The Graybrook Institute

Sotomayor's Justice: By Law or the Will of Those in Power

2009-05-29T09:26:00.000-07:00

By Newt Gingrich

Can you imagine if the President of the United States nominated a judge to the U.S. Supreme Court who said this:

"My experience as a white man will make me a better judge than a Latina woman would be."

Or could you imagine if that same judge ruled from the bench to deny 18 African-American firefighters a promotion just because of their skin color?

That judge would be called a bigot – and in my judgment, rightly so! Would there be any doubt that he would be FORCED to WITHDRAW his nomination for the Supreme Court?

None.

There are only two options for how we govern ourselves – by laws, or by the will of those in power. The rule of law represents objective, dispassionate knowable standards that are applied and enforced equally to all citizens regardless of their background.

The will of those in power represents subjective, fleeting standards that are never fully known by any and are applied purely to satisfy the wishes of a small, concentrated group in power.

True justice is blind. It does not consider one's religion, wealth, race or in this case sex, family origin and ethnicity. To do so would be unjust.

To put someone on our nation's highest court who believes these traits should be considered in cases before the court, would be wrong.

Judge Sonia Sotomayor has proven, by her own admission, that she is such a judge. Knowing this, President Obama should withdraw her nomination to the Supreme Court.

Consider what Judge Sotomayor said about how her being a Latina woman will affect her decisions as a judge:

"I would hope that a wise Latina woman with the richness of her experiences would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male who hasn't lived that life."

You read that right – Judge Sotomayor said that her experience as a person of a particular sex and ethnic background will make her a better judge than a person of another sex and a different ethnic background!

When did that view become acceptable?

If Civil War, suffrage, and Civil Rights are to mean anything, we cannot accept that conclusion. It is simply un-American. There is no room on the bench of the United States Supreme Court for this worldview.

The checks and balances between the three branches of government are designed to prevent any small faction of society from exerting undue influence over the rest of us. If President Obama will not withdraw his nomination, then the Senate has a duty to ensure that judges with who hold these beliefs are not confirmed to serve on the Supreme Court.

The United States is a nation of immigrants from many backgrounds and their contributions have made our country great but that was made possible because our nation was built upon a solid foundation of law and order. The rule of law should be non-negotiable. It cannot be subordinated to ethnic or racial biases. To do so would be to make our Constitution arbitrary and meaningless undermining the very foundations of our society.

The rule of law is a crucial safeguard for the preservation of freedom.

As our civic and public leaders from many backgrounds have proven, America should continue to stand as a land of equality of opportunity, NOT equality of outcomes. Cases brought before the U.S. Supreme Court should be judged on the merits of the arguments rigorously tested against the United States Constitution. They should NOT be judged based on the racial and ethnic preferences of the judges making the decision!

Unfortunately, that's exactly what we'll get if Sonia Sotomayor is confirmed to the Supreme Court – a judge who will interpret the law based on her ethnic background, rather than based on the LAW. In fact, she has gone even further to say, "Whether born from experience or inherent physiological or cultural differences... our gender and national origins may and will make a difference in our judging."

These are actual quotes from Judge Sotomayor, spoken at a symposium sponsored by the Berkeley La Raza Law Journal in October 2001. And as if that wasn't enough to prove her ethnic-based (and gender-based) bias on the bench, that's not all she said:

"I further accept that our experiences as women and people of color affect our decisions... enough people of color in enough cases, will make a difference in the process of judging."

Remember, this is the same woman who, when speaking at Duke Law School, made it clear that she believes it is a judge's role to "legislate from the bench": responding to a question on the pros and cons of different types of judicial clerkships, she stated that the court "is where policy is made!" She tried to correct her slip, by joking that "I know this is on tape and I should never say that, because we don't ‘make law,' I know, I know." But, she already made herself clear: She believes JUDGES MAKE LAW!

She is wrong. Lawmakers make law NOT judges.

Words mean things and her words give her away. No amount of explaining or spin can change what she truly believes and if she is confirmed she will bring those beliefs to the Supreme Court.

And that wasn't just one little "slip" – in a 1996 article she co-wrote for the Suffolk University Law Review, she said, "Our society would be strait-jacketed were not the courts, with the able assistance of the lawyers, constantly overhauling the law and adapting it to the realities of ever-changing social, industrial and political conditions."

It gets worse: According the American Bar Association, Sotomayor is a member of La Raza ("the Race"). The National Council of La Raza was the group that was willing to compromise our national security by promoting driver's licenses for illegal aliens, amnesty programs, and no immigration law enforcement by local and state police.

The U.S. Supreme Court is no place for these kinds of judicial philosophies – we need to STOP this nomination from going any further before it is too late!

Of course, no one believes that any judge can be 100% impartial and unbiased in every situation. Judges are human beings, and will occasionally allow their personal biases to cloud their attempts at impartiality.

But this is VERY different – this judge is making it CLEAR that she thinks she SHOULD be biased and partial, based on her ethnicity and gender!

As noted this week in The Hill, "these statements raise concerns about whether Sotomayor, who was raised under modest circumstances in the Bronx, would serve as a neutral arbiter in a case pitting a wealthy white male against a less wealthy man or woman of color."

To understand the judicial temperament Judge Sotomayer would bring to the Supreme Court, just look at one of her most controversial decisions – Ricci v. DeStefano. Sotomayor approved of the city of New Haven's racial quota system and its decision to deny 18 firefighters their earned promotions – based on their skin color. This even provoked her own colleague, Judge Jose Cabranes (a fellow Clinton appointee) to object to the issued opinion that contained "no reference whatsoever to the constitutional issues at the core of this case!"

When judges make decisions based not on the application of law but on their personal biases about an issue at hand, the independence and authority of the judiciary is compromised.

Concerns about Sotomayor's activist view of the law grew so great that, despite the fact that President George H.W. Bush appointed her to the district court in 1991, 29 United States Senators voted against her nomination to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998.

THIS time... she shouldn't even get a vote, and should be withdrawn from consideration. It's just not right – every American should expect that their sons and daughters from every background can rise by applying the work ethic under equal protection under the law.

Your background should NEVER impact the application of law under the U.S. Constitution. It should not be a consideration by the judge or an expected consideration by the judged. Decisions made by the highest court in the land should be made on the basis of what is right and wrong – not who is right and who is wrong!

When politicians, judges, or law enforcement officials choose to exercise their own judgment in lieu of what the citizens have decided in a Representative Republic, the very idea of self-government is eroded.

We must not be blinded by the allure of "good intentions". We cannot defend our liberties by ignoring the system that allows for the protection of those liberties in the first place. The rule of law is the means by which a free people protect their liberty in a society of equals.

Barack Obama has made a poor choice by sending Sonia Sotomayor's nomination to the U.S. Senate. If he does not correct his mistake, American who care about justice, must take action -- let the Senate know that you OPPOSE this nomination. And we've got a GREAT way to do that!

What Would Change Under an Obama Supreme Court?

2008-10-08T16:13:00.000-07:00

Jim Brown

OneNewsNow

A group that promotes constitutionalist judicial nominees warns that the top priority of a Barack Obama Supreme Court would be to require taxpayers to fund unlimited abortion rights.

Curt Levey, executive director of the Committee for Justice, says given Obama's opposition to the Born Alive Infant Protection Act, the nation's highest court under an Obama administration would likely reverse the federal ban on partial-birth abortion. According to Levey, two of the top ten priorities of an Obama Supreme Court would be to find that there is a constitutional right to taxpayer-funded abortions, and to order all 50 states to "bless" homosexual "marriage."

"Ten Commandments would be removed all over the place. 'Under God' would be removed from the Pledge of Allegiance. The death penalty would be banned," says Levey. "There'd probably be constitutional rights to all sorts of new things like human cloning and physician-assisted suicide. Racial preferences would proliferate."

"I Never Knew You"

2008-10-07T15:36:00.000-07:00

What you see here will shock you, and that's an amazing, tragic fact alone if you profess to be a Christian. Because not long ago, this message, though it may have shaken a non-Christian, it would not have been shocking to the typical Christian or his church. Here is a message that every Christian and church leader must affirm and proclaim if there is to be any hope that the church of Jesus Christ will ever impact this dark world again. It will take you just under an hour to view, so find an hour to dedicate to it. It will be the best hour you will spend this week. The speaker is teacher/evangelist/missionary Paul Washer (heartcrymissionary.com).

Children and the "Messiah"

2008-10-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

Much (fun) has been made about Barack Obama's self-proclamation that he is The One "we" have been waiting for and his followers' clear messianic devotion to him. Incredibly, this is no laughing matter, but a deadly serious religion for many of his devotees. One of the most sickening examples comes from Venice (California, where else?).

View this video and shudder for the coming generation:

Compare:

This distills it all nicely:

Now, if you're not too fainthearted, click over to our friends at rogue wavelength for this one. As Splash puts it, "This isn't funny anymore."

Sarah Palin Biography Video

2008-09-08T17:25:00.000-07:00

Meet Sarah Palin, the new leader of American Conservatism:

Elections, Like Ideas, Have Consequences

2008-07-08T09:52:00.000-07:00

By Thomas Sowell

Voting is ... a duty to give serious thought to the alternatives on the table and what those alternatives mean for the future of the nation.

A number of friends of mine have commented on an odd phenomenon that they have observed-- conservative Republicans they know who are saying that they are going to vote for Barack Obama. It seemed at first to be an isolated fluke, perhaps signifying only that my friends know some strange conservatives. But apparently columnist Robert Novak has encountered the same phenomenon and has coined the term "Obamacons" to describe the conservatives for Senator Obama.

Now the San Francisco Chronicle has run a feature article, titled "Some Influential Conservatives Spurn GOP and Endorse Obama." In it they quote various conservatives on why they are ready to take a chance on Barack Obama, rather than on John McCain.

What is going on?

Partly what is going on is that, in recent years, the Congressional Republicans in general-- and Senator John McCain in particular-- have so alienated so many conservatives that some of these conservatives are like a drowning man grasping at a straw.

The straw in this case is Obama's recent "refining" of his position on a number of issues, as he edges toward the center, in order to try to pick up more votes in November's general election.

Understandable as the reactions of some conservatives may be, a straw is a very unreliable flotation device.

If all that was involved was Democrats versus Republicans, the Republicans would deserve the condemnation they are getting, after their years of wild spending and their multiple betrayals of the principles and the people who got them elected. Amnesty for illegal aliens was perhaps the worst betrayal.

But, while the media may treat the elections as being about Democrats and Republicans-- the "horse race" approach-- elections were not set up by the Constitution of the United States in order to enable party politicians to get jobs.

Nor were elections set up in order to enable voters to vent their emotions or indulge their fantasies.

Voting is a right but it is also a duty-- a duty not just to show up on election day, but a duty to give serious thought to the alternatives on the table and what those alternatives mean for the future of the nation.

What is becoming ever more painfully apparent is that too many people this year-- whether conservative, liberals or whatever-- are all too willing to judge Barack Obama on the basis of his election-year rhetoric, rather than on the record of what he has advocated and done during the past two decades.

Many are for him for no more serious reasons than his mouth and his complexion. The man has become a Rorschach test for the feelings and hopes, not only of those on the left, but also for some on the right as well.
Here is a man who has consistently aided and abetted people who have openly expressed their contempt for this country, both in words and in such deeds as planting bombs to advance their left-wing agenda.

Despite the spin that judging Obama by what was said or done by such people would be "guilt by association," he has not just associated with such people. He has in some cases donated some serious money of his own and even more of the taxpayers' money, as both a state senator in Illinois and a member of the Senate of the United States.

Barack Obama is on record as favoring the kinds of justices who make policy, not just carry out laws. No matter how he may "refine" his position on this issue, he voted against the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts, who was easily confirmed by more than three-quarters of the Senators.

Like people on the far left for literally centuries, Barack Obama plays down the dangers to the nation, and calls talk about such dangers "the politics of fear."

Back in the 18th century, Helvetius said, "When I speak I put on a mask. When I act, I am forced to take it off." Too many voters still have not learned that lesson. They need to look at the track record of Obama's actions.

Back in the days of "The Lone Ranger" program, someone would ask, "Who is that masked man?" People need to start asking that question about Barack Obama.
---
Thomas Sowell is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. His Web site is http://www.tsowell.com/.

Know Your Enemy

2008-04-02T16:26:00.000-07:00

The new Dutch video, Fitna, by Geerts Wilders, released last week caused international controversy for its shocking exposition of Radical Islam and the Quran. We offer it here in the interest of reminding our readers of the vital importance of remembering the character of our enemy and the nature of our present world warfare. - GJM

Dying Without An Answer to Life's Most Essential Question

2008-03-08T13:43:00.001-08:00

Here is a devastating portrayal of the emptiness and cruelty of the post-modern world view. This is a scene in an episode titled "Atonement" from the 14th season of the NBC television hospital drama E.R. -- a man looking for answers does not find what he needs in a post-modern view of religion where there is no absolute truth or objective solutions to our ultimate perplexities. This desperate man intuitively knows that there is an objective truth from a real God who both judges the wicked and offers the hope of release through forgiveness. All he needs is someone to tell him how and where to find that God (Acts of the Apostles 8:31-35). Relativism and the delusions of self-discovery and inner light cannot satisfy.

Out of the depths I cry to you, O LORD;
O Lord, hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to my cry for mercy.
If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand?
But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared.
I wait for the LORD, my soul waits, and in his word I put my hope.
My soul waits for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning, more than watchmen wait for the morning.
O Israel, put your hope in the LORD, for with the LORD is unfailing love and with him is full redemption.
He himself will redeem Israel from all their sins. (Psalm 130, NIV)

Here's another take on this episode with additional Gospel and Hollywood insights: http://teampyro.blogspot.com/2008/02/ers-atonement-and-absent-gospel.html

Nowhere Man: The Audacity of Barack Obama's World View

2008-03-03T15:31:00.000-08:00

By Garry J. Moes

One of the frightening signs of the great and terrible condition of our time is the enduring popularity of John Lennon's song "Imagine." One of the most diabolical artistic expressions of all time, it is yet regarded far and wide as among the greatest of all time. Rolling Stone, in 2004, named it the third greatest song ever. A year earlier, former President Bill Clinton joined 80 children to sing it to Shimon Peres on his 80th birthday. Former President Jimmy Carter once said, "In many countries around the world — my wife and I have visited about 125 countries — you hear John Lennon's song 'Imagine' used almost equally with national anthems."

The song, originally produced by recently accused murderer Phil Spector, was one of the most performed songs of the 20th century. It has been used in countless films and television programs. It was played as a wake-up song on the Space Shuttle Columbia during its ill-fated mission. It has been played just before midnight on New Year's Eve in Times Square in 2006, 2007 and 2008. Hardly a year has gone by without it being featured by one or more contestants in the fabulously popular TV singing contest American Idol — the most recent being this year's spectacularly talented 17-year-old contestant David Archuleta. At least, the young man had the good sense to skip the first and second verses, which call on the world to "imagine" no heaven, hell or religion and everyone "living for today," a world with "no countries," where no one has anything "to kill or die for" and everyone is "living life in peace."

Explaining to suspicious Idol judge Randy Jackson that he skipped those verses because he lacked time for a full-on performance and that the last verse had such a wonderful message, the smiling, breathless young Archuleta had, however, just reminded us musically to . . .

Imagine no possessions;
I wonder if you can;
No need for greed or hunger,
A brotherhood of man.
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world.

You may say that I'm a dreamer,
But I'm not the only one.
I hope someday you'll join us,
And the world will live as one.

There can be no dispute that the entire song, even that last verse, is pure utopianism. In fact, the absence of possessions, greed and hunger was one of the hallmarks of Utopia, Sir Thomas More's fictional 16th-century island nation and prototype of communism. It was a land in which, among other things, all production was readily given over to a common store, and everyone could take freely from it — in a "from each according to his ability to each according to his need" sort of way. Utopians disliked wars and fought them, not by themselves but through mercenaries, only when forced to do so in self-defense. Money, even gold, was evil and useless to Utopians, who believed that as long as money and private property were standards of living, there could be no justice or happiness.

Lennon plainly stated, as noted in a book by Geoffrey Guliano (Lennon in America), that his song was "anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-conventional, anti-capitalistic."

Lennon and his wife Yoko Ono, on April Fools Day 1973, created their own conceptual country and called it Nutopia, a nation (?) with "no land, no boundaries, no passports, only people. Nutopia has no laws other than cosmic." Its national flag is all white — never mind that the white flag is the flag of surrender. Lennon and Ono defended that association, saying that only through surrender and compromise can peace be achieved.

Yes, John Lennon, you were a dopey dreamer. The greater tragedy, though — the tragedy that now threatens our body politic and very existence — is that you were not the only one. Indeed, our nation is being increasingly populated by succeeding generations of dreamers like yourself who continue to sing and love your dangerously stupid song and really believe it to be reasonable. I fear that this growing naïveté may be reaching critical mass in much of the West and in these United States.

All this is written, not primarily to critique a song or review an American Idol performance, but to note with alarm that the "philosophy" of Lennon's song is deeply ingrained in a new political wave sweeping the country this election year. It is the undercurrent of Barack Obama's "audacity of hope" and the surging tide of swooning support he is receiving across the land, particularly among the young but swelling well beyond that demographic. It is particularly audacious because it demagogues a "hope" without a foundation that can truly deliver on its vague but powerfully emotive promises.

Hope without a reasonable basis for its realization is, of course, not true hope. It is wishful thinking. It is sentimentality and romantic longing, nothing more. It is fancy at best and delusion at worst. It is utopianism, pure and simple.

The New Testament of the Christian Bible tells us what true hope is and how hopes may become reality. A hope that is worth holding is one that has a foundation in faith — faith placed objectively in a Source that can deliver with certainty the thing that is hoped for. Faith gives substance to that which is hoped for and evident certainty to things unseen, says the writer of an epistle addressed to first-century Hebrews. The faith spoken of here is a sure reliance on the infinite abilities of a Creator God with a proven record of providence — providence of all things needed for ultimate happiness and prosperity.

But what does Obama's religion of hope promise us, and on what basis does it pledge to deliver on our hopes? Well, this prophet and priest of the new (no, make that, the old recycled) religion of political hope has not yet spelled it out. Instead of a biblical kind of objective hope, he offers us the circular reasoning of faith in hope itself. At least, that's what his fawning audiences seem to be hearing.

If you carefully dissect his more substantive speeches and position papers, though, you will discover that he does offer something that is objective, if not very hopeful, because underlying his soaring rhetoric is an old suggestion, repeatedly proven false in the real historical world, that our unformed hopes can be realized by faith in an all-provident civil government and/or global community. Obama's entire (though brief) political life and civic record reveal that this is where his hope and promises lie; yet he dares not speak it plainly just now, since there is so much suspicion still rife in the land that government will continue to fail us. So rather than saying outright, "Hope in government," he calls us to put our faith in change — change that only he and his movement can bring about. As his campaign motto has it: "Change you can believe in."

"The 'hope' being sold by Mr. Obama and his true believers is misplaced," says columnist Cal Thomas. "Mr. Obama cannot deliver; he cannot save; he cannot improve individual circumstances by redistributing wealth and talking to America's dictatorial enemies. He is selling snake oil."

The name Utopia was coined by Thomas More from a combination of Greek words which together mean "no-place land." In his campaign's call to utopian hope, Obama is thus perhaps better found in another John Lennon song:

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody.

Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere man, please listen,
You don't know what you're missing,
Nowhere man, the world is at your command.

He's as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere man can you see me at all?
Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?

Nowhere man, don't worry,
Take your time, don't hurry,
Leave it all till somebody else
Lend you a hand.

He's a real nowhere man,
Sitting in his nowhere land,
Making all his nowhere plans
For nobody.

Barack Obama is an authentic nowhere man — a citizen of an ancient Utopia, yet with a rhetorical tone of postmodernism (see one analysis below). He has identified the spirit of the age and has become its voice.
"(T)here is a moment in the life of every generation, if it is to make its mark on history, when its spirit has to come through, when it must choose the future over the past, when it must make its own change from the bottom up," he recently told an adoring audience in Virginia.

The spirit of the age channeled by Obama is a sentimental version of utopian socialism. Yet his followers, more religious devotees than electoral supporters, are not so concerned with the content of his world view as with the vibrancy of his essence.

We haven't seen its equal since John and Jackie Kennedy's Camelot, but well grounded citizens must remember that Camelot is almost as mythical as Utopia. We can only hope (pardon the expression) that by November 2008 enough voters will be sufficiently mature to look beyond childish fairy tales and the imaginings of John Lennon dreamers and elect a president who understands the real world with all its practical challenges and jagged terrors.

It is the existence of these challenges and terrors that makes the prospect of an imagination-driven postmodern Obama presidency so frightening.

This issue becomes clear when considering the political implications of this world view. Dr. Mary Klages, associate professor of English at University of Colorado, Boulder, says, in Literary Theory: A Guide for the Perplexed (Continuum Press, January 2007):

"There are lots of questions to be asked about postmodernism, and one of the most important is about the politics involved — or, more simply, is this movement toward fragmentation, provisionality, performance, and instability something good or something bad?"

Dr. Klages says that one of the consequences of postmodernism seems to be the rise of Muslim fundamentalism, "as a form of resistance to [postmodernism's] questioning of the 'grand narratives' of religious truth."

"This association between the rejection of postmodernism and ... fundamentalism may explain in part why the postmodern avowal of fragmentation and multiplicity tends to attract liberals and radicals. This is why, in part, feminist theorists have found postmodernism so attractive...," she says.

"On another level, however, postmodernism seems to offer some alternatives to joining the global culture of consumption, where commodities and forms of knowledge are offered by forces far beyond any individual's control. These alternatives focus on thinking of any and all action (or social struggle) as necessarily local, limited, and partial — but nonetheless effective. By discarding 'grand narratives' (like the liberation of the entire working class) and focusing on specific local goals (such as improved day care centers for working mothers in your own community), postmodernist politics offers a way to theorize local situations as fluid and unpredictable, though influenced by global trends. Hence the motto for postmodern politics might well be 'think globally, act locally' — and don't worry about any grand scheme or master plan."

Here is why a nation with Obama as president will be in such mortal danger. It is because we currently face determined enemies which have a well-honed grand scheme / master plan and are highly motivated to carry it out. Dreamers imagining us "living for today" in a "brotherhood of man" are no match for enemies such as these, who have no interest whatsoever in brotherhood with those who imagine no heaven, no hell and no religion. (They decapitate and vaporize those who imagine such things, even if only in cartoons.) Lennon- and Obama-inspired dreamers are "blind as they can be" nowhere men, seeing only what they want to see.

* * * * *

Audaciously Hopeful Postscript: Imagine there's no John Lennon; it's easy if you try. He's in hell below us. What a sorry guy!"

Defying Self-interest: GOP Politics in 2008

2008-02-06T20:30:00.000-08:00

By Garry J. Moes

There are two perplexing examples in modern life of people acting against what Lord Woodhouselee in 1836 called democracy’s "predominant principle of self-interest." One is why battered women tend to stay with the men that batter them. The other is the voting habits of Republicans.

With the tide of Super Tuesday now receding into the sea, the footprints of anything conservative on American political shores seem all but effaced. The Republican Party can no longer credibly be called a conservative party if its members continue to be so blind to conservative principles or to the blessings which these principles have provided to the nation’s best interests. In the words of the new Pepsi Max advertising slogan: "Wake Up, People!"

Will somebody please tell me what is the attraction of this crabby old curmudgeon John McCain. Clearly, there is no attraction other than that the GOP (Good Old Pals) Establishment continues to do what it always does — reward the next stalwart in line, oblivious to the nation’s needs and the current political climate and careless of the consequences for both the party and the nation. Welcome back, Bob Dole! We sure enjoyed your delightful campaign back in the day when the country was whooping it up with the Good Time Charlie from Arkansas, hoping to go on sinning with impunity like he was. That sure was great how you zinged the Clintons with your wit and war record. And we were sure that, with your Viagra and all, you would put Bill’s stuff back in its place. Maybe your reincarnation McCain can put his wife in her place, which won’t be in the kitchen baking cookies. But then, maybe we shouldn’t expect as much from McCain as we did from you, Bob. As Ann Coulter puts it, "John McCain is Bob Dole minus the charm, conservatism and youth."

If you watch campaign stuff on the TV, you have probably noticed that in just about every appearance of John McCain the Maverick on a stage somewhere, he’s surrounded by some or all of the really hip guys in politics these days — forward-looking, cutting-edge visionaries like John Warner, Lindsey Graham, Jack Kemp, Joe Lieberman, Sam Brownback, Bob Dole, Susan Collins, Olympia Snow, Trent Lott, Gordon Smith, Chuck Hagel and . . . well, just go down the Senate cloakroom list and the roster of the Gang of 14 and the Who’s Who of Washed-up Washington pols and you’ll see what I mean. And look at the conservative stalwarts to whom he has so successfully reached out to accomplish great bipartisan boons for the nation, guys like Russ Feingold and Teddy Kennedy. As one blogger so aptly put it, "It never ceases to amaze me how Republicans can keep recycling the same old warhorses, no matter what kind of . . . universal disapprobation they receive from the outside world." (To be sure, there’s that other Kennedy, Maria Shriver, who doesn’t like McCain so much, having now endorsed Barack Obama. But then there’s her husband, Arnold, the Terminator of all things conservative on the Left Coast, who thinks McCain’s the Man.) As one commentator on The Hotline put it: "McCain thinks he was doomed by a powerful, insular cabal of Republican insiders [in 2000], so he's building a powerful, insular cabal of his own. . . . McCain is running a 2000 strategy in a 2008 world. Once again, he'll likely discover his misfire two years too late."

The Hotline blogger went on to ask, "What happens when the establishment leads in a direction the grassroots won't follow? You have full scale revolts over issues like immigration...." We can only hope! I’m more worried right now about what happens when the grass-lacking-roots just happily follows along with the Big Tent Establishment down the broad primrose path that leadeth to destruction — the destruction of the golden conservative truth and disintegration of the national foundations that will surely follow.

Okay, conservative Republican voters, which of these McCain positions has you so enamored with him:

Supports expanded prescription drug coverage under Medicare.
Supports stem cell research on embryonic stem cells.
Would relax restrictions barring legal immigrants from using social programs (e.g. public housing, food stamps).
The United States should maintain its financial support of the United Nations and commit troops to United Nations peacekeeping missions.
Does not agree that a nation's human rights record should affect its normal trade relations (most favored nation) status with the United States. Trade agreements should not include provisions to protect workers' rights.
The United States should not grant law enforcement agencies greater discretion to read mail and e-mail, tap phones, and conduct random searches to prevent future terrorist attacks.
The Guantanamo Bay detention camp for terrorists should be closed, and virtually no physical coercion should ever be used to extract information from our bloodthirsty enemies.
Supports increased funding for child care programs.
Supports housing assistance for low-income families.
Supports austere global warming legislation.
Opposes oil independence that could come from extracting America’s own vast, vast oil resources when they lie under a far-flung seldom-seen frozen land crust in the world’s far north.
I could to on....

Hillary Clinton, if she is the Democratic nominee, will make mincemeat of old McCain as her husband did of old Dole. If Obama poses the opposition, old vet McCain will become a laughingstock among the young builders of the new Black Camelot into which the White House will be transformed. The Grand OLD Party doesn’t seem to have tumbled onto the fact that there is a motivated new generation of citizens who have been schooled their whole lives in the world-view of their molders from the Fabian Socialist government school system. These are the children of the children of the Sixties, who spit upon those warmongers who traumatized the good people of Vietnam, even including those like McCain who were traumatized right back by the good people of Vietnam. This generation of leftists and their progeny, of course, never need true answers or intelligent thought, logic or ideas. They just know their feelings must lean left or they will lose their balance, and whoever can make their feelings swoon will have their swooning support in return.

Still — may God so grant — there must be enough real Americans out there who can recognize a proven American idea, give it some real weight in the midst of a blathering election campaign and throw their support to someone who is willing to communicate it forthrightly. I think Mitt Romney could still do so if he could stop being distracted by the urge to gut-fight his gut-fight-baiting opposition and if some conscience-stricken evangelicals could get past his Mormonism to see his admirable understanding of religious freedom. ("Conscience is that still, small voice that is sometimes too loud for comfort," one Bert Murray (?) once said.)

Could we start (quickly, please), perhaps, with Newt Gingrich’s "American Solutions for Winning the Future" and identify a solid, winning individual to run with these ideas, even if it means as an independent presidential candidate, or someone bold enough to be willing to say, "I will lead a new Conservative Party for these United States." I am convinced there is no better year for an independent to actually win the White House. In fact, it may take Newt himself to salvage conservatism in the mainstream of American politics. I like what Michael Reagan wrote last month on the subject:

Who is advocating common sense solutions to the most pressing problems America faces?
Newt Gingrich, that's who. He was out of the race for a long time; he toyed with the idea of running until Fred Thompson entered the race; and then he more or less pulled back. Why Newt? Ask yourself why Ronald Reagan won. He won because he was able to excite a group of people in America that the liberal wing of the Republican Party has never excited – the grass roots.
Newt Gingrich is the last Republican to do that — to reach out to the grass roots, to all those conservative Republicans and Reagan Democrats. Remember, it was Newt who engineered the miraculous Republican takeover of Congress in 1994 — something that was deemed impossible two years after Bill Clinton won the White House.
I wouldn't be surprised if he was out there quietly working the phones and hoping for a wide-open convention where the delegates, and not the primaries that selected many of them, decide for themselves who they want to carry the GOP banner in the presidential election in November.
If Newt throws his hat in the ring he knows that in the blink of an eye he's got the grass roots behind him.

Did I see an eye blink? I’m in. Don’t let my winter-browned lawn fool you. My grass still has roots. Does yours?

Conservatism is a Tower of Babel

2007-10-27T10:45:00.000-07:00

By Patrick J. Buchanan

"I was conservative yesterday, I'm a conservative today, and I will be a conservative tomorrow," declared Fred Thompson to the Conservative Party of New York, billing himself as the "consistent conservative" in the GOP race – in contrast to ex-mayor Rudy Giuliani.

In his defense, Rudy cites George Will as calling his eight years in office in the Big Apple the most conservative city government in 50 years.

And, truth be told, Thompson was reliably conservative in his Senate years. But so, too, has John McCain been, and Ron Paul, Duncan Hunter and Tom Tancredo. Hunter, however, splits with Thompson and McCain on trade. Paul disagrees with all six of them on the war. And Tancredo assails McCain for backing Bush's amnesty for 12 million to 20 million illegal aliens.

Will the real conservative please stand up? Or perhaps we should recall John 14:2, "In my father's house there are many mansions."

What does it mean to be a conservative – in 2007?

Sixty years ago, Robert A. Taft was the gold standard. Forty years ago, it was Barry Goldwater, who backed Bob Taft against Ike at the 1952 convention. Twenty years ago, it was Ronald Reagan, who backed Barry in 1964. Reagan remains the paragon – for the consistency of his convictions, the success of his presidency and the character he exhibited to the end of his life. About Reagan the cliché was true: The greatness of the office found out the greatness in the man.

Reagan defined conservatism for his time. And the issues upon which we agreed were anti-communism, a national defense second to none, lower tax rates to unleash the engines of economic progress, fiscal responsibility, a strict-constructionist Supreme Court, law and order, the right-to-life from conception on and a resolute defense of family values under assault from the cultural revolution that hit America with hurricane force in the 1960s.

With the collapse of the Soviet Empire and the breakup of the Soviet Union, anti-communism as the defining and unifying issue of the right was gone. The conservative crack-up commenced.

With George H.W. Bush came the advent of what Fred Barnes of the New Republic hailed as Big Government Conservatism. Some thought the phrase oxymoronic. But when Bush stood at the rostrum of the U.N. General Assembly in October 1991 to declare that America's cause was the creation of a New World Order, the old right reached reflexively for their revolvers.

In 1992, with foreign policy off the table, the Bush economic record a perceived failure and Ross Perot running on protectionism and populism, Bush refused to play his trump card with the Clintons: the social and moral issues he and Lee Atwater had use to beat Michael Dukakis senseless in 1988. And so, George H.W. Bush lost the presidency.

Now, 15 years later, what does it mean to be a conservative?

There is no pope who speaks ex cathedra. There is no bible to consult, like Goldwater's "The Conscience of a Conservative" or Reagan's "no-pale-pastels" platform of 1980. At San Diego in 1996, Bob Dole told his convention he had not bothered to read the platform. Many who heard him did not bother to vote for Bob Dole.

And so, today, the once-great house of conservatism is a Tower of Babel. We are big government and small government, traditionalist and libertarian, tax-cutter and budget hawk, free trader and economic nationalist. Bush and McCain support amnesty and a "path to citizenship" for illegals. The country wants the laws enforced and a fence on the border.

And Rudy? A McGovernite in 1972, he boasted in the campaign of 1993 that he would "rekindle the Rockefeller, Javits, Lefkowitz tradition" of New York's GOP and "produce the kind of change New York City saw with ... John Lindsay." He ran on the Liberal Party line and supported Mario Cuomo in 1994.

Pro-abortion, anti-gun, again and again he strutted up Fifth Avenue in the June Gay Pride parade and turned the Big Apple into a sanctuary city for illegal aliens. While Ward Connerly goes state to state to end reverse discrimination, Rudy is an affirmative-action man.

Gravitating now to Rudy's camp are those inveterate opportunists, the neocons, who see in Giuliani their last hope of redemption for their cakewalk war and their best hope for a "Long War" against "Islamo-fascism."

I will, Rudy promises, nominate Scalias. Only one more may be needed to overturn Roe. And I will keep Hillary out of the White House.

A Giuliani presidency would represent the return and final triumph of the Republicanism that conservatives went into politics to purge from power. A Giuliani presidency would represent repudiation by the party of the moral, social and cultural content that, with anti-communism, once separated it from liberal Democrats and defined it as an institution.

Rudy offers the Right the ultimate Faustian bargain: retention of power at the price of one's soul.

The True Cost Of The Global Warming Farce

2007-10-19T16:09:00.000-07:00

By Sen. Tom McClintock
California State Senate

The following is an excerpt from a speech that was delivered to the Western Conservative Political Action Conference on October 12, 2007 in Newport Beach, Calif.

Last year, in the name of saving the planet from global warming, California adopted the most radically restrictive legislation anywhere in the nation, including Assembly Bill 32, which requires a 25 percent reduction in man-made carbon dioxide emissions within 13 years.

To put this in perspective, we could junk every car in the state of California RIGHT NOW – and not meet this mandate.

Californians just approved $40 billion of bonds that California’s political leaders promised would be used for highways, dams, aqueducts and other capital improvements. They are desperately needed.

But at the same time, those same political leaders have imposed a 25 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions.

Now here’s the problem. Building highways, dams and aqueducts requires tremendous amounts of concrete, the principle ingredient of which is cement.

How is cement produced? It is produced by taking limestone and super-heating it into a molten state – it comes out the other side as a compound called clinker. Clinker is about 2/3 the weight of the original limestone. The missing 1/3 of that weight is carbon dioxide. And when you include the emissions required to superheat the limestone, it turns out that for every ton of cement, a TON of carbon dioxide is released. It’s the third biggest source of carbon dioxide in all human enterprise.

But now we have a law that specifically forbids us from doing so. That was the essence of the Jerry Brown lawsuits against new highway projects that were part of the summer budget impasse.

Citing AB 32, Brown argued that unless the counties could show how they would build highways without using earthmoving equipment or concrete – and that once built, that people would not drive automobiles on them – the only legal use of the funds would be to promote mass transit, transit villages – and I’m not making this up – pedestrian trails and bicycle paths.

So much for construction.

Agriculture is in big trouble, too.

You can start with nitrogen fertilizer, which is a critical component of all agricultural activity. Unfortunately, it produces large amounts of nitrous oxide, another so-called greenhouse gas that must be radically curtailed in California.

The wine industry is also in for a shock. Fermentation of wine occurs when a molecule of glucose in the grapes is converted into EQUAL PARTS of alcohol and Carbon Dioxide.

But the biggest agricultural impact is the administration’s mandate for heavily subsidized use of ethanol fuel. Ethanol is produced in exactly the same way as the alcohol in wine: the glucose in corn is converted into equal parts of ethyl alcohol and CARBON DIXOIDE.

Following AB 32, the governor’s appointees on the California Air Resources Board imposed a requirement that ALL gasoline sold in California within THREE YEARS, must be comprised of at least TEN PERCENT ethanol, doubling the current mandate.

Now think about this: an acre of corn produces about 350 gallons of ethanol. There are 15 billion gallons of gasoline used in California each year. In order to meet the ten percent requirement in three years, it means converting 4.3 million acres of farmland to ethanol production. Now that’s a lot of farmland, considering that we have a total of 11 million acres producing any kind of crops.

Current ethanol mandates are already producing serious shortages in other parts of the world, as farmland that had been producing food shifts to ethanol to chase hundreds of millions of dollars of government subsidies coming out of your pocket. There were riots in Mexico earlier this year in response to spiraling tortilla prices.

And we’re seeing this across the board – including commodities like milk and beef that are responding to increased prices for corn feed. And as you see your grocery prices rise as a result of this policy, just be glad you’re not in the Third World. Food is a relatively small portion of the family incomes in affluent nations, but they consume more than half of family earnings in third world countries.

So when the global warming alarmists predict worldwide starvation, they’re right. They’re creating it.

In Praise of Xenophobia

2007-07-19T15:47:00.000-07:00

By Garry J. Moes

"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation...." — Abraham Lincoln

Though not often the focus of analyses of the Gettysburg Address, those last three words — "a new nation" — have significance. They signify, that is, that America, upon its founding, was something innovative and unique in the history of nations. It had from the outset, as Alexander Hamilton noted, a particular "national spirit and a national character" — a complexion so vastly worth having that virtually any sacrifice could be afforded for its development and preservation.

This fact is rapidly being driven to the nether lands of our present national consciousness as our cultural elite vigorously propound a philosophy of multiculturalism and contend for policies of borderlessness and unconditional immigration. The multicultural ethos urges us to unreservedly embrace all traditions, value systems, and world views and the sojourners who come here while steadfastly maintaining their former civic spirit and character. Those who seek to advance this ethos are fond of citing parts of the inscription on the tablet of the Statue of Liberty ("Give me your ... huddled masses...) as if it were an utterly open invitation to all comers without restriction, ignoring that this inscription, when read in its entirety and intended context, is an invitation to absorption into the considered liberties of that unique American system alluded to by Hamilton and others of our Founding Fathers. Rather then extending an unconditional embrace to immigrants who desire to maintain a native disposition alien to the American spirit and character, our approach should be to embrace the notion once put forth by American social philosopher Eric Hoffer when he argued, "America needs new immigrants to love and cherish it" (The New York Times Magazine, April 25, 1971, p. 25).

Theodore Roosevelt proffered that "Every man has a right to one country." Note carefully: a right to "one country."

"He has a right to love and serve that country and to feel that it is absolutely his country and that he has in it every right possessed by anyone else," Roosevelt said in 1918 during the closing months of America’s war with the German-led Axis Powers (Kansas City Star, July 15, p. 2). "It is our duty to require the man of German blood who is an American citizen to give up all allegiance to Germany wholeheartedly and without on his part any mental reservation whatever. If he does that it becomes no less our duty to give him the full rights of an American, including our loyal respect and friendship without on our part any mental reservation whatever. The duties are reciprocal, and from the standpoint of American patriotism one is as important as the other."

George Washington put it another way when he said, "The bosom of America is open to receive [all], whom we shall wellcome to a participation of all our rights and previleges, if by decency and propriety of conduct they appear to merit the enjoyment" (emphasis added).

In 1802, Hamilton wrote: "The safety of a republic depends essentially on the energy of a common national sentiment; on a uniformity of principles and habits; on the exemption of the citizens from foreign bias and prejudice; and on that love of country which will almost invariably be found to be closely connected with birth, education and family" (quoted by Michelle Malkin, "The Importance of Assimilation," The Washington Times, July 9, 2007).

Hamilton also warned that "The United States have already felt the evils of incorporating a large number of foreigners into their national mass; by promoting in different classes different predilections in favor of particular foreign nations, and antipathies against others, it has served very much to divide the community and to distract our councils. It has been often likely to compromise the interests of our own country in favor of another. The permanent effect of such a policy will be, that in times of great public danger there will be always a numerous body of men of whom there may be just grounds of distrust; the suspicion alone will weaken the strength of the nation, but their force may be actually employed in assisting an invader. ... To admit foreigners indiscriminately to the rights of citizens the moment they put foot in our country would be nothing less than to admit the Grecian horse into the citadel of our liberty and sovereignty." (ibid.)

What then is the "common national sentiment," the "uniformity of principles and habits," the "national spirit and national character," that constitute the uniquely American world view from which our culture grew?

"The study of the historical development of civilization and culture is a study of world view," writes Jay Rogers ("Whatever Happened to Western Civilization," The Forerunner). "World view is defined as the basic presuppositions of a people in a given society; how they look at life; and the basic truths which form their values and beliefs. When we look at any civilization or culture, it is as though we are looking at a vast tapestry made up of many intertwining threads. The picture formed by this tapestry symbolizes the world view of that civilization's culture."

Today’s multiculturalist and xenophoric "Americans" deny that there is such a thing as a uniquely American world view or at least that there should be such a thing. Yet their unflagging exertions to destroy the "citadel of our liberty and sovereignty" only prove that it exists or once did.

The American cultural ideal has some roots, of course, in the broader category we call "Western civilization."

"The campaign against Western culture — sometimes called multiculturalism — is not simply a call for equal time for other cultures that make up the world," says Rogers. "Clearly this would be a noble cause. Yet more often than not the champions of multiculturalism promote an accompanying disdain for the values and beliefs that have sustained Western culture. Nobody knows for sure exactly what these people are so angry about. And even more baffling to the casual observer, there seems to be no certain agenda for reform except a destructive nihilism.

"But let us propose that behind the diatribe against Western culture is an attack on the religious faith that has characterized the West. Indeed the basic theme of multiculturalism is as much anti-Christian as anti-Western. At the root of the attack on Western civilization in America is a more subtle attempt to discredit Christianity."

But Western civilization is itself somewhat of a paradoxical amalgam, assimilating some of the ancient Greco-Roman world view along with the Judeo-Christian world view. These two systems were in many respects fundamentally at odds with each other, especially at their religious cores.

The American system, though it developed in the context of broader Western system, found its fundamental character in the Protestant Reformation, particularly in the understandings of the Calvinist Puritans and Scottish Covenantal Presbyterians, such as John Witherspoon, a signer of the Declaration of Independence whose sermons and writings were perhaps the leading doctrinal inspiration for the Revolution. There can be no doubt that proponents of the humanist Enlightenment sought to contribute their comprehensions to the development of the American system, but the foundations and most of the superstructure of the emerging American polity reflected the Presbyterian paradigm. Calvinist models are credited with playing a a role in shaping the American political structure with its recognition of basic human depravity, its consequent system of checks and balances, separation of powers, and constitutional limits to authority.

Growing out of Luther’s discovery of the doctrine of the "priesthood of all believers," the Puritan civil polity, which gave the world its first representative, parliamentary democracy, saw that human governing authority comes from God the Father, through His Son Jesus Christ (who was given "all authority in heaven and on earth by reason of His obedience to the Father’s redemptive plan), directly to the federal head of each human family. There was no divine right of kings to rule, and there was no sacerdotal priest to intervene as a mediary in the rule of men, but God’s authority (His law) was to be exercised on earth by patriarchal individuals at the foundational level of society. Families thus governed formed the local community, and communities combined to form the whole society, the greater society being governed by representatives of the decentralized community of families. In short, those who govern do so by consent of the governed who, in turn, get their authority as an endowment by their Creator, to whom all authorities owe their allegiance and gratitude. This concept was a death blow to top-down authoritarianism, despotism and hierarchical priestly rule, all of which were anathema to the society sired by the American Revolution.

While it would take volumes to fully describe the comprehensive nature of the American system, this fundamental element is clearly at odds with virtually all competing world views. Thus any ascendency of those competing world views in America would constitute catastrophic trauma to the system which has produced the world’s and history’s most successful, productive and highly sought society.

It would also take volumes to compare this system with all other competing systems, but we must at least briefly consider two of its strongest contemporary competitors: Islamism and the Latino world view.

We hardly need to discuss how radically disparate Islamism is from the American set of ideals and common governing principles. There could hardly be two more divergent world views, and it should be abundantly clear that Islamism is a potentially fatal threat to all that our American civilization stands upon and for. For this reason, it must be resisted at all costs, save the sacrifice of our system itself. We must pledge our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor to prevent its ascendancy in our country and its dominance in our world.

The world view of the historically militant and imperialistic version of Islam is universalist and borderless, envisioning a worldwide House of Islam (Dar al-Islam) governed by the revealed law of Allah and demanding pandemic submission to its demands and principles, with death to all who resist.

Islamic scholar Mohammed Salam Madkoar notes that "Islamic Law is very different from English Common Law or the European Civil Law traditions."

"To understand Islamic Law one must first understand the assumptions of Islam and the basic tenets of the religion," Madkoar says. "The meaning of the word Islam is ‘submission or surrender to Allah's (God's) will.’ Therefore, Muslims must first and foremost obey and submit to Allah's will.... The most difficult part of Islamic Law for most westerners to grasp is that there is no separation of church and state. The religion of Islam and the government are one. Islamic Law is controlled, ruled, and regulated by the Islamic religion. The theocracy controls all public and private matters. Government, law, and religion are one. There are varying degrees of this concept in many nations, but all law, government and civil authority rests upon it and it is a part of Islamic religion."

Though less dire in its consequences than Islam, the world view of Latin America is also problematic as its influence spreads through North American culture. Again, as always, this world view has its basis in religion, and at its heart is the concept of sacerdotalism, a doctrine basic to the Roman Catholicism which has molded Latin American culture. "Sacerdotalism is the establishment of a rigid hierarchy that separates man from God, the interjection of a ‘priestly’ class between man and God, through whom the ‘layman’ must go to reach God" (William A. Simpson). Carlyle viewed this doctrine as the polar opposite of Puritanism.

A sacerdotal mindset gives rise to a polity in which a hierarchical government is the foundation of society. It is predisposed to the maternalism of the socialist state. "In Latin America, the female runs the household. She educates the children and manages the finances. As a result, the Latin American family is matriarchal. Whereas the father is distant, the mother is ‘linked with love and proximity’ and has a greater influence on the children" (One Hundred Years of Solitude/Cien Anos de Soledad : The Buendía Family).

This foundational aspect of Latin American culture has vast implications for change as its influence spreads throughout traditional North American culture. It is a foreign element which can elementally altar this nation. We could go on to discuss the vast differences in historical experience, linguistic understanding, and institutional memories of Latin America and the United States.

Without going into further comparative detail, let it suffice to say that if we are to preserve our admirable character as an American nation and culture, we must be vigilant in examining the influences and impulses which may be anathema to our common spirit. For this reason, we may rightly be xenophobic. We must hasten to say that we do not fear foreigners per se. Indeed, we may welcome foreigners who yearn to embrace our founding principles and contribute their own hues to our already colorful national complexion — those immigrants who, in Eric Hoffer’s words, will "love and cherish it."

My family once emigrated to Sweden for two years. During that time, we shared our American values and traditions, much to the delight (and sometimes curiosity) of friends and neighbors in our temporarily adopted country. But we did not strive to fundamentally alter the culture of our host nation. Indeed, we acquired many delightful traditions there which we carried home to America and still enjoy to our greater delight and human vision without submerging our native spirit.

While we as Americans do not fear foreigners, we should fear that which is foreign, i.e., destructively alien, to our national character. We have every reason to delight in our American heritage, for it has fostered the most cherished and brilliant form of human existence, liberty and creativity the world has ever known. We are well disposed to share these blessings with all who would embrace them, and have every right to require that they learn and absorb them into their own lives. But we are equally justified in standing firm against all who wish to smother or dismantle them in favor of a strange spirit.

E pluribus unum!

Faint, Yet Pursuing

2007-07-03T12:19:00.000-07:00

By Garry J. Moes

I write this while visiting the home of my son-in-law and daughter, Maj. Mark and Shiloh Hand, at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center in Twentynine Palms, California. My family and I have come here for the base’s big Fourth of July celebration, in the expectation that one could hardly find a better place to celebrate Independence Day. Mark, who has spent two lengthy tours of duty in Iraq, is now in the field here at this Mojave Desert base coordinating a training program for Iraqi military trainers. He’s a remarkable leader both on the field of earthly battle and in spiritual warfare.

Yesterday, after returning from a late-night session wisely mediating a conflict in his church, he introduced me to an old devotional book, Morning Exercises for the Closet for Every Day of the Year, written in the early 19th century by a British cleric, the Rev. William Jay (1769-1853). While he is not well known, some consider him second only to Charles Spurgeon among English preachers. This devotional book, companion of Jay’s Evening Exercises..., is reminiscent of Spurgeon’s classic Morning and Evening devotional book.

On the eve of the annual celebration of our nation’s independence, I am perusing Jay’s meditations for July 3 and 4, brief studies of a phrase in the Old Testament book of Judges, chapter 8, verse 4: "Faint, yet pursuing." The passage concerns a reluctant but obedient military leader of the ancient Hebrews, Gideon.

Jay’s devotionals for July 3 and 4, although written as an exercise of encouragement for spiritual warfare, contain language which I find to be a remarkable admonition for our country in the present prosecution of the war against the implacable enemies of both our faith and our cherished civilization.

Following are excerpts which should be taken to heart by our citizens and our leaders in this critical time when many are more inclined to faint than to pursue:

-------------

[July 3] — What war is there that has in it nothing to depress, nothing to animate, and that does not furnish a diversity of feelings in those who carry it on?

Yes; while engaged in this good fight ... they may be faint. We need not wonder at this, if we consider the enemies they have to vanquish. ... If we also consider the qualities of their adversaries, their number, their malignity, their power, their policy, their success, for they have cast down many mighty, yea, many strong men have been slain by them. When we think of the heroes, the statesmen, the princes, the philosophers, the divines and all the myriads they have enslaved and destroyed, who is not ready to tremble, and exclaim, "I shall one day perish!"

There is also the length of service. It is not for a season only, but for life. We are not allowed to receive any proposals of peace. We cannot enter into a truce, no, not even to bury the dead. Let the dead bury the dead. We are to fight on through summer and winter, by day and night, in every situation and condition. He that endureth to the end, the same only shall be saved. ... While we are here, something is still to be done, something still to be avoided....

There are also occasional difficulties too common to be overlooked. It is easy to suppose a few of them. What marvel if the soldier is faint, when the road is rough and thorny, and the weather is warm and oppressive — and he hungers and thirsts for want of seasonable refreshments and supplies, which are interrupted, if not cut off — and he feels a loss of strength, occasioned by a wound from without, or an indisposition from within? ...

And if this, therefore, be my experience, let me remember that there is nothing ominous nor even peculiar in it. ... And let me be thankful that to will is present with me, though how to perform that which is good I find not. If I faint, I do not flee. Faint, yet PURSUING.

[July 4] — ... There is ... much to eoncourage [us] in [our] cause. It is a good warfare. It will bear examination. Conscience entirely approves of it. ... There is therefore nothing to make us waver or hesitate. Every thing in the conflict feeds courage. We ought to engage and persevere. It is the cause of truth, of righteousness, of glory, of real glory....

And let me think of the certainty of the issue. Fear unnerves; but it would make a hero of a coward to assure him in the conflict that he should overcome. This can rarely or never be done in other [than spiritual] contentions, for nothing is so doubtful as the result of battle. Prudence therefore says, Let not him that putteth on the harness boast himself like him that putteth it off. ... [Yet] however trying or lengthened the struggle may be, he fights not uncertainly. Yea, in all these things we are more than conquerors.

--------------
Jay’s words found an echo when Francis Scott Key penned the fourth stanza of The Star Spangled Banner:

Then conquer we must, when our cause is just,
And this be our motto: "In God is our trust."
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

What Floats Your Boat?

2007-06-21T09:57:00.000-07:00

By Graham H. Moes
Graybrook Film Critic

If environmentalism is the religion of liberals -- complete with end-times prophecies, carbon offset indulgences for “sins” and Al Gore’s scriptures on hotel nightstands -- the Church of Green can now boast its own Noah account in Evan Almighty.

The crazy thing is, many broad-minded Christians can lay claim to Universal's biblical comic epic too.

Yes, in terms of its worldview, Evan Almighty might be the oddest bird caught on film since that seagull Randy Johnson obliterated with a fastball a few years ago.

On the one hand, it’s a by-the-numbers, mostly liberal message movie that elevates urban sprawl to the 8th Deadly Sin. Think "Jonah and the Whale" re-told as "Free Willy."

On the other hand, it’s predicated on the freestanding premise God is real, loves His creatures and demands their service in a universe He fully controls.

Steve Carell (The Office, 40 Year Old Virgin) reprises his supporting role as news anchor Evan Baxter from Bruce Almighty. Recently elected to congress on a "change the world" slogan, Evan moves into a massive new housing development for the super rich in Virginia with his wife Joan (Joan of ARK, get it?) and three sons.

Overwhelmed by the task, he prays God will show him how to make good on his campaign promise. In the film's funniest sequence, God shows up -- again and again and again -- to hammer home His reply that Evan is to hammer up a massive ark, on-load the animals He'll send, and prepare for a second flood intended to wipe the once pristine valley clean of the encroaching works of man.

In a plot lifted directly from Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the increasingly driven neo-Noah throws himself into the mission from God, to the horror of his coworkers, ridicule of his constituents and abandonment by his wife.

The subplot, lifted directly from Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, involves Evan being used by a senior congressman to launch a bill allowing residential construction in our national parks.

When it works, which if more often than not, the film has Steve Carell to thank.

The endearing dopiness that drives his Office persona powers the subplot -- essentially a series of sequences in which he morphs from GQ congressman to Geico Caveman to Gandalf the Burlap in a matter of days, all the while dodging all creatures great and small as they track him two-by-two around the beltway.

(The very thought of Jim Carrey hamming it up past the punchline in this role makes me cringe.)

Carell's other mode, the pie-eyed earnestness that barely salvaged 40 Year Old Virgin, delivers the A-storyline, a funny, family friendly, cynicism-free affair that almost makes Leave it to Beaver seem sordid in comparison.

This movie is clearly post-Passion of the Christ. The questionable premise and morally iffy gags that put Bruce Almighty beyond the reach of many Christians has been replaced by a genuine attempt at affirming our faith.

That said, it's largely the shiny happy "seeker sensitive" version of Christianity presented. Easy on the fire and brimstone, extra rainbow please.

God all but apologizes for the big misunderstanding last time he flooded earth. Forget all that "wrath" talk. Really it was all about bringing folks closer: Noah's family coming together on a nautical family project, the animals arriving all two-by-two and cozy-like, etc.

"Ark," in fact, turns out to be an acronym for "Act of Random Kindness."

Nor, it seems, is Jehovah concerned for His glory first and foremost. He does everything because He loves us and wants us to be in communion with Him. That happens to be a major debate in the church today, actually. And in this respect, Evan Almighty is more Joel Osteen than St. Augustine.

Then again, Christians of every stripe will warm to the unprecedented depiction of a man standing before the unbelieving world, compelled by God to play the holy fool. Much like the original Noah must have done. Sure, Paul Scofield did it in 1966's A Man for All Seasons, but here, smack dab in the middle of a 2007 summer blockbuster comedy? Fairly unusual.

I'll leave it at that. As comedy, it has its moments despite running out of gas a bit early. As spectacle, it delivers a nice ride in the third act. (Can't wait to see a historical epic on the original Noah now.) As theology... Eh. Not so much.

Bottom line, how this film floats your boat will depend on the degree to which you hold your political and doctrinal standards close. Either way, the debate to come as this one hits screens should be interesting.

Dark Visions

2007-05-09T14:13:00.000-07:00

I have previously posted commentary by a Romanian relief worker and visionary, Michael Boldea, Jr., who, like his late grandfather, seems to have unique and curious insights concerning the future, especially as it relates to coming judgments for the United States and the West. I am posting his latest vision, which had special impact when, shortly after reading it, I came across a secular expert's predictions, which I reproduce below the Boldea comments. – GJM

* * * * *

A New War Is Coming
By Michael Boldea Jr.
Hand of Help Ministries

Jeremiah 50:22, “A sound of battle is in the land, and of great destruction.”

James 5:8, “You also be patient. Establish your hearts, for the coming of the Lord is at hand.”

One of the most important lessons I learned as a young man traveling with my grandfather, as being his interpreter, is that one must always prepare for battle, before he is faced with it. Just as a soldier must know the weapons of his warfare, train with them, and be comfortable with them, so must a servant of God know his weapons and prepare himself before he ventures out into enemy territory. It was so ingrained in me that a servant of God must be prayed up and fasted up before he goes out to minister that, before every tour I begin, I take a couple weeks to simply fast and pray and draw close to God and see what He would have me share at the upcoming meetings.

I was still in Romania the first few days of February, about halfway through a two-week fast, when after having spent some time in prayer, I went to bed and fell into a restful sleep. Sometime during the night, I began to dream. I dreamt I was hearing what were at first faint hoof beats, but the closer they got, the louder they grew, until it was a thundering roar of not one or two horses but what seemed like hundreds. I felt as though the ground beneath me was shaking from the onrushing horses, and the sound of them became so loud that I suddenly awoke in my bed. As I blinked a few times, adjusting to the darkness in my room, I noticed a shadow at the foot of my bed. I blinked again, and there stood the same man I have seen on previous occasions, dressed in battle armor, his hands resting atop each other before him on the hilt of his sword.

“What is the meaning of what I just dreamt?” I asked, somehow knowing he had come to give me the interpretation.

“What you heard,” he began, “were the chariots of war, and they are swiftly approaching. A new war is coming, but it will be unlike this present one (emphasis added). Speak as you have spoken, pray as you have prayed, and walk as you have walked for dark days will soon come upon the land to which you are returning. Even now their enemies plot, even now their enemies unite under one banner, and soon they will make their intentions known to the world. There is no refuge but in the Father, and He will guide and protect those who know His voice.”

I blinked again, and the man was gone, and I was left to ponder the words I had heard. I struggled with whether I should make this dream public, for I know the reaction that some will have to it, and the last thing I desire is to stir fear in the heart of any man. After much prayer, I felt I was supposed to publish the dream, and though some may receive it as a reason to fear, the true children of God will receive it for what it was, the forewarning of a loving Father, preparing His children for what is to come. God’s desire for us is not ignorance, but rather knowledge, that we may prepare our hearts, in prayer and fasting, that we may draw closer to Him, that we make Him our place of refuge long before hardship forces us to seek one. The wise man prepares, while the foolhardy is caught unaware.

As always my prayers continue to be with you and yours, and with a grateful heart I thank you for all that you do on behalf of those less fortunate.

Jeremiah 19:15, “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: ‘Behold, I will bring on this city and on all her towns all the doom that I have pronounced against it, because they have stiffened their necks that they might not hear My words.”

(April 6, 2007)

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Expert Predicts 'High Probability' Attacks
By Jim Meyers

NewsMax.com

Tuesday, May 1, 2007

An expert who helped prepare a 1994 report that uncannily predicted the threat terrorists would pose – including key aspects of the 9/11 attacks – now warns of even more ominous attacks.

"Muslim extremists will acquire nuclear weapons within the next 10 years, if they do not possess them already," writes Forecasting International founder and president Marvin Cetron in the new issue of The Futurist magazine.

Cetron played a key role in the 1994 report titled "Terror 2000: the Future Face of Terrorism."

The report was part of a Pentagon sponsored conference that took input from several experts, including Paul Bremer, formerly ambassador-at-large for counterterrorism and administrator of Iraq; Brian Jenkins, now senior vice president at the RAND Corp.; and others.

At the time, the common wisdom was that terrorism was becoming obsolete, for no state would be likely to sponsor future terrorist acts for fear of crippling reprisals.

The authors of the "Terror 2000" report saw it differently. Terrorism, they predicted, would be sponsored not by states but by Muslim extremists motivated by hatred of the West.

Among the particulars, the compilers of the report foresaw a new, more successful attack on the World Trade Center towers, the crash of an airplane into the Pentagon, and the threat of simultaneous assaults on widely separated targets.

Among the particulars, the compilers of the report foresaw a new, more successful attack on the World Trade Center towers, the crash of an airplane into the Pentagon, and the threat of simultaneous assaults on widely separated targets.

The accuracy of that report lends considerable credence to Cetron and his organization, and their new predictions.

"Rather than obtaining nuclear weapons from a sympathetic government, al-Qaida or its spin-offs will likely become the government in any of perhaps a dozen countries," Cetron writes.

"Wherever secular government is weak, it might easily be replaced by a much stronger and more virulently anti-American theocracy with leaders drawn straight from the terrorist movement."

He cites Syria, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Sudan, Iraq and the predominantly Muslim nations of the former Soviet Union.

"However," Cetron notes, "our own choice for ‘most likely to undergo a religious revolution' is Saudi Arabia, where the royal family has supported the extremist Wahhabi sect for some 200 years."

Interestingly, Cetron's report was published before Saudi officials arrested last week 172 militants it claimed were planning massive and coordinated terror attacks at installations, including numerous refineries, across the kingdom.

* * * * *

EDITOR'S NOTE: The first article above is one in a long series of prophetic warnings written by Mr. Boldea and his grandfather, Dumitru Duduman, founder of Hand of Help, a small charitable ministry working with the poorest of the poor in Romania. Both men, over the years, have related a host of dreams and visions in which serious warnngs and calls to repentance have been revealed.

S3 Comes on a Web and a Prayer

2007-05-07T10:39:00.000-07:00

By Graham H. Moes
Graybrook Film Critic

I caught the eleventh-hour press screening of Spider-Man 3 last night, almost literally at the eleventh hour. Spidey geeks camped out for the midnight showing, in fact, glanced up from their trading cards and Game Boys just long enough to give us "VIPs" dirty looks of Venom-like proportions for cutting to the head of the line. Didn't look much happier as we threw them a friendly wave on the way out either.

But on to the movie.

The short version: S3 is somewhere on the upper end of good and the lower end of great. Alright, much lower than great.

Part three of any trilogy is make-or-break time. You either end on a high note (Revenge of the Sith) or drag down the whole shebang (X-Men 3).

Personally, I tend to favor origins stories. Fellowship of the Ring is still tops with me despite Return of the King's superior firepower as spectacle. That's largely how I feel about S3. The effects are better, the story has greater depth, and the themes are deeper. It's just hard to beat the emotional impact and story arc of the "genesis" installment for me.

That, and S3's too-many sources of villainy -- presented sympathetically and connected in loose ways that tend to dissipate much of the tension -- are the biggest negatives. The Sandman looks phenomenal, but it's hard to hate a guy motivated by the love of his daughter the way we could hate the demonic fury of Willem Dafoe in Spider-Man.

But fans of director Sam Raimi's earlier, darker, quirkier career will still appreciate a return to style at times here. A completely random sequence showing the "evil" Peter Parker strutting his sexy stuff on the streets of New York is some of the funniest stuff in the film. A lot of people are hating that exact bit, but it's old school Raimi to the core. (Remember the Three Stooges-esque eye pokes Ash endured in the graveyard during Army of Darkness? Feels a little like that.)

The great and mighty Bruce Campbell makes his usual cameo for Raimi as well, this time as a hilariously over-the-top maître de at a French restaurant. Clearly a better choice for the recent Pink Panther remake, had a remake not been pure blasphemy in the first place.

Oh, did I mention Bryce Dallas Howard? Turns out the daughter of Opie Cunningham is uh...one fine, foxy lady, despite what The Village or Lady in the Water may have led us to believe.

Conservatives too should give this a thumbs up. While hardly a political movie and has no obvious subplot involving, say, a mechanical, multi-tentacled Osama bin Laden, the film never strays from its earnest Red State roots.

Which basically means it doesn't take much to please conservatives anymore.

It's manna from heaven these days when Christianity isn't maligned, when gratuitous jabs at George Bush don't materialize, when the everyman (and everywoman) characters don't shack up, and when the hero somehow manages to speak without a sniff of irony about things like the power of forgiveness and making moral choices in life.

Sure it's a little corny at times, but I like corn.

Superman Returns, you may recall, drew fire for avoiding the Man of Steele's American hero status. (I hear it from my own manager all the time: "It won't play well overseas!") In stark contrast, S3 has Spidey swing into battle framed by a giant American flag.

Happily, that one shot is already irking Eurotrash critics like Leo Lewis at the Times Online, who ends his review with:

"Also disappointing is the inability of the director, Sam Raimi, to end the romp without a fleeting shot of the American flag. The Stars and Stripes just happens to be fluttering behind Spidey as he makes his triumphal return to honour, probity and good honest fist-fighting."

The filmmakers say they weren't trying to say anything with that flag. Could be. Could be they're just smart enough to realize films that do well overseas often don't do well here, where the money actually is.

Still..."I'm a patriotic guy. I do believe it's absolutely true this country strives to do the right thing," said director Sam Raimi during a recent interview with World magazine.

S3 also contains a "conversion" scene of sorts taking place at the foot of a massive cathedral cross. I'll leave it at that.

The film will be a runaway hit regardless of critics' opinions, which are also running strong in S3's favor.And when it is, look for talk of Raimi's involvement in New Line's Hobbit project to heat up too.

The "Law and Order" Candidate

2007-04-26T09:54:00.000-07:00

Back in the Sixties, when the leftist Revolution was moving into violent high gear and the existence of all that we knew as America was clearly being threatened, many of the fearful spoke of the need for "law and order" candidates when the election periods of the 1960s and 1970s rolled around.

So much of what the "Sixties" represented has again become the order of our day, but uneasiness about a looming chaos has been heightened with some very contemporary new threats. Back in the former days, it took a clear-thinking well-spoken actor-statesman, Ronald Reagan, to bring the country back to its roots and senses. Today a similar figure is emerging in the person of Fred Thompson.

Thompson, who has not yet announced his candidacy for president but who looks very much like he will, has given conservatives happy goosebumps and appears to have Reaganesque qualities which could prove unbeatable and, more importantly, just the sort of sincere wisdom that this nation craves in its new hour of need.

We are pleased to reprint here a number of reports and commentaries which we hope will help convince the candadite and the voters that Fred Thompson is the man of the hour. -- GJM

Vote: www.afa.net/petitions/strawpoll/strawpoll.asp

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Thompson Seeing a Green Light on the Right

By Ralph Z. Hallow and Stephen Dinan, The Washington Times

Evidence of former Sen. Fred Thompson’s presidential appeal to victory-seeking conservatives is growing, including drawing more than 50 House Republicans on April 18 to hear his pitch and walking out with some endorsements for the Tennessean.

“When Fred Thompson runs for president, I will endorse him,” said Rep. Jeff Miller of Florida. Rep. Dan Burton of Indiana said Mr. Thompson “is ready, and I want him to run.”

Richard Land, one of the nation’s leading Southern Baptists, told The Washington Times that Mr. Thompson is sure to win if he runs.

“If Fred Thompson enters the race, he will be the odds-on favorite to become the nominee,” said Mr. Land, president of the South Baptist Convention’s Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission. “He will be a formidable candidate in the general election for the presidency.”

The actor-politician has invited Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder to attend any announcement of a presidential candidacy.

Mr. Kinder, a staunch supporter of the Iraq war, noted that “Thompson won both his U.S. Senate races by more than 20 percentage points in a state that Bill Clinton carried twice.”

“Fred Thompson has demonstrated massive crossover appeal [to Democrats and independents] reminiscent of Reagan,” Mr. Kinder said.

Mr. Land and Mr. Kinder’s enthusiasm adds to the conviction among Republican insiders that Mr. Thompson will enter the contest and become a magnet for Iraq war advocates and social conservatives looking for a candidate they can trust.

Mr. Thompson told reporters he was on Capitol Hill to meet old friends and make new ones, but said nothing about his political ambitions.

Rep. Zach Wamp, the Tennessee Republican who organized the meeting, said five of the seven members of the Republican leadership were among the 53 lawmakers who attended. House Minority Leader John A. Boehner of Ohio and Minority Whip Roy Blunt of Missouri did not attend. Mr. Wamp said Mr. Blunt had been scheduled to meet with President Bush.

Not all of the Republicans meeting with Mr. Thompson were ready to make an endorsement. Many said they simply wanted to hear what he had to say. Mr. Thompson had the ear of Rep. Tom Latham of Iowa and Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina, whose states have early primaries or caucuses.

“After seven failed years of George Bush, this party needs somebody who can excite them,” said Rep. Walter B. Jones, North Carolina Republican. He was one of the outspoken conservatives against the Iraq war who attended the Capitol Hill meeting.

Mr. Thompson is a former Watergate prosecutor who plays a minor role as district attorney in the popular TV series “Law & Order.”

Missouri is shaping up to be a battleground for endorsements. Gov. Matt Blunt has endorsed former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney for the Republican presidential nomination. Former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani appeared Saturday at a fundraiser for Mr. Blunt’s father, but the congressman has not publicly endorsed any candidate.

Mr. Land said Mr. Thompson’s wife, Jeri Kehn, telephoned to thank him for a complimentary newspaper column. On April 14, Mr. Thompson phoned to say he wanted Mr. Land present at any campaign kickoff. “No date or time frame was mentioned,” Mr. Land said.

Mr. Land gave a qualified “yes” when asked whether conservative evangelical voters will sit out the 2008 election if none of the candidates shares their values. He said they may participate in elections below the presidential level, but “you will see a significant drop in the turnout among evangelicals.”

Run, Fred, Run

By Cal Thomas

I have no idea whether Fred Thompson, former senator from Tennessee, will run for the Republican nomination for president, but he should.

He has Ronald Reagan's communication skills and speaks plainly in ways most people can understand. Anyone who has listened to him substitute for Paul Harvey on ABC News Radio senses that, in this, he follows in Reagan's footsteps. Radio is an intimate medium. People who are able to connect with a radio audience often can connect on TV and in person. Thompson, the actor, plays other people. On radio and in news interviews, he "plays" himself.

Thompson conveys Middle American, common sense values. When he is asked a question, he doesn't sound as if he's giving a poll-tested pabulum answer. Agree or not, his statements spring from conviction.

In an interview with Fox's Chris Wallace last month, Thompson gave refreshingly direct answers to questions. On Iraq: "We're the leader of the free world whether we like it or not. People are looking to us to test our resolve. People think that if we hadn't gone down there (to Iraq), things would have been lovely. If Saddam Hussein were still around today with his sons looking at Iran developing a nuclear capability, he undoubtedly would have reconstituted his nuclear capability. Things would be worse than they are today."

Yes, we made mistakes in Iraq, Thompson says. "We went in there too light, wrong rules of engagement, wrong strategy, placed too much emphasis on just holding things in place while we built up the Iraqi army, took longer than we figured. Wars are full of mistakes. You rectify things. I think we're doing that now."

Abortion? "Pro-life. I think Roe vs. Wade was bad law and bad medical science. And the way to address that is through good judges."

Gay rights? "I think that we ought to be a tolerant nation. I think we ought to be tolerant people. But we shouldn't set up special categories for anybody. Marriage is between a man and a woman and I don't believe judges ought to come along and change that."

As for "civil unions," Thompson thinks it should be left up to the states.

Gun control? Thompson is "against it generally."

Thompson is a member of the advisory committee for the Libby Legal Defense Trust, which supports Dick Cheney's former chief of staff who is appealing his perjury conviction. Thompson told Wallace if he were president he would pardon Libby immediately: "This is a trial that never would have been brought in any other part of the world. This is a miscarriage of justice."

There's something else to like about Fred Thompson. He doesn't appear to be lusting after the job as if he needs it for his self-image. This, too, is much like Reagan, who knew who he was before becoming president and was the same after he left office.

It is said of Thompson that he has always "answered the call" of his country, whether it was serving as minority counsel to the Senate Watergate Committee, or in other capacities, including United States senator.

Some political "experts" think it is almost too late for any new candidate to announce for president. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich says he intends to wait until September before saying if he will run. Actually, waiting might be the best strategy for these Republicans. Conservative Republicans are restless about what they regard as a weak field. They want someone who can take on Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama and win.

The Time Is Now for Fred Thompson
Dick Morris & Eileen McGann

Saturday, April 21, 2007

NEWSMAX.COM -- For everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven — even a time to declare one's presidential candidacy.

For Fred Thompson, the time is now!

Momentum has been building for Thompson in the past six weeks. If he announces his presidency run in the next few weeks, he will coast easily into a berth in the Republican finals against Rudy Giuliani. But if he delays — as he shows signs of wanting to do — he will miss the boat.

For many candidates, delay means that they don't have to stand out and be targets until later in the game. But for Thompson, delay could be fatal.

The major negative against the former Tennessee senator is that he lacks the heart or the fire in the belly to compete and win.

With Hillary Clinton looming as the expected Democratic nominee, victory is of surpassing importance to the Republican primary electorate. Republicans will not nominate someone who they think is ambivalent about running.

During his Senate tenure, Thompson's work habits were suspect. The New York Times recently (gently) noted that he was not known as one of the hardest working senators. The very fact that he left the Senate after only eight years in office raised suspicions that he was distracted by the allure of Hollywood and the joys of private life.

Too long a delay in announcing his candidacy could fuel such speculation and create a negative that need not exist for the actor-turned-politician-turned-actor.

On paper, Fred Thompson looks like a nominee from, well, central casting. Invoking the legacy of Ronald Reagan, his communications skills hearken back to the era when the GOP right had a president so fluid, silken voiced, and articulate that it could advance its agenda without compromise and still prevail.

With Rudy Giuliani threatening to resurrect Rockefeller Republicanism in a modern incarnation, Thompson offers a refuge for pro-life, pro-gun, anti-gay Republicans.

The recent Supreme Court decision upholding congressional legislation banning partial birth abortion and the tragic shooting at Virginia Tech will both ignite demands on the left for an aggressive drive to protect Roe v. Wade, and to legislate tougher gun controls.

This Democratic offensive puts Rudy Giuliani in the middle and could erode support for his candidacy. On the other hand, it could fire the ranks of true believers and lead them to rally around a Fred Thompson candidacy.

The Fundamentals of Armageddon

2007-04-24T17:38:00.000-07:00

By Garry J. Moes

Fanatical liberal extremists, such as the reality-challenged butch whack-job Rosie O'Donnell, are fond of charging that the United States of America (read United States of Bush) is a greater force for terror in the world than the self-proclaimed terrorists who have been blowing up everything in sight for some 40-50 years now. The charge is so absurd that it does not deserved to be discussed. So I won't.

I would like to discuss, however, a parallel charge, also from the same quarters (including Rosie the rabid riveter), that there is no essential difference between Islamic "fundamentalists" and Christian "fundamentalists," except that the latter are probably more dangerous. The "dangerous" part of that allegation is as patently absurd as the broader charge cited in the opening paragraph. However, it would be enlightening to consider what parallels there might be between Islamic fundamentalism and certain Christian elements. (Actually, "parallels" is a less appropriate term than, say, "mirror images.")

First of all, the religiously ignorant loudmouths making the charges know virtually nothing about the tenets of either Islamic fundamentalism or Christian fundamentalism. I would be happy if they would only acquaint themselves with the former, because a keen, even basic, understanding of the religious inspiration and motivations of the Islamic imperialists would be sufficient to end the discussion.

In modern Christianity, the term "fundamentalism" is a theological term of art. Fundamentalist Christianity, or Christian Fundamentalism (with a capital "F"), is a movement that arose mainly within British and American Protestantism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, led by conservative evangelical Christians, who, in a reaction to "modernism," set forth a series of fundamental Christian beliefs: the literal inerrancy and authority of the Bible, the virgin birth of Christ, the doctrine of the substitutionary atonement of Christ through His death on the cross, the bodily resurrection of Jesus, and the imminent return of Jesus Christ.

In the late 19th century and early to middle 20th century, Christian Fundamentalists became highly identified with another set of beliefs which mainstream Christianity did not hold to, namely a scheme of historical interpretation of the Bible and a particular systematic eschatology known as "dispensationalism." Dispensationalism teaches biblical history as a number of successive economies or administrations, called dispensations, each of which emphasizes the continuity of the covenants God made with the Hebrews/Jews, said to be His original and eternally chosen people.

Most dispensationalists also espouse an eschatology (doctrine of the "end times") known as "premillenialism," which holds that Jesus Christ will return to earth at a certain point in history (that point delineated by certain benchmarks including the end [or beginning, in a variant view] of a seven-year period of severe persecution or "tribulation" ) and literally reign on the earth from a throne in Jerusalem for 1,000 years, after which the earth and all the wicked in it will be destroyed. Christians will be "raptured" out of the earthly environment either before, during or after the millennial reign, depending on which of several views of premillennialism one holds.

Among the benchmarks or "signs" of the end times and coming of the millennial reign of Christ are these, according to the premillennial Fundamentalists: the rise of false religious prophets, teachers and messiahs; wars; famines; earthquakes; tribulations; the spread of the Christian Gospel throughout the world; increasing godlessness; apostasy (a falling away) from the faith among Christians; the rise of a 200-million-man army in the East; the redevelopment of the Roman Empire (now taken to mean the European Union); the return of the Hebrew language within Israel; the rebuilding of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, along with the return of Temple worship and animal sacrifices; the appearance of a certain Red Heifer in Israel; increase in global knowledge and travel; the return of Ethiopian Jews to Israel; the rise of Russia as a strong military power; an alliance or pincher movement of Russia and China; the return of Russian Jews to Israel; the rise of certain technologies which will result in all of the enemies of Christ receiving a "mark of the beast"; the rise and establishment of "one world government" and a universal language under the rule of political superman or "antichrist"; the rise of Satanism, the occult, and sorcery; a rise in homosexuality, adultery, feminism, sex, violence, disobedience/rebellion among children and drug use; false peace movements; and instant worldwide communication.

Many premillennialists believe most of these benchmarks have recently been met and that the return of Christ to wage a final battle against His enemies, to establish His 1,000-year iron-fisted rule over the wicked of this world and to enter His Final Judgment against evil mankind is imminent. Some scan the daily news reports in great detail looking for evidence of the arrival of these signs. Many are working feverishly, in the open and in secret, to hasten the arrival of benchmarks still unrealized and thereby usher in the Rapture and Millennial Kingdom.

Over against the Fundamentalist Christian millennial view (by no means universally held among Christians, some believing that a figurative or spiritual "millennial" reign of Christ began with His original Incarnation and will continue until the end of history) is a particular eschatological view held by some adherents within Shi’ite Islam. These Muslims are expecting and/or working for the imminent return of a figure known as the Twelve or Hidden Imam, who will lead the world in an Islamic brand of millennial rule.

While the stories of the first eleven Imams are historical in nature, the history of the Twelfth Imam is mystical and miraculous. He was born in A.D. 868 as Abu'l-Kasim Muhammad (which is the name of the Prophet himself). When Hasan al-Askari, the Eleventh Imam, died in A.D. 874, the seven-year-old boy declared himself to be the Twelfth Imam and went into hiding, according to scholar Richard Hooker of Washington State University.

"The central Shi'a doctrines revolving around the Hidden Imam are the doctrines of Occultation (Ghayba ) and Return (Raj'a ). The Doctrine of Occultation is simply the belief that God hid Muhammad al-Mahdi away from the eyes of men in order to preserve his life. God has miraculously kept him alive since the day he was hidden in 874 AD/260 AH; eventually God will reveal al-Mahdi to the world and he will return to guide humanity," Hooker says.

This return is the most significant event in the future for the Shi'ite faithful and has thunderous eschatological consequences. This return will occur shortly before the Final Judgment and the end of history. Imam Mahdi will return at the head of the forces of righteousness and do battle with the forces of evil in one, final, apocalyptic battle. When evil has been defeated once and for all, the Imam Mahdi will rule the world for several years under a perfect government and bring about a perfect spirituality among the peoples of the world. After the Imam Mahdi has reigned for several years, Jesus Christ will return (raj'a ), as will Husayn and others. It is the return of the dead that falls under the Doctrine of Return; the Mahdi will only appear to humanity.

Twelver Shi'ism is, then, a deeply eschatological religion. Important to understanding Shi'a religious belief is the understanding that the end of time will be preceded by an era of perfect justice and spirituality. The world, for the Shi'ite, is a deeply immoral, degenerate, and corrupt place; these are the necessary preludes to the appearance of Imam Mahdi. Like Christianity, Shi'ism is also a deeply prophetic religion. Like Christian belief, the end of time and the appearance of the Mahdi will be preceded by a number of events foretold in prophecy. The Shi'ite, then, like many Christians, lives in a world full of signs of the impending concluding chapters of history. This is vitally important in understanding Shi'a culture and political theory. Most of Iranian history can only be understood in relationship to the Doctrine of Return and the prophecies associated with it. For instance, during the Iranian Revolution, several Iranians believed that Ayatullah Ruhollah Khumayni, the spiritual and theoretical head of the Revolution, was the Hidden Imam returned to the world of humanity. While Khumayni never admitted this, he never denied it either. In many ways, the Revolutionaries believed that they were engineering or inaugurating the beginning of the reign of justice in the world, just as the radical Protestant English who settled America believed that they were inaugurating the one thousand year rule of saints that would precede the end of the world. Contemporary Iranian politics can in no way be divorced from the fundamental religious tenets of Shi'a Islam.

As described by John von Heyking of the Ashbrook Center for Public Policy at Ashland University:

One of the differences between Sunni and Shi’ite Islam is that the latter, who dominate Iran and form the majority in Iraq, believe that Allah shielded or hid Muhammad al-Mahdi as the Twelve Imam until the end of time. Shi’ites expect the Twelfth Imam, which Jews and Christians would recognize as a messianic figure, to return to save the world when it had descended into chaos. Shi’ite orthodoxy has it that humans are powerless to encourage the Twelfth Imam to return. However, in Iran a group called the Hojjatieh believe that humans can stir up chaos to encourage him to return. Ayatollah Khomeini banned the group in the early 1980s because they rejected one of the primary commitments of the Iranian revolution: the concept of Vilayat-i Faqih (Guardianship of the Jurist). In other words, they opposed the notion of an Islamic republic because it would hinder the Twelfth Imam’s return on account of it being too just and peaceful. Today, in addition to the possibility of [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad himself being a member (or a former member), the group has connections to Qom ultraconservative cleric Mezbah Yazti whom Iranians frequently refer to as the "crazed one" and the "crocodile." Four of the twenty-one new cabinet ministers are purportedly Hajjatieh members. Some reports state that cabinet ministers must sign a formal pledge of support for the Twelfth Imam.
* * *
According to Shi’ite teaching, the Twelfth Imam will not require an introduction upon his return. His identity will be self-evident to all, or at least to those capable of recognizing him. One view states that he will rule through a deputy, or perhaps the deputy will precede the Imam’s return. Perhaps the deputy’s identity should also be evident to all who can see. [Could this be the Beast or False Prophet of Christian Premillenialism’s Antichrist? — GJM]
While Ahmadinejad has not drawn an explicit connection between his desire to see Israel wiped off the map and an activist belief in the Twelfth Imam’s return, the dots are there to be connected once one understands the tyrannical "logic" behind someone who, perhaps viewing himself as a self-proclaimed deputy for the Twelfth Imam, might wish to effect Mahdi’s return. The deputy would promote Iran’s nuclear capabilities for they are key to effecting chaos in the world. The deputy would also purge diplomats, dozens of deputy ministers and heads of government banks and businesses, and challenge the Iranian ruling clerical establishment. All these moves push the regime toward a "coup d’etat" (according to one Iranian source) or at least a constitutional crisis. But a constitutional crisis would be a mere stepping stone for a president for whom the Twelfth Imam does not require an Islamic republic to return.
Western observers need to be able to understand the ideological and religious overtones of the current situation in Iran. Ahmadinejad’s peculiar references to the Twelfth Imam are no mere eccentricity to be taken lightly. Nor do they seem to be the rhetorical ploy of a politician manipulating the excitable masses (as some have interpreted Saddam Hussein’s embrace of Islamism in the later part of his rule). Minimally, Ahmadinejad’s speeches and actions portend a constitutional crisis for the Iranian regime. Maximally, there are times when one should take bombastic statements not as double-talk, but for what they are.

Historian Victor Davis Hanon of the Hoover Institution observes, "In all his crazed pronouncements, Ahmadinejad reflects an end-of-days view: History is coming to its grand finale under his aegis."

It is not difficult to see that the Dispensationalist Premillennial Christian view of the end of history and the eschatology of the Shi’te Islamic Twelvers are on a powerful and potentially dangerous collision course, with Israel at the center of both apocalyptic views.

Beyond eschatology, there is a second area of theology which must be examined to clearly understand the clash between Christianity and Islam. The key word in this discussion is "theonomy" — the rule of divine law.

Islamic fundamentalists are currently on a worldwide crusade to establish the rule of divine law as the governing force in society, not only in traditionally Islamic lands but throughout the West as well, including Britain, France, the Netherlands, Canada and the United States, all of which currently have enclaves where Sharia is practiced.

Islamic law is known as Sharia. The term means "way" or "path." It is the legal framework within which the public and some private aspects of life are regulated for those living in a legal system based on Muslim principles of jurisprudence. Sharia covers all aspects of day-to-day life, including economics, politics, banking, business law, contract law, sexuality, and social issues. There is not a strictly codified uniform set of laws pertaining to Sharia. It is more like a system of derived laws, based on the Qur’an, Hadith and centuries of debate, interpretation and precedent. Sharia has certain laws which are regarded as divinely ordained, concrete and timeless for all relevant situations (for example, the ban against drinking liquor as an intoxicant). It also has certain laws which derive from principles established by Islamic lawyers and judges.

For fundamentalist Muslims, there is no division of "church" and "state" (although in Islam there is neither church nor state). All of life is one, and all is guided along the path of Sharia. "As Islam makes no distinction between religion and life, Islamic law covers not only ritual but every aspect of life" (infoplease.com Encyclopedia).

"...Sharia ... contains the rules by which the Muslim world is governed (or should govern itself) and forms the basis for relations between man and God, between individuals, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, as well as between man and things which are part of creation. The Sharia contains the rules by which a Muslim society is organized and governed, and it provides the means to resolve conflicts among individuals and between the individual and the state," according to the Middle East Institute.

In Christianity, the concept of theonomy is being advanced primarily by a highly influential movement known variously as Christian Reconstructionism or Dominion Theology. This movement, sparked by the late California theologian Rousas John Rushdoony, author of The Institutes of Biblical Law, and drawing on principles advanced by early Calvinist Reformers in Europe and American Puritans, also holds that divine law (Biblical law) is, once was, and again should become the fundamental organizing principle for all aspects of society and every area of life.

In the terminology of Christian Reconstructionism, theonomy is the idea that, in the Bible, God provides the basis of both personal and social ethics. In that context, the term is always used in antithesis to autonomy, which is the idea that Self provides the basis of ethics. Theonomic ethics asserts that the Bible has been given as the abiding standard for all human government — individual, family, church, and civil; and that Biblical Law must be incorporated into a Christian theory of Biblical ethics (Wikipedia). The moral laws given by God to the ancient Israelites reflect God's character, which is unchangeable, theonomists hold. Most of the laws are intended for all nations, cultures, societies, religions and all eras, including the present time.

"Theonomic ethics, to put it simply, represents a commitment to the necessity, sufficiency, and unity of Scripture. For an adequate and genuinely Christian ethic, we must have God's word, only God's word, and all of God's word. Nearly every critic of theonomic ethics will be found denying, in some way, one or more of these premises" (The Theonomic Antithesis to Other Law-Attitudes).

Rushdoony writes that "the god of a culture can be located by fixing its source of law. If the source of law is the ontological Trinity of Christian revelation, then that Trinity is the God of that culture. If the source of law rests in the people, then the voice of the people is the voice of God (vox populi, vox dei), and that voice finds expression and incarnation either in a leader, a legislative body, or a supreme court, depending on which gains the ascendency. The highest point in the processes of law is the god of that system" (The Politics of Guilt and Pity).

Theonomists support public policy changes in accord with Biblical principles, but see those changes as coming about as a result of, and not the cause of, conversions to Christianity. By contrast, fundamentalist Muslims would base public policy on Sharia by whatever imposition is necessary, including by arms, terror or forced conversions.

Many Christian theonomists seek a future earthly "Kingdom of God" in which much of the world is converted to Christianity. They cite the numerous scripture passages referring to God's collective judgment upon unrighteous nations and God's blessing upon those rulers and societies heeding His Word as evidence that the presence or absence of Christian values may profoundly influence the rise and fall of nations.

"Theonomy means literally, ‘God's law,’ or the belief that the moral laws of the Old Testament are still binding today. This idea states that only Old Testament laws specifically fulfilled in the New Testament are non-binding (such as sacrificial laws, ceremonial laws and dietary laws). The moral Law of God is still the ethical standard for governing individuals and society," writes Jay Rogers, editor of a Reconstructionist-oriented publication called The Forerunner International.

The moral Law of God, when codified as a basis for civil law, restrains the passion of the sinner (i.e., capital punishment is a deterrent to violent crime). It also acts as a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. Knowledge of the moral Law of God brings individuals knowledge of sin. Then more may be converted through faith in Christ as Lord and Savior. How can we be saved unless we first know that we are sinners?
Theonomy implies the systematic theology of covenantalism: the belief that God operates through covenants, or eternally binding legal agreements; that there is no division between the Old and New Testaments; that the New Covenant includes the moral Law of the Old Covenant; that the Old Covenant required grace through faith in Jesus Christ as a means of obtaining personal salvation.
The system of government resulting from theonomy is called a theocracy: literally, "God's government." When we speak of a theocracy, it should be clear that we are not talking about a state run by a national church, or an ecclessiocracy, such as the Holy Roman Empire, or the totalitarian military dictatorships in Muslim fundamentalist states. In a true theocracy, the state does not control the church, nor the church the state, but both spheres of society are under the government of God. There is implied a decentralization of power or a "Christian Republican" form of government.

Christian Reconstructionism repudiates Zionism and vehemently opposes the views of the Christian Fundamentalist Dispensationalists and Premillennialists, which they say have captured much of the Christian Right in America.

"The Christian Right may be criticized for putting an undue emphasis on ‘political solutions’ and for not relying strictly on biblical law," says Rogers. "Simply put: either we will have man’s law or God’s law as a standard for civil legislation. We are not looking for a ‘voice a the table’ nor are we seeking ‘equal time’ with the godless promoters of pornography, abortion, safe-sodomy subsidies, socialism, etc. We want them silenced and punished according to God’s Law-Word. ... Civil law must has some standard: either it is human autonomy (what man sees as right in his own eyes) or it is biblical law (what God declares to be right in His Word) .... take your pick!"

We believe that there are two biblically prescribed punishments enforceable by the state: execution and restitution. We do not believe in jail sentences. We believe in only the biblically prescribed punishments for violations of the moral law.
We do not believe that the state is the final arbiter in all matters pertaining to the moral law. Most of these cases would be resolved within families or within churches. However, only the state may execute criminals for capital crimes; only the state "bears the sword’ (see Romans 13).
We want civil government to punish evil doers according to biblical sanctions. We want all moral laws of the Old Testament to be enforced according to biblical standards.

Reconstructionists hold that any person — Jew, Muslim, Catholic, Protestant — would be free in a biblically reconstructed society under the civil law to worship. "The civil government has no power to restrict religion," Rogers says. "The civil government has an obligation to see that all people obey the moral law as it falls into civil jurisdiction. Thus religious expressions which contradict the Ten Commandments would not be publicly tolerated. The domain of the church is to preach truth. Because Reconstructionists are postmillennialists [the view that Christ will return at the end of an undefined figurative millennium in which the church and world are now living], we believe that eventually, organized false religions will become rare, if not extinct. This will be accomplished mainly through the efforts of the church, not the state."

Such views produce hysteria among theonomy’s critics, avowed secularists and atheists. One such critic who calls himself an Evangelical Atheist, says, "My friends, Christian Reconstructionism and Muslim Fundamentalism are the two most dangerous ideologies in the world today. Under either, unbelievers would be oppressed at best. At worst, who can say? Which is more of a threat? The Muslims can only blow us up; the Dominionists get to vote. Al-Qaeda can take our lives, but Christian Reconstructionists can take our country, and ultimately, our freedom."

Reconstructionists energetically deny such charges and say that they hold only that as biblical thought competes in the marketplace of ideas, it will eventually win the day because of its inherent goodness, righteousness and justice and eventually become the basic character of society, with biblical ethics codified as law being the natural result. According to Rushdoony, "Now as Christians we believe that the basic starting point is the regeneration of man. Then man takes and applies that faith. For Christians the basic government is the self-government of the Christian man. Then the basic governmental unit is the family. This means that every father and mother will be more important in the sight of God than heads of state, because He controls children, property and the future. Then the third is the church as the government, fourth the school as a government, fifth your job governs you, then sixth society governs you with its ideas, beliefs and standards, and seventh, one among many forms of government, is the civil government."

Meanwhile, the clash of religious fundamentalisms will no doubt continue to grow. The strategies and tactics of the opposing fundamentalist forces are vastly different, with Islam renewing is centuries-old violent imperialism in an attempt to take the world by force through a growing army of terrorists, insurrectionists and violent propagandists. In the modern world, the nations of Christendom have no religiously motivated crusader armies, indeed few have much left of Christianity. Unless the formerly Christian nations of the West awaken to the harsh realities that Islamic fundamentalism seeks to impose on them, the outcome of this civilizational Armageddon looks bleak for the West. It is time to reassert the moral foundations of Western society, which find their genesis in the civilizing impulses and values of Christianity and the Hebrew-Christian Bible. Without the reinforcement of these foundations and the repudiation of its present moral corruptions, the West will crumble, and great will be the fall thereof.

"Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand: And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell: and great was the fall of it." — Jesus in Matthew 7:24-27 (KJV)

New Hope for Life

2007-04-20T14:48:00.000-07:00

By Garry J. Moes

WARNING: THE FOLLOWING CONTAINS GRAPHIC DESCRIPTIONS AND EXPLICIT LANGUAGE WHICH MAY, AND SHOULD, CREEP YOU OUT.

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on April 18, 2007, upholding a congressional ban on partial birth abortion, though extremely limited in its scope, is a monumental and welcome breakthrough in the court’s approach to the question of abortion.

At the outset, it must be noted that the limited scope of the ruling is in large part due to the fact that the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 which it upholds is itself extremely limited in its scope, banning only a very specific type of unspeakably ghastly abortion and defining that banned procedure in a very restrictive way. The law and the ruling still leave ghoulish abortionists with options for late-term abortions that are nearly equally as gruesome to contemplate — though contemplate them we must.

The ruling in the case known as Gonzales v. Carhart is a positive development, however, in several subtle but potentially significant ways:

It places a powerful new emphasis on language in earlier court pro-abortion rulings which previously only paid lip service to what the court said is the government’s "legitimate interests from the outset of the pregnancy in protecting the ... life of the fetus that may become a child." In so doing, it shines new light on historically overlooked aspects of previous court rulings which questioned the legitimacy of abortion for late-term "viable" fetuses.
For the first time since legalizing murder of unborn humans in 1973, the court has approved a direct ban on an abortion procedure itself (albeit only a specific type), not merely a peripheral restriction, such as parental consent.
It repeatedly refers to the unborn as children and living humans, not merely tissue or the product of conception, and it frequently uses the word "kill" in describing abortion techniques.
It honestly and graphically describes the horrific acts of murder and dismemberment which not only this banned procedure involves but which are involved in all forms of legal abortion, which it says are "laden with the power to devalue human life."
It approvingly cites the government’s and society’s interest in passing legislation which fully discloses to abortion-seeking women the explicit details of the horrific act they are contemplating. This may prove to be a boost to crisis pregnancy centers and others who are working for legislation to require ultrasound procedures and the presentation of their living, moving baby images to mothers seeking abortions.
For the first time, Justice Anthony Kennedy, the court’s new "swing vote," has come down on the pro-life side of the abortion question, actually authoring this 5-4 majority opinion, suggesting the possibility of a pro-life majority on the court. Although he did not repudiate any of his previous opposite positions, he skillfully seemed to try to reconcile them to his new position in this case.
Justice Clarence Thomas, with concurrence from Justice Antonin Scalia, reiterated his belief that the court’s previous landmark rulings finding a fundamental right to abortion have "no basis in the Constitution."

Before going into further detail on these positive points from the Gonzales ruling, it is important to be reminded, as Kennedy took considerable pains to do, that certain appalling abortion procedures are still legally available. In the first trimester of pregnancy, abortion "doctors" still have available to them the standard procedure for ending the life of an unwanted baby, killing the baby with chemicals and then sucking it out of the womb with vacuum devices and throwing its remains into garbage cans.

Kennedy described this procedure as follows:

Abortion methods vary depending to some extent on the preferences of the physician and, of course, on the term of the pregnancy and the resulting stage of the unborn child's development. Between 85 and 90 percent of the approximately 1.3 million abortions performed each year in the United States take place in the first three months of pregnancy, which is to say in the first trimester. ... The most common first-trimester abortion method is vacuum aspiration (otherwise known as suction curettage) in which the physician vacuums out the embryonic tissue. Early in this trimester an alternative is to use medication, such as mifepristone (commonly known as RU-486), to terminate the pregnancy. ... The Act does not regulate these procedures.

Of the remaining abortions that take place each year, Kennedy noted, most occur in the second trimester. The surgical procedure referred to as "dilation and evacuation" or "D&E" is the usual abortion method in this trimester and this method is still very much legal for all later term abortions. Although individual techniques for performing D&E differ, the general steps are the same. Kennedy describes this procedure in explicit detail (citations removed):

A doctor must first dilate the cervix at least to the extent needed to insert surgical instruments into the uterus and to maneuver them to evacuate the fetus. ... The steps taken to cause dilation differ by physician and gestational age of the fetus. ... A doctor often begins the dilation process by inserting osmotic dilators, such as laminaria (sticks of seaweed), into the cervix. The dilators can be used in combination with drugs, such as misoprostol, that increase dilation. The resulting amount of dilation is not uniform, and a doctor does not know in advance how an individual patient will respond. In general the longer dilators remain in the cervix, the more it will dilate. Yet the length of time doctors employ osmotic dilators varies. Some may keep dilators in the cervix for two days, while others use dilators for a day or less. ...
After sufficient dilation the surgical operation can commence. The woman is placed under general anesthesia or conscious sedation. The doctor, often guided by ultrasound, inserts grasping forceps through the woman's cervix and into the uterus to grab the fetus. The doctor grips a fetal part with the forceps and pulls it back through the cervix and vagina, continuing to pull even after meeting resistance from the cervix. The friction causes the fetus to tear apart. For example, a leg might be ripped off the fetus as it is pulled through the cervix and out of the woman. The process of evacuating the fetus piece by piece continues until it has been completely removed. A doctor may make 10 to 15 passes with the forceps to evacuate the fetus in its entirety, though sometimes removal is completed with fewer passes. Once the fetus has been evacuated, the placenta and any remaining fetal material are suctioned or scraped out of the uterus. The doctor examines the different parts to ensure the entire fetal body has been removed. ...
Some doctors, especially later in the second trimester, may kill the fetus a day or two before performing the surgical evacuation. They inject digoxin or potassium chloride into the fetus, the umbilical cord, or the amniotic fluid. Fetal demise may cause contractions and make greater dilation possible. Once dead, moreover, the fetus' body will soften, and its removal will be easier. Other doctors refrain from injecting chemical agents, believing it adds risk with little or no medical benefit.

The abortion procedure that was the impetus for the numerous attempted bans on "partial-birth abortion," including the 2003 law, is a variation of the standard D&E and is known primarily as "intact D&E." The main difference between the two procedures is that in intact D&E a doctor extracts the baby intact or largely intact with only a few passes, Kennedy noted, adding that there are no comprehensive statistics indicating what percentage of all D&Es are performed in this manner. He then went on to describe the gory details of intact D&E or partial-birth abortion:

In an intact D&E procedure the doctor extracts the fetus in a way conducive to pulling out its entire body, instead of ripping it apart. One doctor, for example, testified:

"If I know I have good dilation and I reach in and the fetus starts to come out and I think I can accomplish it, the abortion with an intact delivery, then I use my forceps a little bit differently. I don't close them quite so much, and I just gently draw the tissue out attempting to have an intact delivery, if possible...."

Rotating the fetus as it is being pulled decreases the odds of dismemberment. A doctor also "may use forceps to grasp a fetal part, pull it down, and re-grasp the fetus at a higher level — sometimes using both his hand and a forceps — to exert traction to retrieve the fetus intact until the head is lodged in the [cervix]."
Intact D&E gained public notoriety when, in 1992, Dr. Martin Haskell gave a presentation describing his method of performing the operation. ... In the usual intact D&E the fetus’ head lodges in the cervix, and dilation is insufficient to allow it to pass. Haskell explained the next step as follows:
"‘At this point, the right-handed surgeon slides the fingers of the left [hand] along the back of the fetus and ‘hooks’ the shoulders of the fetus with the index and ring fingers (palm down).
"‘While maintaining this tension, lifting the cervix and applying traction to the shoulders with the fingers of the left hand, the surgeon takes a pair of blunt curved Metzenbaum scissors in the right hand. He carefully advances the tip, curved down, along the spine and under his middle finger until he feels it contact the base of the skull under the tip of his middle finger.
"‘[T]he surgeon then forces the scissors into the base of the skull or into the foramen magnum. Having safely entered the skull, he spreads the scissors to enlarge the opening. "‘The surgeon removes the scissors and introduces a suction catheter into this hole and evacuates the skull contents. With the catheter still in place, he applies traction to the fetus, removing it completely from the patient.’"
Dr. Haskell's approach is not the only method of killing the fetus once its head lodges in the cervix, and "the process has evolved" since his presentation. ... Another doctor, for example, squeezes the skull after it has been pierced "so that enough brain tissue exudes to allow the head to pass through." Still other physicians reach into the cervix with their forceps and crush the fetus' skull. ... Others continue to pull the fetus out of the woman until it disarticulates at the neck, in effect decapitating it. These doctors then grasp the head with forceps, crush it, and remove it.
Some doctors performing an intact D&E attempt to remove the fetus without collapsing the skull. ... Yet one doctor would not allow delivery of a live fetus younger than 24 weeks because "the objective of [his] procedure is to perform an abortion," not a birth. ... The doctor thus answered in the affirmative when asked whether he would "hold the fetus’ head on the internal side of the [cervix] in order to collapse the skull" and kill the fetus before it is born. ... Another doctor testified he crushes a fetus’ skull not only to reduce its size but also to ensure the fetus is dead before it is removed. For the staff to have to deal with a fetus that has "some viability to it, some movement of limbs," according to this doctor, "[is] always a difficult situation."

How sensitive! Crush the baby’s skull while still in the womb so that the attending staff doesn’t get freaked out when they see the tiny infant writhing in pain. Thanks to the mercies of God, a Republican Congress and president, and new wisdom within the Supreme Court, this kind of barbarism is now unlawful in the United States.

Kennedy cited with implicit approval Congress’ revulsion at this inhumanity:

The Act's purposes are set forth in recitals preceding its operative provisions. A description of the prohibited abortion procedure demonstrates the rationale for the congressional enactment. The Act proscribes a method of abortion in which a fetus is killed just inches before completion of the birth process. Congress stated as follows: "Implicitly approving such a brutal and inhumane procedure by choosing not to prohibit it will further coarsen society to the humanity of not only newborns, but all vulnerable and innocent human life, making it increasingly difficult to protect such life."

Congress was concerned, furthermore, with the effects on the medical community and on its reputation caused by the practice of partial-birth abortion, Kennedy noted. The findings in the Act explain:

"Partial-birth abortion ... confuses the medical, legal, and ethical duties of physicians to preserve and promote life, as the physician acts directly against the physical life of a child, whom he or she had just delivered, all but the head, out of the womb, in order to end that life."

Kennedy said that an earlier landmark decision of the court, in Planned Parenthood of Southern Pa. v. Casey, which upheld most of the original Roe v. Wade ruling, had reaffirmed the legitimacy of governmental objectives to protect life. "The government may use its voice and its regulatory authority to show its profound respect for the life within the woman. A central premise of the opinion was that the Court's precedents after Roe had ‘undervalue[d] the State's interest in potential life,’" he wrote.

The plurality opinion [in Casey] indicated "[t]he fact that a law which serves a valid purpose, one not designed to strike at the right itself, has the incidental effect of making it more difficult or more expensive to procure an abortion cannot be enough to invalidate it." ... This was not an idle assertion. The three premises of Casey must coexist. ... The third premise [see further on this below - GJM], that the State, from the inception of the pregnancy, maintains its own regulatory interest in protecting the life of the fetus that may become a child, cannot be set at naught by interpreting Casey's requirement of a health exception so it becomes tantamount to allowing a doctor to choose the abortion method he or she might prefer. Where it has a rational basis to act, and it does not impose an undue burden, the State may use its regulatory power to bar certain procedures and substitute others, all in furtherance of its legitimate interests in regulating the medical profession in order to promote respect for life, including life of the unborn.

Though it resulted here in a welcome step to protection of life, this is still twisted reasoning. Kennedy has here argued that the state is well within its rightful duties to protect life and promote respect for it by barring inhuman abortion procedures, as long as other, less repulsive, procedures remain available to end that very same life. Kennedy went on to say:

The Act's ban on abortions that involve partial delivery of a living fetus furthers the Government's objectives. No one would dispute that, for many, D&E is a procedure itself laden with the power to devalue human life. Congress could nonetheless conclude that the type of abortion proscribed by the Act requires specific regulation because it implicates additional ethical and moral concerns that justify a special prohibition. Congress determined that the abortion methods it proscribed had a "disturbing similarity to the killing of a newborn infant," and thus it was concerned with "draw[ing] a bright line that clearly distinguishes abortion and infanticide." ... The Court has in the past confirmed the validity of drawing boundaries to prevent certain practices that extinguish life and are close to actions that are condemned. Glucksberg found reasonable the State's "fear that permitting assisted suicide will start it down the path to voluntary and perhaps even involuntary euthanasia."
Respect for human life finds an ultimate expression in the bond of love the mother has for her child. The Act recognizes this reality as well. Whether to have an abortion requires a difficult and painful moral decision. ... While we find no reliable data to measure the phenomenon, it seems unexceptionable to conclude some women come to regret their choice to abort the infant life they once created and sustained. Severe depression and loss of esteem can follow.

Kennedy said that in a decision so fraught with emotional consequence, some doctors may prefer not to disclose precise details of the means that will be used, confining themselves to the required statement of risks the procedure entails. "From one standpoint this ought not to be surprising," he said. "Any number of patients facing imminent surgical procedures would prefer not to hear all details, lest the usual anxiety preceding invasive medical procedures become the more intense. This is likely the case with the abortion procedures here in issue."

It is, however, precisely this lack of information concerning the way in which the fetus will be killed that is of legitimate concern to the State. ... ("States are free to enact laws to provide a reasonable framework for a woman to make a decision that has such profound and lasting meaning"). The State has an interest in ensuring so grave a choice is well informed. It is self-evident that a mother who comes to regret her choice to abort must struggle with grief more anguished and sorrow more profound when she learns, only after the event, what she once did not know: that she allowed a doctor to pierce the skull and vacuum the fast-developing brain of her unborn child, a child assuming the human form.

It is a reasonable inference that a necessary effect of the regulation and the knowledge it conveys will be to encourage some women to carry the infant to full term, thus reducing the absolute number of late-term abortions, Kennedy said. "The medical profession, furthermore, may find different and less shocking methods to abort the fetus in the second trimester, thereby accommodating legislative demand. The State's interest in respect for life is advanced by the dialogue that better informs the political and legal systems, the medical profession, expectant mothers, and society as a whole of the consequences that follow from a decision to elect a late-term abortion."

Kennedy acknowledged that some might object that the standard D&E is in some respects as brutal, if not more, than the intact D&E, so that the legislation accomplishes little. But he said there was no inconsistency on the part of Congress or the court in disapproving one while allowing the other, since partial-birth abortion is especially horrendous.

It was reasonable for Congress to think that partial-birth abortion, more than standard D&E, "undermines the public's perception of the appropriate role of a physician during the delivery process, and perverts a process during which life is brought into the world." ... There would be a flaw in this Court's logic, and an irony in its jurisprudence, were we first to conclude a ban on both D&E and intact D&E was overbroad and then to say it is irrational to ban only intact D&E because that does not proscribe both procedures. In sum, we reject the contention that the congressional purpose of the Act was "to place a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion."

Kennedy held that because of the state's interest in promoting respect for human life at all stages in the pregnancy, physicians are not entitled to ignore regulations that direct them to use reasonable alternative procedures. "The law need not give abortion doctors unfettered choice in the course of their medical practice, nor should it elevate their status above other physicians in the medical community," he said.

Kennedy argued, and Thomas agreed, that the new anti-abortion ruling in Gonzales is compatible with certain aspects of the court’s earlier pro-abortion rulings in Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. He cited the following excerpt from the 1992 Casey decision, which he said set forth three critical principle with regard to legislation on abortion:

"It must be stated at the outset and with clarity that Roe's essential holding, the holding we reaffirm, has three parts. First is a recognition of the right of the woman to choose to have an abortion before viability and to obtain it without undue interference from the State. Before viability, the State's interests are not strong enough to support a prohibition of abortion or the imposition of a substantial obstacle to the woman's effective right to elect the procedure. Second is a confirmation of the State's power to restrict abortions after fetal viability, if the law contains exceptions for pregnancies which endanger the woman's life or health. And third is the principle that the State has legitimate interests from the outset of the pregnancy in protecting the health of the woman and the life of the fetus that may become a child. These principles do not contradict one another; and we adhere to each."

Kennedy said that the third principle of the Casey ruling had special bearing in the court's ruling on partial-birth abortion. "To implement its holding, Casey rejected both Roe's rigid trimester framework and the interpretation of Roe that considered all previability regulations of abortion unwarranted," he said. "On this point Casey overruled the holdings in two cases because they undervalued the State's interest in potential life."

Regrettably, the present ruling again affirmed the right to abortions other than partial-birth abortion, although it provided some evidence of the court’s willingness to regulate abortion generally.

We assume the following principles for the purposes of this opinion. Before viability, a State "may not prohibit any woman from making the ultimate decision to terminate her pregnancy." ... It also may not impose upon this right an undue burden, which exists if a regulation's "purpose or effect is to place a substantial obstacle in the path of a woman seeking an abortion before the fetus attains viability." ... On the other hand, "[r]egulations which do no more than create a structural mechanism by which the State, or the parent or guardian of a minor, may express profound respect for the life of the unborn are permitted, if they are not a substantial obstacle to the woman's exercise of the right to choose." ... Casey, in short, struck a balance. The balance was central to its holding. We now apply its standard to the cases at bar."

We shall have to wait for another day when at least one more member of the court can think consistently through the now more strongly recognized truth that society, through its laws, must safeguard the sanctity of innocent human life at all its stages of development. Without that recognition, there will soon be little to distinguish us from our present enemies who so savagely devalue life and devote themselves so fanatically to a religion and culture of death.

Thankfully, we were governed for a time by a majority in Congress and a president who were sufficiently committed to protecting human life to pass this badly needed legislation. Why the butchers who continue to perform abortions, along with the current majority political party and their former president who twice vetoed similar bans, cannot see their own savagery can only be explained by their utter loss of morality and humanity, making them much akin to those enemies who would utterly destroy all of us.

"Fetal Position": A Dramatic Pro-life Television Triumph

2007-04-04T14:27:00.000-07:00

By Garry J. Moes

Just when you think television entertainment has plunged as far into the abyss as it can go, a stunning reversal hits the airways. On Tuesday night, April 3, 2007, one of the most remarkably cogent pro-life drama presentations was broadcast in a most unlikely venue, Fox Network’s otherwise utterly amoral doctor show, House.

The powerfully emotional episode, entitled Fetal Position, was amazing in its in-depth handling of the abortion debate and went so far as to reenact a now famous photograph used widely in pro-life circles depicting a tiny pre-born baby’s hand grasping the finger of a surgeon performing an in utero operation. Even more remarkable was that the episode ended with the show's lead character, Dr. Gregory House, who had argued vehemently throughout the episode in favor of abortion, until witnessing a similar tiny hand touch his own finger, admitting he was wrong and that what he had been advocating would have been a killing.

For those who are not familiar with the television series, it would be helpful to know something about the characters and usual orientation of the show to fully understand just how striking the April 3 episode was. The series, first of all, has no plot — or rather it has one formula plot repeated every week with different patients and a different disease of the week. Every episode opens with an ordinary or extraordinary person enjoy his life when he or she suddenly collapses from some mysterious illness. Rushed to the hospital, it is the task of Dr. House and his team of diagnostic specialists to identify the mysterious illness and save the person’s life. The team always goes through a series of promising diagnoses, only to have each of them fail as the patient moves closer and closer to death. At just the last moment, Dr. House has an epiphany and the cure is found.

As weak as the plot line is each week, the show’s redeeming feature, dramatically speaking, is the richness of the characters involved, both doctors and patients, but mostly the lead character, Dr. House. In addition to the richness of the characters and wittiness of House's dialogue, the performance by award-winning British actor/comedian Hugh Laurie, is always powerful. His character, Dr. House, is a pathetic and woeful drug-addicted loner who wallows in his misery, has the world’s worst bedside manner, antagonizes everyone in sight including and sometimes most of all his own patients. He speaks one language fluently — sarcasm. He was a gunshot victim earlier in life and now walks with a cane and lives with nearly unbearable pain, which he masks with incessant gobbling of painkilling medications obtained through reluctant fellow physicians by any means necessary. Yet through this all, he is touted by each of them as one of the most brilliant men in his field and thus indispensable to the hospital’s mission. For this reason, his colleagues, including the hospital’s ravishingly beautiful chief of medicine, are willing to perjure themselves and break laws and medical ethics just to keep him going.

In sum, Dr. Gregory House is one of television’s premier anti-heroes. This has been problematic from a moral standpoint for most of the life of this series, because this utterly despicable character always proves right and wise in the end. He may be a wretched person, but he is always to be admired for his dogged pursuit of medical salvation, never mind that he is willing to do anything, including nearly killing patients in order to find his answers, which viewers recognize are answers he often seeks to understand his own miserable condition. Some of the other leading characters are nearly as reprehensible from a moral standpoint. I had been ready to swear off the show completely after the March 27 episode in which two handsome members of House’s resident team, Drs. Allison Cameron and Robert Chase, began having on-the-job sex and made it clear that this is no-commitment, strictly recreational fun.

In Fetal Position, the anti-hero feature of the Dr. House character is turned on its head, resulting in a stunning triumph for the pro-life argument. In the story, famous celebrity photographer Emma Sloan, five months pregnant, is rushed to the hospital suffering from what appears to be a stroke. Through the usual series of misdiagnoses and process of elimination, House and his team eventually come to the conclusion that serious medical issues with Ms. Sloan’s baby are the cause of her mysterious illness and she will die unless the pregnancy is terminated. The mother adamantly refuses and finds support from House’s main antagonist, Chief-of-Medicine Dr. Lisa Cuddy, like Ms. Sloan a single career woman who herself has been struggling to become pregnant late in life. For once, Dr. Cuddy does not cave in to House’s pressures, but personally intervenes to take the most risky and highly unapproved methods to save the unborn baby’s life.

House angrily insists throughout the episode on calling the baby a "fetus" and not a "baby," and makes every classic pro-abortion argument possible, including that the organism in the womb is not a baby but a dangerous growth, a parasitic "tumor." But when he is finally convinced to perform lifesaving surgery on the child still in the womb, the tiny infant grasps his finger, shaking him to his core and leaving no mistake that this is a precious little human being. The extraordinary procedures save the lives of both mother and son.

Following the surgery, the mother thanks House for saving them, but he replies, "Don’t thank me. I would have killed him." The episode ends with House returning to his solitary home, gently and pensively rubbing the finger that was touched by the infant child. Meanwhile, the mother is shown some weeks or months later, playing joyfully with her baby.

This episode is most welcome especially in light of the fact that in an earlier episode, another distressed pregnant patient is convinced by House to terminate her pregnancy, despite her previous vociferous pro-life objections. Sadly, the Fetal Position, episode still seemed to look favorably upon in vitro fertilization and embryo implantation for single women who desperately want to indulge themselves with childbearing despite the fact that they will be bringing up children without fathers. Nevertheless, the power of this episode’s message that unborn babies are truly human and worth saving at almost any cost was overwhelming, and the show’s writers and producers as well as the Fox Network should be commended for taking this highly politically incorrect position.

Warm Thoughts on the Intolerant Hypocrisy of Moral Relativism

2007-03-27T13:53:00.000-07:00

By Garry J. Moes

The outlawing of the Ten Commandments in recent years seems to have led to some wonderful economies of scale in the area of sinning. The number of serious transgressions has been reduced to approximately three, far below the 600-plus possible violations of biblical law which were summarized some millennia ago into the familiar ten entries on the two tablets of stone now banned from courtrooms, schools and most public places.

One of the three is fairly new and reflects the ascendency of a new god (goddess?). "Warming" of the deity "Globe" is now among the highest of absolute offenses, but, thankfully, the unnatural acts which constitute this great evil seem to be largely limited at this time to only the most corrupt of pervert societies: advanced capitalist realms. It used to be that warmness was viewed in a positive light. We liked being around people with "warm" personalities. We appreciated a "warm" welcome. Couldn’t sleep? A "warm" cup of milk did the trick. Anything that gave us "warm" and fuzzy feelings was a good thing. But apparently the new god(dess) reacts adversely to being warmed, and to avoid her/its/his wrath and the certain catastrophes which follow thereupon, we must educate ourselves and our children, especially our children, to refrain from the sin of warming at all costs — and the costs may be staggering.

A second, more traditional, sin among the three remaining transgressions is Intolerance (and its cousin Racism), but, again thankfully, this is now a sin only on a limited scale; indeed, it cannot even be regarded as a sin unless one is intolerant of tolerance (i.e., a liberal view of life). That is to say, only people with the aforementioned outmoded traditional values based on the earlier recognized 600-plus sins are capable of intolerance. Intolerance by those blessed with a sense of liberality toward all things is really quite a virtue. This is tricky. Many people in the current transitional period have become very confused about when tolerance and intolerance are sinful and which targets are legitimate, so it is important always to consult the true experts, the elite arbiters of the new moral paradigms (such as certain movie stars). If you can’t understand what they are saying, just follow their example and you probably can’t go wrong.

Which brings us to the third remaining sin. This is perhaps as old as mankind and is pretty much the one remaining universally acknowledged human disposition that could be regarded as conventional iniquity. It is Hypocrisy — also known as The Double Standard. You can hear it discussed ... and soundly condemned ... almost every day, particularly in political discourse. It is highly bipartisan. You can see this great sin — and the denunciation of it — on both sides of the aisle.

It used to have a more religious tone to it. I remember long ago that when an evangelistically minded Christian, for example, would try to invite one of the traditional types of sinners to get right with God, the almost inevitable objection by the sinner would be that he wanted nothing to do with God because the Church was full of hypocrites. Someone came up with a clever retort that since no sinner ever gets into heaven and thus there could be no hypocrites there, it would make good sense to get right with God and thus be assured of going to that great hypocrite-free zone in the sky one day.

Nowadays, The Double Standard has a more generic or secular aspect. But that has not by any means diminished its character as a widely recognized sin.

We submit, however, that the charge of Hypocrisy, as applied today, is frequently a cop-out and misses the mark. To grasp this, one must understand the basic definition or character of hypocrisy. Hypocrisy is (A) a show or expression of feelings or beliefs that one (B) does not actually hold or possess. To put it simply, it is "saying one thing" (usually something good and virtuous) and "doing another thing" (usually something bad or unvirtuous). The hypocrite, to state it in yet another familiar way, does not "practice what he preaches."

If you think about this for a minute, its means that there are always two moral aspects to the hypocrite which must be examined. On one hand there is the moral quality of (A) what he says, or shows, or expresses in public. On the other hand, one must examine the moral quality of (B) his actual or true hidden position. The problem with making a charge of hypocrisy is that one can easily fail to examine either of these causal positions and simply expose their combined effect, which we label hypocrisy if A and B are inconsistent with one another. The accused may then simply deny the hypocrisy charge or return it and never be forced to deal with the moral character of its underlying components. Furthermore, while no one likes to be accused of sin, being accused of hypocrisy is perhaps not the worse thing that could happen to oneself; after all, one can’t actually be fined or imprisoned or put to death for being a hypocrite.

Let’s consider an example so see why charges of hypocrisy are often the easy way out of a moral conundrum and rarely lead to corrected behavior.

One of the most prolific levelers of hypocrisy charges today is that Great American Sean Hannity, a truly guileless fellow who is almost always right in assessing the moral positions of his antagonists, the Liberals. Perhaps he is so prone to bring this charge because the sin is so fantastically ubiquitous among liberals. He is almost always right in recognizing hypocrisy when he sees it, but he tends to dwell incessantly (dare I say, ad nauseam) on the apparent hypocrisy and often fails to deal conclusively with the deeper sins of the hypocrite, the component polar positions (A and B) which combine to give rise to this sin of effect.

One of Mr. Hannity’s favorite targets of late, for obvious and wholly appropriate reasons, has been Al Gore, the new high priest of the deity Globe ... the thunderous prophet and revelator of the very un-chic new sin of warming. Mr. Hannity and others have carefully followed Mr. Gore’s travel and living habits and found that the way he lives and works and travels is grossly inconsistent with the way he says the rest of us should live and work and travel if we are to avoid the new sin of warming Globe. Mr. Gore’s critics seem, for sure, to have nailed him to the wall on the sin of hypocrisy, the double standard, inconsistency writ large. But few, including Mr. Hannity, have gone deeper to examine the moral realities of either Mr. Gore’s preachments or his behaviors, the constituent components of his hypocrisy. Yet this is quite possible to do. It has been done, thankfully, by some dedicated journalists (see the results of their in-depth investigation, for example, elsewhere on this blog). The result of this examination is much more important and useful than taking the easy way out with a charge of hypocrisy. It shows that Mr. Gore is a liar and a fraud and that the mathematical al-gore-isms and computer models he touts in support of his divine science (what he preaches) are just plain wrong. And because he advances falsehoods, he himself is a moral wrongdoer. (Oops, pardon me. I forgot there for a moment that lying, fraud and deception are among those old-timey "sins" that are no longer recognized as unacceptable.) One could, on the other hand, examine the morality of his actual personal behavior and find that his rich lifestyle is perfectly moral (again, pardon the appeal to the out-dated notion of moral standards). These types of examinations would do much more for creating a better (oops, sorry, another moral judgment?) world than making easy charges of hypocrisy. But because few have taken the trouble to do the hard moral legwork, Mr. Gore goes on his merry way of deceiving the world and potentially destroying it with misplaced policy proposals.

Lest it be thought that I have been too hard of a moral ally like Sean Hannity, let me make you another case involving the other side of the philosophical aisle.

Liberal secularists are very found of charging conservative Christians of hypocrisy on the issue of the sanctity of life. "They say they are pro-life but they won't lift a figure to end capital punishment, gun violence or war. They're such hypocrites," the typical charge says. "Such a blantant double standard. Cluck. Cluck. Tsk. Tsk."

By leveling this mindless hypocrisy charge and pointing out a seeming inconsistency, the liberals smugly believe they have won the moral ground: The Rightwingers are hypocritical; they're positions must therefore be dismissed. End of discussion.

But if the accusers were to do the hard legwork of moral investigation of the Christian practice and preaching, they would find no hypocrisy at all, no inconsistency. That's because the true underlying Christian position argues only the sacredness of some kinds of life and the damnation/forfeiture of other kinds of life. Innocent life is sacred and worthy of protection as an inalienable right. Guilty life is not inalienable and must be forfeit when its owner has deprived a innocent person of his or her sacred life (sacred in that it is God-given and thus inalienable). Murderers and those who take life through unjust war or aggression have no such inalienable right to life. That is the Christian position and taking the life of such persons through the behaviors of capital punishment, just war and appropriate police action is entirely consistent with the Christian profession regarding life.

But to reach that understanding one has to carefully study the Christian's "A" -- his stated position -- and his "B" -- his actions or behaviors -- from a moral standpoint. That's hard and often devastating work. It is much easier to claim moral superiority and victory by spewing out a simplistic charge of hypocrisy and never examining the premises of the hypocrisy equation.

To do in-depth moral evaluation, however, leads inescapably to making absolute moral judgments, something that has been rendered all but impossible in light of the new reality that there are virtually no sins left. In fact, the present moral relativity explains why the only available sin with which to charge one’s enemy is hypocrisy. If neither one’s public expression (A) nor one’s hidden agenda (B) can be labeled right or wrong, all that is left to charge is that these two positions are inconsistent with one another. And inconsistency can be considered morally wrong only if it has the nature of an absolute.

This is the weird world in which libertarians live. Listen to another commentator who is fond of citing the double standard, Bill O’Reilly. He is always quick to tell his viewers and listeners that he couldn’t care less what sodomites, for example, do or believe. "What they do is they’re business," he predictably bloviates with regard to this or most other societal situations he addresses. But he has no trouble at all leveling a charge of hypocrisy in this or that situation, and that alone is enough for him to come to a moral conclusion, since hypocrisy is one of the few moral absolutes left in this world (the other two being the aforementioned global warming and one-directional intolerance).

The upshot of it all is that the moral relativists have painted themselves into an uncomfortable and potentially deadly corner, for no one can survive long in a world where all behaviors are acceptable, save a tiny handful of insipid comportments like hypocrisy which gain moral gravitas only by screeching about them.

Gracious me, but moral relativists are so intolerably hypocritical! Which would be funny if it weren’t for the fact that a major segment of the rest of the world is inhabited by some rabidly determined absolutists whose moral compass points only south. And because it is sin to be intolerant of these folks, there is little we can do to stop them, unless, of course an angry Globe destroys us all first.

What Must Be Done: Thoughts on the 4th Anniversary of the Current Hostilities in Iraq

2007-03-19T15:07:00.000-07:00

By Garry J. Moes

If there was any good in the Islamic attack on the United States on September 11, 2001 (and many good and noble things did happen on and around that day), one of the highest was this: for one brief, glorious moment, Americans and much of the rest of the world East and West knew what had to be done.

For more than 30 years before that fateful day, the maniacs of imperialist Islam had been on the attack, mostly with impunity. Airliners were hijacked and blown out of the sky. Cruise liners were commandeered and old men in wheelchairs were thrown overboard. International games were disrupted and athletes murdered. Journalists, ambassadors, embassy workers, businessmen and tourists were kidnapped, held captive for months on end, and/or murdered. Novelists were marked for death and were forced into years of seclusion. Barracks, airbases and warships were bombed, and soldiers, marines, airmen and sailors were slaughtered. Servicemen on humanitarian missions were brutalized, murdered, and burned and their corpses were dragged through the streets. Embassies abroad were blown up and skyscrapers at home were shaken. Suicide bombers quietly penetrated supermarkets, cafes, buses, night clubs and schools, bloodying the landscape with the dismembered bodies of ordinary people living their ordinary lives. Jihadist organizations with nothing but violence on their programs proliferated, while some of their leaders won Nobel peace prizes. Whole nations were subverted into terrorist states. Literally thousands of such incidents could be cited.

Save for a few successful precision air raids (President Ronald Reagan's retaliatory strike on Libya) and some ill-fated rescue attempts (President Jimmy Carter's helicopter fiasco in the Iranian desert) and off-target retaliations (President Bill Clinton's inept missile attack on an aspirin factory) over the years, America responded to the incessant succession of Muslim attacks with hand-wringing, head shaking, regrets, sadness, resignation and apathy.

But on September 11, 2001, and for a brief season thereafter, that all changed. Americans and much of a sympathetic world saw with great moral clarity what had to be done. This clarity was distilled in President George W. Bush, a plain-spoken man who almost instantly put it forth in a sweeping Doctrine that promised a dark destiny for all individuals, organizations, enterprises and nations whose purposes were to bring the world to heel through terror.

The impulse to do what had to be done was so powerful and instinctively clear that few at the time heard the president's warning that the civilized world's necessity would be a struggle spanning decades and generations. Few thought to consider whether what had to be done could, in fact, feasibly be done at all -- whether the armies of civilized nations could ever secure a victory against a million fanatics making a million unpredictable and undetectable little but deadly forays at any moment at any place. It is likely that few contemplated, beyond their instincts, the nuances or harsh future realities that would accompany the doing of what we knew in our hearts (but not so much in our heads) had to be done.

The breathtaking truth we knew on 9/11 was that what had to be done was this: We must return to war and stay at war for as long as this implacable enemy insists on pursuing its vicious vision of subjecting ("Islam" means "submission") the world to the demands of Allah and rule by his people. This pan-Islamic vision has always existed among the Mohammedans, who have, ironically, almost constantly warred among themselves over which of their religious factions or dynasties will control and implement the vision.

And so this nation went back to war. I say "went back" because it had launched a major campaign in this war just over a decade earlier when the patriarch of the Bush dynasty saw what had to be done in the face of a bold move by one of the most brazen of the modern antagonists to establish a dominant position in the renewal of the pan-Islamist imperialistic vision, namely Saddam Hussein. Whether President George H. W. Bush (the elder) had a full understanding of the need to stand against this historic broad Islamist vision is unclear; he spoke only of the need for a "new world order" of powers partnered under the United Nations to stand against international aggression. (His son seemed to labor under a less grandiose and morally simpler assumption; namely, that any person, organization or nation who uses terror to accomplish any end must be stopped by any reasonable means necessary.) Not long after Bush the Elder left office, there was a blatant terrorist attack on our home soil, the first in 50 years. The enemy attempted to bring down one of the centers of our economic life, the World Trade Center, in 1993. But our new playboy president at the time was too busy with his perversions and the country was having too much fun mimicking or watching the antics of President Goodtime Charlie to give the attack a second thought.

The renewed campaigns which began shortly after 9/11 proved spectacularly successful. Within weeks of the start of retaliatory hostilities on two fronts, two enemy regimes were easily toppled. In the case of Iraq, the conquest was so swift that our forces outpaced their own supply lines occasionally. The leaders of the fallen regimes and many of their organizational allies and terror masterminds fled for the safety of spider holes, caves and cross-border sanctuaries. Successful generals retired, and one aircraft-carrier captain allowed his ship to be festooned with a banner declaring "Mission Accomplished" as his commander-in-chief landed a jet on deck to offer thanks to his accomplished warriors. Though many later scoffed at that slogan, the fact was that the mission of the campaigns to which the slogan applied had indeed been accomplished.

What many failed to realize at the time was the fact that new campaigns were about to be launched by the enemy. There seems to be evidence that our war planners had not fully prepared for this fact. The regime changes in Afghanistan and Iraq had created two more "Israels," and the hit-and-run terrorists who had always plagued the original Israel now took their tactics to the new fronts.

But by now, the memories of that fateful day in 2001 had begun to fade among the Western masses whose earlier instincts had led them to pursue what had to be done. Patriotic country singer Darryl Worley wondered in song: "Have you forgotten how it felt that day?" Perhaps one of the reasons the memories had faded can be found in the words of that very question. We had been remembering for a time how we "felt" on that day, when what we should have been remembering were the cold, hard facts about what led to that day. It is natural for most normal people in the West to find it hard to sustain powerful emotions for a long period of time -- unlike the enemy, whose anger and commitment never seem to fade. We, the people of a rational civilization, must understand historical and ontological realities if we are to succeed in the defense of our world and way of life. The problem is that in recent generations, owing to our crumbling educational system and moral/philosophical foundations, we are quickly losing our ability to reason, especially to morally reason, and to see clearly what has to be done. We may respond to our latent instincts for a time, but these are not enough to see us through to the necessary end in the long haul.

And so, like the circus-goers of ancient Rome, we have turned our attention to what furthers our enjoyments: the fun of singing competitions and flesh-flashing dance contests, acquiring the latest gadgets and downloading music and zippy ringtones to them, fixating on the "tragic" death or head-shaving meltdowns of celebrity harlots and the paternity of their offspring, awarding gold statuettes to goofball former politicians turned pseudo-scientists, endlessly debating sexy social issues which once were sensibly undebatable, following virtually every hedonistic opportunity available to us -- the very corruptions which lead our enemies to so deeply despise us.

Our lagging interest in pursuing what has to be done is exacerbated by the devilish efforts of some of our own number and of countries abroad who had been strategically silent in the instinctive moments following 9/11 but who had never forgotten what the madman Hitler-Bush had pledged to do back then. These sanity-challenged anarchists and revolutionaries, and their useful idiots in major political parties, realized at the time that what the rest of us knew had to be done could only be done through the leadership of the world's only remaining superpower, a global military-industrialist power which they hate with a burning passion. Many of these secretly or openly work to stop us from doing what must be done and would be delighted to see our enemy succeed against us -- forgetting, of course, that the enemy will also come for them. They desperately need to see the 4,000-year-old Hebrew-Christian civilization fall, because they cannot abide its claims on their lives. The problem is that if this civilization falls, all the world will be forced to abide the claims of a barbaric system of religious and societal horrors too terrible to contemplate. Too terrible to contemplate...but very easy to examine, for this system has operated in plain view for centuries and does so still in myriad and diverse places in our contemporary world. Still its civilized rival, incredibly, is viewed by some in the West as the greater terror.

The evident horrors of today's Islam are only the modern manifestations of a centuries-old imperialistic holy war by the practitioners of a malevolent and malicious religion sworn, bound and determined to persevere till all the world falls under the dominion of their "merciful" god.

"History confirms with great clarity that Muslims, beginning with Muhammad, launched their conquest of Christendom one-thousand years before the Europeans responded rather feebly with their Crusades. Yet today, Muslim propagandists want the world to believe that the West stole Islamic lands and that Christians alone are imperialistic. This mindset is used to fool fools into believing that Muslims fight Christians because Christians have fought Muslims. Those who deceive don’t want you to know that Christians were victims, not villains in this affair or that Islam alone is why Muslims kill," writes one chronicler of this reign of terror.

"And yet, despite all of the evidence to the contrary, Islam is presented as innocent and passive. The religion is seldom if ever held accountable for the terrorism it inspires. Even when so-called experts discuss terror in the context of the religion they universally apply the qualifier 'radical' to Islam, suggesting that a corrupted form of the doctrine is to blame for its carnage when the opposite is true. But to have access to the media and to sell books one must be willing to lie. This suicidal pathology is born out of Socialist Secular Humanism and its campaign against Christian values.

And make no mistake: the present opposition to any Western war on Islamism is a "suicidal pathology." In the face of the certain destruction which the do-nothing position will bring about, the opposition advocates doing nothing. To these opponents -- from the terminally naive to the political opportunists to the flat-out traitors who work for our destruction -- the thing that must be done is nothing. For the traitors, Western capitulation is a desired strategy -- suicidal and pathological though it may be. The naive and the opportunists, if they consider at all the practice of terrorism in the 40 years before 9/11, apparently believe that the thing that must be done is simply to endure the troublesomeness of it all. We survived the nettlesome irritation of terror before; we can survive it some more, miserable as things may be from time to time.

But they have forgotten. They have forgotten 9/11, the day we knew for a moment what really, truly had to be done. For that moment, we knew this was more than nettlesome irritation; this had the nature of history's ultimate showdown.

Indeed, that is how the enemy sees it. The visionary leaders of of al Qaeda and Iran have made it repeatedly and abundantly clear: a conflagration must occur to usher in history's climax -- the eternal golden age of Islamic triumphalism -- and they are sworn to fulfill their perceived destinies to bring it to pass in their (our) lifetimes. This is why the present opposition to the war is so utterly and profoundly and stupidly wrong.

To those who argue that the "war against terror" may be necessary but the "war in Iraq" is not, we submit again that this is a terminal case of ignorance. Whatever rationale may have been given by the American administration and its allies four years ago for returning to the Iraq theater, the place of Iraq in the enemy's grand understanding of history's progress and end must be considered. At the heart of the pan-Islamic vision for the world is the restoration of the caliphate -- abandoned by the corrupt Ottoman Turks in 1924 and seemingly lost for good with the defeat of the Axis Powers, which included the (by then disheveled) Ottoman Empire, in World War II. For certain factions within Islam, Iraq is central to the vision. (Thankfully, this is and always has been a factious matter within Islam and the internecine struggles on such issues have frequently weakened the movement from within. One of the West's most promising strategies would be to exploit this factionalism in every way possible. Saddam's aggressions were more than bravado but his effort to position himself in the forefront of the coming Islamic world dominion, and it is why he could not capitulate to the pre-war demands of the West despite the impossibility of his situation.)

The tactics now being employed by the Democrats in the U.S. Congress completely ignore the centrality of Iraq in the pan-Islamic vision, and their shamefulness is outweighed only by their dangerousness. For if the present West-accommodating Iraqi regime or some similar successor of it falls, there will be little to stand in the way of a vast renewal of the imperial push of greater Islam. Again, whatever rationale may have been publicly given for U.S. action in Iraq, our presence in the strategic heart of the Middle East -- if for no other reason than to be a hedge against the vicious rivalry between Arab and Persian Islam, which could produce chaos on a colossal scale -- is critical to our national interests and the peace and safety of the world.

The opportunistic Democrats have been idiotically clear on what they think should not be done, despite the realities of the present world and the remembrance of their own instincts on 9/11 of what had to be done. To them we ask, "What do you propose to do to accomplish what still must be done?"

"Nothing" is not good enough. A pox on your house if you allow your thirst for partisan power to so blind yourself to what you must do that our national house and the civilization that it still barely nurtures is forced to fall to the House of Islam.

Give Eco-Messiah a Little Carbon Credit

2007-03-19T14:21:00.000-07:00

By Mark Steyn

Stop me if you've heard this before, but the other day the Rev. Al Gore declared that "climate change" was "the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced.'' Ever. I believe that was the same day it was revealed that George W. Bush's ranch in Texas is more environmentally friendly than the Gore mansion in Tennessee. According to the Nashville Electric Service, the Eco-Messiah's house uses 20 times more electricity than the average American home. The average household consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours. In 2006, the Gores wolfed down nearly 221,000 kilowatt-hours.

Two hundred twenty-one thousand kilowatt-hours? What's he doing in there? Clamping Tipper to the electrodes and zapping her across the rec room every night? No, no, don't worry. Al's massive energy consumption is due entirely to his concern about the way we're depleting the Earth's resources. When I say "we," I don't mean Al, of course. I mean you -- yes, you, Earl Schlub, in the basement apartment at 29 Elm St. You're irresponsibly depleting the Earth's resources by using that electric washer when you could be down by the river with the native women beating your loin cloth dry on the rock while singing traditional village work chants all morning long.

But up at the Gore mansion -- the Nashville Electric Service's own personal gold mine, the shining Cathedral of St. Al, Tennessee's very own Palace of Versal -- the Reverend Al is being far more environmentally responsible. As his spokesperson attempted to argue, his high energy usage derives from his brave calls for low energy usage. He's burning up all that electricity by sending out faxes every couple of minutes urging you to use less electricity.

Also he buys -- and if you're a practicing Ecopalyptic please prostrate yourself before the Recycling Bin and make the sign of the HDPE -- Al buys "carbon offsets," or "carbon credits." Or, as his spokesperson Kalee Kreider put it (and, incidentally, speaking through a spokesperson is another way Al dramatically reduces his own emissions), the Gores "also do the carbon emissions offset."

They do the Carbon Emissions Offset? What is that -- a '60s dance craze? No, it's way hotter. I mean, cooler. All the movie stars are doing it. In fact, this year's Oscar goodie-bag that all the nominees get included a year's worth of carbon offsets. Totally free. So even the stars' offsets are offset. No wonder that, when they're off the set, they all do the offset. Look at Leonardo DiCaprio: He's loaded with 'em, and the chicks think he's totally eco-cool. Tall and tan and young and lovely, the boy with carbon offsets goes walking and when he passes each one he passes goes aaaiiieeeeeeeee!

How do "carbon offsets" work? Well, let's say you're a former vice president and you want to reduce your "carbon footprint," but the gorgeous go-go Gore gals are using the hair dryer every night. So you go to a carbon-credits firm and pay some money and they'll find a way of getting somebody on the other side of the planet to reduce his emissions and the net result will be "carbon neutral."

It's like in Henry VIII's day. He'd be planning a big ox roast and piling on the calories but he'd give a groat to a starving peasant to carry on starving for another day and the result would be calorie-neutral.

So in the Reverend Al's case it doesn't matter that he's lit up like Times Square on V-E Day. Because he's paid for his extravagant emissions. He has a carbon-offset trader in an environmentally friendly carbon-credits office suite who buys "carbon offsets" for Al from, say, a terrorist mastermind in a cave in the Pakistani tribal lands who's dramatically reduced his energy usage mainly because every time he powers up his cell phone or laptop a light goes on in Washington and an unmanned drone starts heading his way. So, aside from a basic cable subscription to cheer himself up watching U.S. senators talking about "exit strategies" on CNN 24/7, the terrorist mastermind doesn't deplete a lot of resources. Which means Tipper can watch Al give a speech on a widescreen plasma TV, where Al looks almost as wide as in life, and she doesn't have to feel guilty because it all comes out . . . carbon-neutral!

And, in fact, in the Reverend Al's case it's even better than that. Al buys his carbon offsets from Generation Investment Management LLP, which is "an independent, private, owner-managed partnership established in 2004 and with offices in London and Washington, D.C.," that, for a fee, will invest your money in "high-quality companies at attractive prices that will deliver superior long-term investment returns." Generation is a tax-exempt U.S. 501(c)3. And who's the chairman and founding partner? Al Gore.

So Al can buy his carbon offsets from himself. Better yet, he can buy them with the money he gets from his long-time relationship with Occidental Petroleum. See how easy it is to be carbon-neutral? All you have do is own a gazillion stocks in Big Oil, start an eco-stockbroking firm to make eco-friendly investments, use a small portion of your oil company's profits to buy some tax-deductible carbon offsets from your own investment firm, and you too can save the planet while making money and leaving a carbon footprint roughly the size of Godzilla's at the start of the movie when they're all standing around in the little toe wondering what the strange depression in the landscape is.

A couple of days before the Oscars, the Reverend Al gave a sell-out performance at the University of Toronto. "From my perspective, it is a form of religion," said Bruce Crofts of the East Toronto Climate Action Group, who compared the former vice president to Jesus Christ, both men being (as the Globe And Mail put it) "great leaders who stepped forward when called upon by circumstance." Unlike Christ, the Eco-Messiah cannot yet walk on water, but then, neither can the polar bears. However, only Al can survey the melting ice caps and turn water into whine. One lady unable to land a ticket frantically begged the university for an audience with His Goriness. As the National Post reported, "Her daughter hadn't been able to sleep since seeing An Inconvenient Truth. She claimed that seeing Mr. Gore in person might make her daughter feel better." Well, it worked for Leonardo DiCaprio.

Are eco-celebrities buying ridiculousness-emissions credits from exhausted run-of-the-mill celebrities like Paris, Britney and Anna Nicole? Ah, well. The Eco-Messiah sternly talks up the old Nazi comparisons: What we're facing is an "ecological Holocaust, and "the evidence of an ecological Kristallnacht is as clear as the sound of glass shattering in Berlin."

That 221,000 kilowatt-hours might suggest that, if this is the ecological Holocaust, Gore's pad is Auschwitz. But, as his spokesperson would no doubt argue, when you're faced with ecological Holocausts and ecological Kristallnachts, sometimes the only way to bring it to an end is with an ecological Hiroshima. The Gore electric bill is the eco-atom bomb: You have to light up the world in order to save it.

©Mark Steyn 2007

"Shooter" a Self-inflicted Wound

2007-03-19T13:21:00.000-07:00

By Graham H. Moes
Graybrook Institute Film Critic

Don’t believe the rumors... It is all about oil, my friends.

Not only do we invade other countries for it, we slaughter whole villages and bury their bodies under the pipeline.

I know because I saw it in Shooter.

I won’t even bother with the plot. Let’s just jump right in.

In Shooter, America is baaaad. So bad that even the handful of good guys left in government are powerless to stop the vast majority of baaaad ones running it layer upon layer upon layer (with brandy snifter in hand, of course.)

In Shooter, there are no Republicans or Democrats, only guys trying to make a quick buck. In fact, any U.S. senator -- who looks suspiciously more Republican than Democrat -- will admit that to your face, with a smile and a puff of cigar smoke, because you can’t do a thing about it, little man.

In Shooter, U.S. soldiers get left behind at the first sign of trouble. By their commanding officers, who will set up large, illegal, undetectable military bases in foreign countries at a phone call from those Republican-looking senators and their Haliburton pals.

In Shooter, you can tell the bad guys by their American flag lapel pins, and the good guys by their Che Guevara T-shirts.

In Shooter, you have a film to heal the long and unfortunate rift between Hollywood and Iran caused by 300.

In Shooter, you have a film Hugo Chavez will adore.... You have a film in which Chavez-adoring Danny Glover stars...patriotism is for suckers who should know better, a weakness acknowledged reluctantly, like alcoholism...and even rednecky, good-old-boy gun nuts from the deep south gloat like Rosie O’Donnell about finding no WMDs in Iraq.... Seriously folks, it’s that bad.

Danny Glover was a dead giveaway, of course, but I had hoped it was one of those cases where he was so desperate for work, he was willing to compromise his core beliefs. Like Oliver Stone stooping to direct World Trade Center. But nope.

Oh, and get ready for the payoff line at the end...

Evil Guy: You can’t shoot me. I’m a U.S. Senator!
Hero: Exactly. [BLAMMO!!!]

Burn, baby, burn!!

And when, oh when, are we going to give private security contractors a break? They're popping up as the heavies everywhere lately, despite the fact most are uber-patriots in the real world who deserve to be stars in their own right. (But to see that movie, you'll have to buy my recently completed Iraq actioner, Spartans, currently being politely rejected for its subject matter by all the top producers in Hollywood.)

--------------

This review first appeared on rogue wavelength.

The Great Global Warming Swindle

2007-03-16T19:37:00.001-07:00

Arm yourself with the truth about the global warming myth. This is a must-see documentary. Click on the other link in my March 15 posting (see left) to access Google Video's higher resolution version.

The Great Global Warming Swindle (Google Video Version)

2007-03-15T16:06:00.000-07:00

UK Documentary: The Great Global Warming Swindle (Click Here)

A huge segment of the population has begun to take it for granted that climate change is a catastrophe and is a man-made phenomenon. But just as the environmental lobby think they've got our attention, a group of skeptics armed with real science have emerged to slay the whole premise of global warming.

According to a group of scientists brought together by documentary-maker Martin Durkin, if the planet is heating up, it isn't your fault, there's nothing you can do about it, and it is not sinister.

This stunning British program is a must-see documentary that not only blows holes in the phony "science" being touted as proof of a man-made global warming disaster-in-the-making but is also a devastating exposé of the modern green movement and its brazen, colossal and widespread deceptions.

When I was working as a journalist in Europe at the height of the Cold War in the mid-1980s, I regularly monitored Radio Moscow. One of the unmistakeable themes of the dying Communist movement at the time was environmentalism. It was clear that Moscow and its client states were not truly committed to environmental purity. I personally traveled in Eastern Europe at the time and witnessed some of the most ghastly pollution one could imagine. It was clear, rather, that the socialist/communist left badly needed a cause in its last-ditch effort to destroy capitalism, and environmentalism was its convenient lie. This fact is strongly underscored by Greenpeace Founder Patrick Moore in the film.

Watch this 1 hour, 13 minute program and circulate it as widely as possible, especially among young people.

No Mandatory HPV Vaccines for Girls

2007-02-22T22:39:00.000-08:00

By Andrea Lafferty, Executive Director
Traditional Values Coalition

Merck, the giant drug company, has come under fire in recent weeks over its lobbying efforts to have their drug, Gardasil, forced upon public school girls throughout the nation. Traditional Values Coalition is calling upon the Department of Justice to investigate the behind-the-scenes scheming that Merck has done to influence the votes of state legislators to push mandates of this drug on girls. If this isn’t the sort of activity which interstate commerce regulation and federal racketeering statutes were designed to prohibit -- what is?

The public outcry has gotten so loud that Merck announced on February 20 (2007) that it would stop its lobbying campaign to persuade state legislatures to mandate this HPV vaccine for all girls as young as nine years old. It was doing much of its lobbying through an organization called Women in Government.

This decision to stop lobbying for mandating this vaccine is clearly intended to put off any possible investigation of the company or the drug itself. TVC wants to know how many politicians were influenced by political contributions by Merck. How much money has Merck dropped into the political campaigns of politicians – both Republican and Democrat – in order to buy favor in state legislatures. Clearly, having a drug mandated for grade school girls is a gold mine for Merck, who will reap billions in profits each year.

Merck’s lobbying turnaround is suspect – and should not be considered a victory. Legislation on forced mandates are still being considered in at least 20 states where Merck has already gotten a foothold. The National Conference of State Legislatures has a detailed report on the progress of legislation in states to mandate the vaccine for grade school girls.

The fact is that the American public is poorly educated about HPV and its relationship to cervical cancer. According to the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation, Women’s Health Policy Facts, “In the U.S. cervical cancer is relatively rare, but there are nearly 10,000 cases and 3,700 deaths from cervical cancer annually.” Moreover, according to the CDC, HPV infects approximately 20 million people in the U.S. with 6.2 million new cases each year. (Source: National Conference of State Legislatures, HPV Vaccine report, February 20, 2007)

The Henry J. Kaiser Foundation is on target when it says that cervical cancer in the U.S. is relatively rare with only 10,000 cases annually out of a potential population of 20 million who are infected with HPV already.

U.S. Epidemic That Isn’t

According to the National Cervical Cancer Coalition, there are an average of 3,700 women in the U.S. each year who die from cervical cancer. Women in developing countries “account for about 85% of both the yearly cases of cervical cancer (estimated at 493,000 cases worldwide) and the yearly deaths from cervical cancer (estimated at 273,500 deaths worldwide).

While these 3,700 deaths are a tragedy, this is not a national health crisis nor does it require that states like Texas should rush to mandate an HPV vaccine upon girls. Mandatory vaccines should only be required when outbreaks of polio, tuberculosis or other easily transmitted diseases may threaten a school or community.

HPV is contracted through sexual contact and is not contagious. Therefore, almost all cases of HPV could be prevented through responsible sexual behavior, including fidelity in marriage and abstinence outside of marriage.

The mandating of a vaccine such as Gardasil sets a dangerous precedent. What other drugs will be mandated for our children in public schools? And, who must pay for them? Who will be criminally liable if a girl becomes disabled or dies from a mandated drug?

Expensive Drug – And Boosters Needed

Gardasil requires a series of three shots spaced out over several weeks. The cost is $360 for these shots and taxpayers will be forced to pay for them. This is the most expensive vaccine in history. It is nine times more expensive than a measles vaccine. Current evidence indicates that the shots only last 5 years, so booster shots will be required as well. Since Gardasil only protects against the strains of HPV accountable for 70% of cervical cancer cases, will governments then mandate a second drug to cover the other 30%? What other drugs will be mandated for our children under the guise of fighting “cancer”? Will there be mandates for birth control pills for girls?

Merck Wins Big In Texas

One of the most significant victories achieved by Merck was the announcement by Texas Governor Rick Perry that he was ordering the vaccination of all girls in public schools beginning with 6th graders!

This HPV vaccine is designed to provide protection against four of more than one hundred strains of a sexually-transmitted disease known as the human papillomavirus, which can cause cervical cancer. The four strains protected by Gardasil are found in 70% of the cases of cervical cancer.

Medical doctors are deeply concerned about the mandating of this new drug on pre-teen children.

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons has issued a statement opposing the forced vaccinations of grade school girls. In a letter to Governor Rick Perry, the AAPS stated: “This vaccine mandate violates parental rights, informed consent and privacy; the efficacy and safety of this specific vaccine are unproven; it is an unjustified expansion of the taxpayer’s burden; it constitutes an unwarranted overreaching of executive power; and it violates sunshine-in-government.”

The AAPS notes that clinical trials were conducted on fewer than 2,000 of the target population of girls aged 9 to 15! “The studies were far too short to demonstrate that the vaccine prevents the HPV transforming into cancer. Further, since the duration of the protection is estimated at 5 to 7 years, it would wane about the time that some of these girls are becoming sexually active,” says the AAPS.

The Texas Medical Association (TMA) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) are both opposed to the forced vaccination of pre-teen girls.

The TMA says that Governor Perry’s mandate of HPV vaccines is premature and must be carefully investigated before moving ahead. “There are issues, such as liability and cost, that need to be vetted first,” said Dr. Bill Hinchley, a San Antonio pathologist and president-elect of the TMA. Hinchley also notes that there are unknown long-term or rare adverse side effects from the HPV vaccine.

The AAP detailed its opposition to mandating of the HPV virus in early February. Dr. Joseph Bocchini, AAP’s infectious-disease chairman notes: “Much of the public doesn’t know about HPV and its link to cervical cancer and other diseases. You can’t put a mandate ahead of that.”

The AAP notes that school vaccines evolved to protect pupils against outbreaks of contagious diseases, not to compel immunization. (Currently, 20 states are considering pushing for mandated HPV vaccines for children.)

Merck’s Political Strategy And Gov. Perry’s Merck Connection

If Merck can get every state to mandate its vaccine, it could make as much as $4 billion a year with more girls coming into the sixth grade each year. One wonders what influences were involved in Gov. Perry’s decision to mandate this drug for school girls. Merck hired Mike Toomey, Perry’s former chief of staff for $250,000 a year. In addition, Women in Government (WIG), which has received Merck funding, has hired Dianne White Delisi to run one its state chapters. Delisi is the mother-in-law of Gov. Perry’s current chief of staff Deirdre Delisi. (Associated Press story, 2/2/2007) Perry also received $6,000 from Merck during his re-election campaign in 2006.

Women in Government (WIG) lists its supporters on its web site. Of the 81 companies listed, more than half are pharmaceutical and health-related organizations. WIG is lobbying in numerous states for the mandating of Gardasil. Women in Government also receives support from GlaxoSmithKline, which is developing another HPV vaccine. The Glaxo vaccine should be on the market by spring or summer of this year.

It would appear that Merck is trying to get a monopoly hold on vaccine mandates for girls before Glaxo can get its drug on the market. Are preteen girls to be the sacrificial lambs in a war over two powerful drug companies who are fighting for a monopoly in the public schools? It seems likely.

Merck has also contributed to the political campaigns of pro-vaccine mandate legislators in Virginia. Delegate Phil Hamilton (R-Newport News), for example, received a $1,000 donation from Merck just weeks before he introduced a bill requiring mandated Gardasil vaccines for school children. Hamilton has received more than $10,000 from Merck in the past decade, according to a report in the Virginian-Pilot (2/15/2007).

Senator Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) offered a companion bill in the state Senate. She had received a $500 donation from Merck just 60 days before introducing her bill. Merck has given Howell $3,500 in the past decade.

According to the Virginian-Pilot, Merck has given more than a million dollars to politicians around the country in the past two election cycles. Virginia politicians received $13,000 last year.

Texas State Legislature To Block Perry’s Mandatory HPV Vaccine

As this report was being completed, it was learned that Texas state Representative Dennis Bonnen is offering H.R. 1098 to block Governor Perry from implementing his executive order on mandatory HPV vaccinations. ... H.R. 1098 will protect the rights of parents to be the sole decision-makers when it comes to Gardasil or any other similar vaccine!

Minority Children As Guinea Pigs

Star Parker is founder of the Coalition on Urban Renewal & Education (CURE), an organization founded to provide resources for African Americans on issues of race, poverty and social policy. In a recent column published by WorldNetDaily, Parker expressed outrage about Gardasil and its forced mandate upon girls. Her concern is that Merck is going to specifically target low-income minority girls for this drug by having state and local governments pay it through the welfare system.

As Parker notes: “The main risks that these girls from low-income families face stem from their promiscuity. Blacks account for 50% of new AIDS cases, and are 18 times more likely to contract a sexually transmitted disease than whites, and are regularly at risk of death through homicides, suicides and accidents that plague these communities. Blacks are twice as likely to die before the age of 20 as whites.

She continues: “It is the collapse of family and values and the attendant sexual promiscuity that drives the deadly poverty cycle in these communities. So mandating Gardasil vaccine for these girls is to validate a lifestyle that is already killing them in order to address a risk that is among the least of their problems.”

Georgia Congressman Proposes Federal Money Ban For Mandated Vaccines

U.S. Representative Phil Gingrey (R-GA) is a medical doctor who is proposing legislation to prohibit federal funding from being used to mandate the HPV vaccine for children. Gingrey’s “Parental Right To Decide Protection Act” “prohibits federal funds from being used to implement mandatory state human papillomarvirus (HPV) vaccination programs.”

According to Gingrey, “As an OB-GYN physician, I understand the importance of protecting Americans from sexually transmitted diseases, and I applaud the development of an HPV vaccine. But for states to mandate vaccination for young women is both unprecedented and unacceptable.”

Rep. Gingrey continues: “States should require vaccinations for communicable diseases, like measles and mumps. But you can’t catch HPV if an infected schoolmate coughs on you or shares your juice box at lunch. Whether or not girls get vaccinated against HPV is a decision for parents and physicians, not state governments.”

The American College of Pediatricians agrees with Dr. Gingrey’s assessment of Gardasil. In a letter sent to the California state legislature on January 25, 2007, this professional group stated that requiring a vaccination for a disease spread by sexual contact is a “serious, precedent-setting action that trespasses on the right of parents to make medical decisions for their children as well as on the rights of the children to attend school.”

Mandated Vaccines: A Bad Idea

In conclusion, it is clear from the lack of long-term research and dangerous side effects of Gardasil that this drug should not be mandated for school girls.

HPV is not a communicable disease; it is a disease resulting from intimate sexual contact. All vaccines should be voluntary unless there is a clear and present danger to the public health from a communicable disease such as Polio or Tuberculosis. Mandating a vaccine for a sexually-transmitted disease sets a bad precedent that could be used to mandate condoms for boys and girls and birth control pills for girls on school campuses. Such mandates would be a financial boon to the manufacturers of drugs and condoms for sex, but will undermine parental rights and encourage girls and boys to believe they are immune from the effects of premarital sexual activities.

Governor Perry’s mandate is wrong, immoral and bad medicine for Texas children. The effort of Merck to monopolize the vaccination of millions of girls in public schools is an example of the dangers of out-of-control greed in the marketplace.

Merck has backed off from its efforts to have this vaccine mandated – but the effort is already far down the road in many state legislatures. If only 20 states end up mandating this drug, Merck will still reap billions of dollars.

The U.S. Department of Justice should look at the behind-the-scenes scheming of Merck to influence politicians who will then push for vaccine mandates, putting billions into Merck’s pocket. In addition, the U.S. Attorney General and the Attorneys General of the 20 states where mandatory use of the HPV is being considered need to take a long hard look at Merck’s role and the role of Women in Government.

Dr. Clayton Young has written an important letter about Gardasil to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists that deserves reprinting in full:

OBGYN Questions HPV Vaccine Gardasil
Editorial Office
Obstetrics and Gynecology
The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists
409 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20024-2188

http://www.vaccineinfo.net

I am writing in response to the recent Committee Opinion 344 Published in the September issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology. I have several concerns regarding Gardasil.

First, the Gardasil’s product insert states their endpoint is the prevention of "High Grade Disease", this encompasses CIN II-III and adenocarcinoma in situ (AIS) which are "immediate and necessary precursors" for squamous cell and adenocarcinoma of the cervix.1 The MAXIMUM median follow up in any of their studies is FOUR years.

However, the time course from CIN III to invasive cancer averages between 8.1 to 12.6 years.2 Claiming this vaccine prevents cervical cancer, with the longest median study subject being 4 years, is inappropriate.

The vaccine only "protects" against 4 high risk HPV subtypes. We are currently screening for 15 "high risk" HPV subtypes. This may lead to an increase in infection with other and possibly more aggressive subtypes.

According to ACOG, “The vast majority of women clear or suppress HPV to levels not associated with CIN II or III and for most women this occurs promptly. The duration of HPV positivity (which is directly related to the likelihood of developing a high grade lesion or cervical cancer) is shorter, and the likelihood of clearance is higher, in younger women.”3 Seventy percent of women clear the virus spontaneously after 18 months and 90 % clear the virus after 2 years.4 Vaccinating children against HPV with a vaccine that is of unknown duration of efficacy may only postpone their exposure to an age which they are less likely clear the infection on their own and be subject to more severe disease, including the cervical cancer which the vaccine is supposedly preventing. This would require an unknown number of boosters and is a setup for complacency in the older population that is a recipe for disaster.

The likelihood for regression to a normal pap from CIN II with expectant management is 40%.5 This beats Gardasil’s reduction of CIN II-III of only 39% in the “general population impact group” which is where most people would currently fall.6 This includes “all subjects who received at least one vaccination (regardless of baseline HPV status at Day 1.”7 Since ACOG does not currently recommend serologic testing for HPV before vaccination this will be the endpoint
from here out. In this case, "first do no harm” rules.

The study of the vaccine in children and adolescents is limited to only measuring the development of antibodies to the HPV subtypes in the vaccine. There is absolutely no evidence that the vaccine prevents anything when administered at this young age. Merck expects you to extrapolate their adult data to the immune response in children. If they were really interested in
vaccine efficacy in children, should it not be studied properly in children? Vaccinating children for this or any other sexually transmitted infection is not without risk. There are over 30,000 immunization reactions reported to the Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) annually 8, and it has been estimated that only 10% or less of vaccine reactions are reported.9 In light of these facts the integrity of the post marketing surveillance of vaccines is questionable. Currently no vaccine has ever been examined for possible carcinogenic, mutagenic, or teratogenic effects, and yet the pharmaceutical industry stands ready to add Gardasil to the list of vaccines mandated for school admission.
Currently, precancerous lesions are readily identifiable and treatable in the developed world. Cervical cancer causes approximately one percent of all cancer deaths in America. The utility of this vaccine may be in third world countries in which regular screening is not available and cervical cancer is still a major cause of morbidity and mortality. The Committee Opinion states that there continues to be a significant population of women not receiving adequate screening. If you estimate the cost of the series at $360.00 (the most expensive vaccine on the market) administered to all adolescent girls and use that money to expand and enhance screening, I believe the results might be quite impressive. To invest that amount of healthcare dollars in an immunization with no long term efficacy or safety data is unwise.

I have personally witnessed the devastation caused by severe vaccine reaction, including patients, their children, nurses and my own family. To proceed with mass vaccination against this embellished "threat" is premature.

Clayton Young, M.D., F.A.C.O.G.
Cc: NVIC, AAPS, PROVE

References
1. Prescribing information for GARDASIL. Whitehouse Station (NJ): Merck & Co., Inc.; 2006.
2. Management of abnormal cervical cytology and histology. ACOG Practice Bulletin No. 66. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist. Obstet Gynecol 2005; 106: 645-64.
3. Ibid.
4. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Genital HPV Infection Facts Sheet. Available at:http://www.cdc.gov/std/HPV/STDFact-HPV.htm. Retrieved September 16, 2006.
5. Management of abnormal cervical cytology and histology. ACOG Practice Bulletin No. 66. American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologist. Obstet Gynecol 2005; 10
6: 645-64.6. Prescribing information for GARDASIL. Whitehouse Station (NJ): Merck & Co., Inc.; 2006.
7. Ibid.
8. Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, phone representative, interview with the author, September 13, 2006.
9. Cave, S. What Your Doctor May Not Tell You About Children’s Vaccinations. Warner Books, 2001. p.xviii.

Choosing Sides

2007-02-22T22:32:00.000-08:00

By Michael Boldea, Jr.
Hand of Help Ministries

Although the events taking place throughout the world are captivating and interesting, we must look a little closer to home for the truly relevant occurrences as pertains to the children of God. Indeed, we need look no further than the church itself.

I say this with a heavy heart, but it must be said, the hour is coming, it is fast approaching, when those of the house of God must choose a side. Every one of us, claiming the name of Jesus, every one who calls themselves children of God will soon have to choose between being the persecuted or the persecutor. I realize the statement is shocking, but it was not intended for shock value. It is merely a statement of fact, one that is clearly visible taking into consideration the current events unfolding within the modern day church.

When one of America’s most influential evangelical leaders can make the statement that Jesus Christ is not the only way to God, when we are willing en masse, to abandon core beliefs, and fundamental doctrine for the sake of the world’s acclaim, it is inevitable that those who choose not to compromise the truth, those who choose to stand on the Word of God, will face the wrath of the compromisers.

The modern churches of compromise, and the world, have something in common dear friend, in that they both consider those who remain faithful to Christ, those who choose not to flirt with the world, and sell themselves, a stumbling block in the way of progress, an obstruction in the way of the perfect world they are envisioning, wherein we all serve the same God just by different names, and the deity, relevance, and necessity of Christ is nullified.

* * *

Yes, the true followers of Christ, will be hated due to the fact that they are unwilling to go along, just to get along, because they will valiantly continue to claim the ultimate truth that Jesus is the only way to salvation, that Jesus is the only way to God, and no man goes to the Father but by Him.

Very soon the true believer will be seen not only as a hindrance, but a hindrance that must be removed, and those illegitimate children, those who believe they know God, but whom God does not know, will mount a campaign against anyone bold enough to stand in the way of their agenda.

The time has come to choose a side, to know where we stand, to know what we believe, and know why we believe it. The time has come to prepare our hearts for the inevitable fallout, and persecution against the true children of God, to purpose in our hearts, as Daniel did, that we will not defile ourselves, that we will remain faithful, and continue to proclaim the truth no matter the consequence.

Those things which have been foretold, the self-same things that so many scoffed at not so long ago, no longer seem so impossible, but rather very probable. I know that some are rolling their eyes, saying in their hearts, this could never be, but the times are changing, the shape of things is becoming clearer, and above all else God is not a liar. If we do not heed the warnings of Christ, if we do not prepare ourselves that we may be steadfast in the face of persecution, we have no one to blame but ourselves, for we have been warned.

The promise to the faithful remains true throughout the ages, in that if we confess Christ before men, He will confess us before His Father who is in heaven, but so does the warning, that if we deny Him before men, He will also deny us before His Father.

Today for the sakes of our very souls, we choose with whom we stand. If it be with Christ, and in Christ, know that although in the eyes of the world you may be in the minority, in reality you are in the majority. If it be that we choose to stand with the world, know that although you may have bought yourself some comforts, you may have spared yourself some persecution, the price you chose to pay was too high indeed.

I for one made my choice long ago, and echo the words of a mighty man of God in saying, that no matter what may come, as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.

WWJD: What Would J. (Edgar) Do?

2007-02-14T16:49:00.000-08:00

By Graham H. Moes
Graybrook Institute Film Critic

Spy thriller Breach seems like the most openly religious film in recent memory. It begins with a man praying in church, ends with him asking for prayer, and depicts in between a conservative Christian family man doing all the things a conservative Christian family man does.

Granted, that man here is also a sexual deviant and the most devastatingly traitorous mole for America's enemies ever to escape a well-deserved death sentence.

Stands to reason. Guys who slam Hillary Clinton, decry the country's vulnerability to attack and exhort co-workers to draw nearer to God only see the light of a multiplex film projector when they're total hypocrites and sociopaths.

Still, it's a brilliant film.

Breach gives the play-by-play on the takedown of FBI agent Robert Hanssen (Chris Cooper), the high-ranking Cold War veteran busted in pre-9/11 2001 after a career of selling out U.S. interests to the Russians. The extent of the damage done is still classified, though we know he handed our agents over to death on at least one occasion.

By all acounts, Hanssen was an enigma and a complicated guy. Probably more complicated than merely a troubled, well-armed, Catholic version of Jim Bakker. And had his other appetites extended beyond sex tapes of his wife and a fixation on Catherine Zeta-Jones into the same-sex realm, you can bet "sexual deviant" wouldn't have even made the script.

But apart from that and a line about the investigation of Bill Clinton being a witch hunt, Breach is a serious, gripping, and remarkably non-partisan film. Presidents come and go merely as photos on the Bureau's wall. John Ashcroft is depicted in an even light. And whatever Hanssen was or wasn't outside of church, those who took him down are depicted as heroes, the rare feds genuinely looking out for the country's best interests and proud of it.It's also a masterpiece of Hitchcock-style tension. Expect no shootouts or car chases (high speed, anyway) but an edge-of-your-seater nonetheless.

With his Shirley Temple pout, babyfaced Ryan Phillippe is hard to buy initially as the operative planted in Hanssen's office to out-spy the master spy. But that's the point. Even the paranoid Hanssen didn't see this kid coming. As the mouse one slight step ahead of the cat, and occasionally in its mouth, Phillippe turns out to be the ideal protagonist for this kind of thriller. (Enjoy the tinglies you get from seeing the killer about to enter the office our hero is ransacking for evidence? This one's for you.)

Forget cat... Hanssen was pure snake. And Chris Cooper, with his heavily lidded gaze and darting red tongue embedded in a colorless face -- tip of the hat to cinematographer Tak Fujimoto for the cold-blooded look of the film -- somehow nearly becomes one. He's spectacular, the spookiest spook since Hannibal Lecter, the original.

Oddly, the film hedges its bets regarding Hanssen's ultimate motives, satisfied that "obsessed religious fanatic" is close enough. Yet Cooper's villainous mojo fuels a thinking man's thriller, a subtle character study already fascinating for its true crime grounding. Yes, including the religious angle... Now if only the filmmakers hadn't had such a good time working it.

The Last Sin Eater

2007-02-08T22:13:00.000-08:00

By Graham H. Moes
Graybrook Film Critic

4 out of 5 stars

After The Nativity Story opened to nothing but the chirping of crickets over the Christmas holiday (way to support the home team, church folks), studios have to be confused – and nervous. After Passion of the Christ made a mint, several had just launched Christian divisions for the overlooked market. Then that market up and overlooked the sure-bet "prequel" to Passion.

Actually, I know they’re nervous. Just last month, one of Fox Faith’s first outings, the psycho-thriller Thr3e, was ruthlessly yanked from theaters less than two weeks out of the gate for failing to break the bank. It’ll be lucky to break even on DVD at this point.

Luckily, believers still brazen enough to claim they support "family entertainment" when it’s offered have a second chance to put their money where their mouth is. The Last Sin Eater, a film based on Francine Rivers’ best seller, opened in many mid-sized to larger markets nationwide Feb. 8.

Directed by veteran "Christian movie" helmer Michael Landon Jr., the story focuses on an isolated Welsh community in 1850’s Appalachia and the personal tragedy at the center of one family, a tragedy that’s left 10-year-old Cadi in desperate need of the "sin eater" – a shadowy figure in Welsh social tradition invoked to appear and voluntarily take the sins of the dearly departed upon his own damned soul.

Think you can see where this one’s headed already? You’re right. Sort of.

Like M. Night Shyamalan’s The Village – which I suspect inspired the film’s tone as much as anything in the book – there’s more going on than meets the eye in this sleepy cove of farmers, bee keepers and porch-settin’ old folks.

Tragedy runs deep in old school Appalachian bluegrass music, and one appeal of Sin Eater is watching the source material for some of those songs in the action. It’s an uplifting story ultimately, a catharsis mounted by the steady-handed Landon and a well-crafted screenplay.

At this level of the biz, of course, forget big-star name recognition. There’s Henry Thomas (E.T., All the Pretty Horses, Gangs of New York) and Academy Award winner Louise "Nurse Ratched" Fletcher, about as far from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as humanly possible. But Thomas is a glorified cameo, and Fletcher is hardly Oscar-worthy here, laboring through a measured Gaelic brogue more Swedish Chef than Old Country Welsh.

But there the criticisms end.

The cast is strategically comprised of actors you’ll recognize but probably need IMDB.com to figure out why. With one or two exceptions, they’re stellar – particularly the Sin Eater himself.

Then there’s Liana Liberato as Cadi. A relative newcomer with a handful of previous TV roles under her belt, she breezes through a demanding role that, while never as high-octane as anything Dakota Fanning has done, suggests she’s as much a natural.

Liberato plays the pre-pubescent lost soul with conviction, giving the film its greatest strength – the ability to convince us of sin’s reality and the downward tug it can have on any life, no matter how young or otherwise "innocent."

More than the tug sin can have, it’s the tug it should have that modern viewers most take away from the experience. The power of Christ to heal the broken heart is largely lost today, even on Christians like me, in a culture that denies any need for healing in the first place.

But I can hear you now… "Sin and tragedy? Sign me up!"

Happy to report, Liberato also nails the other side of her character, a Tom and Betsy-like relationship with fellow spiritual traveler Fagan (Soren Fulton, Thunderbirds). The spunkiness of their unspoken crush is fun to watch and provides a nice emotional counterpoint to the rest.

Did I mention the "purple mountain majesties" cinematography? Worth the price of admission, particularly if you live somewhere currently under three feet of snow.

One minor quibble.

I haven’t read the book so I can’t say for sure, but from conversations with those who have, it seems they jazzed the ending a wee bit here. And in a way that – for a knee-jerk conservative like me – borders on the sort of Dances With Wolves revisionism to the American experience that never fails to work me into a frenzy.

Granted, I’m a right-wing nut job (and former history major) who often sees that stuff where never intended. Nor did I approach frenzy status. Whatever its politics, this late-inning twist to the story adds nothing to the more powerful, more real, story of Cadi and her family.

Still, a solid film recommended on multiple levels. So get out there and support this film before they stop making them again.

Next month, a review of Fox Faith’s next release, The Ultimate Gift.

To find a theater showing The Last Sin Eater near you, visit www.foxfaithmovies.com.

What Thomas Jefferson Learned From the Muslim Holy Book of Jihad

2007-01-18T15:51:00.000-08:00

By Ted Sampley
U.S. Veteran Dispatch

Democrat Keith Ellison is now officially the first Muslim United States congressman. True to his pledge, he placed his hand on the Quran, the Muslim book of jihad and pledged his allegiance to the United States during his ceremonial swearing-in.

Capitol Hill staff said Ellison's swearing-in photo opportunity drew more media than they had ever seen in the history of the U.S. House. Ellison represents the 5th Congressional District of Minnesota.

The Quran Ellison used was no ordinary book. It once belonged to Thomas Jefferson, third president of the United States and one of America's founding fathers. Ellison borrowed it from the Rare Book Section of the Library of Congress. It was one of the 6,500 Jefferson books archived in the library.

Ellison, who was born in Detroit and converted to Islam while in college, said he chose to use Jefferson's Quran because it showed that "a visionary like Jefferson" believed that wisdom could be gleaned from many sources.

There is no doubt Ellison was right about Jefferson believing wisdom could be "gleaned" from the Muslim Quran. At the time Jefferson owned the book, he needed to know everything possible about Muslims because he was about to advocate war against the Islamic "Barbary" states of Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Tripoli.

Ellison's use of Jefferson's Quran as a prop illuminates a subject once well-known in the history of the United States, but which today is mostly forgotten -- the Muslim pirate slavers who over many centuries enslaved millions of Africans and tens of thousands of Christian Europeans andAmericans in the Islamic "Barbary" states.

Over the course of 10 centuries, Muslim pirates cruised the African and Mediterranean coastline, pillaging villages and seizing slaves.

The taking of slaves in pre-dawn raids on unsuspecting coastal villages hada high casualty rate. It was typical of Muslim raiders to kill off as manyof the "non-Muslim" older men and women as possible so the preferred "booty" of only young women and children could be collected. Young non-Muslim women were targeted because of their value as concubines in Islamic markets. Islamic law provides for the sexual interests of Muslim men by allowing them to take as many as four wives at one time and to have as many concubines as their fortunes allow.

Boys, as young as 9 or 10 years old, were often mutilated to create eunuchs who would bring higher prices in the slave markets of the Middle East. Muslim slave traders created "eunuch stations" along major African slave routes so the necessary surgery could be performed. It was estimated that only a small number of the boys subjected to the mutilation survived after the surgery.

When American colonists rebelled against British rule in 1776, American merchant ships lost Royal Navy protection. With no American Navy for protection, American ships were attacked and their Christian crews enslaved by Muslim pirates operating under the control of the "Dey of Algiers" -- an Islamist warlord ruling Algeria.

Because American commerce in the Mediterranean was being destroyed by the pirates, the Continental Congress agreed in 1784 to negotiate treaties with the four Barbary States. Congress appointed a special commission consisting of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Benjamin Franklin, to oversee the negotiations.

Lacking the ability to protect its merchant ships in the Mediterranean, the new America government tried to appease the Muslim slavers by agreeing to pay tribute and ransoms in order to retrieve seized American ships and buy the freedom of enslaved sailors.

Adams argued in favor of paying tribute as the cheapest way to get American commerce in the Mediterranean moving again. Jefferson was opposed. He believed there would be no end to the demands for tribute and wanted matters settled "through the medium of war." He proposed a league of trading nations to force an end to Muslim piracy.

In 1786, Jefferson, then the American ambassador to France, and Adams, then the American ambassador to Britain, met in London with Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja, the "Dey of Algiers" ambassador to Britain.

The Americans wanted to negotiate a peace treaty based on Congress' vote to appease.

During the meeting Jefferson and Adams asked the Dey's ambassador why Muslims held so much hostility towards America, a nation with which they had no previous contacts.

In a later meeting with the American Congress, the two future presidents reported that Ambassador Sidi Haji Abdul Rahman Adja had answered that Islam "was founded on the Laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Quran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as Prisoners, and that every Musselman (Muslim) who should be slain in Battlewas sure to go to Paradise."

For the following 15 years, the American government paid the Muslims millions of dollars for the safe passage of American ships or the return of American hostages. The payments in ransom and tribute amounted to 20 percent of United States government annual revenues in 1800.

Not long after Jefferson's inauguration as president in 1801, he dispatcheda group of frigates to defend American interests in the Mediterranean, and informed Congress.

Declaring that America was going to spend "millions for defense but not one cent for tribute," Jefferson pressed the issue by deploying American Marines and many of America's best warships to the Muslim Barbary Coast.

The USS Constitution, USS Constellation, USS Philadelphia, USS Chesapeake, USS Argus, USS Syren and USS Intrepid all saw action.

In 1805, American Marines marched across the dessert from Egypt into Tripolitania, forcing the surrender of Tripoli and the freeing of all American slaves.

During the Jefferson administration, the Muslim Barbary States, crumbling as a result of intense American naval bombardment and on shore raids by Marines, finally officially agreed to abandon slavery and piracy.

Jefferson's victory over the Muslims lives on today in the Marine Hymn, with the line, "From the halls of Montezuma to the shores of Tripoli, we will fight our country's battles on the land as on the sea."

It wasn't until 1815 that the problem was fully settled by the total defeat of all the Muslim slave trading pirates.

Jefferson had been right. The "medium of war" was the only way to put and end to the Muslim problem. Mr. Ellison was right about Jefferson. He was a"visionary" wise enough to read and learn about the enemy from their own Muslim book of jihad.

Top 10 Movies of 2006

2007-01-08T17:19:00.000-08:00

By Graham H. Moes
Graybrook Film Reviewer

EDITOR'S NOTE: The 2006 reel world in rewind: Forget those fancy-pants critics with their foreign-language films you've never heard of. Enjoy the real top ten movies of the year as recommended for the rest of us by our resident film columnist Graham Moes.

Casino Royale — Best Bond movie in years? Try best action movie in years, period. Part of the recent movement to reinvent action-hero icons by visiting their roots, this rebirth of 007 took the rusty franchise off autopilot at long last in favor of an intelligent, character-driven story, a down-and-dirty execution, and action sequences more riveting than the last decade of 007 put together. Daniel Craig is the best Bond since Connery, and assuming this level of writing holds up, expect great things ahead for Her Majesty's secret service.

The Nativity Story — Not quite the transcendent work of devastating beauty The Passion of the Christ represented (nor the box office for that fact), writer Mike Rich's exhaustively researched framing of Mary and Joseph's struggle to fulfill their cosmic calling has a quiet strength that rises above director Catherine Hardwicke's uninspired direction and Keisha Castle-Hughes' lifeless portrayal of Mary for a deeply moving experience. Joseph's wonderfully fleshed-out story and brief scenes with shepherds and others in need of great joy are key elements that helped put the meaning back in those carols I, at least, had been taking for granted for years.

Apocalypto — They say great filmmakers can tell stories without a line of dialogue. If so, Mel Gibson may be the purest director working today. Mesmerizing from first frame to last, the Spartan-scripted Apocalypto — OK, it was a foreign-language film — is like nothing you've ever seen. And before it settles into a merely thrilling third-act homage to The Naked Prey, the ancient Mayan world Gibson hog-ties and drags us into is more horrifying, spectacular and exquisitely crafted than anything we're likely to find until his next crazy idea for a movie. And look for me first in line.

United 93 — It wasn't "too soon" for this film, though writer/director Paul Greengrass took some heat for tackling the story of the flight that fought back on Sept. 11 to saved untold lives. While at times too documentary to generate the kind of cathartic raw hatred we're still waiting to feel at the movies for those behind Sept. 11, Greengrass at least came closest to showing us the true face of the enemy. His chaotic directorial style fit the real-time narrative, and his casting of people actually involved in the events was an act of risky genius. Catch it on DVD now for some great insight from surviving relatives as they weigh in on the film.

World Trade Center — Oliver Stone delivered the year's Ground Zero-level story of Sept. 11, told from the perspective of Port Authority officers trapped in the rubble and those working to save them. Stone put aside his personal politics and penchant for kook-burger conspiracy theories long enough to prove he still knows how to make movies for the rest of us, and Nicholas Cage gave an Oscar-deserving performance made all the more impressive for the fact he does so mostly through voice and facial expression, trapped in the debris as his character is for most of the film. Far from the downer most expected, the triumphant "WTC" deserves a place of honor on every American's DVD shelf.

Cars — It wouldn't be the ol' Top 10 list without a Pixar film, this year a shiny but nostalgic take on American car culture of a bygone era. For anyone who's driven the lonely stretches of old Route 66 in recent years and experienced the bittersweet solitude of cruising the road time left behind, this movie is for you. And if you haven't, it's still for you. It also features a superior soundtrack and the voice of Paul Newman, proving a legend doesn't even need to be seen onscreen to steal scenes.

Stranger Than Fiction — Will Ferrell stretched his serious acting muscles and still managed to keep it funny in the only movie in recent memory to have film-theory wonks and average viewers alike actually debating the meaning of a mainstream movie. Great performances and the most original script of the year made for the perfect blend of art house "intelligent design" and popular accessibility.

Inside Man — I'm a sucker for a great caper film anytime, but Spike Lee's urban jack worked not only on a will they pull it off? level but also mounted a killer wait, what's really going on here?? suspense classic, surprise ending. Serve it all up with Denzel Washington and a side of Jody Foster and you've got a cinematic recipe for the year's other rare brain- and crowd-pleaser.

Nacho Libre — This monk's tale of a heavyweight friar moonlighting as a Mexican wrestler is the kind of movie you either love or hate. Having seen it thrice since it came out and laughed harder each time, apparently I love it. Brought to you by Jack Black and the team behind Napoleon Dynamite, Nacho may be even more of an acquired taste, and while not quite at the level of Napoleon, still featured some of the freshest and funniest comic bits in the movies this year. Nachoooooo!

Invincible — Sure it's a slick, factory-produced, "feel good" story from Disney. Who says the top 10 movies of the year have to be depressing, low-budget indies for the gay rodeo circuit? As the true(ish) story of an aging Average Joe who bootstrapped himself out of hard times and into the NFL, feel good comes with the territory, and God bless it, says I. Even so, the slice-of-life depiction of Philly in the depressed '70s and deeper themes of American resilience helped raise this one to the Rocky of recent football movies. (Now if only I'd made it to see the real Rocky last year. But I guess that's why they invented New Year's resolutions.)

The Crisis and Politics of Higher Education

2006-11-27T23:04:00.000-08:00

By Larry P. Arnn
President of Hillsdale College

Many of our politicians have it backwards these days. It's not a shame to lose an election. But it is a shame to serve a wrong idea—which is what Republicans, while in control of the White House and both houses of Congress, have been doing the past six years in education policy. Most recently, they have been seeking to reauthorize the Higher Education Act of 1965, the first and still the authoritative assertion of the modern bureaucratic state into higher learning.

A product of the Great Society, the Act provides direct aid from the federal government to colleges and universities and their students. With this aid comes rules, rules by the tens or hundreds of thousands, rules beyond the knowing of any person. Every year these rules are adjusted, refined, forgotten, remembered, and reinterpreted in countless ways by countless people. But every five or six years, relatively major changes are made by several pieces of legislation. This is what is meant by “reauthorization.”

Conservatives, when they argue for school choice (a good cause), like to say that elementary and secondary schools should be financed on the same principles as colleges, where student aid follows the student to whichever school he pleases. This is true enough, but it is not the aid alone that follows the student. Title IV of the current Higher Education Act regulates colleges that accept federal student financial aid (something Hillsdale College, honorably and famously, does not do). Title IV includes now more than 300 pages of regulations, and the failure of a senior college official to comply in a material respect can lead to heavy fines and imprisonment. Of course these regulations grow in number and scope every year. Of course they affect profoundly the management deliberations of any college that is subject to their commands—which is to say, practically every college. The Higher Education Act is the very model of bureaucratic legislation: top down, complex, requiring interpretation of endless details by everyone concerned, and placing power over local things in remote beings whose very job titles are indecipherable, and who, also, have almost no direct contact with the actual things being accomplished.

Federal aid to higher education is politically potent. This is true because people who work in colleges are powerful. It is true also because the public, for a good reason and a bad one, believes in higher education and thinks it worthy of public support. Education is rightly seen as the road up, the avenue of progress for all. Popular government, moreover, requires that a capacity for governing be widely spread, that education at all levels should impart the knowledge and civility requisite to good citizenship. Without these qualities, the people who make the laws will not act justly or respect liberty, and the people who live under the laws will not know what to do about that. The preservation of the republic depends, therefore, upon a proper system of education. At its highest, education is the contemplation of the ultimate ends in virtue of which means are selected for the sake of private and public happiness. The American people's recognition of education's importance creates favor for a Higher Education Act presumed to serve those ends.

Rising Costs, Declining Skills: Is Federal Aid Effective?

In addition to this old and noble reason for support of the Act, there is in modern times the acute problem of the expense of college. Since the passing of the Higher Education Act, college expenses have exploded, especially in recent years. Every constituency except the richest fears the cost of college in the same way that people fear catastrophic setbacks to their health. Government help for the cost of education is very welcome to those who have children approaching college age. These people are often unaware of the impact that federal regulation and subsidy of education have upon its cost. Anyway, they want help right now.

Thus most Republicans since Reagan have set their shoulders to extending and enlarging federal education policy, consistently making the situation worse. First and foremost, they have spent a lot of money. Consider: Since September 11, 2001, defense spending has risen 47 percent, while higher education spending has risen 133 percent. There are major increases in most higher education programs, especially those regarding need-based aid. Both the amounts available, and the upward limits of the income groups to whom they are available, have risen sharply. This cascade of funds exceeds all prior experience in rates of growth, except for the first heady days of the Act.

More recently the Republicans seem to have become aware that this additional spending is not quite getting the job done. For one thing, they cannot seem to spend money as fast as colleges can raise tuition. The people they mean to help are not better off, but the colleges are.

In the Executive Branch, a recent Draft Report released by the National Commission on the Future of Education—a commission formed by Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings—offers lots of ideas to cut costs. But the one federal policy that would work is not discussed at all, despite the fact that the Bush administration, in another department, has done some of its best work in pursuing it. In health care, health savings accounts (HSAs) and high-deductible policies are making patients more important in the health care system. These patients are spending their own money, and in a miraculous development, they are more careful with it than they are with the money of others. Instead of learning this lesson, the National Commission is promising more subsidies to colleges and threatening regulation if they do not watch their costs.

The second great concern animating federal education policy is the miserable failures in basic skills, especially math and science but also literacy, of America's high school and college graduates. The National Commission's Draft Report offers an impressive number of ideas for dealing with this crisis. But they are all built on the same notion: that once upon a time, in the 1950s, the Soviet Union fired a rocket into space before the U.S. did, and so the federal government began funding higher education, and because of that we had a great coordinated national effort and became the leaders in science and technology. Secretary Spellings tells this story often. It is the same story that was told back at the time of Sputnik, and it was used effectively to justify passage of the original Higher Education Act.

This story is nice, but it cannot be true. Sputnik went up in 1957, after Americans had invented the telephone, the laser, the transistor, done half the work to discover DNA, settled a continent, covered it with railways, roads, airports, and communications. We managed to do all of this without the Department of Education. Federal aid to higher education started in small ways a year after Sputnik. We landed on the moon in 1969, twelve years later, barely time to get an undergraduate degree and then a Ph.D. No student funded even in the first year can have played an important part in the moon landing. It is not possible that federal aid to education had a decisive impact on the space race. Nor is it possible that our race with the central planners in Moscow was won by duplicating their methods. The genius of the American people lies elsewhere.

Academic Content: Search for Truth or Relativism?

Republican policymakers have strayed even further afield in addressing the content of higher education. A bill recently passed by the House of Representatives contains a statement on “student speech and association rights.” The “Bill Summary” released by the House Committee on Education and the Workforce says that this section is modeled on the Academic Bill of Rights, an idea proposed by David Horowitz. Horowitz, a lion on the campus and an effective guerrilla fighter in good causes, has reason to make his recommendations. He knows firsthand, by visiting dozens of college campuses where he is a popular speaker, how skewed are the opinions that reign there among the faculty. His idea of an Academic Bill of Rights is to turn to advantage the notion of balance and value-free neutrality to which those campuses pay lip service. Here is how he describes it:

All higher education institutions in this country embrace principles of academic freedom that were first laid down in 1915 in the famous General Report of the American Association of University Professors . . . . The Report admonishes faculty to avoid “taking unfair advantage of the student's immaturity by indoctrinating him with the teacher's own opinions before the student has had an opportunity to fairly examine other opinions upon the matters in question . . . .” In other words, an education—as distinct from an indoctrination—makes students aware of a spectrum of scholarly views on matters of controversy and opinion, and does not make particular answers to such controversial matters the goal of the instruction.

In another place, Horowitz writes:

There are no “correct” answers to controversial issues, which is why they are controversial: scholars cannot agree. Answers to such questions are inherently subjective and opinion-based and teachers should not use their authority in the classroom to force students to adopt their positions. To do so is not education but indoctrination.

There are truths here, which give the statement plausibility. Certainly students should not be browbeaten by their professors, and anyway good students are not persuaded by this tactic. One ought not to draw conclusions without examining all the serious arguments on every side. Evidence must be eagerly sought and neither suppressed nor distorted. These concepts are part of the substance of the academic life. And they are old.

Indeed, if the principles of academic freedom are real, they cannot have been laid down first in 1915. The very adjective “academic” is taken from Plato's ancient teaching ground. The first universities were operating, in the later 12th century, more or less as we know them today. A couple of centuries ago, Thomas Jefferson worked with fellow revolutionary James Madison to design a college curriculum. These men committed treason rather than submit to a violation of freedom of speech and conscience. Yet Madison wrote to Jefferson that it “is certainly very material that the true doctrines of Liberty, as exemplified in our political system, should be inculcated on those who are to sustain and may administer it” (emphasis added). Then, he commits a heresy by speaking of heresy:

After all, the most effectual safeguard against heretical intrusions into the school of politics, will be an able & orthodox professor, whose course of instruction will be an example to his successors, and may carry with it a sanction from the visitors.

Did Madison really mention “a sanction from the visitors,” meaning the governing board of the college? What can he have been thinking? But before we condemn him as a bigot, we should remember his resume. He cannot have meant that he wished to raise up generations of automatons, men who might, for example, do the bidding of a King or aristocrat merely because they were in awe of authority. That would be the kind of man Jefferson and Madison had lately expelled from the new nation by force. The co-author of the Federalist, the constitution writer whose preparation for that work was an academic study both exhaustive and profound, cannot have meant that education should be one-sided, partial, partisan, or shallow.

Jefferson, for his part, is famous for writing that there are such things as “laws of nature and of nature's God”—truths that are accessible to reason, and better known if the reason is trained to see them. Jefferson, like Madison, thought that an educated man would have investigated these matters—indeed, that he would have come to some conclusions about them that would decisively shape his life. Students, when they are young, must have a reason to begin the journey of learning, or they will not begin it at all. If they start out indoctrinated with the facile notion that “there are no correct answers,” they will be relieved of the burden of looking for them. They will be launched on a journey that can only lead nowhere.

Madison and Jefferson are not alone here. College after college has been founded with such words as virtue, honor, piety, freedom, right, and goodness in their mottos and their missions. These are words of value, and they are controversial words. That means in the academic setting they must be debated and discussed. At the same time it must be realized that whole institutions, many of them lasting centuries, have been built to teach or “indoctrinate” students with the principles that underlie moral and intellectual virtue.

Are the purposes of those institutions rendered obsolete by the principles of academic freedom that were “first laid down” by the American Association of University Professors in 1915? That was certainly the intent of that association. Its relativist principles have remade the university into the thing we have today. Colleges have not thereby gained but lost in openness, profundity, civility, and high purpose. The universities built on these new principles are a scandal of uniformity, of contempt for the unorthodox, of disdain for the backward folk who take the foundations of their colleges or their country seriously.

The relativism and utilitarianism of the progressives who laid down these principles is nothing but an invitation to the assertion of the will. It begins by undercutting the whole point of college, which is—choosing a traditional college mission statement at random—to provide “such moral, social and artistic instruction and culture as will best develop the minds and improve the hearts of the students.” (I borrow from the Hillsdale College Articles of Association, 1855.) In the older view, students should be invited to look, not to themselves and their own opinions, but rather outwards and upwards, beyond themselves to something against which they can judge the choices they must make. Shakespeare is beautiful and instructive, but not usually at first. He takes work. What justifies the work is the idea that some great thing awaits the one who does it successfully. Any recovery of excellence in education will entail a recovery of this older idea of the purpose of education.

National Standards and the Danger of Political Correctness

Turning back to the National Commission's Draft Report, we see clearly again how little the contemporary crisis of education is understood today even by conservative policymakers. The Draft Report promotes enforcement through a method that goes beyond anything ever imagined by the original Higher Education Act—national standards. Compliance with these standards would be examined through a test administered to every student in the land. The results would be published so that everyone may see. Accrediting agencies, which will be nationalized or anyway more tightly regulated, would use this “outcomes data” to accredit or withhold accreditation.

All the vices of “teaching to the test” are latent in these proposals. Charles Murray writes of the No Child Left Behind Act that it has not improved test scores and that it creates an atmosphere of endless drilling, which is poor for learning. And he is probably right. But even worse than the tests' ineffectiveness and waste of time is that they will be expressions of the worst forms of political correctness. One should fear this, first of all, because the National Commission is not interested in that subject. It justifies its reforms on the ground that math and science knowledge and literacy are poor, and college costs too much. This is true, but not exhaustive. Certain matters formerly thought important do not come up in the Draft Report nor, apparently, in the deliberations of the National Commission. The Draft Report does not mention religion, God, or morality. It does not mention history as a subject of study. It does not mention the Constitution, either for what it commands or allows, or as a subject of study. Although busy governing, the Report does not mention government as a subject of study. Philosophy, literature, happiness, goodness, beauty are not to be seen, even though these terms abound in the mission statements and mottos of American colleges whenever they are older than a hundred years and in most of the younger ones.

The Draft Report is devoid of any echo of the purpose of education as it is trumpeted in our first national documents. It contains no whisper of the sentiments from the Northwest Ordinance, those regarding “religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind.” It does not so much as murmur the hallowed idea that students should learn the lessons upon which America was built, the conveying of which lessons is the reason government would be interested in education in the first place. Have they read no Lincoln? For example, his prescription for public schools:

that every man may receive at least, a moderate education, and thereby [be] enabled to read the histories of his own and other countries, by which he may duly appreciate the value of our free institutions . . . .

These tests that will decide the fate of colleges will be devised later. One does not have to guess about their nature; they will be prepared by the most influential academics. Or one can observe the tests they write now. Take, for example, the College Board's Advanced Placement Program, and specifically its Teacher Guide, AP English Literature and Composition.

Nothing seems simple anymore, particularly where the introductory courses are concerned. There is little consensus among English teachers when it comes to goals, curriculum, approaches to literature, or even definitions of literature, or rather literatures . . . .

There is no agreement, then, about the meaning of the thing that is being taught. Formerly, there was a more “robust regard for textual authority.” Now,

perhaps most importantly?“objectivity” and “factuality” have lost their preeminence. Instruction has become “less a matter of transmittal of an objective and culturally sanctioned body of knowledge,” and more a matter of helping individuals learn to construct their own realities . . . .

And finally:

Contemporary educators no doubt hope students will shape values and ethical systems as they engage in these interactions, acquiring principles that will help them live in a mad, mad world.

Forget for a moment the selfishness, lassitude and despair that are latent in this notion. The student is taught that the world is mad: find your own way. If the text does not appeal to you, never mind. You are only looking for your own reality: Find what comfort you may in it. Little wonder that half the opinions of the Supreme Court today read as if the Constitution were unavailable to them. Little wonder that members of Congress write about education requirements ad nauseam, ignorant all the while of the great documents by which education was built in our country.

These will be the tests. College students will take them, and colleges who do not prepare their students to excel on them will be held up to ridicule and maybe denied accreditation. Poor parents, whose children will be taught to devalue all that has bound their family together. Poor students, if they want to waste their time in the love of Milton or Aquinas or Plato.

What is to Be Done?

To repair all this and place the education system on a better footing, there are two things that need doing, neither of them proposed so far during this reauthorization of the Higher Education Act. The first is that we should return control of college to private people to the utmost extent possible. The federal government should do what Reagan suggested: go back to the things it has the constitutional power to do. As it withdraws, it should mimic the great acts of education support from our past, the Northwest Ordinance and its companion, the Land Ordinance of 1785, and the Morrill Act signed by Lincoln. It should decentralize authority to the states. Or even go one better: Let taxpayers keep their money, if they are prepared to spend it for something so vital to the public interest as education.

The second thing is to recover the tradition of liberal and civic education that has helped to keep us free by teaching us the purpose of our freedom. To do this, we will have to be willing to take positions on subjects that are “controversial.” We will have to organize our colleges to study the great documents of the American past and those upon which that past was built. This will involve us—gasp—in the study of the Western canon. This is not merely a good thing; it is “urgent.” The National Commission goes on at length about what is “urgent,” but it forgets a point evident in this little paragraph from an influential man of our day:

You are the nation who, rather than ruling by the Shariah of Allah in its Constitution and Laws, choose to invent your own laws as you will and desire. You separate religion from your policies, contradicting the pure nature which affirms Absolute Authority to the Lord and your Creator.

This is from a statement broadcast to the American people by Osama bin Laden on November 24, 2002. He objects specifically to the thing that makes us what we are, the principles of civil and religious freedom. This man and his friends have killed more than 5,000 of us already. They seek weapons to kill us en masse. They offer us peace only if we agree that the right to make a law comes from appointment to the priesthood. Here is a truly urgent matter. We are in a war, likely to be a great and terrible war, a war for the central principles of our land. Perhaps we ought to study those principles. Then maybe we can remember the meaning of the doctrine that “resistance to tyrants is obedience to God.”

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The preceding is adapted from a longer article, “The GOP and Higher Education,” published in the Fall 2006 issue of the Claremont Review of Books. Reprinted by permission from IMPRIMIS, the national speech digest of Hillsdale College, www.hillsdale.edu.

Stranger Than Fiction: Will Farrell Turns a Page

2006-11-16T23:05:00.000-08:00

Reviewed by Graham H. Moes
Graybrook Institute Film Critic

Ranking: 4 out of 5 stars

Apparently, there comes a time in every top comedian’s career when he feels the need to tempt fate and skate off onto the thin ice of “serious comedy.” Think Robin Williams circa Good Morning, Vietnam, or Jim Carey along about The Truman Show. Stranger Than Fiction marks that point for Will Ferrell. Turns out, the guy can skate.

Ferrell plays Harold Crick, a drab IRS numbers-cruncher who discovers he’s a character in someone’s in-progress novel. To make matters worse, the author (Crick can hear her narration at odd and inconvenient times) is suffering from serious writer’s block — mostly over how best to kill him off in the end.

If “a person with a problem” is the essence of every movie premise, Harold has the Citizen Kane of dilemmas — to find out who this author is and convince her not to off him, despite the fact he’s shaping up to be the author’s crowning achievement as a writer.

As Harold sets out to discover, first and foremost, whether his life is a comedy or a drama, we realize this is deeper stuff for Farrell, who offers the first truly restrained performance of his career — no small feat for the reigning king of cinema improv, whose movies are often built as much around his ad-libs as the script itself. Is it funny? Absolutely, but here the humor is understated, found in Harold’s quiet desperation on his metaphoric quest for the meaning of life and a life well-lived.

Whether or not those who loved the obvious and asinine Talladega Nights will appreciate Ferrell’s dry turn here remains to be seen, but director Marc Forster (Finding Neverland) and screenwriter Zack Helm have managed to create that rarest of birds — an indy-style film with mainstream appeal.

Forster did the same thing with Neverland, exploring some of the same issues en route to a grip of Oscar nominations. It’s an indication of how good he and Helm’s richly textured script is that we’re able to buy Will Ferrell as a Christ figure. (Say what now?)

The film should also become a film school staple for discussion — maybe even an adult Sunday school discussion: At what point does Harold begin to exist? Why make the author’s home as empty and sterile as Harold’s while the professor of literature’s is a mass of color and clutter? Is Harold a Christ figure at all, or just an everyman in a universal Christologic framework?

When last I wrote about Will Ferrell, Talladega landed dead last on my Ferrell Films Rankings, far south of Bewitched, Kicking and Screaming, Elf and — cue the golden trumpets — Anchorman (Sorry, Borat. Clearly a better candidate for funniest film ever.)

Stranger Than Fiction doesn’t make that list at all, but it’s at the top of a new one I’ll be keeping for Ferrell. Because — as Harold Crick discovers — sometimes with life, and a good book, all you have to do is turn the page.
________________________

The preceding review was written for publication in the Clovis Independent on Nov. 17, 2007.

You Want Your Culture Back? Engage it!

2006-11-16T16:28:00.000-08:00

By Jason Apuzzo
Libertas - A Forum for Conservative Thought on Film

Here is what it’s been like (until now) to be a conservative in Washington: you have access to the White House, and to the most powerful members of Congress. You have money - oceans of money - that flows through the coffers of PACs and think tanks. You have Fox News, compliant talk radio hosts, conservative authors, and internet gurus who will do your bidding. First and foremost, you have power.

Here is what it’s like to be a conservative in Hollywood: you have access to … none of the studios, nor to the most important independent producers, agencies, or film finance sources. You actually have no money; your films are frequently financed on VISA and American Express cards. You’re scrappy, and have to live by your wits, ideas and talent. Basically you have The Liberty Film Festival and LIBERTAS pulling for you, and a few odd people scattered throughout the system - most of whom are deeply fearful for their careers. Other than that, you’re on your own …

Perhaps now you’ll understand my attitude. The Republican Party lost spectacularly last week - with, I would note, the striking exception of one Arnold Schwarzenegger (and California Republicans generally) - because Republicans nationally are now bereft of ideas. They are no longer the party of Ronald Reagan. Republicans have become a pastiche of their former selves, riffing on the past, play-acting at being conservatives rather than actually being conservatives. If Republicans had a genuinely conservative record to run on, they would’ve won last week. But Republicans have no such record in 2006.

“Oh well!”

That isn’t really what I want to discuss, however. My concern is chiefly the media, and the state of filmmaking. Republicans, and conservatives generally, no longer take the arts or media seriously (nor do they take higher academia seriously) - and now it’s actually beginning to hurt them at the ballot box. ... I have gotten to know many conservative leaders over the last few years. A striking number of them have told us some variation of the following: that they like Hollywood and the media being run by the Left, because that gives Republicans ’something to run against.’ That the steady, unending stream of left-wing agitprop coming from Hollywood, along with the celebrity liberal activism, has been a great thing for Republicans … because after all, it riles up the base!

For example, Republicans are still convinced Michael Moore helped them win in 2004 by turning the public against Hollywood. I’ve personally heard this countless times from politicians in private, repeated to me like a mantra. Washington Republicans prefer having Hollywood as an issue to complain about rather than making a serious effort to change the situation. This has left conservatives in Hollywood holding the bag, working without resources or wide-spread networks of power, creating small organizations like the Liberty Film Festival or LIBERTAS to turn the tide.

But I wonder how these Washington Republicans feel now. Now that they’re out of power, I wonder if Republicans will remain so sanguine about Hollywood and the media being against them.

Let’s be frank: Hollywood does not support the war effort. And why is this a problem? Because ... America did not win a major war in the 20th century that Hollywood didn’t support. The operative examples here are: World War I, World War II and Vietnam. Hollywood backed the war effort in the two World Wars, and we won those wars. Hollywood either took a powder or outright opposed the Vietnam War, and we lost. [Similarly, Hollywood half-heartedly supported our efforts in Korea, and our military victories were correspondingly mixed.]

This should come as no surprise, because what Hollywood does is shape the nation’s narrative. And right now, as we fight the War on Terror and fight in Iraq, the narrative being shaped by Hollywood is this: that America is an imperialistic, war-mongering, ruthlessly profiteering, neo-fascistic Christian theocracy that does not merit the world’s admiration or allegiance. And frankly, it’s hard for America to fight and win a war when Hollywood shapes the war-narrative that way.

Conservatives simply haven’t taken this issue seriously. Instead they’re comically enamored with Fox News, talk radio and the blogosphere; and frankly I’d trade all of those in a heartbeat for Paramount, Warner Brothers or Sony. Or a magazine like Vanity Fair, or People. Why? Because that’s where attitudes are being molded - in cineplexes and at supermarket checkout stands, usually without conservatives even being aware of it.

Hollywood’s ‘war effort’ these days is not what it was in the past, to say the least. We’re getting no films like Casablanca or Across the Pacific or Action in the North Atlantic. We’re not getting Notorious or The Sands of Iwo Jima, nor Destination Tokyo or Operation Pacific. Instead we’re getting Syriana, Fahrenheit 9/11, V For Vendetta, Jarhead, The Road to Guantanamo, Flags of Our Fathers, The Good German, Death of a President, Shut Up and Sing, and on and on. How are we supposed to win a war like this? How are even supposed to be entertained with drivel like this?

It wasn’t always this way, of course. Conservatives once ran Hollywood, back when the industry’s titans were people like Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Barbara Stanwyck, Cecil B. DeMille, Frank Capra or Louis B. Mayer. They gave the country the movies it needed. Conservative producers like Merian C. Cooper (King Kong), for example, created films like the John Ford/John Wayne cavalry trilogy that self-consciously promoted an American mythology of individualism and bravery - to stand in contrast to the anti-American propaganda then coming out of the Soviet Union.

But conservatives don’t run movie studies anymore. Now we run The Weekly Standard. We’ve got Fred Barnes; the other side’s got Angelina Jolie, or Natalie Portman.

So this is generally what we see nowadays: conservatives write trenchant columns about tax policy while George Clooney romances starlets in film and on magazine covers. This week, for example, People Magazine will again declare George Clooney ‘The Sexiest Man Alive!,’ while Peggy Noonan will write another windy Wall Street Journal column about post-election malaise. I’ll let you guess which article will get more attention …

Until this sort thing changes, Republicans are going to seem out of touch, distant, old and irrelevant. The reason? Because the culture war conservatives say they want to fight isn’t being fought in Beltway think tanks or at National Review - in fact, it isn’t even being fought in elections, per se; it’s being fought in multiplexes, in People Magazine, on Xboxes, at Netflix and on YouTube. Conservatives not only aren’t fighting the culture wars, they don’t even seem to know where the battlefields are.

I’ve taken a lot of heat here at LIBERTAS, for example, because I occasionally find excuses to post pictures of Jessica Simpson. You want to know why I do this? I’ll make it really simple for some of you: because she’s a Republican, and because she’s hot. Find me a few more chicks like her - i.e., entertainers who don’t spend their days writing columns on eminent domain - and I’ll post pictures of them, too. But right now I don’t see many others.

You want your culture back? Engage it. Stop whining about it - go pick up a camera and try something new. Or better yet, since a lot of us out here already have picked up cameras - I’d ask conservatives on the east coast and elsewhere to invest in film. It also wouldn’t hurt if some of you back there on the east coast - say, at the Wall Street Journal, or at National Review or The Weekly Standard - actually covered what we do out here, particularly since your own world seems to be in the process of crumbling. Take this stuff seriously, take the culture seriously - or don’t whine about losing it, afterwards.

For you filmmakers: Godard once said the only elements you need to create drama in a movie are a gun and a girl. It’s that simple! And with digital technology, moviemaking is cheaper than ever. So go make some movies, make an impact, and perhaps some of the problems everybody’s so worried about in Washington will eventually solve themselves.

I’m reminded of the way some people seem to think that New York firefighters are the front-line warriors in the War on Terror. They’re not. The firefighters deal with terrorism when it’s already too late - and that’s what Republicans in Washington are like. They deal with cultural problems (typically through legislation) after it’s already too late. They refuse to engage the culture, get their hands dirty. They retreat into their east coast Ivory towers and think tanks and talk radio studios to analyze the culture, without making an effort to shape it. Those two activities are not the same thing. The culture is being shaped out here in California, not in Washington.

Republicans have been kidding themselves for a long time with lies like, “Michael Moore and George Clooney and Sean Penn actually help our cause!” Really? How are you feeling about that now that you’re out of power?
___________________________

The preceding is an excerpt from a Nov. 16, 2006, blog post at http://www.libertyfilmfestival.com/libertas/?p=3126. Thanks to Graybrook Institute Film Critic Graham Moes for calling our attention to this important analysis.

"In Selecting Men for Office"

2006-11-11T00:11:00.000-08:00

By Garry J. Moes

"IN SELECTING MEN FOR OFFICE let principle be your guide. Regard not the particular sect or denomination of the candidate ... look to his character. The scriptures teach that rulers should be men who rule in the fear of (Respect for) God, able men, men of truth (faithful to their promises), hating covetousness (greed). "It is to the neglect of this rule that we must ascribe the multiplied frauds, breaches of trust, and embezzlements of public property which tarnish the character of our country and disgrace government. "When a citizen gives his vote to a man of known immorality, he abuses his civic responsibility; he sacrifices not only his interest, but that of his neighbor; he betrays the interest of his country." -- Noah Webster, 1823

_______________

The rancorous mid-term elections of 2006 are history, and the victorious Democrats are (secretly gloating and plotting their revengeful counterattack for the past six years of humiliation while) positing statesmanship and bipartisan cooperation with the Administration on all things good for the country. Republicans immediately have opened their post-mortem and begun a sorry ritual of self-flagellation. Conservative pundits are asking what has gone wrong with the GOP; liberal pundits have no doubts.

What is wrong with the conduct of the war is really not the primary explanation for the election results, despite what the liberals would have us believe. What is wrong with the Democrats is too vast to address here. What is wrong with too many of the men and women of the GOP who have held high legislative office in the past 12 years might be discovered in the words of Noah Webster quoted above, especially in the area of "breaches of trust."

Whatever is wrong with the current crop of public "servants" (pardon the expression), however, pales in comparison with what is really wrong in the American civic realm: the American voter.

What I have feared for some time now is becoming painfully obvious: Americans are no longer qualified to govern themselves. And if they persist in trying to do so without some fundamental changes, life in this country will grow increasingly weird, even hellish. If our own vices, crimes, ambition, lying, injustice, fickleness and stupidity do not become the hallmarks of our existence, the highly motivated vision of our terror-striking enemies will. Until that frightening prospect happens, though, we will still increasingly become the helpless victims of every moment's political whim, polling vagary, demagogue and entertaining loony.

In words that now sound utterly ludicrous to many in our midst, James Madison, the Father of the Constitution, set forth the essential foundation for American society when he stated in 1778, "We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future ... upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to sustain ourselves, according to the Ten Commandments of God."

Another patriot observed that the success of the American system depended wholly upon the existence of a moral people and that it was wholly inadequate for any other.

The statesman-orator Daniel Webster put it plainly when he said, "Lastly, our ancestors established their system of government on morality and religious sentiment. Moral habits, they believed, cannot safely be trusted to any other foundation than religious principle, nor any government be secure which is not supported by moral habits."

In 1851, Webster cautioned: "Let the religious element in man's nature be neglected, let him be influenced by no higher motives than low self-interest, and subject to no stronger restraint than the limits of civil authority, and he becomes the creature of selfish passion or blind fanaticism (emphasis added).

"On the other hand, the cultivation of the religious sentiment represses licentiousness ... inspires respect for law and order, and gives strength to the whole social fabric, at the same time that it conducts the human soul upward to the Author of its being." Alas, these are values which are now of little consequence to the majority of the American people.

An earlier Webster, Noah, predicted our day when he wrote, "All the miseries and evils which men suffer from vice, crime, ambition, injustice, oppression, slavery, and war, proceed from their despising or neglecting the precepts contained in the Bible." Noah Webster argued that the "moral principles and precepts contained in the Scriptures ought to form the basis" of all our civil laws and life.

"America is great because America is good," the French observer Alexis DeTocqueville said in finding the America of the mid-19th century "aflame with righteousness." But he warned: "...if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great."

Near the turn into the last century, the U.S. Supreme Court could still declare: "Our laws and our institutions must necessarily be based upon and embody the teachings of The Redeemer of mankind. It is impossible that it should be otherwise...." Our courts now find it necessary and constitutionally mandated that it be otherwise.

In the early part of 20th century, we could boast a president who recognized the absolute necessity of adherence to the Biblical system of morality and ethics if the American vision were to survive. Said President Calvin Coolidge, "The foundations of our society and our government rest so much on the teachings of the Bible that it would be difficult to support them if faith in these teachings would cease to be practically universal in our country." Though we have recently been blessed with another president who could affirm that idea, it is clear that such faith is far from universal, and the foundations of our society and government can clearly be expected to crumble, either under the weight of our own corruption or the determination of our enemies.

It is hard to say when exactly Americans lost this vision. It was probably sometime before Bill Clinton. In America today, in politics, in social life and in the church, Biblical absolutes and objective truth no longer govern nor even serve as norms.

The Republican Party, for example, has abandoned the notion that parties are formed to advance principles. The party, born of principle, has now agreed to financially support candidates who openly flout the party's platform. It has forgotten the ideal noted a more than a decade ago by conservative historian Robert J. Nagle, "The formation of any political philosophy is basically an attempt to transform personal moral and social values into a platform acceptable to a great mass of people." In the place of parties based on political or moral principle, we now have parties that are nothing more than power blocs. Whosoever will join, enrich, empower and cultivate the power bloc is welcome; principles be damned.

The future is bleak as well, when the coming generation is examined. An analysis by Bryan Hayes, marketing director for Mount Hermon Association Inc., finds that 60 percent of Christian teenagers "say there is no such thing as absolute truth." Worse, in the realm of ethics, fully 90 percent of Christian teens say that "right and wrong depend on the individual and the situation." The Nehemiah Institute, which surveys youthful attitudes and beliefs, finds that both public- and Christian-school teens share worldviews which are thorough unbiblical, secular and even socialist ... and are deteriorating yearly.

Samuel Adams admonished religious, educational and political leaders in 1790 about their obligations to the young: "Let divines and philosophers, statesmen and patriots, unite their endeavors to renovate the age, by impressing the minds of men with the importance of ... inculcating in the minds of youth the fear and love of the Deity and universal philanthropy, and, in subordination to these great principles, the love of their country; of instructing them in the art of self-government, without which they never can act a wise part in the government of societies, great or small; in short, of leading them in the study and practice of the exalted virtues of the Christian system..." (emphasis added).

By all of the historic measures quoted herein, and many others which could be cited, Americans have now lost their ability to conduct a just and moral political system and will increasingly lose their right to governmental sovereignty.

What lies in store for us is increasingly becoming too grim to contemplate. As commentator Thomas Sowell recently put it: "Corruption of the government is not a private matter or a transient scandal. It is dry rot that either has to be cleaned out or else allowed to undermine the whole structure in the course of time. But if we cannot see that, then our problems are much bigger than [any individual corrupt politician or lobbyist], and will be with us long after they are gone."

Sinning With Impunity: The New American Dream

2006-11-09T16:49:00.000-08:00

By Garry J. Moes

Some years ago, Rev. Steve Schlissel, a Jewish Christian pastor in Brooklyn, N.Y., wrote an astute critique of The Revolution of the Sixties. It was, he noted, the era during which America formally changed its religion, after more than a century-long process of eliminating the old religion's standard, the Bible.

With that standard of truth, right behavior and justice gone, it was now possible to realize the central goal of The Revolution and the New American dream of today's Left: the right to sin with impunity.

"It was in the 60's that our civilization underwent its most dramatic change. That consisted in a glaring particular: the demand to sin without consequences," he wrote (Messiah's Mandate, 2nd Letter, 1998).

No assessment better explains why the American Left so warmly embraced the sex-and-lies scandal sired by Bill Clinton in the narcissistic Nineties. Though he initially denied sinning at all, the president later, with his parsed and steely-eyed admission of sin, publicly turned a moral corner which his contemporaries had turned more than 30 years earlier. As Rev. Schlissel put it, "Like a child stepping into the gutter after being told by the parent not to, the 60's generation brought sin ... into the faces of all authorities, and asked, 'What are ya gonna do about it?' The answer was a resounding whimper, 'Not much.'"

Mr. Clinton's entire posture and his formal defense could be boiled down to this: "I have sinned but no one has a right to do anything about it." The American Left, finding in their federal head a most perfect surrogate, have enthusiastically embraced this posture and upheld this defense. For in him they found their best hope to also sin with impunity. But the libertines of the Left were not the only ones to embrace the Sinner in Chief. It must not be forgotten that Clinton's popularity has still not waned much among the population in general.

Incidentally, this perspective also conversely explains why the Left so bitterly hates proponents of traditional moral standards and leaders who exude biblical moral absolutism, such as President George Bush, ordinary honest Christians, . These stand as actual or potential or perceived obstacles to the dreams of the libertine. This is also why, when representatives and advocates of moral absolutes fall, they are so loudly ridiculed and despise — for there is still one sin that cannot be commited with impunity in the assessment of the secular Left: hypocrisy.

Former President Clinton's leading defenders — the rule-of-men "lawyers" who argued his case in court and on television, the president's political partisans, and certain say-anything-and-everything-outrageous pundits — actually traveled further down the slippery slope. Going beyond an assertion of the right to sin with impunity, some found a veritable duty to do so. Hence the various arguments that it is really only expected good form — good sexual etiquette — to lie about adultery.

Then Democratic Leader Richard Gephardt took the case still further during the House impeachment debate. He angrily denounced the puritanical maniacs who, in his estimation, have created a moral standard which is "impossible" for any man to meet. Gephardt apparently would have us believe it is now morally impossible for the world's most powerful political leader to keep his zipper up and young girls out from under his desk while he conducts the other affairs of state and it is further impossible to then refrain from lying under oath about it. To defenders of this bizarre new public morality it is a shameful, unattainable "litmus test" to attempt to view any public official as a moral fiduciary.

A sizable majority of the American people, molded by the morally adrift Old Media, apparently found this all very reasonable, indeed wholly admirable. President Clinton, they held, should not be sanctioned for his failure to avoid the inevitable, because, after all, it was his right and duty and a mark of sexual chivalry to sin without consequence. By extension, of course, it is the people's right as well. In America, it should be remembered, rulers do what they do by consent of the governed, and so immoral leaders frequently take their cue from a people who love sinning with impunity.

The philosophy and politics of sinning without consequence have become pervasive in our society and culture, as several other examples show:

The fact came into vivid focus during the O.J. Simpson criminal trial. In this stunning example of how things work in a system where the rule of law is replaced by the rule of men, we heard Johnny Cochran and a sympathetic black jury assert the right to murder without consequence. In this particular case, the right to murder with impunity was grounded in a need to rectify the nation's record of racial wrongs. Justice now has nothing whatsoever to do with law or the facts of the case, but only with some subjective and ever-changing notion of social redress.
A "woman's right to choose" allows her to murder her own offspring with impunity. This acceptable and much lauded crime is only the ultimate among the vast array of acceptable behaviors spawned by the utterly destructive sexual revolution which blew wide open beginning in the Sixties.
Sodomites, like people in racial categories, are now said to be born that way ... are locked by genetic into their queer orientation ... and must thus be free to commit their abominations without consequences (the HIV virus be damned, or, better yet, embraced ). Even "man-boy love" is promoted, and unfettered pornography is insisted upon. To try to convert the pervert, as the American Psychiatric Association has declared, is the real sin against nature — this particular sin, like hypocrisy by moral absolutists, being another exception to the no-consequences rule, of course.
Related to this line of thinking is the whole "victimization" argument. If genetics and the immutable realities of birth cannot be invoked as authorization to sin, we can still find a rationale in the concept of victimization. Society has gotten away with sinning against me, so I have a right to commit crimes and other moral transgressions against society without retribution.

Gratefully, there are still a few statesmen and other leaders who recognize the grave danger to our national and personal lives in this legacy of The Revolution. Whatever their motives may have been, the Republicans who raised their voices during the impeachment debate on behalf of the rule of law were standing heroically in the breach. (Alas, this brand of Republican quickly faded from the scene and their replacements soon fell into the same behavior pattern.) Michael Krauss, a professor of law at George Mason University near the capital, saw the Clinton impeachment skirmish as "in many ways an important battle in the culture wars."

"I'm one of those who believe that there has been an erosion of values and legal standards in the country and that this is the time for the House of Representatives to stand up and say that the erosion will go no further," he told The Washington Times at the time.

Dr. Hafeez Malik, professor of political science at Villanova University, was quoted in the same newspaper as adding, "In the culture, there is a moral relativism, and you are seeing its effect in these political deliberations among the Democrats."

Such voices are increasingly rare. Yet the deafening roar of their opposite numbers cannot change the reality of the Fixed Moral Universe into which God has placed us all.

In His Universe, the City of God, it is impossible to sin without consequence, all wishful thinking and moral relativism to the contrary. "Be sure your sin will find you out," Numbers 32:23 warns.

Our sin will find us out because sin is rebellion against an inalterably just and holy God.

"...[W]e must know that God is holy — infinitely, eternally and unchangeably holy," writes Calvin Knox Cummings in Confessing Christ. "He cannot, he will not, treat sin lightly. His justice demands full punishment for sin. His holiness requires that the demand of the law be met in full. He would not be a God we could respect if he required anything less. Should we expect less justice from God than from a human judge? The earthly judge who lets a criminal go free without punishment is despised as unjust."

That last statement was written in 1955, shortly before The Revolution began to turn such truths upside down. In less than a generation, we now live in a land where it is no longer considered unjust for judges, juries, congressmen, the electorate or the court of public opinion to let criminals like O.J. Simpson, Bill Clinton, and hundreds of garden-variety criminals, child molesters and illegal aliens go free.

St. Augustine outlined what will become of a nation where sinning has no consequence; that is to say, where there is no justice.

"Consequently, if the republic is the weal of the people, and there is no people if it be not associated with a common acknowledgment of right, and if there is no right where there is no justice, then most certainly it follows that there is no republic where there is no justice," he wrote in The City of God (book 19, chapter 21).

To put it another way, it is simply impossible to live freely and safely in a land where people can sin with impunity.

Perhaps God will stay His judgment yet awhile if our national prayer could become that which still stands over the door of the Boone County, Missouri, Courthouse: "Oh Justice, when expelled from other habitations, make this thy dwelling place."

Judicial Supremacists and the Despotic Branch

2006-11-09T14:55:00.000-08:00

The Federalist Papers constitute the definitive explication of our national Constitution. In Federalist No. 32 Alexander Hamilton writes, "[T]here is not a syllable in the [Constitution] which directly empowers the national courts to construe the laws according to the spirit of the Constitution, or which gives them any greater latitude in this respect than may be claimed by the courts of every State." On the subject of federalism, he wrote in No. 81 "...the plan of the [Constitutional] convention aims only at a partial union or consolidation, the State governments would clearly retain all the rights of sovereignty which they before had, and which were not, by that act, exclusively delegated to the United States."

In Federalist No. 45, the author of our Constitution, James Madison, notes: "The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite. The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation and foreign commerce. ... The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives and liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement and prosperity of the State."

Madison's outline notwithstanding, the scope of activities of the legislative and judicial branches today hardly resemble the limits of our Constitution — yet nothing in its amendments allows that scope.

Concerned for the potential tyranny of the judiciary, Thomas Jefferson warned: "The opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves in their own sphere of action but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch. ... The Constitution on this hypothesis is a mere thing of wax in the hands of the judiciary, which they may twist and shape into any form they please. ... It has long, however, been my opinion, and I have never shrunk from its expression...that the germ of dissolution of our federal government is in the constitution of the federal Judiciary; working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow, and advancing its noiseless step like a thief, over the field of jurisdiction, until all shall be usurped."

Jefferson continued: "At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance."

Some 200 years later, they are as dangerous as ever. Notes Justice Antonin Scalia, "As long as judges tinker with the Constitution to 'do what the people want,' instead of what the document actually commands, politicians who pick and confirm new federal judges will naturally want only those who agree with them politically."

The time is long overdue for Congress to make amends for failing to check the unbalanced and growing powers being arrogated by these judicial tyrants -- and altering the Senate rules is a good start. But our current circumstances are worse than nearly all analysts are admitting. Not only should conservative judicial nominees be seated, but those judges who are in violation of their oaths of office should be unseated by impeachment. Alas, as Jefferson noted long ago, "We have...[required] a vote of two-thirds in one of the Houses for removing a judge; a vote so impossible where any defense is made before men of ordinary prejudices and passions, that our judges are effectually independent of the nation. ... For experience has already shown that the impeachment it has provided is not even a scare-crow."

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The preceding was adapted from The Federalist Patriot (March 4, 2005).

Borat: Not for the Slightly Uptight or Politically Correct

2006-11-09T12:18:00.000-08:00

Painfully Funny, But Jokes Taken a Bit Too Far for Comfort of Audience

By Graham Moes
Graybrook Institute Film Critic

I hate being that guy ... The one who doesn't "get it." The killjoy who can't take a joke and just laugh along with everybody else without being so "uptight."

Mostly because I do get it. And I did laugh along with everybody else, probably harder than most. I just felt a little dirty afterward.

I'm talking about Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. And if the title alone doesn't make you grin, you're probably no fun either; and boy, do I wish I wasn't standing on your side of the line here.

It's the reality-blurring mockumentary starring Sacha Baron Cohen as the funniest of his HBO-show alter egos, Borat Sagdiyev, a fictional Kazakhstani reporter who wouldn't know the meaning of "politically incorrect" if he walked up and pinched it in the rear end — which would be tame compared to the outrages on Jews, women and general good taste he perpetrates in his film incarnation.

Cohen specializes in what the great Phil Hendrie has been doing on radio for years, portraying an extreme character operating in the real world for the express purpose of getting a rise out of those who aren't in on the joke. Or, when lured into agreeing with his smiling, dopey bigotry, exposing them for what they are.

Call it ambush comedy. And potent stuff it is. Using a mangled mix of Polish, Romanian and Armenian vocabulary, he's a painfully funny dead ringer for the real deal.

No wonder the government of Kazakhstan is this close to ordering Cohen's assassination at this point for portraying them as a nation of Stone-Age racists, drunks, rapists and general morons. (At a recent press conference outside the Kazakhstan embassy, Borat denounced as evil Uzbekistani propaganda the notion his country's national drink is not fermented horse urine, then threatened to strike back "with all our catapults.")

The movie gives the Jewish, Cambridge-educated Cohen a chance to string together his best bits from "Da Ali G Show" and earlier British TV incarnation into a road trip across America, where he goofs on everyone from feminists and frat boys to militant gays and charismatic Christians.

The problem is, a movie also dangles Cohen the tempting carrot to push things even beyond his HBO-issued license to offend.

Again, I get it. The antisemitic gags are meant to lampoon antisemitism itself, but the extremes Cohen takes things to here often go too far.

At a Kazakh hometown "Running of the Jew" event (funny), he's seen urging on the village children to kill the symbolic Jew Egg before it hatches (maybe not so funny), and later, when the village converts to Christianity, they hang one on a cross (definitely not funny).

When taken in by a kindly old Jewish couple, he compares them to cockroaches, tosses money at them and flees in the night. Ouch.

Then there's some seriously unsexy full-frontal nudity, pedophilia jokes, defecation gags and other stuff I won't go into. Beware, too, the all-nude smackdown between Borat and his 400-pound producer after Borat catches him with his sacred Pamela Anderson magazine.

Borat's appeal has always been his willingness to skewer sacred PC cows, but in moments like these we realize Cohen has slid from sharp, edgy satire into easy, ultra-cheap laughs.

Also problematic is the fact most of the best stuff in the 82-minute experience can be found already, for free, on YouTube.com.

In another recent review, I compared Cohen to Peter Sellers. Sadly this outing has knocked him down closer to Cheech and Chong.

But if all this still seems like the grumblings of a prude... feel free to take your chances. You may laugh yourself silly. Just be prepared to hate yourself in the morning.

________________________________

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan

2.5 on a scale of 1 to 5
Starring: Sacha Baron Cohen, Ken Davitian, Pamela Anderson
Director: Larry Charles
Writers: Sacha Baron Cohen, Anthony Hines, Peter Baynham, Dan Mazer
Released by: 20th Century Fox
Rating: Rated R for pervasive strong, crude and sexual content including graphic nudity, and language.
Time: 1 hour, 22 minutes

This review first appeared in The Clovis Independent on Nov. 3, 2006.

The Vexed Question

2006-11-09T09:49:00.000-08:00

By Garry J. Moes

In 1865, Southern congressman and political thinker Alexander Hamilton Stephens wrote, "How society is to be constituted so that all can attain justice; that is the vexed question." The question is becoming more vexing every day as American society increasingly falls under the tyrannical rule of a judicial oligarchy.

How this society is to be constituted was the seminal question at America's inception as its founding document, the Declaration of Independence, was written. It was supposed to be settled in law when America's groundbreaking Constitution was written. It is no coincidence that the latter document (and its counterparts in the several federated states) is called a "constitution."

The very purpose of a constitution is to FIX — against the whims of men and movements and the winds of unproven change in a fallen world — the fundamental nature and purposes of a society. It is supposed to be an anchor in the storm and a mooring in the time of tranquillity. In America's case, our national character was established in our founding documents as a federal, republican society based on the rule of law. Our system of laws was to be one facilitating a liberty that is self-governed under the authority of the revealed eternal will of a Divine Creator who has sovereignly chosen to endow His creatures with certain inalienable rights. To create and enforce that system of laws, a carefully devised political system was established, laced with checks and balances to prevent the re-establishment of tyranny — indeed, any concentration of power in the hands of a centralized force or in the hands of a democratic majority that might one day lose its moorings in the moral designs of its Creator. Eighteen-century France, in its pursuit of liberty, equality and fraternity, failed to devise similar restraints, and its radical Revolution, unlike America's conservative innovation, immediately devolved into mob rule and a reign of terror.

If there was any weak point in the American system of checks and balances, it seems to have been, as time is now proving, in the constitution of our national judiciary. While it was intended that this judiciary be independent to a large extent — to protect the rule of law against the designs of finite men, that notion was seen to be valid only insofar as this judiciary would be populated by men of true moral wisdom and committment to the carefully devised constitution of their society. Instead, the men and women who now hold the public trust as guardians of the rule of law have elevated themselves to be arbiters and creators of the law, not its interpreters, following their own notions of what is preferable for a new globalist humanity. To overcome the constraints of the real Constitution, these would-be philosopher-kings have invented the concept that they are the intepreters of a "living" or "dynamic" Constitution. But an ever-changing constitution is no constitution at all — it "constitutes" nothing. Rather, it establishes the rule of men, not the rule of law.

For more than a century, beginning perhaps with jurist Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. and "educator" John Dewey, a "living" constitution has been the ever-increasing, overarching, overriding necessity for judges, social engineers and unruly citizens who despise the true constitution of our society — those who would rather have a society of utopian, collectivist/socialist, amoral/immoral, pagan, secular, libertine, anarchist, humanist, sentimental, evolutionist, materialist, multicultural, hedonist, pacifist, globalist, modernist, post-modernist, minimalist, deconstructionist ideals and principles; in short, everything anathema to our intended national character, as envisioned by those who came to this virgin land to build and enjoy God's kingdom in this world.

The invention of imagined clauses and rights and tortured interpretations of our written and established Constitution has become the critical tool of today's social changers — those elitist revolutionaries who haven't yet been able to fully overcome the residuals of devotion to the founding political, social and moral principles still lingering in our society and body politic. The original system was so powerful it has yet to be completely defeated on its own merits and by its own rules; it can only be stealthily subverted at its weakest point if its enemies are to prevail. And in recent times, they have been disturbingly successful — so successful, in fact, that we are today on the very verge of losing the glorious system which has protected our lives, liberties, property and happiness so wonderfully these many years.

For this reason, the fight over the character of our judiciary must become the highest domestic priority of those who love moral self-government and liberty in this land. If international terrorism is the greatest external threat to our existence, the current assault on Americanism by and through the judiciary is the greatest internal threat. The intensity of our war on terror must be matched in every respect in the needed war on judicial tyranny, with every moral and political effort directed toward its defeat. We have only our nation, our safety, our religion, our future and the future of freedom in the world to lose.

Why Submit to Judicial Tyranny?

2006-11-09T09:18:00.000-08:00

By Pat Buchanan

If Gov. Jon Corzine wished to make himself a hero to Middle America, the opportunity is at hand. All he need do is inform the New Jersey Supreme Court he will neither submit nor sign the law it has ordered enacted -- to put homosexual unions on a par with marriage.

At root, what that 4-3 decision, ordering the legislature to enact a new law sanctioning civil unions or gay marriage, is about is: Who governs New Jersey? It is about who decides what law shall be -- elected legislators or judges appointed for life.

In our War of Independence, in which New Jersey was overrun repeatedly by British troops, at issue was whether George III and a Parliament sitting in London, in which Americans had no voice, would govern us, or whether we would rule ourselves. From April 1775 to Yorktown in 1781, Americans fought and died to end that rule of kings -- only to have their meek and timid heirs submit to a rule of judges.

Let us go back to the era of Earl Warren that began in 1954, and consider what, in the span of a half-century, U.S. judges and Supreme Court justices, abetted by state jurists, have done to America.

God, Bible study, prayer and the Ten Commandments have been ordered out of all public schools and the public square of a nation that once proudly boasted of itself as God's country. Pornography has been declared protected by the First Amendment. Cities have been ripped apart, as judges have ordered students, based on color alone, bussed across crime-ridden cities to achieve an artificial racial balance. Abortion, homosexual sodomy and naked dancing in public bars have been declared to be new constitutional rights.

Of all these outrages and idiocies, one thing may be said: No legislature, no executive at the state or federal level would have survived imposing such measures upon us. They would have been hurled from office at the next election. When homosexual marriage was put on the ballot in 13 states in 2004, it was routed in every one by landslides as great as six to one. America rejects it.

Upon what ground, then, does the New Jersey Supreme Court stand to order an elected legislature to enact a law the people do not want? Answer: The court said that to deny homosexuals the same rights as married couples is to treat them unequally, and this violates the Constitution of New Jersey: "Although we cannot find that a fundamental right to same-sex marriage exists in this state, the unequal dispensation of rights and benefits to committed same-sex partners can no longer be tolerated under our state constitution."

The operative words here are "no longer be tolerated." What the court is saying is that, though there is no right to same-sex marriage in New Jersey, and the state has never voted the rights and benefits to homosexuals it has for married couples, we, the judges in our wisdom, declare this to be intolerable.

Therefore, you, the legislators of New Jersey, and you, Gov. Corzine, are ordered to change the laws of New Jersey to conform to our idea of equality. A tiny minority of judges in America now dictates to the Great Silent Majority.

This is exactly what happened in Massachusetts in 2003. And had Gov. Romney told the Massachusetts Supreme Court that its 4-3 decision had no constitutional basis, and that he and the legislature had no intention of obeying its order, Mitt Romney would be the front-runner for the Republican nomination in 2008.

When Shay's Rebellion of farmers broke out in Massachusetts in 1786, Thomas Jefferson wrote to James Madison, "I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical." It is time for a little rebellion in New Jersey, and America. For what is taking place, what has taken place, is a bloodless coup by judges who have arrogated to themselves the powers of legislatures to make laws and remake society in their own image -- without recourse to referenda or free elections.

When judges in New Jersey can order legislators to write new laws that conform to their ideology, laws the people have not only not demanded, but viscerally and violently oppose, we have ceased to be a free country or a democratic republic.

"Who rules?" That is what is at issue in New Jersey.

For 50 years, this nation permitted the Warren Court, and its successors and imitators in the state courts, to create a body of judge-made law that has altered the character of our country, very much for the worse.

Again and again, the people have voted for candidates for president, Congress and governor who promised to ring down the curtain on this half-century of judicial tyranny. But still the judges persist in issuing orders that have no basis either in precedent or in the written constitutions they have sworn to defend.

Such judges need to be defied and they need to be impeached. Not obeyed.

_______________________

Pat Buchanan is a founding editor of The American Conservative magazine, and the author of many books including State of Emergency: The Third World Invasion and Conquest of America

"Father of the Century"

2006-11-08T13:12:00.000-08:00

By Rick Reilly, Sports Illustrated

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots.

But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he's pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he's not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars--all in the same day.

Dick's also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. On a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much--except save his life. This love story began in Winchester , Mass. , 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs.

"He'll be a vegetable the rest of his life;'' Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. ``Put him in an institution.''

But the Hoyts weren't buying it. They noticed the way Rick's eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. ``No way,'' Dick says he was told. ``There's nothing going on in his brain.''

"Tell him a joke,'' Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain. Rigged up with a computer that allowed Him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? ``Go Bruins!'' And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, ``Dad, I want to do that.''

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described ``porker'' who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried. ``Then it was me who was handicapped,'' Dick says. ``I was sore for two weeks.''

That day changed Rick's life. ``Dad,'' he typed, ``when we were running, It felt like I wasn't disabled anymore!''

And that sentence changed Dick's life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

``No way,'' Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren't quite a single runner, and they weren't quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then They found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, ``Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?''

How's a guy who never learned to swim and hadn't ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they've done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii . It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don't you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you'd do on your own? ``No way,'' he says. Dick does it purely for ``the awesome feeling'' he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992--only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don't keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

``No question about it,'' Rick types. ``My dad is the Father of the Century.''

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. ``If you hadn't been in such great shape,'' one doctor told him, ``you probably would've died 15 years ago.'' So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other's life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass. , always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father's Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

``The thing I'd most like,'' Rick types, ``is that my dad sit in the chair and I push him once.''

See the inspiring video below. Click here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f4B-r8KJhlE

The Age of Indifference

2006-11-01T20:46:00.000-08:00

By Michael Boldea Jr.

Romans 13:11-12, “And do this, knowing the time, that now it is high time to awake out of sleep; for now our salvation is nearer than when we first believed. The night is far spent the day is at hand. Therefore let us cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armor of light.”

My heart is heavy, my soul is burdened, and as so many who have been called, anointed and charged to preach a message of warning and repentance to this nation, I am a weary man. Though the time is upon us, though undeniable events continue to come to pass, still most of Christendom suffers from a severe case of abject indifference. I often feel as though I am a man standing outside a building engulfed in flames, screaming at the top of my lungs for those inside to come out, to save themselves, to escape the fire, while all the while, those inside stand by the windows and wave merrily, coffee in one hand, donut in the other, unaware of the tragedy that is about the befall them. Seeing that they will not heed the warning, the only option left is to run into the burning building and drag as many out, by force if need be, and lead them to safety. This is the mindset that I have adopted over the years, for since early youth, when I served as my grandfather’s translator, I realized that some would hear and heed, but most would not.

There is no doubt God has been merciful to this nation, first having raised up men from within your own borders to speak a heavy but needed truth, men who were promptly dismissed or ridiculed as being instigators, those who would enjoy to stir up provocation, simply for the sake of being provocative. Though the message fell, in large part, on deaf ears, they labored, and wept, and labored some more, for it was their calling, their mission, their sovereign duty toward an omnipotent God, one they could not as readily dismiss, as the message itself had been by the masses.

Then in His infinite mercy, God called on faithful servants from half a world away and placed the same message in their hearts, in some cases almost identical, and sent them in the hope that perhaps the nation might heed the message if spoken from new lips. These too were promptly rejected, either for being too harsh, not having the right credentials, or not having graduated from a proper theological seminary. We have found a reason and an excuse to reject every messenger that has come, that has spoken, and that has warned.

In their hearts, some consider that surely God is merciful enough to send yet another messenger, to give yet another warning; as though they were waiting for a bus, they think to themselves, ‘‘I’ll catch the next one, I’ll believe next one.’’ But I say to you this day, the warnings have ended. To be clear in what I am trying to relay, for this is the core reason I write this article today, I will repeat myself: the warnings have ended. No new messengers are waiting in the wings; no new warnings are coming, but merely the visions and forewarnings of the specific judgments that are about to unfold. These words are not my own, and I write them with a heavy heart; but on three separate occasions while in prayer I heard the same phrase repeated, over and over again, ‘‘the warnings have ended, the warnings have ended.’’

The time has come for the true servants of God to weep between the porch and the altar, to lament and cry out, to stand in the gap and be fearless for righteousness’ sake. If you must stand alone, dear brother, than so stand, for you will be in good company, counted among such giants of the faith as Elijah, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel. They too stood alone in the face of overwhelming odds, with only the truth of God’s word on their side, but the truth proved to be more than enough. So I say this day, to you whom God has been urging to step up, to take up the charge, to be on the front lines of the battle that is raging, be fearless in unmasking deception, and propagating righteousness, for you are on the side of right. If our desire were to spread a false gospel, to deceive the sheep, to bring division to the house of God, then there would be reason for fear, for God Himself would be set against you, but since He stands with you, since He is the one urging you into battle, be bold and brave and confident in Him; you will always be the majority.

Recently I was rereading Foxe’s Book of Martyrs and, weeping, thought to myself: "Where have all the valiant defenders of truth gone, those that even in the face of death would proclaim the name of Christ and pour out their lives to their final breath for His sake, with a smile on their lips? Is their time past?" Surely it cannot be, for this is the greatest time in the history of the Church, the time in which God needs warriors, faithful and true, fearless and uncompromising, to do battle against the forces of darkness. No, the time for the valiant, faithful soldier is not passed; but rather many of those who have been called to this service are quick to bow out, finding either excuse or justification for their unwillingness to do battle.

The time has come to blow the trumpet, while time still remains, for it is quickly running out, and the sheep that slumber are too many to number. It is incumbent upon all servants of righteousness to proclaim truth, and defend it, if need be with their very lives.

Jude 20-23: “But you, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. And on some have compassion, making a distinction; but others save with fear, pulling them out of the fire, hating even the garment defiled by the flesh.”
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EDITOR'S NOTE: The preceding article is one in a long series of prophetic warnings written by Mr. Boldea and his grandfather, Dumitru Duduman, founder of Hand of Help, a small charitable ministry working with the poorest of the poor in Romania. Both men, over the years, have related a host of dreams and visions in which serious warnngs and calls to repentance have been revealed.