That’s the title of an article by Matt Taibbi, appearing in Rolling Stone recently. (RS, May 1, 2008). It is an adaptation of his forthcoming book, The Great Derangement, (Random House).
The premise is this: Matt “infiltrates” (Degree of difficulty, judges? 1.5 out of 100) John Hagee’s mega-church in Texas, finally culminating in a membership retreat weekend. His stated purpose was to find out what kind of religion was driving George Bush’s foreign policy (read: Israel) and domestic policies, as well. Along the way he makes some scathing observations— some of which are very true, and some of which he misses.
It’s a longish article, but it is fascinating to hear a completely unchurched person describe a branch of evangelicalism. As with many people who have done the same, he confuses all evangelicals with John Hagee’s brand of theology, and that is where you will become most frustrated. (Warning: it also has some rougher language.)
I would insert some great quotes, but I know some of you have read it, and you may actually want to post them.
I never, ever thought I would find the occasion to link this blog’s readers to anything on the Access Hollywood website. And yet…..
Harrison Ford, of Indiana Jones, Jack Ryan, and Han Solo fame, has had his chest waxed to protest deforestation. You can read the whole sorry thing here. Get this:
In an effort to showcase the pain involved in deforestation, Harrison willingly subject himself to the painful process of stripping his chest of all its follicles. Having worked with CI for 15 years, it was Harrison’s hope that his trip to the salon might just shock people into thinking “green.”
What did Forrest Gump say? Stupid is as stupid does.
I guess everyone has heard by now the quote from Barack Obama during his recent fundraiser in San Francisco. But, for the benefit of those who may have been cut off from civilization the past week, here it is:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…;And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
The condescension is utterly mind-boggling. And it hasn’t taken HRC long to respond. Here’s a recent ad of hers from Pennsylvania:
Now, the politics of this are pretty obvious: Obama’s image as the candidate of Hope and Unity is getting a little tarnished. Hillary is trying to take advantage to save her candidacy (though her attempts to portray herself as a bible-toting sportsman ring a bit hollow). I suspect that Obama has just handed HRC a LARGE victory in PA and IN, and maybe NC too. This will also surely make the superdelegates think twice about his ability to carry states like PA, OH, and MI, which the Dem nominee MUST carry to win.
However, all that said, what’s most interesting to me about this is the worldview that BHO has with regard to Christianity. Every reference I have ever heard him make to what drew him to his church are all vaguely political. Almost invariably, they center around the social outreach programs (what we’d call mercy ministries) that the church had. I have yet to hear him mention his own salvation, or, much less, the name of Jesus.
So, it seems that Obama thinks that big city churches that engage in social projects are OK, but people in small towns who “cling” to their religion are just doing so out of bitterness at being out of work. Got that? No, I don’t either. There’s an obvious double standard, and I suspect that the real truth of it lies in how much a church centers on sin, redemption, and Christ. Those that actually mention those things (like in those small PA towns) can’t actually be drawing people to hear that stuff. They MUST have other motives. The must just be all exercised about their bank balance being too low (these small town folks don’t have Ivy League law degrees after all - else why on earth would they be in a small town?). It’s their poverty that makes them need Jesus. Urban churches with educated congregations don’t go in for all that stuff because they’re more sophisticated. They occupy themselves with nobler pursuits - like social outreach.
(For clarity’s sake, I’m NOT slamming social outreach. But, it’s not the reason for church.)
I think that Obama has a typical elitist attitude toward Christianity: it’s OK, so long as it knows its place and stays in it. And that place can’t intrude on anyone’s personal choices for living their life, or, worse, on public policy. But that’s not real Christianity. Christianity is knowing your sin and how Christ redeemed you from it without you even deserving it in the least. How can that knowledge stay contained? As I’ve written before, real Christianity is going to take over the whole person, and not be kept in a nice compartmentalized box where it merely runs a food bank or a clothes closet. A robust Christianity is going to assert itself beyond that, into the political, into the personal, into education and childrearing, into everything. For believing people, that’s a wonderful truth. For the unbeliever, it’s frightening.
That’s how I see it, anyway. But maybe I’m just bitter about being in this small town…….
I write a lot about politics here on the Riverblog. In a reply comment to my last post on the subject, I acknowledged that it might be in order some time for me to explain my views on the intersection of faith and politics. Today, I had in mind to do my taxes and had expected the effort to take all day. Happily it only took a couple of hours, so with the extra time, I’m going actually attempt to address those two least polite of dinner conversation topics – religion and politics.
Before starting, I want to make two points. First, I’m limiting my comments to how this issue plays out in the US, with all our First Amendment baggage in tow. Second, and as always, these are nothing more than my views. That and $1 will buy you a coke. Obviously, I think they’re correct, or I wouldn’t hold them. However, being the believer in depravity that I am, I don’t believe that they’re infallible.
There seem to be two popular schools of thought on how religion and politics should mix, and I don’t subscribe to either. The first group could fairly be characterized as the religious right. They seem to believe that the problem with our government and our politics is that we’ve divorced them from Christianity. This group seems to hold to the theory that the US is an inherently Christian nation, and that Christian concepts should play a role in politics and government.
The second group could fairly be characterized as secularists – maybe call them the irreligious left. They want no recognition of religion in public life, and believe that there should be a strict separation of church and state (a concept, I might add, that is extra-constitutional – go read the first amendment and see if that’s what’s mandated.) The secularists, since they tend not to be people of any particular faith themselves, believe that religion tends to be a generator of discord, and that it is best banished from public life and restricted to private activities.
Now, if you go look at data from the last presidential election, the best predicter of voting behavior was the frequency of attendance at church. Given that fact, it should not be surprising that Democrats are considered the secularist party and the Republicans the party of the religious right. Thus, a casual observer, seeing my unabashed GOP cheerleading, might assume me to be religious righter; that, however, would be way off the mark.
I disagree with the notion that this nation is a “Christian nation” to the extent that that means that it has always been populated by faithful Christians and has thus been rewarded by God for that faithfulness with prosperity. I disagree with that view of history and with that view of God. Many of the founders were not Christians, but rather deists. Their writings refer frequently to a “creator” or “providence”, but rarely to a savior, and almost never to Christ by name. Even if I’m wrong on the history, I cannot accept the premise that this country’s prosperity has anything to do with the relative religiosity of its citizenry or government. If prosperity is an indicator of Christian faithfulness, then what about the ancient Romans, or the Babylonians? Prosperous beyond any measure for their day, but utterly pagan.
So I disagree with the premise of the religious right. I disagree more with the secularists, because I find their arguments to be illogical. To say that all religious influence must be expunged from public life is as ridiculous as it is impossible. Christianity influences the whole person, including his worldview, and I’m sure any other religion would make the same claim. How can that be expunged if a person of faith is to hold public office or participate in politics? I suspect that the advocates of this position truly prefer to be free from certain policies and positions that are opposed or supported by religion (abortion being a good example) and seek to win by banishing the religious adherent from the debate altogether. Furthermore, for better or worse, most people in this country subscribe to a religion, and the vast majority of those are Christian. Isn’t it unreasonable to say that the government or politics can’t reflect that?
So where does that leave me? As I said above, true Christianity informs one’s outlook on everything because it works a transformation in one’s heart and mind. It certainly influences my thinking on issues such as abortion. It informs my views on the rights of parents to control the upbringing of their children, which makes me disinclined to support sex ed in the schools, or the providing of birth control without the parents’ consent. Christianity causes me to believe that the government should use its military power to defend the country.
My Christian outlook even leads me to believe in free-market capitalism, because I believe in total depravity. Markets need predictability to function, and if folks are free to make choices, they will choose what is in their interests, which is pretty doggone predictable. The converse of this is why socialism doesn’t work – it relies on the assumption that people will act for the good of the group as a whole and not themselves individually. I think that some elements of the church – the Roman Catholic church in particular – gets confused about this and urges more socialistic policies because they believe that since Christians are to put others before themselves that capitalism is wrong. To me, this both ignores the abysmal results that socialism, when historically attempted, has always produced, and the totally depraved nature of man (even Christians), which explains those historical failures.
Now, differing views of Christianity can produce different politics. Certainly so can other religions. So, my view is to get aligned politically with the party that reflects who you are and is going to be most likely to work to enact policies in which you believe. For me, that’s the GOP. For other Christians, it may be the Democrats or the libertarians, or whatever. Because God gave us all the ability to reason, I only expect Christians to be able to intelligently explain why their Christian views lead to their affiliation. (I once had a Christian friend argue to me that her faith supported her pro-choice views. I heartily disagreed, but she argued logically, and I cannot question her Christianity.) Party affiliation is not, to me, a litmus test for faith. Rather, the views that faith informs should dictate the party affiliation.
As always, I look forward to anyone’s comments on these issues.
I recently received a link to a video that is circulating on the internet. It is a fairly long video, about 16 minutes, and it is creatively produced and thought provoking. The main point of the video is to highlight the violence propagated by the Qur’an and the devoted followers of Islam. I think a typical reaction to the video could be one of hatred and disgust…towards what is portrayed and possibly even all of Islam. You can watch the video here:
I found myself with a different type of reaction. I was definitely disturbed by the images and memories, but I think one could produce the very same type of video using selected passages from the Bible highlighted with videos of “our” religious fanatics. I am definitely not an apologist for Islam, but I do believe that the vast majority of Muslims practice their religion and attend their mosques for similar reasons that you and I attend our various churches. As I watched the Islamic fanatics doing what they did and preaching what they preached in the video, my mind replayed images of Warren Jeffs, David Koresh, Jim Jones, various white supremacist groups, Westboro Baptist Church in Kansas, abortion clinic killers and various “con artist” televangelists…all doing their deeds in the name of God or Jesus, and all with scripture-a-plenty to justify it. I do believe the Bible to be the word of God, and I do believe the Qur’an to be simply a misguided book…but as a darn good pastor I know says, “context is everything.” If I have a particular agenda that I am passionate enough about, I think I could take parts of the Yellow Pages out of context to further my agenda.
Jonah Goldberg had an Op-Ed in the LA Times this morning, with an interesting premise.
Let me just give you the title and sub-title:
“Evolution of Religious Bigotry: The cowardice and intolerance of slapping a Darwin fish on your car bumper.”
As Christopher Caldwell once observed in the Weekly Standard, Darwin fish flout the agreed-on etiquette of identity politics. “Namely: It’s acceptable to assert identity and abhorrent to attack it. A plaque with ‘Shalom’ written inside a Star of David would hardly attract notice; a plaque with ‘Usury’ written inside the same symbol would be an outrage.”
And another:
The Darwin fish ostensibly symbolizes the superiority of progressive-minded science over backward-looking faith. I think this is a false juxtaposition, but I would have a lot more respect for the folks who believe it if they aimed their brave contempt for religion at those who might behead them for it.
Warning: The following will most likely offend somebody. Even my wife has her reservations about this idea. She tells me I must “lighten-up.” (I had her permission to write those two lines). But my intent is not to make anybody mad, defensive, or destroy any DVDs. I simply want to raise some questions that we should work through as believers. In essence, I am asking: “What do you think?”
Recently, I posted a short article about Anglican vicar Rev. Harrison who recently released a new book, Must Know Stories, in which he re-tells the major stories of the bible, while spicing up already dysfunctional characters with even more dysfunction and fantastic embellishments. His work reflects the PoMo notion that truth only communicates principle, and mythical approximation can just-as-well communicate the “point” of the bible.
Now, it’s easy for me to make my point when somebody starts making our historical stories even more graphic and clearly perverts the original. But let’s go the other way. What if someone embellishes the truth, changes the characters, removes the graphic parts, and adds age-appropriate parallels? The product would be cute, cuddly, family-friendly, and, yet, very much fictional. Would you have a problem with that? If you don’t, you have an overwhelming evangelical consensus at your back. American Christians (across various denominations) love their Veggie Tales.
Truth in blogging journalism: we have a row of VT DVDs in our movie collection—and I am not exactly sprinting to throw them out. Guilty of ownership, your honor. My point is not to stop watching the VT, or even destroy our current collection.
My point: Even “cuteness” should be held to a high standard. Simply being cute doesn’t give us greater latitude with the truth. Cuteness should be accurate. Our critical filters should be activated when we watch wholesome-looking cartoon characters, just as much as when we watch every art film de jour.
My wife let me know of a good approach to viewing the VT videos. She would have her kindergarten class watch the VT episode, read the real Bible story, and then discuss its similarities and differences. She said they did a fantastic job of dissecting them. It would seem that this approach would equip our kids to be critical thinkers, without dismissing the merits of any form of media.
Now, the VT episodes are shown on Saturday morning with all the other cartoons. They have had to edit out all references to the Bible, resulting in a sweet, moral lesson detached from the historical and overall redemptive story of our “Sacred History”. And if that’s the case, VT is just Aesop reincarnated.
An Anglican vicar, the right Reverend Robert Harrison has just released his new book, Must Know Stories. He retells all of the major biblical stories while updating them “to create more interest.” Goliath is now a drunk, and Eve is now a sex-crazed man-eater. You can read all about it here.
As if the Bible needed more graphic stories of sinful people doing sinful things.
It’s not that these characters are/are not guilty of his revisions, it’s that they are revised and presented as the truth.
Here is the most fantastic PoMo quote from the article:
“It’s better to tell the story controversially than not at all.”
Do you know what we call this genre? Fiction. Let’s not call it the Bible.
In George Will’s column today he offers up some fascinating data. (Washington Post, March 27, 2008, “Conservatives More Liberal Givers”) You can read it in its entirety here:
Here are some tidbits:
• “Although liberal families’ incomes average 6 percent higher than those of conservative families, conservative-headed households give, on average, 30 percent more to charity than the average liberal-headed household ($1,600 per year vs. $1,227). “
• “People who reject the idea that “government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality” give an average of four times more than people who accept that proposition. “
I don’t think there is room for any conservative to heave a self-contented sigh, but I think it is very interesting to examine the self-perceptions of both camps. By virtue of my calling and denominational affiliation, most Americans would view me as a “conservative.” Yet, I would not feel that my charitable giving was “excellent” or “good,” even. Contrast that to the “liberals” in Will’s article who would have a generally positive view of their charitable giving. Where is the disconnect? George Will alludes to it at the conclusion of his article.
About three weeks ago, I posted on the current desire/need to be a victim in modern American culture. I ran across a quote today from Tim Rutten in the LA TImes that I consider profound:
“In the United States and, increasingly, in parts of Western Europe, the only unchallenged moral authority has become that of victims.”
The modern day left LOATHES homeschooling. Kimberly and I have started watching Boston Legal, which I probably shouldn’t be confessing here, but nonetheless, we’ve noticed that every time they portray homeschoolers, it’s done in a way to paint the homeschoolers as kooks, weirdos, subversives, or even criminals. I ascribe this loathing to two facts: first, that most homeschoolers are evangelical Christian, and second that those children will not be available for the social engineering that liberals like to try through the public schools (e.g., sex ed).
So, on Drudge today, there’s a link to an interesting case from California. Apparently an appellate court in California has held that, unless the parents doing the homeschooling are state-credentialed teachers, they must enroll their children in a public or private full-time school. The homeschooling parent’s being supervised by a church, private, or charter school is insufficient for the court, it seems.
The ruling has caught the homeschoolers in California completely off guard. They’re promising an appeal to the California Supreme Court. If that’s not successful, then the vast majority of homeschool parents can be arrested for truancy and charged with “educational neglect” - whatever that is. Predictably, the teachers’ union pronounced itself “happy” with the ruling.
I don’t think the homeschoolers will go down without a fight, though:
Homeschooling parent Debbie Schwarzer of Los Altos said she’s ready for a fight. Schwarzer runs Oak Hill Academy out of her Santa Clara County home. It is a state-registered private school with two students, she said, noting they are her own children, ages 10 and 12. She does not have a teaching credential, but she does have a law degree. “I’m kind of hoping some truancy officer shows up on my doorstep,” she said. “I’m ready. I have damn good arguments.” She opted to teach her children at home to better meet their needs. The ruling, Schwarzer said, “stinks.”
Seems as though the gloves are coming off on both sides…..
The title of this blog entry is also the title of a new book just out by Susan Jacoby that speaks to the prevalence of anti-intellctualism in America today. Or maybe I should just say “In the Western World,” given Jeff Miller’s post on the London Mail survey below about fictional characters and historical personages.. The New York Times book review is here. While you (and I) probably don’t agree with all her conclusions, there is no denying the trend. And whatever you do, don’t leave the site without clicking on the YouTube link under the picture that shows the model on the game show about being smarter than a third grader answering the question about Budepest. It is beyond hilarious, or pitiful, depending on how the mood strikes you.
A new book, Against the Machine, by Lee Siegel, attempts to describe the effect of the internet on American culture. The New Your Times review can be found here.
Suffice it to say that Siegel doesn’t care for the Internet, and he warns you that if you sit in front of it for long periods of time, you will be encouraged toward “exhibitionism and asocial behavior.” The book is generally panned by the reviewer but Siegel makes some worthwhile points. See what you think about it.
Glenn Reynolds calls it the “Pee-Wee-Hermanization of the American male,” and I think he and Tim are onto something. There seems to be a definite trend in pop culture to make men effete. What’s wrong with men dressing like men, and, by extension, acting like men? Women out there, would you be attracted to a man who dressed like this? Personally, I wouldn’t be caught dead in it.
Then again, I don’t know anybody who would, really. Am I out of touch, or is Brooks Brothers?
Apparently, All Good Christian Men/Women should not be shopping at Gap, Kohls, Bloomingdales, and Marshalls this year.
Why? Article here.
In other news, if you can’t find me, I’ll be in the Gap.
I’ve been blogging a lot lately about the ‘08 race, especially on the Republican side. Since my last entry, though, two really interesting developments have taken place that involve religion’s role in politics.
The first is Mitt Romney’s speech on the role of religious freedoms in the American political tradition. It was almost universally well received. I read positive reviews from everyone from Chris Matthews (notorious leftie), to Pat Buchannan (notorious rightie), to Dr. Dobson, to Peggy Noonan. You can find the text here and the video is probably on YouTube if you go looking.
Romney made two interesting points that might be considered contradictory. First:
If I am fortunate to become your president, I will serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause, and no one interest. A President must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States. There are some for whom these commitments are not enough. They would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts. That I will not do. I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers - I will be true to them and to my beliefs.
Then:
There are some who would have a presidential candidate describe and explain his church’s distinctive doctrines. To do so would enable the very religious test the founders prohibited in the Constitution. No candidate should become the spokesman for his faith. For if he becomes President he will need the prayers of the people of all faiths.
Now, I think that there’s an element here of having your cake and eating it too. I agree that no candidate should be required to be an apologist for his religion. But that really isn’t reality, is it? Obviously, as a religion that most folks aren’t familiar with, Romney’s mormonism rightly raises questions about what he believes and how it will affect his conduct as president. I’m not sure that’s the same thing as having a religious test, something Romney implies is the case.
The second event of the last week was the revelation about Huckabee’s speech to the Southern Baptist Convention in 1998. The article describing the speech is here. He’s quoted as saying “I hope we answer the alarm clock and take this nation back for Christ.” This implies that, at one time, the nation was Christ’s. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I’m thinking this means Huckabee subscribes to the notion that the US has been blessed for its faithfulness, as a special province of God, a view I do not share.
Here’s another interesting quote from the article:
“I [Huckabee] didn’t get into politics because I thought government had a better answer. I got into politics because I knew government didn’t have the real answers, that the real answers lie in accepting Jesus Christ into our lives.” He compared his entry into politics to “getting inside the dragon’s belly,” adding, “There’s not one thing we can do in those marbled halls and domed capitols that can equal what’s done when Jesus touches the lives of a sinner.”
I’m not sure I understand, then, why he’s in government instead of ministry.
So, for better or worse, religion seems to be figuring prominently on the Republican side this year (almost as prominent as the dueling proxy star power of Bill Clinton v. Oprah on the Democrat side). So I’ll pose two questions for consideration and comment:
I’ve frequently bemoaned the sorry state of the Episcopal Church USA. The Church of England is apparently even worse off, if the recent comments of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, are any indication.
The Archbishop recently gave an interview to Emel, which is described as a “muslim lifestyle magazine.” (I’m not even going to touch that one.) The interview was excerpted in The Times (UK).
Dr. Williams throws out some doozies. Get this:
Williams suggested American leadership had broken down: “We have only one global hegemonic power. It is not accumulating territory: it is trying to accumulate influence and control. That’s not working.”
He contrasted it unfavourably with how the British Empire governed India. “It is one thing to take over a territory and then pour energy and resources into administering it and normalising it. Rightly or wrongly, that’s what the British Empire did — in India, for example.
“It is another thing to go in on the assumption that a quick burst of violent action will somehow clear the decks and that you can move on and other people will put it back together — Iraq, for example.”
Either this man is rabidly ignorant of history and current events, or he is outright lying. Whichever it is, he sounds utterly ridiculous. Does anybody really believe that we went into Iraq, bombed away, and then left for someone else to “put it back together”? Who would that be, exactly? I’m sure the families of the soldiers who are bleeding and dying there would like to know why their loved ones are bleeding and dying if someone else is putting Iraq back together. Probably the folks at the US Treasury would like to know who’s paying to put it all back together, if the US isn’t.
And the British went into India to normalize it? Really? Then can someone please explain to me what all of Ghandi’s protests were about then? The UK got into India for trade, and nothing else. How many decades were they there before granting India independence? Contrast this with Iraq. We invaded in 2003. In 2005, the Iraqis held elections (twice) and began to govern themselves.
Is it any wonder, with leadership like Dr. Williams is providing, that the worldwide Anglican Communion is about to be torn apart? Perhaps he should refrain from political analysis (and probably from interviews with muslim “lifestyle” magazines too) and concentrate on his own problems.
Here’s a start. He should figure out what’s wrong with this quote that he gave in the interview:
He commends the Muslim practice of praying five times a day, which he says allows the remembrance of God to be “built in deeply in their daily rhythm”.
It’s for idiotic stuff like this. NOTE: This link is probably better for adults only (especially the comment threads, some of which are really funny, though).
Ordinary humans (i.e., non-lawyers) probably can’t imagine either 1) having an argument over what falls within such a definition or 2) having to have a definition of such a blazingly obvious thing in the first place.
Ordinary human taxpayers in Wisconsin are probably pretty upset that their supreme court actually had to waste time and taxpayer money ruling on it, especially once they see what the ruling is.
Kimberly hates rules of ethics. Her view is that you either have ethics or you don’t, and if you don’t, no set of rules is going to give them to you. I’d say this proves her point.
So I got up this morning and saw the news that Al Gore had actually won the Nobel Peace Prize. Perusing a sampling of reaction on the internet, I think that the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, hit the nail on the head:
“The relationship between his activities and world peace is unclear and indistinct,” the statement said. “It rather seems that Gore’s doubting of basic cornerstones of the current civilization does not contribute to peace.”
The award committee practically acknowledges as much:
Extensive climate changes may alter and threaten the living conditions of much of mankind. They may induce large-scale migration and lead to greater competition for the earth’s resources. Such changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world’s most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars, within and between states.
Got that? There MAY be a danger of conflict. What planet are these people living on? I suppose it escaped their notice that the US Army and the US Marine Corps have been in Iraq actually trying to bring some semblance of order and peace to that country for several years now, and are actually having some measure of success. Or how about the residents of Anbar province, where the locals have turned on Al Quaeda and pacified their cities?
Actually, I know that it didn’t escape their notice. They’re a bunch of political hacks. Consider some of their past award recipients, noted this morning by Scott Johnson at Powerline:
2005
MOHAMED ELBARADEI (joint winner). He’s done such a nice job with Iran.
2004
WANGARI MAATHAI. The Kenyan ecologist peacefully teaches that the AIDS virus is a biological agent deliberately created by the Man.
2002
JIMMY CARTER JR., former President of the United States of America. A true cosmopolitan, he has undermined the foreign policy of his own country and vouched for the bona fides of tyrants and murderers all over the world.
2001
UNITED NATIONS, New York, NY, USA.
KOFI ANNAN, United Nations Secretary General. Among other things, they have respectively served as the vehicle for, and presided over, one of the biggest scams in history.
1994
YASSER ARAFAT (joint winner), Chairman of the Executive Committee of the PLO, President of the Palestinian National Authority. He was a cold-blooded murderer both before and after receiving the award.
1992
RIGOBERTA MENCHU TUM, Guatemala. She is the notorious Guatemalan faker and author, sort of, of I, Rigoberta Menchu.
1988
THE UNITED NATIONS PEACE-KEEPING FORCES New York, NY, U.S.A. Notwithstanding rapes and sex abuse committed by the team in Kosovo, Sierra Leone, Liberia, Guinea and the Congo, still doing fine work all over the world.
The will of Alfred Nobel, in establishing the Peace Prize specified that it go “to the person who shall have done the most or the best work for fraternity between nations, for the abolition or reduction of standing armies and for the holding and promotion of peace congresses.” I leave it to the reader to decide whether Al Gore and the luminaries noted above actually fit that description, or are just the most politically correct flashes in the pan at the time.
An article written by Alan Fram (“One in Four Read No Books Last Year,” AP), was printed in many newspapers on August 21, 2007. The Washington Post purchased it and printed it, as did many other papers. You can find the online version here.
As a great reader and a protectorate of all things bibliophilic, Jimmy Hopper alerted me to the discouraging news: Americans are reading less. But more saline was to be sprayed on the wound: the article asserted that (in general) Southerners don’t interact with anything intellectual. To boot, religious people don’t see a need to read as much. Plus, old women, minorities, poor people, Southerners, country-dwellers, and conservative Republicans have an insatiable craving for religious books. Read a section for yourself:
People from the West and Midwest are more likely to have read at least one book in the past year. Southerners who do read, however, tend to read more books, mostly religious books and romance novels, than people from other regions. Whites read more than blacks and Hispanics, and those who said they never attend religious services read nearly twice as many as those who attend frequently…Those likeliest to read religious books included older and married women, lower earners, minorities, lesser educated people, Southerners, rural residents, Republicans and conservatives.
In a recent presentation to a community group, I even cited the article. My point was this: The self-satisfied, non-religious, non-Southerner, library-card-carrier can easily mutter, “That just proves those Red State Christians are crazy and it definitely shows their growing separation from the global cultural conversation.” But, I pointed out, based on the article, (and my presupposition that all mankind craves truth) the non-religious person has to ingest “more crumbs of truth,” whereas the believer enjoys a pipeline of Truth vis a vis his respective religious service.
Hindsight: What a careless and stupid point.
Why?
I failed to read the fine print underneath the article:
The AP-Ipsos poll was conducted from August 6 to 8 and involved telephone interviews with 1,003 adults. It had a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Where Clay Staggs might say, “I am at a loss for words,” I, on the other hand have a barrelful of words at the ready. Some, that I will choose not to use. According to the US Census Bureau, the United Sates has approximately 303,036,000 people living within its borders. 1,003 respondents is hardly representative. That would be like taking “a poll” of Bryant-Denny Stadium and asking only one person a question—if Bryant-Denny held over 3,000,000 people, that is. Out of pure Christian charity, let’s assume the AP/Ipsos Poll was methodologically responsible in the conduct of the poll. Let’s assume that they asked the proper amount of people from each state—based on population (similar to how each state gets representatives to Congress). Thus, (if conducted properly) the pollsters would have called 16 Alabama persons. (MS, 9; GA, 16;SC, 13;LA, 16, AK, 9; TN, 20) California, by contrast, would have had 121 respondents. Sixteen people represent how the state of Alabama reads? That’s not just irresponsible. That’s lunacy. How can a poll like that be the subject for an AP article and also printed in the Washington Post? I haven’t even begun to point out the inherent flaws in modern phone polls, either. What if your more “edgimicated” types subscribe to a “no-call” list? What if college grads are migrating to VOIP and cell phone usage?
Benjamin Disraeli (made popular by Mark Twain) had it right:
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
Mea Culpa. Shame on me for not reading critically.
I’ve written before about the disturbing inability of our culture - especially our supposed elites - to make even the most basic moral judgments. That inability is on display again for the world to see at Columbia University.
The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, will be in NYC this week to address the United Nations General Assembly (who, I suppose, must tolerate his appearance). Yet, inexplicably, Columbia University has extended an invitation to him to speak at a forum.
This probably isn’t necessary, but for the benefit of the morally dense at Columbia, this man is evil, and represents an evil regime that is bent on the destruction of the US and our allies. He’s not even shy about it. He has repeatedly denied the holocaust, threatened the annihilation of Israel, is working feverishly for nuclear weapons, and holds to a very radical, apocalyptic view of his role in ushering in the return of the “hidden imam,” (their equivalent of the final judgment) by starting war with us infidels in the West. These statements are made in public, and frequently in English (though our press just as frequently ignores them). Ahmadinejad is also accused of having been one of the student captors of the US hostages in Tehran in 1980. The Iranian regime he represents is listed by the US State Department as a state sponsor of terrorism, is widely credited with the bombing of the US Marine Corps barracks in Lebanon in the 80s, and, just last week, US commanders in Iraq testified to Congress that Iranian munitions are being supplied to insurgents by Iranian special forces and are used frequently in attacks that kill and wound US soldiers. Finally, the litany of executions, floggings, torture, political repression, and enforcement of barbaric sharia law is too gruesome to detail here. Google it if you can stomach it.
Now, sadly predictably, the powers that be at Columbia, all the way up to its president, Lee Bollinger, when confronted with this outrage hide behind the canard of freely exchanging ideas. The whole concept of a university as a platform for the exchange and debate of ideas is centered around the pursuit of truth. This man represents everything that is antithetical to truth, and every other Western and, especially, Christian value. When one of the most prestigious universities in the US says that it is participating in constructive dialogue, but in fact are allowing a sworn enemy of this country to use them as a platform for his obvious propaganda, what is one to conclude about that university? As if exhibiting pride in their moral obtuseness, one of the deans at Columbia has said that they would have invited Hitler to speak, given the opportunity.
How about adding this to the mix: this same university, Columbia, that warmly welcomes a murderous tyrant, bans the US military’s ROTC programs from its campus. So, the military is banned, but the leader of a nation who is actively working to kill our soldiers is welcomed. We should, then, be very clear. This is NOT about simple relativism, or else the ROTC would be allowed just like Mahmoud. This is what Jeanne Kirkpatrick so accurately referred to as the “blame America first” mentality.
Lest anyone think that this is just another of my GOP-slanted rants, none less than the speaker of the NYC city council has condemned Columbia for this outrage.
These people have no discernment, no wisdom, no moral compass, and no shame.
UPDATE: The folks at the Daily Kos, the leading liberal blog and virtual mouthpiece of the Democrat party, are really jazzed up about Mahmoud’s visit. Check out this post, by a Jewish lesbian who confesses to having a crush on Ahmadinejad, because he’s so right about how evil George Bush is. Money quote:
Monday, when Ahmadinejad speaks at Columbia University in New York, I’ll be listening. Maybe with a bottle of wine and some soft music playing in the background. If I can get past the fact that, as a Jewish lesbian, he’d probably have me killed, I’ll try to listen for some truth.
For about the first time in my life, I have literally no idea what to say.
Sometimes it’s hard to know if I’ve just become too jaded and cynical, or whether American culture has completely gone down the drain.
In the news recently was the story of this college student at the University of Florida who went to a forum where Sen. Kerry was speaking. He overstayed his time at the microphone per the events rules, and the police came to remove him. He resisted the officers, which is completely illegal, so they attempted to arrest him, which he then further refused. After a warning that they were going to use the taser on him, when he still failed to follow their instructions, they used the taser on him.
Here’s the video. (I think there’s a profanity beeped out, but you may want the kiddos out of the room just in case.)
Now here’s my question. Should I feel sorry for him? I really don’t. A hit from a taser is painful, but does no long or short term damage. He was resisting an entire group of officers. What are they to do? They’d be sued if they broke his arm trying to force it behind his back and into the cuffs.
The reaction in the blogosphere to this has been surprising. Most seem to feel that the force was excessive, and that the campus cops were trigger happy. Here’s a roundup of comments.
Have I gotten too hard-hearted? Is this brutality? Or, is it simply acceptable now to refuse arrest, and suffer no consequence for it? Aren’t the police in a no-win situation here?
I’m interested to hear anyone’s thoughts about this.
The Puritans (and modern day political conservatives too) have been accused of being deathly afraid that someone, somewhere was having fun. Today, undoubtedly, that distinction belongs to the political left.
I ran across a couple of stories today about food. PETA is unhappy with Al Gore for eating meat. Why pick on poor Al Gore, you might ask? Well, you see, PETA claims that the animal husbandry industry produces more greenhouse gases than all forms of transportation combined. So, in their view, Gore is an eco-hypocrite because he’s not a vegetarian. They even plan to protest his next appearance in Denver.
Couple that with the LA city fathers, who want to place a moratorium on any new fast food restaurants opening in south central LA because there are just too darn many and it’s making the locals fat. Now, this could be fodder for lots of different rants - nanny-state bureaucrats, loss of economic freedom, etc. But I want to go in a different direction.
The PETA activists and liberal LA politicians would absolutely have a conniption fit if someone suggested that the government regulate any personal sexual conduct whatsoever. They are quite emphatic that in the sexual sphere, anything must go, and no one has any right whatsoever to say differently. So why would they care what anyone ate?
Personally, I lay all of this at the feet of relativism. The answer to my question is that, purely in the world of the hard political left, sex is not taboo, but a quarter pounder with cheese at Mickey D’s is just tacky. So, since they don’t like fast food, it should be banned. But wait, you may object, what about all the bad health consequences of those burgers and fries (or whatever carnivorous delicacy the Gores enjoy)? Well, what about the fact that STDs are virtually eliminated if everyone has only one sexual partner? I guess some public health problems are more equal than others, huh?
Really, if you think about it, moral relativism is doomed by its own self-contradiction. If all viewpoints are equally valid, and some think that private sexual conduct should be regulated, and some think that food consumption should be regulated, what, if anything, do we actually regulate?
Take another example: some cultures think honor killings are acceptable. Others don’t. So how is the moral relativist to reconcile this when it actually comes to either outlawing or allowing honor killing? There is a real world (much as relativism may want to deny this) and a given activity will either be legal or illegal, and there isn’t much gray to it. Relativism can’t cope with this reality.
Relativism is very much in vogue now intellectually, but, eventually, I think, it will fall of its own weight. And, who knows, maybe the thing that will get that started is when they come for your Whopper.
So I guess everyone has heard about the brouhaha on the beach in San Diego over the holiday weekend. In case you missed it, a fight on the beach escalated to the point where the police had to be called in. Read all about it here.
And guess what’s to blame? That’s right, Carrie, it’s demon rum. Nevermind asking anyone to take responsibility for their own actions, even if they have been drinking. People aren’t to blame. Booze is.
So, because alcohol is so clearly to blame, what’s the natural course of action if you’re a craven politician? You propose a total ban on alcohol on all public beaches, natch. Thus has SD City Councilman Kevin Faulconer stepped up to the plate and done just that. Surely this will make the beaches family-friendly again, right? If we just ban the alcohol, it’ll be a swell place - a place where Ward and June could take Wally and the Beav without fear of them being exposed to that most wicked of substances, corrupting their immortal souls.
What garbage. And, not only to I have my own opinion to back me up, I have that most coveted of things in our postmodern American culture - a study! According to a 2004 study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, kids whose parents allowed them to attend unchaperoned parties where drinking took place were twice as likely to binge drink as other kids. No shocker there. However, the study also found that kids who drank at home with their parents were one-third as likely to binge drink as other kids. Who could have foreseen this? I mean, alcohol is so evil - how can this be? When children are taught to drink responsibly by their parents, they become responsible drinkers as adults. It’s craziness, I tell you.
An excellent piece citing this study appeared on the Wall Street Journal ’s opinion website on Monday. I recommend all of you read it here.
Now, the oh-so-cocky Councilman Faulconer laid down this challenge regarding his proposed ban:
For those who believe an all-out ban is too extreme, I invite you to convince me otherwise.
Well, I submit this scientific study in response to Mr. Faulconer’s challenge. It’s good public policy to encourage families to drink together to reduce binge drinking. Pour up a beer for Wally! It’s good for him!
Somehow, I still don’t expect Mr. Faulconer to be convinced.
No, that wasn’t a typo. And, yes, this is going to be as blazingly stupid as the title suggests. In fact, when trying to categorize this entry, I was sorely tempted to create a new category called “Too Dumb to Believe.” Honestly, sometimes I read real news stories and wonder if I’ve accidentally clicked over to the Onion.
So earlier this month, a group of 600 (probably frozen) morons decided to get naked and have their picture taken on a melting Swiss glacier. It’s hard to say what’s the worst aspect of this whole spectacle. It could be the fact that the photographer, who’s done lots of shots of large groups of naked people in public places, seems to have a very weird obsession with what would ordinarily be considered indecent exposure. It could be the respect that the AFP writer pays to this highly questionable cause, referring to the photographees as “eco-conscious volunteers.” It could be the nauseating self-congratulatory do-gooder pose that the organizers of the event strike:
Volunteers for the Swiss photoshoot were asked to turn up by train and cable car, to avoid generating carbon dioxide emissions that contribute to global warming.
But, winning by a nose is the brain-numbing illogic of stripping naked on a glacier to “draw[] attention to melting Alpine glaciers, one clear sign of global warming and of man-made climate change… .” Can someone please explain this to me? Is there anyone that really and truly looks at this and thinks about global warming? I dare anyone to see this picture and think of anything except the fact that there are a bunch of naked doofuses on a sheet of ice. I think the local mayor’s quote pretty well sums it up: “There’s no need to get undressed, I can show you very nice pictures of the glacier.”
Oh, and I LOVE the agenda journalism - the melting glaciers are a “clear sign … of man-made climate change.” Note the immediate leap to the conclusion that because the glacier is melting (as glaciers have been since the last ice age), it’s man’s fault. BUT WAIT! According to researchers in Norway, moose flatulence produces more greenhouse gases than driving a car. So I guess those “eco-conscious volunteers” took the train for nothing.
All this is just so ridiculous. It’s like all semblance of logic has left public debate. The emperor, literally this time, has no clothes.
Last night I discovered the perfect answer to the celebrity idea that they, because they are famous, attractive and rich, have all the answers to all political and social ills. The answer lies in two words: CELEBRITY JEOPARDY. Despite the softballs lobbed up and categories designed for their specialties (i.e. Movie History); the questions they can’t answer and the dumb answers they give is really pitiful.
We return again today to a perennial favorite on this blog - the battle between wacko environmentalists and the rest of us. Be warned: this one is ridiculous even by the already-low standards of the debate on this issue.
We humans have now been accused of being too greedy for the sun’s resources, and using a disproportionate share of them. Truly, I am not making this up. Read it all here.
Now, the first thing anybody reading this is going to wonder is how any one thing on the face of the earth takes more of the sun’s resources than any other thing. Ah, well, you see, they’re talking about that great biological storehouse of solar energy - plants. We apparently are guilty of using more plant resources than any other species on earth.
Folks, I couldn’t dream up quotes like this:
An agriculture professor at the University of Melbourne, Snow Barlow, said … humans were taking up too much of an important natural resource. “Here we are, just one species on the earth, and we’re grabbing a quarter of the renewable resources … we’re probably being a bit greedy.”
Now, I’ll drop the sarcasm for a minute to actually point out what should be blazingly obvious to everyone. There are a considerable number of those “renewable resources” that are only renewed by HUMAN ACTIVITY. To read this article, you’d think that corn, wheat, soybeans, etc., just magically spring forth from the ground, and rapacious humans descend on them like locusts, leaving nothing for the subsistence of the myriad innocent (and totally not greedy) species.
That’s just coming at it from a non-Christian perspective. As Christians, we understand that the reason that it is good and proper for us to plant and harvest crops, use trees for wood, etc., is because a) God has given the Earth to us so that we can exercise dominion over and be stewards of it, b) the earth is made for man, not man for the Earth, and c) we worship the Creator, not the creation.
So, all of this is really dumb, and probably not worth the pixels I’m devoting to it. However, if there’s a substantial part of the environmentalist movement that buys into this, consider this line from the article:
[T]he increased use of biofuels - such as ethanol and canola - should be viewed cautiously, given the potential for further pressure on ecosystems.
How’s that going to be for an internecine environmentalist feud? The plant-huggers vs. the alternative fuels crowd. It ought to at least be entertaining to watch. Get the popcorn. Oh, wait….
Ecclesiastes 1:9 says the following: “That which has been is what will be; that which is done is what will be done, and there is nothing new under the sun.’ While reading Henry Morton Stanley’s (“Dr. Livingston, I presume”) memoir of his explorations in equatorial Africa in the 1870’s, I ran across this passage. Stanley and his party are north of present day Uganda and are staying in a village for the night. “Mirambo” is the great chief and overlord of the area with whom they have negotiated for permission to cross his country:
Zegi, swarming with a reckless number of lawless men, was not a comfortable place to dwell in. The conduct of these men was another curious example of how “small things make base men proud.” Here was a number of youths suffering under that strange disease particular to vain youth of all lands, which Marambo had called “big head.” The manner in which they strutted about, their big looks and bold staring, their enormous feather head-dresses and martial stride, were most offensive. Having adopted, from bravado, the name of “Ruga-Ruga,” they were compelled, in honor, to imitate the bandits custom of smoking bhangi (wild hemp,) and my memory fails to remind me of any similar experience to the wild screaming and stormy sneezing, accompanied day and night to the monotonous droning of the one-string guitar (another accomplishment de rigueur with the complete bandit) and the hiccuping, snorting and vocal extravangances which we had to bear in the village of Zegi.
There is very little in that description that I thought doesn’t apply to the young street gangs of today. There is the ridiculous dress, the posturing, the violence, the drugs, the imitation of the most violent aspects of society, and if you substitute the one string guitar for the incessant bass that rocks automobiles (I think the monotonous droning applies both to the bass and to the lyrics): the music is even the same. Maybe the social engineers of today can examine the Zegi society and find out how the Ruga-Ruga were disenfranchised and determine that they are only seeking a “family” to which to belong. On the other hand, maybe it’s a fallen world and man is flawed….
Ah, the wisdom in God’s word. There is truly “nothing new.”
As the 4th of July approached, I saw again church signs and even billboards that indicated that the worship of God in certain churches has been changed to a “patrotic celebration” advertising all the fervor for country associated with that particular endeavor. Last Saturday, I read an editorial column in the Tuscaloosa News from Cary McMullen, who writes a religion column for the Lakeland , Fla. paper that is syndicated throughout the country that addresses this tendency. While Mr. McMullen and I don’t always agree, I have found him to be an excellent, often perceptive observer of religion in America. However, this is a column in which he and I agree totally in every respect (except he is probably more lenient toward it than I.) The link is here. http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20070630/NEWS/70629010/1005/SPORTS0106
Some of you have already read this since I sent the link out earlier but I thought it would be good to put it on the Riverblog since, as someone noted below, we’ve discussed the state of Christiandom quite a bit here. If you have e-mailed me with a comment, please feel free to repeat it here.
I read an article published in a recent New York Times about the death of Jerry Falwell and a shift in emphasis for what the authors say is a “new breed of evangelicals.” You can read the article here. This “new breed” still adheres to some base issues such as abortion and same sex marriages but are described as being more open to other social issues such as the environment, world poverty, and AIDS. Many of the leaders are megachurch pastors such as Rick Warren, author of the mega best seller, The Purpose Driven Life. Although the movement is still basically Republican, the authors see some problems with the upcoming GOP presidental candidates for various reasons. One of the really fascinating things about the article is that it doesn’t mention, even in passing, Joel O’Steen and the other light weight minds that comprise the “get rich off Christianity” group, thus dismissing them as any sort of factor. Maybe they never were taken seriously by anyone.
I found their views interesting, especially on the political evolution of this movement, and I have been almost totally critical of Christian political involvement and don’t see that changing. If you live by the sword, you will die by the sword, and I prefer not to see Christianity judged by the actions and standards (or lack thereof) of some of these people. Especially interesting to me was the quote by Gabe Lyons, raised in Falwell’s church, who has shunned politics and advocates involvement in the general culture, including the arts and media. That quote comprises the next to last paragraph in the piece and says that politics does not shape the morality of a culture but only reflects that culture. To change anything, you have to change the culture. One facet of this is something Jeff Miller continually advocates in his Salt and Light articles; Christians should work to take back the arts instead of a miserable concession, because “Ideas are important”!
ap•ro•pos
1 : at an opportune time
2 : by way of interjection or further comment : with regard to the present topic
As I was studying for the first part of Thessalonians, I came across this quote:
After watching clip after clip on CNN of comments by Jerry Falwell, I wanted to create a blog about how my faith differed from Mr. Falwell. And although Mr. Falwell and I seem to be world’s apart, I could not escape the video clips that showed him affirming and proclaiming almost every orthodox tenet that I, too, believe. Sans his political activism and Arminianism, Mr. Falwell and I are brothers in Christ. (That was an incredibly difficult sentence to write.) But Calvin’s quote reminded me that in my Reformed-Intellectualism, I must affirm the supernatural up and against the Cynic, Diogenes, and Epicurus of our day. So, I guess that was me in the background to the right of Mr. Falwell. Yes, I was almost falling off the stage, but I was there.
As noted in the bulletin this morning, we are providing a forum on the Riverblog to discuss our current Movie Night movie, Jesus Camp. The suggestions below are just that, suggestions, and everyone is free to discuss any ideas as comments. Please join in with your thoughts on the important concerns raised by this movie.
-The New York Times reviewer of this feature stated that this movement is “partly a response to the steady coarsening of mass culture in which the dominant values are commercial and the worldview is Darwinian in its amorality.” Is this completely accurate? Is commercialism really widely considered to be an enemy of evangelicalism? Will Christianity always be at odds with the world?
• The methods of Ms. Fischer and her group are obviously very effective in achieving their goals. Mass manipulation always seems disturbing when seen from outside but seems especially odious when the ones manipulated are children. How is this type of manipulation different from Joel O’Steen , Benny Hinn Billy Graham, James Dobson and Don Wildmon?
•These children are home-schooled and so are many reformed Christians. This obviously doesn’t lead to Kids on Fire. Are the motives different? If so, how are they different?
•There are scenes of children in camouflage with wooden swords in mock fights to heavy metal Christian music. There is also much talk about how Muslims indoctrinate children to go to war. Is this a viable response for a Christian? Are these the weapons of the New Testament for the cause of Christ?
•Ted Haggard makes an appearance ironically speaking against homosexuality. Should evangelical Christianity have someone who speaks for them on a high political level? Can any man really do this? Is it truly effective? Is it right and ethical?
•One of the children has been told and speaks of Protestant churches whose services are like Riverwood as being “dead churches where Jesus doesn’t visit.” Is emotionalism a requirement of the Church in the New Testament ? Can this be maintained? What is the proper place of emotionalism in Christianity?
•Ms. Fischer declares that “Extreme Liberals who look at this should be quaking in their boots.” Is she correct? Is this something to be desired?
•The interaction between Ms. Fischer and Mike Papantonio, the Air America talk show host, is very telling. Papantonio is a protestant Christian of Ms. Fischer’s “dead” church variety. Who “wins” the debate? What are their respective attitudes after the debate?
•All “evangelical” Christians tend to be perceived by the world as if their children were part of Kids on Fire. We are all lumped together. Can this be addressed? If so, how?
•What is laudable about the evangelicals that were portrayed?
Most adult Sunday School attendees at Riverwood have heard me speak about the (comatose) state of American culture by commenting on the New York Times Book Review bestseller lists. Well, I’m something of a movie fan also and I was interested in the article in the entertainment insert of the Tuscaloosa News about “Summer Blockbusters” coming to the local movie emporium. My interest turned to amazement as I read it and was once again convinced of the incredible truth and wisdom of H. L. Mencken way back in the thirties when he said, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public.”
The reviewer lists 45 summer “blockbusters” (I can’t type that without smiling) of which seventeen, more than a third, are re-hashed previous releases (started to say sequel but that has some validity.) Fully 75% of these are the third time around. Maybe they need to go to the Madison Ave. guys who make TV commercials and try to find some originality. Eight are horror movies, always (incredibly) a staple in America. Seven are animated and, believe it or not, three of those are based on children’s toys! One of the live action movies is actually based on a video game.
One of the re-hashed entries is called “Evan Almighty,” a re-hash of “Bruce Almighty” which, were it not for George Burns in “O God,” might have been the worse movie in history and is based on a concept that is offensive to me. One of the new trends seems to be movies about pregnant women but with a certain twist. The woman in “Waitress” gets pregnant by her “worthless” husband. In “Knocked Up,” (what a title) the villainous male is a “slacker” one night stand. In “The Ex,” he is also a “slacker” but at least they were married. One has to wonder if it’s the worthless ne’er do well men or the brainless women who choose them that are the problem. I think we already know the politically correct answer to that question.
I guess there may be a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Two movies look to be interesting to me (i.e. worth giving a shot in the event that it might be good.) In percentage terms of the total releases, that’s 4.4%. There is a movie called “Imagining Jane” about the early life of Jane Austen, and a comedy about dueling, romantic chefs called “No Reservations.” If it turns out badly, it does have Catherine Zeta-Jones in it, which is compensation of a sort.Obviously none of these will make the Riverwood Movie Night list.
Well, this is a far cry from the gravity of the discussions about the movie (which I’ve thoroughly enjoyed by the way). But, it was so ludicrous, I just had to post it and offer a brief comment.
Sheryl Crow has now proposed a limit on how many squares of toilet paper can be used in any one sitting - only one - in order to combat global warming. Read the whole thing here.
Now, there are so many things that are just blazingly stupid about this, that it’s not even worth the pixels to detail them. I just ask this question. How completely and utterly divorced from reality do you have to be to even offer such a suggestion in the first place? I mean, this is just downright gross. Is there anything too extreme for these Hollywood enviro-types to suggest? Consider the insular, sycophantic world a person would have to be living in to even suggest such a thing in public.
If anything saves the world from the designs of these radical environmentalists, it will be their own extremism. I’m pretty sure that toilet paper rationing is a big political loser.
Monday morning, driving in the early morning fog to take my dogs to the Riverwalk, I turned on NPR and heard one of their detailed news items about world affairs; human interest division. This particular item had to do with the coming beatification and canonization of the recently deceased Pope John Paul II, a subject that would normally be of little or no interest to me. What grabbed my attention was a statement that rushing sainthood through would help to make the Catholic Church more “relevant” in Europe. In their rush to make themselves “relevant,” they have waived every rule of the centuries required for “sainthood” and, as the reporter stated, put John Paul on the “fast track”to sainthood. There was a five year after death wait rule. Waived. There was a long investigation into his virtues that generally takes decades. Not waived but started immediately and quickly completed; led by the Polish Cardinal who is behind the big push for beatification. There is the need for one “miracle” for beatification and one more for canonization. Lo and behold, a French nun reported last week that she prayed, not to God, mind you, but to John Paul, about her Parkinson’s Disease and she was miraculously healed. Now John Paul knew nothing of this prayer or this healing but he gets credit for the miracle. Can anyone doubt that a second miracle is forthcoming?
This follows the two previous posts regarding the “artistic” effort of making a statue of Jesus from chocolate and the on-going “selling” of the Evangelical vote. One wonders how long this “artist” studied his situation and tried to find a controversal way get his name and “art” in the papers for some “pub.” It finally came to him that connecting Christ and the chocolate candy that has become associated with Easter at Easter would deliver the proper shock value and someone would complain. At that point he could make a statement about artistic integrity akin to repudiating book burning.
One has to wonder what exactly happened between Fred Thompson and James Dobson, who was one of the key players in delivering Ohio and the presidency to George W. Bush. Probably nothing happened. Thompson probably simply didn’t pay the proper homage to Dobson, one of the godfathers of evangelism; even though his voting record as a senator is spotless regarding the issues Dobson regards as central.
And finally; back to John Paul II. I guess that, in a relativistic world; being willing to throw away all of the rules and traditions of centuries for expediency is looked upon as a virtue. If that is where they are going, it’s all irrelevant anyway. What I hate about all three of these is they are all represent “bad pub” to any thinking man. They are also bad pub to me because I name the name of Christ. However, I can live with that personally because I hold no allegiance to any of these men; don’t need to defend them, and I hope and believe that I could defend my own beliefs against this sort of thing. The real problem I have with it is that these attempts at influence peddling also name the name of Christ and that is truly offensive and disgusting to me.
I’ve previously criticized Dr. James Dobson for his negative comments about Sen. McCain and some statements McCain had made about gay marriage. It appears that Dr. Dobson has again thrust himself into the 2008 GOP primary, this time to slam a guy who isn’t even a candidate (yet).
Drudge posted a link to this story, where Dr. Dobson opines about Fred Thompson, former Tennessee Senator and actor on the TV show Law & Order. Key excerpt:
“Everyone knows he’s conservative and has come out strongly for the things that the pro-family movement stands for,” Dobson said of Thompson. “[But] I don’t think he’s a Christian; at least that’s my impression,” Dobson added, saying that such an impression would make it difficult for Thompson to connect with the Republican Party’s conservative Christian base and win the GOP nomination.
Wow. That’s pretty strong stuff to allege that he’s not even a Christian, even while acknowledging that he’s been supportive (“strongly”) for Dobson’s agenda. Why would a heathen support Dobson’s political agenda?
Thompson’s supporters immediately countered that he is in fact a Christian, and is a baptized member of the Church of Christ. Dobson left it to his spokesman to reply:
In a follow-up phone conversation, Focus on the Family spokesman Gary Schneeberger stood by Dobson’s claim. He said that, while Dobson didn’t believe Thompson to be a member of a non-Christian faith, Dobson nevertheless “has never known Thompson to be a committed Christian—someone who talks openly about his faith.”
So, now get this: unless you’re a noisy Christian, in evangelical politics, you aren’t a Christian. Do I have that straight? I think I’ve put my finger on the real problem here, too: evangelical politics. Now, I don’t want to be misunderstood. I hope many, many Christians are elected to public office. I think they should run, and I think their influence if elected will be salutary. However, having one man with a radio show in Colorado be the arbiter of who’s really a Christian for political purposes is completely insane.
I know that many folks respect Dr. Dobson, mainly for his views on raising children, and especially boys. The buzzword for this in the business world is “core competency.” And when a business gets outside its core competency, it runs a tremendous risk of failure. (Anyone remember Coca-Cola clothes?) I think that Dobson should stick to his core competency and quit trying to be the Christian political kingmaker.
If anyone is left out there that needs an object lesson in the perverse intersection we have in this country with the public schools and the First Amendment, then let me tell you about Bong Hits 4 Jesus.
Believe this or not (and this actually makes my point here) this week the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in a case called Morse v. Frederick. Morse is the high school principal where Frederick was a student. The Olympic Torch was coming through town. The school apparently encouraged students to turn out to see it. Frederick did, and when the torch passed by, he unfurled a banner that read “Bong Hits 4 Jesus.” Morse took the banner away and suspended him for 10 days. Frederick later admitted that the banner had no meaning, was intentionally absurd, and that he did it just for attention.
This, folks, is before the United States Supreme Court. I know, you’d think they’d have better to do. The question in the case is whether the principal had the power to effectively censor the student’s speech at a non-school event. A good summary of the oral argument can be found at Prof. Althouse’s Blog.
Now, the reason I post this is that it exemplifies perfectly the problem with having the government be in the business of running schools. Because the principal is a government actor, this matters. Had this principal been running a private school, she would answer to her customers for her actions privately, and the US Supreme Court could consider more weighty and less sexy issues.
It’s not the fault of the schools that they’re run by the government. You’d think that governments would be tired to the point of exhaustion with dealing with endless federal court litigation over the schools. When any action that a teacher takes can result in a federal lawsuit (maybe even all the way to the top), it’s inevitable that teachers are going to have to spend a not insignificant amount of time basically learning federal civil rights law.
Is it only me that thinks that effort could be better spent?
Oh well, looking on the bright side, as Prof. Althouse points out, this case will make for no end of bong jokes in Constitutional Law classes for decades. At least there’s that.
Just when you thought that you had read every asinine, hysterical, over-the-top moronic thing that could be written or said about global warming, along comes Paul Hellyer. Mr. Hellyer used to be the Defense Minster of Canada. He has figured out the way to save the planet from all the destruction that mankind is wreaking through greenhouse gas emissions. Ready?
That’s right. If the government will just give up the secret alien technologies that it has in Roswell, NM, then we can use those to save the planet. After all, those aliens had to have some more kind of energy source to fly all those light years to earth. And they’re sooo smart, they’d never use fossil fuels. Right? Right??
In a strange way, I feel very sorry for Prince Charles. He’s an extremely important person, but yet he’s utterly irrelevant. That is to say, he will never wield any real power. But since he’s the Prince of Wales, the media will hang on his every word. So, he has this bully pulpit, but is completely impotent to do anything other than talk - or maybe I should say nag.
Today the UK Evening Standard carried a report (read it here) quoting Charles as saying that, in effect, McDonald’s fast food should be banned. How noblesse oblige of him to determine what his lowly little subjects should and should not be eating. It’s for their own good you know.
But my sarcasm aside, he can say that all day long, and yet he’s without the first whit of authority to do anything about it. That must be extremely frustrating. All the riches and splendor in the world, and all he can do is rail against Big Macs. What’s actually sadder is that he obviously can’t appreciate the simple pleasure of a good, greasy hamburger and fries.
Anyone who knows my political leanings will not be surprised to learn that I’m no fan of the New York Times editorial page. Yesterday’s editorial about the price of corn, however, was one of the most astonishing things I’ve ever seen them print.
For anyone who’s not heard about this yet, a bit of background is in order. For years, ethanol made from corn has been pushed as an alternative fuel for cars. However, with gasoline approaching $3 per gallon, and with the abject hysteria in some quarters over alleged human-induced global warming, alternative fuels have taken on a new urgency, and the demand for ethanol has increased, meaning, of course, a greater demand for corn.
What do we (well, those of us who acknowledge free markets, anyway) know is going to happen when demand for ethanol made from corn increases? Surprise, Surprise! The price of corn has gone up. OK, big deal, right? So the bag of Doritos costs a few cents more - so what? That’s all well and good here in the good old USA, but south of the border, it’s a different story.
It seems that in Mexico, there are protests in the streets over the spike in the price of tortillas. According to the AP, “[Mexican] workers earning the minimum wage of about $4 a day could spend a third of their earnings on tortillas for their family.” The article goes on to explain that poor Mexicans get 40% of their protein from tortillas. It’s as much a staple for them, or even more so, than bread is for us. If they can’t afford it, malnutrition is a serious possibility.
This seems very, very bad. The poor are being squeezed by this turn of events. Surely something should be done. Ah, yes, but that inflexible law of supply and demand. It puts the impoverished workers of the developing world at cross-purposes with the zealots of global warming. With whose side will the all-compassionate NYT editorial writers cast their lot?
Since their site is registration required, I’ll reproduce that editorial below:
The current price of corn is $3.23 a bushel, more than half again what it was a year ago, and beginning to bring to mind the record $5.545 a bushel set in July 1996.
There are many reasons for this price spurt. The ethanol boom has created a sharp new demand for corn. The Department of Agriculture revised its estimate of the 2006 corn harvest downward by some 200 million bushels because of weather and other factors. There is also a smaller corn reserve on hand than usual — the smallest in a decade — which parallels shortages around the world.
Add to this the growing weight of commodities funds investing in agricultural markets, and you have daydreams — or nightmares — of that $5 mark.
Yet all this has taken place against the backdrop of three record harvests in a row, a sure sign of how strong the ethanol appetite for corn production is turning out to be. It’s tempting to assume that the effect of sharply higher prices is confined primarily to the agricultural sector. But where corn is concerned, we are all part of the agricultural sector. The historical cheapness of corn has driven it into nearly every aspect of our economy, in the form, most familiarly, of corn syrup. The low price of corn over the past half-century lies at the very foundation of America’s historically (and unrealistically) low food prices.
Gratifying our two major appetites — cheap food and cheap gas — used to seem easy because both corn and oil were abundant. Cheap oil helped keep corn prices low because it cost farmers less to run their tractors and combines.
But we are entering a new dynamic now. While there has been talk recently about refining ethanol from sources other than corn, that could take a while. So at the moment what we are trying to do is gratify those appetites from the same resource: agricultural land. No matter how high prices go, what will need to change isn’t the amount of corn acreage available or even the size of the enormous harvests we are already getting. What will need to change is the size of our appetites.
Get that? The Mexican poor had just better change the size of their appetites. I guess we know now where the NYT’s priorities are. Keep Al Gore and his acolytes happy, and the peasants can just eat cake, or something.
OK, confession time. I am hooked on Grey’s Anatomy. It’s one of my favorite shows on TV. That said, there’s nothing to ruin a perfectly good movie or TV show like knowing what the actors are like in real life.
I have been reading about a recent dust-up on the set of the show where one of the lead actors (Isaiah Washington, who plays Dr. Burke) allegedly used a slur on the set to describe a castmate who has recently let it be known that he’s gay (TR Knight, who plays George). You can find some gossipy type articles about it here. Washington subsequently issued a statement apologizing. It’s here, and it seemed pretty thoroughgoing to me.
The reason that I even post such trivialities is the latest installment of the off-set drama. It seems that in today’s world, simply apologizing for doing something wrong is just not good enough. You need to go to rehab, and that’s exactly what Washington has done. You can read the whole ridiculous tale here.
This is not meant to excuse Mr. Washington’s behavior in any way, but rehab? Rehab for using a bad word (that he’s already profusely apologized for using)? When I first saw the article, I figured that he was going into rehab because he had some drug or alcohol problem. Nope. According to the ever-present “insider”, the honchos at ABC told Washington that to keep his job, he must “enter a program to examine why he would say such hateful words.” This means there’s actually such a program in existence. Really. I am not making this up.
As a Christian, intellectually, I know that the world has it’s priorities exactly backwards. But in my mind, I still have this (obviously ridiculous) expectation that the offended castmate will just say, “OK, apology accepted” and everyone just move on with their lives. But no. Off to the “treatment facility” with Mr. Washington. After all, why would anyone ever say hateful words?
It is always fascinating to see what the unbelieving world thinks about Jesus Christ. In today’s Sun (UK) newspaper, we get a glimpse of that.
Apparently the leader of the “church” of Scientology, David Miscavige, believes that Tom Cruise is going to be “worshiped like Jesus for his work to raise awareness of the religion.”
That was what Jesus did, after all, right? Now, I know that darkness cannot understand the light, however, this doesn’t even make sense. Raise awareness of what religion? Judaism?
The inevitable “source close to the actor” says the following of Cruise: “Like Christ, he’s been criticised for his views. But future generations will realise he was right.”
Follow the circular logic here. Christ was criticized all right, but for claiming to be both the Son of God and the only way to the Father. Have future generations realized that? If so, why are they looking for another christ (and in Tom Cruise of all places)?
I once heard Rob Looper say that man was created to worship, and if that worship isn’t directed at God, man will put something else in God’s place and worship that. I think this pretty much proves that thesis up. QED.
If everything goes as planned, after next week, all the investitures for public and civil offices will be completed. These ceremonies make everything official, honorable, and serious, and they culminate in “the swearing in” of our candidates for public office. Traditionally, the oaths have been made while the candidate places his/her right hand on the Judeo-Christian Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments (aka the Bible).
Last month The American Family Association (AFA) sent out an email alert to all American Christians decrying the intentions of Representative-elect Keith Ellison (Muslim, D-MN) to use the Koran during his swearing-in ceremony. You can find most that email’s contents here:
The AFA was ignited mostly by Jewish columnist Dennis Prager’s article earlier that week. Prager insisted that, regardless of faith, the United States should use the Bible for all inductions, ceremonies, and swearing-ins. You can find his article here:
However, since we are a nation of laws, (as Clay Staggs often reminds me) there is no law that conscripts any official-elect to use the Bible for any vow/oath as a requisite for office. He found an excellent clause in the U.S. Constitution that was very plain:
The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the members of the several state legislatures, and all executive and judicial officers, both of the United States and of the several states, shall be bound by oath or affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States.
In fairness, the AFA finally figured out that they could do nothing (legally) except express outrage—outrage which I believe is unfounded and unbiblical. But they did manage to issue an action point for all concerned Christians:
Take Action
1. Send an email asking your U.S. Representative and Senators to pass a law making the Bible the book used in the swearing-in ceremony of Representatives and Senators.
Now, several things first: 1) I want people to become believers in Christ—the exclusive and only Savior of souls. 2) I can appreciate activism. 3) I like America 4) I like families. With that out of the way, my statement is this: The duties of the office dictate the requirements for the office. Simple, I know. Additionally, I am against petitioning for such a law that would propose this as requirement. I know this may bring up the aged discussion in regards to the separation of Church/State, but this is another example where belief simply does not have the biblical mandate to force others (alien beliefs, persons, or cultures) to comply with God’s laws. It is only within the context of the covenant community (read: Church universal) can these be made requirements.
Interestingly, Dr. Dobson has poked his toe into the political waters of the GOP 2008 presidential primary. He is opposed to John McCain’s candidacy. Apparently McCain’s position on gay marriage is unacceptable to Dobson.
I find this interesting on a number of fronts. First of all, McCain has always been solidly pro-life. This makes me wonder whether there’s a new litmus test politically for being a social conservative. Does being squishy (assuming McCain is that) on gay marriage trump being pro-life?
Second, I can’t help but wonder whether this is cover for having other problems with McCain. The reason I suggest this is that McCain’s position, set in full context, seems non-controversial to me. McCain made the comment which was the basis for Dobson’s criticism on a TV talk show. That comment was:
I think that gay marriage should be allowed if there’s a ceremony kind of thing, if you want to call it that. I don’t have any problem with that. But I do believe in preserving the sanctity of a union between man and woman.
However, moments later, in the same event on the same show, McCain clarified what he meant:
On the issue of the gay marriage, I believe that if people want to have private ceremonies, that’s fine. I do not believe that gay marriages should be legal.
You can read McCain’s whole exchange here. Dobson appears to have neglected to mention the later clarification.
Now, I think there’s LOTS to disagree with McCain about, and in the spirit of full disclosure, I’ll say he’s not my first choice (o
Truth in blogging journalism: we have a row of VT DVDs in our movie collection—and I am not exactly sprinting to throw them out. Guilty of ownership, your honor. My point is not to stop watching the VT, or even destroy our current collection.
My wife let me know of a good approach to viewing the VT videos. She would have her kindergarten class watch the VT episode, read the real Bible story, and then discuss its similarities and differences. She said they did a fantastic job of dissecting them. It would seem that this approach would equip our kids to be critical thinkers, without dismissing the merits of any form of media.