Religion in the Public Square

Jody Bottum, the editor of First Things, has some thoughtful things to say in the current issue of that journal about the role of religion in "American exceptionalism," not least what he quotes from Stephen Carter. Here it is:

When people are well formed by family, church, and all the other institutions of civil society that mediate between the individual and the state, they naturally resist the politicization of life and the encroachments of the state even as many are motivated to become and remain civically engaged. But atomized, self-defining individuals need a Levithan to direct and protect them, as the only alternative to anarchy. And under today's social conditions, there are more and more such people.

Whereupon Bottum soon quotes from Stephen Carter's God Name in Vain: The Wrongs and Rights of Religion in Politics:

Religion is what we profess and morality is what it moves us to do. Politics needs morality, which means that politics needs religion. In a nation grown increasingly materialistic and increasingly involved in urging satisfaction of desire as the proper subject of both the market and politics, the religious voice, at its best, is perhaps the only remaining force that can call us to something highere and better than thinking constantly about our own selves, our own wants, our own rights. Politics without religion must necessarily be, in today's America, the politics of me.

Well said.

As for the "politicization of life and the encroachments of the state," one might add: and the super-state. Oversimplifying, but not by much, the need for health care reform -- a legitimate if rather over emphasized need -- is the best available excuse for those eager to politicize every facet of our lives, allowing the state to encroach into every nook and corner of them, just as the much more dubious global warming "crisis" is the best available excuse to turn ourselves over to some of the most questionable bureaucrats at the U.N., the E.U., the Arab League, and sundry unelected international institutions deeply at odds with the principles upon which our own society -- and western civilization itself -- was founded.

A Classic Rubicon

In Thursday's Wall Street Journal Online, Peggy Noonan perfectly describes the experience that turns moderates and even liberals into "Rubicons" of the sort I have previously defined.

America is good at making practical compromises, and one of the compromises we've made in the area of arts and entertainment is captured in the words "We don't care what you do in New York." That was said to me years ago by a social conservative who was explaining that he and his friends don't wish to impose their cultural sensibilities on a city that is uninterested in them, and that the city, in turn, shouldn't impose its cultural sensibilities on them. He was speaking metaphorically; "New York" meant "wherever the cultural left happily lives."

For years now, without anyone declaring it or even noticing it, we've had a compromise on television. Do you want, or will you allow into your home, dramas and comedies that, however good or bad, are graphically violent, highly sexualized, or reflective of cultural messages that you believe may be destructive? Fine, get cable. Pay for it. Buy your premium package, it's your money, spend it as you like.

But the big broadcast networks are for everyone. They are free, they are available on every television set in the nation, and we watch them with our children. The whole family's watching. Higher, stricter standards must maintain.

This was behind the resentment at the Adam Lambert incident on ABC in November. The compromise was breached. It was a broadcast network, it was prime time, it was the American Music Awards featuring singers your 11-year-old wants to see, and your 8-year-old. And Mr. Lambert came on and—again, in front of your children, in the living room, in the middle of your peaceful evening—uncorked an act in which he, in the words of various news reports the next day, performed "faux oral sex" featuring "S&M play," "bondage gear," "same-sex makeouts" and "walking a man and woman around the stage on a leash."

People were offended, and they complained. Mr. Lambert seemed surprised and puzzled. With an idiot's logic that was nonetheless logic, he suggested he was the focus of bigotry: They let women act perverse on TV all the time, so why can't a gay man do it? Fifteen hundred callers didn't see it as he did and complained to ABC, which was negligent but in the end responsive: They changed the West Coast feed and apparently kept Mr. Lambert off "Good Morning America."

Mr. Lambert's act left viewers feeling not just offended but assaulted. Again, "we don't care what you do in New York," but don't include us in it, don't bring it into our homes. Our children are here.

I don't mean to make too much of it. In the great scheme of things a creepy musical act doesn't matter much. But increasingly people feel at the mercy of the Adam Lamberts, who of course view themselves, when criticized, as victims of prudery and closed-mindedness. America is not prudish or closed-minded, it is exhausted. It cannot be exaggerated, how much Americans feel besieged by the culture of their own country, and to what lengths they have to go to protect their children from it.

Make sure you read the whole piece here. But in case you're in a rush, here's her closer:

I'd like to see a poll on this. Yes or no: Have we become a more vulgar country? Are we coarser than, say, 50 years ago? Do we talk more about sensitivity and treat others less sensitively? Do you think standards of public behavior are rising or falling? Is there something called the American Character, and do you think it has, the past half-century, improved or degenerated? If the latter, what are the implications of this? Do you sense, as you look around you, that each year we have less or more of the glue that holds a great nation together? Is there less courtesy in America now than when you were a child, or more? Bonus question: Is "Excuse me" a request or a command?

Interview with Rene Girard

To see Peter Robinson's interview with Rene Girard, go here for the first segment, and here, here, here and here for the remaining four segments, the last one being a kind of Christmas card.

Happy Hanukkah

The Canticle of Zechariah:

This was the oath He swore to our father Abraham:
To set us free from the hands of our enemies,
Free to worship Him without fear,
Holy and righteous in His sight
All the days of our life.

Happy Hanukkah, belatedly. Thanks to David Goldman for the reminder.

And you thought it was about the weather ...

Hat Tip: Gateway Pundit

Multiculturalism and Political Correctness as "Moral Exhibitionism"

Anthony Daniels is a British medical doctor who worked for years in the prisons and slums of England. He writes under the nom de plume of Theodore Dalrymple. His essays are insightful and often brilliantly so. In a recent one, he wrote as follows:

British intellectuals, as George Orwell once remarked, have long harboured a hatred of their own country and its culture. This attitude has deeply infiltrated the political class and has therefore come to affect legislation. All cultures are equal except ours, which is the worst.

The first thing to notice about this attitude is that it is insincere. Those who adopt it are not genuine admirers of other cultures, for genuinely to admire other cultures it is necessary seriously to study them. To know another culture is not just a matter of slipping down once in a while to a restaurant that serves its cuisine: it is very hard work indeed and the more different that culture is from one’s own the harder the work it is.

So when members of our political class express their adherence to multiculturalism they are not expressing their love of other cultures, they are expressing hatred of their own and it is this which explains the discrepancy in the way a Christian who derides Islam can now expect to be treated by comparison with a Muslim who derides Christianity. The hatred of that section of the political class for their own country’s culture, traditions and past is insincere in another sense also.

By expressing that hatred they imagine themselves to be exhibiting their own moral superiority for all the world and especially the intelligentsia, to see. Their hatred is actually moral exhibitionism. We all know the kind of odious patriot who believes everything in his own country is best merely because it is his own and who therefore despises every thing about all other countries, from their language to their cooking to their way of dress.

Our political class is a mirror image of this kind of person but preens itself on being morally superior to him.

My question is: how applicable is this diagnosis to our current president?

Are the wheels coming off yet?

This video -- sobering as it might be for those who support this reckless monstrosity -- at least ends humorously.

Last Minute Christmas Signing

The number of signatories to the Manhattan Declaration is about to go over the 300,000 mark. If you haven't signed, I encourage you to do so.

The Declaration address three issues:

1. the sanctity of human life
2. the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife
3. the rights of conscience and religious liberty.

To read the Declaration, go here. To sign it, go here.

Iraqi “ethnic cleansing” against Christians

Christmas in Mosul:

In the late morning, a car bomb exploded in front of the Church of the Annunciation in the al- Mohandiseen neighbourhood, damaging walls and windows. The attackers also threw grenades against the nearby Christian school, killing a baby girl and injuring 40 more people, including five high school kids. Saad Younes, father of the 8-day-old child, said that the blast occurred when his daughter and sister-in-law were leaving the nearby hospital.

A second attack targeted the Syro-Catholic Church of the Immaculate in al-Shifaa, a neighbourhood in northern Mosul. An explosive device went off in the street in front of the building’s gate. No one was killed or injured.

Yesterday’s attacks are the latest episodes in a series of violence against Christian places of worship. On 26 November, terrorists razed to the ground the Church of Saint Ephrem and the Mother House of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine. A source told AsiaNews that most nuns left; only a few have remained but “are afraid of going out”.

Such attacks are a “warning” for Christians to leave en masse. Many “families have fled north, into Kurdistan, but are jobless and have no hope for the future. The Christian community is destined to die,” the source said.

Read the whole depressing update on the religion of peace here.

Another Reminder

It's not getting-and-keeping, but giving-and-receiving.

Abortion: the one thing necessary . . .

This from Matthew Archbold at Creative Minority Report:

I've always wondered what was more important to secularist liberals, abortion or socialism. Sure, the two seem to be linked but when it comes down to it, which one, I wondered, was the principal which liberals would cling to no matter what.

And this week gave me my answer. The Senate Democrats needed 60 votes to pass healthcare but Senators Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman stood in the way for different reasons, presenting the White House and Senate leadership with a choice. Lieberman swore he wouldn't vote for a public option while Nelson said he couldn't vote for public funding of abortion.

And this week, Harry Reid did what seemed unthinkable just a month ago. He told Lieberman that they would take out the public option out of the healthcare bill. It's telling that the Democrats in the White House and the Senate surrendered the public option before they were willing to take abortion out.

Let's remember, the whole point of this healthcare bill and the main focus of Barack Obama's first year in the Presidency was the public option. And they just gave it away so that they wouldn't have to take out federal funding of abortion.

So in short, while liberals say that they believe that everyone is entitled to healthcare even at taxpayer expense what they really mean is that everyone is entitled to an abortion at taxpayer expense. They have proven with their actions that abortion is the bedrock principal of the Democratic Party.

By their fruits you will know them. Not by their cooing rhetoric.

Our Mother Tongue

In the 1950s Mother Geneviève Gallois wrote an appropriately little book about a legendary saint known as Little Placid. In it she describes the way this humble man was shaped by the liturgy:

The Liturgy put into his mouth words he never dared utter. His words formed his thought and his thought formed his being. And so, the Liturgy enfolded him as in a mould, and when it had transformed him, then rose to God as the expression of his own being . . .

Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, for all his immense theological erudition, is also a very simple and humble man, a man who also has a great devotion to the liturgy. The liturgy, he writes, is the Christian's mother tongue. Through the liturgy, he says, "the language of our Mother becomes ours; we learn to speak it along with her, so that gradually, her words on our lips become our words."

The humblest of saints and the greatest living theologian are here united in their love for the liturgy and its subtle transforming effects.

Madmen with nuclear weapons . . .

Where were the adults when we needed them? Everyone except those with their heads buried in ideological sand saw this coming long, long ago.



Isn't it a shame that evil exists and that it is so impervious to high flown oratory?

The Obama administration has been played like a violin, a violin of the sort that Jews were encouraged to play in the death camps, something to cheer up their doomed companions and keep them from fully realizing what was happening around them.

Cicero: A distant mirror . . .

A funny thing happened to me on my way to a more irenic life. As some of my close friends know, I have lately wearied of blogposts bewailing the sundry anthropologically ludicrous assaults on social, cultural, political, and economic reality. Blessed is the occasional respite from such "watchman on the watchtower" duty. I have been working myself up to at least a partial renunciation of this duty, and I have certainly not abandoned that idea altogether.

However, as my resolve was forming, I happened today to see Mary Ann Glendon's piece on Cicero in the current edition of First Things, in which she praises Cicero for his ability to combine a philosophical and a political life. Among the many differences between me and Cicero (!) are my philosophical ineptitude and my distaste for political partisanship. (Yes, it's true. For those with longer than usual blogosphere memories, you may recall that almost exactly three years ago I am emphatically announced that I was not a neo-con or a theo-con (though I comes close to the latter). I was, I declared, a "rubicon" -- with all the mockery the term invites. The original thesis is here, and here, and here.

My abandonment of early and naive liberalism in favor of a conservative response to the juggernaut of loopy-liberalism-turning-totalitarian was just that, a response to radically changed circumstances in our culture. At some point in this persistent erosion of common sense and common decency, a moral and cultural Rubicon was crossed, and what I regard as a natural and healthy conservatism awakened in me.

Be that as it may, I am as tired of the culture wars as any well-balanced person must be, but, like any other kind of war, and contrary to the "peace now" bumper stickers, culture wars don't end when one of the proponents abandons the field. When that happens, the other side wins. This is pretty simple stuff; if anyone is having trouble with it, just give it two seconds thought.

Anyway . . . even without the Mary Ann Glendon article, I am not about to abandon the pro-life or pro-traditional marriage causes, nor am willing to go quietly into the dark night of cultural irresponsibility into which our present leaders are beckoning us. But . . . I was, and to some extent still am, pondering a more occasional foray into those matters. But then I read this in Professor Glendon's encomium to Cicero:

Although philosophy, as he told his son, was "indispensable to everyone who proposes to have a good career," it was always, for Cicero, a handmaiden to politics. Even philosophers, he said, have an obligation to concern themselves with public affairs, not only out of civic duty, but also for the sake of philosophy itself, which requires certain conditions to flourish.

In times when he was excluded from political life or overcome with personal sorrow, Cicero plunged into his philosophical studies with prodigious energy. On the those occasions, he could not help casting a glance down the path not taken. "Now that power has passed to three uncontrolled individuals," he wrote to his friend Atticus during the Triumvirate of Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Crassus, "I am eager to devote all my attention to philosophy. I only wish I had done it from the outset.

The mood didn't last, for the three uncontrolled individuals and many others were pulling at the cultural fabric of a social order which -- for all its many and egregious shortcomings -- was the sine qua non of the civilization of his day -- not unlike what is happening today.

Again, nothing could be more ludicrous than to invite a comparison with Cicero. It's just that I find Glendon's reflection on him a mild corrective to my recent weariness with the culture wars. Without extraordinary effort on the part of all those who feel called to it, the world we bequeath to our children may be unconscionably toxic and precarious, and we must do what we can to provide something healthier for them.

As usual, Mary Ann Glendon has provided wise guidance.

John Paul the Great Graduation Ceremony

The first graduation class at John Paul the Great University

During the last academic year I gave monthly talks at John Paul the Great University in San Diego. On the feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe the new and very vibrant university graduated its first senior class. The students and teachers I met there were most impressive, and I fully expect this small and growing institution to send faithful and competent and creative graduates into our society for the benefit of us all. Congratulations to the new graduates.

It's called Christmas

When people finally weary of being pushed around, we today sometimes say that they begin to "push back." Well, pushing back -- being unavoidably reactive -- isn't always done in the most generous spirit, but sometimes the frustration it expresses is entirely healthy, even if the tone leaves something to be desired. This video is a very good example of that. Though their theology could use a little nuancing, I have to say I love the feistiness of these kids.

"Intrinsically disordered" not inherently sinful

This from the December 3rd edition of The Baltimore Sun:

Cardinal draws Vatican rebuke for anti-gay talk

A Roman Catholic cardinal has drawn on an unusual rebuke from the Vatican for saying that homosexuality is “an insult to God” and “transsexuals and homosexuals will never enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.”

Cardinal Javier Lozano Barragan, the retired head of the Vatican’s Council for Pastoral Assistance to Health Care Workers, made the comments Wednesday to a conservative Web site, the British newspaper The Telegraph reports.

“People are not born homosexual, they become homosexual, for different reasons: education issues or because they did not develop their own identity during adolescence.

“Perhaps they aren’t guilty but by acting against the dignity of the body they will certainly not enter the Kingdom of Heaven.”

The comments prompted a response from Vatican spokesman the Rev. Federico Lombardi, who said the Web site to which Lozano Barragan spoke should not be considered an authority on Catholic thinking “on complex and delicate issues such as homosexuality.”

Current Catholic teaching acknowledges that some people have innate homosexual tendencies but that homosexual acts are “disordered.”

The Telegraph also quotes a reaction from the Italian rights group Arcigay.

“It’s true, we won’t ever get into your heaven, which is a murky and unjust place.”

That's the thing about heaven: no one gets in without wanting in. No one holds a gun to one's head. It has its prerequisites, but anybody can decline the offer; sort of like the Church, you might say.

In Mary-Darkness

In Mary-Darkness
by Jessica Powers

I live my Advent in the womb of Mary
And on one night when a great star swings free
From its high mooring and walks down the sky
To be the dot above the Christus i,
I shall be born of her by blessed grace.
I wait in Mary-darkness, faith's walled place,
With hope's expectance of nativity.
I knew for long she carried me and fed me,
Guarded and loved me, though I could not see,
But only now, with inward jubilee,
I come upon earth's most amazing knowledge:
Someone is hidden in this dark with me.

Thanks to Eileen Barbella, who read this poem at the retreat I led in Dallas.

The Season for the Reason

"There are only two kinds of people one can call reasonable, those who serve God with all their heart because they know him and those who seek him with all their heart because they do not know him." -- Blaise Pascal

The greatest civilizing force in history deserves better.

This from David Warren, a journalist and columnist for the Ottawa Citizen:

Even so traditional an arbiter of public fashion as the White House now sends out greetings on Muslim occasions that are extremely pointed. To mark Eid, for instance, a devout spiritual message and special video were provided this year, containing a specifically Muslim declaration from President Obama, together with a reminder from his Cairo speech of how hard he is working to make sure Muslims everywhere are able to fulfil all their religious obligations.

By comparison, the Jewish Passover and Christian Easter were tossed off together with a generic statement emphasizing multiculturalism. "They are both occasions to th ink more deeply about the obligations we have to ourselves and the obligations we have to one another, no matter who we are, where we come from, or what faith we practice." Like I say: a toss-off.

Now, Jews still outnumber Muslims in the U.S., and Christians outnumber both by an extremely wide margin. Indeed, among Arab immigrants in the U.S. alone, there are probably still more Christians than Muslims. (Precise figures are not collected by the U.S. census; only estimates can be obtained.) Moreover, explicitly Christian greetings from the White House were a commonplace through previous centuries of the American experience, when it was understood that the U.S., like Canada, was a "basically Christian" country. Our people still are, our governments aren't.

Up here in Canada, even more explicit Christian greetings were a commonplace until little more than a generation ago. Our prime min ister plays his "ethnic cards" much closer to his chest and, for the most part, leaves individual members of his government to deliver the well-wishing to their respective denominational constituencies. The same politically correct syndrome is at work, however, known to everyone in the public replacement of greetings like the traditional "Merry Christmas" with the sterile and therefore slightly offensive "Season's Greetings." In both countries, self-appointed legal vigilantes from "civil liberties" lobbies are constantly at work, identifying and challenging any public display of Christian religious identity. On the other hand, organizations like CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations), which has an Ottawa office, busy themselves with similar interventions to ensure that Muslim identities are strongly asserted.

Without question, I will receive complaints from one or another of these vigilantes for simply spelling out what everyone knows to be true. I will be told, at least in e-mail, that, in effect, any pro-Christian assertion, or even a defence of existing Christian interests, is by definition a manifestation of bigotry. There will be supplementary anti-Christian and, invariably, anti-Catholic diatribes, too. I am used to this.

In the name of a redefined "tolerance" -- a virtue itself originally inferred from the explicitly Christian injunction to "judge not that ye be not judged" -- a campaign of progressive intolerance towards the Christian majority has become a feature of contemporary public life, throughout the "Western" -- i.e., originally Christian -- world. The bureaucracies of the European Union, too, have gone to tireless lengths to strip visible Christian symbolism out of public life across Europe, on the same grounds: that toleration today demands "zero tolerance." Not mer ely the anti-Christian tone, but the malicious inversion of the meaning of the word "tolerance" would have shocked our native-born ancestors only two generations ago. Many alive today are simply befuddled by the scale of this revolution in public life, and of the general inversion of societal values they have witnessed within their own lifetimes.

Elsewhere in the world, in many countries where they are minorities instead of majorities, Christians are actively persecuted. From what I can learn, this is the case in most countries where Christians are a minority. It is not as if our Western "secularization" were a response to some planetary trend, to soften public expressions of religious sentiment, for the sake of peace and quiet. To the contrary, especially in the Islamic world, but even in predominantly Hindu India, state sponsorship of religious identity has been dramatically increasing.

Against this background, it is incumbent upon Christians, everywhere, and as ever, to ignore intimidation. As the old parable goes, do not hide your lamp under a basket, but use it to cast light all around. Do not hesitate to make an example of yourself, or if need be, to be made an example of.

Warren's remarks seem to me so pertinent, I have quoted most of his November 29th column, but for the rest of it go here.

Our Lady of Guadalupe

Thanks to Whispers in the Loggia.

Moderate Muslims

We all know that most Muslims are moderate Muslims, and we are all comforted by that thought. It is a fact that is so unimpeachable that no one bothers to provide substantiation, and it's hard to know how it could be substantiated anyway.

Well I have a suggestion. It seems to me that a reasonable definition of a moderate Muslim might be someone who is willing to publicly renounce and repudiate:

1. the Qur'anic command to punish apostates with death.
2. the Qur'anic approval of wife-beating under certain circumstances.
3. the Qur'anic tradition of forced marriages and child brides.
4. the Qur'anic tradition of honor killings.

There are probably more things that could be added to the list, but this seems a good start.

Some might -- with some justification -- say that this would require Muslims to cease to be orthodox Muslims. It's something about which I don't know enough Islamic theology to have an opinion. But if there is any validity to it, or to the extent that there is validity, it would seem to throw the whole matter of Islmaic moderation into question. I don't say this is the case, and I certainly hope it is not.

Have I missed something? Any thoughts or suggestions?

Safe for what? . . .

The editorial to which Representative Michael Burgess M.D. referred begins this way:

WARNING: This editorial includes discussion of topics that are sexually graphic. Under usual circumstances, we would never entertain these subjects or the rancid language involved. In this case, however, a very unusual exception must be made because the issues are central to the background of a senior presidential appointee at the U.S. Department of Education who is in a position to influence how and what our children are taught in our nation's schools. Thus far, out of fear or squeamishness, there has been public hesitance to examine closely the beliefs of this individual because many are afraid even to touch the risky content. Our scruples cannot be used against us when traditional moral precepts need to be defended. Simply, the deep level of depravity involved in this subject cannot be portrayed without providing a couple of examples to illustrate the inappropriate content. Please do not read any further if you will be offended by sexually graphic language.

The Obama administration is stonewalling serious inquiries about sexual filth propagated by a senior presidential appointee who is responsible for promoting and implementing federal education policy. Democrats clearly are terrified of ruffling the feathers of their activist homosexual supporters, who are an influential part of the Democratic party's base. This scandal, however, is not merely about homosexual behavior; it is about promoting sex between children and adults - and it's time for President Obama to make clear that abetting such illegal perversion has no place in his administration.

Read the rest of it here. Go here and here for two other Washington Times editorials on this depressing subject.

The social and psychological dangers associated with the homosexual lifestyle, which Mr. Jennings and many others are promoting, are so grave and so well-documented that were they associated with second-hand cigarette smoke (than which they are far more serious) or any other activity not immunized from public criticism by the pom-pom media, the cover of Time Magazine wouldn't be a prominent enough place to sound the alarm. With this ideology, however, not a word.

No laughing matter . . .

For those of my friends who will bemoan the source of this interview -- Newsmax -- I would simply say, why does one have to go to Newmax to get this kind of lucidity? Where is Wolf Blitzer when you need him?



I am today scheduling this to post to appeal while I am in Dallas leading a weekend workshop at the Montserrat Jesuit Retreat Center there. But on the day I am scheduling the post (12/1/09) my friend Bill May sent me this -- not unrelated -- story from the AsiaNews:

Christian buildings attacked
Church of Saint Ephrem leveled

At present, there is no information about casualties. Attackers carried out their action in broad daylight without any opposition. The methods used are like those used in the attack against the Bishop’s Palace in 2004. Christian sources say the “attack was like a Mafia warning”, a message to Christians “to leave the city.” The faithful are left with anger, disappointment and fear.

Mosul (AsiaNews) – Explosive devices were detonated this morning at two Christian sites in Mosul, the Church of Saint Ephrem and the Mother House of the Dominican Sisters of Saint Catherine. At present, there are no reports about casualties but the church was entirely destroyed. The convent also suffered damages but it is not known how much. Christian sources in Mosul told AsiaNews that the “attack was like a Mafia warning”, a message to Christians “to get out of the city.”

Source of Mosul story here.

The Unreported Scandal . . .

If you have any doubts about the real White House agenda, and if the details are not too morally objectionable -- which they are -- then don't miss this from Creative Minority Report, the blogsite which -- along with John Hoft at Gateway Pundit -- has been covering the story which the pom-pom media refuses to cover.

The Scandal That Must Not be Named

Matthew and I have been struggling on how to report on an absolutely disgusting story. This horrific story involves President Obama's Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings. What is most incomprehensible about this story is how Kevin Jennings still remains at the White House days after this story became public.

I will not get in to the gory details of what Jennings has advocated and done here on this site as it is just too disgusting. I will attempt to give a high level summary. I will quote heavily from the blog of the outstanding Gateway Pundit for he has spearheaded the release of this information and has even come under cyber attack for his troubles. Gateway says

Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings was the founder, and for many years, Executive Director of an organization called the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). GLSEN started essentially as Jennings’ personal project and grew to become the culmination of his life’s work. And he was chosen by President Obama to be the nation’s Safe Schools Czar primarily because he had founded and led GLSEN

Kevin Jennings, and the organization he founded has promoted child porn in the classroom and has sponsored and taught the most deviant sexual things you can imagine to children. Children!

I present these links now with a most emphatic CONTENT WARNING. Even the titles of these links are repulsive in the extreme.

• ** Breaking: Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Is Promoting Child Porn in the Classroom– Kevin Jennings and the GLSEN Reading List
• ** Breaking: Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Is Promoting Porn in the Classroom– Kevin Jennings and the GLSEN Reading List (Part II)
• ** Breaking: Obama’s Safe Schools Czar’s Question to 14 Year Olds: “Spit vs. Swallow?… Is it Rude?” (audio-video)
• ** Obama’s “Safe Schools Czar” Promoted “Fisting” to Children (Video)
• ** Fistgate II: High School Students Given “Fisting Kits” At Kevin Jennings’ GLSEN Conference (Photo)
• ** Fistgate III: Obama’s Safe Schools Czar’s “Black Book” For Kids Included Tips on Fisting & Pi$$ing on Your Partner
• ** Fistgate IV: Obama’s Safe Schools Czar Passed Out Gay Bar Guides to Teens at GLSEN Events

Follow this important, even if disgusting, story at Gateway Pundit and thank him for what he is doing to expose these horrors.

Posted by Patrick Archbold of Creative Minority Report -- along with a video I did not include -- here.

On the fly from Dallas . . .

This from the pro-life leaders in Washington:

Pro-Life Leaders Launch Opposition to Senate Health Bill Following Nelson Amendment Demise

By Kathleen Gilbert

WASHINGTON, D.C., December 9, 2009 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Following the defeat of the Nelson/Hatch/Casey amendment Tuesday evening, pro-life leaders are calling on senators to oppose the Senate health care bill as it heads towards a final vote, which lawmakers expect will happen before the end of the year.

The Senate voted 54-45 Tuesday evening to table the Nelson/Hatch/Casey amendment, effectively killing the language that would have applied Hyde-amendment restrictions on federal funding of abortion to the health care overhaul. The "tabling" vote allowed Democrats to do away with the Nelson amendment without the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP filibuster of cloture for the amendment.

The vote came after hours of debate on the Senate floor, with alternating Democrat and Republican speeches at loggerheads as to whether the bill's original abortion language represented adequate protections, as pro-abortion lawmakers claimed, or a vast expansion of abortion, as pro-life lawmakers claimed. Pro-abortion senators also argued that the Nelson/Hatch/Casey amendment was discriminatory against women, and violated women's right to privacy.

Yet pro-life senators maintained earlier Tuesday that the bill's phony "compromise" language on abortion masked a fundamental shift on federal policy regarding elective abortion funding, and called on their compatriots to oppose the bill should the Nelson amendment fail.

"For pro-life senators, this is the vote, but it doesn't stop here," said Sen. Mike Johanns (R-Neb.). "Even if this amendment doesn't pass, I want to make the case that this bill should not go forward, because it literally will create a system ... to finance abortions. And I don't believe that's what this country wants."

In a letter to Senators dated December 7, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops warned that, if the Nelson amendment is rejected, "the current legislation should be opposed." Richard Doerflinger, associate director of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops' Secretariat of Pro-Life Activities, said last month that the senate bill was "actually the worst bill we've seen so far on the life issues."

Fr. Frank Pavone, National Director of Priests for Life, condemned the Senate for "allowing this effort at reform to be hijacked by abortion extremists." "Those in the Senate who rejected this Amendment have voted to let their attachment to the abortion industry interfere with health care reform in this country," said Pavone.

The Susan B. Anthony list urged pro-life Senators to oppose the bill "if you call yourself pro-life and genuinely care about preserving true common ground." The National Right to Life Committee has compiled recent poll results that show broad public support for the funding restrictions in the Nelson amendment.

"You can't find greater common ground than the decision to restrict government funding for abortion on-demand," said Susan B. Anthony list president Marjorie Dannenfelser. "With his actions tonight, Harry Reid has effectively tabled the common ground."

"Senator Reid's tabling of the pro-life Nelson Amendment is just the latest reason why incumbents like Harry Reid are becoming top political targets: the disconnect between their words and actions inspire a rising populist opposition," she continued.

"Senator Reid calls himself pro-life, yet he continues to advance the largest expansion of abortion since Roe v. Wade at taxpayers' expense."

Vaclav Klaus, president of Czech Republic

While away in Dallas, here are two clips from a Peter Robinson's Uncommon Knowledge interview with the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus.

A journalistic scandal as well

For more than a week after the story broke, ABC, CBS and NBC ignored or downplayed the scandal over a climate fraud and cover-up. Even Comedy Central scooped them. They have been gingerly playing some catch-up in the meantime, but there's still plenty of foot-dragging going on, as Jonah Goldberg of the National Review Online noted earlier:

How big a scandal this is for the scientific community is being hotly debated on the Internet. But in big newspapers and TV news, the story has gotten less attention. And that’s a scandal, too. The New York Times’s leading climate reporter, Andrew Revkin (whose name appears in some of the e-mails), won’t publish the contents of the e-mail on the grounds it would violate the scientists’ privacy. Can anyone imagine the Times being so prissy if such damning e-mails were from ExxonMobil, never mind Dick Cheney?

This is the lowest point in American journalism in my lifetime, with the very big exception of the new media, who have stepped in to fill the void.

Source: here.

Pom-pom journalism alert from NewsBusters:

On the same day Comcast announced it was buying a 51 percent stake in General Electric's NBC Universal, its CEO sent a letter to President Obama supporting the Senate's healthcare bill.

How's that for a nod and a wink? Could anyone miss it?

At virtually the same time, high-ranking Democrats in the House and Senate said Thursday [apparently with straight faces] they will closely scrutinize the proposed alliance to determine its impact on the media marketplace.

Alas.

But . . . for a really insightful piece on this, read John Coleman's article here. Coleman is the founder of the Weather Channel and a veteran reporter. It's a great article.

A Monk's Homily -- Nov. 15, 2009

As I said in a post last Sunday, a friend of mine, a monk at St. Joseph's Trappist Abbey, gave a couple of homilies while I was out of town. The monks are kind enough to pass along to me recordings of the homilies that I miss when away. I asked my friend if I could share the homily I posted last Sunday (here) and this one. He agreed, asking only to remain nameless for, he said, "I'm a hidden soul."

Click HERE to listen.

Gaming the legal system for Jihad

In what I have written and in many of the talks I have given, I have argued that the contemporary politically correct extension of St. Paul's "sin takes advantage of the law" is that sin takes advantage of the Gospel. The key to its success in this regard is the sentimentality of western liberalism and the cynicism of ideological fanaticism, foreign or domestic. In this case, it is the cynical, Qur'an endorsed manipulation of western principles and western institutions. Such things only succeed when westerners themselves allow themselves to be played for dupes. This administration seems so eager to oblige that one can hardly avoid the suspicion that it, too, is doing so for cynical reasons.


The hearing is today. All eyes are on Copenhagen, but these young men deserve a little attention as well.

Dec. 7: Pearl Harbor Day in Copenhagen

Hockey sticks are ideal for breaking over your opponents' heads, which seems to have been the main point.

The Global Warmongering scandal is yet another lesson in how contagious and (oddly) reassuring is the proposition that the greatest and gravest challenges we face today are indigenous to Western civilization, its moral patrimony, its cultural traditions, its economic prosperity, and its preference for equality of opportunity over equality of outcome.

Here's a theory: contemporary liberalism is moral relativism on steroids, but humans are endowed with a moral sensibility which, under the regime of moral relativism, is deprived of its legitimate and healthy function. It is forbidden by a code -- which is all the more dogmatic for being unwritten -- to make a moral judgment about all the things our ancestors found morally challenging: honesty, fidelity, venality, sexual morality, decadence and so on. It is perhaps in the area of sexuality that moral principle has been historically most essential, key as it is not only to nuptuality and family life, but to spiritual health as well. I think here of Philip Rieff's brilliant insight that "the discipline of inwardness" requires "fresh renunciations of instinct," while "the discipline of outwardness" -- Rieff's term for superficial soullessness -- requires ever fresh "satisfactions of instinct."

So, under today's liberal, multicultural, libertine regime, the basest of instincts and the most "objectively disordered" behavior is regarded as morally self-justifying. Under this regime our moral sensibility is not allowed to function in the ways that it functioned in our ancestors. One therefore has to either break out of the straitjacket of that regime -- the dictatorship of relativism -- or find some "cause" that is both urgent enough to excite our sense of purpose and capable of being espoused with the least inconvenience to ourselves. Of course the urgency required for us to feel the moral frisson requires, in turn, that drastic measures be urgently taken. And if these measures are not to involve any considerable personal inconvenience, they must be measures imposed for the most part elsewhere and on others.

It's a royal bother to those who don't buy any of it, but it's the only opportunity relativists have to feel something like a moral impulse.

Just a theory.

The tone is revealing . . .

I'm not a regular reader of The Los Angeles Times, which I have occasionally lampooned as the Lost Angeles Times, but even I was a bit surprised by the tone of the Times' editorial reaction to the Manhattan Declaration -- which I am proud to say I was among the first of the now quarter of a million people to sign.

I am apparently not alone in my ability to make it through the day -- not to say week, month, and year -- without the light that the LAT shines on the world around me. Nor is the decline in readership unique to the Times, nor even to the fate of print journalism in this internet age. For more and more people are growing weary of what I have rather uncharitably called the pom-pom media, cheerleading for any and all social experiments -- regardless of how reckless -- as long as they carry the leftist trademark.

And so there are these days several reasons -- economic and political -- for news outlets like the Times to be fretful, but the November 28th editorial suggests there are psychological reasons as well, as some of the political strategies to which many leftists seem to think they have proprietary rights are being deployed by more traditional movements which are finally beginning to respond to the massive effort to redefine cultural, moral, and social reality that has been underway for decades.

Anyway, here it is. Try to imagine the Times getting on such a high horse about a proclamation urging civil disobedience in promotion of any of the causes fashionable in Malibu.

….Last week, a group of Catholic, Protestant and Orthodox leaders released a “declaration” reminding fellow believers that "Christianity has taught that civil disobedience is not only permitted, but sometimes required." Then, after a specious invocation of [Martin Luther] King, the 152 signers hurl this anathema at those who would enact laws protecting abortion or extending the rights of civil (not religious) marriage to same-sex couples:

"Because we honor justice and the common good, we will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality. . . . We will fully and ungrudgingly render to Caesar what is Caesar's. But under no circumstances will we render to Caesar what is God's."

…Strong words, but also irresponsible and dangerous ones. The strange land described in this statement is one in which a sinister secularist government is determined to force Christians to betray their principles about abortion or the belief that "holy matrimony" is "an institution ordained by God." The idea that same-sex civil marriage will undermine religious marriage is a canard Californians will remember from the campaign for Proposition 8, as is the declaration's complaint that Christian leaders are being prevented from expressing their "religious and moral commitments to the sanctity of life and to the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife."

…This apocalyptic argument for lawbreaking is disingenuous, but it is also dangerous. Did the Roman Catholic bishops who signed the manifesto consider how their endorsement of lawbreaking in a higher cause might embolden the antiabortion terrorists they claim to condemn? Did they stop to think that, by reserving the right to resist laws they don't like, they forfeit the authority to intervene in the enactment of those laws, as they have done in the congressional debate over healthcare reform? They need to be reminded that this is a nation of laws, not of men -- even holy men.

Go here to sign the Manhattan Declaration. Read its carefully written and quite sober defense of traditional moral and social realities.

Hat Tip: California Catholic Daily.

Kicking the can down the (deadend) road

Mona Charen has a quick review of Michael Ledeen's Accomplice to Evil, which includes:

The failure to grapple with the challenge of Iran is more than a strategic failure, he argues; it’s a moral failure. Just as few in the democratic countries took Adolf Hitler at his word when he repeatedly promised to dominate the world and kill all the Jews; and few could squarely acknowledge the genocidal lengths to which the Communists would go; so today the threat from the radical Islamists is minimized, whitewashed, or wished away.

Of the Carter administration, Ledeen writes, “The failure to comprehend what Khomeini was all about contributed mightily to the American debacle in Iran, and to subsequent failure of American policy, for the policy makers — from Carter down — did not take seriously the possibility that Khomeini might be worse than the shah.” Incomparably worse, as it turned out. During the war with Iraq, Iran sent tens of thousands of children to their deaths “clearing” minefields. Before departure, they were issued plastic keys — to open the gates of paradise.

But Americans have doggedly refused to recognize the nature of the regime or the Islamist movement it spearheads. Ledeen writes of the Carter State Department: “In what was to become a great leitmotif of the next 30 years, American diplomats desperately worked for an agreement at all costs.” When the Iranians presented brutal demands that the U.S. turn over all Iranian “criminals” who had taken refuge in America, an assistant secretary of state — in words that could have been ghostwritten by the current occupant of the Oval Office — explained, “The Iranian suspicions of us were only natural in the post-revolutionary situation . . . but after a transition period common interests could provide a basis for future cooperation.”

Even after the regime had held our diplomats hostage in Iran for more than a year, the Carter administration “approved a series of humiliating concessions” in the hope of securing their release. It was that way to the bitter end. On the day before he left office, Carter issued Executive Order 12283, which immunized the Iranian government from lawsuits arising from the seizure of the embassy.

President Obama deludes himself that “outreach” to the mullahs represents some sort of new departure in American policy. In fact, every administration since Carter’s has repeatedly attempted to “engage” the mullahs. Even the Bush administration “pursued accommodation . . . as vigorously as any of the others.” ...

The Obama administration, seasoning its approach with fawning genuflections, is taking accommodation to a new level — a fact that is not lost on the Iranian people who chant, “Obama. Obama. Either you’re with us or you’re with them,” as they dodge the batons and bullets of the Basij militia.

Read the whole piece here.

The Hertz #1 Club

It sounds like London or Amsterdam, but it's Atlanta. In light of a previous post, try to imagine the howls of protest that would be heard and the stories in the press that would be written if a major corporation gave Jews time off for regular prayer or Catholics time off for eucharistic adoration.

Hertz Global Holdings Inc., the second-largest U.S. rental car company, was sued by former employees who say its policy of allowing Muslims to take daily prayer breaks discriminates against non-Muslim workers.

Katie Barkley and Shirley Harris, who worked as part-time drivers moving Hertz cars from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport to other locations, claim Muslim employees were given as many as three paid, 15-minute prayer breaks each shift while non-Muslim employees were denied equal time off, according to the suit filed Nov. 30 in federal court in Atlanta.

Barkley and Harris lost their jobs in February when Hertz fired all 120 drivers at Hartsfield and replaced them with contract drivers, according to the lawsuit, which seeks class-action status as well as back pay and other damages.

A similar suit filed in 2007 is pending before the same court. In August, Hertz said in court documents filed in that case that it allows Muslim employees at the Atlanta airport to take prayer breaks and that they aren't required to clock out. A non-Muslim worker "has no need for such an accommodation," Park Ridge, N.J.-based Hertz said in the court documents....

I'm all in favor of time off for prayer -- preferably unpaid time off, for as Martin Buber insisted, the way to God is prayer and sacrifice. But this exclusive deference to Islamic religious sensibilities is not a sign of true religious tolerance, as the plaintiffs in this case point out.

In the San Francisco Bay Area

On an early, early flight out this morning I was reading Blaise Pascal again, and I came upon what seems to me a pretty good definition of political correctness, coming as it does from the 17th century. It's this:

We would not hesitate to act as cowards if by so doing we might acquire the reputation of being valiant.

Mutatis mutandis and all that.

Cards of a certain ascertainable sort . . .

Thanks to last week's post by Diogenes:

The catalogue just arrived from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. They're selling some beautiful Christmas cards, featuring different great artists' portrayals of the Madonna and Child.

Wait! Did I say "Christmas" cards? I beg your pardon. They are of course "holiday" cards. We wouldn't want to risk offending anyone who is celebrating some other late-December holiday by sending out cards that picture the Madonna and Child.

Safe Schools indeed . . .

Jim Hoft at Gateway Pundit has an extensive update on President Obama's "Safe Schools Czar" Kevin Jennings. The report contains sexually explicit and deeply troubling information and images, so be forewarned. But it is yet another glimpse into the agenda of those in the inner circle at this White House.

Safe Schools Czar Kevin Jennings was the founder, and for many years, Executive Director of an organization called the Gay, Lesbian and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). GLSEN started essentially as Jennings’ personal project and grew to become the culmination of his life’s work. And he was chosen by President Obama to be the nation’s Safe Schools Czar primarily because he had founded and led GLSEN (scroll for bio).

GLSEN’s stated mission is to empower gay youth in the schools and to stop harassment by other students. It encourages the formation of Gay Student Alliances and condemns the use of hateful words. GLSEN also strives to influence the educational curriculum to include materials which the group believes will increase tolerance of gay students and decrease bullying. To that end, GLSEN maintains a recommended reading list of books that it claims “furthers our mission to ensure safe schools for all students.” In other words, these are the books that GLSEN’s directors think all kids should be reading: gay kids should read them to raise their self-esteem, and straight kids should read them in order to become more aware and tolerant and stop bullying gay kids. Through GLSEN’s online ordering system, called “GLSEN BookLink,” featured prominently on their Web site, teachers can buy the books to use as required classroom assignments, or students can buy them to read on their own.

It gets worse; a lot worse. It's comparable in scope to the Climate Warming fraud now unraveling. I recommend it only for those who still need to be convinced that there is something deeply, deeply troubling about the president's hand-picked inner circle. If you doubt that, I suggest you take a look: here.

After reading it, you may be in the mood to sign the Manhattan Declaration, if you haven't already. It's here.

In a little piece of bread?

Thomas Merton once said that it's hard to convince someone of the existence of a fire they have never been warmed by.

A time for candor . . .

In his National Review Online article, Doug Bandow -- a senior fellow at the Cato Institute and a senior fellow in religious persecution at the Institute on Religion and Public Policy -- summarizes the state of religious freedom in the Islamic world today. His article should be required reading for every high school civics teacher in this country. (Do high schools still teach civics?) "More often than not," writes Bandow, "Islamic states violate basic human rights; and almost all persecute Christians, Jews, and other religious minorities."

The State Department refers to “state hostility toward minority or non-approved religious groups,” as if different faiths randomly oppressed different faiths. However, Islam has distinguished itself with the willingness of governments and individuals to harass, attack, jail, and kill members of other religions. Even the most moderate and tolerant Islamic states often fall far short of respecting religious minorities. In Morocco, for instance, the government detained converts from Islam to Christianity, expelled Christian missionaries, and restricted “non-Islamic materials and proselytizing.” Many other Islamic states are far worse, however.

AFGHANISTAN
The U.S. expelled the Taliban government, but has not created a free society. Although the Karzai government responded to outside pressure and took some steps to improve religious liberty, explains State, “the residual effects of years of jihad against the former Soviet Union, Taliban rule, civil strife, popular suspicion regarding outside influence of foreigners, and still weak democratic institutions hindered the realization of this aspiration.” Relations among different Muslim sects “continued to be difficult”; non-Muslims face “harassment and occasional violence”; “most local Christians did not publicly state their beliefs or gather openly to worship.”

BRUNEI
In this small Islamic state respect for religious liberty has been falling. The State Department reports that “non-Muslims were prohibited from receiving religious education in private religious schools, which had previously been allowed.” Moreover, “across denominational lines, non-Muslim religious leaders stated that they were subjected to undue influence and duress, and some were threatened with fines and/or imprisonment. Active monitoring of churches and disruption of supply shipments and mail were reported.” The authorities also limited the use of literature and worship places by religious minorities.

EGYPT
Although progress was made in some areas, “The status of respect for religious freedom by the government declined somewhat,” reports State, “based on the failure to investigate and prosecute perpetrators of increased incidents of sectarian violence,” mostly against Coptic Christians. Moreover, the authorities “again failed to redress laws and governmental practices that discriminate against Christians, effectively allowing their discriminatory effects and their modeling effect on society to become further entrenched.” Christian converts from Islam were harassed and abused.

INDONESIA
The most populous Islamic nation, Indonesia long has reflected a more moderate variant of Islam. But Muslim extremists remain active and often unconstrained by the authorities. Reports State: “Ongoing government restrictions, particularly among unrecognized religions and sects of the recognized religions considered ‘deviant’ were significant exceptions to respect for religious freedom.” Worse, the government sometimes “tolerated discrimination against and the abuse of religious groups by private actors and failed to punish perpetrators.” Those responsible are rarely punished. Moreover, “Some groups used violence and intimidation to forcibly shut at least nine churches and 12 Ahmadiyya mosques.”

IRAN
One of the uglier Islamic persecutors is Iran. The constitution nominally affirms the rights of “protected” religions — Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians. However, in practice no non-Shi’a believer is safe. Explains the report: “Respect for religious freedom in the country continued to deteriorate. Government rhetoric and actions created a threatening atmosphere for nearly all non-Shi’a religious groups, most notably for Baha’is, as well as Sufi Muslims, evangelical Christians, and members of the Jewish community. Reports of government imprisonment, harassment, intimidation, and discrimination based on religious beliefs continued.” The state also promoted discrimination in the areas of education, employment, and housing. Iran is a Country of Particular Concern.

IRAQ
Tragically, liberating Iraq from Saddam Hussein meant liberating some of the worst sectarian passions, which he had brutally held in check. Roughly half of Iraq’s historical Christian community has been displaced, many to Jordan and Syria, another secular Arab dictatorship. Although the government does not persecute, reports State, “violence conducted by terrorists, extremists, and criminal gangs restricted the free exercise of religion and posed a significant threat to the country’s vulnerable religious minorities.” Although overall violence is down, Christians and other religious minorities continue to be targeted by radical Muslims.

MALAYSIA
This former British colony remains freer than Iran but not as free as Indonesia. Observes State: “Minority religious groups remained generally free to practice their beliefs; however, over the past several years, many have expressed concern that the civil court system has gradually ceded jurisdictional control to Sharia courts, particularly in areas of family law involving disputes between Muslims and non-Muslims.” Conversion from Islam is prohibited and, notes the department, “Religious minorities continued to face limitations on religious expression and alleged violations of property rights,” including prohibiting proselytizing of Muslims.

NIGERIA
The population is divided among Christian, Muslim, and traditional faiths. Although the national government does not persecute, a dozen “northern states use Sharia courts to adjudicate criminal and civil matters for Muslims,” notes State, and “local political actors stoked sectarian violence with impunity.” Although Christians are not free from all blame, the initiators more often have been Muslims and their victims more often have been Christians; there also have been reports of forced conversions to Islam as well as threats to extend Sharia law over non-Muslims.

PAKISTAN
Washington’s ally in the war on terror is one of the least hospitable states for religious minorities. State notes “some positive steps to improve the treatment of religious minorities,” but Christians, Hindus, and Jews remain second-class citizens, if that. Explains the report: “Law enforcement personnel abused religious minorities in custody. Security forces and other government agencies did not adequately prevent or address societal abuses against minorities. Discriminatory legislation and the government’s failure to take action against societal forces hostile to those who practice a different religious belief fostered religious intolerance, acts of violence, and intimidation against religious minorities.” Christians even risk execution if convicted of “blasphemy.”

SAUDI ARABIA
Another close U.S. ally, Saudi Arabia is among the globe’s worst persecutors. At least Saudi Arabia makes no pretense. Explains the report, “Freedom of religion is neither recognized nor protected under the law and is severely restricted in practice.” Although the private practice of non-Sunni Islam is usually left alone, “This right was not always respected in practice and is not defined in law.” Moreover, explains State, “the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice (CPVPV) continued to conduct raids on private non-Muslim religious gatherings.” The repressive kingdom has been designated a Country of Particular Concern.

SOMALIA
No surprise, this wreckage of a nation with an Islamic majority is not a good host for religious minorities. Notes State: “The Transitional Federal Government (TFG) generally did not enforce legal protections of religious freedom.” Not that it probably could do so even if so inclined, given the rise in extremist militias, which “often imposed through violence a strict interpretation of Islam on communities under their control. There were also reports that individuals who do not practice Islam experienced discrimination, violence, and detention because of religious beliefs.”

SUDAN
This tragic nation, whose Muslim north long has warred against its animist and Christian south, also is inhospitable land for religious minorities. After years of violent conflict, an accord of sorts was reached, theoretically ensuring religious freedom in the south while favoring Islam in the north. State explains that, while the Government of National Unity “did not vigorously enforce its strictest restrictions on religious freedom, it generally did not respect religious plurality in the north.” There also “were some reports of societal abuses and discrimination based on religious affiliation, belief, or practice.” Sudan is another Country of Particular Concern.

TURKEY
Although the government generally respects freedom of religious practice, it restricts Islamic expression in education and official circumstances. Moreover, notes State, “Minority religious groups also faced difficulties in worshipping, registering with the Government, and training their followers,” as well as proselytizing. Further, “Threats against non-Muslims created an atmosphere of pressure and diminished freedom for some non-Muslim communities. Many Christians, Baha’is, and heterodox Muslims faced societal suspicion and mistrust, and some elements of society continued to express anti-Semitic sentiments.”

YEMEN
Yet another failed or semi-failed Islamic state, Yemen enshrines Islam as the state religion, holds Shari’a as the source of all law, bans conversion from Islam, and forbids proselytizing of Muslims. Although non-Muslims remain nominally free to otherwise practice their faiths, reports State, “There was a decrease in the status of respect for religious freedom by the government . . . , particularly with regard to the Baha’i and Jewish communities.” Private perpetrators of violence against religious minorities were not punished.

Religious freedom and respect for religion must be reciprocal. When Islam not only denies basic religious freedom to non-Islamic faiths, but exploits the religious tolerance of the West to establish beachheads of religious intolerance within it -- which has undoubtedly taken place in recent years -- those who truly respect the principle of religious freedom have every reason to demand reciprocity.

Source: here.

A Lesson in the Dreary Science

David Warren again:

There are two, and only two ways, to survive in nature. One is by diligent work, and one is by appropriating the work of others. The piratical approach works well for the larger predatory animals in the wild, but only so long as the diligent little creatures on which they depend for their sustenance can themselves multiply.

In human affairs, a whole social order based on someone else working is what we might call "ecologically fragile."

Source here.

A Moral Catastrophe

The Washington Post:

NIH authorizes use of first human embryonic stem cells under new policy.

Obama administration approves the first human embryonic stem cells for experiments by federally funded scientists under a new policy designed to dramatically expand government support for one of the most promising but also most contentious fields of biomedical research.

The cannibalizing of the very young by their more powerful fellow humans now enjoys the moral seal of approval of the nation that began with these words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

God help us.

Advent

Careful not to override human freedom with a self-revelation so overwhelmingly undeniable that no faith was required for its recognition, nor to couch that revelation in so esoteric a way that it would elude the "little children" and humble who would be in the best position to recognize it, Christ came, as Kierkegaard said, to woo humanity like a suitor, not to command allegiance like a conqueror. The inner beauty would shine through the ordinary and the wretched like the still small voice whispering to Elisha.

Blaise Pascal:

It was not right for Christ to appear in a fashion obviously divine and able absolutely to convince everyone; but nor was it right for him to come in a fashion so hidden that the could not be recognized by those who would sincerely seek him. He wanted to make himself perfectly knowable by them, and so, to appear revealed to those who seek him with all their heart, and hidden from those who evade him with all their heart, he tempers our knowledge of him, by making the stamp of who he is visible to those who are seeking him and not to those who are not.

Serious Multiculturalism . . .

Professor Barry Rubin again:

Much of the West has lost the ability to understand how a world view can be narrow and fantastical or, on the contrary, quite internally rational but merely designed to deal with a very different set of circumstances and society. You don't get to be the dictator of Venezuela or leader of al-Qaida or a powerful cleric in Iran by behaving and thinking like a Western democratic politician.

They don't understand what Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini tried to explain back in 1979: We didn't make the Iranian revolution to lower the price of watermelons. In other words, material deprivation doesn't motivate the revolution, and the goal is not higher living standards as the main priority. The goal is to manifest the divine will, to take over the world, to create a utopian society which invokes the absolute good against the absolute evil; to gain total victory because one is absolutely in the right.

In this political world, pragmatism is immoral; compromise is treason. The situation is NOT one of business as usual.

Of course, one can find this kind of thing in Western history -- including within living memory, fascism and Communism -- but not today. What one does find today in Western society is insistence on an idea that renders people completely incapable of comprehension: the idea that everyone in the world thinks the same way and wants the same things.

How ironic: "multi-culturalism" denies the fact that some cultures are really very different. And Political Correctness fails to see that some politics see your well-intentioned humanitarianism and democratic values as so incorrect as to be punishable by death.

Source here.

The Media is the Massage.

What Jonah Goldberg said yesterday about pom-pom journalism's scrupulous inattention to the scientific fraud perpetrated by the leading proponents of global warming applies across the board to any and all stories that do not fit the ideological style sheet to which most media now cling.

As Mark [Steyn] put it yesterday: "If you follow online analysis from obscure websites on the fringes of the map, you'll know what's going on. If you go to the convenience store and buy today's newspaper, you won't."

It is amazing how so much of the news today is stuff you don't find in the news. You'd think some of these dying outlets would try to catch up. There's always been a lot of talk about the legacy media are a bunch of gatekeepers who work to give you the news you need. I'm beginning to wonder if the metaphor has the guards on the wrong side of the gate. These days the press seems more interested in guarding you from the news they don't want you to know, even if you would very much like to hear it.

Source: here.