Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

The Nature of Authentic Dialog with Muslims

What constitutes authentic dialog with Muslims?  A Roman Catholic explains, and his explanation applies to Protestant - Muslim dialog as well.

High Praise for Pro-Life Movie "Bella"

Robert Novak's column today spotlights a movie with a pro-life theme that won the Toronto Film Festival's "People's Choice Award." 

An invited audience including Secretary of Commerce Carlos Gutierrez gathered at the National Geographic Society's auditorium in Washington Monday night for a screening of "Bella," an independently produced feature film. No mere movie, it offers hope for the beleaguered anti-abortion movement to reverse the political tide running against it.

This was the eighth such screening in Washington. Monday night's audience reflected the reaction in

Silliness Taken to Extremes: Nativity Movie Banned from Christmas Celebration for Fear of Offending Non-Christians

Lots of news reports on this, including the Chicago Tribune.    WorldNetDaily has an article:

The so-called war on Christmas has been reignited with an ironic decision by the city of Chicago to ban advertisements for "The Nativity Story" movie from a local Christmas festival, fearing they might offend non-Christians.

"This is one of the most blatant forms of religious discrimination imaginable," said Jay Sekulow, a Christian who is chief counsel of the American Center for Law and Justice. "To suggest that a movie about the birth of Jesus Christ should not be included in a Christmas festival is absurd.

Surprising Statistics? Europe May be Post-Christian, But Not Secular

A fascinating chart lists European countries and for each gives percentages that 1) believe in God  2) believe there is some sort of spirit or life force 3) don't believe there is any sort of spirit, God or life force.   Some surprises here!   (HT: John Derbyshire at the Corner)

Anti-Christian Books on Best Seller List: Sam Harris' "Letter to a Christian Nation" and Richard Dawkins's "The God Delusion"

Chuck Colson's Breakpoint essay today spotlights a couple of anti-Christian books on the New York Times' Best Seller list, namely Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris and  Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion.  I like the fact that Colson always includes a suggested reading list at the conclusion of his articles.

Update 11/30/06 - Scott McKnight and "RJS" (a scientist at a research university in the USA) have filed a first response with reader response following.  I expect to post additional updates from McKnight's blog as well as others.  Update #2 - 12/7/06 is here.  Check the reader responses also.  They're often helpful and stimulating.  Update #3 - 12/13/06.   McKnight and RJS offer a response to Richard Dawkins' third and fourth chapters.  Two summary statements:  "As with so many of his argument he argues by assertion, discounts evidence to the contrary, relies on ad hominem, and emphasizes ridicule."   "As a proof for the nonexistence of God, Dawkins’ argument seems so circular as to be laughable."  Update #4 - 12/25/06 - Peter Williams offers four talks in response to Richard Dawkins.   Professor Alister McGrath of Oxford will be publishing The Dawkins Delusion in the UK, February 2007 (SPCK) and in the United States in May 2007 (IVP).

Pope Benedict XVI's Visit to Turkey

Why is the Pope visiting Turkey?  Robert Spencer puts the visit in context. 

The main purpose of the Pope’s trip is to meet with the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, spiritual leader of the Orthodox Church. One may hope also that the Pope will take an opportunity to shed some light upon the woeful condition of religious minorities, principally Christians, in what is

HEARTBREAKING HAITI

Nicholas Eberstadt offers a lengthy report on the terrible situation that is Haiti.   His article is heart-wrenching and eye-opening.   Eberstadt's concluding paragraphs read as follows:

What do we--the fortunate souls holding U.S. passports, with warm beds and hot meals awaiting us--come home learning from a brief fact-finding sojourn to Haiti? In a sentence: Security comes first. First in the hierarchy of human

Russia - A Continuing Problem

Mario Loyola has it right.

I've often thought that U.S. foreign policy after the Cold War has been consumed with cleaning up the disastrous mess the Soviet Union left behind.  From nuclear Stalinism in North Korea to the legacy of the (Soviet-trained) Yasser Arafat, to Cuba where my cousins remain imprisoned within a Soviet-inspired nightmare, it sometimes seems as if most of the world's most serious problems were created by the Russians. 

And they're not done.  Building nuclear reactors for Iran, selling tons of weapons to Venezuela, using their gas pipeline monopoly in brazen acts of Eurasia-wide extortion, Russia is far more a problem in the War on Terror, than part of the solution, despite decades of of being one of the main targets of terrorism.

For the fourth century running, Putin is proving the old diplomatic adage: "Russia is never as strong as she looks; Russia is never as weak as she looks." 

Why No One Should Apologize for Removing Six Imams From An Airplane

Robert Spencer gives the full story.

Update 11/28/06: The Washington Times has still more.   The Imams were clearly exhibiting suspicious behavior. 

Muslim religious leaders removed from a Minneapolis flight last week exhibited behavior associated

VDH: We Await the Provocation

Victor Davis Hanson concludes a wide-ranging article with the following statement of where we find ourselves right now in the war on terror:

So apparently we are in another Phony War circa October 1939 to May 1940, awaiting the provocation—another 9/11? A nuclear strike on Israel? A full-fledged brazen Syrian invasion of Lebanon? A terrorist killing of the Pope or mass murder in Paris or Berlin?— that sets us off.

And we know that like a Nazi Germany that invaded Russia and declared war on the United States, or a Japan that bombed Pearl Harbor and hoped for our instant surrender, that these jihadists have not a clue about the danger they are courting, apparently thinking that most Americans care only about Mark Foley’s email or Britni Spears’ divorce.

But tragically time will tell for these naïve and self-destructive killers. Their clock is ticking…

William Sanders Scarborough - First Black American Classics Professor

My Black friend who alerted me to Bishop Mason's famous prayer, has written me  this time of a great Black American who is too little known today.  My friend writes:

"I am enclosing a link to an aticle on one of my heroes, William Sanders Scarborough.  Scarborough was born in slavery, illegally taught to read, was the first Black American classics professor, and was a devout Methodist and active Republican.  Here's the link.

Hugh Hewitt's Recommended Book List for Presidential Hopefuls

Hugh Hewitt does us all a favor by providing a reading list related to the war on terror.  Hewitt writes:

My colleague Dean Barnett may have sparked a revolution in Washington, D.C. --the reading of books.  Geraghty The Indispensable picks up the subject today and concludes that "[r]eassuringly, there will be at least one Republican Presidential candidate who reads books. He's read lots of 'em, I'll bet." 

I am very certain there are at least two, and the second of the two has Lawrence Wright's  The Looming Tower. I would strongly encourage any presidential candidate (and their staffs) to read that book first, then

The Origin of Certain English Phrases Explained

An e-mail arrived recently covering all sorts of interesting "facts".  Some of the "facts" dealt with how certain words and  phrases found their way into the English language.  I can't vouch for the accuracy of what follows, but it makes for interesting reading.  (For all I know, the explanations may be accurate.)

**
Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented.  It was ruled 'Gentlemen Only... Ladies Forbidden'... and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language.

Thoughts Of A One-Cigar A Day Smoker

Dennis Prager, whom I admire greatly, has an offbeat column today singing (and justifying) the pleasures of smoking a cigar or pipe once a day.  It's worth a read.  Embedded in the article is the following choice paragraph:

We live in the Age of Stupidity. This new age has been induced by widespread college education and widespread secularism -- Psalms is entirely accurate: "Wisdom begins with fear of the Lord" -- which explains, for example, why only well-educated secularists came to believe that there were no innate nonphysical differences between men and women.

In Prager's view, the dangers of smoking a pipe or cigar in the moderation he reccomends is quite minimal or nonexistent and can't hold a candle to the pleasures it affords.  It's an entertaining and thought-provoking read.

The Same-Sex Marriage Debate is About Children

Mitt Romney got it right when he said about a month ago:

Marriage is not primarily about adults. Marriage is primarily about the nurturing and development of children. A child’s development is enhanced by the nurturing of both genders. Every child deserves a mother and a father. Of course, the principal burden of the Court’s ruling doesn’t fall on

Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" Examined and Critiqued

Update 12/9/06 - Senator Inhofe Announces Public Release of "Skeptic's Guide to Debunking Global Warming"  It can be downloaded here.   
--

The Competitive Enterprise Institute offers a thorough critique of Al Gore's views on global warming found in "An Inconvenient Truth."  Marlo Lewis, Jr. says the following:

In Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth", the only facts and studies considered are those convenient to Gore's scare-them-green agenda. And in many instances, he distorts the evidence he cites. In fact, nearly every significant statement Gore makes regarding climate science and climate policy is either one sided, misleading, exaggerated, speculative, or wrong.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute offers a downloadable book, video, and power point presentation.   (HT: Iain Murray)

Muslim Voices Rising in China

Here's a helpful article on the Muslims voices that are becoming more restive in China.  (HT: SmartChristian)

C. S. Lewis on the Limits of Apologetics

In an essay written in 1946 entitled "The Decline of Religion"  (found in God in the Dock), C.S. Lewis makes several interesting statements.  He notes, for example, that in one sense (in literature) the 19th century was quite as secular as our own. 

"The novels of Meredith, Trollope, and Thackeray are not written either by or for men who see this world as the vestibule of eternity who regard pride as the greatest of the sins, who desire to be poor in spirit, and look

What's the Situation on University Campuses Today?

In a speech given at the November 2006 "Restoration Weekend" in Florida, David Horowitz offered a comprehensive overview of the political indoctrination now found on university campuses.  He reports on the progress that the "Academic Bill of Rights" is making across the nation.  It's a liberal approach to education that eschews tyrannical indoctrination.   In the course of his address,  Horowitz mentions the Marxist approach so common on campuses today:

At every university I go to, I ask, “Are you taught that there are race, sex, and class hierarchies?” The hands always go up because that is what they are taught. It’s an idea derived from the Communist Manifesto. If you

What's with Pastor Rick Warren's Comments about Syria?

Joseph Farah, editor of WorldNetDaily posts an article replete with an account of his correspondence with Pastor Rick Warren over comments Rick Warren made in Syria.  Earlier, Farah had posted a blistering attack on Rick Warren for saying stupid, irresponsible things and in general performing as a "useful idiot" for the Syrian regime.   Warren defended himself in an e-mail to his supporters which one blogger posted here. Farah's article responds to that explanation in a seemingly unanswerable way.  Unless there is something missing here, Rick Warren has the look of a man quite out of his depth.  I hope further developments will prove otherwise, but at this point his international persona looks foolish, or at best, naive. 

On Old Hymns Being Set to New Music...

Earlier this summer Chuck Colson celebrated a new trend: putting old hymns to contemporary music.  One of the groups doing this is Indelible Grace.  Matthew Smith, one of the lead singers of the group, has this to say:

“The praise songs I sang in high school mainly spoke about what I wanted to do: how I wanted to worship God, how I wanted to be renewed, et cetera. While those things were true, singing my desires didn’t produce

Radical Family Ideas Go Mainstream

Stanley Kurtz keeps on top of issues related to the family.  He posts today on the mainstreaming of radical redefinitions of the family. 

Update - Here's a story of a get-together of several women impregnated with the sperm of  the same anonynmous donor.   Their children are with them and playing together.

"Many of the women were pregnant at the exact same time with these chidlren who share half the same DNA.  Two of them are just 10 days part, and most, it turns out, have similar dispositions and temperaments." 

There's no embarassment here.  Lesbian couples with children are treated as completely mainstream. 

Academic Moral Decline in Universities: Witness Middle East Studies

Most everyone recognizes the serious moral decline on university campuses today - the drinking, the cheating, the sexual anarchy.  But what about the academic moral health of the professoriat?  Winfield Myers writes about "the long, steady politicization of the American university, in which learning has become the handmaiden of 'progressive' ideologies."   "Nowhere," he says, "is this more obvious than in the field of Middle East studies."

In an era of worldwide conflict between civilized life and death-loving radical Islamist terrorism, Americans should expect learned men and women in university posts to address key problems — jihadism, extremist varieties of Islam, and suicide bombings — with an eye toward their defeat. After all, the freedom

Victor Davis Hanson's Latest Reflections on Iraq

In an article reviewing the situation in Iraq and our current options, Victor Davis Hanson asks some pointed questions of the media coverage of the war and of American elite thinking.

What does unbalanced reporting really mean? We all harp that the media — specifically, the wire services, network television, and the international stations like the BBC and CNN — all focused on Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, the carnage left by IEDs and suicide bombers, and the allegations against the Marines at Haditha, and neglected entirely the damage we did to the terrorists and Islamic fascists, or the singularity of seeing parliaments in places like Kabul and Baghdad.
 
But the important question left unspoken is Why? Was the unbalanced converge, in the case of leftwing elites in the American media, a simple effort to embarrass  

Rep. John Conyers, CAIR, and Rep. Keith Ellison

Here's an article that will likely serve as a handy reference concerning the privileged position Islam will receive at the hands of elected Democrats --  a privileged position that could well damage the defenses of the United States.  See also Robert Spencer's video  explaining the roots of CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) and the likely developing scenario.  See also the Investor's Business Daily editorial on Rep. John Conyers (D-Michigan) who represents the largest Arab population in the country. 

Conyers, who runs an Arabic version of his official Web site, does the bidding of these new constituents and the militant Islamist activists who feed off them. They want to kill the Patriot Act and prevent the FBI from profiling Muslim suspects in terror investigations. . . 

   (HT: Michelle Malkin)

Israel Guilty of Apartheid?

The Stanford student organization Coalition for Justice in the Middle East (CJME) accuses Israel of practicing apartheid.  This article refutes the charge.

The analogy between apartheid and Israel is absurd. The revival of national sovereignty in the Jewish homeland is not a manifestation of European colonialism, in contrast to the white settlers (Afrikaans, English and others) who created Johannesburg and Pretoria. Jews are indigenous to the Middle East as is the Jewish national language, Hebrew. Anyone who has ever visited Israel knows that it is one of the most diverse multi-ethnic democracies in the world.

Read the whole article and its defense of Israel against this slander.

Iranian Papers: "Great War to Wipe Out Israel Coming"

Editorials in Iranian newspapers claim '50 percent of Israel already destroyed,' say 'Israel must collapse.'  Read more  here.    (HT: Drudge)

China Sub Stalks U.S.S. Kitty Hawk

As I have written many times before, China remains a clear and present danger to world stability and to the security of the United States.   Bill Gertz, one of the most intrepid reporters keeping an eye on China, filed a news report today saying "a Chinese submarine stalked a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in the Pacific last month and surfaced within firing range of its torpedoes and missiles before being detected."

The surprise encounter highlights China's continuing efforts to prepare for a future conflict with the U.S., despite Pentagon efforts to try to boost relations with Beijing's communist-ruled military.

. . . . "This is a harbinger of a stronger Chinese reaction to America's military presence in East Asia," said Richard Fisher, a Chinese military specialist with the International Assessment and Strategy Center, who called the submarine incident alarming.

    "Given the long range of new Chinese sub-launched anti-ship missiles and those purchased from Russia, this incident is very serious," he said. "It will likely happen again, only because Chinese submarine captains of 40 to 50 new modern submarines entering their navy will want to test their mettle against the 7th Fleet."  (HT: Drudge Report)

British Anti-Semitism Then and Now

David Gutmann lays out the situation.  Near the end, Gutmann writes:

Along with the rest of what is now being called "Eurabia," the Brits are soothing the Muslims among them by acts of appeasement. In 1938, they bought a year of peace by offering Czechoslovakia to Hitler; now, for a temporary peace, they offer Muslims a piece of the Jews who are like the unlucky passenger tossed from the sled to appease the ravening wolves.

C.S. Lewis and Praying for the Dead

I remember how surprised I was when I first read C.S. Lewis's views on praying for the dead in Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer. He says there (chapter 20):

. . . Which brings me to your question.  Of course I pray for the dead.  The action is so spontaneous, so all but inevitable, that only the most compulsive theological case against it would deter men.  And I hardly know how the rest of my prayers would survive if those for the dead were forbidden.  At our age the majority of those we love best are dead.   What sort of intercourse with God could I have if what I love best were unmentionable to Him?

On the traditional Protestant view, all the dead are damned or saved.  If they are damned, prayer for them is useless.  If they are saved, it is equally useless.  God has already done all for them.  What more should we ask?

Interpreting the 2006 Elections Results

David Horowitz offers the following analysis:

The elections were a victory for the political center; a vote against an incompetently run war; and an opportunistic spending orgy; and the corruption of a party grown complacent in power. Twenty-percent of the self-described conservatives who voted in the mid-term elections voted for Democrats. Forty-seven percent of the voters over all were moderates. (Hat tip to David Brooks)

James Webb who won a Democratic Senate seat in Virginia is a stand-up military veteran, a conservative who became disaffected with the way the war has been fought in Iraq. He will not be a comfort to the Ned Lamont-Cindy Sheehan crowd on the party’s leftwing.

For  America this can be a healthy result if it means a coming together on the war against the Islamic jihad. Patriotic Democrats who are critics of the war but defenders of their country will have to differentiate themselves from their anti-American left by shouldering the responsibilities of defense as a governing party.

But will this happen? That remains to be seen.

Update:  11/13/06 - For other analyses, see Charles Krauthammer, Alicia Colon, and Tony Perkins.

10 Commandments of Thankful Living

Robert Schuller, the former senior pastor at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California, and founder of the Hour of Power televised church service, delivered a helpful sermon today on the "10 Commandments of Thankful Living."   Check out the sermon transcript here for an expansion of each of the following points.  To see the telecast itself, click here.

#1 Be thankful for prayers answered, known and   unknown.

#2 Be thankful for habits, broken or avoided

#3 Be thankful for sins forgiven, both public and   private

Americans with HIV Can Expect to Live 24 Years, at Cost of $600,000: Study

According to this news report,

An American diagnosed with the AIDS virus can expect to live for about 24 years on average, and the cost of health care over those two-plus decades is more than US$600,000, new research indicates.

Both life expectancy and the cost of care have risen from earlier estimates, mainly because of expensive and effective drug therapies, said Bruce Schackman, the study's lead author.

Cultural Degeneration & the Collapse of the West

Thomas Sowell's recent article carries the subtitle, "Cultural degeneration has paralyzed the West in the face of its enemies."   Those unaware of Western culture's continuing collapse will find Sowell's article sobering, and, if read carefully, alarming.   He writes,

. . .   Only after the Roman Empire began to lose its own internal cohesion, patriotism, and fighting spirit over the centuries did it begin to succumb to its external enemies and finally collapse.

That seems to be where Western civilization is heading today.

Internal cohesion? Not only does much of today's generation in Western societies have a "do your own thing" attitude, but defying rules and flouting authority are actually glorified. Balkanization through "multiculturalism" has become dogma.

Patriotism? Not only is patriotism disdained, the very basis for pride in one's country and culture is systematically undermined in our educational institutions at all levels.

Why I Haven't Blogged for Several Days

I haven't posted anything for several days because I have been at my father's hospital bedside.  For many days it was 24/7.  He passed away early Wednesday morning, 11/7/ 06.  We're in the midst of dealing with our loss.

At some future time I will offer reflections on this experience.  Meanwhile, I find it noteworthy that when we are living intensely out of love and concern for another person, ordinary interests take a back seat and fade --  at least temporarily.  Of course I am concerned to study and evaluate recent U.S. elections, but the truth is that life has been so demanding and so full, that I haven't had time to look at TV,  read newspapers, or look at any of my favorite internet web sites.  But that's okay.  I am convinced that people and personal relations should always have priority over all else.   I pray for grace to remember that always, and not only in regards to family and loved ones.

Be blessed everyone, I hope to be back in harness and blogging in the Lord's good time.

Zogby Polls - Treat with Caution

I wrote once before about Zogby polls.  Once again there is reason to  hold them at arm's length.  Click here.     (HT: John Podhoretz)

WHY LIBERALS CAN'T BE HYPOCRITES

Michael Novak rings the bell with this short post:

In order to be a hypocrite, you have to hold to standards higher than your own behavior. Standards in whose light you are, by your own choice, a sinner, in need of repentance and change of life. . .

Someone wrote a few years back that now that socialism is dead as an economic system, the center of liberal values has migrated to sex and gender. Being a liberal means having a right to do anything that you want sexually anywhere, anytime, and with anybody. Thus, there is no way for liberals to be hypocritical about sex. Except by being chaste.

How Pastors Can Avoid Sexual Temptation and Sin

We are all aware of the tragedy of Ted Haggard.  I was astonished and impressed to read the lengths Pastor Mark Driscoll goes to avoid sexual temptations and sin.  Click here.   This is a 5 Star article.   A must read!

Update:  11/21/06  Mark Driscoll added some clarification to his position on 11/16/06.  (HT: Smart Christian)

THE ENEMIES' VIEW OF AMERICA

Victor Davis Hanson speaks on the enemies' view of America (from the Hugh Hewitt conversation; for other topics see here and here.)

VDH: They think that we are a wealthy, affluent, leisured society that doesn't have a moral sense, that are corrupt, that are godless, and that they are zealots. They believe in a hereafter. They have a more pure view of human experience, and that we hide behind our technology and our sophisticated weapons, and we're not able to get down and dirty with them and fight for what we believe in. They believe that we don't know who we are, if we're better than the alternative. And they think in the long war that this is becoming, they're going to outlast us. So when they see a John Kerry say these things, or they see a Dick Durbin, or they see a picture like this, they say a-ha. You see? We're winning on the battlefield, because these people do not want to support this long war. They don't believe in it.

ON GREAT POWERS SELF-DESTRUCTING FROM WITHIN

I posted below a segment from a Hugh Hewitt-- Victor Davis Hanson conversation.  I want to post another segment from that same conversation but on a different topic.   Hugh Hewitt asks Professor Hanson "Has this happened before...when the world's only or greatest power self-destructs from within?"   VDH responds: 

"Absolutely. Absolutely. You can read the speeches of Demosthenes in 350 BC. You can read Petronius' Satyricon. It was talking about a bankrupted lead at Rome who made fun of the legionnaires who were guarding the Rhine and the Danube, so they could have these lavish feasts back in Rome.  You can look at the illness that was in the British aristocratic society in the 1920's and '30's, that made fun of people like Churchill. And this is what we, in America, collectively, have to guard against, that we don't allow these people, these affluent elites, who are cynical, skeptical, nihilistic, and we can't let them adjudicate what America is about. And because we all know that the people overseas that we're fighting, the terrorists, the Islamicists, the Islamic-facist movements, they find resonance with these people. These people don't mean to deliberately help them, but their attacks dovetail at a time of war with the people that we're fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and elsewhere.

Youth Today: Nihilistic Universities vs. Purposeful, Dedicated Military

Hugh Hewitt and Victor Davis Hanson have a conversation.  It's literate.  It's insightful.  It's "right on".    The following segment deals with the military and the university.  It's VDH speaking:

. . . We have a crisis with our youth today, but they're not the youth in the military. They're the youth in the college campuses, and the professors that teach them, not the officers who teach our young enlisted men. If you go out on a carrier today, and I have, and you see 19 year olds, they eat together with all different races and religions, they're entrusted with $70 million dollar airplanes. You go to a college campus in the free speech area, you see segregation you haven't seen since the 1950's, and you see people who are listless, they don't know what they do, they absorb these rants and rages from the professor's class that is immune from scrutiny because of tenure in a way that officers are not. The problem we're having, really, is the university, and what emanates from it. But the military is one of the last bastions of Americanism that goes right to the founding fathers. It's the thing that keeps us going. It's the fountainhead for our values.

United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFL) - Sitting Around, Not Stopping Weapons Smuggling

According to news reports,

"Despite the 20,000 troops deployed in southern Lebanon, the United Nations admits that weapons smuggling from Syria continues unhindered. A German report finds UNIFIL does not patrol after dark.

Hizbullah terrorists are free to roam at night without fear of being identified by the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL), according to a report by the German paper Der Spiegel.

Spanish UNIFIL official Richard Ortax admitted to the paper that no patrols are carried out at night “because of the danger involved.”    (Read more)

THE HORRIBLE CONSEQUENCES OF A DEMOCRATIC CONTROLLED CONGRESS

Thomas Sowell spells it out by asking a series of questions:

. . . Do we really want Congressman Alcee L. Hastings, who was impeached as a federal judge and removed from the bench due to charges of accepting bribes, put in charge of a committee handling top-secret national intelligence?

Do we really want far-left Congressman Dennis Kucinich to be chairman of the subcommittee on national security?

This is the same Dennis Kucinich who once introduced a bill “to abolish all nuclear weapons,” who has refused to condemn Hezbollah terrorists,

A Fresh Assessment of Nafisi's "Reading Lolita in Tehran"

Thomas Hibbs' begins his essay on Reading Lolita in Tehran this way:

"Perhaps to remain a poet in such circumstances is also to reach the heart of politics. The human feelings, human experiences, the human form and face, recover their proper place — the foreground.” Saul Bellow’s description of the function of art under the regimes of totalitarianism is a recurring motif in Azar Nafisi’s book, Reading Lolita in Tehran, an autobiographical/literary study of the power of literature in the Islamic Republic of Iran. A brilliant and dramatically moving exposition of the power of literature to transform souls and create spaces for the retention of community and identity in the midst of totalitarian oppression, Nafisi’s crisply written book has come under fire as an alleged instrument of neoconservative imperialism. An article by Hamid Dabashi from Columbia University has given rise to mainstream treatments of the controversy in the Chronicle or Higher Education and in major newspapers. In an odd and mostly contrived controversy that says less about contemporary global politics than it does about certain pockets of the contemporary academy, what is at risk of being lost is Nafisi’s powerful account of the nature of liberal education.

MOVING MAP OF IMPERIAL HISTORY - COOL SITE

See a moving map of 5,000 years of Imperial history in 90 seconds.  Click here.

Victor Davis Hanson on "Kerryism"

VDH offers astute comments on what he calls "Kerryism."   The whole piece is well worth reading.  Below are a few snippets.

On our educated soldiers:

Some of the brightest and most educated Americans are not only in the military, but veterans of Iraq. Two of the best educated minds I have met-Col. Bill Hix and Lt. Col. Chris Gibson, both Hoover Security Fellows-were both Iraqi veterans. What is striking about visiting Iraq is the wealth of talent there, from privates to generals. Without being gratuitously cruel, the problem of mediocrity is not