Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

VIDEO ON NEW YORK TIMES' BETRAYAL OF AMERICA

Have you discovered Michelle Malkin' s "Hot  Air" vents yet?  These are short videos  (in some cases mini-documentaries) offering commentary on current events. 

Today's vent puts the NY Times national-security exposures in context.   It shows the planes hitting the twin towers, the appropriate response of the NY Times saying we needed to go after the terrorists (it urged the examinination of money laundering activities and pressed the need to establish cooperation with foreign banking authorities), and then the vent shows the perfidious decision of the  NY Times to reverse itself and sabotage the war on terror.

The same Hot Air vent video is available at  You Tube.    See, also,  my earlier post, The Traitorous New York Times.

VALEDICTORIAN COMPLAINS OF "HOLLOW" PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION

I haven't read anything like this before (see below).  This story brings to the surface what I think most of us who have been through public schools recognized hovering around the fringes of our minds - namely, that what we were learning continually bypassed the central, core issues of life.  Here are excerpts from the story.

(CNSNews.com) - The valedictorian of a Blue Ribbon-awarded high school in New Jersey has left teachers and administrators with a sour taste in their mouths after using his June 20 valedictory speech to describe his education as "hollow" and one filled with "countless hours wasted in those halls."

Teachers and adminstrators might have had a sour taste, but the valedictorian said the students thought differently.

"The reaction from the students to me has been overwhelmingly positive." he continued. "For some reason, I don't know if for the same reason, I think they were all disappointed in some way or unfulfilled and I think that's what the school should be thinking about."

The valedictorian went on to say this:

"I felt like the most important questions were not asked." said Kareem Elnahal, the top rated student at Mainland Regional High School in Linwood, N.J. "Things like ethics, things that defined who we are, were ignored so in that way I thought it was hollow." he told Cybercast News Service Wednesday.

"[It is] grade for the sake of a grade, work for the sake of work." Elnahal added, according to a transcript of the speech posted on the Press of Atlantic City website.

"Ladies and gentlemen, the spirit of intellectual thought is lost," Elnahal said. "I know how highly this community values learning, and I urge you all to re-evaluate what it means to be educated," he concluded before leaving the ceremony without collecting his diploma.

Elnahal told Cybercast News Service that teachers refused to discuss certain topics because they were too closely tied to religious views. In his valedictory speech, he argued that there is a connection between a person's faith and that person's power of reasoning.

"Is there a creator? And if so, should we look to it for guidance," Elnahal asked the audience gathered at the high school graduation ceremony. "These are often dismissed as questions of religion, but religion is not something opposed to rationality. It simply seeks to answer such questions through faith."

And so, our schools continue to fail to educate on the most central issues of life, without which all the rest of life lies meaningless and hollow.

SEXUALIZED TEENS

It's been awhile since I've visited the Anchoress.  In the past I've always found her interesting and thoughtful.   Her comments on oversexualized teens in yesterday's post is worth noting:

Another problem, of course, is that intimacy has been defined downward, especially for our young girls, to mean little more than a “hook-up.”  This is something Buster talks to me about.  Children, but especially girls, are being sexualized at ever-earlier ages. The sexual messages begin very young in television commercials and on the clothes-store racks, and most of Buster’s generation grew up watching Friends and Sex in the City and thinking that this was what life was: a series of sexual encounters with no emotional attachments, no repercussions, no pain, no loss of oneself.

Sexualized early, many girls are either overly jaded or mistrustful and remote. Buster says a troubling number of girls his age are sexually hyper-active, but unhappy and lonely - they cannot make good, healthy connections with respectable young men, because they don’t “get” the guys who open car doors for them and who look for a relationship to be about more than a “hook-up” or perfunctory oral sex. (A romance recently busted up because Buster wanted a real relationship, and the girl, a nice-enough kid, simply did not know what that meant!)

While the girls are untethered and confused balls of sexuality, too many boys are learning to see the girls not as young women to be respected, admired and (in a chivalrous sense) looked after, but as disposable spitoons for their disregarded and misunderstood sperm. I’ve heard my sons and his friends complain about it - that their generation is very screwed up about how to relate to each other, that too many of both gender have no idea what self-respect is, that they treat themselves, and each other, badly. They crave intimacy but have no idea how to achieve it when they’ve been raised to throw everything - their virginity, their standards, their drive to succeed (it’s not cool to get good grades) - their potential, their very selves away. You cannot learn or achieve intimacy if you’re busy conforming to the Culture of Now - what Flip Wilson used to call The Church of What’s Happening Now - you’re too busy just trying to keep up.

This is not an overnight problem, it’s yet another fruit of the sexual revolution and the world-tilting sixties - the overcorrection to the 1950’s.

SUPERMAN MOVIE

Andrew Coffin of World magazine likes the new Superman movie ("Superman Returns") a lot.  So does Ted Baehr.

QUICK TAKES

Thomas Sowell - We have now been through at least two generations of constant denigration of American society. Is it surprising that we seem to have dwindling numbers of people willing to take responsibility and make sacrifices? Harvard is just one small example.

Chuck Colson - "In his marvelous book, The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success, Rodney Stark writes that “Christianity created Western Civilization.”  Without Christianity’s commitment to “reason, progress, and moral equality, today the entire world would be about where non-European societies were in, say, 1800.”

Susan Konig  - These days, many parents with children in public middle school are concerned with issues involving sex and drugs among kids as young as 10, 11, 12. As a mom with kids in parochial school, I hear from these parents on a fairly regular basis. They say to me, “I’m almost tempted to send my kids to Catholic school — except for the God thing.”

So they would rather have their kids more likely exposed to drugs and sexual situations than to God? “I just don’t know how I would feel about them being exposed to religion,” they explain.

Jonah Goldberg   - on "American Exceptionalism" - 
I loathe the sort of commentary stories like this generate.  It's all about how America contributes more greenhouse gasses than other countries.  Okay, guilty as charged.  It's not like these greenhouse gasses don't have a context.   The American economy sustains the planet, pulls millions out of poverty, keeps the sea channels open, develops most of the medical breakthroughs, provides most of the funding for international institutions (including the finger-waggers at the UN's environmental divisions), offers the best higher education to the world's leaders.

CHINA'S BRUTAL CRACKDOWN ON DISSIDENTS

See here

IMPORTANT THINGS TO REMEMBER

The following came as an e-mail from a friend.  It's not clear to me whom I should credit, so if you read this and recognize it, you can let me know.  I thought it worth passing along.

God, grant me the Serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the Courage to change the one I can, and the Wisdom to know it's me.

1. God wants spiritual fruit, not religious nuts.
2. Dear God, I have a problem, it's me.
3. Growing old is inevitable, growing UP is optional.
4. There is no key to happiness. The door is always open.
5. Silence is often misinterpreted but never misquoted.
6. Do the math. Count your blessings.
7. Faith is the ability to not panic.
8. Laugh every day, it's like inner jogging.
9. If you worry, you didn't pray. If you pray, don't worry.
10. As a child of God, prayer is kind of like calling home everyday.
11. Blessed are the flexible for they shall not be bent out of shape.
12. The most important things in your house are the people.
13. When we get tangled up in our problems, be still.
    God wants us to be still so He can untangle the knot.
14. A grudge is a heavy thing to carry.
15. He who dies with the most toys is still dead.

PERSEVERANCE

I blog things that I find noteworthy or that I want to remember.  Recently, I read Mark Earley's commentary (I don't have a link) on "The Long road of Perseverance."   I found his words challenging, and their truth resonated within me.  He wrote:

At Prison Fellowship, perseverance is .. vital to the work God has called us to -- seeking the transformation of lives and a culture ravaged by the floodwaters of sin.  Restoring truth, beauty, goodness, and justice is an ongoing effort.

As Bill Hull says in his book Choose the Life, 'the whole point of the Gospel is to be transformed into the image of Christ.'  This is the long-haul quest of discipleship, and it is not possible without perseverance.  That is why Hebrews 12:1 reminds us of the need to 'throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.'

. . . Surrendering to the lordship of Christ and learning to integrate His truth in every area of our lives is a radical shift from the watered-down discipleship most of us are used to.  And transforming the shredded moral fabric of our culture requires persevering courage and vision over generations.

We see this in William Wilberforce, a member of the British parliament whose Christian faith compelled him to fight to the end his country's slave trade.  In 1791 Wilberforce received a powerful letter of encouragement from John Wesley, written just five days before his death.  "Unless God has raised you up for this very thing," Wesley wrote, "you will be worn out by the opposition of men and devils.  But if God be for you, who can be against you?  Are all of them together stronger than God?  O be not weary of well doing!  Go on, in the name of God and in the power of his might. . ."

Wilberforce kept that letter in his pocket for years as he repeatedly introduced bills and valiantly argued for an end to Britain's insidious practice.  Finally, his 20 years of perseverance prevailed:  Parliament outlawed the slave trade in 1807, and ended slavery altogether in 1833, five days before Wilberforce died.

What a great challenge to "keep on keeping on," constantly cooperating with God's purposes in our life!  As one book title has it, our goal is to pursue  "A Long Obedience in the Same Direction."  And God is our companion and enabler all along the way!  What could be greater, or make for a more meaningful life, than that?! 

MAP OF GAZA

Israel's invasion into Gaza is in the news.  I found this map of Gaza to be helpful in following the unfolding events.  Michelle Malkin  has a link to Carl in Jerusalem who weighs in on the "the complete and utter failure of the Sharon-Olmert 'unilateralism.'"

BELGIUM IS UNSAFE

Immigrant "youths" in Belgium kick a man on a bus to death.  This type of crime is becoming more and more prevalent.  See the story in the Brussels Journal.   The story begins with this sentence: "The Belgian state is no longer able to guarantee the security of its citizens."  (HT: The Corner)

PROMINENT CHRISTIANS LIST BOOKS THAT HAVE INFLUENCED THEM MOST

I love to receive book recommendations from friends and acquaintances.  It's unlikely that I will go immediately and get the book recommended (though that has happened!), but at the least I like to make a mental note of the title and author if only for interest's sake.  Years ago a friend told me that he found the best way to get to know another person was to find out what that person felt most passionately about.   I agree.   So today I was more than pleased to come across a web page that lists the books (usually no more than three) that prominent Christians have listed as having especially influenced them.   I find it immensely stimulating and pleasurable to browse such lists.

While on the subject of books, I might mention that Chuck Colson offers his own suggestions for summer reading, plus he has published a Breakpoint recommended booklist as well.   Embedded in that last is a link to the  Wilberforce Forum Centurion required book  list  (for those enrolled in serious worldview training).  That, too, was very interesting to me.

BOOK EXCERPT FROM "AMERICA: THE LAST BEST HOPE"

I enjoyed reading this excerpt from Bill Bennett's latest book, America: The Last Best Hope.  Bennett writes with verve and punch.  It demonstrates to me the way history should be written.  This excerpt deals with Queen Elizabeth and the exploits of her era.   

WHAT ARE WE TO MAKE OF THE EPISCOPAL CHURCH?

There's no lack of comment on the Episcopal Church's General Convention 2006.   R. Andrew Newman reviews The Episcopal Church's cavalier handling of Scripture and wonders if it remains, in any real sense, a Christian Church.   Peter Toon describes in an evenhanded way the two religions that reside under the umbrella of the Episcopal Church.  After reading his article, one understands why he concluded:

What seems to be clear is that these two different Religions cannot stay permanently together in one jurisdiction, be it a diocese or a province. If ether group concedes any major point to the other side it loses its integrity and its whole position becomes unstable.

I strongly recommend reading Toon's articulation of the two religions.  A split is near.

Finally, the Pakistan-born Bishop of Rochester, England, Michael Nazer-Ali  also speaks of two quite different views of religion and is well worth reading.

HOUSE CHURCHES ARE GROWING LIKE MUSHROOMS

See Jim Rutz's article.

VERBICIDE

Dennis Prager today published an insightful and important article that begins:

When you hear the words "oppression," "genocide," "racism," or even "torture" or "rape," do you immediately recoil as you always did? I don't. While I hate those evils as much as ever, I no longer assume the term always describes the reality.

Prager then proceeds to dissect the way each of these words has lost its primary meaning, a meaning which originally did, indeed, make us recoil in horror.   But our language has been debased, and as Prager writes in his concluding paragraph,

The tragedy of all this is that when evils are defined down, good people are left verbally unarmed when the real evils present themselves. It is yet another way in which the left, intentionally or not, undermines the battle against evil.

As an incidental illustration (in addition to his dissection of the words mentioned above), he describes the way "theocracy" is used on the lips of American liberals.

The left regularly charges America's conservative Christians with wanting to make America a "theocracy," being "fascists" and/or being "anti-Semites." They are none of those things, and as a result, the battle against real theocrats (Muslim fundamentalists), real fascists and real anti-Semites is compromised.

Read the whole article and recognize the verbicide that Prager describes.

HOW THE SUPREME COURT VIEWS PRECEDENTS

Andrew C. McCarthy points out an undeniable fact concerning the way the Supreme Court does or does not follow precedent.

When it comes to the pieties of liberal elites and civil-liberties extremists, the current Supreme Court cares nothing for precedent. In our culture wars, precedent counts mainly as a rationalization for not reversing Roe v. Wade. To the contrary, when bourgeois sensibilities are at issue, the Supreme Court regularly hews to contemporary political correctness. So, for example, when it ruled in favor of special rights for homosexuals in Romer v. Evans (1996), the Court ignored a flatly contradictory precedent from only a decade before, Bowers v. Hardwick (1986). And only last year, when it held that the death penalty could not be applied to a juvenile in Roper v. Simmons, it blithely explained that it had “evolved” past its antithetical decision only 15 years earlier in Stanford v. Kentucky.

CHEAP GRACE AND LIBERAL ACTIVISTS

Peter Schweizer has written a new book, Do As I Say (Not As I Do: Profiles in Liberal Hypocrisy.  He says he wrote the book because

I've experienced what so many others have with family and friends:  the left's sense that they are our moral superiors.  They care more, are less selfless, more civic minded, etc.  My personal experience was that this simply wasn't the case.  So I decided to pick the leading lights of the movement,  those who come from politics, academe, and activism, and that are particularly aggressive in spouting their moral superiority, and do some digging.

In this interview Schweizer says that the actions and personal behavior of such liberals as Michael Moore, Barbara Streisand, Nancy Pelosi, Ted Kennedy, Noam Chomsky, and Cornel West do not match their ideological rhetoric.   Embedded in the interview is the following interpretation of the liberal mind.  Does Schweizer have a point?

FP: Why do you think people are drawn to leftist ideals and what kind of people are they?  Self-contempt appears to be a common ingredient, no?

Schweizer: Yes, self-contempt is a big part of it.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the great German pastor who stood up to Hitler, wrote a book about "cheap grace."  Liberals are guilty of cheap grace in the political sense.  They feel guilty and their form of penance is embracing the destructive ideas of the progressive faith.  But it's cheap grace because as I show it the book, they don't actually change the way they live.  I think that the religious comparison makes sense because in many respects the modern day left represents a religious movement.  They are motivated by a sense of sin, guilt, and the need for salvation and absolution in the political sense.  Socialism offers salvation to them.  Of course, they don't actually plan to live like socialists.

THE TRAITOROUS NEW YORK TIMES

What's with the New York Times publishing classified materials again and again?  Whose side is it on  in this "war against terror" (as it is called)?   Michelle Malkin has put up a series of war posters created by patriots spotlighting the New York Times for its traitorous conduct.  See here and here.   

I think Hugh Hewitt and Bill Kristol have a good idea in calling on the House and Senate "to pass resolutions expressing outrage at the endangering of national security via the publication of sensitive national security information that obviously assists terrorists in eluding capture or killing."

See also Heather MacDonald's column which opens:

BY NOW IT'S UNDENIABLE: The New York Times is a national security threat.  So drunk is it on its own power and so antagonistic to the Bush administration that it will expose every classified antiterror program it finds out about, no matter how legal the program, how carefully crafted to safeguard civil liberties, or how vital to protecting American lives.

MOVIES COME WITH A POINT OF VIEW

Breakpoint has a decent post on movies.  Especially valuable is the list of resources at the end of the article.   The article makes much of Brian Godawa's book, Hollywood Worldview: Watching Films with Wisdom & Discernment 

ANN COULTER INTERVIEWED BY THE BBC

Everyone knows Ann Coulter is making quite a splash in the United States.    It's particularly interesting, however, to see her interviewed by the BBC.   She hands her interviewer his head on a platter.

CURRENT MUSLIM REGARD FOR JERUSALEM A NOVELTY AND A FRAUD

Daniel Pipes has provided an important service in publishing his current article on the religious standing of Jerusalem for Muslims.   He notes that through fourteen centuries,

"Muslims focused on the city when it served their needs and ignored it when it did not.  This contrast was especially obvious during the past century. British rule over the city, 1917-48, galvanized a passion for Jerusalem that had been absent during the four hundred years of Ottoman control. Throughout the Jordanian control of the walled city, 1948-67, however, Arabs largely ignored it. . .    Muslim interest in the city revived only with the Israeli conquest of Jerusalem in 1967.  Jerusalem then became the focal point of Arab politics, serving to unify fractious elements.  . . .

Particularly amazing to me has been the Muslim denial of Jewish historical roots related to Jerusalem.   As Pipes says,   

By 1990, the Islamic focus on Jerusalem reached such surreal intensity that Palestinians evolved from celebrating Jerusalem to denying the city’s sacred and historical importance to Jews. The Palestinian establishment – scholars, clerics, and politicians – promoted this unlikely claim by constructing a revisionist edifice made up in equal parts of fabrication, falsehood, fiction, and fraud.  It erases all Jewish connections to the Land of Israel, replacing them with a specious Palestinian-Arab connection.

I am stunned and left speechless at this brazen attempt to rewrite history.  It makes one gag that anyone can have anything but scorn and contempt for such blaring fraud.   Pipes goes on:

Palestinians now claim that Canaanites built Solomon’s Temple, that the ancient Hebrews were Bedouin tribesmen, the Bible came from Arabia, the Jewish Temple “was in Nablus or perhaps Bethlehem” . . .    Palestinian Media Watch sums up this process: By turning Canaanites and Israelites into Arabs and the Judaism of ancient Israel into Islam, the Palestinian Authority “takes authentic Jewish history, documented by thousands of years of continuous literature, and crosses out the word ‘Jewish’ and replaces it with the word ‘Arab’.”

The political implication is clear: Jews lack any rights to Jerusalem. As a street banner puts it: “Jerusalem is Arab.” Jews are unwelcome.

Read the whole article and ask what kind of respect should be accorded such criminal intellectual dishonesty.

WHAT WRITERS AND THINKERS PLAN TO READ THIS SUMMER

National Review Online has compiled a list of books  that correspondents and contributers plan to read this summer.   I find it somewhat comforting that "old books" made the list as well as new ones.  Some oldies include The Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius (475-525), The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O’Connor edited by Sally Fitzgerald, The Collected Works of G. K. Chesterton: The Illustrated London News, 1908-1910, Tolstoy's War and Peace,  and Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov.   Of new books, two contributors plan to read America: The Last Best Hope by Bill Bennett, among many other new and fascinating titles.

WAS THERE EVER A SIMPLER TIME? -- NO

In a wonderfully illuminating and down-to-earth public lecture given at Hillsdale College this past March, historian David McCullough talked about John Adams, second President of the United States, and his wife Abigail.    The lecture is available here.   I especially appreciated the following:

Something I always like to emphasize is that there never was a simpler past. We hear often, “Oh, that was a simpler time,” but it's always wrong. Imagine Abigail's life.   Up in the morning at about 5 to light the fireplace that served as the kitchen, call to the children to come down, cook the breakfast, tend the stock, try to keep the farm solvent during the whole war with her husband gone and with inflation and with shortages of everything. Schools were closed, so she had to educate the children at home.   Her day didn't end until 9 or 10 at night when the children would go upstairs to their bedrooms, where it could be so cold that the water in the bowls that they used to wash their faces was iced over.  And then she would sit down at the kitchen table with a single candle and write some of the greatest letters ever written by any American.

In one plaintive letter, she writes: “Posterity who are to reap the blessings will scarcely be able to conceive the hardships and sufferings of their ancestors.”  And we don't.  We don't know what they went through–epidemics of smallpox or dysentery, which could take the lives of hundreds of people just in the little town of Quincy, Massachusetts.  It was by no means a simpler time.  They had to worry about things that we don't even think about any more, and suffer discomforts and inconveniences of a kind that we never even imagine.  We have little idea of how tough they were.  Imagine John Adams setting off in the middle of winter to ride nearly 400 miles on horseback to get to Congress. T ry riding even 40 miles sometime. John and Abigail were separated, in all, more than ten years because of his service to the country.

WHY AREN'T CONSERVATIVES AS EXCITED ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING AS LIBERALS?

Dennis Prager offers a fascinating contrast between conservatives and liberals on what exercises them most:  Islamic fascism or global warming.  It's worth reading.   Prager offers the following concluding paragraph (but don't miss the intervening argumentation!):

One day, our grandchildren may ask us what we did when Islamic fascism threatened the free world.  Some of us will say we were preoccupied with fighting that threat wherever possible; others will be able to say they fought carbon dioxide emissions. One of us will look bad.

HOROWITZ & COLLIER ON "THE PARTY OF RETREAT AND DEFEAT"

How do you explain the Democratic party?  What perverse spirit is at work making them so cross-eyed and dull witted?  As David Horowitz and Peter Collier point out in their article, "The Party of Defeat and Retreat",

At the very moment that documents captured from the Zarqawi death site indicate that Al Qaeda feels it is losing its war against the Iraqi future and has become so desperate that its only hope to prevail is by embroiling the U.S. in war with Iran; at the very moment Iraq’s democratically elected government is establishing itself as a functioning regime, and its increasingly capable military becomes more successfully engaged against the insurgents —at this critical moment for the future of Iraq and the Middle East,  more than three quarters of the House Democrats have voted against a resolution to “complete the mission.”   

For the first time in American history, a major political party wants  America to run from a war we are winning.

Strange indeed is such a mindset.  Horowitz and Collier ruminate on the worldview of the American Left and provide a useful modern history lesson tracing the sad degeneration of the Democratic party from its former noble and responsible foreign policy to its present lamentable self-betrayal.   The piece deserves a careful reading. 

Edinburgh New Testament Scholar Weighs in on the Da Vinci Code

Larry Hurtado  (New Testament scholar from the University of Edinburgh) weighs in on the Da Vinci Code  in his recent Slate article.    Hurtado says,

In a climactic scene in the movie The Da Vinci Code, the supposed Holy Grail expert, Sir Leigh Teabing, lays out the conspiracy theory at the heart of the movie and the novel: "Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false," he declares. Actually, just about everything author Dan Brown puts in the mouth of Teabing is ludicrously false history. . . .    My scholarly concern is the Da Vinci Code's errors regarding historical beliefs about the divinity of Jesus and the creation of the New Testament.

CHRISTIAN CEOs IN CHINA

At least 30 CEOs of major Chinese companies have become Christians.   Personal lives and business practices are being transformed.  Marvin Olasky relates some of the stories.

THE CHINESE DEATHMOBILE

See the picture and read the brief article to find out what it's all about.  And then let your stomach turn and grimace.  (HT: The Corner)

THE TRUTH ABOUT THE MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD

Frontpagemag.com today published a major (and lengthy) report on "The Truth About the Muslim Brotherhood" by  Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld and Alyssa A. Lappen.   Many of us in the United States have only a vague acquaintance with the Muslim Brotherhood.    This essay probes deeply into its philosophy, funding, and goals. 

The Brotherhood is an expansive and secretive society with followers in more than 70 countries, dedicated to creating a global Islamic order that would isolate women and punish nonbelievers.  Its members and supporters founded al Qaeda, as well as one “of the largest college student groups in the United States."

As stated on its charter and its website, the MB seeks to install an Islamic totalitarian empire, a worldwide Caliphate, through stages designed to Islamize [21] targeted nations by whatever means available.

Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld is author of Funding Evil; How Terrorism is Financed—and How to Stop It, Director of American Center for Democracy and a member of the Committee on the Present Danger.  Alyssa A. Lappen is a Senior Fellow at the American Center for Democracy.

IMMIGRATION AND FLOUTING THE LAW - WHAT IS AT STAKE?

How serious is it that immigration laws be ignored?  Does it weaken our whole  law-honoring civilization?  What consequences might we expect?  Have we thought things through?    Victor Davis Hanson answers these question in an important article that underscores what is at stake if we start to pick and choose which laws we will honor.   A few quotes:

"...  what distinguishes the U.S. from nations in the Middle East, Africa and, yes, Mexico is the sanctity of our legal system.   The terrain of Mexico may be indistinguishable from the landscape across the border in the U.S.   But when it comes to the law, there is a grand canyon between us.

Only on one side of the border is title to private property sacrosanct, are police held accountable and is banking conducted transparently.  Public hiring in America is based on civil service law, and judges are autonomous.  And the American public has a legal right to investigate and even sue its government. ..

Yet once we as a nation choose to ignore our keystone laws of sovereignty and citizenship, the entire edifice of a once unimpeachable legal system will collapse. Ironically, we would then become no different from those nations whose citizens are now fleeing to our own shores to escape the wages of lawlessness.

 

DOES ONE HAVE TO KNOW ARABIC TO COMMENT ON THE QUR'AN?

Check out this article from Jihad Watch by Hugh Fitzgerald who answers the question saying

This has been dealt with by many ex-Muslims, including Ibn Warraq, who point out the obvious: 80% of the world's Muslims are not Arabs and do not know Arabic.  Yet they are treated as Muslims, and believe themselves to be Muslims, and act upon what they read in Qur'an and Hadith.   Are all of them grossly misinformed?

The article goes into much greater depth in answering the question. 

VICTOR DAVIS HANSON ON IRAQ AND VIETNAM, HADITHA, AND LIBERALS

See VDH's current piece on Iraq and Vietnam, Haditha, and liberals.  He remains a weekly "must read" for setting the record straight and maintaining one's bearings.  He can be counted on to produce reliable and persuasive responses to leftist' defeatism.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex and Feminism

Jamie Glazov interviews Carrie Lukas, the author of the recently published The Politically Incorrect Guide to Women, Sex, and Feminism.  Amazon reviews are quite positive.

GLOBAL WARMING TROUNCED BY SCIENTISTS

The Canadian Free Press has published an article noting that only a tiny fraction of scientists  supposedly in Gore's global warming camp actually work in the field of climate prediction! 

Professor Bob Carter of the Marine Geophysical Laboratory at James Cook University, in Australia gives what, for many Canadians, is a surprising assessment: "Gore's circumstantial arguments are so weak that they are pathetic. It is simply incredible that they, and his film, are commanding public attention."

Another comment:

... what Gore's "majority of scientists" think is immaterial when only a very small fraction of them actually work in the climate field.

Even among that fraction, many focus their studies on the impacts of climate change; biologists, for example, who study everything from insects to polar bears to poison ivy. " While many are highly skilled researchers, they generally do not have special knowledge about the causes of global climate change," explains former University of Winnipeg climatology professor Dr. Tim Ball.  "They usually can tell us only about the effects of changes in the local environment where they conduct their studies."

The writer offers more critiques and a sample of the side of the story we almost never hear about.  Read the whole article.   (See also an earlier post).

ZARQAWI'S DEATH - REACT WITH A DANCE OR A DISMISSAL?

Two views of Zarqawi's death are represented in this 4 minute 40 second video.   Zarqawi's death is proving a shot in the arm and is most encouraging to most of us, even though the radical left stoops to calling it a "stunt".   The video contrasts the two views. 

SWEDEN: WOW, WHAT A MESS!

Sweden is loaded with problems.  A reader wrote Jonah Goldberg at the Corner :

• Police no-go areas (for the few police they have);
• An atrophied military (soon to be about 5000 troops);
• Cities that will soon be Muslim majority;
• Under-reported rise in violent crime (robbery, rape) by immigrants who admit to being “at war” with the Swedish state and who claim to derive personal pleasure humiliating the “wimpy” Swedes;
• Jihadism openly preached and excused by Swedish elites;
• Politicians who stump for votes in Pakistan where many Swedish “citizens” spend much of their time;
• An all-but-open immigration policy that apparently costs the state a vast fortune;
• An aggressive anti-nationalism that forbids students from displaying the Swedish flag at school;
• Hamas members officially welcomed;
• Violent leftist and “anti-racist” groups who intimidate people daring to question the assumptions of Swedish multiculturalism and immigration;
• And, of course, an official anti-Israeli position that veers into anti-Semitism.

Fjordsman tells the story.   It's a long article, full of detail and all the more valuable for the same.  One brief quote:

While their political elites insist that immigration is “good for the economy,” Scandinavians are in reality funding their own colonization.    Although the cost of welfare is significant, it pales in comparison to the price paid through rapidly declining social harmony and increasing insecurity caused by Muslim immigration.  Some of the increase in insecurity is due to the rise of mafia groups and organized crime, but most is mainly due to terror threats and intimidation of critics of Islam and Muslim immigration.

The article cries out to be read en toto.  Anyone interested in Sweden, or Europe in general, must read it.    See also Fjordsman's earlier article.

VINTAGE ANN COULTER

Recognizing that the New York Times will probably not review her latest book Godless: The Church of Liberalism (at least not to her satisfaction), Coulter uses her latest column to offer her own book review.  Part way through we read the following:

The thesis of "Godless" is: Liberalism IS a religion.  The liberal religion has its own cosmology, its own explanation for why we are here, its own gods, its own clergy. The basic tenet of liberalism is that nature is god and men are monkeys. (Except not as pure-hearted as actual monkeys, who don't pollute, make nukes or believe in God.)

Liberals deny, of course, that liberalism is a religion — otherwise, they'd lose their government funding.  "Separation of church and state" means separation of YOUR church from the state, but total unity between their church and the state.

Hmmm.   Strikes me as vintage Ann Coulter.   She pricks conventional thinking with pointed needles.   People cry "ouch".   

THE ANN COULTER AFFAIR

Coulter strikes back at her critics here  The world of video is amazing.  What she said was shocking.  She defends herself quite powerfully in this brief videotaped interview with Sean Hannity. 

GREATEST CONSERVATIVE ROCK SONGS - THE TOP 50

John J. Miller of the National Review compiled the list.    "Wake up little Susie," by the Everly Brothers made the list??

MASSIVE IGNORANCE ABOUT ABORTION LAW PREVAILS

On the abortion question, John O'Sullivan states what should be obvious:  "What people think about abortion is strongly influenced by what they know."   What are reasons for the ignorance?

Ramesh Ponnuru provides one in his new book, The Party of Death , about the politics of abortion, stem-cell research, and cloning.  He deals, first, with the nature of people’s ignorance.  Most Americans, let alone most European sophisticates, have no idea that the landmark Supreme Court decision, Roe v. Wade, establishing a constitutional right to abortion, means that a woman can obtain an abortion right up to the moment of her baby’s birth.  When this claim is advanced, they point out that Roe specifically insists that states may regulate abortion in the second trimester and prohibit it in the third trimester.

But Roe also states that states can neither ban nor regulate abortion in cases where a doctor certifies that a woman’s life or health would be adversely affected. And in a second Supreme Court judgment, Doe v. Bolton, delivered that same day, Justice Harry Blackmun wrote that the doctor’s medical judgment should be exercised “in the light of all factors—physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age—relevant to the well-being of the patient.”  In brief: unfettered choice posing as a clinical decision.

Roe and Doe together allow a woman and her doctor to have a legal abortion for any reason at any time before birth and arguably even during birth. The courts have confirmed this in countless cases but especially in those striking down state and federal laws to prohibit or regulate “partial birth abortion”—i.e., the procedure in which a baby is partly delivered and, while in the birth canal, has his or her skull crushed and his or her brains sucked out.

Most Americans don’t know this is legal. If they did, they would oppose it. We reasonably infer this from the 2003 Gallup poll that 68 percent of Americans thought that abortion should be “generally illegal” in the second trimester, let alone the third. This popular opposition has grown slowly but steadily for at least the last decade.

There's much more in the article.   See also my previous post of May 9th on Ramesh Ponnuru's book.

HOW THEY VOTED ON THE FEDERAL MARRIAGE AMENDMENT

The votes of Senators may be found here.  Republicans voting No:  McCain, Chafee, Collins, Gregg, Snowe, Specter, Sununu.  Democrats voting yes:  Byrd, Nelson. 

JOHN STOSSEL'S NEW BOOK - "MYTHS, LIES AND DOWNRIGHT STUPIDITY"

Walter Williams  highlights a few of the subjects  Stossel dissects, including the myth of overpopulation. 

MUSLIM ZIONISM NOW STRONGER THAN JEWISH ZIONISM

So argues Daniel Pipes in his article "Muslim Zionism."   He marshalls interesting (disturbing!) facts and observations  in support of his thesis.

THE STRANGE INABILITY OF AUTHORITIES AND THE PRESS TO IDENTIFY TERRORISTS AS MUSLIMS

Michelle Malkin nails it with her article, It's the jihad, stupid.

IRAN - DO WE KNOW WHAT WE ARE DOING? MICHAEL LEDEEN DOESN'T THINK SO

Michael Ledeen, a frequent and shrewd commentator on things Iranian, is a frustrated man.  Today he offers a gloomy assessment of our policy.

...These [Iranian leaders and mullahs] are fanatics, millenarian fanatics who believe that the world is headed for a final and decisive confrontation between the forces of Islam and the infidels and crusaders. They believe that the final days are at hand, and that they are the instruments of Divine power and glory. They have no doubt about their ultimate triumph, and everything they see in the West only reinforces their confidence, and leads them to redouble their murderous efforts.

Their vision is not world peace, but world domination, accompanied by the slaughter of their enemies.  And we are encouraging them in that vision.

I do not believe we will surrender and give them a free hand, but our current behavior only makes the ultimate confrontation with Iran more difficult and likely more violent than it need be.  No matter how unwilling Western leaders may be to respond to their 27-year war against us, we cannot escape it, because they will not permit us to escape.  It is a conflict we can either win or lose, but we cannot opt out of it.  Eventually we will be compelled to respond.

At the moment, most of our leaders are trying desperately to convince themselves that there is a way out, that we can make a grand bargain, that we do not have to confront the mullahs.  It is the illogic of appeasement so well described by Churchill after Munich.  Chamberlain, he said, had to choose between war and dishonor.  Chamberlain chose dishonor, and he got war.  This is the risk our leaders are running today.

And the hell of it all is that the mullahs are terribly vulnerable, loathed by their own people, our natural allies in what is after all a political and ideological conflict.  Our failure to support the Iranians’ cry for freedom is a dark stain on our banners, and worse: Our dishonor leads directly a war that we should not need to fight.  We can defeat the mullahs the same way we defeated the Soviet Union, by mobilizing their own people against them, and by consistently stating and supporting our own ideals.  Instead we are sending our young men and women into the field to fall alongside innocent Iraqis to whom we promised a better fate.

HOW ANN COULTER WRITES

Ann Coulter has written a new book - Godless: The Church of Liberalism.  TownHall has published most of chapter one.  In what I suspect will be the first of several interviews to be noted in this blog, I found interesting her explanation of how she writes:

When I was writing High Crimes and Misdemeanors, the magnificent writer Joe Sobran gave me the greatest advice a writer could ever get.  I called him in desperation, because I was pulling my hair out trying to write the Whitewater chapter.  I explained to him that the reason Whitewater was so hard to write about was that the financial transactions comprising Whitewater were incredibly complicated—and they were complicated for a reason: to hide what was really going on.  After I whined for about five minutes about how impossible this made it to explain the scandal, Joe told me to write down exactly what I had just said to him—in fact, to write the entire chapter like I was writing an e-mail to him.  I did, and the Economist (written by the only economists on earth who liked Hillary’s health care plan) described it as one of the clearest explanations of the Whitewater scandal out there.

So now I write everything like I’m e-mailing one of my friends—often a friend I’ve been arguing with about whatever I am writing.  I think the writing is better, and it’s a lot more fun.

Also, I noticed that when I e-mailed my friends asking them to explain some point of law to me so I could put it in my book, I’d get a lot of convoluted jargon that read like an 18th-Century legal brief.  But when I sent them an e-mail casually asking, “Hey, what do you think of William Ginsberg [Monica Lewinsky’s attorney]?”  I would get back some of the most beautiful prose ever written.  So I recommend to all writers that they write like they’re sending an e-mail to a friend—or enemy, for some really punchy writing.

MOST SAME SEX COUPLES DON'T WANT TO MARRY

Stanley Kurtz, one of the most knowledgeable analysts of worldwide marriage patterns, says "It seems that, when they actually do have the chance to marry, very few same-sex couples actually do so.  Why is that? I've tried to answer that question: yesterday in "Why So Few" and today in "Why So Few," Part II.

"FROM THE GULAG TO THE KILLING FIELDS" - REVISITED

On April 21st, I put up a post on Paul Hollander's book From the Gulag to the Killing Fields: Personal Accounts of Political Violence and Repression in Communist States.  Now, today, Jamie Glasov offers an insightful interview with the editor, Paul Hollander,  that is well worth reading.   Hollander says,

My motivation for putting this book together is quite straightforward and longstanding.  I have been impressed (and dismayed) for many years, indeed decades, by the phenomenal and profound Western (esp. American) ignorance of communist systems in general and the deprivations they imposed on their people in particular.

I found especially noteworthy and puzzling the contrast between this ignorance (and the very limited interest) and the lively (and fully justified) preoccupation with the Holocaust. In the introduction to the book, I discussed at some length the differences and similarities between the Holocaust and the communist mass murders and tried to explain the different moral responses in the West. . . .

The Anthology may be considered a "landmark" because there is nothing like it; nobody has before brought together such writings in one volume; moreover these writings represent experiences from every single communist system, extinct or surviving, from Albania to Vietnan.  Many of the selections are also of considerable literary merit.

Read the whole interview.

"HE TALK LIKE A WHITE BOY" BY JOSEPH C. PHILLIPS

Le Shawn Barber reviews  Joseph C. Phillips' new book, He Talk Like a White Boy.

The Amazon.com review says

Actor and social commentator, Joseph C. Phillips, speaks powerfully to life as a conservative African-American husband, father, and American citizen. As a young student, Phillips overheard someone say of him, "He talk like a white boy!"    never thought that speaking correctly would cause others to question his authenticity as an African- American. Little did he know what lay in his future.  His choices in music, politics, faith, and family have given rise to many accusations of his not being "black enough." As an actor, Joseph has encountered even more pointing fingers, this time for not being liberal enough for Hollywood.

Le Shawn Barber says, "Readers looking for a forthright--and sometimes painful--account of being a black conservative won't be disappointed."

VIDEO GAMES DEFENDED

Tonight I came across an article that defends video games.   Within the last year I heard a speaker at a technology conference do the same.   This is a subject that demands more investigation and study, and this article seems a good starting point.