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Catholic Online Saints
St. John of the Cross
Feastday: December 14
Born in Spain in 1542, John learned the importance of self-sacrificing love from his parents. His father gave up wealth, status, and comfort when he married a weaver's daughter and was disowned by his noble family. After his father died, his mother kept the destitute family together as they wandered homeless in search of work. These were the examples of sacrifice that John followed with his own great love -- God.
When the family finally found work, John still went hungry in the middle of the wealthiest city in Spain. At fourteen, John took a job caring for hospital patients who suffered from incurable diseases and madness. It was out of this poverty and suffering, that John learned to search for beauty and happiness not in the world, but in God.
After John joined the Carmelite order, Saint Teresa of Avila asked him to help her reform movement. John supported her belief that the order should return to its life of prayer. But many Carmelites felt threatened by this reform, and some members of John's own order kidnapped him. He was locked in a cell six feet by ten feet and beaten three times a week by the monks. There was only one tiny window high up near the ceiling. Yet in that unbearable dark, cold, and desolation, his love and faith were like fire and light. He had nothing left but God -- and God brought John his greatest joys in that tiny cell.
After nine months, John escaped by unscrewing the lock on his door and creeping past the guard. Taking only the mystical poetry he had written in his cell, he climbed out a window using a rope made of stirps of blankets. With no idea where he was, he followed a dog to civilization. He hid from pursuers in a convent infirmary where he read his poetry to the nuns. From then on his life was devoted to sharing and explaining his experience of God's love.
His life of poverty and persecution could have produced a bitter cynic. Instead it gave birth to a compassionate mystic, who lived by the beliefs that "Who has ever seen people persuaded to love God by harshness?" and "Where there is no love, put love -- and you will find love."
John left us many books of practical advice on spiritual growth and prayer that are just as relevant today as they were then. These books include:
Ascent of Mount Carmel
Dark Night of the Soul
and A Spiritual Canticle of the Soul and the Bridegroom Christ
Since joy comes only from God, John believed that someone who seeks happiness in the world is like "a famished person who opens his mouth to satisfy himself with air." He taught that only by breaking the rope of our desires could we fly up to God. Above all, he was concerned for those who suffered dryness or depression in their spiritual life and offered encouragement that God loved them and was leading them deeper into faith.
"What more do you want, o soul! And what else do you search for outside, when within yourself you possess your riches, delights, satisfaction and kingdom -- your beloved whom you desire and seek? Desire him there, adore him there. Do not go in pursuit of him outside yourself. You will only become distracted and you won't find him, or enjoy him more than by seeking him within you." -- Saint John of the Cross
In His Footsteps:
John of the Cross believed it was just as dangerous to get attached to spiritual delights as worldly pleasures. Do you expect to get something -- a good feeling, a sense of God -- from prayer or worship? Do you continue to pray and worship when you feel alone or dry?
Prayer:
Saint John of the Cross, in the darkness of your worst moments, when you were alone and persecuted, you found God. Help me to have faith that God is there especially in the times when God seems absent and far away. Amen
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The days are coming--they are here now--when practicing Christians and devout Orthodox Jews will be persecuted for their faith in the West by a secularist society. A society, by the way, which itself will eventually fail due to its innate degeneracy. These are the days when faith will be tried. Let us place our faith in the Lord and maintain our composure and love. God bless and keep you.
--Winston
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Victor Davis Hanson (NRO)
October 31, 2003, 8:40 a.m.
??????Those Jews??????
If only Israel and its supporters would disappear.
There are certain predictable symptoms to watch when a widespread amorality begins to infect a postmodern society: cultural relativism, atheism, socialism, utopian pacifism. Another sign, of course, is fashionable anti-Semitism among the educated, or the idea that some imaginary cabal, or some stealthy agenda ?????? certainly not our own weakness ?????? is conspiring to threaten our good life.
Well apart from the spooky placards (stars of David juxtaposed with swastikas, posters calling for the West Bank to be expanded to "the sea") that we are accustomed to seeing at the marches of the supposedly ethical antiwar movement, we have also heard some examples of Jew-baiting and hissing in the last two weeks that had nothing to do with the old crazies. Indeed, such is the nature of the new anti-Semitism that everyone can now play at it ?????? as long as it is cloaked in third-world chauvinism, progressive thinking, and identity politics.
The latest lunatic rantings from Malaysian prime minister Mahathir Mohamad are nothing new, and we should not be surprised by his mindless blabbering about Jews and his fourth-grade understanding of World War II and the present Middle East. But what was fascinating was the reaction to his madness: silence from the Arab intelligentsia, praise from Middle Eastern leaders ("A brilliant speech," gushed Iran's "president" Mohammad Khatami), and worry from France and Greece about an EU proclamation against the slander. Most American pundits were far more concerned about the private, over-the-top comments of Gen. Boykin than about the public viciousness of a head of state. Paul Krugman, for example, expressed the general mushiness of the Left when he wrote a column trying to put Mahathir Mohamad's hatred in a sympathetic context, something he would never do for a Christian zealot who slurred Muslims.
Much has been written about the usually circumspect Greg Easterbrook's bizarre ranting about "Jewish executives" who profit from Quentin Tarantino's latest bloody production. But, again, the problem is not so much the initial slips and slurs as it is the more calculated and measured "explanation." Easterbrook's mea culpa cited his prior criticism of Mel Gibson, as if the supposed hypocrisy of a devout and public Christian's having trafficked in filmed violence were commensurate with the dealings of two ordinary businessmen who do not publicly embrace religion. Michael Eisner and Harvey Weinstein simply happen to be movie executives, with no stake in producing Jewish movies or public-morality films, but ?????? like most in Hollywood ?????? with a stake in making money from films. That they are Jewish has absolutely no bearing on their purported lack of morality ?????? unless, of course, one seeks to invent some wider pathology, evoking historical paranoia about profiteering, cabals, and "the Jews."
Recently, Joseph Lieberman was hissed by an Arab-American audience in Dearborn, Mich. when he briefly explained Israel's defensive wall in terms not unlike those used by Howard Dean and other candidates. What earned him the special public rebuke not accorded to others was apparently nothing other than being Jewish ?????? the problem was not what he said, but who he was. No real apology followed, and the usually judicious and sober David Broder wrote an interesting column praising the new political acumen of the Arab-American community.
Tony Judt, writing in The New York Review of Books, has published one of the most valuable and revealing articles about the Middle East to appear in the last 20 years. There has always been the suspicion that European intellectuals favored the dismantling of Israel as we know it through the merging of this uniquely democratic and liberal state with West Bank neighbors who have a horrific record of human-rights abuses, autocracy, and mass murder. After all, for all too many Europeans, how else but with the end of present-day Israel will the messy Middle East and its attendant problems ?????? oil, terrorism, anti-Semitism, worries over unassimilated Muslim populations in Europe, anti-Americanism, and postcolonial guilt ?????? become less bothersome? Moreover, who now knows or cares much about what happened to Jews residing under Arab governments ?????? the over half-million or so who, in the last half-century, have been ethnically cleansed from (and sometimes murdered in) Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, and almost every Jewish community in the Arab Middle East?
And what is the value of the only democratic government in a sea of autocracy if its existence butts up against notions of third-world victimhood and causes so much difficulty for the Western intelligentsia? Still, few intellectuals were silly enough to dress up that insane idea under the pretext of a serious argument (an unhinged Vidal, Chomsky, or Said does not count). Judt did, and now he has confirmed what most of us knew for years ?????? namely, that there is an entrenched and ever-bolder school of European thought that favors the de facto elimination of what is now a democratic Jewish state.
What links all these people ?????? a Muslim head of state, a rude crowd in Michigan, an experienced magazine contributor, and a European public intellectual ?????? besides their having articulated a spreading anger against the "Jews"? Perhaps a growing unease with hard questions that won't go away and thus beg for easy, cheap answers.
A Malaysian official and his apologists must realize that gender apartheid, statism, tribalism, and the anti-democratic tendencies of the Middle East cause its poverty and frustration despite a plethora of natural resources (far more impressive assets than the non-petroleum-bearing rocks beneath parched Israel). But why call for introspection when the one-syllable slur "Jews" suffices instead?
And why would an Arab-American audience ?????? itself composed of many who fled the tyranny and economic stagnation of Arab societies for the freedom and opportunity of a liberal United States ?????? wish to hear a reasoned explanation of the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian war when it was so much easier to hiss and moan, especially when mainstream observers would ignore their anti-Semitism and be impressed instead with the cadre of candidates who flock to Michigan?
How do you explain to an audience that Quentin Tarantino appeals both to teens and to empty-headed critics precisely because something is terribly amiss in America, when affluent and leisured suburbanites are drawn to scenes of raw killing as long as it is dressed up with "art" and "meaning"?
How could a Tony Judt write a reasoned and balanced account of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict when to do so would either alienate or bore the literati?
So they all, whether by design or laxity, take the easier way out ?????? especially when slurring "Israel" or "the Jews" involves none of the risks of incurring progressive odium that similarly clumsy attacks against blacks, women, Palestinians, or homosexuals might draw, requires no real thinking, and seems to find an increasingly receptive audience.
You see, in our mixed-up world those Jewish are not a "people of color." And if there really is such a mythical monolithic entity in America as the "Jews," they (much like the Cubans) are not easily stereotyped as impoverished victims needing largesse or condescension, and much less are they eligible under any of the current myriad of rubrics that count for public support. Israel is a successful Western state, not a failed third-world despotism. Against terrible oppression and overt anti-Semitism, the Jewish community here and abroad found success ?????? proof that hard work, character, education, and personal discipline can trump both natural and human adversity. In short, the story of American Jewry and Israel resonates not at all with the heartstrings of a modern therapeutic society, which is quick to show envy for the successful and cheap concern for the struggling.
This fashionable anti-Semitism and anti-Israelism ?????? especially among purported intellectuals of the Left ?????? reveals a deep-seated, scary pathology that is growing geometrically both in and outside the West. For a Europe that is disarmed, plagued by a demographic nightmare of negative population growth and unsustainable entitlements, filled with unassimilated immigrants, and deeply angry about the power and presence of the United States, the Jews and their Israel provide momentary relief on the cheap. So expect that more crazy thoughts of Israel's destruction dressed up as peace plans will be as common as gravestone and synagogue smashing.
For the Muslim world that must confront the power of the patriarch, mullah, tribe, and autocrat if it is ever to share the freedom and prosperity of the rest of the world, the Jews offer a much easier target. So expect even more raving madness as the misery of Islamic society grows and its state-run media hunker down amid widespread unrest. Anticipate, also, more sick posters at C-SPAN broadcast marches, more slips by reasonable writers, and more anti-Israeli denunciations from the "liberals."
These are weird, weird times, and before we win this messy war against Islamic fascism and its sponsors, count on things to get even uglier. Don't expect any reasoned military analysis that puts the post-9/11 destruction of the Taliban and Saddam Hussein's evil regime, along with the liberation of 50 million at the cost of 300 American lives, in any sort of historical context. After all, in the current presidential race, a retired general now caricatures U.S. efforts in Iraq and quotes Al Sharpton.
Do not look for the Islamic community here to acknowledge that the United States, in little over a decade, freed Kuwait, saved most of the Bosnians and Kosovars, tried to feed Somalis, urged the Russians not to kill Chechnyans, belatedly ensured that no longer were Shiites and Kurds to be slaughtered in Iraq, spoke out against Kuwait's ethnic cleansing of a third of a million Palestinians ?????? and now is spending $87 billion to make Iraqis free.
That the Arab world would appreciate billions of dollars in past American aid to Jordan, Egypt, and the Palestinian Authority, or thank America for its help in Kuwait and Kosovo, or be grateful to America for freeing Iraq ?????? all this is about as plausible as the idea that Western Europeans would acknowledge their past salvation from Nazism and Soviet Communism, or be grateful for the role the United States plays to promote democracy in Panama, Haiti, the Balkans, or the Middle East.
No, in this depressing age, the real problem is apparently our support for democratic Israel and all those pesky Jews worldwide, who seem to crop up everywhere as sly war makers, grasping film executives, conspiratorial politicians, and greedy colonialists, and thus make life so difficult for the rest of us.
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There's an Irish song called, "The World Turned Upside Down." I could never have imagined just how nuts human beings could be, not after WWII and the Soviet/Chinese
gulags. Perhaps, Vonnegut was right when he stated that "human beings are too stupid to survice." At least, liberals and militant Moslems.
--Winston
national7000@yahoo.com
St. Patrick's Breastplate PrayerSt. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through the belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness
Of the Creator of Creation.
I arise today
Through the strength of Christ's birth with his baptism,
Through the strength of his crucifixion with his burial,
Through the strength of his resurrection with his ascension,
Through the strength of his descent for the judgment of Doom.
I arise today
Through the strength of the love Cherubim,
In obedience of angels,
In the service of archangels,
In hope of resurrection to meet with reward,
In prayers of patriarchs,
In predictions of prophets,
In preaching of apostles,
In faith of confessors,
In innocence of holy virgins,
In deeds of righteous men.
I arise today
Through the strength of heaven:
Light of sun,
Radiance of moon,
Splendor of fire,
Speed of lightning,
Swiftness of wind,
Depth of sea,
Stability of earth,
Firmness of rock.
I arise today
Through God's strength to pilot me:
God's might to uphold me,
God's wisdom to guide me,
God's eye to look before me,
God's ear to hear me,
God's word to speak for me,
God's hand to guard me,
God's way to lie before me,
God's shield to protect me,
God's host to save me
From snares of devils,
From temptations of vices,
From everyone who shall wish me ill,
Afar and anear,
Alone and in multitude.
I summon today all these powers between me and those evils,
Against every cruel merciless power that may oppose my body and soul,
Against incantations of false prophets,
Against black laws of pagandom
Against false laws of heretics,
Against craft of idolatry,
Against spells of witches and smiths and wizards,
Against every knowledge that corrupts man's body and soul.
Christ to shield me today
Against poison, against burning,
Against drowning, against wounding,
So that there may come to me abundance of reward.
Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,
Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ on my right, Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.
I arise today
Through a mighty strength, the invocation of the Trinity,
Through belief in the threeness,
Through confession of the oneness,
Of the Creator of Creation.
St. Patrick's great prayer in Irish--sometimes called "Saint Patrick's
Breastplate" because it was thought to protect him from hostile powers,
sometimes called "The Deer's Cry" because it was thought to make him
resemble a deer to those seeking to do him harm--cannot definitively be
ascribed to him. Characteristics of its language would assign it to the
seventh, or even to the eighth, century. On the other hand, it is Patrician
to its core, the first ringing assertion that the universe itself is the
Great Sacrament, magically designed by its loving Creator to bless and
succor human beings. The earliest expression of European vernacular poetry,
it is, in attitude, the work of a Christian druid, a man of faith and magic.
If Patrick did not write it (at least in its current form), it surely takes
its inspiration from him. For in its cosmic incantation, the inarticulate
outcast who wept for slaves, aided common men in difficulty, and loved
sunrise and sea at last finds his voice in this prayer.
--Thomas Cahill, How The Irish Saved Civilization, 1995
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In these days that seem, more and more, to resemble the last centuries of Rome--with increasing chaos--let us all remember that Our Lord is ever-present for us.
--Winston
national7000@yahoo.com
From Drudge
Sun in frenzy since 1940, Germans say
Wed Oct 29 2003 10:05:09 ET
German scientists who have created a 1,000-year-record of sunspots said Wednesday they discovered the Sun has been in a frenzy since 1940 and this may be a factor in global warming.
The research, based on the quantities of the isotope beryllium 10 found in ice bores from Greenland and the Antarctic, challenges the belief that carbon dioxide from cars and coal fires and other greenhouse gases are the only cause of recent warmer climates.
The team from the Max Planck Institute for Aeronomy in Germany and Finland's Oulu University discovered a past phase of elevated sunspot activity between 1100 and 1250, though there were far fewer sunspots then than today.
The earth was very warm at that time and Vikings were recorded as farming on Greenland.
A gas cloud from one of the largest flares ever seen on the Sun reached the Earth this week causing a magnetic storm that disrupted radio and radar systems, forcing safety authorities to space out airline traffic. More flares and disruption are expected.
The findings, which are to appear in the December issue of Physical Review Letters, chart sunspots back to the year 850. Sunspots were first observed in the early 17th century after the discovery of the telescope.
Astronomers have made on-again-off-again notes ever since of the spots, where the Sun's surface appears darker because magnetic fields disrupt the outflow of energy from the star's interior. Most of the surface is 5,800 degrees celsius, but a spot is 1,500 degrees colder.
The 11-year cycle of sunspots from strong to weak to strong again is well known to anyone using shortwave radio, but the long-term fluctation was not plain.
The team said the surge of spots and gas flares since 1940 was the greatest in the entire period checked. The activity was 2.5 times the long-term average. Solar activity matched average temperatures on the Earth, they added.
Radioactive beryllium 10 used for the readings comes from cosmic rays bombarding nitrogen and oxygen in the air. The element falls to the ground with rain and snow. Layers are preserved in the ice caps.
Sunspots block cosmic rays from reaching the Earth, meaning less beryllium and increased ultraviolet radiation.
The statement Wednesday noted a much-discussed Danish hypothesis suggesting cosmic radiation helps tiny particles to form in air, increasing cloud formation. Sunspots would thus mean fewer clouds.
Sami K. Solanki, director of the German institute, said the team had discovered a new climate influence, but still believed recent climate change was mainly the result of mankind using more and more fossil fuels.
``Even after our findings, I would say the sharp increase in global temperatures since 1980 can still be mainly attributed to the greenhouse effect arising from carbon dioxide,'' professor Solanki said.
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I remember the winters of the forties and fifties being much warmer. Chicago reached its all-time lows in the earlt eighties. Let's not take out the Parker Pen just yet.
--Winston
national7000@yahoo.com
Group Prepares Legal Challenge to 'Born Gay' Theory
By Lawrence Morahan
CNSNews.com Senior Staff Writer
October 29, 2003
(CNSNews.com) - A coalition representing former homosexuals is developing a legal strategy to litigate on behalf of people who challenge the proposition that individuals are "born gay."
The group also is seeking to promote the idea, particularly among schoolchildren, that people can overcome unwanted homosexual attractions.
Arthur Goldberg, president of Positive Alternatives to Homosexuality and co-director of Jews Offering New Alternatives to Homosexuality, said the coalition intends to stress the concept of diversity, a concept he said homosexual advocacy groups have misrepresented to promote the concept that people can't change.
"We want to make sure that people understand the diversity, that this is an open forum. We want toleration of those who have been able to successfully change and get their rights recognized as real rights," Goldberg said
Dr. Warren Throckmorton, a professor at Grove City College, Pa., and a supporter of the Parents and Friends of Ex-Gays and Gays, or PFOX, said the coalition aims to correctly portray the current state of research concerning sexual orientation.
"There are two broad views about the origins of homosexuality - one being related to environmental factors and one being primarily related to genetic factors," said Throckmorton. "The truth is, the science on the subject is so unclear that we can't really say with certainty that we know what the role of any of those factors are."
Since homosexuality cannot be identified by immutable genetic traits, such as skin or hair color, spokesmen for the coalition said policymakers should be allowed to hear that thousands of people who used to consider themselves homosexuals now are living as heterosexuals.
Coalition members also want to see an end to what they consider reverse discrimination by institutions. Since homosexuality is no longer considered a disorder, neither should recovery from homosexuality be considered a disorder, they said.
Goldberg described so-called ex-gays, who he said are fighting a two-front war, as "the most repressed minority in the world."
"They're fighting an internal battle with their own unfilled emotional needs on the one side, and on the other, they're fighting society, which is telling them to accept it," Goldberg said.
Indeed, institutions that suppress the message could put themselves in legal jeopardy. According to Goldberg, schools and universities that tell questioning individuals homosexuality is genetic may be liable in lawsuits if clients endanger themselves or others by engaging in sex acts on the advice of school counselors or psychologists.
Data show that an individual's environment clearly plays a role in forming sexual attitudes, Throckmorton said. Also, there may be some factors that would be loosely called genetic that influence sexual choice in some way.
"But to say that we have any kind of clarity about the way that would occur is just wrong," Throckmorton said.
The message that homosexuality is determined genetically could give homosexual advocacy organizations more ammunition in calls for special legislation and enactment of hate crimes laws.
Conservative groups said they would use same-sex marriage as an issue to rally voters in the 2004 presidential election.
Mark Mead, a spokesman for the Log Cabin Republicans, a homosexual advocacy group within the GOP, discounted the message that homosexuals can change and claimed telling people they can is not likely to be helpful.
"Most of the people I know who claim to have changed usually end up getting caught in gay bars or in gay relationships. I think that message has been dismissed by most folks with common sense," Mead said.
But Throckmorton said the coalition's primary objective was to reach policymakers, particularly in the field of education, "because so much of what the schools are teaching concerning sexual orientation is really suspicious from a scientific point of view."
Many school authorities have adopted the "born gay - gay gene theory" as fact, ignoring a considerable scientific controversy over that theory, Throckmorton said.
"Not just among evangelicals and secularists, but within the scientific community, there are many people who simply don't accept that the data support that theory," Throckmorton said.
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The "It's not my fault, I was born that way" crowd manipulates shaky research at every turn. They've piggybacked their cause on to civil rights, which in ludicrous beyond contempt.
--Winston6908
national7000@yahoo.com
Title: You Are Strangers No Longer (From: Catholic Exchange)
Author: Monsignor Dennis Clark, Ph.D.
Date: Tuesday, October 28, 2003
Eph 2:19-22 / Lk 6:12-16
Alienation is not a new problem. From the beginning of time, people have found themselves feeling like aliens and strangers, sometimes even in their own land and in their own homes. Attila the Hun had a knack for making the Romans feel like strangers in their own town. Genghis Khan was an expert at turning people into strangers, and so were Hitler and Stalin. Though no one did it to them, our first-generation immigrant ancestors knew the bitter uncertainty of never quite fitting in after they left their homelands and came to America.
The problem of alienation isn't limited just to immigrants and the victims of conquerors. It's a part of many people's lives in every age, and it's a problem now: People feeling like outsiders, feeling alone and disconnected from the mainstream of their own culture, which seems to have gotten up and walked away from them. A sad sense of confusion, futility, and uselessness fills many hearts.
In this complex, rapidly-changing culture of ours, that terrible malaise can afflict any one of us, and it can be crushing if we've lost our compass by letting ourselves get disconnected from Christ. He is the one who speaks for our Father and helps us to remember who we are - not aliens and strangers, but much beloved sons and daughters, and heirs, who have a future that's only begun to unfold.
So stay connected to him, and you'll always remember who you are. Stay connected to him, and you'll never doubt that you have a very special place in God's world.
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The world can often be an alien and isolating place where we feel like "stangers in a strange land". But God is always with us especially through our Lord Jesus, who also was a stranger in his very home. Tonight, let us pray for one another. God bless.
--Winston
national7000@yahoo.com
Jack Kelly
Blame Bush!
http://www.NewsAndOpinion.com | New York Times columnist Paul Krugman has yet to blame President Bush for the Chicago fire and the San Francisco earthquake. But there is still time.
In his column Oct. 21, Krugman defended anti-Semitic remarks by Malaysian Prime Minister Mahatir Mohamad, and blamed Bush for anti-Semitism in the Muslim world.
Mahatir said: "The Europeans killed 6 million Jews out of 12 million. But today the Jews rule this world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."
Krugman downplayed Mahatir's remark as "part of his domestic balancing act."
Mahatir must "insert hateful words into a speech mainly about Muslim reform," Krugman said, because "thanks to its war in Iraq and its unconditional support of Ariel Sharon, Washington has...brought relations with the Muslim world to a new low."
Krugman's day job is teaching economics at Princeton, where he apparently never took a history course. Anti-Semitism has been rife in the Muslim world ever since the Prophet Mohammed himself ordered the extermination of a Jewish tribe, the Banu Qurayza, in Medina in 627. "Kill any Jew who falls into your power," Mohammed told his followers. And it seems to have escaped Krugman's attention that violence between Arabs and Israelis - always initiated by the Arabs - predates the Bush administration.
If Krugman can muster no indignation for Mahatir, he is outraged by LtGen. William Boykin, who, speaking a church in Oklahoma City last year of a Muslim warlord he fought in Somalia in 1993, reportedly said: "I knew that my G-d is a real G-d, and his was an idol."
"By making it clear he sees nothing wrong with giving an important post in the war on terror to someone who believes, and says openly, that Allah is a false idol...Donald Rumsfeld has gone a long way to confirming the Muslim world's worst fears," Krugman said.
Krugman has lots of company in howling for Boykin's head. The Boston Globe's James Carroll said the flap proves Christians ought not to be in positions of power: "The general's offense was to speak aloud the implication of a still broadly held theology," he wrote. "But that theology is dangerous now...In the 21st Century, exclusivist religion, no matter how mainstream and no matter how muted the anathemas that follow from its absolutes, is a sure way to religious war."
What Carroll means is that Christians, like Muslims, believe theirs is the one true faith, and all other religions are false. The difference, over which Carroll, Krugman, et. al. elide, is that Christians do not believe adherents of other faiths should be murdered or enslaved, as a distressingly large number of Muslims do.
Krugman's column and l'affaire Boykin highlight unlovely characteristics of contemporary liberals: pathological hatred of President Bush, and a craven desire to appease our enemies.
Krugman found something nice to say about a flaming anti-Semite because he wanted to say something nasty about George W. Bush.
Boykin's remarks were made public by the Los Angeles Times, which compared them to those of Mahatir. Boykin must go, the Times said, because Muslims might be offended by his views. But Muslims would be unaware of his views if the LA Times hadn't publicized (and apparently distorted) them.
Krugman, Carroll et. al. believe that if we abandon Iraq; prevent Israel from defending itself from Palestinian terror, and muzzle anybody who says anything Muslims might deem offensive, then radical Muslims will stop hijacking airliners and flying them into our buildings. If Islamists hate us, it has to be our fault.
But those who murder women and children are evil, and it is important to call them by their right name. They are less likely to be deterred by craven words of appeasement from the likes of Paul Krugman than by a bullet in the brain from the likes of William Boykin.
Liberals should ponder why it is Bush is hated so by hateful people like Saddam Hussein, Kim Jong Il, Yasir Arafat and Fidel Castro, and what it says about liberals that they have more good things to say about murderous dictators than they do about their own president.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in Washington and in the media consider "must reading." Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
JWR contributor Jack Kelly, a former Marine and Green Beret, was a deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. Comment by clicking here.
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We are commanded to love our enemies as individual human beings not as a pernicious force of a vile ideology. Please, no John Lennon lyrics or quotes from St. Paul. The former is psycho-babble; the latter has to do with love between persons as such and not political movements.
--national7000@yahoo.com
The Hate-Religion Party
By Lowell Ponte
FrontPageMagazine.com | October 27, 2003
PONTEFICATIONS
THE MOST IMPORTANT RELIGIOUS HOLIDAY celebrated in our public schools happens this Friday. It is neither Christmas nor Passover, both effectively banished from government institutions in the name of the ???Separation of Church and State.???
But this one religious holiday of Europe???s pagan witchcraft religions, Halloween, is honored with extensive ritual artwork, free sweets and widespread approval in our socialist schools. This religious holiday seems mysteriously exempt from criticism or attack by the American Civil Liberties Union.
America, according to the ACLU, is a ???secular country??? in which the government equally protects the rights of all religions but does not use its power or expenditures to promote any one of them. This, of course, is not what is happening.
The Culture War is also a religious war, and leftists are using government to promote and advance their own cults ??? from the pseudo-science called Marxism to a host of pagan and anti-Judeo-Christian movements ??? to alter America???s culture.
The two dominant political parties, Republican and Democrat, each attract a wide variety of supporters. But they too, researchers have found, tend to divide not only ideologically but also along religious lines. This has gone far beyond past tendencies for Roman Catholics and Jews to vote Democratic, two old patterns now reversing as members of both groups vote increasingly Republican with each election.
Among rank and file voters, a Harris Poll reported last February 26, nine percent fewer Democrats than Republicans believe in heaven, 17 percent fewer in the existence of the devil and 19 percent fewer in Hell.
But when it came to New Age beliefs apart from the Jewish and Christian faiths, 12 percent more Democrats believe in ghosts, 13 percent more in reincarnation and 21 percent more in astrology.
Self-identified independents in this poll tended to share the less Judeo-Christian, more pagan beliefs of Democrats except about astrology, on which independents??? views were midway between superstitious Democrats and more skeptical Republicans.
The Harris Poll also sifted this data into three racial-ethnic categories and reported that blacks held the strongest belief in Hell and the devil, while Hispanics had the strongest belief in ghosts and reincarnation.
But among the ruling elite that controls the Democratic Party, the rejection of God and indeed all religious belief is dramatic. At the 1992 Democratic National Convention that nominated Bill Clinton its candidate for President, ???60 percent of first-time white delegates???either claimed no attachment to religion or displayed the minimal attachment by attending worship services ???a few times a year??? or less.??? Thus write Louis Bolce and Gerald De Maio, Political Science professors at Baruch College, City University of New York.
These secular values are reflected in leftist Democratic positions on a host of issues, they observe, from abortion to education to sexual mores. And they are reflected in both fear of and active hostility towards evangelical Christians, one of whom is President George W. Bush.
???If the GOP can be labeled the party of religious conservatives,??? wrote Professors Bolce and De Maio in the journal The Public Interest, ???the Democrats, with equal validity, can be called the secularist party.???
But when these scholars compared coverage of such issues in the New York Times and Washington Post, they were struck by the almost complete absence, the ???paucity of news stories and commentaries that identify secularists or the secularist outlook with the Democratic party, particularly when contrasted to the large number of stories and editorials in both papers about the Republican party???s relationship with evangelical and fundamentalist Christians (43 and 682 stories respectively).???
In this area as in others, those controlling the news media share the ruling Democratic mindset. Robert Lichter and his associates in their study The Media Elite identified one of the prime characteristics of this elite as ???its secular outlook.???
This can be evident even when not declared, note Bolce and De Maio. ???People for the American Way, for example,??? they write, ???is most often characterized in press accounts as a civil liberties and civil rights group, rarely as a secularist organization. But a visit to the organization???s website shows that its culture agenda is the mirror opposite of the Christian Coalition???s.???
In his fine book Persecution: How Liberals Are Waging War Against Christianity, David Limbaugh lays out a lawyerly case showing that the Left is systematically trying to purge Christianity and religious Judaism from public schools and everyplace else in the public square.
The leftist aim is not to leave those schools and young minds devoid of faith. It is to erase all beliefs that contradict the secular humanist values of the Left, a rival religion. Humanism, as the ultimate standard of our language defines it, can be called ???the religion of man,??? a faith in which ???man is the measure of all things,??? in which humankind becomes God.
More than a century ago, when the new white-robed priesthood of science began challenging the literal statements of the Bible, those who lost their old faiths were easily seduced by new ones. Foremost of these pseudo-scientific cults was Marxism, which claimed to be scientific in its methods, to have deep understanding of invisible forces controlling history, and to be able to usher in a heaven on earth and the emergence of the ???crystal man??? evolved beyond greed, war and individuality.
The religious wars, tortures and concentration camps unleashed by socialism and this cult of Marxism ??? now discredited by its failed predictions and disastrous tests in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere ??? have thus far murdered more than 100,000,000 human beings, arguably causing more bloodshed and horror in a shorter time than all the other religions of world history combined.
But even as the Soviet Union was unraveling, secular leftists were emerging ???as a political force within a major party at the 1972 Democratic National Convention??? that would nominate Senator George McGovern, write Bolce and De Maio. About a third of its white delegates were secularists, while only about five percent of America???s population could be so described.
(Only five percent of first-time white Republican convention delegates in 1972, as in 2000, fit the working definition as ???secularists,??? but another 67 percent of GOP delegates were religious and attended services at least once each month.)
In the 2000 national election, write Bolce and De Maio, about 16 percent of America???s electorate was defined as ???secularist,??? roughly the same percentage as union members. Two-thirds of these secularists cast their votes for Democratic candidate Al Gore.
Akin to these secular voters, note Bolce and De Maio, are those identified by the American National Election Study (ANES) of the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan as ???anti-fundamentalist.???
This group, ANES found, is generally made up of ???secularists, the highly educated, particularly those living in big cities, and persons who strongly favor legalized abortion and gay rights, oppose prayer in schools, and who, ironically, ???strongly agree??? that one should be tolerant of persons whose moral standards are different from one???s own.???
???Over a quarter of Clinton???s white supporters in 1992 said that they intensely disliked Christian fundamentalists,??? write Bolce and De Maio. ???In both 1996 and 2000, about a third of the total white Democratic presidential vote came from persons with these sentiments.???
???Just as the Republican Party has labored under the charge of being ???hijacked??? by fundamentalists,??? write Bolce and De Maio, ???so too could the Democrats in equal fairness be tagged as the party sympathetic to irreligionists, a group that historically has been viewed more negatively than moralistic evangelicals.??? Indeed, a March 2002, Pew Research Center for the People national poll found that more than half of respondents expressed unfavorable feelings towards ???nonbelievers,??? almost double the number unfavorably inclined towards the ???Christian conservative movement.???
And this may explain why Left-of-center newspapers such as the New York Times and Washington Post are quick to identify the GOP with the Religious Right ??? but slow to label their ideological soulless-mates the Democrats with the Pagan, Humanist or Godless Left.
???To portray secularists as ideologically distinct and as aggressive political actors,??? write Bolce and De Maio, ???would be to shift the landscape dramatically. It might serve to legitimize the political involvement of religious traditionalists, and it might also have negative consequences for journalists??? favored groups and causes.???
And make no mistake, Democratic leftists are aggressive. As First Lady, Hillary Clinton tried to force a new regulation on the EEOC, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, that would have made it a crime for any employer to engage in ???religious harassment.??? What is such harassment? Perhaps something as simple as a manager wearing a yarmulke or a cross, or having a Bible on her desk, or inviting an office friend to attend a Bible study session.
Hillary Clinton purportedly also urged the U.S. Postal Service to end the traditional Madonna and Child stamp issued each Christmastime. And Hillary, according to one FBI agent who worked in the Clinton White House, decorated her own upstairs Christmas tree with sex and drug paraphernalia such as hypodermic needles, sex toys and condoms in a way presumably intended to mock Christianity. Such are the people now in control of the Democratic Party.
That party???s founder Thomas Jefferson did write in a private letter that he favored separation of church and state. But Jefferson also wanted the state to remain very, very small and to keep it confined to a distant corner of the public square. When Leftists such as Senator Clinton (D.-N.Y.) use his phrase today, they do so as socialists who want the government occupying every inch of the public square and every aspect of citizen lives. If the church and synagogue must be separate from this Leviathan, then they will be driven out of the public square entirely.
Bill Clinton, who won the presidency with a sizeable secular vote, was quick to order the Internal Revenue Service to withdraw its tax exemption from a small church in Valhalla, New York, that had dared to criticize his morals publicly as a threat to other believers. (But Clinton and other Democrats continued to give campaign speeches and even take up political collections in African-American churches.) President Clinton also ordered the military to introduce pagan Wiccan chaplains into our armed forces.
Such are the tricks and treats that Americans should take note of this Halloween as their children in public schools are encouraged to celebrate a pagan religious holiday in taxpayer-supported buildings where Judaism and Christianity have been banished.
In some of these schools Muslim children are allowed openly to pray five times daily while Jewish and Christian children are forbidden. Science classes violate separation of church and state by teaching, in effect, that a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis is wrong.
Some public schoolchildren are taught to think of Mother Earth (the Greek pagan goddess Gaia) as one living Being, and that individuality, capitalism and private property inherently violate this ecological oneness. Moral values are taught to students, coerced to attend such classes, which violate their parents??? deepest religious values and beliefs. And the Canadian Government is about to rule in this clash of cultures that the Bible is ???hate literature??? because of who and what this Politically Incorrect and hence-no-longer-Good Book condemns.
Who do you think appointed the leftist judges to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals who ordered the removal of the words ???under God??? from the Pledge of Allegiance in these schools, a case now being decided by the U.S. Supreme Court? Do they believe that leftist politics is ???above God,??? that God is dead? How much longer can we be ???One Nation Under God??? with one of our two major political parties??? leaders moving away from God?
Could it be that we now have three major political parties in the United States ??? the Republican Party, the waning Democratic Party and its evil usurper the Demoncratic Party, whose adherents literally want America to jettison its traditional allegiance to a Judeo-Christian Deity, being ruled de facto by the minions of hell, demons? If you prefer, call it the Halloween Party. But can this be true when secularists and pagans tell pollsters that they do not even believe in hell or in the devil?
What these secularists apparently do believe in is acquiring political power, by trick or treat, over you and your children. What would happen to America if and when they do?
Most individual Democrats are still religious, moral, God-fearing people. When are they going to demand that these secular elites who have taken over this political party give it back ??? and then go to Hell?
---------------------------------------
--Winston
national7000@yahoo.com
We are warned to be either hot or cold and not tepid!
Yes, we are at a point in our nation when we have become two irreconcilable camps. Many of our college campuses are goose-stepping to the drums of Marcuse, while we have ugly, personal attacks on the President fom the likes of Ted Kennedy. Now, CBS has created a vicious, fictionalized mini-series on Ronald Reagan, who is slowly dying from Alzeimer's. Civil discourse needs to address the looming dangers that face our nation. And there is a distinct possibility of internal terrorism (which is already a main action of the so-called "animal rights" movement). To bury your head in the sand of total politeness is suicidal.
The world is rapidly and dangerously changing...and, yes, what will come will be quite "uncivil" like it or not. The irony is only in the blind stupidity of those who deny it.
--Winston
national7000@yahoo.com
Xtreme Politics (Wall Street Journal)
You're not a voter, just a spectator.
BY DANIEL HENNINGER
Friday, October 24, 2003 12:01 a.m. EDT
If there is one remark that a tourist through the political life of the United States hears constantly--from political professionals to amateur enthusiasts--it is that our politics has never seemed more polarized. How did that happen? Perhaps a culture that could devise Xtreme Sports deserves an Xtreme Politics in which "issues" such as abortion, gay marriage and judicial nominations become not just politics, but death-struggles. It wasn't meant to be this way.
Many Europeans abandoned their birthplace centuries ago to risk life in America precisely because they had tired of the culture wars back home--of living in places where religious and social disagreements got settled by people overcome with a compulsion to smash and erase their opponents.
The men who made the American Constitution understood that nothing in the pristine vapors of their nation was so special or unique as to ensure that Jack would never despise the opinions of Tom--and more than anything would like to shut Tom up, for starters. It is clear in the Federalist Papers that the Founders, above all, tried to reduce the destruction often done to civil life by political factions. I don't know that James Madison is spinning in his grave over the factionalism washing through U.S. politics, but surely he is heaving heavy sighs.
This week President Bush said he would sign into law an act banning partial-birth abortion, which the Senate enacted the day before by a vote of 64-34, enough to override a filibuster. The American Civil Liberties Union said it would go to court, on behalf of the National Abortion Federation, to thwart the new law. The ACLU noted it has convinced courts to overturn such bans voted by legislatures in Alaska, Idaho, Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Montana, New Jersey and Rhode Island. These bans are favored by a wide range of religious groups--Catholics, evangelical Christians and Orthodox Jews. An alarmed Tom Harkin blew his bugle to call the troops onto the battlefield opened 30 years ago by Roe v. Wade: "I say to the women of America: This is step one."
It was a good week for Xtreme Politics. We had as well the case of Lt. Gen. Jerry Boykin, who while in uniform and inside a church, said that the U.S. in the Middle East is fighting a "spiritual enemy" by the name of "Satan." It seems to me that Gen. Boykin's "Satan" is synonymous with "evil," the word the president himself most often uses to describe terrorism. Indeed, many of the same people who were made uncomfortable when George W. Bush described an "axis of evil" are now demanding that Gen. Boykin be fired from his job at the Pentagon because his remarks are insulting to Islam and "racist."
Only in an era of Xtreme Politics would the default option be that Gen. Boykin must be obliterated from public life. Gen. Boykin is a highly decorated soldier, meaning that he repeatedly has put his life in harm's way for his country--in the 1980 attempt to rescue U.S. hostages in Iran, hunting for drug lord Pablo Escobar, and amid the bloody battle of Mogadishu in 1993.
In a political world less overdosed on emotional steroids, people would cut Gen. Boykin some slack, allowing the Pentagon to suggest that he go easy on the fire and brimstone in public. Life then goes on. Islam survives. But no, the story, like a helium-filled balloon at a child's birthday, has floated for days through the news, even aboard Air Force One over Australia, where an intimidated George Bush finally gave the press mob what it wanted: a thumbs-down rebuke of Jerry Boykin.
Last week in this column, I reported that a recent analysis, largely using data collected by the University of Michigan's Center for Political Studies, suggested that the membership of the Democratic Party was increasingly secular, while the GOP is attracting evangelical Christians. The e-mail I received is no doubt similar to what Gen. Boykin has been getting. "A piece of rubbish." "I'm afraid of the 'religious right' because I don't want my daughter's body to become the property of the state the next time she becomes pregnant."
In some ways, America may now be closer to the England of the Stuarts, rife with religious and political animosity, than to the intentions at Philadelphia in 1789. If not, it is sliding toward reflexive strife.
I agree with the argument that this war of the cultures dates to the Supreme Court's Roe v. Wade decision of 1973. The history of the cultural tensions that came afterward is familiar to everyone, even people merely upset at "what's gone wrong with the country."
Beneath this history lies another argument, with which I agree, that the country's judges the past 30 years have made much law touching people's deepest beliefs about the ordering of public and private life, which previously was the first responsibility of elected legislatures. So internalized has the courts' legislative primacy become that seminars are now held to argue whether liberal or conservative judges are the more activist.
This may be the moment to put the courts and the culture at the center of a presidential campaign. Mr. Bush, now unable to get judges confirmed for reasons of cultural superstition, should make the case for returning the culture to legislative politics, and then make his Democratic opponent reply.
I think many people who don't get paid for waging politics are becoming quite frustrated with dysfunctional legislatures that are now polarized--as in Congress or in California--essentially along the cultural faultlines created by 30 years of allowing judges to pre-empt the broader community's ability to discover, or re-examine, its social beliefs. These legislators have become little more than clerks to judges and the complainants in their courts--the law as not much more than a brief. When this happens, citizens lose their status as voters or electors and become mere courtroom spectators. How can this be good?
Continuing to use the courts in this way--the ACLU boasting it will get a court to overthrow a law passed by Congress or any legislature--and then demanding that large portions of American society simply shut up and swallow it is a recipe for a kind of war much more serious than the mere chattering crossfire of talk shows.
Mr. Henninger is deputy editor of The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. His column appears Fridays in the Journal and on OpinionJournal.com.
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