Deborah Gyapong: March 2009

Dick Morris on Obama's rationale for reducing charitable deductions

In 2006, the most recent year for which data is available, four million taxpayers had adjusted gross incomes of $200,000 or more. They comprised 3% of the tax returns, made 31% of the income, but donated 44% of all charitable contributions. Together, they provided charity with $81 billion in that year.

Obama’s plan will cost them $10 billion in extra taxes on the income they allocated to charitable donations. How can the president be so glibly certain that they will not curtail their charitable contributions by a like amount or even more?

Imagine all the harm Obama’s program will cause. Churches will be hit most hard. They account for the largest share of charitable donations, but universities, disease research, hospitals, soup kitchens, and cultural institutions will also be hard hit. So will international relief efforts that funnel aid abroad through churches or directly.

It is totally dishonest for Obama to pretend that his curtailment of these deductions won’t hurt the poor. It will most directly impact them since most of the charities Obama is hurting focus on helping the impoverished.

This proposal is not about saving money. It is about controlling it. By, in effect, transferring at least $11 billion a year from private philanthropy to government spending, Obama empowers the public sector at the expense of the voluntary one.

President Obama’s recommended reduction in the tax deduction for charitable giving reflects his fundamental belief that only the government can or should help the poor. He wants to keep the impoverished directly dependent on the government - and the Democratic Party - for their daily bread.

Hillbuzz is always interesting

I love the fact that these Hillary Clinton-loving gay men also dig Sarah Palin and worked hard for the McCain/Palin ticket when Hillary lost the primary. They are obviously independent thinkers, great writers and, oh oh, pretty pungent observers. My bolds:

Abortion and “Gay Marriage” are the two Pavlovian bells the MSM rings when it wants to distract the public from something else, and to derail a substantive argument with zealotry and emotional terrorism.

The sad thing is, it works like a charm every time.

For Republicans, Sebelius might actually be an ideal Obama H&HS Secretary, as she will not accomplish a single thing in her tenure. Because of her lack of general intelligence, political ability, common sense, or charisma, she will fail at every initiative she attempts, and will most likely become so discouraged by her own performance that after attempting three or four things, she’ll just start coming into the office every day to hold meetings that don’t matter and make objects d’art from the paper clips and staples on her clutter-free, accomplishments-bare desk.

Sounds a lot like her time as Governor of Kansas.

For Democrats who actually want to see healthcare reformed, Sebelius is a terrible choice.

As much as we don’t like him, Howard Dean would have been a better pick. As much as the people of Michigan don’t like her, Jennifer Granholm would have been better than Sebelius. We are stunned we are about to say this, but even CLAIRE McCASKILL, the absolute worst member of the United States Senate, could have done a better job as H&HS Secretary than Sebelius (McCaskill, though proven unable to think for herself or make good decisions, at least has a fire inside her that pushes for the causes her children bug her to believe in).

Sebelius is as fired up and ready to fight as a soggy cucumber sandwich on moldy Wonder bread.

Mark Steyn finds the most interesting facts

" . . . government agencies have to budget for such novel expenditures as narrowing the sewer lines in economically moribund, fast depopulating municipalities because the existing pipes are too wide to, ah, expedite the reduced flow. Even flushing yourself down the toilet of history is trickier than it looks."

The whole article is well worth reading.

The only reason why France could get away with being France, Belgium with being Belgium, Sweden with being Sweden is because America was America. Kagan’s thesis – Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus – will look like paradise lost when the last conventional “great power” of western civilization embraces the death-cult narcissism of its transatlantic confreres in the full knowledge of where that leads.

CHRC issues annual report---ding! ding! ding!

Here's what it says about freedom of speech. (My bolds). Sounds to me like they would like to stay in the driver's seat and determine what Canadians can and cannot say, despite the recommendations of the Moon report.

Freedom of Expression and Hate on the Internet

Throughout 2008 there was a vigorous debate about freedom of expression and section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act – the section prohibiting the electronic transmission of hate messages.

Beyond the heated rhetoric, the current debate is part of a centuries-old question on where exactly the line should be drawn between one citizen’s freedom of speech and another citizen’s right to be protected from harm caused by vilification and hatred.

The freedom to express ideas and opinions is fundamental to both democracy and human rights. Exercising the right to freedom of expression takes place within a context of competing values. With freedom comes responsibility. Human rights are not hierarchical; in fact the rights structure is more accurately viewed as a matrix. As the 1993 United Nations Vienna Declaration explained: "All human rights are universal, indivisible and interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing, and with the same emphasis."

Acknowledging that no right is absolute, it is up to legislatures and the courts to strike a balance when one right conflicts with another. The Supreme Court recognized this in its 1990 Taylor decision. The Court affirmed that the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms allows for limitations on extreme forms of speech in order to protect other fundamental Charter values:

... It [hate speech] undermines the dignity and self-worth of target group members and ... contributes to disharmonious relations among various racial, cultural and religious groups, as a result eroding the tolerance and open-mindedness that must flourish in a multicultural society which is committed to the idea of equality...

Freedom of expression and section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act have proven to be facets of our society that continue to evolve. In 2001, the Act was amended to prohibit the use of the Internet or other electronic communication tools to disseminate hatred.

The rapid shift from print to electronic news meant that the media began operating inside the jurisdiction of section 13. The impact of this shift may not have been fully foreseen when the Act was amended.

The Review of Section 13 – the Moon Report

In 2008 the Commission initiated a comprehensive review of section 13 and its role in dealing with hate on the Internet. The review was designed to assess whether the current model is the best approach to dealing with electronic hate in Canada. The Commission retained leading constitutional law expert Richard Moon to conduct an independent study, as an integral component of the broader policy review.

Released in November, Professor Moon’s report recommends that section 13 be repealed, leaving the police and the courts to handle all extreme forms of expression. The Report also recommends that if section 13 is not repealed, it should be reshaped to more closely resemble a criminal restriction on hate speech.

Professor Moon’s report also confirmed that while perceptions exist that the Commission targets "offensive speech," this has not been the case. In fact, the Commission uses a narrow definition of "hate" derived from jurisprudence. His review found that: "section 13 cases that have been sent by the CHRC to the Tribunal and in which the Tribunal has found a breach of the section have almost all involved expression that is so extreme and hateful that it may be seen as advocating or justifying violence against the members of an identifiable group."

The Commission is preparing to deliver a Special Report to Parliament in 2009 that will address what needs to change for the Canadian Human Rights Act to remain effective and that will suggest new collaborative approaches to combat hate speech.

Throughout 2008, the Commission welcomed the debate on how to best address hate on the Internet. Dedicated to ensuring that the Canadian Human Rights Act remains effective, the Commission’s preliminary concern is helping all Canadians live with dignity and respect. Prohibiting hate is part of that responsibility.

Beyond human rights laws and the Criminal Code, finding the right balance between freedom of expression and the dignity and equality of all Canadians is a responsibility that belongs to all of us.

This issue raises the question: what kind of society do we want to live in? It calls into question whether to give free reign to extreme forms of expression, or take careful and reasonable measures to ensure that all Canadians can live in dignity and respect. That is the real challenge our society and the Commission must face.

My "false dichotomy" alarm bells just went off.

Government bodies are not the only means to deal with extreme forms of expression. There is censure that is far preferable to bureaucrats and partisan ideologues censoring unpopular (and potentially truthful but painful opinion.)

I think it is far better to have police deal with thugs who issue death threats or call for violence against different groups or individuals for whatever reason, and leave the countering of "extreme forms of expression" to techniques like exposure, argument, marginalization, ridicule and so on. Far better than having government bureaucrats use the power of the state to enforce the latest orthodoxy du jour or political correctness.

Worried about the Conficker worm?

Read this.

Persecution of gays in Iraq--another horrific example of minority persecution

Basically, I think Iraq is better off since the regime change. Under Saddam if you were a Kurd or a Shi-ite, you might get gassed in your village, have the marsh you depended on for food dried up in a water diversion project, or get fed feet first in the shredder.

But as much as things have improved in Iraq, they have become much worse for Christians. Members of the ancient Christian community that has lived in that country since before Islam came into being are now mostly living in exile, in refugee camps in neighboring Syria and other countries.

But that's not all. Fred over at Gay and Right has several reports on the horrific persecution of gays in Iraq.

I hope that Canada and the United States press Iraq to uphold the rights of minorities. No time for what Tarek Fatah rightly calls the racism of low expectations.

Denyse O'Leary's been reading Shakedown

and commenting on some salient quotes. It's a delicious series over at Post-Darwinist.

Part5 is here, including links to the other parts.

She writes:

The thing that most impresses me about Shakedown is that it talks about the reality of living in Canada today. Most of what I hear in media is nonsense, carefully crafted to avoid trouble. The people who craft it may not even realize that they are doing so, in which case I would fully expect them to deny it.

The key point is, many media people don't ask themselves the one key question: "Why can't I say what I know is true, based on best information?" They simply tack away from it.

Please read this whole Douglas Farrow article

Here's an excerpt from Catholic Insight.

To speak of conscience is to come to the third level, where the emphasis falls on the individual. At first glance it may seem odd that conscience should be displaced and even attacked. Conscience, after all, though informed by natural law (knowledge of which is universal or innate) and by religion (which is learned in community), is a faculty that involves the individual in a dialogue with himself; it belongs to one’s self-awareness. So why should those who wish to exalt the individual to the highest place, and to emphasize moral autonomy, make themselves the enemies of conscience?

They do so because the dialogue that conscience demands is not merely a dialogue of the self with itself. It is a dialogue in which the self is questioned, in which the self is called upon to side against itself; that is, to discipline itself by taking up the cause of natural law or of religion. And this is precisely what individualism – the idolatry of the autonomous individual – cannot stand for. Conscience acknowledges autonomy, the freedom of the individual to choose. But it also acknowledges heteronomy, the claim of the Creator and of the common good. It asks the self to choose to submit itself to what is higher than itself. For the individualist, however, there is nothing higher than the self. Conscience is therefore the last enemy to be overcome in the battle for the new moral order.

Get out of hospital alive cards?---chilling story on euthanasia

In the Montreal Gazette, by Hugh Anderson, this chilling column. My bolds.

Imagine carrying around with you at all times a sort of get-out-of-hospital-alive card, sometimes called a sanctuary card. Its message: I do not want to be killed even though my quality of life seems to you to be unbearable.

Hard to imagine? In Holland and Belgium right now such cards are in demand. They may become essential in the not too distant future for seniors in Quebec and other parts of Canada and the U.S. who do not want to die before their time because other people believe that killing you is in your best interest, or that you should be assisted to kill yourself.
-snip-
The strange thing is that we do have an ominous real-life or real-death demonstration of what this kind of thing can lead to. Holland legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide three decades ago, first in practice and later by law. Advocates said it would be limited to competent adults who are terminally ill and ask to be killed. Then it was extended to competent adults with incurable illnesses or disabilities, although not terminally ill. Then it was extended to competent adults who were depressed but otherwise not physically ill. Then it was extended to incompetent adult patients like Alzheimer's sufferers, on the basis that they would have asked for death if they were competent.

And now it is legal for doctors in Holland to kill infants, if parents agree, if they believe their patients' suffering is intolerable or incurable. This is a long way from the soothing image of an elderly person choosing with full understanding to die with dignity, assisted by compassionate relatives and friends.

Then there are such places as Dignitas, one of the Swiss assisted-suicide clinics. An investigation by a British newspaper found that those who could afford the high fee could fly in and be killed within an hour or two. A whistle-blowing former employee said she had seen new arrivals sharing the same elevator with gurneys removing the bodies of earlier arrivals.

Great editorial about importance of doing more than sending a cheque

But when organizers suggest you can work wonders, they want you to consider something more than money.

ShareLife is a call to action, an invitation to get involved, to contribute money, yes, but also to invest yourself in a cause that brings so much comfort to so many people. That is the message that should be resonating with Catholics on the first of three ShareLife Sundays, March 29, when the 2009 campaign is launched in earnest.

In its 33 years ShareLife has grown from supporting eight charitable agencies to 33, helping 225,000 people of all ages, backgrounds and faiths. There are programs for single parents, families and the elderly, for children and teens, for immigrants and refugees. Support goes overseas to dozens of missionary causes and also stays at home to fund the schooling of future generations of priests.

The need is great but greater yet is the challenge amid a recession to support so many worthy causes. Much has been written about the sad state of the world economy. People are suffering. For charities, the pain is two fold. First, high unemployment and overall economic uncertainty threaten contributions. Second, a hardscrabble economy increases demand for services provided by social and charitable agencies.

Governments face the same two problems in tough times, so expecting them to come to the rescue is like looking for flowers to bloom in winter. Too often, though, we’re programmed to rely on governments to take the lead in solving society’s ills rather than heeding the call ourselves.

Free Dominion folks appeal legal decision

I haven't been following this too closely, but that's not to say it isn't important. I'm glad to see Connie and Mark Fournier are appealing. I'm not crazy about some of the more raucous posters over at FD, but it is not a far-right message board as some describe it. Glad this newspaper report strikes the right tone.

A Kingston-area couple who run a conservative online forum will appeal a court decision ordering them to hand over personal details about eight anonymous posters at the heart of a defamation lawsuit.
Connie and Mark Fournier, who run the online forum Freedominion.ca,said yesterday that they will be in Ottawa today to file the necessary papers to formally appeal a decision handed down exactly one week ago.
That decision ordered the Elginburg couple to hand over personal information about eight "John Does" whose postings are alleged to have defamed an Ottawa- based lawyer. The court ordered the couple to divulge the information before the actual defamation suit is heard.
The couple said in an interview yesterday that they have received messages from people interested in fighting the case, worried about the precedent it may set for future Internet use.
"We didn't think we'd be able to (appeal)," said Connie Four - nier. "There are a lot of good legal minds that have said this has to be fought."
Mark Fournier said the couple doesn't have enough money right now to finance the appeal. They are hoping members of their website, bloggers and forum owners will donate to their legal fund.

Go on over to FD, click on "Recent" and read up on why this case is important.

H/t Blazing Cat Fur

The dastardly Conservatives---Brian Lilley

Brian writes:

My Press Gallery colleague David Akin is reporting on his blog that the Conservatives are giving $27,124 in funding to Report Magazine, Western Canada's Conservative Voice.

True, the government even put out a press release to promote this funding.

"The Government of Canada is proud to support editorial content that promotes Canadian ideas, history, and culture," said Minister Ambrose. "We are committed to the preservation of our heritage and the promotion of our values to keep our identity strong now and in the future."

Akin, a good fellow in the gallery if ever there was one, also points out that this comes as CBC lays off 800 workers due to a lack of funding and that Sun Media had to close two Alberta weekly papers this week.

Surely this is a plot to push partisan media voices in favour of the government and punish those who oppose Conservative ideals!

If only. Never assume a conspiracy when plain old incompetence will do.

There's something about all this that makes me smell an election in the air.

The Savior State---and the revenge of Samson

Douglas Farrow is one of the foremost thinkers on the Canadian stage and I only wish he were better known.

This week I heard him give two talks, one on the end of Christendom, the other yesterday entitled "The Audacity of the State."

The title was a deliberate play on the title of a sermon Jeremiah Wright gave called "The Audacity of Hope" that Barack Obama used as the title for his second self-referential autobiography.

I have promised myself to do some cleaning today, so I don't have time to write much, but one thing he did in yesterday's talk was eviscerate John Stuart Mill and his truncated notion of freedom and individualism.

For Mill and his acolytes the autonomy sought of the individual is the freedom from the restraints of religion and the family. Hmmm, sounds like some modern day libertarians who like the idea of a small state but balk at social conservatism.

Yet what Farrow pointed out in a deft, tightly-argued paper presented to the Catholic Organization of Life and Family's seminar yesterday, is that if the pillars of family and religion are pulled down, society collapses.

One illustration: the Soviet Union, which after a few generations of destroying the family and religion through state run daycare, widespread abortion, persecution of churches, brought about its own doom.

Farrow called it Samson's revenge---because he said the individual who is "freed" up from the commitments and the community of family and religion, becomes an unwitting slave of the Savior State. Just as the blinded Samson, chained to the temple, pulled it down, so will this autonomous individual, chained to the pillars of religion and family, destroy society when he pulls them down.

Soooooooo true. Really, how can you ignore the horrible consequences of the family breakdown we see all around us?

Farrow also pointed out that the whole idea of the secular--which means the present age--comes from Christianity, which set off the secular against the transcendent realm of God and eternity. Because, in Christendom, there is a belief in a God and Savior who is also a King who will judge us at the end of time, governments were more modest. He rejected the idea that the separation of church and state was basically an Enlightenment concept, showing that the separation of the Prelate from the King went way back to the early years of Christendom. Though there were times when the King usurped his role and invaded the realm of the Church with disastrous results, or times the Church overreached and took over the levels of state power, with disastrous results, the efforts to find a proper balance well precede the 18th Century.

With the loss of the belief in anything transcendent, with the loss of belief in natural law and natural justice, and in God and a Savior, nothing is limiting the state from invading this territory with a new religion and a new type of theocracy--the Savior State. Of course, as Farrow showed, it's not really a new idea, for Caesar and other tyrants throughout history have been considered gods.

The Savior State--one that takes care of you from beginning to end---is looming and could lead to totalitarianism, he warned.

So many other excellent papers presented at this conference yesterday.

What is freedom? Is freedom mere autonomy?

Farrow showed that Mill wanted to replace Christianity with a new kind of civic religion that would have its own form of indoctrination. Most interesting.

Anyway....I hope all these ideas soon come out in a book. In the meantime, read his Nation of Bastards.

Without the virtues of self-restraint, wisdom, courage, justice, love, hope and faith incubated and nurtured in families and in churches, society will be a lawless, unruly place overrun with people who have been destroyed by the consequences of sin--their own and that of others.

As Jesus once said---he who sins becomes a slave of sin.

But the remedy is this: Ye shall know the Truth, and the Truth shall make you free.

Did Douglas say this yesterday? Don't have my notes in front of me-- something about how those who sought freedom thought that freedom would bring you to the truth.

But really it is the opposite. Freedom of the kind Mills advocated, and the kind our courts and politicians seem to support---this kind of autonomy of personal choice---will lead to death and despair.

Find the Truth first though, and take on the yoke of Christ, and find the freedom for which we were created. It's a freedom to love, to be true, to be faithful, to be people of our word, keepers of promises, pure at heart and all sorts of wonderful things that the autonomous narcissicist of today hasn't a clue about. Joy. Joy. Joy.

Sorry about the typos and the rush, but I have some dusting and other duties to perform.

The Anchoress thanks God for foolish love

So do I.

Faith’s young mother dared to grow; she loves her daughter with abandon. It is - by the world’s measure - a foolhardy love (when is love ever sensible?); it is a love that will eventually bring her to her knees with pain. That’s what love does; it brings the pain - and also the joy. All of it is part and parcel of an authentic, meaningful life lived with arms, heart and soul wide open, instead of a life resolutely, “sensibly,” “correctly” shut and ultimately meaningless. I thank God for foolish love. I thank God for the courage of it, and the richness it brings.

Farzana Hassan responds to Iain Benson

She writes in response to Iain's response to her article (link below)

March 26, 2009

Dear Mr. Iain Benson,

Thank-you for your letter concerning my recent article, “Heritage Canukistan?” (Investigative Project on Terrorism, Washington, DC, March 23, 2009, http://www.investigativeproject.org/1011/heritage-canukistan).

Your letter raises, and perhaps, confuses, two important issues.

The first issue is essentially a legal one that I cannot deal with competently, for, unlike you, Mr. Benson, I am neither a lawyer nor legally trained. Only you can judge whether, in the course of the legal effort that you describe, you might have failed in your professional due diligence obligation to protect associates from legal or other complications arising from connections that you might have facilitated. Did you perform your duty to the standard of care required? I do not know and cannot say. People like me must rely on lawyers, courts, law societies and the like, to review such things.

The other matter you raise has to do with the idea of “inclusiveness,” or, as others might say, the need for a “multiplicity of voices.” And, in the context of radical Islamism and outreach, you present me with a question.

... are you saying that no one with any connection to the groups you mention should be part of any round-table or, a very different point, that the round-tables are insufficiently inclusive of necessary counter-opinions?

As a person of integrity, learning and intellectual rigour, you will, upon reflection, realize that you have presented a false dichotomy. You will particularly recognize that, in this complicated world, the option that “no one with any connection to the groups you mention should be part of any round-table” (emphasis added) is so absolutist as not to constitute a serious basis for good-faith discussion. Am I invited to suggest that the grandson of the proverbial milkman of Osama bin Laden’s grandmother would be barred from today’s “roundtables”, because this ancient association somehow meets the definition of “any connection”? By its own terms, the absurdity of such choices virtually rules these options out of serious debate.

So, let us get to the point. As you know, Mr. Benson, this discussion is not really about inclusiveness or expanding the circles of opinion and contribution. Neither is it about prayer, religion in the public square, same-sex marriage, or a host of other serious and legitimate subjects debated by responsible people of faith.

This is a debate about whether extremist apologists , people who would at best seem to be unlikely contributors to religious roundtables, should be permitted to legitimize themselves in the eyes of the public and manipulate innocent religious and other people – including media – through involvement in otherwise respectable forums and groups.

And, indeed, it can be difficult, at times, to determine which groups and individuals are to be avoided. But this obligation – religious and ethical and, perhaps, legal – is not nearly as challenging as some would have us believe, including some of those who might now stand before us, in embarrassment, as a result of their having blundered into associations with such individuals and groups.

For many brave people have recognized their duty to guard against those seeking, whether through the host of extremist Muslim Brotherhood-oriented organizations, or others, to subvert Canada’s democracy or constitutional traditions. Indeed, this is why no competent outreach authority will be unaware of the Brotherhood’s Strategic Memorandum of 1991(http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/misc/20.pdf).ganizations As a competent interfaith person, you will have understood the implications of the Memorandum. Other readers, however, may need to be reminded that it is this document, accepted under the rules of US court evidence, that finds the Muslim Brotherhood specifying that “their work in [North] America is a kind of grand Jihad in eliminating and destroying the Western civilization from within and “sabotaging” its miserable house by their hands and the hands of the believers so that it is eliminated and God’s religion is made victorious over all other religions.” One can sense that it might be important to distinguish between certain kinds of Islamic representative groups.

In fact, it has not in the past been beyond the ability of many brave people, including those not benefiting from legal education, to identify, for several reasons – hatemongering apologetics and so on – those groups and individuals who should be scorned. Many other conscientious people have been called upon to sacrifice their safety and peace of mind, by speaking out against radicals. Some people, Muslims and non-Muslims, occasionally facing fatwas and often from outside the comfort of interfaith platforms, have been prepared to pay a steep price for doing the right thing. And their trials have been all the greater for having added to their burdens the need to penetrate the cover and the “laundering” that interfaith activists have inadvertently given radical front organizations and individuals.

In light of this, and of observations to follow, it is difficult to resist an unpleasant impression: that those who would reduce the current Islamic interfaith outreach crisis to a parochial tension between the “orthodox” and the “reformist” – curious designations for outsiders to impose – are indulging in self-deception of the highest order. Only one thing would be worse: a self-serving attempt by those who have embarrassed themselves through naive engagement, to write off vital concerns about radicals’ manipulation of media and outreach as a mere plot by some Muslims to “smear” the “orthodox” with charges of extremism. A cynical form of damage control, this would, I am pleased to say, be beneath the dignity of those interfaith activists with whom I have had the pleasure of associating.

So, just how hard has it been to determine which organizations were to be kept at bay?

As a lawyer, Mr. Benson, you will appreciate that the harassing lawsuits I refer to are generally matters in the public domain – some of them having commenced years ago, and having concluded – as are the patterns of “silencing” associated with them. So, too, the outline of aggressive human rights commission activity by Islamist interests. Meanwhile, Congressional, scholarly and other material on such entities abounds and has long been available through the crudest of Internet searches. And for the convenience of all, there is the famous list of the unindicted co-conspirator organizations (http://www.investigativeproject.org/documents/case_docs/423.pdf) identified by the US Justice Department in the course of the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing trial. Several of these entities have Canadian chapters and arms operating in this country, and engage, when permitted, in credibility-building interfaith activity.

But, as a person whom I presume to be a competent interfaith activist and a competent lawyer, you will doubtless already know all of this and have been guided in your every action by this fundamental knowledge.

Yours sincerely,

Farzana Hassan

Interesting profile of GK Chesterton

I didn't know this. Cool.

After all, Chesterton was still an Anglican when he published Orthodoxy in 1908 and remained one until 1922. Even after his conversion, while totally secure in his new faith, he seemed to harbor more reservations about it than trouble Oddie.
“It may be,” Chesterton wrote, “that I shall never again have such absolute assurance that [Catholic doctrine] is true as I had when I made my last effort to deny it.” As an Anglican he had taken communion infrequently, and he did not alter this practice after his conversion. Furthermore, he was never the kind of Catholic who believes either that the Church can do no wrong or that other sects and religions can do no right. While he regarded the Reformation as the most disastrous turning point in English history, he was also clear that the reform of medieval Christianity had been urgently required. Furthermore, Chesterton never wholly reconciled himself to the foreignness of Rome. “By every instinct of my being, by every tradition of my blood” he declared, “I should prefer English liberty to Latin discipline.” Equally, he showed no eagerness to visit Lourdes and no enthusiasm for the cult surrounding St. Thérèse de Lisieux. He also continued to admire the Anglican Book of Common Prayer—so much that he defined it as “the last Catholic book.”

"I have seen the future, and it's riots"--Dalrymple

Feral young men with an expression of urban predation on their faces stood around on street corners in nylon tracksuits and hoods, muttering f---ing this and f---ing that to one another. About half the people in the street were unemployed young immigrants, mainly of Middle Eastern origin, on the lookout for a bit of small-scale trafficking. Some took advantage of free Internet access in the public library—a concrete building aesthetically suitable as the headquarters of the Stasi—to look at inflammatory political sites or to search for women.
I have seen the future, and it’s riots.

Gerard Lafreniere becomes a priest at 80

I especially enjoyed writing this story.

OTTAWA - When Fr. Gerard Lafrenière was nine or 10 years old he told his mother he wanted to be a priest.

He maintained that dream even after he married Gisèle Viau at the age of 30, became the father of an adopted son, Georges, and embarked on a career in the insurance business.

On March 26, Lafrenière’s dream was finally realized when, at the age of 80, he was to be ordained in St. Joseph’s parish in Orleans, where he has served as a permanent deacon for 30 years.

“I had this on my mind my whole life,” he said. “(God) came and got me by the neck and said, ‘It’s your time.’ ”

He received the call from God, but the push came from his wife. She died in 2007 but, while terminally ill, she said to him several times: “Why don’t you become a priest?”

Steve Crowder and the Obama Song

I’m the first to admit it; Music is not my “forte.” However, due to the staggering number of misinformed Americans, I decided to employ some Child Education/Propaganda tactics in the latest video. Plus, everyone likes Billy Joel! Well except for his daughter…She could have had Brinkley’s looks but wound up with her dads mug. Poor girl.

Here’s to hoping that this sing-along can get through the Obamabots calcium deposited skulls!

Ezra Levant and Nigel Hannaford in Ottawa

I had a most interesting but odd day yesterday. In the morning I neglected my morning prayers and got involved in tracking down an 80-year old man who was ordained to the priesthood last night. Put together little story that was quite heart-warming. Then the rest of the day, I talked on the phone to various people on background on some stories I'm considering and looked forward to hearing Ezra Levant and Nigel Hannaford speak that evening.

Well, I had a scheduling conflict. Yesterday was the Feast of the Annunciation and the Feast of Title of my little Cathedral of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary. As I was preparing to leave, I could hear a still small voice asking me if I really did put God first. So instead of heading downtown right away to the cocktail party I had looked forward to all day, I went to evening prayer and mass. It was glorious and just what my spirit needed.

Afterwards, I had about ten minutes afterwards to drive to Ottawa, find a nearby parking space and get up to the Rideau Club for the last half hour of the panel discussion sponsored by the Fraser Institute.

A friend of mine always likes to talk about the little graces Our Lady provides when we listen to her Son Jesus. It's what she told the wedding of Canada organizers when they ran out of wine. "Do as He tells you," she told them, and they did, and Jesus performed his first miracle---turning water into wine.

My friend likes to mention all the little graces---the water turned into wine--that she believes the Blessed Mother has provided her in her life. We don't really need the wine, but oh, it sure is nice.

So, because I did as He told me in a small way by going to mass, what should I find upon nearing the Rideau Club but a nice, cushy parking space only a few blocks away. So I made it in good enough time to hear a substantial part of the discussion, which was great. But it gets even better.

Gerald Langlois was there. I had met him exactly a year previously at the March 25 Canadian Human Rights Tribunal case involving Marc Lemire. It's also where I met Mark Steyn for the first time, and where CHRC employee Dean Steacy had to answer for his jadewarr identity.

After the discussion period ended, some of the people were to go into a private fundraising dinner. As I was preparing to go home, Gerald told me he had bought a ticket to the dinner but had to leave and invited me to take his place. When Jesus turns water into wine at the request of His mother, he does not create cheap wine with a screwtop cap.

So I got to spend the evening with Ezra, Nigel, Dr. Roy, and a few other bloggers who may prefer to remain anonymous, and others. So thank you Gerald, and thank you God for prompting that generosity!

Anyway, I'm not going to report on everything I heard since you can find excellent material on Ezra's Shakedown tour over at his site. Here are a few comments that I thought were interesting:

Nigel Hannaford (who is an editorial writer fro the Calgary Herald) on human rights abuses by so-called human rights commissions: "I do not undertasnd why this is not a cause for moral outrage."

Exactly.

Ezra talked about his being compelled to endure his interrogation because the Alberta Human Rights Commission has the right to enter his home without a warrant and seize documents, even his hard drive. He pointed out that even if he had been accused of murder, he would not be subjected to warrantless searches.

He also spoke about the videotaping of the interrogation that has since had more than 700,000 views on YouTube. He decided a record was necessary so a transcript could be developed in case he was found guilty and appealed to a higher court. He also thought maybe he'd be able to circulate the YouTube videos via email to 50 friends and that maybe news would spread and perhaps 10,000 people might see them. He was astonished that on the first weekend they were posted about 100,000 people viewed them, makign them among the most-watched videos on the YouTube service.

Ezra said that when he first started his blog, he had a bit of trouble finding news pegs for his entries. He had to scour the media for new reports on human rights commissions so as to have something to write about. "Now not a day goes by whehre there isn't a scandalous story," he said, noting that now some journalists like Joseph Brean of the National Post have made hrcs their beat. He also mentioned a "legion of bloggers" who have been covering the issue.

Ezra spoke of EGALE's reasons for not wanting to shut down hate speech: 1) it identifies the hater rather than letting them fester anonymously. Identification means that other means of civil society pressure can be brought to bear: marginalization, letters to the editor, denouncing, and non-governmental means to put pressure on the purveyor of hate speech.
2) it provides a teaching moment for those to explain why the speech is hateful, or racist or false
3) (this may be Ezra's, not EGALE'S) We should not outsource our personal social responsibility to the Nanny State.

For example, if someone makes a racist joke at your workplace---do you call a human rights commission and have it take 400 days to come up with a ruling on whether the joke was appropriate? Ezra asked. Or do you use up some of your social capital by taking the joker aside and kindly telling that person to "live up to a higher standard" and "to be a better companion."

No one's rights are being violated by the state in this kind of exchange, he said. "To steer someone the right way is a harmonious act."

Nigel spoke of the way the state has chosen "winners and losers" among various groups, noting that things can be said about the Catholic Church that could never be said about other religions.
He called this a dangerous "categorization of society."

Though initially set up to give people experiencing discrimination a speedy solution and a quick solution, human rights commissions are now engaging in a "pernicious attempt to control public discourse."

The Galloway affair came up. Ezra repeated what he's said in his blog that he agrees with his being kept out because of his fundraising activities for Hamas, a designated terrorist organization. "It's being spun as a free speech argument by the Left," he said. "If only they cared as much about the free speech of Canadian citizens."

He also noted that keeping Galloway out suddenly made a lot more people interested in seeing what he said. Thus the move gave him a huge amount of publicity. "It shows how you can't stop ideas."

In Australia there are 1300 banned websites, he said. These websites are so secret that even the urls aren't given out. Instead they were given to the Interet providers who were to block them.
Well, someone sent the secret list to Wikileaks.com So of course, Ezra, who had never heard of Wikileaks, went to check out the banned list. Many of the urls were disgusting and obviously child porn sites, he said, making the desire to ban them understandable. (He said Wikileaks is now on the banned list!) But a Dutch fork lift company and a Queensland dentist is on the list, too. Much interesting stuff on Wikileaks by the way. Enjoy reading it while you still can.

Thailand, which has a pedophile problem, also has a list. So does Denmark!

"Once you open the door an inch, there is no stopping it," Ezra said.

Nigel wound up the discussion with this: "I salute Ezra as a genuine free speech hero."

Amen!

Who speaks for Canadian Muslims?

I just got a phone call from Richelle Wiseman of the Centre for Faith and Media, and soon I will be posting her response to the article by Farzana Hassan when it is ready. She disputes many of the assertions in the article.

She raised some interesting questions in her telephone call---about who speaks for Canada's Muslims. Her concern is that any Muslims who are not secular are smeared as Islamists and by extension any groups that have anything to do with them. She says in her work dealing with hundreds of Muslims over the years, none want to impose Shariah law on Canada or have an Islamist agenda.

So, I await her response and the Manning Centre's, because I understand they will have one as well.

Meanwhile, I am posting a response Iain Benson from the Centre for Cultural Renewal sent to Farzana Hassan. I think he makes excellent points about the need for a multiplicity of voices from the Muslim community in panel discussions:

Dear Farzana Hassan:

I don't believe we have met. I found your article "Heritage Canukistan" for IPT News March 23, 2009, passed on to me by a friend, dealing with the Centre for Faith and Media (CFM) and the Manning Centre etc. most interesting and very well written.

My question is this: are you saying that no one with any connection to the groups you mention should be part of any round-table or, a very different point, that the round-tables are insufficiently inclusive of necessary counter-opinions?

Your answer to this question is a critical one. In Canada at the moment with ignorance about the nature of so many Islamic associations being, as you noted, wide-spread, I would favour discussions and the airing of "dodgy connections" rather than leaving such things hidden. In particular I think that involving more rather than fewer "muslim spokespersons" would do everyone good.

As a lawyer myself acting on inter-faith coalition cases in the past (the Same-sex marriage litigation for example) we asked around about Muslim involvement in the cases (already having Christian groups well represented, Hindus and Sikhs and some Jewish involvement) but the name we were given was that of Abdulla Idris Ali. He is now identified with one of the groups on your list of bad actors. Nothing in his affidavit would be of concern, I would think, to orthodox (conservative) Muslims but the fact remains- - we did not know who was properly representative with respect to "the Muslim voice" on such an important issue.

Here is the make up of the Affiants for our side of the case for your interest and you will see Abdulla Idris Ali listed:

Affidavits on behalf of the “Interfaith Coalition” in the “same-sex marriage” litigations, for example,
were filed on behalf of Judaism (Rabbi and University of Toronto political theorist David Novak), Roman
Catholicism (Professor Ernest Caparros, professor of Canon law at the University of Ottawa and Professor
Daniel Cere, Catholic political theorist at McGill University), Islam (Abdulla Idris Ali, Past President of the
Islamic Society of North America), and Evangelical Protestantism (Professor Craig Gay of Regent College).
In each case, focus of the affidavits were: the teachings of the religious perspective with reference to the nature
and place of marriage, the need for respect for the other groups and citizens irrespective of their sexual
orientations, and concerns about where a reconfigured constitutional norm would place the religious groups
themselves. On appeal, various “reformed” religious groups appeared in an effort to counter the traditional
religious voices.

My point is this. If one is going to involve Islam (widely construed) in discussions of citizenship, constitutional litigation or what have you, one is necessarily going to have to recognize the splits, divisions and differing perspectives within the communities that make it up in Canada. As information becomes available from reliable sources, that connect in ways we can know to be reliable, information that certain people or groups are connected with those who advocate terrorism, then such people and groups should be identified and de-legitimized where they seek cover from legitimate projects of whatever sort. I think we can agree on that.

We should never knowingly or naively support terrorists or their fellow-travellers.

You do recognize, however, that this process of learning what groups are legitimate and what ones (often with wide sounding representative names) are not takes time and is not the easiest process for "outsiders." Yet it is the "outsiders" in many cases who wish to see a genuine discussion furthered for the good of Canadian citizenship and the common-good.

In this respect your work as an investigative journalist is very important and you quite rightly pointed out the fact that the people and groups you mention may well have made some false steps due to lack of knowledge of the deeper waters in the Muslim communities in Canada. I don't think they would deny that and would want, in fact, more accurate assistance going forward.

In addition, my first question remains; should we involve wider discussions with a wide variety of groups so as to best show the diversity of viewpoints in Canada? That is the approach I would favour but I am looking forward to hearing back from you on this.

I'd like to keep this dialogue going and hope you will be part of round-tables in the future as you obviously add an important and civil perspective to an area that frequently discourses at too high a volume for anyone to hear what is being said.

Sincerely,

Iain Benson

I am of the impression that Farzana Hassan would probably agree with the view that roundtables are "insufficiently inclusive" of different points of view. (See Iain's point in italics above). I agree. I think that it is dangerous to assume that there is one spokesperson for the Muslim community or for the Christian community or the Black community or the gay community---you name it.

Space is needed at the table for a multiplicity of voices. But I also think that Canadians need to be aware of soft jihad practices, lawfare and other techniques and not be dismissed from the table as Islamophobic for raising the subject. There were, after all, a couple of twin towers that were exploded by some terrorists in the name of Islam.

BTW, the Canadian Islamic Congress, which I did not like for its lawfare use of human rights commissions against Mark Steyn and Maclean's Magazine or its president's anti-Jewish remarks, actually issued a responsible brief (by Khurrum Awan, no less) in support of traditional marriage. The Muslim Canadian Congress (MCC) supported same-sex marriage.

So....to be continued.

Who speaks for Canadian Muslims?

Creation a form of defecation? my goodness

David Thompson interviews Stephen Hicks on his new book about postmodernism. (h/t Dr. Sanity). Please read the whole thing. It will help you understand why we have come to such a devastating impasse in politics (my bolds).

SH: Pomo is rhetoric-heavy, yes. But rhetoric is a tool, so one can ask how it’s being used and why it’s being used that way. The postmodernists have rejected reason, and along with it concern for evidence and consistency. What then is the purpose of rhetoric? In pomo practice, there are a couple of possibilities.

One is that rhetoric becomes a kind of subjectivist expressionism - you play around with language and hope that something interesting pops out. Derrida is often like this - I think of him as a performance artist of postmodernism. In its darker moods, this approach recalls a line from Kate Ellis, a sympathetic-to-postmodernism commentator, who noted “the characteristically apolitical pessimism of most postmodernism, by which creation is simply a form of defecation.” Whatever’s been processing and churning up inside you - you just let ‘er rip.

The other use of rhetoric is politically-charged persuasion. Pomo rhetoric becomes long on emotionalism, ad hominem, and so on, and it becomes short on logic and evidence. But the point of such rhetoric is effectiveness, not truth.
You mention that much pomo political rhetoric is anti-capitalist and champions unlikely causes such as fundamentalist Islam. Here the pomo are taking a page out of Lenin’s and Marcuse’s playbooks.

President Twitter? ouch!

". . . he's about to turn into President Twitter, telling all of us what he's doing in real time, from pickup basketball to fixing the bonus mess at AIG.
It is what happens when you are a pleaser. So far, President Obama sure seems to be one of those, and this comes from somebody who would have voted for him twice if they'd let me.

Last week, Barack Obama became the first sitting President to appear on "The Tonight Show," and despite putting his foot in his mouth about the Special Olympics, he got laughs and pulled big ratings, though that's really supposed to be Jay Leno's job, not his.

The night he was on with Leno, he joked that being in Washington is a little like "American Idol," the only problem being that "everyone is Simon Cowell." But the way this President is going lately, don't bet against him showing up there, too, trying to keep Scott, the blind singer, on the show.

Before Leno last week, he was on ESPN, filling out his brackets for March Madness. Sunday night, he was back on network television, CBS this time, "60 Minutes" with Steve Kroft, where he seemed to think he was still with Leno, yukking it up about money to the point where Kroft said that people were going to think the leader of the world was acting punch-drunk.

Obama was the candidate of the modern world, the first presidential candidate to see the possibilities of the Internet, not just for raising vulgar amounts of money, but for instant access to the voters as well. In many ways, he is the first President of the BlackBerry world.
[and that was by an Obama fan!]

Most interesting report on jihad on the 'net

Kathy Shaidle writes over at RightSide News:

Because Facebook is so ubiquitous, it has actually been used by investigators to track down jihadists. Earlier this month, the FBI looking for a group of Somali immigrants to who left Minneapolis to join an overseas terrorist group were tracked down through their Facebook pages.

As one expert told FoxNews.com, sites like Facebook can help spread radicalism, but that shouldn't "overshadow all the ways it has helped to stop radicalism. The benefits far outweigh the risks, and we are doing all we can to [mitigate] the risks."

Marc Lynch agrees. The author of Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, al-Jazeera, and Middle East Politics Today) blogs at Foreign Policy Magazine online, and is an expert on the use of modern information technology
by Islamic terrorists.

He believes that the same information technology trends that enable terrorists to carry out attacks - as occurred in Mumbai - can also diminish their ability to spread their propaganda, because the technology is available to its enemies: that is, us.

Lynch also points out that debates between radical Muslim members on online forums and chat rooms can actually "undermine moral or turn into open dissent, to the dismay of movement leaders." ("Plus," Lynch adds, video download sites "often feature ads for pornography (...) while you're waiting... I'll leave it to you to decide whether that's a glitch or a feature for the jihadists downloading their bin Laden videos.")

Perhaps to get around these and other drawbacks, Hamas actually tried to start their own version of YouTube.com last fall.

The site, called AqsaTube, came complete with a ripped off version of the American site's famous red logo. But instead of the cute cat clips and stealth campaign videos you'll find on YouTube, however, AqsaTube was "devoted entirely to propaganda and incitement," according to the Israeli Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center (IITIC).

As the IITIC report explained, "the new AqsaTube website is another example of how Hamas, like other terrorist organizations such as Hezbollah and Al-Qaeda, have learned to exploit the information revolution to wage the battle for hearts and minds."

Sad story about the Centre for Faith and Media and Heritage Canada

Years ago, the Centre for Faith and Media (CFM) held an excellent conference in Ottawa on that subject that attracted all the big media names and top religious leaders, mostly Christian, in Canada. It was a great event, and I was one of the panellists.

A subsequent conference was much smaller and had a far greater proportion of Muslim women wearing hijabs and gave a great deal of attention to sensitivity towards the portrayal of Muslims in the media.

I know Richelle Wiseman, the executive director. We've attended some of the same conferences, and she once gave a thoughtful keynote address to a conference sponsored by an Christian writers' group I belong to. She's a bright woman.

So.....I'm sorry to see this story by the Muslim Canadian Congress's president Farzana Hassan

Hassan writes:

Things are heating up in the sweepstakes for the most incompetent department of Canadian government to face Islamic radicalism. For a while, bets were on Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board, which, for 11 years, had the president of the extremist-sympathizing Canadian Arab Federation – big on Hamas and Hizballah – on its board. His job there was to decide who was too dangerous to let into the country.

But now "Heritage Canada," a Canadian government department whose bid for the title is made with the help of the Calgary-based independent Centre for Faith and the Media (CFM) has jumped in the fray.

Heritage Canada pushes a multiculturalism agenda, and the CFM seems to be a one-employee outfit with a volunteer Board of Directors of sympathetic religious people – with one exception. Positioning itself as a link and information clearinghouse between journalists and religious communities, CFM has been decisive in moving Heritage Canada into committing blunders.

The current fiasco started when Heritage Canada funded the Centre to start something called "The Muslim Project." This initiative involves a series of cross-Canada "roundtables" prominently displaying CFM's sole paid employee, Executive Director Richelle Wiseman, as moderator. The end-product? A "study" of media portrayals of Muslims and Islam in Canada, due out within the next year or so.

Heritage Canada bureaucrats would have known something could go wrong with a Muslim-oriented project dealing with this subject if they'd only looked at a "journalist's guide" to Islam on the sponsoring CFM's website. The Islam "guide," which was pulled from the site last month, recommended that Canadian reporters seek out the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) as an authoritative source of information about Muslims and Islam. CAIR, of course, is the Washington, DC radical-Islamist organization that is funded by the Saudis and qualified by the US Justice Department as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing trial. A parade of its senior officials and affiliated people has made its way into penitentiaries on criminal charges and an FBI agent testified that it was a front organization for Hamas.

Oh oh.

The problem is not unique to Heritage Canada and the CFM. This kind of propaganda is rife within most mainstream media organizations now who are probably hiring accordingly just as various government agencies like human rights commissions are doing. In fact, as MCC founder Tarek Fateh said at the recent Freedom of Speech conference in Ottawa, if you are not wearing a beard and dressing like a Saudi or if a woman, you are not wearing a hijab, you are not taken seriously as a Muslim in Canada. Yet he pointed out that most Canadian Muslims do not wear beards, nor do most Canadian Muslim women hijabs. Nor are most of them complaining constantly of Islamophobia.

This penetration probably explains why people like Mark Steyn, Ezra Levant and others who criticize Islamic extremism, (or Islamism, or jihadism or Islamo-fascism to describe that narrow group of Islamic supremacists who want to impose their totalitarian version of the Muslim religion on the West) get accused of Islamophobia and prejudice against all Muslims by Canadians who have been groomed by sophisticated propagandists.

Why the Galloway issue is not about free speech

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney explains for the upteenth time why the Galloway issue is not a freedom of speech issue in a post QP scrum today.

Question: There's growing pressure for you to intervene in the George Galloway matter. Are you going to? Are you going to I guess change the government's mind or the decision to ban him?

Hon. Jason Kenney: Well, I have no intention to. The Canadian Border Security agents made a preliminary assessment of Mr. Galloway's admissibility to Canada. And they determined under Section 34-1 of the Immigration Refugee Protection Act that he would be likely inadmissible because of his material support for a banned illegal terrorist organization. According to Mr. Galloway's own admission earlier this month, he provided financial and corporeal support to Hamas, an organization which deliberately targets and kills innocent civilians and is therefore illegal in Canada. I don't see why I -- we should make exceptions and override the decision of our professional border security agents in making a judgment about the inadmissibility of someone who provides funding and resources to an illegal terrorist organization.

Question: Those who argue it's a free speech issue, what do you think of that?

Hon. Jason Kenney: It has nothing to do about speech, it has everything to do with actions. It's not about words, it's about deeds. It's not about his opinions, it's about his financial, material support for an illegal terrorist organization. The law is clear and experts will tell you this that anybody who provides material and financial support to an illegal terrorist organization is prima facie inadmissible to Canada. Our border security agents made that determination and I see no compelling reason why I should second guess them. If this was simply about, you know, Mr. Galloway expressing his opinions, I'm sure he can do that by publishing his views in Canada, by telling people his views. His views are no secret. I think they are odious but certainly in Britain he has a right to express them and if he was a Canadian citizen and he was already here he would have a right to express them verbally in Canada. That's not the issue. The issue has nothing to do with freedom of speech and everything to do with the -- maintaining the integrity of our Immigration Act which says that individuals who provide material and financial support to illegal terrorist organizations are inadmissible for entry to Canada. I think it's a reasonable law and I have no intention of second guessing the considered opinion of our professional border security agents in that regard.

Imagine if the president were to pass a law forcing Jews to eat pork . . .

"If you have ever complained that the bishops haven’t done enough on a particular issue, now’s your chance to prove that you weren’t just complaining.

Imagine the president were backing a bill to force Jews to eat pork — or to make Muslims desecrate the Koran. Obama is doing worse with an effort to force Catholic doctors to kill unborn children.

The bishops have reacted with intelligence, imagination and boldness." http://www.ncregister.com/daily/join_the_bishops_battle/

Here’s the webpage they have set up:

http://www.usccb.org/conscienceprotection/

The Redingers, Medical Students

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vh6q84pBXVc

Dr. Myles Sheehan

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJs32Iwevjk&feature=related

Cardinal George - Keep Conscience Protections for Health Care Workers

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6NoCRwMqVzQ&feature=related

The tanking U.S. economy is a laughing matter?

I dunno, but I remember people giggling like this after inhaling:

Lots of people see the handwriting on the wall, even if Obama thinks the destruction of America as we know it is a laughing matter.

Victor Davis Hanson asks why so many Americans are depressed. Suggesting five themes that might provide an answer, he thinks it might be more than the economy that explains our state of mind. I agree, but none of Dr. Hanson's themes accounts for my despair.

I feel utterly powerless to do anything about the fellow in the Oval Office who combines infantile leftism and adolescent grandiosity in roughly equal measures. It seems to me that every day he is responsible for assaults on the freedom and well being of the American people. I can't keep up and I can't stand to pay attention.

His aim seems to be to reduce us to government dependents. His inattention to rehabilitation of the financial system in lieu of vastly expanding the size and scope of the government is a dead giveaway, as is his lack of concern over the vast destruction of wealth his policies are working (and will continue to work).

Perhaps most depressing to me is the manifestation of his adolescent grandiosity in his stewardship of foreign policy and national security. He doesn't understand that the government of Iran is intent on acquiring nuclear weapons it can put to evil purposes. He thinks he can sweet-talk them out of achieving this objective.

But, be of good cheer. Hope in God. Store up treasures in heaven and enjoy the peace of Christ that passes understanding.

If this doesn't make you cry . . .

My friend Sheila Wray Gregoire writes about Obama's Special Olympics remark (read the whole thing):

Now maybe he was just making a joke and it fell flat. We all make stupid jokes sometimes. But I don't think I've ever joked about the Special Olympics.

Especially not since 1996. Here's a picture of me with someone very dear to me. This was taken the night before my son Christopher had open heart surgery. Unfortunately, the surgery wasn't successful, and he died five days later. Christopher had Down Syndrome.

When we first found out, while I was still pregnant, it seemed like everyone was pressuring us to abort, especially the doctors. (You can read the story here). But we didn't.

It wasn't that I was happy about the Down Syndrome. I was devastated. What if my son could never read? Would I have to care for him the rest of my life? Would he ever get married?

But after a few days of panic, we began to read more and more materials about Down's. We joined listservs of Down Syndrome parents. And I became excited. I was going to be the best mom he could have!

I only had that chance for a month on this side of heaven. The rest of my relationship with him will have to wait until we're reunited. But so many people plot against these little blessings. The doctors didn't want him to be born. Many in my family didn't want him born. Keith's colleagues didn't want him born. And Obama thinks he's the subject of a joke.

What are we becoming when we start making jokes about the least of these? We're becoming cruel, heartless, and proud. It seems to me I remember Someone else saying something quite different about those who are maybe a little more helpless among us. He said, "whoever does this to the least of these my brothers does it to Me." So when Obama said that about the Special Olympics, he wasn't just talking about those with Down's. I know that sounds harsh, but that's what I think.

Did Obama intend to insult those with Down's? Of course not. Did he intend to insult those with other disabilities who compete in the Special Olympics? No, I don't think he did. But the point is he made that comment without thinking. I would never do such a thing, anymore than I would make fun of Obama because he's black. Such things don't register with me, as I don't think they do with the majority of good-hearted folk.

We live in a culture which denigrates the disabled without even thinking about it. When we realize what we do, of course we apologize, but the point is that we don't realize it. It's become so commonplace that it just slips out. And what does that say about us?

That's why I don't think it really matters whether he intended it or not. I don't think it matters whether he apologized (though I'm glad he did). And I do hope that he's learned to think a little bit more about those who are disabled.

But if we truly valued the disabled, such slips wouldn't happen. Canada really doesn't have the racist history that the United States does, and so I don't hear racist jokes. I really don't. We trained ourselves not to make them, because racism just isn't acceptable. So surely we can train ourselves not to make jokes about the disabled, either.

If we truly valued those with Down's, the way Jesus does, we won't make such jokes. Perhaps I'm taking this too personally because I still miss my son, but that's just the way I see it.

"you have a real, and very rare, gift for portraying psychological states"

Robert Eady is an old friend I had lost touch with until he called me to tell me he has a novel coming out this summer. Back in my evangelical days during the early 1990s, I used to have lunch with him and a group of conservative Catholics once a week. It was there that I confess I first heard of G.K. Chesterton. Robert's a great essayist and letter to the editor writer, as well as a poet, so I was delighted when he sent me an email with some kind words about my novel. I would imagine his novel will be more literary than mine--in a good way--and have a lot of humour as well. Here's what he wrote with his permission:

I finished reading your novel last night, and as I said, couldn't put it down. I had forgotten how much fun reading a rip along thriller can be. I think that you really got into Linda Donner's brain. She was very believable as a woman who was raped by a pervert priest. Her various psychological states - rigid resentment and barely controlled fury; distrust and vindictiveness towards religious figures; transient obsessive compulsive neurosis; religious conversion and settling of turbulent emotions into a new self-confidence through Christ - all came through for me. You are very good at presenting with few words the psychological states of people in emotional turmoil. The low lives in the community - the inbreeds, perverts, sociopaths etc. - were very believable. Things like the giggling old chipmunk cheeked matriarch from hell; the vile Satanic monsters Rex and Dawn; the plywood sides to the bingo hall; the animal intrusions into filthy houses in the form of fecal pollution - all enhanced the underlying terror of the South Dare story setting. There was nothing anti-Catholic at all in the novel, as unfortunately, trendy Father Ron predators are not that terribly rare or unusual to find. I found the wronged pastor, David Jordan, quietly heroic, inspired and uplifting. Usually in modern fiction, an anti-abortion Protestant minister with healing gifts would be presented as a hypocrite and a psychopath. The saving power of Christ was not overbearing, but where it should have been for a Christian writer - central to the story.

I can't understand why this book wasn't a big seller, especially amongst Christians or those who just want a good read. You should continue to do more fiction because, as I said, you have a real, and very rare, gift for portraying psychological states. This was apparent throughout the novel (dialogue, body language, gestures etc.) Even if you don't make a lot of money out of fiction, you should definitely write more!

God Bless, Robert Eady

Now there are about 150 regular readers of this blog---small I know--but some of you are influential and have bigger blogs. Have you read my novel The Defilers yet? If you liked it, would you say so and let others know? Yes, it is a Christian novel, but shouldn't we writers be doing something to try to change the culture, including how we entertain ourselves?

Aren't you tired of spending money on entertainment that derisively tears down the foundations of our society? I worked hard at making sure this novel--while not great literature, I admit---would not insult your intelligence and would turn the pages for you. It's the kind of novel I would like to read if I had a flight from Ottawa to California. The Defilers will take you to Nova Scotia in the winter inside a fictional heart of darkness.

Michael Wolff realizes . . .

Sheesh, the guy is Jimmy Carter.

That homespun bowling crap on Jay Leno, followed by the turgid, teachy fiscal policy lecture, together with the hurt defensiveness (and bad script for it) that everybody in Washington "is Simon Cowell… Everybody's got an opinion," is pure I’m-in-over-my-head stuff. Even the idea of having to go on Jay Leno to rescue yourself from the AIG mess is lame. Be a man, man.

The guy just doesn’t know what to say. He can’t connect. Emotions are here, he’s over there. He can’t get the words to match the situation.

Dr. Sanity on waking up from the romantic dream of Obama

I think it is not only Republicans and conservative Democrats who are utterly aghast, but a large majority of the population. They were voting for the First Black American to be President, happily secure in their hopey changey world that they would be free at last, thank God; free at last of that over-used "racist" label that Barack and Co. (i.e., the Jeremiah Wrights and many others) had been throwing around for a few decades. They saw a hope that in Barack Obama there was finally a chance at redemption from America's past with all the bitterness of the Civil War and the whole slavery issue. And, I think, rather innocently were led to believe that issues of race could finally be put behind them. What a laugh that turned out to be--especially since now every criticism of the "post-racial" candidate produces even more accusations of racism.

I think also, that the hopeful American public did not sufficiently consider the ramifications of actually having a person of minimal experience in the White House because they were blinded by the shining white light of his media-enhanced supernatural personality. It might not have mattered if someone of dubius qualification had been elected in a less volatile epoch of history; but not having even the smallest of proven capabilities during this critical historical time is going to really hurt this country as we are starting to find out.

Not only is Barack Obama seriously unqualified (as I and many others warned), but what little there was documented of his various activities over the years was quite damning as far as the content of his character and the ideological bent of his mind. When it was pointed out repeatedly (but not in the MSM, unfortunately) that he had the most leftist voting record in Congress (when he actually didn't vote "present"), that information was shrugged off. When it was pointed out repeatedly (but not in the MSM, unfortunately) that he had absolutely NO record of EVER having "reached across the aisle" in any sort of bipartisan manner, that information was shrugged off.

People made fun of Sarah Palin, a sitting governor of a large state and someone with a modicum of executive experience; but making fun of Barack "community organizer" Obama was considered the height of disgusting and racist utterings.

Nevertheless, Sarah Palin was and is the equivalent of a seasoned fighter pilot and Obama is only someone who's carefully studied about how jets fly, but hasn't quite got around to flying one yet.

His lack of experience was so obvious, but so downplayed, because everyone was so infatuated on such short acquaintance was with the charismatic Obama that, to quote Marianne the "sensibility" half of Sense and Sensibililty (the movie), "What care I for colds when there is such a man?"

Indeed. What did the American public care about the pressing issues of the day when there was "such a man" as Barack, who in all his glory had exploded on the American stage only a few short years earlier? They were weary of the Iraq war, having suffered the slings and arrows of all those imaginary sacrifices trumpeted by the left; and even more weary of all the arguing about it.

Who could have predicted from those seemingly heroic-sounding, carefree days of the campaign, that, much like Marianne, we are coming to appreciate that Obama's character, as it turns out, is not much different from Willoughby: empty of integrity and honor; as well as weak and shallow. Those who innocently voted for him are beginning to sicken on the bitterness of their regret and betrayal.

The Anchoress on persecution of religious communities

She writes:

When the communists came to Bulgaria, they suppressed religious communities. Some of these nuns remember. Please watch this video. It takes almost three minutes to get started, then it is riveting. In this first part one of the sisters brings insight into how the whole trick of socialism and suppression works. It has worked very well in our own society; we call it political correctness, and it is hard at work, right now, fomenting a knee-jerked revolution with little honesty behind it, and a great potential for violence, harassment of private citizens and injustice.

I dunno…all this new “change” Obama is mouthing off about…it seems like a re-do of a really old and unsuccessful idea that we all thought we’d defeated in the 1980’s. Very soon, it will be a social “sin” to own a nice home. Or, it will be a sin unless you’re the right sort of person, like Chris Dodd, or Bruce Springsteen or Nancy Pelosi, or even Barack Obama.

If you’re not them, if you’re just an ordinary American who bought into the notion that working hard and dreaming dreams mattered…how dare you succeed when others fail. Let us destroy you.

Always good Binksish material is especially good

in long, provocative essays in this post:

Iran, that ancient nation and people, is now imprisoned in a grim theocracy run by Islamic loonies, who are bent on sponsoring terrorism, worldwide Islamic supremacy, and (they hope) the nuking and extermination of Jewry.

And n00b POTUS Barack H. Obama wants to make all nicey-nice with these folks, on their terms? Do you suppose The All-Wise Omessiah will even mention the awkward business of Omid Reza Mir Sayafi, and many thousands of other Iranians imprisoned or slain freedom activists or religious protesters who just want to speak out and live as we are free to do here?

Hope & Change

Iran needs change: regime change, and the mullahs back where they belong– in their Mosques.

Don’t count on the West-hating Left to fight for a better Iran, for it’s our radical Left who now see the Islamists as the new hammer hanging over us, where once they loved and pandered to the USSR for the same reason. 26 million people went through the Gulags there over 40 years and more. Or again, don’t count on the Left to seriously spend much time on current gulags like those in Cuba, North Korea,, China, or elsewhere in the rotting outposts of their once beloved communism.. those people are just statistics, necessary sacrifices for the revolution.

Brothers & Sisters, All

However, that’s where I differ both with the idea-loving but people-hating Left, and the sometimes intolerant Right: those who seek a better way, who stand for their rights and freedoms against various forms of inhumanity and tyranny– these are our true brothers and sisters in the spirit, no matter their colour, creed, culture, or language. Moreover, where some must stand and risk everything to speak out in their countries, our embrace of freedom comes more easily, and costs us less– we must honour their effort and commitment even more.

and this one:

ASIDE FROM A FEW NIHILIST LOONIES, marooned people, and stone-age tribes, cannibalism isn’t a big thing these days. Except in the modern West.
We’re not talking chef-approved cuisine or fancy canapés here, but rather medically consuming the dead, dying, or preborn for various reasons we justify to ourselves. Fancy-resort stem-cell injections from dead preborns; fetal stem-cell research (when adult stem-cells actually provide results), and now (warns Al Mohler), a dehumanized British Prof proposing that “organ tissues from aborted fetuses might represent “at least a temporary solution” to the shortage of available organs for transplant.” Today’s moral horror, tomorrow’s economic activity. It’ what happens when your society spends so much time sliding on various slippery slopes.

Ew! Ick-Word Alert

Why use the shock-word cannibalism? because anthropophagy sounds too Greek, and misses the horror of what people are doing, and proposing now, on planet earth, in ‘civilized’ nations.

Consuming babies for beauty, anti-aging, and alleged genetic benefit– not as tasty toddler-tots with the appropriate dipping sauce, but in a sterile, medicalized mentality which safely distances us from what we’re actually doing. We are becoming our own zombies.

Way back in the day, human sacrifie and cannibalism were more common. However, even the ancient Phoenicians and Carthaginians only rolled their first-borns into the fire: there’s no evidence that they ate the results of said viviBBQs. Recent stone age people conceive of eating the dead as a partaking of their powers and qualities. Modern cannibals want to get pretty, younger looking, or cured of some malady.

New And Improved!

Our cannibalism isn’t born of primitive religion, or a stone-age misunderstanding: those who partake of medical cannibalism do it for selfish or narcissistic reasons; and in the case of having lots of dead babies lying about, to make even more money for Morguentaler or Planned Parenthood. Our evil is more banal, sterilized, and handy-dandy, and made all the more truly horrible and vomit-inducing for that. It’s a kind of horrible carnivorous communion, not for spiritual food and eternal life, but for more and better of this one, on our terms, no matter how dehumanizing the means.

The "vulgar" Sarah Palin vs. the suave cool Obama

Rush Limbaugh:

RUSH: I want to return to a comment I made at the opening of the program, the vulgarity of Sarah Palin. I don't care that members of the left -- people on the left and Democrats -- trashed her and said she was vulgar. That's because she was effective. But what infuriated me all during the campaign was how supposed conservatives, pseudo-conservatives, people on our side who are pseudo-, phony intellectuals of the New York, Washington media axis, who have a desire to be accepted by the wrong crowd in politics, had to also go after Sarah Palin as unfit and vulgar and uncouth and raw around the edges. So last night while Barack Obama is making fun of Special Olympics people, Special Olympics kids -- while he's making fun of them -- Sarah Palin, on March 7th, 13 days ago, addressed the 2009 Special Olympics on her website, SarahPAC.com. As you watch this, she's holding the baby, Trig, and she says this...

PALIN: When I first held Trig, it was like an hourglass turned upside down. My heart filled up with love, as my mind emptied itself of all the different worries and fears and concerns that I had. I had carried those while I was carrying him. Everyone wants their baby to be perfect. And with Trig, that's exactly what we got. Everyone worries about what the future holds for their newborn child. With Trig we have hopes and concerns and dreams just as we do for all our children, but one thing is certain for our family, and that's that Special Olympics is going to be a big part of his and our future.

RUSH: Sarah Palin -- the uncouth, the unpolished, the rough around the edges, the vulgar -- discussing her special-needs child, Trig, and the Special Olympics. Later, in her website post, she added this.

PALIN: Now thanks to Special Olympics, we know for certain that Trig is going to have every opportunity to enjoy sports and competition that all of our other than children have. I know I don't have to worry that he's going to be on the sidelines, when he wants to be in the game. You know what the difference is between a hockey mom and a Special Olympics hockey mom? Nothing. For our family and for millions of other families with special, special children, Special Olympics gives us confidence and excitement for his future, and we've got big plans for this little guy -- and we can't wait.

RUSH: Sarah Palin on her website SarahPAC.com talking about this. She did an address there to the 2009 Special Olympics on her website as she was holding her Down syndrome child, Trig. I just wanted to contrast that -- the supposedly vulgar and uncouth, rough-around-the-edges, embarrassing Sarah Palin -- with, of course, the elegant, the suave, the cool, the calm, the willowy, the weightless Barack Obama and his "teachable moment," of making fun of Special Olympics people.

John McKay, call the Liberal War Room

Good on John McKay, the Liberal MP tasked with reaching out to evangelical voters.

I wish he had more clout to rein in the Liberal war room.

He writes in today's National Post (my bolds):

Re: The Liberal War On Faith, David Asper, March 19.
I agree with the sentiments expressed by David Asper. Regrettably, the dialogue between faith communities and science has so degenerated over the years that rational discussion has pretty well been foreclosed. Gotcha journalism (of which the Globe and Post are noted practitioners) trivializes the great issues of our time, leaving faith leaders battered, bruised and unable to share their understanding on the great questions of life and death in the marketplace of ideas.
Our society is impoverished when the religious wisdom of the ages gets left on the proverbial shelf. Many faith groups feel that our society preaches freedom of religion and practices freedom from religion.
Unfortunately this immaturity of thought gets expressed in our media and politics. Taken to its logical conclusion, people of faith would be excluded from public life. It seems to me that our national life would be greatly diminished if Tommy Douglas (a Baptist) Lester Pearson (a Methodist), Paul Martin (a Catholic) or Preston Manning (an evangelical) were excluded from public life because of their religious beliefs. The religious faith of each man animated his public life in unique ways.

Alas, the cackling derision and the spiteful glee of the attacks on religious voters is not going unnoticed by those McKay would reach out to. It's been the topic of conversation in the venues I cover. The Liberals seem to be back to the smearing and marginalization of Christians as anti-Canadian and anti-Charter because that kind of stereotyping and scare tactics seemed to work in past election campaigns.

A big whack of Catholics voted Conservative for the first time over the marriage issue. They might have thought of returning home to the Liberal fold, but the attacks on people like Gary Goodyear and Doug Cryer are not going unnoticed among Catholics either.

The other thing that I find amusing is that all of a sudden Michael Ignatieff, who has been strangely silent when it comes to the egregious abuses by human rights commissions against Canadian citizens, is leaping to the defence of freedom of speech when it comes to a British MP who has funded terrorist groups and who undermined UN Sanctions against Iraq.

He says:

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff, speaking to reporters after a speech in Winnipeg Friday, said while he’s no fan of Galloway, people can’t be banned from Canada for what they may say.

“If he is being barred on free speech grounds that is an outrage,” said Ignatieff. “He can come to Canada and talk rubbish all day long as far as I’m concerned.”

Are you really all for freedom of speech Mr. Ignatieff? Or are you going to stand by while those on the left and their jihadist allies (its hard to tell who is whose useful idiot in this partnership) who want to use our Charter and our institutions as leverage to impose their totalitarian vision, whether it is imposed secularist multicultural relativism or Shariah law?

The Liberals brought us human rights commissions. They created this Frankenstein monster.
It's a power tool to oppress dissident opinion, especially when the rules keep changing the process is the punishment. He has been silent on this so his attacks on Jason Kenney for not laying down the red carpet for Galloway, who is a lawbreaker by Canadian standards, has the whiff of political opportunism not principle.

Since members of his caucus have no problem appearing alongside Hezbollah and Hamas or Tamil Tigerflags---all illegal terrorist organizations, what's up? Is it freedom of speech for terrorists but not for me and thee? Should I begin to question the kind of protection Ignatieff would provide Canada from a national security standpoint should he become Prime Minister?

Oh yeah, did Ignatieff speak up when the Brits blocked Dutch MP and party leader Geert Wilders from speaking on invitation to the House of Lords? Wilders who has only broken laws against freedom of speech, but never funded terrorists or undermined UN Sanctions.

Would Ignatieff welcome Geert Wilders to Canada? Or would he allow Galloway to conduct a Hamas fundraiser at a Toronto church but forbid Wilders to come?

There are a number of good Liberals in the caucus. I hope they show some courage, like John McKay has, and let their leader know in no uncertain terms that Christian-bashing for the sake of votes is unCanadian, anti-Charter and dangerous for the common good. It stinks of thuggery and totalitarianism, something increasingly common on the left. Ignatieff has a worldwide reputation as an expert on human rights. I hope he does not sacrifice that reputation in the pursuit of power. In that case, we risk a return of the Libranos.

Also, is the Liberal leader going to vet his candidates to make sure he is not allowing Islamists to be elected to his caucus? A prominent member of the Jewish community told me he fears about 20 Islamists---people who adhere to an extremist and totalitarian form of Islam that supports the eradication of the Jewish State of Israel--might be elected as Liberal MPs in the next election. Will you prevent that Mr. Ignatieff?

Ezra Levant writes about the Galloway case:

This case is an interesting intersection between free speech and national sovereignty and security.

Galloway is not a Canadian citizen; he does not have a right to come to Canada (nor any other rights guaranteed to our citizens). He would be a guest, and he is being turned away for security reasons.

Were he a citizen, he would have the right to spout his bigotry in Canada (but not to engage in material support for terrorists, which is a crime.) If he were a citizen, he would be allowed back home, and arrested for his crimes.

I don't see this as a free speech issue; I see it as a sovereignty issue -- keeping out an undesirable foreigner who has no right to be here, and who boasts about violating our criminal code.

Good riddance.

Conrad Black on Ann Coulter vs. John Moore

In today's National Post, Conrad Black defends Ann Coulter:

In his March 11 Post article, Mr. Moore wrote of Ms. Coulter with a sanctimony as broad and flat as the Canadian Prairies: “One wondered if even she took herself seriously,” in reference to her latest book, Guilty: Liberal Victims and their Assault on America.

I can report that she doesn’t, particularly, and never did. She is a rational conservative, slightly to the right of Ronald Reagan, and a practicing, middle-of-the-road Christian. This puts her within, albeit on the right side of, the American mainstream, a position that perhaps corresponds with Mr. Moore’s idea of the Middle Ages.

As she is in a highly competitive business (conservative commentary in a generally conservative country), she has developed some successful promotional techniques. She is the ne plus ultra of pulverizing and scandalizing the soft left, implying revisionism about Senator Joseph R. McCarthy and Darwinian evolution, though she believes in due process and is not a creationist. She stakes out a number of positions on other current and philosophical issues, which provoke the holders of the conventional liberal wisdom to react like wounded animals, but she really differs only marginally from standard, respectable conservative views on most subjects.

Through her career as a commentator, she has had pies thrown at her while the invited speaker at public occasions, has had glasses of wine poured over her head at supposedly civilized social gatherings and has endured all manner of boorish outrages from people too obtuse and impenetrably earnest to realize what a grand and successful send-up and put-on much of her career has been.

With her long blonde hair, micro-dresses that may incite the prurient to hope for an occasional fleeting glimpse of her underwear and photographs on her book jackets of her in leather dresses, arms akimbo, like a stern but voluptuous school mistress, she is not, as Mr. Moore wrote, “faux glam.” She is eccentric, alluring and slightly outrageous, with a hint of being a bit gamey.

There are teeming masses of outspoken conservative commentators, but Ann Coulter doesn’t fade into their ranks. She has more presence than any, an almost Eleanor Roosevelt matrician accent (a pleasant acoustical contrast with blowhards such as Bill O’Reilly), is wittier than almost all and is the Rocky Marciano undefeated champion at causing cuckoo birds to debouch violently from the priggish, belligerent minds of liberal eagle scouts like John Moore.

She lives well, is an international celebrity, a star among her peers; and to judge from his March 11 article, Mr. Moore is a perfect foil for her. He refers to the “spectacular flame-out of the American right” in the last year; former congressman Tom DeLay is “disgraced”; “Web sites and talk shows … inflicted 14 years of divisive and incompetent rule on America, (if you count House majorities)”; the Republican Party is “lobotomized”; and we have reached the nirvana of what Mr. Moore portentously calls “the new age of Obama.”

At his end of the kindergarten teeter-totter, Mr. Moore’s purposeful little feet are triumphantly on the ground, and Ann and Rush and George W. are in the air, “flailing their limbs” like Kafka’s giant bug.

The pope's worst enemies are Catholics--Holy Smoke

Damian Thompson writes:

We learned this morning that "Vatican insiders" consider Benedict XVI "a disaster". It's true. They do think that. He's a disaster for them, and their determination to turn the Catholic Church into a touchy-feely forum in which uncomfortable teachings and traditions are "modernised" to impress non-Catholics. Until the Williamson affair, the media weren't sufficiently interested in attacking Benedict XVI to be useful. But now, after that own goal... YES!!!

Take the furore over condoms. I don't think the Pope should have strayed into the topic of condoms and Aids, but what he said didn't represent a hardening of the Church's line on this subject. Post-Williamson, however, the liberal media have slipped back into anti-papal default mode, which suits certain "Catholics" just fine. Consider this piece by a creep called Robert S McElvaine, Professor of Arts & Letters at Millsaps College. "Impeach the Pope," he screeched in the Washington Post Online.

The Church's opposition to birth control is largely an outgrowth of its all-male composition and those males' attempts to degrade women's physical powers by asserting that women and the intercourse into which they supposedly tempt men are necessary evils ("It is well for a man not to touch a woman," Paul instructed the Christians of Corinth), the only purpose of which is procreation ... Let's start a movement within the Catholic Church to impeach Pope Benedict XVI and remove him from office. While we're at it, let's replace him with a woman.

Rant, rant, rant. But this is the most preposterous bit: "I am a Catholic and the idea that such a man is God's spokesperson [yes, 'spokesperson'] on earth is absurd to me." Actually, Professor, if you're a Catholic you should know that Benedict can be God's spokesman and hold views unaccaptable to the religion page of the Washington Post... but there's no point in arguing.
The point is that Benedict's most relentless critics, the ones who are determined to extract every last ounce of rhetorical advantage from his predicament, are liberal Catholics.

Common threads at interesting panel discussion

The Freedom of Speech: Restoring Reason, Truth and Civility to the Public Square conference put on by the Neeje Association for Women and Family last night was most interesting, though at first glance, the four panelists all seemed to have picked disparate topics that were not directly related to the conference's theme. But for those of us who have been covering this issue for some time, they were linked on fundamental levels.

Barbara Kay spoke first about the poison of misandry--or hatred of men--that has infected the media through unintended bias as a result of ignorance, routine negative stereotyping, and opinion masquerading as objective journalism. White heterosexual men--if they are Christian so much the better--are fair game, she said, for forms of cultural bias and scorn that would not be acceptable if directed towards any other group. She spoke of the bogus statistics concerning violence against women, gave examples of numerous ads promoting the idea that men are by nature oppressive and violent, the bizarre focus on the Montreal massacre as a symbol of male violence when in fact it represented a one-off event involving a sociopath. The misandry has become so entrenched, the depictions of men as wimpy, incompetent, infantile and abusive so rampant and accepted, that men have tacitly accepted hate speech about themselves by not speaking up about it. She also noted that only those columnists with a proven track record dare speak up against this. It is a career limiting move for younger columnists, she said.

Nicole Scheidl, a mother of seven, spoke of the demise of the romantic male hero, and the strange Twilight phenomenon in which the romantic lead is a "dead person" i.e. a vampire and how these books are huge hits among young teenaged girls. Yet society as a whole has exchanged casual sex for romance and young men and women are unable to make commitments to spouses and children. Millions of babies are aborted. She said this comes from "a belief that our culture is not worth saving" because people are not committed to "anything bigger than ourselves."

Present day society minimizes the thrill of the chase, the warrior mentality and the need for males to take risks or to be willing to lay down their lives for those they love, she said. It also increasingly tells young men and women they can be complete on their own and diminishes the idea that through romantic love, men and women take part in a "great dynamic, something worth fighting for, worth giving one's life for."

Interesting, eh, when you think of the criticism people like Mark Steyn and Kathy Shaidle have of the young men who --not a romantic hero among them--let Marc Lepine massacre the women that day. Barbara Kay pointed out in her talk that most of the people perpetuating the misandry are journalists and opinion writers who are brainwashed into their stereotyping in the schools they attend. Yet these women themselves usually marry successfully and have their children in wedlock because they know somehow the bad outcomes for children that are raised outside marriage. But their opinions have a pernicious effect on the culture at large, especially on those in less advantaged groups.

So, this brings us to Robert A. Kenedy, a sociology professor at York University, recent scene of a big strike and rather a centre of political correctness in Canada.

Kenedy said that while respect and sensitivity are good, political correctness has gone to far. It has become an ideology that is inhibiting discourse.

It is also inconsistently applied, given that the campus and many others support such things as Israel Apartheid weeks, but oppose pro-life groups. Postmodernism and the idea that there is no objective truth or over-arching narrative, is "drifting into censorship" and faculty and students are "afraid to discuss things."

Critical thinking is lacking, he said, so that the tools for evaluating opinions through logic and assessment of the facts is replaced by a "knee-jerk" reaction.

"Everything should be up for disccussion and we should be called on the fact, not on what's politically correct," he said.

Uh huh. Facts. What a concept.

Critical thinking, rights and responsibilities must replace what Neil Postman called the trivia culture he likened to Las Vegas, a city built after 1945 designed for endless entertainment.

"Let's take back the university common and make it a place of dialog," he said.

Okay---so we have misandry and the demise of the romantic hero and I can see how these two are connected. I can also see how political correctness at the university has contributed to both. I mean those dead white (often Christian men) have become the problem on university campuses when they used to comprise the canon for educated people. I can also see how by denigrating our forefathers (and pouring hatred on the foremothers who happened to agree with them) we have slit our wrists and are bleeding away in our civilizational suicide while we mock and deride everything that has made our society successful and good relative to the rest of the world.

How then does Tarek Fateh, a moderate Muslim and founder of the Muslim Canadian Congress, fit in when it comes to a panel like this? Fateh described freedom of speech as a "frail institution" that is "under threat by people who take it for granted."

He gave a number examples of westerners on the left capitulating and appeasing jihadist threats that had not even materialized. One example he gave was the withdrawal by Random House of the Jewel of Medina, a fictionalized account of Aisha, after a busybody academic examined the manuscript and said it was disrepectful to Muslims. He described that approach as deeply racist against people of colour and members of other religions because it would deny them the same rights and freedoms we enjoy. He called it the "racism of low expectations."

Democracies like India are also capitulating to demands of religious extremists, whether Muslim or Hindu, but he noted that while he had trouble getting his latest book Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic Illusion of an Islamic State published in India, it is being published in Pakistan and Malaysia.

He warned of efforts on the part of the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) and organization representing Islamic countries, to pass international laws preventing the criticism of religions, specifically Islam. This would make it impossible for legislators to do their jobs, he said, if laws such as Shariah were looked upon as handed down by God and therefore off limits for discussion.

Fateh also warned of how Islamists had penetrated various government bodies, including the Ontario Human Rights Commission (OHRC).

Fateh also noted how unfortunate it is that most of the critique of Islamists is coming from the right and that is just what Osama Bin Laden hopes for. That's because to immigrants the right is perceived as xenophobic, opposed to affirmative action and so on and that makes some of the islamist critique fall on deaf ears. He said more people on the left need to be speaking out. He himself had been a member of the NDP and even worked on getting Barbara Hall elected when she ran for Toronto mayor. Hall, in case you did not know, heads the OHRC.

So....how are these all related? Political correctness denigrates anyone who disagrees with the prevailing left-wing orthodoxies as racist, while allowing the racism of low expectations to prevail. Meanwhile, we as a society are belittling and undermining the kinds of masculine virtues of honor, commitment, responsibility and self-sacrifice. Our political correctness is stifling real debate, killing off critical thinking and telling us our western civilization that brought us our precious rights and freedoms is not worth fighting for.

Anyway, it was a most interesting evening. Kudos to the Neeje Association to putting it together. And my colleague Brian Lilley did a great job in moderating the panel. Except he cut off questions just as I got to the mic!!!!!!

Xanthippa's Chamberpot shares her thoughts on the evening here.

Ha ha ha ha! Intelligent design expert says "dinosaur" attacks could hurt the Liberals

Denyse O'Leary, who knows more actual science than most journalists, is a specialist in the Intelligent Design debate. She writes (my bolds):

- The intelligent design controversy has not been politicized much in Canada, principally due to the fact that - as a recent Decima poll confirmed - views don't break out on predictable political lines here:
In a trend that also departs very much from the American scene, the people who intend to vote Liberal were much more likely than those who intended to vote either Conservative or NDP (leftist) to choose a "theistic" option - God either created humans or guided the process. Only 22% of Liberals thought God had nothing to do with it, but 31% of Conservatives thought that, as did 31% of leftist voters.
So what does this mean?

It means that if I were the campaign manager of a politician running for any party likely to have a chance at electing a member, I would whack him silly if he suggested politicizing the issue: "It's not an issue we need, and it won't bring us any votes. And I will quit the next time you say another word about it."

And this time, this time, now that marriage, abortion etc. are off the table, this could be the religious wedge issue that keeps those voters who left the Liberals over marriage voting Tory next time around and it could dislodge many more voters who begin to see that the Liberal Party apparatus disdains religious voters and mocks them derisively, holding them out for contempt and hatred. Yet these same people support illiberal human rights commissions that are undermining real religious freedoms and freedom of speech.

Nope. It ain't going to work this time.

Journalists---the new grand inquisitors

Brian Lilley writes about the new Spanish Inquisition on Parliament Hill:

Monty Python had it right "Noooobody expects the Spanish Inquisition." The British comedy troupe's take on the 15^th century religious tribunal featured clerics rushing in to quiz people about their beliefs and telling them "Our chief weapon is surprise."
Minister of State for Science and Technology Gary Goodyear certainly seemed surprised when a Globe and Mail reporter asked him if he believed in evolution. Globe Science Reporter Anne McIlroy says she was doing a profile on Minister Goodyear and that after the cuts to research in January's budget many in the research community were unhappy, "Some had expressed concern that Mr. Goodyear is suspicious of science, perhaps because he is a creationist."
It is an odd question "do you believe in evolution?" What on Earth does that have to do with government policy?

Yeah! It's only a way to try to paint Christians as anti-science, narrow-minded and ill-informed. Lorna Dueck has an excellent column on how the news media with its gotcha tactics has made it impossible for a nuanced and thoughtful discussion of the relationship between faith and science, faith and reason. And the inquisitors have certainly not examined the basis for their own "faith" in Darwin, materialism or whatever strange conglomeration of a priori assumptions they make to go about their day.

Lorna writes (emphasis mine):

If the vitriol against Gary Goodyear, the federal Minister of State for Science and Technology, has any merit, we just might be closer to that bizarre world than I thought. He's facing the worst of Canadian paranoia for standing his ground in stating that a science reporter's question about his Christian religion is not "appropriate." While amateur religionists are now having their say about his supposed incompetence, with some even demanding that an atheist take over the science portfolio, let's examine a few principles underlying the controversy.

First, how do we decide the line between politics and personal faith? This has evolved on a case-by-case basis under freedoms that include the right to hold and express religious beliefs while in public office. It's a balance of respect for differences that Canadians expect to be represented in our elected officials. All religions are free to exist in Canada, and like other rights protected in our Charter, they deserve to have expression.
Mr. Goodyear did not respond to my calls, so I'll guess at what underlies the shock he launched. He made a defensive stumble in an environment he assumed would not allow the breadth of questions needed to explore Christianity and science. He drew the line around his faith tightly, with what appears to be a "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. The fact that we cannot intelligently explore a science minister's personal beliefs in God because it's deemed political suicide in a sound-bite culture should alarm us all about the erosion of our freedoms.

Exactly.

But you know, anti-Christian bigotry is popular these days. Hit an evangelical Christian, bash the Pope or a conservative Catholic and you might win some political points. It's been done before. But each time its been tried it has worked less. I think people are getting really tired of this anti-Christian strategy because of the attack it represents on basic principles of freedom of religion and freedom of speech, both under threat in Canada.

David Asper has it exactly right today. He writes in the Calgary Herald and other Canwest papers (my bolds):

The bulk of what Globe readers got was a set of sensationalized non-sequiturs under the headline "Science minister won't confirm belief in evolution."
That's too bad, because government research funding is a legitimate subject for public debate. Instead, we find ourselves talking about a gratuitous attack perpetrated against Mr. Goodyear on the basis of his religious beliefs.
This is part of a larger problem that began on a national scale in 2000, when a Liberal strategist mocked Stockwell Day's Christian beliefs (and, by implication, all other creationist religions, from Islam to the animist faiths of Canada's natives) by proudly showing a Barney the Dinosaur doll to a chuckling media horde. Ha ha, how witty.
Things continued in this vein in the years following. After the resignation of Paul Martin as Liberal leader in 2006, interim leader Bill Graham rose in the House of Commons and attacked the credibility of a senior staffer in Rona Ambrose's office for his evangelical Christian beliefs.
Throughout the growth of the current Conservative party, starting with the establishment of Reform, the Alliance and then the merger with the Progressive Conservatives, there has been a festering undercurrent of anti-religious bigotry in the methods of attack used by left-wing critics.
Now, we have a reporter from the Globe following the same script. The essence of the newspaper's front-page slag on Tuesday was that if you have a religious faith that includes the idea of a God who created the heavens and the earth billions of years ago, it must mean you entirely reject the evolutionary process that shaped the life forms that subsequently developed -- and are therefore unfit to be the Minister of Science and Technology.
Mr. Goodyear was clearly caught off-guard by the evolution issue, and probably did not give the best possible response. (He later clarified that his faith did not interfere with the execution of his secular duties.) But can you blame him? This was supposed to be an interview about legitimate policy -- not his religious convictions.
This attack on Goodyear needs to be put into context. There is no workplace in Canada where an employee can be grilled -- let alone belittled, or have their competence questioned -- on the basis of their religious beliefs.
Imagine walking into the office of your employer's VP for research
and development. You open the door and say, "Hey Joan, are you a member of a church?" Which you follow up with: "What? So you believe in God and all that crap? Are you serious? Maybe you should go and find another job, because none of us around here have time for religious nutbars."

Yup.

Actually I do not consider these attacks liberal. Liberal with a capital L perhaps, and shared by other parties even further to the left, but this is illiberal and totalitarian and of the same mindset that brought us our wonderful so-called human rights commissions.

Asper continues:

Joseph McCarthy would have approved of the Globe's methods. Will the newspaper's reporters now approach candidates for office with the question "Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of a religion that has creationist values?"
If it did, readers would find out that virtually every member of parliament ever elected, including the previous three Liberal prime ministers, adhere to some kind of organized religion with creationist tenets. Theology majors and even church ministers have been elected to Parliament. Did Pierre Trudeau's Catholicism ever -- I mean ever -- get raised in this toxic manner during his time in office? Was there ever any hysterical front-page fear that Jean Chretien's Catholicism would dictate his approach to secular matters of state?
The answer is obviously no -- plain evidence of the hypocrisy and selective insult faced by members of the Conservative caucus.

I think if you look at certain blogs associated with the Liberal war room and how they are gleefully running with the story and putting stuff up on YouTube using the Flintsone meme, then you will see Asper is right on.

Does Michael Ignatieff approve of attacks against Christian belief that would not be tolerated against any other religious group?

Frankly, this time it isn't going to work.

Ezra Levant talks to Kathy Shaidle

"The real punishment is the process -- biased, slow, uncertain, capricious, lawless, costly, unfair. The process is designed to so demoralize political dissidents as to make them abandon hope, leave the jurisdiction, or spiral down in a rage. Many people who are caught in HRCs actually become, over time, the caricature that they are accused of being -- they're turned into obsessive cranks, which is a wholly predictable outcome when a Canadian expecting Canadian justice is subjected to Soviet-style 'justice.'

"So I simply decided I wasn't going to become like that. If I were to 'obsess' over the unfair charges against me, it would take the form of a relentless campaign for reform, using my time and whatever talents I have to spread the word about the corruption and abuse of the system. I knew I was luckier than pretty much any other HRC target in the past: I had friends in politics and journalism, and it would be pretty tough to tag me, a Zionist Jew who had actually started a multi-racial club in law school called Minorities Against Discrimination, as a 'neo-Nazi' or 'white supremacist.' So, unlike the HRCs' previous targets, I would actually have a chance to be heard when I pointed out the rot in the system.

"I decided I would try to live up to the title of Mark Steyn's column in the National Review: the 'happy warrior', and to use mockery and ridicule where appropriate.

"I spent time researching HRCs, and found that they were actually everything they claimed to be against -- everything they accused me of being.

Powerful words from Cardinal George

Cardinal George, the president of the USCCB, taped the video released today after the Obama Administration announced in early March that it was rescinding the regulations which guarantee that health workers cannot be forced to provide services that violate their consciences, including abortions.

"As Catholic bishops and American citizens, we are deeply concerned that such an action on the government's part would be the first step in moving our country from democracy to despotism," says the Cardinal in the video.

"Respect for personal conscience and freedom of religion as such ensures our basic freedom from government oppression. No government should come between an individual person and God - that's what America is supposed to be about. This is the true common ground for us as Americans. We therefore need legal protection for freedom of conscience and of religion-including freedom for religious health care institutions to be true to themselves."

The Cardinal observed that the country respects conscientious objection in the case of those who object to war, "even though it's good to defend your country," and for physicians who do not want to participate in the death penalty.

"Why shouldn't our government and our legal system permit conscientious objection to a morally bad action, the killing of babies in their mother's womb?" he asks. "People understand what really happens in an abortion and in related procedures - a living member of the human family is killed - that's what it's all about - and no one should be forced by the government to act as though he or she were blind to this reality."
You can see the video here.

Powerful words from Cardinal George

Cardinal George, the president of the USCCB, taped the video released today after the Obama Administration announced in early March that it was rescinding the regulations which guarantee that health workers cannot be forced to provide services that violate their consciences, including abortions.

"As Catholic bishops and American citizens, we are deeply concerned that such an action on the government's part would be the first step in moving our country from democracy to despotism," says the Cardinal in the video.

"Respect for personal conscience and freedom of religion as such ensures our basic freedom from government oppression. No government should come between an individual person and God - that's what America is supposed to be about. This is the true common ground for us as Americans. We therefore need legal protection for freedom of conscience and of religion-including freedom for religious health care institutions to be true to themselves."

The Cardinal observed that the country respects conscientious objection in the case of those who object to war, "even though it's good to defend your country," and for physicians who do not want to participate in the death penalty.

"Why shouldn't our government and our legal system permit conscientious objection to a morally bad action, the killing of babies in their mother's womb?" he asks. "People understand what really happens in an abortion and in related procedures - a living member of the human family is killed - that's what it's all about - and no one should be forced by the government to act as though he or she were blind to this reality."

Christians now targets of witchhunts

Gee, I wonder if Canada has a Journolist, a listserve for Liberals, leftwing NGOs and journalists like the United States has.

For the past two years, several hundred left-leaning bloggers, political reporters, magazine writers, policy wonks and academics have talked stories and compared notes in an off-the-record online meeting space called JournoList.

Proof of a vast liberal media conspiracy?

Not at all, says Ezra Klein, the 24-year-old American Prospect blogging wunderkind who formed JournoList in February 2007. “Basically,” he says, “it’s just a list where journalists and policy wonks can discuss issues freely.”

But some of the journalists who participate in the online discussion say — off the record, of course — that it has been a great help in their work. On the record, The New Yorker’s Jeffrey Toobin acknowledged that a Talk of the Town piece — he won’t say which one — got its start in part via a conversation on JournoList. And JLister Eric Alterman, The Nation writer and CUNY professor, said he’s seen discussions that start on the list seep into the world beyond.

“I’m very lazy about writing when I’m not getting paid,” Alterman said. “So if I take the trouble to write something in any detail on the list, I tend to cannibalize it. It doesn’t surprise me when I see things on the list on people’s blogs.”

Last April, criticism of ABC’s handling of a Democratic presidential debate took shape on JList before morphing into an open letter to the network, signed by more than 40 journalists and academics — many of whom are JList members.

Canadian journalists probably don't need one as their lives are so entwined and they share the prevailing orthodoxis of (il)liberalism to such an extent that they think anyone who disagrees with it is by nature evil or knuckledragging---especially Christians.

Jonathan Kay nails it in this piece about the Globe and Mail's attack on Gary Goodyear:

Canadians differ on whether a supernatural entity had a role in the creation of human life. In a 2007 Canadian Press-Decima Research poll, 26% of respondents said they believe in creationism, 29% picked evolution and 34% said they believe in some combination of the two.
But according to militant secularists -- given disgracefully prominent play by The Globe and Mail on the front page of yesterday's edition -- that's not good enough. They want everyone in society, or at least everyone leading this country, to dogmatically subscribe to the minority view that God had no role at all in human creation.
In the article -- entitled "Minister won't confirm belief in evolution: Researchers aghast that key figure in funding controversy invokes religion in science discussion" -- Globe science writer Anne McIlroy breathlessly reported that "Canada's Science Minister [Gary Goodyear], the man at the centre of the controversy over federal funding cuts to researchers, won't say if he believes in evolution"; that "some have expressed concern that Mr. Goodyear ... is suspicious of science, perhaps because he is a creationist"; and that "Mr. Goodyear's evasive answers on evolution are unlikely to reassure the scientists who are skeptical about him."
In fact, Goodyear's remarks (delivered during an interview with McIlroy) seem to have been carefully considered words from a man trying conscientiously to balance his personal faith with his public responsibilities.

If someone were going on a campaign like this against members of any other religion than Christianity there would be an uproar, there would be human rights complaints.

And....has anyone ever stopped to think about the logical outcomes in terms of human rights, in terms of morality, truth, even the ability to understand truth, of a strict neo-Darwinist materialist point of view?

Imagine....we have all evolved as the result of random chance and material forces. We have no souls, just brains that are a bundle of chemical and electrical processes like an intricate computer. How do we know, if that is the case, whether anything is true? And, given that nature is "red in tooth and claw" how can we say that anything is right or wrong?

The implications are chilling, but most journalists first of all do not understand the roots of science and the fundamental philosophical assumptions that made genuine science possible, nor do they understand that materialism is just as much a belief system as various forms of creationism.

What a stupid, anti-intellectual bunch most journalists are, leading unexamined lives, content to sneer about the Christian faith about which they know little to nothing, even if they go through the "hocus pocus" of a church service now and then for cultural reasons.

The cult that David Frum belongs to

Ex-cult member Jeffrey Lord exposes the rites and beliefs in the American Spectator:

The object of this cult, as with all cults of course, is mind control. Something that can only be achieved with deceptive techniques designed to recruit and indoctrinate the members. Ultimately, as pointed out in Treatment Today Magazine some years ago, the clever deceptiveness of the whole program results in a targeted individual like myself or poor Frum having a reduced capacity to assimilate and critically analyze some combination of the following three things:

* The individuals exerting control over him or her (the group's leadership).

* The conditions affecting his or her well-being (including diet, living conditions, health or safety hazards).

* The influence of his or her actions, because of these circumstances and conditions, on others (such as family, peers, or more helpless members of the group).

How, you may ask, did I ever get myself involved with such an insidious group?

It started, as it always does, so innocently. The bright lights beckon to the boy from the provinces (in my case Pennsylvania via Massachusetts) dazzled by the cult's glossy, larger than-life image. The Invitation to join the cult arrives after college, always from someone already a cult member in good standing. The small first-car is packed, the leave-taking of teary-eyed, anxious and (in retrospect) cult-wary parents is had. Day One on the job, at my first cult reception, I was given a smiling pat on the back by a longtime cult member who said, quite literally, what all cult members believe to their core: "Welcome," he said, "to the Center of the Known Universe."

Who wouldn't be thrilled? I always knew it! What fabulous Kool-Aid!

I'm sick of Christian-bashing in the media

Elizabeth Thompson is a nice person I speak with cordially from time to time when I run across her on the Hill. Today she even asked to be my Facebook friend. But then I received a version of this story and I'm annoyed and disgusted:

A longtime Conservative who opposes same-sex marriage has been appointed to the tribunal that decides whether gays get refugee status in Canada.
Doug Cryer, a former director of public policy for the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada, has also publicly defended the right of churches to denounce homosexuality.
"Doug Cryer of the EFC said the church has a right to say that homosexual behaviour is sinful, just as it can say that adultery is sinful," according to a November 2006 edition of CanadianChristianity.com.
"It is part of God's teaching," Cryer told the publication.
Cryer is among a dozen people appointed by Immigration Minister Jason Kenney last month to Canada's Immigration and Refugee Board -- an independent administrative tribunal that hears applications for refugee status.

I'd be curious to know whether Elizabeth was mining the record for these quotes of Doug Cryer's on her own in a mission to attack evangelical Christians or the Conservatives. Somehow I doubt it, though I'm now inclined to believe she shares a common prejudice and bigotry against Christians common among secularist journalists. That would be unfortunate.

The headline is disgraceful: "Anti-gay appointee for refugee board."

Where does the Toronto Sun or Elizabeth Thompson or anyone else get off calling someone who is opposed to gay marriage anti-gay? Would she like being labelled anti-Christian? What ever happened to the idea of civil disagreement and religious freedom? I think Doug's remarks have to be understood in that context, something that I think folks at EGALE, who respect freedom of speech, recognize. Or does Elizabeth Thompson and the Toronto Sun think there should only be one set of beliefs that qualify one to serve in any public body--hers?

Frankly, most Christians are appalled at homosexual persecution around the world and have been quite outspoken of the kind that is going on in a number of countries, including the Netherlands. I know I have been. I and people like Doug Cryer, who is a compassionate person, may disagree with gay marriage, but none of us want to see homosexuals treated with anything but respect for their basic human dignity. As I wrote Elizabeth on Facebook, we in the Christian community have been outspoken about persecution against gays but the feminist community has been strangely silent. I forgot to add that I haven't heard a whole lot from the leftist gay rights industry on this either, only from gays on the conservative side of the spectrum.

I think this article stinks as a smear. It ranks up there with Joan Bryden's ridiculous guilt by association attack on MP Keith Martin.

I smell Liberal war room fingerprints. It has the whiff of the kind of anti-Christian attacks that tried to paint evangelicals as having a scary hidden agenda during the 2000 campaign. The kind of campaign that in 2005 painted the approximately 50 per cent of Canadians who oppposed gay marriage as unCanadian and anti-Charter. It's the new fundamentalism of the anti-religious and it stinks to high heaven and demonizes and threatens to marginalize Christian believers in Canada. Yeah, great, fan Christian persecution in Canada, Liberals!

So if the Liberals are resurrecting this tired strategy (and Elizabeth, how disappointing if that is in fact what happened and you ran with it) then they better kiss goodbye their hopes of bringing evangelical voters back into the tent.

Disgusting.

Oh by the way, it'd be nice if Elizabeth balanced her piece with this, eh? (h/t Gay and Right)

OTTAWA – The cause of gay refugees who flee persecution in Iran only to face harassment in Turkey has caught the attention of the federal immigration minister, who says Canada is willing to facilitate their resettlement here.

Jason Kenney wrote the Canadian office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to urge quick processing of their applications after a story appeared last month in the Toronto Star.

That story centred on Iranian Arsham Parsi, now a Toronto-based advocate whose "Iranian Queer Railroad" project tries to help gay and lesbians in legal limbo in Turkey reach Canada or the United States.

"I can't imagine more legitimate grounds for protection than folks who are facing potential execution in Iran for their sexuality," Kenney said in an interview. "These are people who are clearly in need of protection, and Canada has already received a number of gay and lesbian Iranian refugee claimants through the UNHCR, typically through Turkey."

Kenney suggested Canada had accepted a few dozen. His office could not provide a more precise number as this type of "persecution" is not specified for "government assisted refugees."

Parsi told the Star he recently helped secure refugee status from the UNHCR office for 45 Iranian gays, who were awaiting interviews at the Canadian and U.S. embassies.

The journey from a gay identity to engagement to a woman

My friend the Sheepcat writes movingly about his journey here and here:

"Al, you're not gay. Go to sleep." And with that rebuff, not unkind in its tone, my best friend dismissed my greatest worry in the world.

Earlier that evening as we had watched a Bond movie at the student centre, my mind kept jumping back to Topic H. I was on spring break from my final year of high school back in 1981 and visiting my friend, a freshman at one of the universities I was checking out for the fall. When we returned to his residence, I wanted desperately to talk but couldn't bring myself to raise the subject without the aid of lots of rum and Coke. At last I confessed that I thought I was ... might be ... gay--only to be told I wasn't, and that was that!

In the morning, both of us now sobered up, he assured me, "Just wait, and some little lady will come along and sweep you off your feet." I didn't believe him.

I continued to struggle with my sexuality, eventually deciding during the first work term of my co-op program at university that, like or not, I did have these feelings I would have to deal with. I had little sense of any other options, so I came to deal with the feelings by taking on a gay identity.

And . .

I'd had individual therapy while I was studying in London, England. Still upset that my parents had tried to pry me away from my gay identity, I was I was adamant that the therapist I chose would not try to "cure" me of homosexuality. Indeed my therapist appeared not to be trying anything of the kind, though I would sometimes be left disconcerted by a particularly acute observation of his and would wonder how sound my fundamental understanding of my sexuality really was. In any case, our sessions helped bring some measure of insight and integration to a life in turmoil, and it distressed me when they came to an end as I finished my thesis and returned to Canada.

During my first years back in Toronto, I attended a weekly insight-oriented therapy group, led by a psychiatrist, whose members were dealing with a wide range of issues. By this time I was a serious Christian and no longer averse to the idea of orientation change, but neither did I pursue it actively as a goal in group or, for that matter, talk much there about sexuality. I eventually decided to "graduate" from the group, having found it useful in its own way, but by 2008 it was becoming clear in hindsight that group therapy had not quite hit the nail on the head.

A Courage men's retreat in January 2008 introduced me to the work of Conrad Baars, a Catholic psychiatrist who placed a Freudian concept of repression in the context of Thomas Aquinas's understanding of persons as having appetites, intellect, and will. Somewhere here was the key to bringing emotion and reason into greater harmony. I began to look for a therapist, and only an orthodox Catholic would do.

Canadian Lawyer on Warman vs. Christie

Both vegetarians. Who would have thunk it?

Words simply spoken can turn thousands toward malevolence with gas chambers. Or machetes. Which is why the preservation of a peaceful, pluralistic society like Canada hinges on outlawing hate. Or does it? Perhaps words are simply words — offensive, even forceful at times, but essential to a public discourse from which reasonable citizens in a democracy inform their personal opinions.

This polemic has alternately simmered and boiled for more than three decades and no two lawyers in Canada exemplify this debate more precisely than hate propaganda sleuth Richard Warman and free speech libertarian Douglas Christie: crusaders, courtroom foes, and fellow vegetarians. And though they’d cringe at being compared further, they do share one thing more: strangers want them dead.

Good editorial in the Catholic Register

U.S. President Barack Obama surrounded himself with political friends, the sick, the handicapped, churchmen and scientists on March 9 to trumpet his intention to separate politics from science. To enthusiastic applause he announced an executive order that will rescind a ban on government funding for embryonic stem cell research (ESCR).

What utter hypocrisy.

Obama’s announcement was all about politics. It was theatre, a photo op dressed up as a sound bite intended to play to the confusion of the masses on the issue of ESCR. He invoked the memory of Superman in the person of the late actor Christopher Reeves, of all things, in helping justify a unilateral decision to give ESCR scientists access to a multi-billion-dollar biomedical research fund.

What political grandstanding.

The president claimed he was rejecting a “false choice” between sound science and moral values, when, in fact, the choice between science and morality has never been more clear. Recent advances in adult stem cell research are quickly making ESCR a redundant methodology. Scientists can now create stem cells from just about any type of human cell. The science is nascent and needs to be nurtured but there seems little doubt that, soon, human embryos will be unnecessary for stem cell research.

Great conference coming up in Ottawa this Friday night

As Kathy Shaidle writes:

The Neeje Association for Women and Family Presents a Panel Conference

With guest speakers Babara Kay, Robert A. Kenedy, Nicole Scheidl, Tarek Fatah and Panel Moderator Brian Lilley

Friday, March 20, 2009 6:30 to 9:30 pm
The Fairmont Chateau Laurier, Ottawa, Ontario, Adam Room

You can download a brochure and register online HERE .

I plan on being there. I'm looking forward to it very much. Brian should be a great moderator and Barbara Kay alone is worth the price of admission. I haven't heard some of the speakers, but I know the Neeje Association and they do a great job in finding interesting folks for occasions like this.

What happens when cultural sensitivity runs amok

This is an apalling story about a Christian convert in the United Kingdom:

A mob with her father at its head pounded and hammered at the door as she cowered upstairs hoping she could not be seen or heard. She heard her father shout through the letter box: “Filthy traitor! Betrayer of your faith! Cursed traitor! We’re going to rip your throat out! We’ll burn you alive!”
Does she still believe they would have killed her? “Yes, without a doubt. They had hammers and knives and axes.”
Why didn’t you call the police after-wards? “First, I didn’t think the police would believe me. That sort of thing just doesn’t happen in this country – or that’s what they’d think. Second, I didn’t believe I would get help or protection from the authorities.”
Hannah had good reason for this doubt. When, at school, she had finally summoned the courage to tell a teacher that her father had been beating her (she couldn’t bring herself to reveal the sexual abuse), the social services sent out a social worker from her own community. He chose not to believe Hannah and, in effect, shopped her to her father, who gave her the most brutal beating of her life. When she later confronted the social worker, he said: “It’s not right to betray your community.”
Hannah blames what is sometimes called political correctness for this debacle: “My teachers had thought they were doing the right thing, they thought it showed ‘cultural sensitivity’ by bringing in someone from my own community to ‘help’, but it was the worst thing they could have done to me. This happens a lot.

Meanwhile, in Canada, Blazing Cat Fur is alerting us to a move to develop Muslim-only social services in Canada:

Shahina Siddiqui, in this revealing interview, gives her justification for the implementation of a separate "Muslim Social Services" infrastructure in Canada.

I was just asked this question on one of the T.V shows, why do you need social services for Muslims alone? It doesn't have to be for Muslims alone, Insha Allah. When we will develop it, we will offer it to everyone. But the principle on which social services is based in Islam is very different from the mainstream.
....

To attract Muslims to ask for help we need that. Majority of the abused Muslim women, if you ask them, why didn't they turn for help, all they needed to do was call 911, they'll say that 'I don't want him to go to jail, I don't want to end up in a shelter where my children and I will be exposed to an unIslamic lifestyle.'

So there is a fear, that if they go to mainstream social services, they won't be able to preserve their faith and their children will be lost in mainstream society. So they'll choose the lesser of two evils.

I confess, though, I have some sympathy with Siddiqui's position about the desire to preserve one's faith and how some present configurations of social services make that difficult. Case in point. Years ago, when I was working as a journalist in the Maritimes, someone called me at the television station to tell me she had tried to get a job at some kind of battered women's shelter. She just wanted to go and help abused women, but she was forced to undergo feminist indocrination that was anti-men, that viewed men as rapists, saw violence against women as systemic in a Marxist paradigm and so on.

So, I don't like that "anti-religious" virulently secularist, anti-patriarchial bent in social services either. A woman who wants to preserve her Christian faith, or her Muslim, or Jewish, or Hindu or Buddhist etc. faith, should not have to face being counseled only by radical feminists who think Lesbianism is the solution to the problem of "patriarchy."

I don't know this Siddiqui woman, but given that she lobbed the utterly baseless human rights complaint against B'nai Brith, I do not think she sufficiently understands real human rights of freedom of religion, association, conscience, freedom of speech and so on to deserve public funding for her mission.

And freedom of religion includes the freedom to leave that religion. No Muslim social services should get access to government money if it does not expressly have a policy that people are free to leave the Muslim faith without death threats hanging over their heads.

I am all for the ability of Muslims to practice their religion in peace here in Canada. But that practice must be circumscribed by real human rights that are based on the Western foundations--which is to say Judeo-Christian notions of human beings made in the image of God, the equality (and complementarity) of women, and freedom of conscience and religion--even to the extent that one is free to reject religion altogether.

Islamists should not be hijacking government funds or agencies in order to advance an anti-Western, supremacist agenda that undermines our rights. I am sure the majority of Canadian Muslims are delighted to be in a country where they are free to worship as they please and would like to be protected against the extremists in their midst who would declare them apostates if they do not go with the radical program.

Obama's enemies list--the vast Left-wing conspiracy

Fascinating. Bill O'Reilly calls this unAmerican and dangerous. I agree. The Obama administration does not play fair. From Politico:

The vast new left-wing conspiracy sets its tone every morning at 8:45 a.m., when officials from more than 20 labor, environmental and other Democratic-leaning groups dial into a private conference call hosted by two left-leaning Washington organizations.

snip

The call has proved particularly effective at coordinating attacks on critics, said Jacki Schechner, the national communications director for Health Care for America Now, a labor-backed alliance of groups that support Democratic efforts to expand health care.

“There’s a coordination in terms of exposing the people who are trying to come out against reform —they’ve all got backgrounds and histories and pasts, and it’s not taking long to unearth that and to unleash that, because we’re all working together,” Schechner said.

When a new group called Conservative for Patients Rights, for instance, launched an ad campaign featuring former health care executive Rick Scott, “There was a discussion about what do we know about this guy and in a very quick period of time we were able to come up with his background,” she said.

Karl Rove on the Obama admin's attack on Rush Limbaugh

Team Obama -- aided by Clintonistas Paul Begala, James Carville and Stanley Greenberg -- decided to attack Rush Limbaugh after poring over opinion research. White House senior adviser David Axelrod explicitly authorized the assault. Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel assigned a White House official to coordinate the push. And Press Secretary Robert Gibbs gleefully punched the launch button at his podium, suckering the White House press corps into dropping what they were doing to get Mr. Limbaugh.

Was it smart politics and good policy? No. For one thing, it gave the lie to Barack Obama's talk about ending "the political strategy that's been all about division" and "the score-keeping and the name-calling." The West Wing looked populated by petulant teenagers intent on taking down a popular rival. Such talk also shortens the president's honeymoon by making him look like a street-fighting Chicago pol instead of an inspirational, unifying figure. The upward spike in ratings for Rush and other conservative radio commentators shows how the White House's attempt at a smackdown instead energized the opposition.

Did it do any good with voters not strongly tied to either party? I suspect not. With stock markets down, unemployment growing, banks tottering, consumers anxious, business leaders nervous, and the economy shrinking, the Obama administration's attacks on a radio talk show host made it seem concerned with the trivial.

Ezra has second thoughts

I can't wait for the end of this blog post: Fire. Them. All.
Why the CHRC would pursue a complaint against words that were no longer on the Internet is a question to which there are no acceptable legal answers. As the Tribunal ruled, there was nothing to "remediate", since there was no problem. The whole exercise was pointless -- other than to put Warman's enemy through the meat-grinder for a few years.

snip

In this case, the Tribunal was so disgusted with Warman -- and so stupefied that a complaint would be made against a website that doesn't exist -- that he really didn't plan to issue any order at all. But had he wanted to throw the book at Ouwendyk, he couldn't -- another Tribunal chair had ruled that everything is on ice until Lemire is done.

The enforcement of Section 13 of the Canadian Human Rights Act has been suspended indefinitely by the CHRT.

That's fascinating.

But look what hasn't been suspended: the investigations and prosecutions of section 13. And, as I've said a dozen times before, it's the process that's the real punishment. In this case, it was three years from complaint to ruling -- three years of bullying someone because they had "wrong" political ideas.

The CHRC and the CHRT will continue with that informal punishment, the punishment of abusive process.
The law is coming apart at the seams; the law's chief user has been officially exposed as malign; the law's enforcement has been suspended; but the sick, sick HRC system continues to grind on, using our money and abusing our heritage of natural justice.

David Frum is starting to annoy me

. . .says Brigitte Pellerin at ProWomanProLife.

Me, too.

Lay off Briston Palin, David. You are sounding like such a snob. I remember you as someone with wonderful manners. What happened?

Brigitte writes:

“Socially conservative downscale voters”? Who, exactly, does he think he is? Someone who puts on his socks two feet at a time?

I would venture to guess that young Ms. Palin is not the first, nor the only, American teenager (white, educated, rich or otherwise) who finds herself pregnant without meaning to. I’m almost certain it’s happened before. Possibly even in nice liberated upscale neighbourhoods. And that in many of those cases, the young mother decides (or “decides,” under pressure from her parents, boyfriend, teachers or all of them combined) to “erase” the mistake.

Are we to consider these young women more “upscale” than Bristol Palin, who chose to keep her baby in extremely difficult - and public - circumstances? Ms. Palin has an awful lot of moral courage. Calling her ugly names says more about you, Mr. Frum, than it does about her. And no, I don’t mean that in a good way.

Yup. I know lots of white, well-educated, upscale women who have had abortions because having a baby would have interfered with their professional lives.

I remember back in the 1980s, a young CBC radio reporter decided against an abortion and was pregnant out of wedlock and gave the baby up for adoption, as far as I can recall. That was a little scandalous, no?

So Jason Kenney has a security detail now?

In Canada?

Mark Steyn writes:

On a related matter, I bumped into Jason Kenney in the lobby of the King Edward Hotel in Toronto a couple of weeks back, and thought, as I often do on such occasions, how great it is just to run into unaccompanied cabinet ministers strolling around. A month on, it's not so easy. As The National Post reports, Mr Kenney now has a full-time RCMP security detail, having had the temerity to question whether it's in the interest of taxpayers to fund the ugly thugs who run the Canadian Arab Federation. I don't quite get Khaled Mouammar's line of thinking here: He's the guy living off Mr Kenney's departmental checks, but Kenney's the whore?

I dunno. Does anyone care? Or do most Canadians think it's Jason Kenney's fault for unleashing an irrational force of nature that bears no moral responsibility for its actions once provoked by say a cartoon or a speech quoting a historical figure?

Imagine if this were an abortion clinic bomber

David B. Harris writes of the man recently convicted of terrorism charges in Ottawa:

After all, he refused to testify on his own behalf, refused to show remorse. Rather, he sat, severe, soulessly-handsome, rigid, giving nothing away, his sleek, carefully-oiled hair parted down the middle. This was the picture and epitome of the disciplined soldier, maintaining the dignity of a righteous cause in the face of a determined but debased enemy — a court whose jurisdiction he did not fundamentally deign to recognize. A POW temporarily caged in hostile territory, sworn to return to combat. In sum, this was not a portrait of remorse, and hardly a prospect for rehabilitation. And this is why he is likely to be a menace for the hate he will spread in prison and, possibly, the more lethal hazards he could yet unleash upon society. Yet he will be among us in a decade, at most.
As a further suggestion that self-improvement isn’t in the cards, consider the anxiety expressed by those in contact with staff at Ottawa’s Regional Detention Centre, Khawaja’s home for the past five years. This anxiety is born of the open secret that Khawaja has been holding court at the centre, sermonizing and spreading his faith, presumably the version that underwrote his crimes.
As far as one can tell, Khawaja is a poisoned chalice now being offered to the prison system, a concoction whose lethality will only likely be concentrated further by the adulation of susceptible prisoners. So, expect more at the penitentiary, and more graduates of his penitentiary “lessons.”
-snip-
Those unfamiliar with the niceties of law and chaplaincy — but familiar with the evidence and shaheed-like figure cut in the courtroom — will be forgiven for asking whether we have gone mad. They will not like to contemplate a psalm-singing killer-aspirant being granted the legitimacy, status and influence of a religious social worker, licensed by officialdom to tend and recruit his highly vulnerable flock. Picture a Brylcreemed Charles Manson in vestments.

AP on the Traditional Anglican Communion and the Holy See

VATICAN CITY —
The Vatican is considering welcoming into the Roman Catholic Church a group of traditional Anglicans who broke away from the global Anglican Communion nearly two decades ago over women's ordination and other issues, officials say.

Vatican officials stress that no decision has been made and no announcement is imminent. Still, Anglicans across the spectrum of belief are closely watching for any signs of movement.

Absorbing the breakaway Traditional Anglican Communion would be a small but notable victory for Pope Benedict XVI, who has made unifying Christians a goal of his papacy.

At the same time, any invitation by the Vatican is likely to upset leaders of the 77 million-member Anglican Communion and would hurt the Vatican's decades-long efforts to strengthen ties with that fellowship of churches. Anglicans split with Rome in 1534 when English King Henry VIII was refused a marriage annulment.

The Traditional Anglican Communion formed in 1990 as an association of orthodox Anglicans concerned about what they considered the liberal tilt in Anglican churches, including the ordination of women. Members of the group are generally Anglo-Catholic, emphasizing continuity with Catholic tradition and the importance of the sacraments. The fellowship says it has spread to 41 countries and has 400,000 members, although only about half are regular churchgoers.

The traditional group aims to unify the Anglican and Catholic churches, according to Archbishop John Hepworth of Australia, who is the leader, or primate, of the Traditional Anglican Communion. They have accepted the ministry of the pope, but also want to maintain their Anglican traditions — one of several potential impediments to unification.

"We seek a communal and ecclesial way of being Anglican Catholics in communion with the Holy See," the group wrote, in a letter Hepworth presented two years ago to the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The head of that Vatican office, Cardinal William Levada, wrote Hepworth in July 2008, saying he was giving "serious attention" to the Traditional Anglicans' proposal. But he noted that the situation within the broader Anglican Communion, with which the Vatican has an official dialogue, had "become markedly more complex." The Anglican Communion is on the brink of schism because of internal rifts over how it should interpret what the Bible says about gay relationships and other issues.

Good news on the "human rights" front

Yesterday's Canadian Human Rights Tribunal ruling is great news for those who are defending real human rights like freedom of speech and due process. Joseph Brean has a great piece in today's National Post:

But in denying Mr. Warman's request for financial compensation and a fine, the tribunal also harshly criticized him for "disappointing and disturbing" online behaviour, including his posting of hate messages written by others that "could have precipitated further hate messages."
One such message, to which Mr. Warman added a comment, refers to former justice minister and Liberal MP Irwin Cotler as an "Israel firster." Mr. Warman's comment then referred to politicians as "scum."
"It diminishes his credibility," wrote CHRT chairman Edward Peter Lustig.

And things are going to get better as Ezra Levant's book tour for Shakedown begins and he gets to reveal to wider audiences the egregious violations of real human rights and of common sense perpetuated by these commissions and tribunals.

Ezra writes on the Lustig decision:

Warman filed his complaint in January, 2006 – so this has been grinding through the human rights industry for more than three years. Countless hundreds of thousands of tax dollars have been spent, first by the CHRC to investigate the case, and then by the Tribunal to hear the case.

And in the end a website that hasn’t even been on the Internet in years is “banned”.

I guess this is part of the “stimulus package” to make work for busy-bodies, lawyers and bureaucrats.

There are a lot of losers in all of this – the taxpayer; common sense; freedom of speech, including freedom of speech to say offensive things; natural justice and rule of law.
But Warman is clearly the biggest loser.

There is also the human rights complaint against B'nai Brith that has, I think, successfully awakened the Jewish human rights organization to the Frankenstein monster these commissions and tribunals have become. This complaint, made on the basis of hearsay, by an anonymous complainant, took FIVE years of investigation before the Manitoba Human Rights Commission dismissed it.

But tides roll in and out. We have a big tide coming in right now and we can enjoy it, but the fight must continue. Totalitarian impulses are everywhere on the horizon. Check this out (via BCF):

OK, this is getting very, very scary.

A while ago, I wrote about a proposed idea to alter the way Canadians access the internet: instead of ‘connecting’ to the ‘Great Wide Web’ and navigating it freely, this ‘model’ would more closely resemble the way Cable companies allow customers to access various TV channels. The internet denier provider would ‘bundle’ the most ‘desirable’ websites, just like TV channels are ‘bundled’ by Cable providers. Accessing anything outside of these bundles would be either very, very expensive - or not available at all.

Couple this with the calls by Barbara Hall of the Ontario ‘Commission for the propagation of virtue and prevention of vice’ Human Rights Commission to shackle ALL journalists and bloggers with a ‘Canadian Broadcast Standards Council’- like body which would censor ALL the written (virtual or printed) words in Canada! Not a pretty picture!!!

Yet, my beloved Canada is not the only place under siege!

Now, the UK is proposing EXACTLY the same scheme!!!

This would mean that unless a website or blog was ‘influential enough’ to muscle its way onto the ‘approved’ list for a particular ‘bundle’ of websites ‘offered’ by an ISP, it would be 100% invisible and unaccessible to the UK internet subscribers!

We must not let up. This is a long term battle. In the meantime, I hope that those with technical savvy will look at ways the Internet can circumvent these attempts to limit access to the blogosphere even out of the best of intentions. Why? Because truth will be the first casualty, and the porn purveyors and other evil-minded people will still find ways to get around the system because they have a lot of money behind them.

Government agency posts hate speech on the Internet

You have to see it to believe it.

Kathy Shaidle writes:

The Government of Canada and the Human Rights Commissions always celebrate when they shut down a website that features "hate speech."

They celebrate by issuing a report on their triumph -- a report that contains all the "hate speech" in question -- and publishing the "hate speech"-filled report in full on a Government of Canada website!

Are you happy about how your precious extorted tax dollars are being used -- especially during a recession?

Remember, under Section 13(1), truth is no defence, neither is intent. It is only what is likely to expose various identified groups to hatred or contempt.

Mark Steyn has more here.

I loved writing up John Beaulieu's lecture in Ottawa

I hope you will love reading it and that somehow the impact hearing John Beaulieu had on me last Saturday will also affect you and give you joy.

He urged them to seek a “personal Pentecost,” where the Holy Spirit would set their hearts on fire for Jesus.

“Don’t build a fireplace for God, a safe little place for God,” he said. What if God is saying, “I want to come into your house and burn it down and replace it with a mansion”?

Let the Holy Spirit “take it all,” he said.

A father of five, Beaulieu acknowledged it is not always easy to choose among the many competing goods in one’s life.

“On Christmas Eve 2007, Pope Benedict XVI came to my house and smacked me between the eyes with a two-by-four,” he said. “Not literally.”

The “blow” came from reading Benedict’s Christmas Eve homily that spoke of how Mary and Joseph were looking for a place to rest so she could give birth. There was no room for them.

“In some way, mankind is awaiting God, waiting for him to draw near,” he quoted the pope saying. “But when the moment comes, there is no room for him.

“Do we have time and space for God?” Beaulieu asked.

Embryonic stem cells? Why?

Those who follow the embryonic stem cell debate know that so far all the of the breakthroughs in stem cell research have come from adult stem cells. Scientists have also discovered they can take a stem cell from someone's skin and make it pluripotent like an embryonic stem cell but with an added advantage. If you receive embryonic stem cells, your immune system might reject them, thus necessitating your taking drugs to ensure that doesn't happen, the way kidney transplant patients do. But if you need stem cells and they are taken from your own skin, that problem does not happen.

So why all the jubilation and slavering over embryonic stem cells and Obama's decision to release possibly billions of dollars in federal funding? Could it be patents and more money for big pharmaceutical companies?

A couple of years ago, I had a bone scan done that revealed I had developed osteoporosis in my spine. That's scary, as, if this progressed I would have a humped curved spine in another decade or so, experienced painful bone fractures and ended up crippled in my old age.

I am so blessed to have a doctor who herself was diagnosed with osteoporosis at a young age, who tried the usual drugs for treating it, experienced some bad side effects, and then started researching more natural, nutritional means for treatment. In one year of following her protocol of mineral supplements and vitamins, including Strontium and lots of Vitamin D, I built back 10 per cent of my bone mass. I bet I am pretty close to the normal range now if the trend continued.

But most physicians don't like going the supplement route because there aren't a whole lot of studies to show the efficacy of these treatments. Many think it's a bunch of hocus pocus around the placebo effect. But could it be that there is no money to fund studies of natural supplements, but plenty to fund the creation of patented drugs because there is a fortune to be made in successful patents? Could it be that doctors are bombarded with information about drug treatments because that's where the studies are?

Last spring, my blood pressure, which had always been normal, suddenly spiked to levels as high as 170/110. I could feel a disconcerting pounding in my head. While searching on the Internet for natural approaches to treatment, I came across this site. Because of some other things I had been learning about the importance of being well-hydrated while working out at the gym, the message tweaked with me. It made sense, so I tried it, while telling my doctor about it. (Actually, when she heard I was reading this material on the web, she lent me one of Dr. Batmanghelidj's books.

By July, my blood pressure had dropped to something like 150/90.

Last December, and again recently, it was down to 130/80.

I would recommend reading this book. I would also recommend that you have a doctor's supervision, especially if you are already on blood pressure medication. And also, realize that chronic dehydration could also have effected the stores of minerals you need in your body, both within and outside your cells for osmosis to take place---electrolytes, including salt.

Yes, salt.

Interestingly, your bones are your mineral storehouse, and when your body is depleted of certain minerals--in my case because of malabsorption due to Celiac disease, it robs the bones to maintain the necessary levels of potassium etc. in the bloodstream.

Dr. Batmanghelidj also believes that many chronic illnesses, including obesity are dehydration related.

Water, he says, is a natural diuretic. It's also an anti-histamine.

Last summer, while on vacation, I awoke in the New Hampshire house where we were staying
surrounded by damp woods and leaf mould, sneezing, eyes itching, nose running, a typical allergic reaction.

Following Dr. B's advice, I drank a 16 oz. glass of water, not believing it could possibly work.
But in minutes, all signs of the allergic reaction was gone.

This happened the second time. I did it again. It worked again. Within a few minutes I was able to go back to sleep, with no more sneezes and itchiness.

Could a lot of what ails us be as simple as not drinking enough water? (But making sure not to wash all the electrolytes out of the body, especially salt) Not getting enough exercise? Not getting enough sunshine or Vitamin D?

What would happen to our whole medical ediface if what Dr. B says is true? Could it really be that simple?

Of course undoing the damage of years of chronic unintentional dehydration may take some extra work, so my case has been under a doctor's supervision and involves lots of supplementation with various minerals and vitamins.

Interestingly, I have found most people are about as resistant to paying attention to what I have just written as they are to hearing the Gospel.

But maybe you will listen and you will find this information helpful, even life-saving. It sure has helped me!

Cardinal Pell on modern liberalism's totalitarian tendencies

LONDON, MARCH 12, 2009 (Zenit.org).- Modern liberalism has strong totalitarian tendencies, according to the archbishop of Sydney.

Cardinal George Pell affirmed this at a conference last week in Oxford on "Varieties of Intolerance: Religious and Secular."

The Australian prelate began his address considering two examples of intolerance. The first was the little-publicized reaction to California's vote in November to define marriage as between one man and one woman.

The cardinal said that religious groups, businesses and individuals that worked toward the amendment have been the victims of pro-homosexual retaliation, ranging from death threats to boycotts to forced resignation from jobs.

He went on to consider as a second example the opposite reaction of human rights groups to what is considered intolerance of Islam.

The prelate said these cases show there is "onesidedness about discrimination and vilification."

"Some secularists seem to like one way streets," he added. "Their intolerance of Christianity seeks to drive it not only from the public square, but even from the provision of education, health care and welfare services to the wider community. Tolerance has come to mean different things for different groups."

The cardinal noted how particularly in the United States, members of Church organizations are facing more and more legal obstacles when it comes to following their consciences.

What if God asked you to build an ark?

Remember the story of Noah? God told him to build an ark. Meanwhile everyone was eating and drinking and enjoying life up until the flood came.

That's why I found the story--now acknowledged to be false-- about David Wilkerson's Times Square Church making sandwiches (without knowing precisely why God was telling them to do so) prior to 9/11 interesting.

I'm working on a story about how people get drawn to prophecies say from apparitions of the Virgin Mary, self-proclaimed prophets in the Christian world. I spoke to someone who runs a major site that collects news about these things and he said traffic was way up, similar to what they experienced after 9/11. Unfortunately, a lot of this stuff is nonsense and breeds panic among the overly credulous.

Here's some analysis of Wilkerson's prophecies from one of the more responsible sites--Spirit Daily-- that discerns among various prophetic messages.

The warning caught notice because Wilkerson (once based in Manhattan) has a large church and once penned a bestselling Christian book (The Cross and the Switchblade). Ten years ago -- and then just before the current financial crisis hit full bore -- this minister warned about coming chaos and economic problems very similar to what we now see. In 1974 he released a second book, The Vision, that foresaw weather extremes and natural disasters hitting the U.S., and in 1998 he focused more specifically on coming financial crises ("America's Golden Calf Is Coming Down," was the title of one prophecy). He saw banks closing, nations going bankrupt, and martial law.

"The auto industry is going to be hurt badly," he prophesied more than three decades ago. "Makers of recreational vehicles are going to get hit very hard. Appliance inventories will pile up, and sales will fall off drastically." Last September, he saw a little economic respite (after the Bear Stearns debacle) followed by a quickly deepening crisis.

In 1973 Wilkerson said, ""The United States government is going to overreact to the confused economical developments. I see a flurry of near-panic decisions being made by various government agencies, but these hasty efforts to shore up the economy will backfire."

Periods of calm and false prosperity would precede great demise, he said.

It has been long years. Time went on. "Soon" was not so soon. But the language was striking. "I believe we are going to witness the bankruptcies of some of this nation’s major and most popular corporations," he said way back. "I see tremendous difficulty arising for credit corporations. There are going to be many people unable to pay off their heavy obligations to major credit card companies, causing near-chaos."

The current prophecy -- indicating "fire" in the way of what sounds like nuclear terrorism in the New York area, as well as "blazes" and uprisings in other cities -- was labeled "urgent." He delivered it on March 7.

"For ten years I have been warning about a thousand fires coming to New York City," he wrote. "It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires—such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago. There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting—including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath."

What are we to make of that? What are we to make of other matters on the prophecy beat?

It is very hazardous to prophesy with specificity, and especially to interpret words like "soon." It is curious how God delivers prophecy divorced from time. Wilkerson's detractors may point out that his prediction is overly specific and that rarely if ever does a specific prediction that has made the secular media materialize.

In addition, when one looks back at Wilkerson's previous prophecies, one can point out not only "hits" but also "misses."

But God does give real warnings ahead of catastrophes. He did so prior to the Rwandan genocide. Two of the visionaries were later murdered in the rampage.

Michael H. Brown writes:

I didn't know, for example, that the Blessed Mother appeared in the night sky before thousands in the way of a huge silhouette formed with unusually bright, strangely arrayed stars. I knew the sun spun as at Fatima, but I didn't realize that it also turned into a reflecting glass -- showing a mirror-like image of the landscape (as again thousands watched). I didn't know that several of the seers went into comas so deep during visits with the Blessed Mother to the afterlife that doctors and experts from a bishop's commission (who were there as eyewitnesses) were ready to declare them dead. I did know that this set of phenomena in Kibeho, which is located in Rwanda (in deepest Africa), was the first major approval of an apparition in years and the one with the strongest Church sanction since Fatima (announced by the Vatican itself in June of 2001 after twenty years of Church investigation).
Does it seem so implausible that God would warn people of coming calamities? Or that he would ask us to do odd things that don't make sense until after the fact?

And, when we get an odd message, how do we discern whether it is from God or not?

I remember a friend telling me she was sitting in a McDonald's restaurant in Ottawa, watching an old man walking on the sidewalk outside. She had an impression come on her that the man was going to slip and fall on the ice and that she should go outside to help him so it would not happen. She had never had one of these impressions before and it seemed odd and weird to her that she should rush out of the restaurant to help this perfect stranger who seemed to be making out just fine. Well, she stayed in the restaurant, only to watch the man slip and fall on the ice just as she had been forewarned.

One time, while on the dance floor with some friends, I had an impression come over me to go tell this sad-looking woman nursing her drink at the bar that Jesus loved her. I shook it off, telling myself I would look ridiculous, like a fool. No way. The impression came again. This was not a Christian venue. The dance followed a rather raunchy performance by some Afro-Caribbean comedians. The woman looked a little rough. When it came a third time, I walked over to the woman with wobbly legs and tapped her on the shoulder. Of course, even believing the message came from God, I could not open with "Jesus loves you." The music was loud so I had to speak right into her ear.

So I said, "You look like you could use a friend. I want you to know there is Love in this world."

Well, she could have decided to beat me up for dissing her or something. Instead, she threw her arms around me and hung on so tight I felt like a life preserver. Then I could tell her "Jesus loves you."

I never saw her again. I have no idea what impact those words had on her life. We talked a little. I found out her name. Diane. Every now and then, I am reminded to pray for her.

I have had a few other instances where God has told me to do something that I think at first makes me look like a fool if I obey. But afterwards, in obeying, knees shaking, feeling inadequate, foolish and uncertain, His grace floods me and I know, yes, He was speaking to me. And nothing, nothing is so precious as to be in His will, being His hands and feet, His ambassador, his love letter to a hurting world.

As John Wimber used to say, "I'm a fool for Christ. Whose fool are you?"

About discernment. I think it takes a lot of prayer, a lot of practice and a lot of obedience to the teachings of the Church as handed down by the Apostles.

Jonah Goldberg goes to the movies

Taken is “Thelma and Louise” for fathers, he writes.

and

It’s the mother of “I told you so” moments. But fathers never get to enjoy such moments because we always have to fix the problems that inevitably arise when our women don’t listen.

Ha, ha, ha.

But I loved the movie, too. Because Patriarchy's okay with me. I like good old-fashioned, noble and honorable patriarchy a heck of a lot better than sappy metrosexual, feminized men kowtowing to Matriarchy.

Real women like real men.

The pope's letter--- it must be read and reread

Please read the letter in full. And reread it. Here's an excerpt:

In our days, when in vast areas of the world the faith is in danger of dying out like a flame which no longer has fuel, the overriding priority is to make God present in this world and to show men and women the way to God. Not just any god, but the God who spoke on Sinai; to that God whose face we recognize in a love which presses “to the end” (cf. Jn 13:1) – in Jesus Christ, crucified and risen. The real problem at this moment of our history is that God is disappearing from the human horizon, and, with the dimming of the light which comes from God, humanity is losing its bearings, with increasingly evident destructive effects.

Leading men and women to God, to the God who speaks in the Bible: this is the supreme and fundamental priority of the Church and of the Successor of Peter at the present time. A logical consequence of this is that we must have at heart the unity of all believers. Their disunity, their disagreement among themselves, calls into question the credibility of their talk of God. Hence the effort to promote a common witness by Christians to their faith – ecumenism – is part of the supreme priority. Added to this is the need for all those who believe in God to join in seeking peace, to attempt to draw closer to one another, and to journey together, even with their differing images of God, towards the source of Light – this is interreligious dialogue. Whoever proclaims that God is Love “to the end” has to bear witness to love: in loving devotion to the suffering, in the rejection of hatred and enmity – this is the social dimension of the Christian faith, of which I spoke in the Encyclical Deus Caritas Est.

So if the arduous task of working for faith, hope and love in the world is presently (and, in various ways, always) the Church’s real priority, then part of this is also made up of acts of reconciliation, small and not so small. That the quiet gesture of extending a hand gave rise to a huge uproar, and thus became exactly the opposite of a gesture of reconciliation, is a fact which we must accept. But I ask now: Was it, and is it, truly wrong in this case to meet half-way the brother who “has something against you” (cf. Mt 5:23ff.) and to seek reconciliation? Should not civil society also try to forestall forms of extremism and to incorporate their eventual adherents – to the extent possible – in the great currents shaping social life, and thus avoid their being segregated, with all its consequences? Can it be completely mistaken to work to break down obstinacy and narrowness, and to make space for what is positive and retrievable for the whole? I myself saw, in the years after 1988, how the return of communities which had been separated from Rome changed their interior attitudes; I saw how returning to the bigger and broader Church enabled them to move beyond one-sided positions and broke down rigidity so that positive energies could emerge for the whole. Can we be totally indifferent about a community which has 491 priests, 215 seminarians, 6 seminaries, 88 schools, 2 university-level institutes, 117 religious brothers, 164 religious sisters and thousands of lay faithful? Should we casually let them drift farther from the Church? I think for example of the 491 priests. We cannot know how mixed their motives may be. All the same, I do not think that they would have chosen the priesthood if, alongside various distorted and unhealthy elements, they did not have a love for Christ and a desire to proclaim him and, with him, the living God. Can we simply exclude them, as representatives of a radical fringe, from our pursuit of reconciliation and unity? What would then become of them?

Certainly, for some time now, and once again on this specific occasion, we have heard from some representatives of that community many unpleasant things – arrogance and presumptuousness, an obsession with one-sided positions, etc. Yet to tell the truth, I must add that I have also received a number of touching testimonials of gratitude which clearly showed an openness of heart. But should not the great Church also allow herself to be generous in the knowledge of her great breadth, in the knowledge of the promise made to her? Should not we, as good educators, also be capable of overlooking various faults and making every effort to open up broader vistas? And should we not admit that some unpleasant things have also emerged in Church circles? At times one gets the impression that our society needs to have at least one group to which no tolerance may be shown; which one can easily attack and hate. And should someone dare to approach them – in this case the Pope – he too loses any right to tolerance; he too can be treated hatefully, without misgiving or restraint.

George Weigel comments:

Thus the pope puts into the proper context the problems posed by both the Lefebvrist schism and the psychological schism in which some Catholic progressives live — both forms of schism impede the evangelical mission of the Church at a moment when that mission has acquired a new urgency.

It remains to be seen whether Benedict XVI will now take in hand a reform of the personnel and practices of the Roman Curia, which is essential if the evangelical brilliance of this pontificate is to fulfill its great potential. For the moment, however, the Rottweiler Brigade has been put in its place; a major flaw in the Roman bureaucracy has been fixed; the Church has been reminded of the dynamic relationship between tradition and development in Catholic self-understanding; Catholics living in both formal and informal schism have been told, politely but firmly, that they are impeding the Church’s mission; the psychological path has been cleared for a successful papal pilgrimage to the Holy Land in May; and, as Jews approach Passover and Christians approach Easter, both have been reminded that their inevitable entanglement is of the will of God, as St. Paul tried to explain to the Romans two millennia ago. That’s accomplishment enough for one letter.

Gerry Nicholls launches new book in Ottawa

I just came from the Ottawa launch of Gerry Nicholls book Loyal to the Core: Stephen Harper, Me and the NCC. The NCC stands for the National Citizens Coalition, one of the first and for a time one of the only conservative organizations trying to break through the progressive intellectual fog that has its grip on the Canadian political class.

Nicholls worked as vice president to Stephen Harper when Harper led the NCC, so the book promises to contrast the dedicated true conservative he once was to the pragmatic, centrist who just followed every other western democracy deep into deficit spending.

Nicholls spoke briefly about the discouragement that many Conservatives are experiencing with the tack the Harper government has taken, but he stressed that it is important to distinguish the political party from the conservative movement.

This is the last line from Nicholls handsome book, published by Freedom Press, a new publishing company dedicated to publishing conservative books by Canadians for Canadians. Publisher Tristan Emmanuel is shown standing in front of the Conservative Books poster. Nicholls stands in front of the Canadian Centre for Policy Studies poster. The Centre co-hosted the launch. It is a relatively new think tank that is contributing to the conservative movement. Nicholls says: "If the disappointment of the Harper government has taught us anything it's that we conservatives can't depend on politicians to fight our battles. It's up to us." He's right. He said tonight that Harper, instead of baiting the Liberals last fall with a move aimed at destroying them, should have put forward a truly conservative program and allowed the government to fall. He might have lost the election, but at least there would be one party that had a truly conservative message. I'm not sure I agree with that. But I do agree that we have to change the culture, change civil society through the strenght of our arguments and ideas. The politicians will then follow us. The other photo is of fellow blogger Dr. Roy.

In the For What It's Worth department

UPDATE: In the "too good to be true" department, World Net Daily has acknowledged the story about the sandwiches is false.

For six weeks they felt an intense burden and enormous heaviness. A critical need for intercession was so profound that Pastor Wilkerson canceled everything on the church calendar – mission's conferences, youth events and every guest speaker.
For six weeks, there wasn't a sermon. Instead, there was intercession for our nation with weeping and repentance. They knew something was coming and that something was bad. And that something was soon. So they prayed. And prayed … and prayed.
Then Wilkerson felt God telling him something that seemed rather bizarre. He felt God telling him to make sandwiches – lots of sandwiches. What were they for? Who would eat them? That part wasn't clear, but his church did what they believed God was telling them anyway.
And on the 10th of September they stayed up all night making hundreds and hundreds of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. By morning they had about 2,000 sandwiches. At 8:46 a.m. the first plane hit the World Trade Center and Times Square Church was ready to feed and minister to rescue workers and victims of our nation's worst attack.

Camille Paglia on Obama's mistakes

First it was that chaotic pig rut of a stimulus package, which let House Democrats throw a thousand crazy kitchen sinks into what should have been a focused blueprint for economic recovery. Then it was the stunt of unnerving Wall Street by sending out a shrill duo of slick geeks (Timothy Geithner and Peter Orszag) as the administration's weirdly adolescent spokesmen on economics. Who could ever have confidence in that sorry pair?
And then there was the fiasco of the ham-handed White House reception for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, which was evidently lacking the most basic elements of ceremony and protocol. Don't they read the "Iliad" anymore in the Ivy League? Check that out for the all-important ritual of gift giving, which has cemented alliances around the world for 5,000 years.
President Obama -- in whom I still have great hope and confidence -- has been ill-served by his advisors and staff. Yes, they have all been blindsided and overwhelmed by the crushing demands of the presidency. But I continue to believe in citizen presidents, who must learn by doing, even in a perilous age of terrorism. Though every novice administration makes blunders and bloopers, its modus operandi should not be a conspiratorial reflex cynicism.
Case in point: The orchestrated attack on radio host Rush Limbaugh, which has made the White House look like an oafish bunch of drunken frat boys. I returned from carnival in Brazil (more on that shortly) to find the Limbaugh affair in full flower. Has the administration gone mad? This entire fracas was set off by the president himself, who lowered his office by targeting a private citizen by name. Limbaugh had every right to counterattack, which he did with gusto. Why have so many Democrats abandoned the hallowed principle of free speech? Limbaugh, like our own liberal culture hero Lenny Bruce, is a professional commentator who can be as rude and crude as he wants.

The decline of Christianity in the United States

Damian Thompson writes:

Five years ago I was doing academic research on evangelical religion, and I was struck by just how secularised even born-again, Bible Belt Christianity had become. US Christians whom the BBC would describe as "fundamentalist" were becoming increasingly focussed on a narcissistic spiritual journey in which the figure of Jesus was sometimes little more than a disposable spirit guide or a life coach.
The fast-growing evangelical churches of America base much of their appeal on experiential excitement and therapeutic storytelling; everything is turned into a commodity, including courses of sermons. No wonder there is a signficant (if unacknowledged) overlap with the New Age.

This is so true. Alas, even our self-professed Christians are Biblically illiterate.

We need a massive revival, but one that isn't just the shakes and signs and wonders but a real intellectual revival as well.

The story about that pregnant nine-year-old

The story of the nine-year old pregnant with twins by her stepfather is an awful story. But as usual, the mainstream media spin on this makes the Catholic Church look draconian.

Well, thankfully, Suzanne over at Big Blue Wave has explained the Church's reasons. Here's an excerpt from an excellent, long post:

Many people are outraged that the Vatican backs the excommunication of the mother of the girl in Brazil who was raped, and the doctor who performed the abortion.

There are many details that people do not seem to know or care about.

First off, the issue is not whether the raped girl has a right to life. Of course the girl could have the pregnancy terminated if her life was in danger.

The Church does not dispute that.

Let me repeat.

The Church recognizes, through the theory of Double Effect, that when the pregnant woman's life is in danger, the pregnancy can be terminated PROVIDING there is no alternative, and that no direct killing or any other evil is performed on the fetus.

In other words, the pregnant girls' unborn twins could have been delivered to save the life of the mother.

Where the Church disagrees with abortion proponents is the method of abortion.

The Church would have had no issue with saving the life of the pregnant girl by delivering the fetuses intact and non-euthanized.

The Church believes that it is permissible in some situations to allow human beings to die. But it is never acceptable to deliberately attack the physical integrity of any human being with the intent of causing death. In other words, it is acceptable to let nature its course-- that is, allow the fetuses to die once delivered-- but it is never okay to provoke death.

But abortion proponents do not see it that way.

The abortion proponents wanted the unborn twins dead.

Let me re-state it: they didn't just want the girl to be free of a pregnancy that might have killed her. They wanted those fetuses dead.

Read the whole thing.

Why we must choose to be generous not have the state force us

Sometimes when I hear the words "social justice" I cringe, because the ideas, often coming from well-intentioned people within the Church, conflate those ideas with government redistribution of wealth and, well, socialism. They do not seem to realize that state intrusion into local affairs and lower orders of civil society is a violation of the principle of subsidiarity and human freedom.
Of course we pay taxes to further the Common Good, but not a lot of thought is given to the law of unintended consequences if the state assumes all of our responsibilities for us.

And interestingly, when people assume their taxes take care of their charitable obligations, they consequently give a lot less to charity. And the poor are robbed of a relationship that rewards the giver as much as the receiver.

When the government confiscates my income, it robs me of the ability to choose to be charitable. It also robs the poor or the needy of the most important aspect of charity---the relationship of love--duh!--that charity is by definition. It's love that's a two-way street, not the creation of dependence or the spawning of more of the problems the program was intended to solve.

Pope Benedict XVI wrote in his recent encyclical Spe Salvi:

Free assent to the good never exists simply by itself. If there were structures which could irrevocably guarantee a determined—good—state of the world, man's freedom would be denied, and hence they would not be good structures at all.

The Anchoress has a great post today that should be read in its entirety. She writes:

Btw, socialism does not work, except in monasteries and the reason it works in monasteries is because it is voluntary. When you voted for Obama - if you did - did you think you were voting for socialism? When Obama talked to you about “remaking America” was socialism and “not wasting a good crisis” what you had in mind? Do you really think the US Constitution is fundamentally flawed, and not a bit of genius?

UPDATE: I wrote earlier today:

No wonder [Church] scares off so many. In our age, the self is everything to be celebrated and never to be diminished. Church subsumes; you become not the lone worker bee, but the very buzz of the hive. And what sweetness is found, therein.

But the thing is…being subsumed by something greater than oneself is only glorious when one is at liberty to assent to it, when one volunteers to be absorbed into the collective. That is, in fact, the ultimate expression of liberty. Being compelled into the collective - or herded there - against ones will, against one’s liberty, against one’s declared choice - even against one’s constitution, has nothing to do with glory and everything to do with tyranny. One is an ultimate human freedom and a good. The other is the antithesis of human freedom. And that is evil.

The State cannot inculcate virtue. It can force obedience. But that society will not be virtuous. Virtue is inculcated by strong families and churches and synagogues and other religions institutions that honor natural law concepts of justice, human dignity and freedom.

Wow! Augustine College has a new website

I am a big fan of Augustine College. It's a one year program run as a labor of love by Christian professors from a variety of denominations and disciplines. It gives students an intellectual grounding in the Christian faith and the foundations of Western Civilization so that when they move on to university, they are equipped to defend their faith. In the present climate of political correctness and thought-control on university campuses, those parents seeking an alternative for their children should visit this website and consider Augustine College.

Well, now Augustine College has an awesome new website. For those who have high school age children contemplating university, consider Augustine College. They will get a real education there, something that will set them on a lifelong course of true understanding and character-development.

Ah, just to read this welcome from Augustine College President Dr. John Patrick thrills my soul:

Welcome to Augustine College on the web – of course, only a pale imitation of the real Augustine College, which is composed of flesh and blood characters the likes of whom, the students tell us, are rarely encountered elsewhere in the decaying vestiges of the erstwhile famous universities.

Here we travel together “the path of life.” This is not just travel for the sake of adventure, though adventure there most surely is. It is “the way of understanding” (Isaiah 40:14), on which we seek together what it was given to us to learn.

On such a journey loneliness is unthinkable and boredom impossible. On the road we travel our students insist there is genuine collegium. The reasons for this are not hard to find. We teach because we love to teach and our reward is the good that is already beginning to flow from this project.

In September of 1997 Augustine College opened to its founding class, realizing the vision of a number of local university professors and laymen who felt called to found a new kind of institution for higher learning. Our intent is to provide qualified students with a time of rich and integrated study, food for both the spirit and the mind.

Augustine College offers an opportunity for dedicated students to study, for one year, the basic foundations of Western intellectual and cultural tradition. We are convinced that such study is done best in an atmosphere of sincere and articulate Christianity, which has sustained both faith and humane culture since the days of the early Church.

Christians have always recognized that to achieve a fully articulate faith demands familiarity with the great achievements in the arts and sciences. Augustine College answers the need for a place in which the enduring questions of human life can again be studied at the level they deserve and against the background of the Christian story.

And in this economic climate, this rich program is far less expensive than most university programs, and the credits are transferable to a number of accredited institutions.

Michael Trolly and 40 Days for Life

As I wrote earlier, I attended an amazing Lenten Quiet Day last Saturday at our little church. It's one reason why you might not be seeing as many posts here as I finally am freed of my Internet compulsion so I can fast from too much surfing during Lent. So, though I am not posting Evening and Morning Prayers now, I am doing them the old-fashioned way with the Book of Common Prayer, the King James Bible and a Psalter. (Now...if you send me something in the comments section that you were depending on my publishing the prayers and readings each day, then I will resume--if you tell me not to publish your comments, I won't. If there is silence I will probably continue staying off line.)

Here is our postulant Michael Trolly's second talk, with the parts that especially spoke to me bolded. Michael spent all of Saturday night at the 40 Days for Life vigil and the Quiet Day's theme corresponded with that wonderful exercise of fasting, praying and standing watch outside the Morgentaler abortion clinic on Bank St. Not only are the words of this talk beautiful, but I could feel the fruit of hours of prayerful preparation in its delivery. I hope this touches you the way it did me.

The Sanctity of Life and our Lenten Discipline: Examination of Conscience and Repentance

One of the things that we are encouraged to do during Lent is to make a careful examination of conscience – to reflect carefully on the sin that led Christ to the cross, what it has cost Him to offer us salvation. Ultimately, the purpose of such self-examination is so that we can return to God, clearly recognizing what needs to take place, and asking God for help.

Recently I have been re-reading C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity, and throughout the book he points out a number of things about repentance. The first is that God does not want “nicer people”, who behave better, and live a moral life. God does not, ultimately, want people who obey certain rules; God is not content with that. Rather, God desires us to surrender the totality of ourselves to Him.

God wants to make us into an entirely different sort of person, in fact. God is in the business of creating New Men, of bringing us completely alive. Lewis comments that this is a business accomplished entirely by God Himself – it is not due to our own effort or merit. However, Lewis explains the relationship of grace and works by saying that true repentance is possible only when we have worked as hard as we can, expending all of the effort we can muster, and then realize – honestly and clearly – that it is not enough, that we cannot possibly save ourselves. To come to the place where we can really accept the grace of God, we must know how badly off we are. And to know how sinful we are, we must try to fight against it. Thus, an honest and careful self-examination should not lead us to despair, but to be able to really turn to God and receive His mercy and help. The Church has been given tremendous gifts of God’s grace here, particularly in Christ’s command to His Apostles and their successors in the priesthood to declare Jesus’ forgiveness of sins. The best thing we can do to receive the full benefit of this, is to look deeply into our souls, to recognize how much that grace is needed.

I have also begun reading Alexander Schmemman’s book Great Lent, in which he goes on at length about the Orthodox Lenten observances, and points out that Lent is given to us as an experience of “darkness”, but a darkness that is as the same time full of the joy of Easter. The purpose of the darkness is to reveal to us how far we have fallen away from God, and the purpose of that revelation is to allow us to go home!

It seems to me that one of the primary reasons why Christians must seriously face the issue of the sanctity of human life, and our many failings to recognize that sanctity, is that this is really one of the greatest manifestations of spiritual darkness in our age. The prophets of Israel were outspoken in their condemnation of human sacrifice, and unjust killing – they confronted the stark reality that many in their nation, even some of those who still claimed to follow the Lord, had sacrificed their children on the altars of other gods. The thought of a return to God without confronting this spiritual disease was unthinkable. The return must be total, and if we avoid dealing with this, we have not repented. If we do not call our nation to repent of this, we have not given them the Gospel.

We must face the fact that here in Ottawa, just in the one clinic where 40 Days for Life is holding peaceful vigil, it is estimated that 2400 unborn children are killed each year.

We must face the fact that this figure represents unspeakable pain to those infants – it is believed that developing babies in the womb are at least as sensitive to pain as a newborn, as early as 10 weeks (within the first tremester). It also represents the grief, shame and regret of thousands of parents, grandparents and friends, who often do not understand what is happening to them, and who feel pressure to accept abortion, often feeling guilty for their lingering doubts about the “right to choose”. We must face the fact that the Church has often said and done nothing, even those who are most orthodox in their faith and morals. But enough of this preaching.

Let us use the tragedy of abortion as a motive for personal Lenten repentance - meditating on this symptom of our fallenness, to spur us to pursue holiness and conversion. Let us recognize how bad things truly are, in many ways, but also recognize that the grace of Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the power of the Holy Spirit are more than capable of handling this situation, if we can be inspired to truly turn it over to Him.

Let us ask ourselves:

Do I murder any human being in my heart? Do I hate my brother? Do I remember “widows and orphans” and keep myself “unpolluted by the world”?

Or do I put wealth, convenience, pleasure, or anything else ahead of my love of God and “the least of these”?

Have I done my part to protect the sanctity of human life?

Do I have a firmly Christian understanding of life, and do I understand that here, in Lent, particularly, I am invited to participate in a spiritual battle, where lives and souls are at stake?

What tools will I make use of in this struggle? What do I need to repent of? What should I abstain from? What should I take up? Is there any way I can do more?

Make an examination of conscience reflecting on the tragedy of abortion. Let us ask: Do any of our sins “in thought, word and deed”, by commission or omission, support the culture of death, either in our hearts or in the world? Are we complicit in this sin? Pray for the grace of true repentance, and for God’s mercy on our nation, and world.

Amen!

By the way, Michael is an accomplished musician and songwriter. His CD is wonderful. You will play it over and over and over. You can order copies via his website.

Groups unite to oppose polygamy

An excerpt from the Catholic Register site:

OTTAWA - Groups on opposing sides of the same-sex marriage debate have joined forces to oppose the legalization of polygamy.

“We feel (polygamy) would be a very backward step for our nation,” said Institute for Canadian Values founder Charles McVety, who joined Canadian Family Action Coalition president Brian Rushfeldt and Muslim Canadian Congress president Farzana Hassan at a news conference March 3 on Parliament Hill.

Rushfeldt warned of “moral and legal chaos” with devastating consequences to Canada’s immigration, welfare, health care, education and family law systems should the law prohibiting polygamy be struck down by the courts.

In January, British Columbia charged two members of a breakaway Mormon sect with violating Canada’s polygamy laws, but some constitutional experts have said the law will not survive a charter religious freedom challenge. McVety said the three groups wanted to be “proactive” rather than waiting for the courts. They have launched a web site at www.stoppolygamy.ca.

“Once the judges have done their deed, it’s very difficult to overcome this,” said McVety, who with Rushfeldt was a key player in a coalition of groups that tried to save the traditional definition of marriage after provincial court judges struck down the marriage law in 2003.

The Muslim congress, however, supports same-sex marriage because it is a consensual “contract between two equal partners,” said Hassan, who described her organization as representing “secular” and “progressive” Muslims.

“Women are always shortchanged when polygamy is allowed to flourish,” she said.

The picture shows McVety and Hassan at the news conference. Read the whole story. You might find it interesting.

Are the Liberals trying to woo Evangelical voters?

CFRB's Ottawa Bureau Chief Brian Lilley thinks so. He writes:

Now comes perhaps the more shocking news, the Liberals, under Michael Ignatieff, are reaching out to religious voters.

Specifically, the Liberals are planning to try to reconnect with to Evangelical Christians, MP John McKay is the man heading up the effort. Today Evangelicals are a group mostly thought of in terms of Republican support in the United States, yet at one point they did vote for Liberal MPs, especially in Ontario.

But that was a long time ago and Liberal attempts to attract the religious Christian vote lately, well….I can’t say they are clumsy, mainly because there aren’t really that many examples. In the space of a generation, the Liberal party went from being THE party of Catholics who attended Mass weekly, to the party most likely to wish you wouldn’t mention anyone who may or may not be a deity because such a mention might offend another person you know. The change in attitude has eroded their bedrock Catholic support and their support among Evangelicals in Canada’s mini-Bible belts.

In the lead-up to the last election campaign, Liberal Leader Stephane Dion made the decision to appear on the television show of my CFRB colleague Michael Coren. Coren, who hosts the appropriately named Michael Coren Show on CTS, wrote the experience up in a column for the National Post. Dion, he told us, wanted to attract Protestant voters.

“You see, the Catholics can be relied on to vote Liberal, always, but the Protestants much less so.”

Well like so many other things in electoral politics, Dion had it wrong.

David Wilkinson prophecy--for what it's worth

Anyone remember the book and the subsequent movie The Cross and the Switchblade? Its author David Wilkinson now has a church in New York City's Times Square. In the months leading up to 9/11 he and members of his church were aware something terrible was going to happen.

Anyway, he's put out a new prophecy (emphasis his). (h/t Rod Dreher)

I am compelled by the Holy Spirit to send out an urgent message to all on our mailing list, and to friends and to bishops we have met all over the world.

AN EARTH-SHATTERING CALAMITY IS ABOUT TO HAPPEN. IT IS GOING TO BE SO FRIGHTENING, WE ARE ALL GOING TO TREMBLE - EVEN THE GODLIEST AMONG US.

For ten years I have been warning about a thousand fires coming to New York City. It will engulf the whole megaplex, including areas of New Jersey and Connecticut. Major cities all across America will experience riots and blazing fires—such as we saw in Watts, Los Angeles, years ago.

There will be riots and fires in cities worldwide. There will be looting—including Times Square, New York City. What we are experiencing now is not a recession, not even a depression. We are under God’s wrath. In Psalm 11 it is written,

“If the foundations are destroyed, what can the righteous do?” (v. 3).

God is judging the raging sins of America and the nations. He is destroying the secular foundations.

I dunno.

Given the economic crisis, it is easy to start to imagine various bleak, even violent scenarios. We're already seeing riots in countries like Greece. Imagine the rage if America does become bankrupt and all the houses and cars and cushy jobs the hopenchange crowd expect of their Obamessiah do not materialize.

I hope and pray none of this comes to pass. But I have been deeply concerned.

The other day, I was even reading a survivalist's blog. I have susceptible to that stuff in the past because I thought American society was going to collapse back in the 70s and moved to rural Nova Scotia to a farm so as to be self-sufficient just in case. It was a mistake to do so then, as what I opted for was voluntary poverty. Things did get better in the 80s but I was not positioned for it.

The other thing to remember is Nineveh. Jonah prophesied God was going to destroy their city. Instead of continuing in their wicked ways, they repented and God spared them.

Let's hope the American economy is robust enough to turn around despite the risky policies coming from the White House, or that Obama realizes he cannot use the economic crisis to revolutionize American society and instead drops those plans.

Wilkonson adds some practical advice:

First, I give you a practical word I received for my own direction. If possible lay in store a thirty-day supply of non-perishable food, toiletries and other essentials. In major cities, grocery stores are emptied in an hour at the sign of an impending disaster.

As for our spiritual reaction, we have but two options. This is outlined in Psalm 11. We “flee like a bird to a mountain.” Or, as David says, “He fixed his eyes on the Lord on his throne in heaven—his eyes beholding, his eyelids testing the sons of men” (v. 4). “In the Lord I take refuge” (v. 1).

I will say to my soul: No need to run...no need to hide. This is God’s righteous work. I will behold our Lord on his throne, with his eye of tender, loving kindness watching over every step I take—trusting that he will deliver his people even through floods, fires, calamities, tests, trials of all kinds.

Note: I do not know when these things will come to pass, but I know it is not far off.

I confess, I enjoy being appalled PLUS bonus Evening Prayer

I have been finding it most entertaining to ply the blogosphere and find like-minded people with the latest negative analysis that corresponds with mine and if the O-man does something new to feed that outrage, what bliss, what happy reading awaits me. What a frisson of pleasure being appalled is. Maybe not a thrill up my leg, but still.

After attending my church's Lenten Quiet Day, (including a little detour to cover a talk by John Beaulieu (who coordinates youth conferences at the Franciscan University of Steubenville) to Roman Catholic youth ministry volunteers, I realize it is not spiritually edifying to keep doing it and that I must rein in my net surfing, especially during Lent. But it's not only my net surfing, it's my attitude that needs a major adjustment.

One of the things that Beaulieu talked about was how much Pope Benedict XVI has mentioned Pentecost in his exhortations to youth. We do need a Pentecost. We need a Holy Spirit fire to transform our lives and to spread, a Third Great Awakening for North America, or our country is toast.

Beaulieu talked about how one of the images of the Holy Spirit is fire, and how we might want the Holy Spirit to come into our lives and stay in our fireplace. He suggested we ask the Holy Spirit to come and burn the house down, so He can build a mansion in its place.

I confess, I have been pretty comfortable with the Holy Spirit in my soul's fireplace. Once upon a time my faith was like a flickering candle, sputtering in the wind and often nearly blown out. Now my relationship with God is like the gas fireplace in my livingroom. I have a nice sense of peace and a strong faith that's there when I need to turn it on.

God is faithful.....when I draw nigh to him, He does draw nigh to me and I am very, very blessed.
But that's not enough. Do I dare ask Him to burn the house down?

Because if a critical mass of us does not ask God to burn our houses down, to purify us so that we shine with Christ's love, then what good are we? I may have a blog that entertains people now and then, or has links to people more entertaining than I am, but if things are going to get much worse---and even if on a material level they don't, spiritually we're still in bad shape here in North America---we need Christ all the more. But we can't just pay lip service. We have to be radiant, we have to put on Christ. In readings recently, I read how Judas betrayed Jesus and Jesus knew he was going to betray him. But then in the Garden of Gethsemane, when Jesus greeted Judas who had shown up with the soldiers, he greeted him with such love that he raced back to return the 30 pieces of silver.

When I returned to my little cathedral, Michael Trolley's second talk was also amazing. I could feel the prayer and preparation that went into it. And the Holy Spirit spoke to me through that talk as well. Trolley's talks were meant to correspond with the 40 Days for Life campaign of fasting, praying and holding vigils outside abortion clinics. When I get a copy of the talk, I'll quote at length, but what stuck with me was his exhortation to look at how we in our own lives participate in the sin of abortion, by our love of convenience, of pleasure, our unwillingness to engage in self-denial and self-sacrifice. Nothing short of a deep transformation is going to change our culture of death into a culture of life.

Beaulieu also mentioned specifically our worship of the computer screen, even mentioned Twitter, one of the latest time-wasters that is also immensely entertaining and alerts me to a host of great reading material to put me in high dudgeon again.

As I have said many times before, being appalled is not a fruit of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, self-control --these are fruits of the spirit and when I'm appalled I have even my fireplace shut off.

Which is not to say that I am going to just lapse into denial about what's going on. I can't do that, especially since I am a journalist and it's my job to stay informed.

But I haven't been too successful at fasting from the Internet and now I really do want to be more disciplined about it.

What's even more important for me to fast from is the enjoyment I get in seeing Obama's sins exposed all over the blogosphere.

Oswald Chambers has a wonderful devotional about how important it is to pray for people when we discern sin in their lives, rather than using the insight God gives us as a reason to enjoy a critical spirit.

If we are not heedful and pay no attention to the way the Spirit of God works in us, we will become spiritual hypocrites. We see where other people are failing, and then we take our discernment and turn it into comments of ridicule and criticism, instead of turning it into intercession on their behalf. God reveals this truth about others to us not through the sharpness of our minds but through the direct penetration of His Spirit. If we are not attentive, we will be completely unaware of the source of the discernment God has given us, becoming critical of others and forgetting that God says, ". . . he will ask, and He will give him life for those who commit sin not leading to death." Be careful that you don’t become a hypocrite by spending all your time trying to get others right with God before you worship Him yourself.
One of the most subtle and illusive burdens God ever places on us as saints is this burden of discernment concerning others. He gives us discernment so that we may accept the responsibility for those souls before Him and form the mind of Christ about them (see Philippians 2:5 ). We should intercede in accordance with what God says He will give us, namely, "life for those who commit sin not leading to death." It is not that we are able to bring God into contact with our minds, but that we awaken ourselves to the point where God is able to convey His mind to us regarding the people for whom we intercede.

I'm an American-Canadian. President Obama is my president. Instead of praying for him, I have been jumping on the negative bandwagon. I don't like many of the things that he is doing. Not at all. And it is nice to know that others out there see the same things that I see and are more articulate in formulating their insights. But me? I pray that God changes my heart so that I become an interceder rather than a criticizer.

Okay. Here is evening prayer. We sang Evensong this afternoon. It was lovely after a day of silent prayer, interspersed with talks. A wonderful retreat.

Minister. O Lord, open thou our lips;

People. And our mouth shall show forth thy praise.

Minister. O God, make speed to save us;

People. O Lord, make haste to help us.

Here, all standing up, the Minister shall say:

GLORY be to the Father, and to the Son, and the the Holy Ghost;

People. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Minister. Praise ye the Lord;

People. The Lord's Name be praised.

Then shall follow THE PSALMS.

Psalm 119

PART 21. Principes persecuti sunt.

PRINCES have persecuted me without a cause; / but my heart standeth in awe of thy word.

162 I am as glad of thy word, / as one that findeth great spoil.

163 As for lies, I hate and abhor them; / but thy law do I love.

164 Seven times a day do I praise thee, / because of thy righteous judgements.

165 Great is the peace that they have who love thy law; / and nothing shall lead them astray.

166 LORD, I have looked for thy saving health, / and done after thy commandments.

167 My soul hath kept thy testimonies, / and loved them exceedingly.

168 I have kept thy precepts and testimonies; / for all my ways are before thee.

PART 22. Appropinquet deprecatio.

LET my cry come before thee, O LORD: / give me understanding, according to thy word.

170 Let my supplication come before thee: / deliver me, according to thy word.

171 My lips shall speak of thy praise, / because thou teachest me thy statutes.

172 Yea, my tongue shall sing of thy word; / for all thy commandments are righteous.

173 Let thy hand help me; / for I have chosen thy precepts.

174 I have longed for thy saving health, O LORD; / and in thy law is my delight.

175 O let my soul live, and it shall praise thee; / and let thy judgements help me.

176 I have gone astray like a sheep that is lost; / O seek thy servant, for I do not forget thy commandments.

Then the FIRST LESSON as appointed.

Exodus 2:11-22

¹¹And it came to pass in those days, when Moses was grown, that he went out unto his brethren, and looked on their burdens: and he spied an Egyptian smiting an Hebrew, one of his brethren. ¹²And he looked this way and that way, and when he saw that there was no man, he slew the Egyptian, and hid him in the sand. ¹³And when he went out the second day, behold, two men of the Hebrews strove together: and he said to him that did the wrong, Wherefore smitest thou thy fellow? ¹⁴And he said, Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? intendest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian? And Moses feared, and said, Surely this thing is known. ¹⁵Now when Pharaoh heard this thing, he sought to slay Moses. But Moses fled from the face of Pharaoh, and dwelt in the land of Midian: and he sat down by a well. ¹⁶Now the priest of Midian had seven daughters: and they came and drew water, and filled the troughs to water their father’s flock. ¹⁷And the shepherds came and drove them away: but Moses stood up and helped them, and watered their flock. ¹⁸And when they came to Reuel their father, he said, How is it that ye are come so soon to day? ¹⁹And they said, An Egyptian delivered us out of the hand of the shepherds, and also drew water enough for us, and watered the flock. ²⁰And he said unto his daughters, And where is he? why is it that ye have left the man? call him, that he may eat bread. ²¹And Moses was content to dwell with the man: and he gave Moses Zipporah his daughter. ²²And she bare him a son, and he called his name Gershom: for he said, I have been a stranger in a strange land.

And after that shall be sung or said Magnificat (or the Song of the Blessed Virgin Mary).

MAGNIFICAT. St. Luke 1:46

MY soul doth magnify the Lord, / and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.

For he hath regarded / the lowliness of his handmaiden.

For behold, from henceforth / all generations shall call me blessed.

For he that is mighty hath magnified me; / and holy is his Name.

And his mercy is on them that fear him / throughout all generations.

He hath showed strength with his arm; / he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts.

He hath put down the mighty from their seat, / and hath exalted the humble and the meek.

He hath filled the hungry with good things; / and the rich he hath sent empty away.

He remembering his mercy / hath holpen his servant Israel;

As he promised to our forefathers, / Abraham and his seed for ever.

GLORY be to the Father, and to the Son, / and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, / world without end. Amen.

Or Cantate Domino, Psalm 98, page 455.

Then THE SECOND LESSON as appointed. And after that shall be sung or said Nunc Dimittis (or the Son of Simeon).

Colossians 1:21-2:-7

²¹And you, that were sometime alienated and enemies in your mind by wicked works, yet now hath he reconciled ²²In the body of his flesh through death, to present you holy and unblameable and unreproveable in his sight: ²³If ye continue in the faith grounded and settled, and be not moved away from the hope of the gospel, which ye have heard, and which was preached to every creature which is under heaven; whereof I Paul am made a minister; ²⁴Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you, and fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body’s sake, which is the church: ²⁵Whereof I am made a minister, according to the dispensation of God which is given to me for you, to fulfil the word of God; ²⁶Even the mystery which hath been hid from ages and from generations, but now is made manifest to his saints: ²⁷To whom God would make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles; which is Christ in you, the hope of glory: ²⁸Whom we preach, warning every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom; that we may present every man perfect in Christ Jesus: ²⁹Whereunto I also labour, striving according to his working, which worketh in me mightily.

Colossians 2

For I would that ye knew what great conflict I have for you, and for them at Laodicea, and for as many as have not seen my face in the flesh; ²That their hearts might be comforted, being knit together in love, and unto all riches of the full assurance of understanding, to the acknowledgement of the mystery of God, and of the Father, and of Christ; ³In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. ⁴And this I say, lest any man should beguile you with enticing words. ⁵For though I be absent in the flesh, yet am I with you in the spirit, joying and beholding your order, and the stedfastness of your faith in Christ.

⁶As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: ⁷Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.

NUNC DIMITTIS. St. Luke 2:29.

LORD, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, / according to thy word.

For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, / which thou has prepared before the face of all people;

To be a light to lighten the Gentiles, / and to be the glory of thy people Israel.

GLORY be to the Father, and to the Son, / and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, / world without end. Amen.

Or else Deus Misereatur, Psalm 67, page 409.

Then shall be said or sung the Confession of the Faith, called the Apostles' Creed.

I BELIEVE in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary, Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried: He descended into hell; The third day he rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost; The holy Catholic Church; The Communion of Saints; The Forgiveness of sins; The Resurrection of the body, And the Life everlasting. Amen.

And after the Creed these prayers following, all devoutly kneeling, the Minister first pronouncing:

The Lord be with you;

People. And with thy spirit.

Minister. Let us pray.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

Christ, have mercy upon us.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

OUR Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us; And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. Amen.

Then the Priest standing up shall say:

O Lord, show thy mercy upon us;

People. And grant us thy salvation.

Priest. O Lord, save the Queen;

People. And mercifully hear us when we call upon thee.

Priest. Endue thy Ministers with righteousness;

People. And make thy chosen people joyful.

Priest. O Lord, save thy people;

People. And bless thine inheritance.

Priest. Give peace in our time, O Lord;

People. And evermore mightily defend us.

Priest. O God, make clean our hearts within us;

People. And take not thy Holy Spirit from us.

Then shall follow THE COLLECT OF THE DAY, together with any other Collects appointed to be said, and these two prayers in order.

ALMIGHTY God, who seest that we have no power of ourselves to help ourselves: Keep us both outwardly in our bodies, and inwardly in our souls; that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O LORD, who for our sake didst fast forty days and forty nights: Give us grace to use such abstinence, that, our flesh being subdued to the Spirit, we may ever obey thy godly motions in righteousness and true holiness, to thy honour and glory; who livest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

The Second Collect, for Peace.

O GOD, from whom all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed: Give unto thy servants that peace which the world cannot give; that our hearts may be set to obey thy commandments, and also that by thee we being defended from the fear of our enemies may pass our time in rest and quietness; through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour. Amen.

The Third Collect, for Aid against all Perils.

LIGHTEN our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night; for the love of thy only Son, our Saviour Jesus Christ. Amen.

Here may follow an Anthem or a Hymn.

Here may be said the prayers found at this point in Morning Prayer or selections from the Prayers and Thanksgivings or such other prayers as are contained in this Book or set forth by lawful authority, always ending with the Prayer of St Chrysostom and the Grace.

A Prayer of Saint Chrysostom.

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplications unto thee; and dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in thy Name thou wilt grant their requests: Fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants, as may be most expedient for them; granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. Amen.

2 Corinthians 13:14.

THE grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.

Morning Prayer, March 7, 2009

Minister. O Lord, open thou our lips;

People. And our mouth shall show forth thy praise.

Minister. O God, make speed to save us;

People. O Lord, make haste to help us.

Here, all standing up, the Minister shall say:

GLORY be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost;

People. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.

Minister. Praise ye the Lord;

People. The Lord's Name be praised.

Then shall be said or sung this Psalm following; except on days for which Proper Anthems are provided. On the nineteenth day of the month, this Psalm shall be omitted in the ordinary course of the Psalms.

At the discretion of the Minister the last four verses may be omitted.

Invitatory: The goodness of God leadeth to repentance; O come, let us worship.

Venite Exultemus Domino. Psalm 95

O COME, let us sing unto the LORD: / let us heartily rejoice in the strength of our salvation.

Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving, / and show ourselves glad in him with psalms.

For the LORD is a great God, / and a great King above all gods.

In his hand are all the corners of the earth: / and the strength of the hills is his also.

The sea is his, and he made it: / and his hands prepared the dry land.

O COME, let us worship, and fall down, / and kneel before the LORD our Maker.

For he is the Lord our God; / and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.

TO-DAY, O that ye would hear his voice: / 'Harden not your hearts as in the Provocation, and as in the day of Temptation in the wilderness;

When your fathers tempted me, / proved me, and saw my works.

Forty years long was I grieved with that generation, and said, / "It is a people that do err in their hearts, for they have not known my ways";

Unto whom I sware in my wrath, / that they should not enter into my rest.'

GLORY be to the Father, and to the Son, / and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, / world without end. Amen.

Then shall follow THE PSALMS.

Psalm 119

PART 19. Clamavi in toto corde meo.

I CALL with my whole heart: / hear me, O LORD; I will keep thy statutes.

146 Yea, even unto thee do I call; O help me, / and I shall keep thy testimonies.

147 Early in the morning do I cry unto thee; / for in thy word is my trust.

148 Mine eyes forestall the night-watches, / that I might be occupied in thy words.

149 Hear my voice, O LORD, according unto thy loving-kindness: / quicken me, according as thou art wont.

150 They draw nigh that of malice persecute me, / and are far from thy law.

151 Thou art nigh at hand, O LORD; / and all thy commandments are true.

152 As concerning thy testimonies, I have known long since, / that thou hast grounded them for ever.

PART 20. Vide humilitatem.

O CONSIDER mine adversity, and deliver me, / for I do not forget thy law.

154 Plead thou my cause, and redeem me: / quicken me, according to thy word.

155 Salvation is far from the ungodly; / for they regard not thy statutes.

156 Great is thy mercy, O LORD: / quicken me, according to thy judgements.

157 Many there are that trouble me and persecute me; / yet do I not swerve from thy testimonies.

158 It grieveth me when I see the transgressors; / because they keep not thy word.

159 Consider, O LORD, how I love thy precepts: / O quicken me, according to thy lovingkindness.

160 Thy word is altogether true: / all the judgements of thy righteousness endure for evermore.

Then shall be read THE FIRST LESSON as appointed, and before each Lesson the Minister shall say, The First [or Second] Lesson is written in such a book, in such a chapter, beginning at such a verse. And after the Lesson he shall say, Here endeth the First [or Second] Lesson.

Exodus 1: 1-14; 22-2:10

Now these are the names of the children of Israel, which came into Egypt; every man and his household came with Jacob. ²Reuben, Simeon, Levi, and Judah, ³Issachar, Zebulun, and Benjamin, ⁴Dan, and Naphtali, Gad, and Asher. ⁵And all the souls that came out of the loins of Jacob were seventy souls: for Joseph was in Egypt already. ⁶And Joseph died, and all his brethren, and all that generation.

⁷And the children of Israel were fruitful, and increased abundantly, and multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; and the land was filled with them. ⁸Now there arose up a new king over Egypt, which knew not Joseph. ⁹And he said unto his people, Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we: ¹⁰Come on, let us deal wisely with them; lest they multiply, and it come to pass, that, when there falleth out any war, they join also unto our enemies, and fight against us, and so get them up out of the land. ¹¹Therefore they did set over them taskmasters to afflict them with their burdens. And they built for Pharaoh treasure cities, Pithom and Raamses. ¹²But the more they afflicted them, the more they multiplied and grew. And they were grieved because of the children of Israel. ¹³And the Egyptians made the children of Israel to serve with rigour: ¹⁴And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in morter, and in brick, and in all manner of service in the field: all their service, wherein they made them serve, was with rigour.

²²And Pharaoh charged all his people, saying, Every son that is born ye shall cast into the river, and every daughter ye shall save alive.

Genesis 2:1-10

And there went a man of the house of Levi, and took to wife a daughter of Levi. ²And the woman conceived, and bare a son: and when she saw him that he was a goodly child, she hid him three months. ³And when she could not longer hide him, she took for him an ark of bulrushes, and daubed it with slime and with pitch, and put the child therein; and she laid it in the flags by the river’s brink. ⁴And his sister stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him.

⁵And the daughter of Pharaoh came down to wash herself at the river; and her maidens walked along by the river’s side; and when she saw the ark among the flags, she sent her maid to fetch it. ⁶And when she had opened it, she saw the child: and, behold, the babe wept. And she had compassion on him, and said, This is one of the Hebrews’ children. ⁷Then said his sister to Pharaoh’s daughter, Shall I go and call to thee a nurse of the Hebrew women, that she may nurse the child for thee? ⁸And Pharaoh’s daughter said to her, Go. And the maid went and called the child’s mother. ⁹And Pharaoh’s daughter said unto her, Take this child away, and nurse it for me, and I will give thee thy wages. And the woman took the child, and nursed it. ¹⁰And the child grew, and she brought him unto Pharaoh’s daughter, and he became her son. And she called his name Moses: and she said, Because I drew him out of the water.

Salvator Mundi

Ant. O Saviour of the world, who by thy Cross and precious Blood hast redeemed us;/ save us and help us we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.

Thou didst save thy disciples when ready to perish: / hear us and save us we humbly beseech thee.

Let the pitifulness of thy great mercy/ loose us from our sins we humbly beseech thee.

Make it appear that thou art our Saviour and mighty Deliverer:/ O save us that we may praise thee, we humbly beseech thee.

Draw near according to thy promise from the throne of thy glory:/ look down and hear our crying we humbly beseech thee.

Come again and dwell with us, O Lord Jesus:/ abide with us for ever we humbly beseech thee.

And when thou shalt appear with power and great glory:/ may we be made like unto thee, in thy glorious Kingdom.

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son,/ and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be,/ world without end. Amen.

Ant. O Saviour of the world, who by thy Cross and precious Blood has redeemed us;/ save us and help us we humbly beseech thee, O Lord.

Then shall be read in like manner THE SECOND LESSON as appointed; and after that the following Canticle, except when it forms part of the Gospel or Second Lesson appointed for the day.

Matthew 27:57-28:-end

⁵⁷When the even was come, there came a rich man of Arimathaea, named Joseph, who also himself was Jesus’ disciple: ⁵⁸He went to Pilate, and begged the body of Jesus. Then Pilate commanded the body to be delivered. ⁵⁹And when Joseph had taken the body, he wrapped it in a clean linen cloth, ⁶⁰And laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn out in the rock: and he rolled a great stone to the door of the sepulchre, and departed. ⁶¹And there was Mary Magdalene, and the other Mary, sitting over against the sepulchre.

⁶²Now the next day, that followed the day of the preparation, the chief priests and Pharisees came together unto Pilate, ⁶³Saying, Sir, we remember that that deceiver said, while he was yet alive, After three days I will rise again. ⁶⁴Command therefore that the sepulchre be made sure until the third day, lest his disciples come by night, and steal him away, and say unto the people, He is risen from the dead: so the last error shall be worse than the first. ⁶⁵Pilate said unto them, Ye have a watch: go your way, make it as sure as ye can. ⁶⁶So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch.

Exodus 28

In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. ²And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. ³His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: ⁴And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men. ⁵And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. ⁶He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. ⁷And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you. ⁸And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word.

⁹And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him. ¹⁰Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.

¹¹Now when they were going, behold, some of the watch came into the city, and shewed unto the chief priests all the things that were done. ¹²And when they were assembled with the elders, and had taken counsel, they gave large money unto the soldiers, ¹³Saying, Say ye, His disciples came by night, and stole him away while we slept. ¹⁴And if this come to the governor’s ears, we will persuade him, and secure you. ¹⁵So they took the money, and did as they were taught: and this saying is commonly reported among the Jews until this day.

¹⁶Then the eleven disciples went away into Galilee, into a mountain where Jesus had appointed them. ¹⁷And when they saw him, they worshipped him: but some doubted. ¹⁸And Jesus came and spake unto them, saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in earth. ¹⁹Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: ²⁰Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen.

Benedictus. St Luke 1:68

BLESSED be the Lord God of Israel; / for he hath visited and redeemed his people;

And hath raised up a mighty salvation for us, / in the house of his servant David;

As he spake by the mouth of his holy Prophets, / which have been since the world began;

That we should be saved from our enemies, / and from the hands of all that hate us;

To perform the mercy promised to our forefathers, / and to remember his holy covenant;

To perform the oath which he sware to our forefather Abraham, / that he would grant us

That we being delivered out of the hands of our enemies / might serve him without fear,

In holiness and righteousness before him, / all the days of our life.

AND thou, child, shalt be called the Prophet of the Highest: / for thou shalt go before the face of the Lord to prepare his ways;

To give knowledge of salvation unto his people / for the remission of their sins;

Through the tender mercy of our God; / whereby the day-spring from on high hath visited us;

To give light to them that sit in darkness, and in the shadow of death, / and to guide our feet into the way of peace.

GLORY be to the Father, and to the Son, / and to the Holy Ghost;

As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, / world without end. Amen.

Or instead Jubilate Deo, the 100th Psalm, page 457.

Then shall be said or sung the Confession of the Faith, called the Apostles' Creed.

I BELIEVE in God the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and earth:

And in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary, Suffered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried: He descended into hell; The third day he rose again from the dead; He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty; From thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.

I believe in the Holy Ghost; The holy Catholic Church; The Communion of Saints; The Forgiveness of sins; The Resurrection of the body, And the Life everlasting. Amen.

And after the Creed these prayers following, all devoutly kneeling, the Minister first pronouncing:

The Lord be with you;

People. And with thy spirit.

Minister. Let us pray.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

Christ, have mercy upon us.

Lord, have mercy upon us.

OUR Father who art in heaven, Hallowed be thy Name, Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread; And forgive us our trespasses, As we forgive them that trespass against us; And lead us not into temptation, But deliver us from evil. Amen.

Then the Priest standing up shall say:

O Lord, show thy mercy upon us;

People. And grant us thy salvation.

Priest. O Lord, save the Queen;

People. And mercifully hear us when we call upon thee.

Priest. Endue thy Ministers with righteousness;

People. And make thy chosen people joyful.

Priest. O Lord, save thy people;

People. And bless thine inheritance.

Priest. Give peace in our time, O Lord;

People. And evermore mightily defend us.

Priest. O God, make clean our hearts within us;

People. And take not thy Holy Spirit from us.

Then shall follow THE COLLECT OF THE DAY , together with any other Collects appointed to be said, and these two prayers in order.

ALMIGHTY God, the giver of all good gifts, who of thy divine providence hast appointed divers Orders in thy Church: Give thy grace, we humbly beseech thee, to all those who are to be called to any office and administration in the same; and so replenish them with the truth of thy doctrine, and endue them with innocency of life, that they may faithfully serve before thee, to the glory of thy great Name, and to the benefit of thy holy Church; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

O GOD, who by thy Holy Spirit hast given unto one man a word of wisdom, and to another a word of knowledge, and to another the gift of tongues: We praise thy Name for the gifts of grace manifested in thy servant St. Thomas Aquinas, and we pray that thy Church may never be destitute of the same; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, who hatest nothing that thou hast made, and dost forgive the sins of all them that are penitent: Create and make in us new and contrite hearts, that we worthily lamenting our sins, and acknowledging our wretchedness, may obtain of thee, the God of all mercy, perfect remission and forgiveness; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Second Collect, for Peace.

O GOD, who art the author of peace and lover of concord, in knowledge of whom standeth our eternal life, whose service is perfect freedom: Defend us thy humble servants in all assaults of our enemies; that we, surely trusting in thy defence, may not fear the power of any adversaries; through the might of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

The Third Collect, for Grace.

O LORD our heavenly Father, Almighty and everlasting God, who hast safely brought us to the beginning of this day: Defend us in the same with thy mighty power; and grant that this day we fall into no sin, neither run into any kind of danger; but that all our doings may be ordered by thy governance, to do always that is righteous in thy sight; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Here may follow an Anthem or an Hymn.

A Prayer for the Queen and all in Authority.

O LORD God Almighty, who rulest the nations of the earth, we humbly beseech thee with thy favour to behold our Sovereign Lady, Queen ELIZABETH, that in all things she may be led by thy guidance and protected by thy power. We pray thee also to bless [*........] and all the Royal Family. Endue with wisdom the Governor-General of this Dominion, the Lieutanant-Governors of the Provinces, the Legislators of the Commonwealth and Empire, and all who are set in authority; that all things may be so ordered and settled by their endeavours upon the best and surest foundations, that peace and happiness, truth and justice, religion and piety, may be established among us for all generations; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

* Here shall be named, as determined by authority from time to time, the several members of the Royal Family.

Or there may be said the prayer For the Queen, For the Royal Family, or For the Commonwealth: Prayers and Thanksgivings, 21, 22, 23, pages 48 and 49.

A Prayer for the Clergy and People.

ALMIGHTY and everlasting God, from whom cometh every good and perfect gift: Send down upon our Bishops and Clergy, and all Congregations committed to their charge, the healthful Spirit of thy grace; and that they may truly please thee, pour upon them the continual dew of thy blessing. Grant this, O Lord, for the honour of our Advocate and Mediator, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Then may be read any of the Occasional Prayers or Thanksgivings, or any prayers sanctioned by the Ordinary, always ending with the Prayer of St Chrysostom and the Grace; and before any of the prayers may be said Let us pray for —, and before any of the thanksgivings, Let us give thanks for —.

A Prayer for all Conditions of men.

* This to be said when any desire the Prayers of the Congregation.

O GOD, the Creator and Preserver of all mankind, we humbly beseech thee for all sorts and conditions of men; that thou wouldest be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, thy saving health unto all nations. More especially we pray for the good estate of the Catholic Church; that it may be so guided and governed by thy good Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the bond of peace, and in righteousness of life. Finally we commend to thy fatherly goodness all those, who are any ways afflicted or distressed in mind, body, or estate; [* especially those for whom our prayers are desired;] that it may please thee to comfort and relieve them, according to their several necessities, giving them patience under their sufferings, and a happy issue out of all their afflictions. And this we beg for Jesus Christ his sake. Amen.

A General Thanksgiving, to be said by the Minister alone, or by the Minister and people together.

* This to be said when any that have been prayed for desire to return thanks.

ALMIGHTY God, Father of all mercies, We thine unworthy servants do give thee most humble and hearty thanks For all thy goodness and loving-kindness To us and to all men; [* particularly to those who desire now to offer up their praises and thanksgivings.] We bless thee for our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life; But above all for thine inestimable love In the redemption of the world by our Lord Jesus Christ; For the means of grace, And for the hope of glory. And we beseech thee, give us that due sense of all thy mercies, That our hearts may be unfeignedly thankful, And that we show forth thy praise, Not only with our lips, but in our lives; By giving up ourselves to thy service, And by walking before thee in holiness and righteousness all our days; Through Jesus Christ our Lord, To whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen.

A Prayer of Saint Chrysostom.

ALMIGHTY God, who hast given us grace at this time with one accord to make our common supplications unto thee; and dost promise that when two or three are gathered together in thy Name thou wilt grant their requests: Fulfil now, O Lord, the desires and petitions of thy servants, as may be most expedient for them; granting us in this world knowledge of thy truth, and in the world to come life everlasting. Amen.

2 Corinthians 13:14.

THE grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Ghost, be with us all evermore. Amen.

Interesting stats about Catholic votes for Obama

In 2004, white traditional Catholics went 78% for the Republican, George
Bush, and 22% for Democrat John Kerry, according to a survey by Prof. John Green
of University of Akron. In 2008, they went 61%-39% for John McCain over Barack
Obama. That represents an amazing 17 point improvement for the Democrat.
(A
"traditional Catholic," according to Prof. Green's methodology, is one who is
more likely than average to attend mass, pray, and read scripture; more likely
to believe in God, the afterlife, scripture and the devil; and more likely to
say religion is very important in their lives.)
How did a pro-choice, pro-gay
rights, Protestant make such inroads? Prof. Green suggests that the first reason
is the economy. These traditional Catholics voted for Obama despite his liberal views on social
issues.

Trouble for the Catholic Church in the U.S.

A proposal to require all hospitals to perform abortions, or lose their
state license would put Catholic hospitals out of business.

Major funding cuts for Catholic schools by Gov. David Paterson, who
continues to force the parochial schools to run state-mandated programs at their
own expense.

An effort by Democratic lawmakers to abolish the statute of limitations
on sex abuse lawsuits against the Church, allowing people to sue over
decades-old cases in which the alleged perpetrators are dead.

The proposed sex-abuse law applies only to private institutions such as the
Church and the Boy Scouts. Public schools are exempt. Yet sex abuse is more
common in public schools than in private institutions.

"The physical sexual abuse of students in schools is likely more than 100
times the abuse by priests”, concluded a 2002 study by Hofstra University
scholar Charol Shakeshaft. It estimated that 6 to 10 percent of U.S. public
school students had been sexually abused by teachers and school employees.

An Associated Press investigation found that 485 “moral misconduct” charges
were brought against New York State teachers between 2001 and 2005, most
involving sex.

Krauthammer on the Obama budget

The "day of reckoning" has now arrived. And because "it is only by understanding how we arrived at this moment that we'll be able to lift ourselves out of this predicament," Obama has come to redeem us with his far-seeing program of universal, heavily nationalized health care; a cap-and-trade tax on energy; and a major federalization of education with universal access to college as the goal.
Amazing. As an explanation of our current economic difficulties, this is total fantasy. As a cure for rapidly growing joblessness, a massive destruction of wealth, a deepening worldwide recession, this is perhaps the greatest non sequitur ever foisted upon the American people.

snip

The markets' recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions -- the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic -- for enacting his "Big Bang" agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.
Clever politics, but intellectually dishonest to the core. Health, education and energy -- worthy and weighty as they may be -- are not the cause of our financial collapse. And they are not the cure. The fraudulent claim that they are both cause and cure is the rhetorical device by which an ambitious president intends to enact the most radical agenda of social transformation seen in our lifetime.
Read it all.

Morning Prayer, March 6, 2009