D. (aka Dr. Miriam Grossman, UCLA)

I haven't been planning to make political correctness (PC) the theme of this blog, but after posting about psychiatric malpractice, I've just heard a talk by a practicing campus psychiatrist that gave the same message: those promoting radical social change have perverted college health systems nationwide. The resulting PC climate intimidates doctors who know more than they're routinely telling student patients, doctors who therefore treat patients inadequately, doctors who therefore promote illness.

Watch Dr. Grossman's talk at the Family Research Council (25 January 07) . (Other coverage of the book exists at National Review Online, twice(!).)

Her book tells readers . . .

*"About an Ivy League university’s health website that okays risky behaviors including S&M, 'swinging,' and bestiality
* How campus health centers hound students to stop smoking, eat right, get enough sleep, and wear sunscreen, but tacitly approve of promiscuity, and whitewash the consequences of sexually transmitted infections
* How HIV education is distorted, causing hysteria among students who are at no risk for infection
* How campus counselors focus on sexual orientation, abuse, molestation, cigarettes and caffeine, but neglect to ask students about abortion
* How ideology-driven health services lead young women to believe they are just like men – and to pay a high price for it.
* How, despite strong evidence of significant health benefits of church attendance and faith in God, psychology remains anti-religion -- an irrational, out-dated prejudice Dr Anonymous calls 'theophobia.'

(the above copied from sales copy at www. bn.com)

These are among her final words at today's talk: "Where I work [student health services at UCLA], it's very difficult to say the things I've just said, and that’s why I wrote the book anonymously. I went out on a limb." At her work, only one colleague has expressed support for Dr. Grossman’s views. "Miriam," she said, "This book completely validates me and everything I believe in."

Dr. Grossman continues, “But guess what? She told me that behind a closed door. Otherwise, mum’s the word. Many people in my profession are intimidated. The atmosphere on campus is intolerant. I do not know what’s going to face me when I go back to work on Monday. And this of course on a campus that celebrates diversity. I am looking for another job."

So much for the university born of Enlightenment.

Psychiatric Malpractice

2007-01-13T10:56:00.000-08:00

Politics, not Science, Redefined Homosexuality as Normal in the 1970’s
I learned my first tidbit about this tectonic medical-social shift from a public radio show in 2002. What stuck in my mind was how a Honolulu bar party of closeted homosexual psychiatrists and one activist convinced a heterosexual psychiatrist to champion deleting homosexuality as a disease from the 1973 edition of the authoritative DSM (Diagnostics and Statistics Manual). The story is bigger than that nonetheless climactic event (see links below). But simply, in the words of Robert Bayer, historian of public health, the American Psychiatric Association “had fallen victim to the disorder of a tumultuous era, when disruptive conflicts threatened to politicize every aspect of American social life. A furious egalitarianism …had compelled psychiatrists to negotiate the pathological status of homosexuality with homosexuals themselves. The result was not a conclusion based upon an approximation of the scientific truth as dictated by reason, but was instead an action demanded by the ideological temper of the times” (Homosexuality and American Psychiatry: The Politics Of Diagnosis. Princeton: Princeton University Press [1987], p. 104).

In other words, a decision society had entrusted to the scientific expertise of an elite group society presumed to be specially, if not uniquely, qualified to decide, a decision that did nothing less than overhaul society, was made because a special-interest group demanded it, not because science and reason justified or compelled it. I doubt that very many people know this story, one more chapter of the unfortunately never-ending iterations of the tale of the emperor’s new clothes that is best not told in order to maintain the status quo of homosexual triumph over social well being. But once you hear the story, I think you will agree with me that the scientific community today should not continue to expect laypersons to trust its judgments just because those handing down such dicta wear lab coats monogrammed M.D. or Ph.D. We know, not only from this story but also from religious-like defenses of macro-evolution (supposedly caused by only one mechanism: impersonal, blind, natural selection), that social forces can and do trump rationality, even in the world of hard-shelled scientism. Without deep honesty (a virtue that, by its nature, exists only when one makes it a habit), desires, personal or social, will "cook the books" of evidence to conclude as near as possible to what one desires.

The paper I recommend: “The Trojan Couch: How the Mental Health Guilds Allow Medical Diagnostics, Scientific Research and Jurisprudence to be Subverted in Lockstep with the Political Aims of their Gay Sub-Components,” by Jeffrey B. Satinover, M.S., M.D.

The radio broadcast you can hear: “81 words.”

A classic book by a courageous psychiatrist who opposed the 1973 DSM changes and who has since suffered professionally because of his principled opposition: Homosexuality: A Freedom too Far. A Psychoanalyst Answers 1000 Questions about Causes and Cure and the Impact of the Gay Rights Movement on American Society, by Charles W. Socarides. Phoenix, AZ : Adam Margrave Books, 1995; ISBN: 0964664259. (Haven't read it yet but hope to. As one might expect, it is assailed by pro-homosex persons.)

The wages of sin (economic & political)

2007-01-10T11:34:00.000-08:00

Urge your representative and Senator to hike the minimum wage to $7.15 if . . .
* you think (some) politicians can make the economy work better than the market can
* you really think it's the government's job to decide what a living wage is ; that is, if you kind of like a Centralized Economy (Stalin's dream and the USSR's nightmare)
* you don't believe people who work hard and seek to become more skillful in their work can earn promotions and wage increases
* you want to increase unemployment (10% forced min. wage increase will raise unemployment 1% to 3%)
* you want the cost of everything touched by minimum-wage workers to increase (rising labor costs raise consumer prices)
* you want to see more jobs go overseas, where competent workers are already available for well below the current US federal minimum wage.
See what the folks at Acton have to say.

Make A Wounded Fighter's New Year a Bit Happier

2006-12-31T16:21:00.000-08:00

My friend Beth sent this suggestion to me, which I recommend heartily:

Walter Reed Hospital, Family Affairs, (202) 782-2071, confirmed that if you address a card as described below, your card WILL go to a soldier at the hospital. Your small act of kindness will be greatly appreciated.

Here's the address:

A Recovering American Soldier
c/o Walter Reed Army Medical Center
6900 Georgia Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20307-5001

Merry Christmas!

2006-12-25T08:08:00.000-08:00

Enjoy this short fantasy by J. B. Phillips. I commend it to you as "full disclosure" of what Christmas is all about. /mer

The Visited Planet

J. B. Phillips
(author, Your God Is Too Small ; paraphraser, The New Testament in Modern English)

Once upon a time a very young angel was being shown round the splendours and glories of the universes by a senior and experienced angel. To tell the truth, the little angel was beginning to be tired and a little bored. He had been shown whirling galaxies and blazing suns, infinite distances in the deathly cold of inter-stellar space, and to his mind there seemed to be an awful lot of it all. Finally he was shown the galaxy of which our planetary system is but a small part. As the two of them drew near to the star which we call our sun and to its circling planets, the senior angel pointed to a small and rather insignificant sphere turning very slowly on its axis. It looked as dull as a dirty tennis-ball to the little angel, whose mind was filled with the size and glory of what he had seen.

"I want you to watch that one particularly," said the senior angel, pointing with his finger.

"Well, it looks very small and rather dirty to me," said the little angel. "What's special about that one?"

"That," replied his senior solemnly, "is the Visited Planet."

"Visited?" said the little one. "you don't mean visited by --------?"

"Indeed I do. That ball, which I have no doubt looks to you small and insignificant and not perhaps overclean, has been visited by our young Prince of Glory." And at these words he bowed his head reverently.

"But how?" queried the younger one. "Do you mean that our great and glorious Prince, with all these wonders and splendours of His Creation, and millions more that I'm sure I haven't seen yet, went down in Person to this fifth-rate little ball? Why should He do a thing like that?"

"It isn't for us," said his senior a little stiffly, "to question His 'why's', except that I must point out to you that He is not impressed by size and numbers, as you seem to be. But that He really went I know, and all of us in Heaven who know anything know that. As to why He became one of them - how else do you suppose could He visit them?"

The little angel's face wrinkled in disgust.

"Do you mean to tell me," he said, "that He stooped so low as to become one of those creeping, crawling creatures of that floating ball?"

"I do, and I don't think He would like you to call them 'creeping, crawling creatures' in that tone of voice. For, strange as it may seem to us, He loves them. He went down to visit them to lift them up to become like Him."

The little angel looked blank. Such a thought was almost beyond his comprehension.

"Close your eyes for a moment," said the senior angel, "and we will go back in what they call Time."

While the little angel's eyes were closed and the two of them moved nearer to the spinning ball, it stopped its spinning, spun backwards quite fast for a while, and then slowly resumed its usual rotation.

"Now look!" And as the little angel did as he was told, there appeared here and there on the dull surface of the globe little flashes of light, some merely momentary and some persisting for quite a time.

"Well, what am I seeing now?" queried the little angel.

"You are watching this little world as it was some thousands of years ago," returned his companion. "Every flash and glow of light that you see is something of the Father's knowledge and wisdom breaking into the minds and hearts of people who live upon the earth. Not many people, you see, can hear His Voice or understand what He says, even though He is speaking gently and quietly to them all the time."

"Why are they so blind and deaf and stupid?" asked the junior angel rather crossly.

"It is not for us to judge them. We who live in the Splendour have no idea what it is like to live in the dark. We hear the music and the Voice like the sound of many waters every day of over lives, but to them - well, there is much darkness and much noise and much distraction upon the earth. Only a few who are quiet and humble and wise hear His Voice. But watch, for in a moment you will see something truly wonderful."

The Earth went on turning and circling round the sun, and then quite suddenly, in the upper half of the globe, there appeared a light, tiny but so bright in its intensity that both the angels hid their eyes.

"I think I can guess," said the little angel in a low voice. "That was the Visit, wasn't it?"

"Yes, that was the Visit. The Light Himself went down there and lived among them; but in a moment, and you will be able to tell that even with your eyes closed, the light will go out."

"But why? Could He not bear their darkness and stupidity? Did He have to return here?"

"No, it wasn't that" returned the senior angel. His voice was stern and sad. "They failed to recognise Him for Who He was - or at least only a handful knew Him. For the most part they preferred their darkness to His Light, and in the end they killed Him."

"The fools, the crazy fools! They don't deserve ----"

"Neither you nor I, nor any other angel, knows why they were so foolish and so wicked. Nor can we say what they deserve or don't deserve. But the fact remains, they killed our Prince of Glory while He was Man amongst them."

"And that I suppose was the end? I see the whole Earth has gone black and dark. All right, I won't judge them, but surely that is all they could expect?"

"Wait, we are still far from the end of the story of the Visited Planet. Watch now, but be ready to cover your eyes again."

In utter blackness the earth turned round three times, and then there blazed with unbearable radiance a point of light.

"What now?" asked the little angel, shielding his eyes.

"They killed Him all right, but He conquered death. The thing most of them dread and fear all their lives He broke and conquered. He rose again, and a few of them saw Him and from then on became His utterly devoted slaves."

"Thank God for that," said the little angel.

"Amen. Open your eyes now, the dazzling light has gone. The Prince has returned to His Home of Light. But watch the Earth now."

As they looked, in place of the dazzling light there was a bright glow which throbbed and pulsated. And then as the Earth turned many times little points of light spread out. A few flickered and died; but for the most part the lights burned steadily, and as they continued to watch, in many parts of the globe there was a glow over many areas.

"You see what is happening?" asked the senior angel. "The bright glow is the company of loyal men and women He left behind, and with His help they spread the glow and now lights begin to shine all over the Earth."

"Yes, yes," said the little angel impatiently, "but how does it end? Will the little lights join up with each other? Will it all be light, as it is in Heaven?"

His senior shook his head. "We simply do not know," he replied. "It is in the Father's hands. Sometimes it is agony to watch and sometimes it is joy unspeakable. The end is not yet. But now I am sure you can see why this little ball is so important. He has visited it; He is working out His Plan upon it."

"Yes, I see, though I don't understand. I shall never forget that this is the Visited Planet."

Ahmadinejad hostage-taker in 1979?

2006-11-15T10:01:00.000-08:00

Daniel Pipes lends more credence to identifying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a 1979 invader of the US Embassy in Tehran. I think he was.

Netanyahu: "It's 1938, and Iran is Germany."

2006-11-15T09:16:00.000-08:00

Former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking November 14 at the General Assembly of United Jewish Communities, declares that Hitler's 1938 Germany parallels accurately Ahmadinejad's Iran in 2006. But few listen and believe. Denial reigns, even as Mark Steyn's America Alone: The End of the World As We Know It confirms and extends Netanyahu's claims. Download the Prologue here, so you can start reading it before you have the whole book in your hands.

Jihad is Here -- Because of Radical Muslim Obsession

2006-11-09T07:50:00.000-08:00

While I've taken a bit of solace in hearing that "only" 10 to 15% of the 1.2 billion Muslims worldwide are part of, or support, radical, militant Islam, evidence shows that "mainstream" Islam supports military jihad as well. For example, a school text used in Jordan and the Palestinian territories teaches "This religion [Islam] will destroy all other religions through the Islamic Jihad fighters.”

I can't find any solace in that. Nor can I in the soon-releasing, award-winning DVD "Obsession: Radical Islam's War Against the West." See it low-res for free, and order it from the website. Donate a copy to your public library if it won't order it.

British cultural watchman Melanie Phillips says "[Obsession] should be made compulsory viewing for every politician and pundit who clings to the misguided belief that all we face is terrorism rooted in various grievances around the world. It is the single most powerful and terrifying public exposition of the fact that a global Islamic jihad is now being waged from Bali to Istanbul, from Chechnya to Madrid, from Morocco to Manhattan, from Thailand to Bloomsbury – and that the world that is under attack is deeply in denial about what it is facing." (See her Londonistan, which documents the UK's morphing into a jihadi haven.)

Among the insights from "Obsession" you may find hard to believe: America is the #1 enemy of Arabs and Islam, because America is dedicated to eliminating both(!). This propaganda fuels the call to jihad as defense of Islam and the honor of Allah.

Let's hope the partying Dems won't remain dim about why the war in Iraq matters as a key front -- among many -- against global jihad, and ditto for Afghanistan.

Even more, hope that the film can convince any doubters that jihad, whether fought on US territory or abroad, must be fought as a military and not primarily a law-enforcement action.

Jihad means war -- one Americans do not want and did not seek but that has been declared on them since at least the Muslim invasion and occupation of the American Embassy in Teheran in 1979. Anyone who insists on prosecuting this war as if prosecuting homicides in courts of law has already conceded victory to the armies of jihad.

We've been called up to combat, not to practice criminal law.

How do we win? As in all conflicts, one party loses the will to continue, and the other wins. Exactly what strategies and tactics will produce that result in this conflict, I do not know. But primarily prosecuting domestic terrorists in federal courts and dealing similarly with combatants detained outside the US will not defeat this foe.

Am I alarmist? Overreacting?

Nonie Darwish, the Egyptian-born daughter of a jihad martyr and author of Now They Call Me Infidel: Why I Renounced Jihad for America, Israel, and the War on Terror, tells fellow Americans, "America has to wake up. We are strangling ourselves with our political correctness."

Muslims for America Endorses Senate Candidates

2006-11-07T10:52:00.000-08:00

If anyone needs another bit of evidence that our political experiment does in fact draw everyone -- save felons -- who wants to participate to at least the virtual, cyber table, see whom Muslims for America endorses in today's US Senate elections.

Election Day Forecast: GOP Keeps Senate, Loses Less Than Expected in House

2006-11-06T13:44:00.000-08:00

Late Signs Dispel GOP Gloom

Ann Coulter points out that the GOP has already defied historical trends in its majority government of legislative and executive branches for six years: "It at least seems clear that Democrat gains this year are going to fall far short of the historical average. No poll has the Democrats winning even half of their rightful midterm gains." Charles Krauthammer concurs, calling likely Democratic gains "the American people's usual response to entrenched power — a bracing and chastening contempt."

Today's NY Times revises its forecast of GOP gloom in conservatives' favor, drawing on polls that, even beyond the Times' reportage, show Republican lag decreasing widely. Throw in Saddam Hussein's ticket to the gallows after an unsurpassably open trial -- no small evidence of real change for the good in Iraq -- and I believe that the GOP base of disciplined voters will staunch predicted huge losses and perhaps pull off many slim-margin wins.

All that really matters at the national level, in my opinion, is giving President Bush a minimally cooperative Senate with which he can complete two key jobs in his remaining two years:

prosecuting the war against Islamofascism (God save us from Nancy Pelosi two clicks from the Oval Office; or from Harry Reid's directing the Senate!);
and appointing up to two Supreme Court justices (both of which would likely replace aged liberal justices).

The economy has gone clearly to Republican credit and, confined as a stump issue now to rust- and textile-belt regions, has ceased to be a top-level national election issue. Republicans have already proven disunified regarding sound immigration policy, so GOP losses in Congress probably can't hurt this fiasco any more deeply than GOP governance in Congress already has.

What matters at the national level is enabling a President who has led steadily, courageously, and righteously to finish his term with success in those two top tasks. I agree with at least 17 points of Wayne Grudem's 18-point appreciative assessment of our President's stalwart service and leadership (immigration reform being the bone of contention). And, about the Iraq war, I cannot agree more:

"It is just that -- a war, and wars are not won quickly or easily. We were attacked in an act of war on 9/11, and we had been attacked by similar terrorists many times before that. Finally we are fighting back, against an invisible, very skillful, very evil enemy.

"When people complain, "It's not going well," I just think, "What you are saying is that we haven't won yet. But that is because there are still evil people in the world who want to destroy Iraq and eventually destroy Israel and destroy us, and in some countries their governments are not stopping them yet. So this is a huge task, but we have no choice but to go forward. There will only be one side left at the end of this war, and I want it to be us, not the Muslim terrorists."

"It seems to me that what we need as a country is to unite behind the President in this war, not attack every move he makes (isn't this what a country usually does in war?). For every U.S. soldier who dies there are many times more terrorists who are caught or killed (which I think in light of Rom. 13:4 is the right thing for civil government to do), and the terrorist movements simply cannot and will not continue a losing battle forever. Criticism of the war sounds to me like people are saying, "There are still some evil people in the world, therefore Bush is a bad President." That is misguided reasoning, because there will always be evil people in the world, and the God-given solution, according to Rom. 13:1-7, is to prevent them from harming others through the use of superior force by our military and police.

"That is what President Bush is doing, and I don't know if anyone else in the world could do any better. (Many nations are not even trying, just sitting back and letting us do the dirty work while they criticize!)"

More Republicans than Democrats Online; But Most "Moderate"

2006-11-06T06:34:00.000-08:00

Most-Visited Sites Contrast Sharply

On the eve of nationwide elections, with the GOP "glum" (according to the New York Times) about looming Congressional losses, a recent Nielsen/Net Ratings report suggests that if ballots were cast online, Republicans would have a good chance of continuing to control both Congressional houses. Results of Nielsen's by-party study of Internet use show that "36.6 percent of U.S. adults online are Republicans, 30.8 percent are Democrats and 17.3 percent are Independents."

"The Web site with the highest concentration of Republicans was RushLimbaugh.com, with an 84.8 percent Republican audience . . . . NewsMax.com and Bill O’Reilly.com ranked No. 2 and 3, with audiences that were 65.4 percent Republican. The Drudge Report and Salt Lake Tribune rounded out the top five Republican sites with 59.0 and 57.9 composition percent.

"Among Democrats, the top three sites were BlackAmericaWeb.com, AOL BlackVoices and BET.com with audiences that were 79.9 percent, 64.8 percent and 58.6 percent Democratic, respectively. Salon.com and Village Voice ranked fourth and fifth among Democrats, with 55.3 and 55.2 composition percent.

Online newspaper use by party should surprise no one: "WSJ.com has predominantly Republican readers, at 40.2 percent. Democrats make up 25.8 percent of WSJ.com’s readership, closely followed by Independents at 24.3 percent.

"The New York Times online is a favorite among Democrats, who make up 52.3 percent of its readership. Independents compose 22.6 percent and Republicans 18.3 percent."

The largest segment of respondents identified themselves as "Moderate," 36.1%, while 32.5% self-identified as "Conservative/Very Conservative," and only 19.8% chose "Liberal/Very Liberal" for themselves.

African-American respondents "were over twice as likely to be Democratic as the average Web user. Asians were 36 percent more likely than the average Web user to be Democratic, and Hispanics were 28 percent more likely." But whites were only "slightly more likely to be Republican."

Considered only by age or gender, respondents favored neither party.

Kerry's Slip or Slur?

2006-11-03T09:51:00.000-08:00

I want to give Sen. Kerry a lot of room to exegete his own words; however, his infamous remark about those "stuck in Iraq" for lack of education is, in my mind, imperious, befitting perhaps an aristocrat but not a democrat. Similarly for John O'Neill. More important, that slip-or-slur is empirically wrong: Dr. Tim Kane's study of data on all enlistees shows that "The average American enlistee is more educated — not less — than the average young civilian."

Kane's "Facts About Today’s Soldiers" includes these items that the stereotypical majority news coverage doesn't:

* The average reading level of new soldiers is roughly a full grade level higher than their civilian peers’.
* Enlistees’ high school graduation rate was 97 percent in 2003, 2004, and 2005. The civilian graduation rate is seventeen percentage points lower.
* The wealthiest 40 percent of neighborhoods in America are the home of 45.6 percent of 2005 enlistees. For every two U.S. recruits from the poorest neighborhoods, three come from the richest.
* There is no statistical evidence to support the claim that minorities are being targeted or exploited for military service. The 100 zip codes with the highest proportions of African-Americans were actually under-represented among military enlistees in 2005.
* Every U.S. military recruit of the last 33 years has been a volunteer.

Haggard Interview, Nov. 1 (& updates through Nov. 5)

2006-11-02T20:53:00.000-08:00

Letters of Ted and Gayle Haggard to New Life Church, Nov. 5

New Life Church Overseers Dismiss Pastor Ted Haggard
in a Nov. 4 press release citing proof that "he has committed sexually immoral conduct."

Homosexual Escort's Charge Days before Colorado Marriage Vote Seems Opportunistic

New Life Church Pastor (Col. Springs) and National Association of Evangelicals President Ted Haggard's unedited interview with Denver's 9News flatly but not passionately denies claims that he had sex with escort-accuser Mike Jones (who has now failed a polygraph). I am surprised that he does not deny the charges more forcefully and with a greater sense of surprise; however, such a response fits his public image: very likeable, irenic, and kind. Haggard denies being anti-homosexual even while supporting law defining marriage traditionally. So I believe his denial and certainly hope, for the sake of Haggard, his family, the church, and American evangelicals, that the charges are no more than a desperate, 11th-hour ploy to discourage values voters such that they won't vote Nov. 7.

Nov. 3 update: Rocky Mountain News reports that:
"KUSA-TV reported Thursday night that a voice analysis expert compared a voice mail recording provided by Jones to a recording of Haggard's speech and that they matched."
"Haggard, 50, initially denied the allegations, telling 9News Wednesday night that 'I’ve never had a gay relationship with anybody, and I’m steady with my wife. I’m faithful to my wife.'"
"But KKTV in Colorado Springs reported that New Life Associate Senior Pastor Ross Parsley told a meeting of church elders Thursday night that Haggard had met with the church’s overseers earlier in the day and 'had admitted to some indiscretions.'"
"Parsley told the elders that Haggard had said some of the allegations were true, but not all of them."

Another RNM article discloses accuser Mike Jones' election motive: "[Jones] decided to come out with his story before the election to influence voters. . . . [Jones said] 'I had to catch him being a hypocrite.'"

Taxes, Welfare, Divorce: Unimagined Results Warn Against Homosex Marriage

2006-11-02T10:43:00.000-08:00

"A leeetle more" humility, or "I'm a little leery."

In a remarkable essay (that by itself justifies the blogosphere), libertarian Jane Galt cites three American social reforms whose negative results far exceeded critics' fears and which caution against redefining marriage today:

(1) Federal income tax. When begun, a cap (10% ?) was dismissed as ridiculous because it was so outrageously high that Americans would surely revolt before paying it. Besides, a cap would invite taxes to rise to its level: No cap = a lower tax. But, as Galt points out, "a slow creep . . . eroded the American resistance to income taxation." What are you paying today?

(2) Public welfare. The widows and orphans pensions of the 1800's expanded into temporary support for unfortunate families. In the 1950's, reformers urged expanding aid to theretofore stigmatized unwed mothers, deriding any who objected that financing out-of-wedlock conception and birth would encourage its increase. "So despite the fact that the sixties brought us the biggest advance in birth control ever, illegitimacy exploded," and public welfare finances it.

(3) Divorce. Because it was very hard to divorce in the 1800's and many experienced marital unhappiness of many degrees, reformers made divorce easier. Critics objected: "If you make divorce easier, . . . you will get much more of it, and divorce is bad for society." To which reformers rejoined: "That's ridiculous! . . . People stay married because marriage is a bedrock institution of our society, not because of some law! The only people who get divorced will be people who have terrible problems! A few percentage points at most!"

"Ooops. When the law changed, the institution changed."

As with income tax and welfare, so with divorce: The first change, tiny and incremental, made the next one easier (and with less stigma); and "the magnitude of the change swamped the dire predictions of the anti-reformist wing; no one could have imagined, in their wildest dreams, a day when half of all marriages ended in divorce"; or when (as in the 1990's) out-of-wedlock births exceeded 70% among American blacks (risen from 25% in the early 1960's); or when 35% became the de facto income tax cap (and 10% became the lowest; 2006).

Galt asks how well-meaning reformers could go so badly wrong (noting that reviled critics were right beyond even their own predictions). With regard to how liberalized public welfare undermined marriage (but with application to the other reforms, including homosex marriage), "I think the core problems are two. The first is that [reformers] looked only at individuals, and took instititutions as a given. That is, they looked at all the cultural pressure to marry, and assumed that that would be a countervailing force powerful enough to overcome the new financial incentives for out-of-wedlock births. They failed to see the institution as dynamic. It wasn't a simple matter of two forces: cultural pressure to marry, financial freedom not to, arrayed against each other; those forces had a complex interplay, and when you changed one, you changed the other."

"The second is that they didn't assign any cultural reason for, or value to, the stigma on illegitimacy. They saw it as an outmoded vestige of a repressive Victorian values system, based on an unnatural fear of sexuality. But the stigma attached to unwed motherhood has quite logical, and important, foundations: having a child without a husband is bad for children, and bad for mothers, and thus bad for the rest of us. So our culture made it very costly for the mother to do. Lower the cost, and you raise the incidence. As an economist would say, incentives matter."

And, as Galt cites G. K. Chesterton's analysis, "people who don't see the use of a social institution are the last people who should be allowed to reform it" (as opposed to deforming it). (Reading the GKC excerpt alone is enough reason to move to Galt's essay.)

This reasoning leads her to plea "that people try to be a leeetle more humble about their ability to imagine the subtle results of big policy changes. The argument that gay marriage will not change the institution of marriage because you can't imagine it changing your personal reaction is pretty arrogant. It imagines, first of all, that your behavior is a guide for the behavior of everyone else in society, when in fact, as you may have noticed, all sorts of different people react to all sorts of different things in all sorts of different ways, which is why we have to have elections and stuff. And second, the unwavering belief that the only reason that marriage, always and everywhere, is a male-female institution (I exclude rare ritual behaviors), is just some sort of bizarre historical coincidence, and that you know better, needs examining. If you think you know why marriage is male-female, and why that's either outdated because of all the ways in which reproduction has lately changed, or was a bad reason to start with, then you are in a good place to advocate reform. If you think that marriage is just that way because our ancestors were all a bunch of repressed bastards with dark Freudian complexes that made them homophobic bigots, I'm a little leery of letting you muck around with it."

While this post excerpts key arguments, please read Jane's essay and update.

Up to America, Again: No Nukes In Teheran

2006-10-31T10:06:00.000-08:00

Time's passed for alternate measures

Daniel Pipes notes Europe's continued dithering and Teheran's hardening resolve to go nuclear. Evidence for the latter: "Hostile statements provoking the West"; "a mood of messianism in the upper reaches of the government"; and Iran's "urgent nuclear program."

"A focused, defiant, and determined Tehran contrasts with the muddled, feckless Russians, Arabs, Europeans, and Americans. A half year ago, a concerted external effort could still have prompted effective pressure from within Iranian society to halt the nuclear program, but that possibility now appears defunct. As the powers have mumbled, shuffled, and procrastinated, Iranians see their leadership effectively permitted to barrel ahead."

Three non-war alternatives are now too late for success: "threatening an economic embargo, rewarding Tehran for suspending its nuclear program, or helping Iranian anti-regime militias invade the country."

Thus the "key decision – war or acquiescence – will take place in Washington, not in New York, Vienna, or Tehran. (Or Tel Aviv.) The critical moment will arrive when the president of the United States confronts the choice whether or not to permit the Islamic Republic of Iran to acquire the Bomb. The timetable of the Iranian nuclear program being murky, that might be either George W. Bush or his successor."

Pipes' analysis confirms the point of my post Oct. 3, 2006. Barring a providential or wholly miraculous intervention, if Teheran shall not have the Bomb, expect the US to stop its nuclear ambition by force. And yet another US stop along the Axis of Evil. (Despite the scoffing since the President named the Axis, events have confirmed that he is right.)

"They Voted": Why United 93 Passengers Foiled Islamist Hijacking 9/11

2006-10-31T08:02:00.000-08:00

Passionate Eloquence Probes "The Heart of American Values"

Hear and share a compact, eloquent expression of what America is all about in Gary Bauer's recent speech (choose 10/30/2006) at Two Rivers Baptist Church in Nashville, TN. One of the finest civic speeches I've heard in years that should be anthologized for the future.

Belarus: Update on New Life Church Hunger Strike

2006-10-27T09:01:00.000-07:00

By Elizabeth Kendal
World Evangelical Alliance - Religious Liberty News & Analysis

The purpose of this brief posting is to update the situation in New Life Church, Minsk, Belarus and to provide resources to enable informed advocacy and prayer.

There are presently 119 Protestants on hunger strike. Around 30 of them are commencing their fourth week without food. This is courageous commitment in the extreme, but it is not glamorous. These believers are in great need of the LORD's intervention. (Proverbs 21:1, and 29:26). For background, see "Belarus: New Life Church Hunger Strike" WEA RLC New &
Analysis, 17 October 2006 (Link 1).

SUCCESSFUL RALLY

On Saturday 21 October some 2,000 Protestants rallied publicly in Bangalore Square, Minsk (with government permission) for an end to religious repression. This was a courageous and hugely significant public rally. (Photos - http://www.charter97.org/eng/news/2006/10/23/protestant)

VISIT FROM MILINKEVICH

Alysksandr Milinkevich [democratic leader] has visited the hunger strikers in the New Life Church. He encouraged the believers and expressed great admiration for their faith and courage. "I see very strong and courageous people here, who have a deep faith in God, who believe in justice. These people are invincible, and they are fighting for the simplest right, the right for freedom of worship. It is one of the most important rights of a human. I greatly respect these people, I wish them courage, I wish them not to lose health in this struggle. I know that God is with those who are here, and God wouldn't leave them." (Link 2)

FRESH APPEAL: HOPES RAISED THEN DASHED

According to Forum 18, President Lukashenka reportedly indicated a desire to provide assistance to the church. His aide for ideology issued a "strong recommendation" to New Life's Pastor, Vyacheslav Goncharenko, that the church make a fresh appeal to the Higher Economic Court. New Life church submitted a fresh appeal to the court on 18 October. However, the believers vowed to continue their hunger strike saying the protest will not end until the church's land and building are legally returned and the church's right to worship in its own property is
officially, legally acknowledged. (Link 3)

On 25 October the church received a letter from the Supreme Economic Court informing them that their pastor faces a massive fine for non-compliance of earlier court rulings. Charter 97 comments, "The Supreme Economic Court has fallen short of Protestants' expectations." The following day, when relatives of two of the New Life hunger strikers attempted to meet with Deputy Director of The Minsk Mayor Mr Michael Titenkov, Svetlana Matskevich, wife of hunger striker Vladimir Matskevich, was forcefully detained by police and taken to the Moscow District Police Station of Minsk for identification.

HEALTH FAILING: SITUATION BECOMING CRITICAL

Back on 18 October, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty published a piece by Daisy Sindelar on Belarus' various hunger strikes. Sindelar writes, "Hernan Reyes, who oversees prisoner medical issues for the International Committee of the Red Cross, says determined strikers want to stay alive as long as they can.

"The longer they fast, the rationale goes, the more extreme their suffering -- and the more powerful their message. It only takes a few weeks for the physical pain of a fast to become profound.

"'You don't feel hunger after a few days because of the ketosis. You have ketones in your bloodstream, which actually stamp out sensations of hunger as we understand it,' Reyes says. 'But of course there are other sensations. After a couple of weeks you'll have what we call nystagmus, which means that you have these uncontrolled rapid eye movements which give you a feeling of dizziness or vertigo, and you feel like you just go off a carousel that's been spinning around very fast. And it's extremely unpleasant. People throw up, they can no longer drink their water. And this is definitely one phase of the hunger strike which all hunger strikers who reach it do remember.'

"That phase is rapidly approaching for the more than 150 Protestant believers in Belarus." (Link 4)

On 23 October volunteer doctors from the Union of Evangelic Baptist Christians recommended that Natallya Ivanova (60) end her fast because she was suffering acute cardiovascular insufficiency. Natallya was rushed to hospital on 24 October, seriously weakened and without a pulse.

On 26 October, Volha Kryshneva (50) was admitted to the intensive care unit of the regional hospital in Baraulyany, Minsk region with heart problems. She had been without food for 21 days. Olga Nikonova (48) was hospitalised to the 4th Clinic Hospital on 26 October with critical heart weakness.

RESOURCES
New Life church website (http://www.newlife.by/ ) is being continuously updated by New Life Church Youth Press Centre, which was founded just recently by New Life youths in response to the hunger strike. It is an excellent source of information, photographs, stories and links.

A 23 October report by CBN reporter Gailon Totheroh, "Belarus Christians Fast for Freedom" comes with a video and Totheroh's blog that includes information and addresses for advocacy.
http://www.cbn.com/CBNnews/45526.aspx

Elizabeth Kendal
rl-research@crossnet.org.au

Links
1) Belarus: New Life church hunger strike. 17 October 2006 World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty News & Analysis WEA RLC Principal Researcher and Writer, Elizabeth Kendal
http://www.worldevangelicalalliance.com/news/view.htm?id=725

2) Alyaksandr Milinkevich Met Protestants on Hunger Strike 24 Oct 2006 http://www.charter97.org/eng/news/2006/10/24/am

3) BELARUS: Government to make U-turn on charismatic church?
By Geraldine Fagan, Forum 18 News Service. 20 October 2006
http://www.forum18.org/Archive.php?article_id=858

4) Belarus: Are Hunger Strikes Losing Their Power To Persuade?
By Daisy Sindelar, RFE/RL 19 Oct 2006
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/10/F124A669-7855-4172-8021-2A58B8067BBE.html
-----------------------------------------
**WEA Religious Liberty News & Analysis**

-----------------------------------------
Please feel free to pass this along to others giving attribution to:
"World Evangelical Alliance - Religious Liberty News & Analysis."

"Merry Christmas": Gifts That Give Twice

2006-10-19T09:57:00.000-07:00

Visit these sites to give gifts that should please your recipients and will help the oppressed Christians who created them:

Christian Freedom International

Other sites to follow soon.

Merry Christmas!

To the Pope: Open Letter from Muslim Scholar-Leaders

2006-10-18T08:14:00.000-07:00

In Islamica Magazine Muslim scholars and leaders respond in an open letter to Pope Benedict's comments about Islam in his 12 September 2006 address at the University of Regensburg. Religion Today Summaries comments:

"All the eight schools of thought and jurisprudence in Islam are represented by the signatories, including a woman scholar. In this respect the letter is unique in the history of interfaith relations. The letter was sent, in a spirit of goodwill, to respond to some of the remarks made by the Pope during his lecture at the University of Regensburg on Sept. 12, 2006. The letter tackles the main substantive issues raised in his treatment of a debate between the medieval Emperor Manuel II Paleologus and an “educated Persian”, including reason and faith; forced conversion; “jihad” vs. “holy war”; and the relationship between Christianity and Islam."

My comments soon . . .

Act Today to Stop Persecution of New Life (Pentecostal) Church, Minsk, Belarus

2006-10-17T10:53:00.000-07:00

Members of New Life Church are joined in an outdoor rally 21 October by 2000 residents of Minsk and numerous other towns of Belarus, as well as by Christians from Moscow and Saint Petersburg, Russia. New Life members have decided to start legislative work with participation of representatives of interested governmental bodies and religious organizations to overturn the repressive 2002 legislation that limits religious freedom. I believe we are witnessing yet another people-power movement toward widespread civil freedom in another former Soviet republic. May God grant them full success!

See What God Can Do with Your Voice

Goal: 100 faxed letters to Belarus ambassador this week

One appeal for each ten members of New Life Church

1. Read the October 17 report (updates here). See the PowerPoint presentation of the church founded in 1992 by the son of an imprisoned Pentecostal pastor. Then, below, see the sample letter to the Belarus ambassador.
2. Pray for God’s victory through this persecution, and then
3. Write and fax your letter today: (202) 986-1805.
4. Copy me with your letter, or simply tell me you’ve sent it. Click on the e-mail (envelope) icon at the bottom of the blog to respond. I will update the blog as results are reported.

Thank you for joining this effort to advance religious freedom and the gospel with your prayer and letter of protest and appeal. Today your voice counts more than ever before: Davids are defeating Goliaths.

SAMPLE LETTER TO THE AMBASSADOR TO THE UNITED STATES FROM BELARUS

October 17, 2006

The Honorable Mikhail Khvostov
Ambassador, Respublika Byelarus'
1619 New Hampshire Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20009
TEL: (202) 986-1604
FAX: (202) 986-1805

Dear Mr. Ambassador:

I wish your country much prosperity, peace, and freedom.

However, I have learned how unjustly your government treats the New Life Church of Minsk; and I am so deeply disturbed that I am writing to you and – until your government stops its injustice – seeking to swell a worldwide corps of eyes and voices to show the world how Respublika Byelarus’, a United Nations member, systematically defies its obligation to honor religious freedom, as expressed in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UN, 1948): namely,

The right to believe, to worship and witness
The right to change one's belief or religion
The right to join together and express one's belief.

I send with this letter a report by the World Evangelical Alliance Religious Liberty Commission (17 October 2006). It documents these injustices of your government:

· continuously denying New Life Church’s (NLC) attempts to register with the state
· obstructing NLC’s efforts to rent a meeting place
· harassing NLC’s renovation and use of its building to meet for worship
· for Article-18-protected religious activities, fining Pastor Goncharenko multiple times and threatening church administrator Yurevich with prosecution
· refusing NLC’s request to change its building’s official designation
· forcing unjust sale of NLC’s property at about 1/35th of its true value
· denying doctors’ and nurses’ visits to hunger strikers in NLC.

As you know, starting Friday, 6 October, and continuing into an eleventh day today, a growing number of productive Belarus citizens who are also members of NLC have moved into its house of worship and are protesting these government injustices through a determined hunger strike. They are successfully focusing world attention on this tragic fact: Respublika Byelarus’ denies its citizens the universal right of religious freedom.

Mr. Ambassador, please appeal to your government to stop the injustice immediately and to demonstrate with consistent public actions that it sincerely promotes religious freedom and cooperates with – rather than hinders – the religious activities of NLC. If it does not begin doing justice in these matters, I and many like me will increase our efforts to publicize worldwide your government’s injustice; and Respublika Byelarus’ will receive much negative attention. But if your government will promote religious freedom and cooperate with NLC, I and many like me will be happy to help Byelarus receive positive attention worldwide.

As a Christian, I know that the leaders and members of NLC seek only the good of your country. Our faith teaches us to respect our leaders and to pray for them. New Life Church is no threat to any government that seeks to do justice and to serve the good of its citizens. If your government will cooperate with NLC, it will see what benefit this church will bring to Minsk and even to the country as a whole.

My wish for your country’s prosperity, peace, and freedom is sincere. But it can be fulfilled only as your government treats NLC and other religious bodies justly – that is, through sincerely respecting their freedom to believe, worship, and witness to their faith without government opposition.

Sincerely,

Rev. Mark E. Roberts, Ph.D. †
Publisher, Word & Spirit Press
www.WandSP.com

UNM Poll: Teaching Leans Left

2006-10-16T08:14:00.000-07:00

University of New Mexico student newspaper, Daily Lobo, today publishes on-going results of an Internet-reader-response poll about the politics of university faculty. No surprise about the leftward slant; what surprises me is that responses by UNM students today corroborate its reality:

22% "Yes, as a conservative, I feel my freedom of speech is limited."
39% "Yes, certain facts are presented with a leftist slant."
39% "No, politics have never clouded the facts in my classes."
0% "No, professors are not liberal enough."

(The poll is ongoing as of 17 October, and response percentages have changed.)

Good prima facie evidence for the need for some genuine viewpoint diversity on the UNM faculty, wouldn't you say? Not only at UNM, but at American universities generally. Thomas Sowell reports that at Stanford, his home as a Fellow of the Hoover Institution, "the faculty includes 275 registered Democrats and 36 registered Republicans. . . . Such ratios are not uncommon at other universities -- despite all the rhetoric about "diversity." Only physical diversity seems to matter."

Taxis Drive under Constitution, not Sharia

2006-10-16T07:53:00.000-07:00

Daniel Pipes, source of accurate information and analysis about the Middle East and relations between Islam and the world, reports that Muslim taxi drivers who refused to carry passengers carrying alcoholic drinks are not getting their way with the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport: "Islamists need to understand that the Constitution rules in the United States, not Shari'a, and Americans will vigorously ensure that it continues to do so."

Update Refutes This Claim: Muslim Doctor Kills Wife for Failing to Prevent Daughter's Conversion

2006-10-13T06:44:00.000-07:00

On 13 October 2006, WEA Religious Liberty News & Analysis issued a posting entitled "Australia: Girl's conversion results in mother's death".

That story needs to be updated.

In summary, Australian media reported that on 9 October a 17-year-old girl named Kaihana Hussain was attacked with a knife by her father, Dr Mohammed Hussain, after she reiterated her commitment to convert from Islam toChristianity. According to the reports, Kaihana's mother was fatally stabbed when she tried to intervene, and her father attempted to kill himself afterKaihana escaped the apartment. Police confirmed at the time that Kaihana was not a suspect. (Link 1)

Dr Hussain was hospitalised in a critical condition and put in an induced coma. It has only been very recently that investigative police have been able to speak with Dr Hussain. He alleges that Kaihana stabbed her mother to death and attempted to murder him because they disapproved of her behaviour and her unsuitable boy-friend.

Kaihana was subsequently arrested. She faced the Southport Magistrates Court on 7 November where she was charged with murder and attempted murder. She did not speak and no plea was entered. Kaihana Hussain is remanded in custody until her trial which has been slated for 22 May 2007. No further comment can be made as the matter is under police investigation. More details can be found at Link 2.

Anyone who has posted WEA RLC's 13 October release to their website should remove it. Thank you.

LINKS:

1) HERALD SUN. Islam row behind mum's death. 11 October 2006
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,20563009-662,00.html
Mother killed after teen rejects IslamSchool Death Link. 12 Oct 2006
http://www.gcbulletin.com.au/article/2006/10/12/1207_news.html

) Girl on murder charge. 7 Nov 2006
http://www.gcbulletin.com.au/article/2006/11/07/1643_news.html

[At the request of the WEA Religious Liberty News & Analysis, on 8 November 2006, I deleted the rest of this post.]

Evangelicals, culture, politics

2006-10-05T13:05:00.000-07:00

A Third Way?

James K. A. Smith puts Greg Boyd's The Myth of A Christian Nation firmly in the pietistic half of a dichotomy, opposed by triumphalism. Knowing the Pentecostal background of both Boyd and Smith, I'm pleased that both aim their admirable intellectual and theological resources on the topic of Christian faith and its relation to culture, politics being a key sphere within culture. And I happily side with Smith: "[C]an't we see in-breakings of the coming kingdom here and now, better in some places than others?" Surely the reign of (confessedly fallen) democracy in South Korea at least approximates the reign of God more than life under Kim Jong-il's tyranny in the north. If not, why should people of faith ever concern themselves with" speaking truth to power" (a phrase I first heard from a Quaker friend) -- unless only to pronounce judgment without mercy or hope for redemption.

But Smith joins "Constantinianism" with "triumphalism" without remainder, rejecting both it and pietism, while calling for a third way. But given the dichotomy, Constantinianism holds out more hope for correction -- righteous restraint in its agenda of this-worldly engagement -- than does a pietism that identifies spirituality with disengagement. In fact, Robert Louis Wilken's review of recent works on Constantine urges that within earliest Constantinianism, Lactantius, the Latin apologist and contemporary of the emperor, establishes the basic political and ethical argument for freedom of religion that, refined for 1500 years, constitutes a core value of the secularized West:

Lactantius’ Institutes deals with a grab bag of theological and moral topics, but at places in the work one can see that he had an additional agenda: he wished to deprive Roman authorities of a philosophical and legal justification for the persecution of Christians by appealing to their own ideals of toleration, which they had abandoned in this case. Lactantius moved beyond the usual apologetic gambits to offer a positive argument as to why religion of any sort cannot be coerced. Religion, says Lactantius, has to do with love of God and purity of mind, neither of which can be compelled. “Why should a god love a person who does not feel love in return?” he asks. Religion cannot be imposed on someone, it can only be promoted by “words,” i.e., by persuasion, for it has to do with an interior disposition, and must be “voluntary.” “Nothing,” he writes, “requires freedom of the will as religion.”

Whatever the excesses of Constantinianism -- and they should not be minimized -- Wilken argues that early on Roman society accommodated to the church far more than the church accommodated (read "compromised") to pagan society.

So the third way Smith calls for may already have been occupying the world stage for centuries: a limited Constantinianism that expresses kingdom Spirit through earthly structures in a dialectical journey toward Zion, toward the coming down of the heavenly city to earth (Rev. 21:2 -- 10).

Must America Go It (nearly) Alone?

2006-10-03T13:48:00.000-07:00

Bat Ye'or knows Islamism's global threat -- and Europe's collusion

Bat Ye'or is the world's foremost authority on dhimmitude, that humiliating, second-class status into which all non-Muslims are put when Islam governs through shariah. Her latest studies include Islam and Dhimmitude. Where Civilizations Collide and Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis. The following excerpt concludes her 2004 interview with FrontPage magazine, in which she foresees America and Israel increasingly isolated from, even opposed by, the European Union, even in the war against Islamist terror.

FP: Is there any optimism that we can have for Europe? How about to win this war against Islamism?

Bat Ye'or: Maybe the recent developments revealing France's failed policy and the horrendous ordeals of children and parents in Ossetia will induce Europeans to bring their politicians and media to accountability. The war against a global jihadist terrorism can be won only if the civilized world is united against barbarity. Until now European democracies supported Arafat, the initiator of jihadist terrorism, hostage-taking and Islamikazes. The war will be won if we name it, if we face it, if we recognize that it obeys specific rules of Islamic war that are not ours; and if democracies and Muslim modernists stop justifying these acts against other countries. The policy of collusion and support for terrorists in order to gain self-protection is a delusion. [emphasis added]

Sharansky's Town-Square Test

2006-10-03T09:51:00.000-07:00

Identifying Genuine, Peace-Promoting Democracy

I was stirred by President Bush’s identifying the advance of liberty as "the mission that created our Nation" and “the best hope for peace in our world" in his Second Inaugural Address. Yet is another of his firm beliefs true: namely, that free -- that is, democratic -- nations do not fight each other? The electoral victory of Islamofascists such as Hamas in Palestine does not promise peace with its democratic neighbor Israel; and the potential for electoral victory by similarly anti-Western forces in Afghanistan and Iraq makes me wonder if freedom as “democracy” by itself guarantees international stability in any way. If a nation elects a leader with the vile anti-Semitism of Iran’s Ahmadinejad, why should Tel Aviv sleep peacefully?

Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet dissident and tireless agitator for global human rights, addresses precisely this concern in his June 2006 inaugural Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom Lecture “Is Freedom for Everyone?”. His key point? “Elections Do Not Democracy Make.”

In America, I came here to [Washington], to this White House to discuss with the Vice President and with everybody who wanted to listen that you cannot start democratic reforms with elections. You can have elections, but they will have nothing to do with the democracy. Democracy is not elections; democracy is free elections and free society. The test of the democratic state is not elections; there are elections in every dictatorship. The test of democratic states is the town square test, where you can go to this square to express your views and you will not be punished for it. Palestinians [in the recent] elections had to choose between a hated corrupt dictatorship [Arafat’s], a mafia which was taking from them protection money for everything on one hand, and a few honest terrorists [Hamas] who wanted to kill a lot of Jews but who were taking care of the weak and poor on the other hand.

Other key points: While President Bush rightly promotes universal democratic freedom, US foreign policy simultaneously undermines the goal whenever it props up tyrannies and fails to support dissidents, who are themselves the key to regime change. Examples: past support of Arafat in Palestine, which paved the road for the present Hamas victory; continuing support for the tribal dynasty of Saudi Arabia and the injustices of Mubarak’s Egypt, which discourage reform leading to genuine democracy; and neglect of dissidents in Iran while appeasing the ayatollahs:

Iran is a unique example of where on one hand you have this awful regime which now is threatening to blackmail all the world with nuclear bombs, and on the other hand, a country where in one generation, a country of true believers of overwhelming support to this regime turned into a country of double thinkers, of people who don’t accept this situation. And they started expressing it. The opposition movement in Iran is not a dissident here, a dissident there. It’s a powerful movement of different trade unions, of student organizations, and of women’s organizations who started two years ago to speak loudly and openly and appeal to the free world to support them, saying, “We are your allies, not the ayatollahs.”

. . . .

[Yet this] movement in Iran . . . is receiving almost no support. Not only is it receiving almost no support, but the America which took such a strong position on Iran at the last moment declared that they have new proposals for the ayatollahs and, in fact, by starting this new page, undermined immediately the inner strength of [its] position. I am saying this with pain, because I have great admiration for the President. When I met him I saw how deeply he believes in these ideas of promoting independent democracy. But when I look at the policies of the United States of America at this moment toward Iran, I don’t see any difference with the policy of the previous administration toward North Korea. And that administration had a very different philosophy. But suddenly, take their approach to North Korea and this approach to Iran and it proves the same.

Sharansky concludes:

The democratic agenda is in danger and I believe of all the reasons, first of all it is in danger because President Bush is very lonely in his struggle. You know, the fact that he has so few allies overseas is bad; but the fact that he has so few allies in Washington is much worse.

Of course, dissidents are always lonely. But now, in this confrontation between the world of freedom and the world of terror, it is crucial that the President of the United States will not be alone on this. But second, to stay the course is very difficult, it’s very important. Before we start saying the democratic agenda failed, let’s first sincerely try this agenda. And then we’ll see whether it will fail or not.

I believe it will win.

(See also the FrontPage interview with Sharansky.)

Fascinating Phrases Proposal

2006-09-29T13:56:00.000-07:00

I'm writing a proposal for a fun, illustrated impulse-purchase or gift book on the origins and lives of fascinating phrases. Here's a draft of a sample entry (all (c) 2006 by yours truly, thank you very much). I appreciate receiving suggestions of phrases to be included, as well as resources that reveal their fascination.

“Ollie, ollie, oxen free”

When Clara yelled it into the Italian duomo’s bell tower in The Light in the Piazza, this humble backyard phrase had finally made it to Broadway.

But it was already a classic. Nearly everyone who’s ever played hide-n-seek has heard or yelled it dozens of times as the ritual that ends a round of play. But what do a boy’s name and a team of unyoked plow animals have to do with the game? Nothing at all. What we’ve yelled and heard for years is a simple corruption of this end-of-game declaration: “All the, all the outs in free!” Even when someone yells each word carefully, players hiding yards away may still hear the corrupted form – which is why it is with us. And despite our hearing the wrong words, we still know what the yell means: Everyone still in hiding – “the outs” – can come in without fear of being “it,” because someone else already is, and another round is ready to begin.