Deliberate Barbarism and the Vacuum

Paris, November 14

Paris, November 14

In a reflection which will soon be posted to our website, I quoted a passage from Cardinal Henri de Lubac which I have often cited:

As soon as man ceases to be in contact with great mystical or religious forces, does he not inevitably come under the yoke of a harsher and blinder force, which leads him to perdition? It is what Vico called the age of “deliberate barbarism,” and that is the age in which we live.

Apropos of which, this from D. Q. McInerny: "There is no vacuum which cries louder to be filled than that created by the rejection of the transcendent."

And the quickest, cheapest, and most predictable way of conjuring up a facsimile of transcendence is by way of mob violence.

Is this the future of secularized Europe?

Islamophobia-phobia

Mark Steyn:

... who needs surveillance operations and intelligence budgets? Major Hasan was entirely upfront about who he was. He put it on his business card: “SOA.” As in “Soldier of Allah” — which seems a tad ungrateful to the American taxpayers who ponied up half a million bucks or thereabouts in elite medical-school education to train him to be a Soldier of Uncle Sam. In a series of meetings during 2008, officials from both Walter Reed and the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences considered the question of whether then-captain Hasan was psychotic. But, according to at least one bigwig at Walter Reed, members of the policy committee wondered “How would it look if we kick out one of the few Muslim residents?” So he got promoted to major and shipped to Fort Hood.

And 13 men and women and an unborn baby are dead.

Ezra Levant, my comrade in a long battle to restore freedom of speech to Canada, likes to say that the Danish cartoons crisis may one day be seen as a more critical event than 9/11. Not, obviously, in the comparative death tolls but in what each revealed about the state of Western civilization. After 9/11, we fought back, hit hard, rolled up the Afghan camps; after the cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and appeased and signaled that we were willing to trade core Western values for a quiet life. Watching the decadence and denial on display this last week, I think in years to come Fort Hood will be seen in a similar light. What happened is not a “tragedy” but a national scandal, already fading from view.

The whole column is here.

The Post-Partisan Healer is at it again.

Fox News reports:

White House Senior Adviser David Axelrod suggested Sunday that President Obama will intervene to make sure a controversial amendment restricting federal funding for abortion coverage is stripped from final health care reform legislation.

In doing so, the president would be heeding the call of abortion rights supporters like Planned Parenthood that have called the White House their "strongest weapon" in keeping such restrictions out of the bill.

Ambassador Kmiec, call your office.

Just back from Notre Dame

I just returned from "The Summons of Freedom" conference hosted by the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. It was, as always, a marvelous gathering of scholars and students. Again as always, it was a welcome opportunity to visit with my fellow presenters, some of them old friends, and to meet many new friends. I am especially grateful for extended conversations I had with my friends Fr. Michael Sweeney, president of the Dominican School of Philosophy and Theology in Berkeley, and Pat Fagan of the Family Research Council and others.

It was a rare treat to hear from Alice von Hildebrand and Michael Novak, each an example of how faith can ripen in a long life, endowing a person with a hint of the aura that scripture says surrounded Moses when he came down from his encounter with the Lord. I had a brief chat with Michael Novak and a more extended one with Alice von Hildebrand, and I will treasure the memory of each.

Another highly was meeting Lucy Beckett, a British scholar, novelist, and historian whom I have lately been reading. Like Michael and Alice, she is the incarnation of the truth to which she gave witness. It was an inspiration to be in her presence.

So I return to my desk with great gratitude for the community of faithful and joyful people with whom I shared a few days -- a bit exhausted, but more than a bit inspired.

The smallest and most innocent one counts.

Make that 14:

From United Americans for Life:

There are, of course, many unnamed victims of the attack at Fort Hood. Spouses, parents, children, siblings, friends. Each left to suffer and question why, on American soil, their loved one’s life was violently ended.

But there was another victim that has been frequently overlooked: the unborn child of soldier Francheska Velez. When Hasan took Velez’s life, he took the life of her unborn baby as well.

As the country looks for justice to be served in this horrendous tragedy, we cannot forget that Hasan can and should be charged with the death of Baby Velez as well.

The Uniform Code of Military Justice was modified when President George W. Bush signed the Unborn Victims of Violence Act (UBVV) in 2004. Also known as “Laci and Conner’s Law,” the federal UBVV law applies only to federal crimes and federal jurisdictions, such as military installations. ...

Because the UBVV law was signed in 2004 and is incorporated in the Uniform Code of Military Justice, justice can be sought for Baby Velez.

We can work toward the day when this law is replicated in every state, applicable to non-federal crimes.

The story is here.

A Nice Reminder . . .

Trinitarian Love Incarnate and Crucified

I'm taking part in a conference at Notre Dame for the next two days, and on the flight today I read this in an article by Cardinal Marc Ouellet on the Trinitarian and Christological ethics of Hans Urs von Balthasar. (The quotations are from von Balthasar.)

... a theo-dramatic ethics bears a social dimension of combat for the sake of the deprived and the marginal. "The fight for social justice for the poor and the oppressed is a strict Christian duty, a 'work of mercy' both corporal and spiritual according to which the Christian and every other man will be judged." In order to carry it on according to his Faith, the Christian does not prescribe ready-made recipes; "he must, along with others, struggle to decipher the enigmas of nature and of history." He has at his disposal a certain image of man which orients his own choices, but these have to take account of the resistance of the structures of his world and of their proper laws: "He must not forget their contingency, and, for example, demand total disarmament and non-resistance or pacifism, in virtue of Christian charity and Christian communion, while overlooking all political prudence."

To which Cardinal Ouellet remarks: Christians "are not spared the painful experience of ethical choices, with their perplexities and anxieties." Nevertheless, the Cardinal adds, in the midst of these perplexities and anxieties, the Christian has the supreme and ultimate standard by which to measure his or her ethical behavior, namely, "trinitarian love incarnate and crucified."

Some things never change: Antisemitism

This is a long lecture, but it is well worth hearing.

Professor Barry Rubin - "How the PLO 'Adapted' Antisemitism as 'Anti-Zionism'" from YIISA on Vimeo.

Some violence merits outrage.

We live in a troubled world, roiling in violence and resentment. Keeping one's head in the midst of it is essential, but we should not become morally numb. Keeping one's head is only a virtue if it means one's reason and civility have won out over a very legitimate moral outrage. Otherwise it's just keeping one's cool, and there's nothing virtuous about it.

From Matthew Archbold at Creative Minority Report:

Jake Tapper from ABC News reported that when asked about the motivations of mass murderer Nidal Hasan, President Obama said:

Well, look, we — we have seen, in the past, rampages of this sort. And in a country of 300 million people, there are going to be acts of violence that are inexplicable. Even within the extraordinary military that we have — and I think everybody understands how outstanding the young men and women in uniform are under the most severe stress — there are going to be instances in which an individual cracks. I think the questions that we’re asking now and we don’t have yet complete answers to is, is this an individual who’s acting in this way or is it some larger set of actors? You know, what are the motivations? Those are all questions that I think we have to ask ourselves. Until we have these answers buttoned down, I’d rather not comment on it.

But Obama didn't wait for all the answers to be "buttoned down" when he declared a group of police officers "stupid" for arresting an African-American college professor.

Obama didn't wait until things got "buttoned down" before commenting on the murder of late-term abortionist George Tiller. I don't remember Scott Roeder's motivations being inscrutable to the President or to the press for that matter.

In fact, within hours of Tiller's death, Obama released a statement which had drawn conclusions as to the killer's motivations. Obama said:

I am shocked and outraged by the murder of Dr. George Tiller as he attended church services this morning. However profound our differences as Americans over difficult issues such as abortion, they cannot be resolved by heinous acts of violence.

The White House even ordered US Marshalls to protect abortion clinics as if Tiller's killer was just the spearhead of a looming rampage by murderous pro-lifers around the country.

On the other hand, do you recall when pro-lifer James Pouillon was killed while holding his pro-life sign. All of a sudden, the media couldn't understand at all what the killer's motivation could be.

Source: Here.

No one risks his life for a question mark.

On this Veterans Day I remember my father, who died when I was months old (and before he had seen his newborn son) in the Battle of the Bulge in January of 1945. He and all those who went to Europe to preserve civilization had no utopian illusions about an eventual paradise on earth, but they had very clear ideas about the difference between civilization and barbarism. In his honor, I offer the following as a wide-angle lens on the issue raised in the post below.

In his treatise De Malo (about evil), Thomas Aquinas says this:

... the artisan does not sin in the fact that he is not always holding the rule in his hand, but in the fact that while not holding the rule in his hand he proceeds to cut the wood.

John Senior quotes this passage in a critique of late-modern liberal education. His remarks have application beyond the very real affliction from which the Western academy -- one of Christianity's greatest contributions to culture -- now suffers.

Senior:

From the atheist precincts of Buchenwald, the Gulag Archipelago and the dark, satanic mills of the mass-murder of unborn children in the United States, the final solution to Western Civilization is its extermination. In the intellectual sphere this solution has been the dissolution of knowledge into its specialized departments, class discussions and committees, so that the teacher no longer takes his ideal from Aristotle as the master of those who know, but from Hamlet and Descartes, the masters of those who doubt -- who test, experiment and publish and never conclude but essai, whose "truth" is always in quotation marks, for whom the perfect unit of expression is not the sentence but the parenthesis.

Analyze This: Allahu Akbar

"It's unclear if religion was a factor in this shooting," said Chris Matthews.

"Allahu Akbar," screamed Major Hasan as he opened fire on innocent people, killing 13 and crippling many others.

Yes, yes, anyone knows (and must ritually reiterate) that most Muslims are good, decent citizens, etc. etc.

All this goes without saying, but if one doesn't say it at every mention of the Islamic threat one is automatically regarded as morally comparable to a terrorist. Sigh . . .

But the same could have been said about German Americans in the late 1940s. That didn't change what a great many other Germans were doing to Europe and threatening to do to the rest of the world.

“U.S. Homeland Security officials are working with groups around the United States to head off any possible anti-Muslim backlash following the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas.

”To which the columnist Mona Charen (here) responded: "Hogwash."

The backlash trope is trotted out after every episode of terrorist violence. But it is as false as it is dangerous. This image of a nation on a hair trigger for violence against Muslims is a calumny. Even in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, though millions were inflamed by grief and outrage, there was no broad-based “backlash” against Muslim Americans. ...

The repeated invocation of this libel has had an effect, though. It has succeeded in intimidating many Americans about the proper bounds of discussion. General Casey reinforces this timidity when he frets that “our diversity” may be a casualty of the attack at Fort Hood. He and the Obama administration are obscuring the real challenge Americans face.

Our challenge is not to transcend the demons of vengeance clawing at our souls. Our challenge is to deal intelligently with a threat that arises from religious convictions. Non-bigoted observers can see that while the vast majority of the world’s Muslims are not extremists, a significant minority are. And it matters what people believe.

We don’t like to pass judgment on others’ religious convictions. That’s fine. But when a religious belief spurs violence and mass murder, it becomes political, and it becomes a proper concern of the military and security services.

Worldwide, Muslims believing themselves to be advancing the faith have committed more than 14,000 acts of violence just since 9/11. You know the litany: Madrid, London, Bali, Jerusalem, Mumbai, Amman. The list is long and bloody — and it includes many innocent Muslims.

Federal agents have thwarted planned terror attacks on Fort Dix, N.J., folded up a terror ring in Lackawanna, N.Y., and uncovered plots against the nation’s financial centers, the World Bank, the Sears Tower, the New York subway system, the Los Angeles airport, the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles, ten airliners landing in the U.S. (the liquid-bomb plot), JFK airport, the Brooklyn Bridge, and the Prudential Building in Newark, N.J., among others. ...

We have created a climate in which members of the military were afraid to raise questions about the bald and blatant Islamist comments Major Nidal Hassan expressed over many years. He was overheard saying “maybe people should strap bombs on themselves and go to Times Square.” He was caught proselytizing his patients. ... Yet no one raised a red flag. Might be interpreted as anti-Muslim bigotry. And so the military took no action against a man who loudly advertised his extremist sympathies. Thirteen Americans paid for that with their lives.

If any good were to come out of the Fort Hood massacre it would be a new clarity about what we are fighting. Islamism is the enemy. Moderate Muslims are allies in the cause. We should no more shrink from confronting and battling Islamism than we would from any of the “isms” we destroyed in the 20th century.

Many of my friends have decided that charity and concern for victims means being more concerned about the vastly overstated specter of a "backlash" against their co-religionists than about the very real threat to completely innocent people posed by Islamic fanatics.

Andrew McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, has a comment here:

The FBI and the rest of our Islamophilic government have their story, and they’re sticking to it. The terrorists’ siege on our nation has nothing to do with Islam. It is the work of al-Qaeda, and al-Qaeda terrorists — so the catechism goes — are not true Muslims. Sure, Osama bin Laden & Co. accurately quote Islamic scriptural injunctions to wage jihad against non-Muslims. But never mind that: Islam is an irenic, unmitigated good; in fact, it is one of our best weapons against terrorism.

Come again? If all the terrorists are Muslims and all the terrorists say scriptures that plainly command killing are inspiring them to kill, how could Islam be an asset? Don’t go spoiling a feel-good theory by asking a lot of questions — that would be almost like an investigation, and when it comes to Islam, the FBI doesn’t do investigation.

If it did, it might stumble onto all sorts of things we’d just as soon not know. We’d have to start acknowledging that Salafist ideology (the strain of Islam endorsed by the Muslim Brotherhood and Sunni terrorist organizations) is prevalent in American mosques. ...

To stop bad things from happening, you have to come to grips with what causes them. We won’t. ... And with Hasan, the biggest challenge was not whether to investigate an infiltrator wearing a neon “Islamist” sign, but how to promote him up the ladder and burnish our diversity cred while intimidating the suspicious into silence.

Sometimes one has to laugh to keep from crying. This is no laughing matter, and I will be labeled an Islamophobe for this link, but maybe a little well aimed humor can bring us to our senses:

Here it comes.

My former congresswoman:

I expect political hardball on any legislation as important as the health care bill.

I just didn’t expect it from the United States Council of Catholic Bishops (USCCB).

Who elected them to Congress?

The role the bishops played in the pushing the Stupak amendment, which unfairly restricts access for low-income women to insurance coverage for abortions, was more than mere advocacy.

They seemed to dictate the finer points of the amendment, and managed to bully members of Congress to vote for added restrictions on a perfectly legal surgical procedure.

And this political effort was subsidized by taxpayers, since the Council enjoys tax-exempt status. When I visit churches in my district, we are very careful to keep everything “non-political” to protect their tax-exempt status.

The IRS is less restrictive about church involvement in efforts to influence legislation than it is about involvement in campaigns and elections.

Given the political behavior of USCCB in this case, maybe it shouldn’t be.

Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) is co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus.

Here is comes.

In an extended reflection I am now preparing, I quote the passage in T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land where he parodies the culture's turn away from its Christian roots. In the passage Madam Sosostris ("famous clairvoyante ... with a wicked pack of cards") declares herself unable to find "the Hanged Man" -- the Crucified One.

Among the things I say about this passage is that "the world which turns its back on the Hanged Man will not long remain neutral toward the religion that turns its face toward him."

As I say, here it comes.

Jody Bottum of First Things:

Why is the United States doing this? Why are we trying to create a bureaucracy with a $3 trillion price tag, at a time of deep financial trouble? Why are we aiming at governmental management of a huge sector of the American economy at a time when the government is proving itself incompetent to manage the American economy? And why are we giving the culture of Washington new powers of life and death—making ourselves “God’s Partners,” in President Obama’s language—at a time when that culture has proved itself so vague and so deluded about all the issues of life and death that have come before it: war, and embryos, and the unborn, and the weak, and the vulnerable?

That the health-care system in the United States is inequitable seems undeniable. That it is amazingly innovative and robust is also undeniable. The great goal of competent government would be to cure the one and preserve the other. The bill the House of Representatives passed this weekend will do neither.

The whole piece is here.

The Untold Stories of Israel's Martyrs

Sandro Magister has this piece at Chiesa:

For the first time ever, in a book, depictions of the victims of Islamist hatred. Young and old, men and women. Struck down in a bus, at a bar, at the market. Killed solely for the "fault" of being Jewish

ROME, November 9, 2009 – Today Jews all over the world are commemorating their martyrs of the "Night of Broken Glass," the victims of the Nazi pogrom on the night of November 9-10, 1938, in Germany.

There is universal, mournful observance of that massacre and of the tremendous extermination of Jews by the Reich that came after it.

But the same is not done, in Europe and the West, for the many other Jewish victims who for years have been killed in Israel, assailed by Islamic terrorism.

Every time one of them is killed, it is covered in the news and then immediately ignored. The victim ends up buried in the vagueness of the "Palestinian question," viewed by many as Israel's "fault."

Meanwhile, one out of every three hundred Israeli families has been directly affected by an attack. The terrorist actions number in the thousands. More than 150 suicide attacks have been carried out, and for each of these the Israeli police estimate that they have prevented nine more. 1,723 people have been killed to date, 378 of them women. More than ten thousand have been injured.

The indifference of the West and of Christians in the face of this steady stream of victims, struck systematically in the midst of their daily routine, on the buses, in the cafes, in the markets, at home, now has a response in a book that recounts their stories for the first time. It finally tells us who they are.

The book was published a month ago in Italy, and translations will soon be published in New York and London. Its title is "Non smetteremo di danzare [We will not stop dancing]." And the subtitle: "Le storie mai raccontate dei martiri di Israele [The untold stories of Israel's martyrs]."

The author, Giulio Meotti, is already known to the readers of www.chiesa for two in-depth reports that have received extensive attention: on the most Islamified city in Europe, Rotterdam, and on the "Hilltop Youth," the latest generation of Israeli settlers.

His most recent book opens with a preface by English philosopher Roger Scruton, and with a letter by Robert Redeker, the French writer who has been living in a secret location since he began receiving death threats from Islamist fanatics.

Magister has an extract from the first chapter here.

Another Anniversary . . . Kristallnacht

Berlin Synagogue
Kristallnacht: November 9, 1938

Jewish Shop
Kristallnacht: November 9, 1938

Twenty years ago today the Berlin Wall fell and millions were liberated from communist tyranny. But today is another anniversary: Kristallnacht, the beginning of the Nazi slaughter of European Jews. Here are the first paragraphs of Rober Wistrich's article about it in the Brussels Journal:

On November 9, 1938, a massive nation-wide anti-Jewish pogrom took place during peacetime across the entire territory of the Third Reich. The pretext for this orgy of violence against German Jews was the shooting in Paris two days earlier of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish-Jewish refugee. The state-organized pogrom, instigated by Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, resulted in the burning or damaging of more than a thousand synagogues; the ransacking of about 7,500 businesses, the murder of at least 91 Jews, and the deportation of another 30,000 Jewish males to concentration camps in Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. This murderous onslaught against German Jewry, cynically described by the Nazis as the “Night of Broken Glass” (Kristallnacht), was a major turning point on the road to the “Final Solution” of the so-called “Jewish Question.” It signified that the Nazi regime had crossed a Rubicon and would no longer be deterred by Western public opinion in its “war against the Jews.” The economic expropriation of German Jewry, its complete social ostracism and public humiliation swiftly followed. Jews were banned from public transport, from frequenting concerts, theaters, cinemas, commercial centers, beaches, or using public benches. Only a fortnight after “Crystal Night,” the SS journal, Das Schwarze Korps, chillingly prophesied the final end of German Jewry through “fire and sword” and its imminent complete annihilation.

Today the specter of such apocalyptic anti-Semitism has returned to haunt Europe and other continents, while often assuming radically new forms. In the Middle East, it has taken on a particularly dangerous, toxic and potentially genocidal aura of hatred, closely linked to the “mission” of holy war or jihad against the West and the Jews.

Islamist anti-Semitism is thoroughly soaked in many of the most inflammatory themes that initially made possible the atrocities of “Crystal Night” and its horrific aftermath during the Holocaust -- for example, the pervasive use of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion with its perennial theme of the “Jewish conspiracy for world domination;” or the medieval blood-libel imported to the Muslim world from Christian Europe; or the vile stereotypical image of the Jews as a treacherous, rapacious, and bloodthirsty people engaged in a ceaseless plotting to undermine the world of Islam. To these grotesque inventions one must add such more up-to-date libels as Holocaust denial which has become a state-sponsored project in Ahmadinejad’s Iran and is increasingly pervasive in the Arab world.

The whole piece is here.

The obstacles ahead . . .

An update from Charmaine Yoest, president of Americans United for Life:

The pro-life Democrats and Republicans took a stand for the sanctity of life by passing the Stupak-Ellsworth-Pitts-Kaptur-Dahlkemper-Lipinski-Smith Amendment on a vote of 240 to 194. This amendment prohibits the use of federal dollars to fund abortion in health care.

This victory is a step toward a future where both political parties defend Life.

But one victory does not mean the battle is won.

Yesterday’s rhetoric from the Democratic leadership indicates an intention to subvert the bipartisan pro-life majority. We are deeply concerned that Democratic leadership intends to undermine this victory that reflects the will of an overwhelming majority of Americans.

The battle will move quickly over to the Senate. We all have to take a deep breath and refocus our efforts toward watching the final language of the Senate bill to ensure that pro-life protections remain in the final health care bill.

While we applaud the passage of the Stupak-Pitts amendment, serious concerns about H.R. 3962 remain. The Rules Committee did not permit amendments to address concerns about conscience protection, the use of comparative effectiveness research and end of life provisions.

More here.

What the Wall Stree Journal called: "the worst bill ever."

I must say I agree completely.



Hat tip: Athos

Sunday Morning Thoughts . . . on Church

A human subject, inasmuch as he becomes a theological person by a unique call and mission, is simultaneously deprivatized, socialized, and made the location and the bearer of community. -- Hans Urs von Balthasar

In his Theo-Drama (Vol. II), von Balthasar writes: "Human community and the immediate relation of each individual to God are inseparable from each other."

Which Cardinal Marc Ouellet succinctly sums up in a paper on von Balthasar's Christian ethics, where he writes that von Balthasar "advances beyond the Protestant individualism of justification by faith and the Catholic individualism of merit by recovering the essential implication of community in the occurrence of grace."

Which reminds me of a summary of my own: One cannot know God fully without knowing Christ. (Even though some who do not know Christ may well know God better than some who do, they cannot know God fully without knowing Christ, and -- more to the point -- him crucified.) And one cannot know Christ fully without the Church. (Though, again, some who stand outside the Church may well know Christ better than some of its members; nonetheless, one cannot know Christ fully without the Church.)

Just some Sunday morning thoughts, for what they're worth.

This just in . . . so to speak

By the power invested in me as the president of the Cornerstone Forum (a minuscule power, let me assure you), I hereby announce a new Cornerstone Forum catechetical principle. It is, wonder of wonders, from Hans Urs von Balthasar:

Grateful Astonishment Refutes Barren Ruminating.

Uphill on the HIll

From Americans United for Life:

Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) stated on the House floor that all three Chairmen of the Committees of jurisdiction, Chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Henry Waxman (D-CA), Chairman of the Education and Labor Committee George Miller (D-CA), and Chairman of the Ways and Means Committee Charlie Rangel (D-NY) refused to offer assurances that they would support the House passed language that includes the Stupak-Pitts amendment during the House and Senate conference. Boehner urged Members considering a “yes” vote on final passage if the Stupak-Pitts amendment were passed, to reconsider their support in light of the Chairmens’ efforts to undermine the Stupak-Pitts agreement during conference.

What's worse than worst?

My friend Jill Fallon has a good roundup about what the Wall Street Journal calls "the worst bill ever" -- the Heath Care bill being debated at this moment in the House.
Jill's post is here.

Finding Candor Whevever It Can Be Found

Mark Steyn:

In the New York Times, Maria Newman touched on Hasan’s faith only obliquely: “He was single, according to the records, and he listed no religious preference.” Thank goodness for that, eh? A neighbor in Texas says the major had “Allah” and “another word” pinned up in Arabic on his door. “Akbar” maybe? On Thursday morning he is said to have passed out copies of the Koran to his neighbors. He shouted in Arabic as he fired. But don’t worry: As the FBI spokesman assured us in nothing flat, there’s no terrorism angle.

That’s true, in a very narrow sense: Major Hasan is not a card-carrying member of the Texas branch of al-Qaeda reporting to a control officer in Yemen or Waziristan. If he were, things would be a lot easier. But the pathologies that drive al-Qaeda beat within Major Hasan too, and in the end his Islamic impulses trumped his expensive Western education, his psychiatric training, his military discipline — his entire American identity. One might say the same about Faleh Hassan Almaleki of Glendale, Ariz., arrested last week after fatally running over his “too Westernized” daughter Noor in the latest American honor killing. Or the two U.S. residents — one American, one Canadian — arrested a few days earlier for plotting to fly to Denmark for the purposes of murdering the editor who commissioned the famous Mohammed cartoons. But Noor Almaleki’s brother shrugs that’s just the way it is. “One thing to one culture doesn’t make sense to another culture,” he says.

Indeed. To infidels, Islam is in a certain sense unknowable, and most of us are content to leave it at that. The vast majority of Muslims don’t conspire to kill cartoonists or murder their daughters or shoot dozens of their fellow soldiers. But Islam inspires enough of this behavior to make it a legitimate topic of analysis. Don’t hold your breath. We’d rather talk about anything else — even in the Army.

Here's what is so distressing: Robert Spencer is unquestionably one of the West's preeminent experts on the Qur'an and the history of Islam. Like many of us, his frustration at the refusal of officialdom and the mainstream media to deal honestly with the issue of Islamic fanaticism is palpable. It is never, as far as I know, shrill. But when someone yells "fire," before we object to the alarmist tone we should check to see if there's actually something burning.

Anyway, what frustrates me today is that the only link to Robert Spencer's comment below -- which, regardless of whether you agree with it or not, should unquestionably be part of the public conversation -- as I say, the only link to Spencer is from the radio program of Michael Savage. I have never listened to Savage, but I suspect he would be tarred with the brush of right-wingism and therefore ignored. The problem -- my frustration -- is that these days one can only find intelligent remarks such as those Spencer makes in this audio on outlets like Savage's.

I long for the day when one could find them on CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, NPR, and . . . wan hope indeed, MSNBC. Until that happy day arrives, we have to find honesty and candor where it can be found.

The struggle will continue . . .

This from Creative Minority Report:

CAREFUL WHAT YOUR WISH FOR

The immediate reaction to news that Pelosi will allow an up or down vote on the Stupak amendment prohibiting funding abortion in the healthcare bill is to view it as a victory. We should be careful what we wish for.

Pelosi clearly does not have enough votes to pass the bill without the pro-life Dems on board. If it fails, then most likely some of the pro-life Dems will say, "Oh well, we tried" and vote for final passage of the full bill, abortion and all.

But if the Stupak amendment passes, we are clearly not out of the woods. In all likelihood, Pelosi would be able to cajole the radical pro-abortion Dems in the house to go along for now. The Senate does not care about abortion so their version of the bill will not include language similar to the Stupak amendment. The Stupak language would then likely be stripped in the reconciliation process and sent back for final passage.

At that point, no more amendments are permitted. Having the cover of having voted against abortion in the up/down Stupak vote, Pelosi might very well have enough votes to get final passage, abortion and all. They will say things like "Well I voted against the funding of abortion. But that is not possible now. The bill is not perfect, but people are suffering and so I will vote for final passage."

Clearly the Stupak amendment is a good thing as it is the only option we have now save killing the bill in its entirety. But even if it passes, federally funded abortion is not dead. The only way to prevent it is to kill the bill, once and for all.

If Stupak passes today, our work is just beginning.

Posted by Patrick Archbold here.

Update: Abortion in Health Care

Latest update from Americans United for Life:

An editorial in the Washington Post today asserted, “The controversy over abortion funding is similarly phony. Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or where the life of the mother is endangered. The House bill would leave that restriction in place. It would exclude abortion from the list of benefits that plans participating in the insurance exchange would be required to offer. Instead, the exchanges would have to include one plan that covers abortion, along with one that doesn’t. Even so, the plans that cover abortion would have to take steps to make sure that federal funds are segregated from those used to pay for abortions.”

The only thing “phony” about the abortion funding controversy are these repeated misleading statements claiming the bills in Congress, as proposed, would not use federal dollars to fund abortion.

“Federal law prohibits the use of federal money for abortions except in cases of rape, incest or where the life of the mother is endangered. The House bill would leave that restriction in place.”

The prohibition on federal funding of abortion, the Hyde Amendment, does not apply to H.R. 3962.

In fact, the abortion funding language of H.R. 3962 is exactly the opposite of the Hyde Amendment, which has passed every year for 33 years. Instead of codifying restrictions on abortion funding, H.R. 3962 codifies an abortion funding mandate.

The language of H.R. 3962 on its face mandates only coverage in the public option of those Hyde-permitted abortions (in cases of rape, incest, or life of the mother). But, H.R. 3962 does not prohibit funding other abortions and it goes further – explicitly allowing the HHS Secretary to include all abortions in the public option. (Section 222(e)(3)). Since the decision would be made by pro-abortion HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, it is likely that Section 222(e)(3) will be used to extend the abortion funding mandate to cover all abortions.

“It would exclude abortion from the list of benefits that plans participating in the insurance exchange would be required to offer.”

While the bill would not force all private insurance plans to directly reimburse for abortion, the bill allows private health insurance plans that cover elective abortion to receive government subsidies (Section 222(e)(2)). This changes the status quo on federal funds being used towards insurance plans that provide abortion coverage.

In the Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP), the government contributes to premiums of federal employees in order to allow them to purchase private health insurance. The Financial Services and General Government Appropriations bill that provides funding for the FEHB program has annually prohibited these government contributions from being used towards insurance plans that cover abortion since 1983 (with the exception of 1993-1995).

“Instead, the exchanges would have to include one plan that covers abortion, along with one that doesn’t.”

The bill does require that there be one insurance company in each region that does not directly reimburse for abortion. However, another provision of H.R. 3962 severely limits the extent an insurance company is allowed to be “pro-life.” Sec. 304(d) prevents any private insurance company participating in the Exchange from choosing not to contract with abortion providers.

Additionally, for the first time the government is mandating that there be a private insurance company that does provide abortion coverage in each region.

“Even so, the plans that cover abortion would have to take steps to make sure that federal funds are segregated from those used to pay for abortions.”

The bill includes language purporting to segregate “federal dollars” from “private dollars” that are used to pay for abortions (Sections 303(e)(2); 341(c)(3)) – but nothing alters the fact that this provision allows government dollars to go to private plans that cover abortion.

As Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI) said last night in support of his amendment that would reflect the opinion of the majority of Americans and codify the restrictions of Hyde into H.R. 3962, “No federal dollars, no matter how you try to disguise it, should be used to fund abortion in this legislation.”

Latest Update: 11:45 Eastern Time Zone

This just in from Washington:

Moments ago, Planned Parenthood sent out a mass e-mail blast to abortion supporters calling it an EMERGENCY ...

... Here's what they're terrified of:

Late last night, the House leadership -- realizing their health care reform bill didn't have the needed votes while containing an abortion mandate -- agreed to allow a vote today on the bi-partisan pro-life amendment offered by Rep. Bart Stupak and Rep. Joe Pitts that explicitly excludes government funding of abortion in health care reform.

Your calls and e-mails made the difference to allow for this amendment which could help to save millions of lives from abortion -- and prevent Planned Parenthood and the rest of the abortion industry from receiving a massive government funded bailout!

Now, everything comes down to what's happening on the House floor right now.

Planned Parenthood is begging abortion advocates to call Congress now and "reject this attack..." by demanding opposition to the Stupak/Pitts amendment.

If they succeed and the abortion mandate is not removed from health care reform, Planned Parenthood will be sending out a victory e-mail tomorrow -- and preparing to ramp up its operations to handle the largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade.

Even if you have called before, it is critical that you pick up the phone RIGHT NOW and tell your U.S. Representative: "Remove abortion funding and mandates from health care reform!"

If you know your Representative's name, call him or her through the House switchboard at:

(202) 224-3121

The 11th Hour . . .

In a surprise move after hours of tumultuous negotiations, the House Rules Committee, very early Saturday morning, approved rules for debate on the pro-abortion health care bill. Although it appeared Speaker Nancy Pelosi would deny one, it allows a vote on an amendment to remove abortion funding.

Pelosi's hand appeared to have been forced when pro-abortion House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer announced earlier in the day that she did not have enough votes to pass the bill because of objections from pro-life Democrats.

The committee okayed a Rule that allows the House to vote on the Stupak amendment, offered by pro-life Rep. Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat, to the health care reform legislation.

If you do not want your tax dollars funneled into the pockets of people hired to kill children in the womb, now would be a very good time to call your Congressional representative and urge a YES vote on the Stupak-Pitts Amendment.

Second Thoughts . . .

Martin Kozlowski had this cartoon in the November 3rd Wall Street Journal:

We'll see.

"From Democracy to Despotism"

Here are two short videos. I urge you to take the time to view them.



Cardinal George of Chicago:



If you haven't seen them, there are other videos on this subject below.

Tomorrow is the Vote in Congress

Another important video:

Abortion is IN the Health Care Bill

If you're as concerned about this as I am, here is an organization I visited recently in Washington. It is an extraordinary organization of very dedicated people. I urge you to visit their website and do what you can to help.

The M-word and the T-word

Major Nidal Malik Hasan

Soldiers who witnessed the shooting rampage at Fort Hood that left 13 people dead reported that the gunman shouted "Allahu Akbar!" — an Arabic phrase for "God is great!" — before opening fire, the base commander said Friday.

In a video clip on the CNN website, Anderson Cooper narrates security camera footage from a convenience store where Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspected killer in the Fort Hood attack, was buying something. The video showed Major Hasan in recognizably Islamic attire. Knowing his viewers where seeing this, and therefore unable to let it pass without comment, Cooper repeatedly said that Major Hasan's was "dressed in traditional garb."

Traditional garb? What tradition? Does it matter? Is it relevant to this story or just an irrelevancy? Was Major Hasan dressed in traditional Hopi garb? Traditional Sikh garb? Where's the adjective in that sentence? Why did Cooper not say? Cooper's fellow CNN reporters were eventually obliged to utter a few of the censored terms, discretely to be sure, as though they were of no real importance to the story.

Mark Steyn:

There's something deeply weird about the media's instinctive avoidance of the M-word or the T-word and the careless abandon with which they speculate about "post-traumatic stress disorder" even as the emerging facts render it absurd . . . One can forgive the press not getting the story right in the first hours, but it will be interesting to see how honestly they cover it as the facts emerge.

Every person honest with himself knows: No one in his or her right mind thinks Anderson Cooper is an Islamophobe. (If the term means an irrational fear of Muslims, how many suffer from it? Perhaps 1% of the population). Cooper left out a not insignificant detail of the story -- an irresponsible thing for a serious journalist to do -- because he did not want to be accused of Islamphobia, or perhaps, even more shamefully, he didn't want to be thought even mildly sympathetic with more politically conservative people who might be less cavalier about Major Hasan's religious motivations.

This sort of self-censorship is almost certainly why Major Hasan's army superiors and colleagues did not raise warning flags about his behavior, which -- had it been exhibited by anyone else, would have had immediate consequences. As a result of this fear of being labeled Islamophobic, this disturbed man was apparently allowed to continue to give psychological and psychiatric counseling to troubled soldiers. Can you imagine?

The news stories refer to the fact that Major Hasan was a psychiatrist far more often than that he was a Muslim, but which is more relevant to the story?

Is all this just sensitivity? What if the shooter in this crime had been an identifiable Christian -- say a priest with a Roman collar or a Bible-belt fundamentalist with big "I love Jesus" on is sleeveless T-shirt? Would Anderson Cooper have referred to the former as dressed in traditional garb and the latter as a local mechanic?

This fear -- not of being an Islamophobe (whatever that might be) but of being accused of being one -- is a very serious form of self-censorship that is reserved for only one religious tradition today. It is unhealthy for our society. I'm as weary of elite liberal anti-Catholicism as anybody, but as long as such things can be countered with reason and persuasion, I'll take anti-Catholic slurs any day over censorship, especially the pernicious self-censored sort.

P. S.

The headline of Barry Rubin's piece on the politically correct spin that will the official line for the mainstream media:

Understanding the Ft. Hood Attack:

America’s the Bad Guy This I Know
Because My TV Told Me So

Read it here.

Citizens behaving themsevles with dignity

We live in a raucous democracy, thank goodness. We don't all agree; again, thank goodness. These are bewildering times, and no one has a crystal ball. All that said, you may not agree with the people who gathered in Washington today -- I do -- but it would be demagoguery to slander them with the standard sobriquets: right-wingers, racists, angry white men, and so on. These are obviously decent citizens who were not just looking for a good excuse to interrupt their lives for a trip to Washington. They are the kind of people who made this country great, and they deserve a hearing.

Making it Official

This from the London Telegraph:

Climate change belief given same legal status as religion

An executive has won the right to sue his employer on the basis that he was unfairly dismissed for his green views after a judge ruled that environmentalism had the same weight in law as religious and philosophical beliefs.

Hat Tip: Jill Fallon at The Business of Life

Canceling AARP

To each his own, but I just canceled my AARP membership in light of today's endorsement of the current Health Care bill. Vanity would have kept me from joining in the first place, but the slight reduction in the motel rates caused me to override my vanity, but it's not enough to make me override my principles.

I have just joined the American Seniors Association, a very attractive alternative, cheap motel rates and all. If any of you over-55 folks out there are interested in doing likewise, the toll-free number for canceling AARP is 888-687-2277, and you can go here to look into an ASA membership -- $15 a year.

The Decline of the West

My friend Jill Fallon quotes from a piece in the London Daily Express by Leo McKinstry, entitled: Sold Out to Europe by Generations of Weak, Lying Leaders:

The drive by the Eurocrats to impose the Lisbon Treaty has made a mockery of democracy. The Labour Government promised the British electorate a referendum but disgracefully reneged on that pledge. . . .

The result:

WE will lose any vestige of control over our borders, our justice system and our foreign policy . . .

Our national embassies will be soon be superseded by those of the EU, while our Army will be subsumed within the new European Defence Force. EU control of all environmental policy will mean sweeping new regulations on everything from bin collections to petrol prices.

Already 80 per cent of our laws are dictated by the EU. Lisbon will make Westminster redundant as an institution, there will be a Europe-wide police force, complete with all the sinister intrusive powers of the modern surveillance state. . . .

We can be sure that the fashionable ideology of political correctness will be rigorously enforced by our European masters, crushing the rich heritage of our Christian civilisation in the name of diversity. It is no coincidence that on the very day that the Lisbon Treaty was finally ratified by all 27 member states, the European Court ruled that crucifixes had to be banned in Italian schools for fear of offending minorities.

The definition of dictatorship is the inability to remove from power those who govern us, no matter how corrupt or authoritarian they are. That is exactly what the post-Lisbon EU will be like, wielding unprecedented authority but accountable to none, insulated by privilege and riddled with abuses. . . .

But now, without even a whimper, our politicians have thrown away our democratic liberties. What is even worse, the entire saga of our relationship with the EU has been based on the cynical deception of the public by the political establishment. . . .

"The demise of a once- great nation has arrived without a vote being cast or a bullet fired.

The whole story is here.

"The first thing I'd do ..." the candidate said.

This from James Capretta at National Review Online:

The stated number-one priority for Democrats is passage of a government takeover of American health-care. President Obama and his allies in Congress have essentially bet the future of their party on securing something radical and sweeping. Congressional leaders have set aside everything else until they can pass some version of Obamacare, and they have pledged to do whatever is necessary — taxpayers beware — to reach their goal.

But there’s apparently one thing most Democrats aren’t willing to do, even if it jeopardizes their health-care ambitions. And that’s back down on their unwavering commitment to abortion radicalism. . . .

President Obama came in to office proclaiming a new openness to the pro-life position. But that was just a lot of talk to divide the conservative coalition. Actions speak louder than words. And his administration and its allies in Congress are using every tool at their disposal to make elective abortions a part of mainstream insurance coverage.

The whole thing is here.

LOVE IN ACTION

Here's one that can break your heart, but break it OPEN. If you don't well up with tears at this, go get some help.


The Return from Iraq

Hat tip: Creative Minority Report

Tolerance Vigilantes Alert . . . Updating the Thread

This just into my inbox from the Catholic News Agency, via California Catholic Daily:

Sacramento, Calif., Nov 3, 2009 / 06:45 am (CNA).- A think tank has compiled and analyzed reports of the harassment, intimidation, and “gross expressions of anti-religious bigotry” shown in reaction to the successful passage of Proposition 8. If partisans of marriage redefinition continue to increase in power, the analysis warns, those who seek the preservation of marriage as a union of man and wife may risk paying a price legally, socially and economically. The Heritage Foundation’s Oct. 22 report “The Price of Prop 8,” authored by researcher Thomas M. Messner, said that many individuals and institutions who defend the nature of marriage as a union between a man and a woman have paid a “heavy price.”

Militant opponents of Prop. 8 targeted supporters with a range of hostility, including “harassment, intimidation, vandalism, racial scapegoating, blacklisting, loss of employment, economic hardships, angry protests, violence, at least one death threat, and gross expressions of anti-religious bigotry,” the report stated.

Vandalism included a brick thrown through the window of an elderly couple who put a “Yes on 8” sign in their lawn. Another senior citizen with a pro-Prop. 8 bumper sticker had her car’s rear window smashed.

A statue of the Virgin Mary outside one church was vandalized with orange paint. Swastikas and other graffiti were scrawled on the walls of Most Holy Redeemer Catholic Church in San Francisco. At Our Lady of Perpetual Help Catholic Church in Riverside, signs were twisted into the shape of a swastika.

A heavy object wrapped with a “Yes on 8” sign was used to smash the window of a pastor’s office at Messiah Lutheran Church in Downey.

Sign theft targeting Prop. 8 supporters was significant, with one source estimating about one-third of the 25,000 signs distributed were stolen or vandalized before the end of the campaign.

Read the whole piece here.

Our Elder Brothers and Sisters in the Faith

From Robert Spencer at Jihad Watch:

Prof. Robert S. Wistrich is the director of The Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti-Semitism at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the author of A Lethal Obsession: Anti-Semitism from Antiquity to the Global Jihad (Random House, January 2010).

On November 9, 1938, a massive nation-wide anti-Jewish pogrom took place during peacetime across the entire territory of the Third Reich. The pretext for this orgy of violence against German Jews was the shooting in Paris two days earlier of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Polish-Jewish refugee. The state-organized pogrom, instigated by Hitler and Joseph Goebbels, resulted in the burning or damaging of more than a thousand synagogues; the ransacking of about 7,500 businesses, the murder of at least 91 Jews, and the deportation of another 30,000 Jewish males to concentration camps in Dachau, Buchenwald, and Sachsenhausen. This murderous onslaught against German Jewry, cynically described by the Nazis as the "Night of Broken Glass" (Kristallnacht), was a major turning point on the road to the "Final Solution" of the so-called "Jewish Question." It signified that the Nazi regime had crossed a Rubicon and would no longer be deterred by Western public opinion in its "war against the Jews." The economic expropriation of German Jewry, its complete social ostracism and public humiliation swiftly followed. Jews were banned from public transport, from frequenting concerts, theaters, cinemas, commercial centers, beaches, or using public benches. Only a fortnight after "Crystal Night," the SS journal, Das Schwarze Korps, chillingly prophesied the final end of German Jewry through "fire and sword" and its imminent complete annihilation.

Today, shocking to relate, the specter of such apocalyptic anti-Semitism has returned to haunt Europe and other continents, while often assuming radically new forms. In the Middle East, it has taken on a particularly dangerous, toxic and potentially genocidal aura of hatred, closely linked to the "mission" of holy war or jihad against the West and the Jews.

Islamist anti-Semitism is thoroughly soaked in many of the most inflammatory themes that initially made possible the atrocities of "Crystal Night" and its horrific aftermath during the Holocaust. For example, the pervasive use of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion with its perennial theme of the "Jewish conspiracy for world domination;" or the medieval blood-libel imported to the Muslim world from Christian Europe; or the vile stereotypical image of the Jews as a treacherous, rapacious, and bloodthirsty people engaged in a ceaseless plotting to undermine the world of Islam. To these grotesque inventions one must add such more up-to-date libels like Holocaust denial which has become a state-sponsored project in Ahmadinejad's Iran and is increasingly pervasive in the Arab world.

Equally fashionable (and increasingly popular in Europe) is the slanderous identification of Israel with Nazism or the "ethnic cleansing" of the Palestinians. This modernized version of inverted anti-Semitism which sails under the mask of "anti-Zionism" and anti-Americanism, is today a global phenomenon, but it has special resonance in the Middle East as a result of the unresolved "Palestinian question."
The scale and extremism of the literature and commentary available in Arab or Muslim newspapers, journals, magazines, caricatures, on Islamist websites, on the Middle Eastern radio and TV news, in documentaries, films, and educational materials, is comparable only to that of Nazi Germany at its worst. Yet the Western world largely turns a blind eye to the likely genocidal consequences of such a culture of hatred, much as it did seventy years ago. My own extensive research into this phenomenon has, unfortunately, convinced me that the Holocaust did not truly succeed in neutralizing the scourge of anti-Semitism. In a sinister and sometimes devious manner, the widespread defamation and demonization of Israel has in effect revived fantasies of completing the murderous work of the Third Reich. This is especially palpable in the case of Iran. Hence, the anniversary of "Crystal Night" raises two fundamental moral questions for the future of human civilization. Are we at all capable of learning from history, and will the Jewish people once again have to stand alone in the face of concrete threats to annihilate it? On the answer to these questions much may depend.

The last time this happened, most people assumed that it was political bluster. Today they excuse themselves by claiming that it is about Israel's policy toward those states and non-states and failed states that have declared the annihilation of the Jews to be their non-negotiable goal.

We Christians are the heirs and benefactors of Jewish faith and Jewish history; the Jews are our elder brothers and sisters in the faith. We must not be among those who lull themselves into believing that the present threat is less serious than it is.

A Sad Statistic

The UPI reports:

Approximately 92 percent of American women with prenatal diagnoses of Down syndrome babies chose abortion.

The next time you see a parent with a Down syndrome child, realize that you are very likely in the presence of a person of great integrity, a person who has paid a not inconsiderable price for the very considerable graces of a life of selfless love.

Tolerance?

Welcome once again to the Tolerance Vigilantes.

Peter Vadala stands outside his former place of employment -- Brookstone store in Logan Airport -- holding letter of termination.

Hat tip: Mass Resistance

P. S. I just a few minutes ago received an email from Robert Gagnon, associate professor the New Testament at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary, detailing his experience of tolerance, this time at the supreme "tolerant" Bowdoin College in Maine. His account is here.

How long are we going to acquiesce in the fiction that those driving the homosexual agenda are really interested in tolerance?

Ah, those right-wing fanatics . . .

Here's a look:



Makes me nostalgic for my old friends in Houston.

Speaking of Saul Alinsky . . .

Here's Andy Stern, president of the Service Employees International Union, according to official records recently released the single most frequent visitor to the White House in the first months of this administration:



Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit

“It wasn’t nobody’s fault."

“It wasn’t nobody’s fault. People shouldn’t be pointing fingers.”

So said a high school senior at the Richmond, California high school where a recent gang-rape of a 15-year-old girl during a homecoming dance was witnessed by many onlookers, some of whom joined in the rape, some of whom took photos with their cell phones, but none of whom used those cell phones to call the police.

Of course, she's right: it wasn't nobody's fault. It was somebody's fault. The difference between the two statements -- both grammatically and morally -- seems to have been lost on this high school senior. Of the two errors, the moral one is surely the graver one, but the grammatical error is a symptom of the same forces of cultural disintegration that have contributed to the moral one. There was a day when any third grader could have told you -- in flawless English -- that rape is always somebody's fault. But no more.

I'm sure that if you asked this student about how to use a condom or to recite all the colorful sexual orientations and gender combinations now deemed proper forms of marriage, she would have given text-book answers of the sort that textbooks today tend more and more to provide. But as for what caused World War II, or when our country was founded, or the grammatical rule against the double negative, and countless other matters without which one cannot be considered even semi-educated, she might well draw a blank.

Ideas have consequences, and this story, with all its disturbing moral and pedagogical details, can be seen as the glaring culmination of a half-century of left-liberal anthropological and moral mistakes, each a attempt to remedy problems caused by the one before it. The mindset that has made this possible is not only highly visible, but it is proudly so. For instance, here is a recommendation that appears today on the National Education Association website:

Rules for Radicals
by Saul Alinsky
Vintage; Reissue edition (October 23, 1989)

An inspiration to anyone contemplating action in their community! And to every organizer!

Saul Alinsky, one of president Obama's heroes, was an admitted liar and thug, as even his NEA enthusiasts admit. Here is how that long and laudatory recommendation ends:

Alinsky practiced what he preached. . . . He uses eyes, ears and nose for examples...

Eyes
"If you have a vast organization, parade it before the enemy, openly show your power."

Ears
"If your organization is small, do what Gideon did: conceal the members in the dark but raise a clamor that will make the listener believe that your organization numbers many more that it does."

Nose
"If your organization is too tiny even for noise, stink up the place."

Alinsky devised and proved thirteen tactical rules for use against opponents vastly superior in power and wealth.

1. "Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. "Never go outside the experience of your people.
3. "Wherever possible go outside of the experience of the enemy.
4. "Make the enemy live up to their own book of rules.
5. "Ridicule is man's most potent weapon.
6. "A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. "A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. "Keep the pressure on.
9. "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. "Major premise for tactics is development of operations that will maintain constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. "If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.
12. "The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.

"The real action is in the enemy's reaction. The enemy properly goaded and guided in his reaction will be your major strength. Tactics, like life, require that you move with the action."

Alinsky was hated and defamed by powerful enemies, proof that his tactics worked. His simple formula for success...

"Agitate + Aggravate + Educate + Organize"

To this little piece of NEA's educational curriculum will soon be added whatever programs the Obama administration "Safe Schools" Czar, the homosexual activist Kevin Jennings, will determine suitable for students that are no longer learning history, English, science, math or any of the things schools once existed to teach.

Back to the gang-rape at the Richmond high school. According to the San Francisco Chronicle: "teachers and students at least partially blame the attack on the lack of lighting, sturdy fencing or security cameras on the courtyard..."

No doubt the courtyard where the girl was raped before a crowd of onlookers should have been better lighted. The cell phone photos would have turned out clearer no doubt. Since this assessment of the contributing factors came from teachers and students, I suppose we can be grateful that at least this vacuous attempt to explain the attack did not include any grammatical errors, but it is all the more pathetic for having come from adults.

The teachers are hardly the ones primarily responsible for the catastrophe in public education in this country -- that distinction belongs to the parents -- but teachers' unions like the NEA do bear some responsibility, and to prattle on about security cameras and sturdy fencing is just another form of "It wasn't nobody's fault."

The Chronicle reporter observed:

Take the poverty-driven frustration of inner-city Richmond, a youth street culture that glorifies thugs and applauds degradation of women, and the desensitization of young men through violent video games, music and language, and you have a template for trouble.

Well, yes and no. Yes, these excuses are part of the overall decline in civility and culture that we see everywhere today, but, no: the problem is a moral one, and all morality is individual morality. True, groups can quickly degrade the moral sensibilities of those caught up in their contagion, but this occurs in inverse proportion to the morality that has been instilled in each of the members of the group. You can be sure that the inculcation of such morality has not occurred in our society today is somebody's fault. Yours and mine.

The ever thoughtful Thomas Sowell

Internationally, Barack Obama has made every mistake that was made by the Western democracies in the 1930s, mistakes that put Hitler in a position to start World War II — and come dangerously close to winning it.

At the heart of those mistakes was trying to mollify your enemies by throwing your friends to the wolves. The Obama administration has already done that by reneging on this country’s commitment to put a missile-defense shield in Eastern Europe and by its lackadaisical foot-dragging on doing anything serious to stop Iran from getting nuclear weapons. That means, for all practical purposes, throwing Israel to the wolves as well.

The whole piece is here.

No Equivocation at the Wall Street Journal

This quick summary from NewsBusters:

The Wall Street Journal's editorial board didn't pull any punches Monday when it declared Speaker Nancy Pelosi's (D-Cal.) healthcare legislation "The Worst Bill Ever."

The sub-headline made things even clearer:

Epic new spending and taxes, pricier insurance, rationed care, dishonest accounting: The Pelosi health bill has it all.

But the first three must-read paragraphs said it all:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi has reportedly told fellow Democrats that she's prepared to lose seats in 2010 if that's what it takes to pass ObamaCare, and little wonder. The health bill she unwrapped last Thursday, which President Obama hailed as a "critical milestone," may well be the worst piece of post-New Deal legislation ever introduced.

Stop the Abortion Mandate - TONIGHT

9 p.m. Eastern, 8 p.m. Central, 7 p.m. Mountain, 6 p.m. Pacific

Join the URGENT nationwide webcast event this Monday, November 2, to prevent Washington D.C. bureaucrats and abortion industry lobbyists from forcing YOU to pay for abortions.

Go HERE.

During the live webcast, you’ll hear the latest breaking news from nationally respected leaders. Invited presenters include:

• REP. CHRIS SMITH, U.S. House of Representatives
• MARJORIE DANNENFELSER, Susan B. Anthony List
• CHARMAINE YOEST, Americans United for Life
• KRISTAN HAWKINS, Students for Life of America
• DAVID BEREIT, 40 Days for Life
• KELLYANNE CONWAY, The Polling Company
• WENDY WRIGHT, Concerned Women for America
• DOUGLAS JOHNSON, National Right to Life Committee
• KRISTEN DAY, Democrats for Life
• DR. DAVID STEVENS, Christian Medical & Dental Associations

As we get a closer look . . .

It doesn't be simpler than this:

"It is dying for love that counts, whether all at once, at a crash, or lingering-out, in daily mortification." -- Aidan Nichols

Senator Lieberman

Increase and multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it

For we know that every creature groaneth and travaileth in pain, even till now. And not only it, but ourselves also, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption of the sons of God, the redemption of our body. -- Romans 8:22-23

Creation has a human heart; that is the staggering claim that the biblical tradition makes. All creation has a human heart, a heart, however, which has fallen from its moorings in God into what the the author of the First Letter of John calls "the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life." Thus fallen, creation -- in both its human and non-human forms -- is reckless, heedless, destructive of others and self-destructive.

The command to "subdue the earth" is the task of "humanizing" the created order. It is a task that can only be achieved by a humanity that is itself in the process of being "divinized" -- that is by a humanity that is being drawn into the self-donating and self-sacrificial mystery of the Triune God. Every other attempt to manipulate nature in the name of "progress" will carry with it unintended consequences directly proportional to the pride and lust of which it has not been purged. Only to the degree that humanity has been "divinized" can we responsibly take up the task of curing nature -- to whatever limited degree possible -- of its blind indifference to individual life.

Just a thought.

Resisting the Silent Holocaust

To quote from the last little essay we posted on our webpage:

We are persons in the full Christian sense of that word precisely because we are each called by name from the moment of conception. That call can be initially answered by the mere act of clinging to life . . .

I just signed on to a movement called The Personhood Movement.

The Personhood Movement from Personhood USA on Vimeo.

Go here to join.

The Human Mystery . . .

We humans are the most mysterious thing in this universe. The more we can learn about that mystery, the better. What Barbara Tuchman called "a distant mirror" can help us.

Mutatis Mutandis

I'm as weary of this thread as anyone, but apropos of earlier posts here, here, and here, below are the salient excerpts from Peter Hitchens' Sunday column for the Daily Mail. Despite the uniquely British or European concerns that Hitchens addresses, the grand liberal project that one of the Labour Party functionaries recently revealed sounds eerily similar to some things happening on this side of the Atlantic, where principled opposition is increasingly being characterized as right-wing lunacy unworthy of respectable citizens.

Hitchens writes:

Once again, one of the biggest stories of the week has been widely ignored by the official political reporters, who are not interested in politics. This is the disclosure, by a New Labour apparatchik, Andrew Neather, of the real purpose of his party’s immigration policy.

The Blairites’ aim was to undermine and get rid of traditional conservative British culture. They really did want to turn Britain into a foreign land.

Mr Neather wrote an article praising immigration because it provided lots of cheap nannies and gardeners for funky Londoners like him. Apparently thinking nobody would notice, he then revealed that there had been ‘a driving political purpose: that mass immigration was the way that the UK Government was going to make the UK truly multicultural’.

He recalled coming away from high-level discussions ‘with a clear sense that the policy was intended – even if this wasn’t its main purpose – to rub the Right’s nose in diversity and render their arguments out of date’. . . .

Mass immigration, so vast that Britain would have to adapt to the migrants rather than the other way round, would be very useful in attaining this. You could smear your opposition as ‘racist’ if they dared to resist. . . .

Anthony Blair’s hysterical speech ‘attacking the ‘forces of conservatism’ in September 1999 was a barely coded warning of what was to come. He all but blamed the Tories for murdering Martin Luther King and locking up Nelson Mandela. He specifically praised the curse of multiculturalism.

. . . Mr Blair told the Tories to accept his revolution. They did. And the British people are left without a legitimate voice at Westminster.

A Deaconate of Culture

Addressing the full Pontifical Council for Social Communications last Thursday, Benedict XVI said this on the subject of what he called the evangelization of the "digital continent."

The Church exercises that which can be defined as a ‘deaconate of culture’ on today's ‘digital continent,’ using its means to announce the Gospel, the only Word that can save the human being.

The story is here.