Month: October 2007

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This day, 490 years ago…

After serious deliberation, without consulting any of his colleagues or friends, but following an irresistible impulse, Luther resolved upon a public act of unforeseen consequences…

He wished to elicit the truth about the burning question of indulgences, which he himself professed not fully to understand at the time, and which yet was closely connected with the peace of conscience and eternal salvation. He chose the orderly and usual way of a learned academic disputation.

Accordingly, on the memorable thirty-first day of October, 1517, which has ever since been celebrated in Protestant Germany as the birthday of the Reformation, at twelve o’clock he affixed (either himself or through another) to the doors of the castle-church at Wittenberg, ninety-five Latin Theses on the subject of indulgences, and invited a public discussion.

Happy Reformation Day!

Sola Gratia
Sola Fide
Sola Christus
Sola Scriptura
Sola Deo Gloria!

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More (Re)Education

If a school decided in early January to “belatedly mark Christmas,” and ordered students and faculty to dress up and produce a Nativity play, you’d hear the howls of protest all the way the moon. So why is this OK?

Teachers at a primary school have been ordered to dress up as Muslims to promote multi-culturalism.

The West Midlands school is belatedly celebrating the Muslim festival of Eid and told its pupils and teachers to don traditional Muslim dress for the day.

A morning assembly was held to mark the event and an afternoon party was strictly for women only, because Muslim husbands object to wives mixing with other men.

Sally Bloomer, head of Rufford primary school in Lye, West Midlands, told The Sun: “I have not heard of any complaints. It’s all part of a diversity project to promote multi-culturalism.”

But a relative of one of the staff reportedly said: “Who would put their job on the line? They have been told they have to embrace the day to show their diversity. But they are not all happy.”

Amazing how religious and cultural influence is considered threatening when it’s based on Western, Christian ideas, but enlightening from every other source. Well, nature does abhor a vacuum, so the more we throw our own heritage out…

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Higher (Re)Education

Thus ends the so-called Age of Reason — at the hands of radical reeducation, not religion:

Philosopher Richard Rorty argued that secular professors in the universities ought “to arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own.” Rorty noted that students are fortunate to find themselves under the control “of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.” Indeed, parents who send their children to college should recognize that as professors “we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable.”

This is how many secular teachers treat the traditional beliefs of students. The strategy is not to argue with religious views or to prove them wrong. Rather, it is to subject them to such scorn that they are pushed outside the bounds of acceptable debate.

This this is hyperbole? Think again:

The University of Delaware subjects students in its residence halls to a shocking program of ideological reeducation that is referred to in the university’s own materials as a “treatment” for students’ incorrect attitudes and beliefs. The Orwellian program requires the approximately 7,000 students in Delaware’s residence halls to adopt highly specific university-approved views on issues ranging from politics to race, sexuality, sociology, moral philosophy, and environmentalism…

Students living in the university’s eight housing complexes are required to attend training sessions, floor meetings, and one-on-one meetings with their Resident Assistants (RAs). The RAs who facilitate these meetings have received their own intensive training from the university, including a “diversity facilitation training” session at which RAs were taught, among other things, that “[a] racist is one who is both privileged and socialized on the basis of race by a white supremacist (racist) system. The term applies to all white people (i.e., people of European descent) living in the United States, regardless of class, gender, religion, culture or sexuality.”

The university suggests that at one-on-one sessions with students, RAs should ask intrusive personal questions such as “When did you discover your sexual identity?” Students who express discomfort with this type of questioning often meet with disapproval from their RAs, who write reports on these one-on-one sessions and deliver these reports to their superiors. One student identified in a write-up as an RA’s “worst” one-on-one session was a young woman who stated that she was tired of having “diversity shoved down her throat.”

As Dinesh D’Souza concludes:

Parents invest a good portion of their life savings in college education and entrust their offspring to people who are supposed to educate them. Isn’t it wonderful that educators have figured out a way to make parents the instruments of their own undoing? Isn’t it brilliant that they have persuaded Christian moms and dads to finance the destruction of their own beliefs and values?

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Wanted: nonlethal heroes

From Charlie Reese:

Recently on my favorite television channel, Turner Classic Movies, I saw a couple of old biopics. One was about French chemist Louis Pasteur, and the other was about Paul Ehrlich, a German scientist.

They reminded me of how poisoned our culture has become. Hollywood’s idea of heroes today are soldiers, cops, psychopaths or comic-book fantasy characters – – all essentially killers. Yet Pasteur and Ehrlich did more for the human race and saved more lives than all the generals who have ever been born…

My point is that surely America’s massive entertainment industry could find some heroes who are benefiting human beings instead of killing them. Granted, it will require some creative people to make a film exciting without special effects, armies of stuntmen and gallons of fake blood.

Paul Muni, the actor who played Pasteur, said the greatest compliment he received was not the Academy Award but when a mother told him that after seeing the movie, her son asked for a microscope. That’s a heck of a lot better than a kid asking for a gun or a sword.

If we listen to a steady siren song of hopeless, nihilistic violence, we shouldn’t be surprised to find that world leaping off the silver screen. As mentioned Sunday, you become what you focus on.

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Hair we go…

I think a genetic milestone has been tripped. Just in time for his 13th birthday, the oldest Musketeer has wanted to “spike” his hair for weeks now. (“Spike” for him just means make it stand up on top — he knows Dad isn’t about to let him look like a complete punk…)

The Middle Musketeer jumped on the bandwagon as we started figuring out if a flattop would work for son number one. Oddly enough, the flattop looks better on the 10 year old. Must be that red hair he got from Mom.

You can imagine their barber’s excitement with all this experimentation. (That would be me… I cut all three boys’ hair…)

But ya gotta pick and choose your battles. Within reason, conceding a battle here and there can help you win the larger campaign… and raising boys in today’s world is a marathon, not a sprint. At least they’re not singing “this is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius.” Should THAT ever happen, the heavy guns will come out quick!

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Convenience, not principle

For all the protestations of patriotism and public service, the vast majority of our national leaders are less interested in principle than they are political pragmatism. Consider:

Exhibit A: Campaign contributions tend to follow political success, since people want to back winners in the hope of gaining access and influence. So when the Republicans were ascendant after 1994, Democrats decried the influence of their large campaign contributers.

Listen to the crickets chirp now:

Hillary Clinton’s campaign for president is a bigger business than the city of Charleston (WV). As of Sept. 30, she had hired 697 people, and raised just slightly less than $80 million. Charleston’s budget is less than $70 million.

It takes a village…

By comparison, Republicans are paupers, unable as a group of 10 to raise $80 million combined.

This year, the left is stone cold silent on the “negatives” of big money “buying” elections. I guess when billionaires such as George Soros are signing big checks to groups like MoveOn, you kick campaign finance “reform” to the curb.

Exhibit B: The same people who would shout down presenters with whom they disagree would also love to regulate or ban speech on the public airwaves that is injurious to their pet causes. Seems to me supporting the First Amendment should be a slam dunk. But then, I’m not a triangulating politician…

…the Fairness Doctrine has always had fans in the corridors of power because it gave incumbents a way of muzzling their opponents. The Kennedy administration used it as a political weapon. Bill Ruder, Kennedy’s assistant secretary of commerce, explained: “Our strategy was to use the Fairness Doctrine to challenge and harass right-wing broadcasters and hope that the challenges would be so costly to them that they would be inhibited and decide it was too expensive to continue.” The Nixon administration similarly used the doctrine to torment left-wing broadcasters.

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Nothing hallow about it

“Only two more scaring days ’till Halloween!”

I’m surprised I haven’t heard that slogan yet. In many respects, Halloween has become the gravitational twin of Christmas in our culture. The fall event draws retail sales second only to that of the now-known-as-Winter-Holiday. People spend their hard-earned dollars on everything from fake spider webbing to costumes that in some cases should draw a mandatory psych evaluation.

I no longer care about the religious roots of the day, or the innocent manner in which most people partake of what they see as harmless fun. Despite its name, the modern Halloween has nothing hallow about it. It’s about as close to the antithesis of a holiday (derived from “holy day“) one could get. The ultimate focus of the day is fear, evil and death, easily confirmed by a quick review of trailers for Hollywood releases this time of year. At a time when there’s plenty of real evil and death at loose in the world, it seems rather silly to engage one’s imagination in more of it. You become what you dwell upon. Maybe those increasing retail sales over the last decade or two are related to the unease we feel about the direction of our world. Just a thought.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. Philippians 4:8

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The next "Man from Hope"

I was pleasantly surprised to see Joe Carter of Evangelical Outpost withdraw his endorsement of Fred Thompson, having seen him to be the empty suit conservative pretender he is. And yet, Joe went on a couple days later to throw his support behind Mike Huckabee.

I can understand — from a Christian perspective, Huckabee says many appealing things. But then, so did George W. in 2000, and he’s been an unmitigated disaster not only for Christian voters and the reputation of Christ’s church, but for anyone who believes in federalism (“No Child Left Behind”) and minimal government.

As the primaries shape up, I predict more evangelicals will line up behind Huckabee because he has the “right” positions on abortion (pro-life), marriage (pro-constitutional amendment) and so forth. But his campaign has enough echoes of Bush’s “compassionate conservative” mantra to give me pause. Bush turned out to be neither, waging optional wars abroad (Iraq) while vastly increasing government at home (Patriot Act, Medicare drug benefits, etc).

Huckabee rightly emphasizes personal responsibility for one’s own health–but still increased state health benefit programs in Arkansas (“for the children,” naturally). I suspect that’s an indicator he, too, would increase Federal meddling in this area. I believe the only way health care costs will ever get under control is to reduce government regulation and subsidy-by-insurance, and force people to pay-as-you-go so they learn the true costs of unhealthy lifestyle choices. Only one candidate I know of advocates this approach. (Interestingly enough, he’s the only physician in the race…)

The health issue is merely a microcosm of the battle today over the proper role of government. On the one hand are minarchists (I’ll cop to the label) who believe government should concern itself with national defense, enforcement of law and contracts, some areas of public infrastructure, and little else. On the other hand are those who seek government intervention into all the troublesome areas of life, here and abroad… and those, naturally, are legion. They’re also usually emotional (“somebody’s gotta do something!”), meaning the response isn’t well-thought-out.

Any area into which government intrudes becomes a lever of power over the individual, and even the best-intended programs become unintended contraints–or are perverted to abuse. The more we try to address problems as individuals, neighborhoods and communities, and less as “the government,” the freer we will be.

Plenty of Christians try to use government power to “win the culture war.” Not only does this employ the wrong tool, it’s dangerously shortsighted. The restrictions we empower government to place on others today could easily come back to haunt us tomorrow. As Washington said: “Government is not reason. Government is not eloquence. It is force. And, like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.”

Uncle Sam is too big as it is… we need to douse the flames, not throw more logs on the fire in the name of this or that social cause.