The Parable of the Pharisee and the Republican

As my mind tossed over and over the sad and sordid saga of how a certain Evangelical school recently failed the basic test of Middle Eastern hospitality toward a certain former high office holder by apparently yanking his breakfast at the last moment and the implications thereof for our little community, and seeking to discern the inscrutable ways of Providence, I instinctively reached for the paraphrase of Scripture that was not composed by Eugene Peterson, the one that I so often find comforting during such travails of the soul and read as follows.

The Parable of the Pharisee and the Republican

Luke 18:9-14

(Unrevised Politically Incorrect Version)

[9] He told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous, and treated others with contempt. [10] Two men, er . . . that is, two non-gender specific persons, went up into the temple to pray, one a pharisee and the other a republican.[1] [11] The Pharisee standing by himself, prayed thus: God I thank you that I am not like other non-gender specific persons: Southern-dwelling, Bible-thumping, gun-toting, flag-waving, Republican-voting, war-mongering toothless hillbillies and bitter clingers. [12] I recycle twice in the week; I write countless letters asking the government to raise taxes and increase universal entitlement programs. [13] But the republican, standing far off, would not even lift his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God be merciful to me a sinner!’ [14] I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.

---

[1] Some versions say “Tax Collector” but this is clearly an impossible reading. I mean - a Republican collecting taxes? Really now!

Columbia University Welcomes the Man Who Would Finish Hitler's Work

A student asked me if there is anybody I would want to see banned from speaking at Tyndale or if I think freedom of speech is absolute. My answer was that yes, there are speakers who should be banned from Tyndale.

If students want someone to protest, there are plenty of opportunities.

For example, just the other day I came across this article by Mona Charon, which talks about how Columbia University has "Oops, done it again." It is once again hosting Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he is in town to speak at the United Nations General Assembly.

And some students, at least a few in the student newspaper anyway, are protesting. Good on them. Charon writes in the National Journal:

The Columbia Spectator is the student newspaper at Columbia University, the school I was once proud to call my alma mater. A report in that newspaper raises the following question: Are leading American universities producing moral illiterates?

According to the Spectator, a group of students who are members of a group called CIRCA, the Columbia International Relations Council and Association, has been invited to attend a private dinner with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad when he travels to New York for the United Nations General Assembly meeting next week. A student spokesman for the group, asked if the invitation provoked controversy within CIRCA, seemed surprised by the question. “Everyone was really enthusiastic,” said Tim Chan. “They’re thrilled to have this opportunity.”

Ahmadinejad represents everything that campus liberals profess to hate. In order of importance, those things would be: (1) persecuting homosexuals; (2) cruel and abusive treatment of women; (3) brutal treatment of minorities; (4) shooting opponents of the regime in the streets; (5) restricting free speech; (6) building nuclear weapons; and (7) sponsoring terror worldwide. Tehran provides material and moral support for Bashar Assad’s murderous regime in Syria, which has mowed down protesters by the thousands in the past few months. The Iranian regime is also guilty of fetid anti-Semitism, and has the blood of many American soldiers who served in Iraq on its hands — though it isn’t clear that the latter two offenses rate very highly with Columbia students.

Even as members of CIRCA were eagerly anticipating dining with one of the world’s true fiends, the Iranian government was refusing to release American hikers Shane Bauer and Joshua Fattal, who were recently convicted of espionage after a secret trial and sentenced to eight years in prison. Both Bauer and Fattal are graduates of Berkeley, and believers — if you can extrapolate from their backgrounds in “sustainable development” and freelance photography for leftist outlets like Democracy Now! — in liberal causes. Even if members of CIRCA feel no particular solidarity with the hikers as fellow Americans, they might at least feel something for fellow members of the liberal clerisy. But apparently not.

College students are old enough to be responsible for their own moral decision-making, but the faculty and administration of Columbia University certainly provided an appalling example in 2007 when they invited Ahmadinejad to speak.

It is, shall we say, problematic, that Columbia thinks this Jew-hating, holocaust-denying, anti-Western instrument of a totalitarian theocracy is a lovely dinner guest. Why would they think so? Charon nails it in the final paragraphs of her article:

Something is inoculating Ahmadinejad from the total contempt members of the university community would ordinarily feel toward someone with his views and his behavior. . . .

My suspicion is that the harshly adversarial pose of the university toward American society and culture leads to a misplaced benefit of the doubt toward enemies of this country. It is Ahmadinejad’s very hatred of the U.S. that makes him intriguing to Columbia.

This is an excellent example of how blind people have become as a result of the anti-Western, anti-Zionism, anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-colonialism, anti-patriarchy, anti-Catholic, anti-Tradition propaganda that almost totally dominates most secular universities today. Just because Muslim fanatics are anti-Western, they are treated as allies by the Left. It is just like Jane Fonda going to Hanoi and calling America evil during the Vietnam War. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

The answer to the student newspaper's question above is: "Yes, leading universities are turning out moral illiterates." Here we see the results. Bow to dictators and haters; attack and ban those who would stand up to them. The problem with Columbia is that George W. Bush would be protested and Ahmadinejad gets a pass. It is the mindset that sees this as normal that I see as the problem. We are talking about radically different worldviews here.

What unites radical Islamists, anarchists, Marxists, radical Feminists etc. is the conviction that Western civilization and Christianity are evil and must be destroyed. You can see it in the sexual revolution, which is an assault on the family. You can see it in the way the Obama administration refuses to hold Islamic extremism accountable. You can see it in the way the Left treats Israel.

As the writer of Ecclesiastes might well have said, "There is a time to protest and a time to keep silent."

9/11 Memorial

George W. Bush gave a speech this afternoon in Shanksville, PA, where Flight 93 crashed on Sept. 11, 2o01. You can watch it here.

It is eloquent, profound and very moving. As one of the comments said, "How refreshing to hear a president talk for 10 minutes without saying "I" "me" or "mine" once." He was respectful and yet had something important to say.

Compared to Obama's insincere scold the other night, this speech was masterful. George W. Bush sounded mature, thoughtful and deeply convinced of the truth of what he was saying.

When I hear Obama's supporters talk about how eloquent he is, I can't help but wonder if they listen to the same speeches I do. Obama is self-centered and condescending to us "bitter clingers." He embodies and epitomizes the permanent ruling class of the United States, which is so out of touch with the majority of Americans that the fact that he is black is not particularly relevant to anything. He did not get where he is by challenging the politically correct conventional wisdom or prejudices of the Ivy League/Wall Street elite.

The United States will survive this presidency but in a weakened form. And I am not talking merely about economics; I am talking about moral fiber and faith.

Joe Scarborough Calls on Obama to Apologize for Attacking Bush for Doing Exactly What Obama is Now Doing

Joe Scarborough may be running for the Republicans in the next election. I don't know that but he went after Bush this morning on Morning Joe in a way the Obama worshipers are not used to hearing. Either he is laying the foundation for a run in a Republican Party that has moved to the right since the last time he was in office or else he is the most principled man on television.

Either way, it looks good on him. I found this to be the most entertaining 14 minutes of television I've seen in a long time. Obama attacked Bush and Cheney as un-American subverters of the Constitution and attacked their motives, their character and their commitment to the "most cherished values" of America. Then, in his first week in office he invited in the cameras and made a hugely smug, self-righteous production out of signing an Executive Order to close Guantanamo Bay within a year. Then he ran into reality, the majority opinion of the American people and the Congress and he found out that giving enemy combatants the constitutional rights of American citizens and putting American citizens at risk in a show trial in New York City was not feasible.

Obama is a radical leftist who tries to pose as a centrist to fool that portion of the people which can be fooled all the time. But this time he got carried away playing to his anti-war, anti-American base. And now he looks like a shallow empty suit.

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The Obama worshipers couldn't stand to listen to 14 minutes of criticism of Obama, but Bush and Cheney had to listen to 8 years of having their character called into question. And Bush has been so magnificent in retirement absolutely refusing to criticize Obama. He has turned the other cheek even though Obama has taken every possible opportunity to bash Bush unfairly and fairly. It is not getting to the point where even if you didn't like Bush's policies, you must be beginning to feel some sympathy for him. If not sympathy for Bush, at least you must be beginning to get a sick feeling every time to old predictable "Bush was evil and caused all our problems" line is trotted out one more time.

Let's Be Honest: Barack Obama Makes George Bush Look Good

The speech Barack Obama gave on Lybia last night was pure Obama: brazen and utter hypocrisy. Look at how the Left crucified George Bush whose greatest crime in the eyes of the Left was that he did what he thought he had to do after 9/11 without being crippled by political correctness. (Mind you, the Bush administration had its own failures of nerve with regard to the "religion of peace.")

One lesson future GOP candidates for president should learn from George Bush's experience is that trying to be moderate and leaning to the center does nothing to moderate criticism from the Left. Bush's compassionate conservatism, high spending on education and the prescription drug plan should have endeared him to centrists but it did not. All it did was depress his core Republican constituency and prevent them from rallying to his defense. The way an American president has his approval ratings fall into the 30s is not by antagonizing the other party alone, but by losing both independents and also the enthusiasm of his own supporters. There is no way for a Republican ever to succeed as a centrist because the Democratic Party has become so extremely leftist.

The hypocrisy of the Left in giving tacit approval to Obama after savaging Bush is highlighted in this column in Politico by Joe Scarborough entitled: "The hypocrisy of the left."

Self-righteousness is a dangerous vice. It breeds arrogance and moral blind spots for those who come to believe they are superior to those who share different worldviews.

Televangelists have fallen prey to this feeling of superiority, until the time they are caught crawling on the ground outside a hooker’s hotel room. Politicians have also wallowed in the grandiosity of their moralistic worldview, until they too fall prey to the hypocrisy that eventually snags all self-righteous moralizers.

For a decade now, we have been told of George W. Bush’s and Dick Cheney’s moral failings. They have been regularly compared to Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Benito Mussolini and every other tyrant of the past century. Bush has been damned by the ministers of the far left as a war criminal, a fascist and a Nazi when labeling his policies as overly ideological and deeply flawed would have sufficed.

But that was never enough for the carnival barkers on cable news or the blogosphere. For the American left, Bush had to be condemned as an immoral beast who killed women and children to get his bloody hands on Iraqi oil.

That extremism required that the Bush years be filled with images of CODEPINK protesting on Capitol Hill, anti-war activists clogging the streets of New York City and left-wing commentators beating their chests with the self-righteous indignation of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker.

But in the morally murky afterglow of the Obama years, the certainty of these secular saints has melted away.

President Barack Obama bowed to his generals’ demands by tripling troops in an unending war. CODEPINK did nothing.

Obama backed down on Guantanamo Bay. Anti-war protesters stayed at home.

America invaded its third Muslim country in a decade. The American left meekly went along. Without the slightest hint of irony, liberals defended the president’s indefensible position by returning again to a pose of moral certainty.

Democrats streamed to the floors of the House and Senate to praise the president for invading Libya. It was, after all, a moral mission that would stop the slaughter of innocent civilians. Whether protesting for peace or calling for war, these liberals once again convinced themselves of the moral superiority of their positions.

I love it - comparing Code Pink to Jim and Tammy Faye. Perfect!

In the second part of the column Scarborough compares the invasion of Iraq to the bombing of Lybia. Iraq was far more justified, far more beneficial to the entire Middle East and far more well-considered. Even if the execution was not perfect, the general goal was clear and the purpose was far more noble. Scarborough writes:

How can the left call for the ouster of Muammar Qadhafi for the sin of killing hundreds of Libyans when it opposed the war waged against Saddam Hussein? During Saddam’s two decades in Iraq, he killed more Muslims than anyone in history and used chemical weapons against his own people and neighboring states.

With the help of his equally despicable sons, Uday and Qusay, Saddam devastated Iraq, terrorized his people and destroyed that country’s environment. By the time American troops deposed him in 2003, Saddam had killed at least 300,000 of his own people — and human rights groups say that tally does not even include the million-plus casualties his invasion of Iran caused.

No, George W. Bush was not perfect. But he was not Hitler either. I think an awful lot of Americans felt safer when he was in the White House than they do now. I know that as a Canadian I think the world is a more dangerous place with the current occupant of the White House. The Left does not recognize that and by not recognizing it they are demonstrating that they are hypocritical and their criticism of Bush should be dismissed as partisanship and sophistry.

G. W. Bush versus Obama

Wow! The fall of Barack Obama can be measured in many ways. But this is a pretty shocking polling result. A CNN poll (Note: not Fox, but CNN) has Americans still saying that Barack Obama has done a better job as president than George W. Bush, but only by a margin of 2%, which is down from margin of 23% a year ago. From the CNN website:

Americans are divided over whether President Barack Obama or his predecessor has performed better in the White House, according to a new national poll.

And a CNN/Opinion Research Corporation survey released Friday also indicates in the battle for Congress, Republicans hold large advantages over the Democrats among independents, men and blue-collar whites. The poll also indicates that Republicans are much more enthusiastic than Democrats to vote.

By 47 to 45 percent, Americans say Obama is a better president than George W. Bush. But that two point margin is down from a 23 point advantage one year ago.

Rasmussen Polls has Obama's approval rating at 52% who disapprove and 47% who approve. The Real Clear Politics average of several polls has Obama's average approval rating at 3.8% less than his approval rating. The lowest poll has an approval rating of 42% and the highest one has 48%. One of the fascinating things about Obama is that his personal approval levels are consistently higher than those of his policies or the Congress which has passed his priorities. This is one reason why the Democrats may be lulled into thinking that Nov. 2 won't be a massive rejection of them and their social democratic policy agenda.

So how's that hopey-changey thing working out for you all? Not that great, it looks like.

If I Were an Oppressed Middle Eastern Woman, I'd Rather Have George Bush on My Side Than Alll the Feminists in the World

After - what has it been now, four long years - of listening to that little man Obama blame Bush for absolutely everything, while taking responsibility for nothing himself, it is getting to the point where parody becomes inevitable. Lori Ziganto has a hilarious post on George Bush's inaugural address - on Facebook. She writes:

After taking a quick rest from breaking up Al Gore’s marriage and from magically tricking President Obama into being an utterly incompetent failure, President Bush is now nefariously insinuating his way onto Facebook and Youtube. He recently released a video on the popular video sharing website, discussing his delving onto the Facebook scene and a little summary of what he’s been up to since leaving office. Well, besides the manufacturing of hurricanes and arranging for oil spills and such. . . .

It’s fabulous seeing President Bush relaxed and the way that I always picture him. When feeling most depressed at the atrocious lack of leadership – or anything of substance at all – from our current President, I often imagine George Bush, relaxing on his porch with Laura, feet up on the rails, saying “How do you like being President now, genius?” Said while doing that cute little shoulder-shaking snicker that I miss so much, of course.

But Ziganto is not merely mocking "The One," she is also delighted to point out one of the issues being taken up by the George W. Bush Institute, namely, working to alleviate the suffering of, and empowering women, in the Middle East:

Also, it turns out that President Bush is still leading and doing, instead of just spouting increasingly inane rhetoric, unlike the current office holder. President Obama will talk about unclenching fists and give lip service as to how For The Women he is. Meanwhile, it’s President Bush who is literally reaching out his hand to those who need it, not to dictatorial regimes. It is he who is continuing to aid the women in the Middle East who are truly subjugated. Women who need a first wave of feminism and whom our irrelevant modern Feminists, also known as Femisogynists, ignore. They are no longer needed, nor wanted here, yet they’d rather make up things over which to feign outrage than aid women who truly need our help. Because, George Bush.

Well, no worries. Bush will continue to do what is right, with or without their help. The George W. Bush Institute has a woman’s initiative, chaired by Mrs. Laura Bush, that is focusing on empowering women in the Middle East, where it is needed most. Former President Bush understands that freedom is what truly empowers and he understands that the women of the Middle East are not free, no matter how much the multiculturalism worshippers try to claim otherwise, under the guise of tolerance. Oppression and subjugation should not and cannot be tolerated and they won’t be, on his watch. A watch that is, thankfully, continuing with The George W. Bush Institute.

Read it all and see Bush's speech from Facebook here.

Women in the Middle East should expect no help from Western mainstream feminists, like Libby Davies, who are too busy cheering on the Iranian Ayatollahs, the Turkish Empire-restoring Islamicists, Hamas and Hizbullah in their war of extermination against Israel - the only country in the Middle East where women are not ritually mutilated so they can't enjoy sex, where they can walk down the street wearing what they want and where they can legitimately aspire to be Prime Minister when they grow up if they want.

Obama is clearly on the side of the woman-oppressing, genocide-seeking, democracy-hating thugs who want war, bloodshed and violence. Bush is on the side of women and freedom.

The only reason so many "Feminists" oppose Bush is because they are ideologically leftist. It has nothing to do with actual, living, breathing women and their well-being. That is why Palin is just as bad in their opinion as Bush even though, as a successful woman politician, she embodies everything the "Feminists" profess to believe. It is not about women; it is about ideology.

Is Obama Chanelling George Bush?

The Times of London today reports some sentences attributed to Barack Obama, which, if accurate, suggest that he is chanelling George W. Bush. (Note especially the red letter words.)

"Britain, France and the United States set the stage for a dramatic
confrontation with Iran when they revealed the existence of a secret nuclear
site inside a mountain near the holy city of Qom as evidence of Tehran’s efforts
to deceive the international community.

The coup de théâtre came at the opening of the G20 meeting in Pittsburgh after three days of intense diplomacy at the UN General Assembly. President Obama, President Sarkozy and Gordon Brown took turns to demand that Iran disclose its nuclear ambitions and threaten new sanctions.

Later, Mr. Obama raised the spectre of military conflict, saying that failure by Iran to give up its pursuit of nuclear weapons would lead down “a path that is going to lead to confrontation”.

“Iran is on notice that when we meet with them on October 1 they are going to have to come clean and they are going to have to make a choice,” he said.

Mr. Obama added that he would prefer a diplomatic resolution but added: “We do not rule out any options when it comes to US security interests. It’s up to the Iranians to respond.”"

I said last year on this blog that those pacifists, who supported Obama over McCain because they were so over-the-top hysterically opposed to Bush and the invasion of Iraq, were being naive to think that voting Democrat was going to make any serious difference as far as the wars are concerned. I said that Bush was not running so the voters could not punish him. I said that Democratic presidents go to war more often than Republican ones (Woodrow Wilson - WW I, FDR - WW II, JFK and LBJ - Vietnam). I also said that Obama's peace-loving, naive, apologizing for America tone would only tempt America's enemies to try to roll him, like Kruschev thought he could roll Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis.

On the other hand, if McCain had been elected we might well have a 5th anti-Roe vote on the Supreme Court by now and be on the verge of putting another one on if Ginsberg steps down for health reasons. Such a change in the make-up of the court would have a generational effect on the abortion debate and, at the very least, would have sent it back to the states. Many states would impose partial restrictions and some might even impose total restrictions. Millions of lives would be saved every single year from here on out! Remember, we are talking millions of human lives, each one as intrinscally valuable as an innocent civilian life lost in a war.

Sure the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would still be going on if McCain had won. Sure the Iranain crisis would still be here. Sure Guantanomo would still be open. And how exactly is that different under "the One?" Sure he promised to close Guantanamo Bay, bring home the toops and heal the planet etc. etc. But promises are cheap and action is difficult. It is no wonder he is starting to sound like George W. Bush, seeing as how his policies have been so similar for the past ten months.

Obama claimed to be moderate on abortion; he said he wanted to find "common ground." But no one can name even one single, limited, moderate restriction he has placed on abortion, whereas there is a whole list of ways in which his policies have expanded access to abortion. He and his Democratic colleagues refuse to insert language into the health care legislation that would ensure that public money did not pay for abortion, thus confirming the suspicions of those who saw the health care program as "stealth FOCA."

I said that the choice was between two war-mongers, both of whom would keep abortion legal, but one of whom would at least take steps to impose some restrictions on the slaughter and would likely keep abortion from morphing into assisted suicide and euthanasia. Neither option was the Kingdom of God because Jesus wasn't running last year. But one was morally superior to the other from a reasoned, Christian perspective.

I'm not happy to have been right about Obama. He has been a tremendous disappointment to those who, in good faith, took him at his word as a moderate on abortion. Anyone who voted for him thinking he was more than a front man for the most extreme liberal wing of the Democratic Party has surely by now been disillusioned.

And lest anyone try to use his sudden hawkishness on Iran as evidence of his "moderate" stance, let me just say once again that only the most naive among us actually believe that when it comes to war the liberals are any less ready to use violence than the conservatives. It doesn't make him conservative; it just makes him a liberal like all the other liberals.

There is only one kind of person who is happy Obama won and that is the kind of person who really wanted him to win precisely so that he could impose liberal policies, ramp up the welfare state and expand the power and reach of the Federal government as the method for solving social problems. That kind of person, however, was being dishonest in pretending that the war in Iraq was the big issue in the election. It was just a stick with which to beat McCain and promote Obama. Sure, people may have honestly been against the Iraq war but in reality the Iraq war was not the point. Getting a big-government liberal in the White House to finish what FDR and LBJ started was the point.

What I'm upset about is the good-hearted pacifists who are not big-government liberals who took the bait and fell for the flim-flam. The sanctity of human life would have been better served by electing the often bellicose war hero, as counter-intuitive as that might have seemed at the time. It's a lesson we would all do well to remember next time round.

Don't Like Obama? Blame George Bush

Obama's popularity with the American electorate is in free-fall. Rasumssen Reports website, which does daily polling, reports:

"The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Tuesday shows that 29% of the nation's voters Strongly Approve of the way that Barack Obama is performing his role as President. Forty percent (40%) Strongly Disapprove giving Obama a Presidential Approval Index rating of -11. Today is the President’s fourth straight day with an Approval Index rating in negative double digits (see trends). . . . Overall, 49% of voters say they at least somewhat approve of the President's performance. Fifty-one percent (51%) now disapprove."

There is little mystery why the president is suddenly so unpopular with voters. 40% of voters say that cutting the deficit is the highest priority, while reforming health care is a distant second at only 21%. Yet 71% of voters think Obama's policies are driving up the deficit. Voters are pessimistic about Obama getting it right. 67% think deficit reduction is the least likely goal to be achieved, while only 7% think it is the most likely goal to be achieved.

Can we say buyer's remorse? All that hype about Obama being a centrist and a moderate doesn't look so plausible now, does it? Many Republicans and a clear majority of moderate voters, who were justifiably angry at the Republicans for starting an unnecessary war in Iraq, letting spending get out of control and exhibiting disgusting personal ethics, voted the Republicans out thinking they were getting a moderate Democratic president who would not attempt to make fundamental changes to the American economy in the midst of a recession. They thought it was safe to send the Republicans a message. Instead, they got the most hard-line, ideological leftist in congress as president.

This was clearly a tragic situation and the blame for the current mess rests more than any other on one man: George W. Bush. He should have known better than let the imperialistic hawks convince him to do something that discredited conservatism at a crucial moment. If George Bush had governed like a true conservative - emphasizing fiscal restraint, avoiding overreach in international affairs and pursuing an incrementalist policy in social conservativism as he did very effectively - then he would have been a success and Obama would now be a junior senator on the extreme left of a party without power.

The problem is not that George Bush was too conservative; the problem is that he was not conservative enough. Fiscal restraint, geopolitical restraint and gradual, organic change in social policy are characteristics of true conservatism, whereas free spending and reckless interventionism are marks of a kind of nationalistic, utopianism that cries: "we can spread democracy to every country of the world with our army."

Now it appears that the Republican Party will be given another chance. The last thing the GOP needs to do is move toward the center in terms of policy or do anything to alienate the social conservatives, who are essential to any future election victory. It needs to nourish its base, find a leader who does not scare moderates and purge itself of playboys and lobbyists, at least at the highest levels. It is the majority party and will get another chance at power. But it must learn from the hubris of the Bush administration and not take for granted the good will of the electorate.