"We Con the World" by the Flotilla Choir

If any anti-Jewish (oops, I mean anti-Israel) lefties are still reading this blog you should stop reading right now and navigate away because what is below will make your eyes bulge and put your blood pressure up. Just take a deep breath and click away slowly; don't risk popping a vein just to see what mocking terrorism and leftist complicity looks like.

OK, but I warned you!

Via Stephanie Gutmann at the Daily Telegraph I bring you a spoof of the song "We Are the World" by a group calling itself "The Flotilla Choir." Their version is "We Con the World." This is brilliant and sassy. Enjoy!



We await the Hamas response. But surely terrorists don't do satire, do they?

What Happened on the Mavi Marmara and Why Did it Happen?

I have not commented so far on the "Peace Flotilla" incident off the coast of Gaza, but I thought I would point out a few resources on the incident that you might not have noticed. This was a planned and cynical stunt that had the objective of breaking the Israeli blockade of Gaza so that missiles capable of hitting Israeli cities could be smuggled into Hamas. That ought to be obvious, but for some people it seems to be merely speculation.

Why is there a naval blockade of Gaza in the first place? Well, the alliance of the Muslim world plus Western Leftists has been calling for years for Israel to withdraw from the so-called "occupied territories," i.e. Gaza and the West Bank. So a few years ago Israel unilaterally - in the absence of any comprehensive peace treaty or diminution of the Arab determination to destroy Israel - decided to withdraw from Gaza to see what would happen. So what happened? As predicted by many, a fanatical and militant terrorist organization with the backing of Iran and Syria, i.e. Hamas, seized control of the territory and proceeded to make it a forward staging area for the jihad against Israel by firing rockets into Israel. So Israel sensibly imposed a blockade and allowed aid and trade through a checkpoint but screened out weapons. No nation in the world including all the ones doing the screaming would have done any differently.

Is the naval blockade legal? Of course it is not only legal but a commonplace of international war and international law. International waters just outside territorial waters is precisely where ships are typically intercepted.

Was Israel preventing humanitarian aid from getting through? Not at all. Israel intercepted the ships and had them unload their cargo in an Israeli port from which it could be shipped (after inspection) overland into Gaza. This was not about humanitarian aid or whether or not it would reach Gaza. It was about breaking the blockade and getting something into Gaza that Israel had an interest in stopping. What would that be other than weapons?

Who was behind the flotilla? The ships were Turkish and the Times of London now reports that the Turkish group "The Foundation for Human Rights, Freedoms and Humanitarian Relief" (IHH), which was behind the operation has clear ties to Islamic extremism around the world. The Associated Press concurs and quotes a French judge who investigated the IHH in the '90s. It also reports that the group was involved in the al-Qaida plot to bomb the Los Angeles airport in 1999.

What happened when Israeli soldiers boarded the Mavi Marmara? Well, here is a video of the soldiers being attacked with metal rods, chains and chairs. They were stabbed and two were shot with guns stolen from soldiers. The soldiers were armed with paint ball rifles and only sidearms with live ammunition. Eventually, fearing for their lives they asked for and received permission to fire and did so. Nine attackers were killed. Here is video.



What was the reaction in Europe? There was an outpouring of concern for the poor, peaceful, humanitarian blockade runners and condemnation, or in some cases, lack of support for Israel. The disgraceful performance of the Muslim-appeasing, fearful Europeans was embarrassing. This story from The Weekly Standard includes video of the scene in the European Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Committee. The story is aptly entitled: "Eurodeputies Publicly Berate Israeli Ambassador and the Iranian Foreign Minister Smiles."

Was it a public relations disaster for Israel? Jonah Goldberg takes on this question at National Review and says that the theory that Israel is not competent enough at fighting the PR war is based on the premise that the world is open to hearing the truth if it is presented clearly. He goes on:

The assumption is that world opinion is open to hearing Israel’s side of the story. But that hasn’t been the case for years. From the “Jenin massacre” that was no massacre to the idiotic charges of “genocide” that erupt across the Arab world the moment Israel defends itself from missiles or “martyrs,” the presumption is always that Israel is the villain. When it turns out the facts support Israel, it’s at best a footnote or proof the Israelis have manipulated the media.

Question: If Israel is always hell-bent on murder, massacres, and genocide, why is it so bad at it? If its battle plan called for a slaughter, why kill “only” nine people? Why not sink all of the boats?

Meanwhile, is it really the case that Hamas is objectively “good” at public relations? Or Hezbollah? Or Iran? Really? I just don’t see it. To me, these PR operations are less Wag the Dog and more Baghdad Bob (the Monty Python–esque spokesman for Saddam Hussein’s regime). But instead of everyone laughing at the lies and idiocy, millions of people nod their heads in agreement.

North Korea recently sank a South Korean ship. The international reaction has been muted and sober. Turkey — the Palestinians’ new champion — has been treating Kurdish nationalists harshly for generations; no one cares. The Russians crush Chechens, the Chinese trample Uighurs. Real genocides unfold regularly in Africa. Iran is pursuing a nuclear bomb. Hamas is openly dedicated to the destruction of Israel. So is Iran.

And yet the only villain as far as much of the world is concerned is Israel. Always Israel.

But none of these facts matter. Indeed, it’s tiring even to recount them in an environment where big lies matters more than obvious truths, where self-defense is “aggression,” where restraint is “genocide,” and where the heirs of Gandhi wield steel pipes.

In the Orwellian world inhabited by the Western Left and Islamofascists, peace activists are those who clear a path for smuggling missiles, countries which are democratic and committed to the rule of law are fascist and those who advocate genocide are victims.

The "sins" of Israel are being built up so relentless by continuous propaganda that a foundation is being built for the justification of mass murder. If this fanaticism and hatred continues, the path will be clear for the destruction of Israel and the world will blink and realize its mistake only once it is too late.

How Social Conservatism and Economic Conservatism are Mutually Reinforcing

One of my students pointed out this excellent article to me. (HT to David Graham) It is by Robert George, who is increasingly being recognized as a major leader of Christian conservatives, as well as a leading scholar in the "new natural law" movement.

The article is entitled "Renewing the Powerful Alliance of Social and Economic Conservatives" and it expresses and defends some convictions that I have come to realize are true over the past few years. Having always been a social conservative, I have come to realize that economic conservatism is integrally related to social conservatism and this article shows why.

Some people seem to think that the alliance of social and economic conservatives is, at best, a marriage of convenience. I couldn’t disagree more. My thesis is straightforward: Basic shared principles should lead serious social conservatives to be economic conservatives as well, and serious economic conservatives to be social conservatives, too. A sound conservatism will, as a matter of principle, honor limited government, restrained spending, honest money, and low taxes, while at the same time upholding the sanctity of human life in all stages and conditions, the dignity of marriage as the conjugal union of husband and wife, and the protection of the innocence of children.

Any healthy society, any decent society, will rest upon three pillars.

The first is respect for the human person—the individual human being and his dignity. . . .

The second pillar of any decent society is the institution of the family. It is indispensable. The family, based on the marital commitment of husband and wife, is the original and best department of health, education, and welfare. Although no family is perfect, no institution excels the healthy family in its capacity to transmit to each new generation the understandings and traits of character — the values and virtues — upon which the success of every other institution of society, from law and government to educational institutions and business firms, vitally depends. . . .

The third pillar of any decent society is a fair and effective system of law and government. . . .

Some will counsel that economic conservatives “have no horse in this race.” They will say that it is a moral, cultural, and religious question about which business people and people concerned with economic freedom need not concern themselves. The reality is that the ideological movements that today seek to redefine marriage and abolish its normativity for romantic relations and the rearing of children are the same movements that seek to undermine the free market system and replace it with statist control of vast areas of economic life. Moreover, the rise of ideologies hostile to marriage and the family has had a measurable social impact, and its costs are counted in ruined relationships, damaged lives, and all that follows in the social sphere from these personal catastrophes. In many poorer places in our nation, families are simply failing to form and marriage is coming to be regarded as an optional “life-style choice,” as it is in much of Europe—one among various optional ways of conducting relationships and having and rearing children. Out of wedlock birthrates are very high, with the negative consequences being borne less by the affluent than by those in the poorest and most vulnerable sectors of society. . . .

As an advocate of dynamic societies, I believe in the market economy and the free enterprise system. I particularly value the social mobility that economic dynamism makes possible. At the same time, I am not a supporter of the laissez-faire doctrine embraced by strict libertarians. I believe that law and government do have important and, indeed, indispensable roles to play in regulating enterprises for the sake of protecting public health, safety, and morals, preventing exploitation and abuse, and promoting fair competitive circumstances of exchange. But these roles are compatible, I would insist, with the ideal of limited government and the principle of subsidiarity according to which government must respect individual initiative to the extent reasonably possible and avoid violating the autonomy and usurping the authority of families, religious communities, and other institutions of civil society that play the primary role in building character and transmitting virtues.

Having said that, I would warn that limited government — considered as an ideal as vital to business as to the family — cannot be maintained where the marriage culture collapses and families fail to form or easily dissolve. Where these things happen, the health, education, and welfare functions of the family will have to be undertaken by someone, or some institution, and that will sooner or later be the government. To deal with pressing social problems, bureaucracies will grow, and with them the tax burden. Moreover, the growth of crime and other pathologies where family breakdown is rampant will result in the need for more extensive policing and incarceration and, again, increased taxes to pay for these government services. If we want limited government, and a level of taxation that is not unduly burdensome, we need healthy institutions of civil society, beginning with a flourishing marriage culture supporting family formation and preservation. . . .

The two greatest institutions ever devised for lifting people out of poverty and enabling them to live in dignity are the market economy and the institution of marriage. These institutions will, in the end, stand or fall together. Contemporary statist ideologues have contempt for both of these institutions, and they fully understand the connection between them. How shocking, then, that some conservatives fail to see that vital connection. Those who do see it, however, know why social conservatives should also be economic conservatives; and why economic conservatives should be social conservatives, too.

Read it all here. What a terrific apology for the kind of conservatism that Christians can rally around and celebrate!

A Letter That Reveals the Heretical Theology of the Liberal Protestant Sects That Used to Be Anglican

The following is the text of a pastoral letter to The Episcopal Church issued by Katherine Jefferts Schori on Pentecost. My comments are in [red and square brackets].

Pentecost continues!

Pentecost is most fundamentally a continuing gift of the Spirit, rather than a limitation or quenching of that Spirit. [This assertion is central to her theology. It means that new truth is delivered in contradiction to the Scriptures by the Spirit.]

The recent statement by the Archbishop of Canterbury about the struggles within the Anglican Communion seems to equate Pentecost with a single understanding of gospel realities. [A single understanding: as in one Gospel rooted in one Lord Jesus Christ. That is unacceptable to the sectarians.] Those who received the gift of the Spirit on that day all heard good news. The crowd reported, "in our own languages we hear them speaking about God's deeds of power" (Acts 2:11).

The Spirit does seem to be saying to many within The Episcopal Church that gay and lesbian persons are God's good creation, that an aspect of good creation is the possibility of lifelong, faithful partnership, and that such persons may indeed be good and healthy exemplars of gifted leadership within the Church, as baptized leaders and ordained ones. [The question is: "Which spirit is saying this, the Spirit of Jesus Christ or the spirit of Antichrist (I John 4:1-3)? We must test the Spirits with reference to Jesus Christ and His apostles.] The Spirit also seems to be saying the same thing in other parts of the Anglican Communion, and among some of our Christian partners, including Lutheran churches in North America and Europe, the Old Catholic churches of Europe, and a number of others. [But only in liberal circles, not in orthodox ones. What does this tell us?]

That growing awareness does not deny the reality that many Anglicans and not a few Episcopalians still fervently hold traditional views about human sexuality. [So does this mean they are wrong, Schori and co. are wrong or that the Spirit talks out of both sides of his mouth like a lying Spirit? Or is Schori and co. listening the the Spirit of Antichrist?] This Episcopal Church is a broad and inclusive enough tent to hold that variety. [But the Christian Church as defined in the NT is not.] The willingness to live in tension is a hallmark of Anglicanism, beginning from its roots in Celtic Christianity pushing up against Roman Christianity in the centuries of the first millennium. That diversity in community was solidified in the Elizabethan Settlement, which really marks the beginning of Anglican Christianity as a distinct movement. Above all, it recognizes that the Spirit may be speaking to all of us, in ways that do not at present seem to cohere or agree. It also recognizes what Jesus says about the Spirit to his followers, "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come" (John 16:12-13). [Again, she elaborates on what her view of Pentecost means; she holds that the truth the Spirit is foretold as declaring is not the apostolic witness to Jesus Christ recorded in the inspired New Testament writings, but rather, new teachings known by experience that contradict the NT.]

The Episcopal Church has spent nearly 50 years listening to and for the Spirit in these matters. [Again, which spirit?] While it is clear that not all within this Church have heard the same message, the current developments do represent a widening understanding. [Ah, the old faith in progress - an implication that everyone will eventually swing around to our way of thinking: a touching bit of naivete.] Our canons reflected this shift as long ago as 1985, when sexual orientation was first protected from discrimination in access to the ordination process. At the request of other bodies in the Anglican Communion, this Church held an effective moratorium on the election and consecration of a partnered gay or lesbian priest as bishop from 2003 to 2010. When a diocese elected such a person in late 2009, the ensuing consent process indicated that a majority of the laity, clergy, and bishops responsible for validating that election agreed that there was no substantive bar to the consecration. [Note the narrative - this is a never ending story. Anyone who thinks it ends with approving of homosexuality is dreaming. There is no end, ever.]

The Episcopal Church recognizes that these decisions are problematic to a number of other Anglicans. We have not made these decisions lightly. We recognize that the Spirit has not been widely heard in the same way in other parts of the Communion. In all humility, we recognize that we may be wrong, yet we have proceeded in the belief that the Spirit permeates our decisions. [Let the sheer audacity of this passive-aggressive statement sink in for a moment. It is one thing to fall into temptation and sin. It is quite spectacularly different to sin and approve of sin while calling this the work of the Holy Spirit. This is as bad as the Jewish religious leaders observing the healing miracles of the Lord Jesus and calling it the work of Beelzebub, which is described as the unforgivable sin in Mark 3:29-30]

We also recognize that the attempts to impose a singular understanding in such matters represent the same kind of cultural excesses practiced by many of our colonial forebears in their missionizing activity. [Here she equates a sin expressly condemned in Scripture repeatedly and obviously wrong from natural law to cultural practices that are morally neutral and not addressed in Scripture.] Native Hawaiians were forced to abandon their traditional dress in favor of missionaries' standards of modesty. Native Americans were forced to abandon many of their cultural practices, even though they were fully congruent with orthodox Christianity, because the missionaries did not understand or consider those practices exemplary of the Spirit. The uniformity imposed at the Synod of Whitby did similar violence to a developing, contextual Christianity in the British Isles. In their search for uniformity, our forebears in the faith have repeatedly done much spiritual violence in the name of Christianity.

We do not seek to impose our understanding on others. [This is about as dishonest a statement as I have heard in a long time. Of course, they are trying to do that. For example, they want to teach schoolchildren that homosexuality is right even if their parents believe the opposite. For them "tolerance" means "Believe our way or suffer the consequences."] We do earnestly hope for continued dialogue with those who disagree, for we believe that the Spirit is always calling us to greater understanding. [Endless dialogue about whether sin is sin is a sign of a weak and spiritually bankrupt Church.]

We live in great concern that colonial attitudes continue, particularly in attempts to impose a single understanding across widely varying contexts and cultures. We note that the cultural contexts in which The Episcopal Church's decisions have generated the greatest objection and reaction are also often the same contexts where women are barred from full ordained leadership, including the Church of England. [It sounds unintentionally humorous for a rich American Church to be complaining of "colonialism" at the hands of British Anglican institutions they have basically bought and paid for!]

As Episcopalians, we note the troubling push toward centralized authority exemplified in many of the statements of the recent Pentecost letter. [This is hypocritical. She is in favor of centralized authority as long as it is centralized in her office.] Anglicanism as a body began in the repudiation of the control of the Bishop of Rome within an otherwise sovereign nation. [Is she saying that nation states are higher authorities in religion than international Christian institutions?] Similar concerns over self-determination in the face of colonial control led the Scottish Episcopal Church to consecrate Samuel Seabury for The Episcopal Church in the nascent United States – and so began the Anglican Communion.

We have been repeatedly assured that the Anglican Covenant is not an instrument of control, yet we note that the fourth section seems to be just that to Anglicans in many parts of the Communion. So much so, that there are voices calling for stronger sanctions in that fourth section, as well as voices repudiating it as un-Anglican in nature. Unitary control does not characterize Anglicanism; rather, diversity in fellowship and communion does.

We are distressed at the apparent imposition of sanctions on some parts of the Communion. We note that these seem to be limited to those which "have formally, through their Synod or House of Bishops, adopted policies that breach any of the moratoria requested by the Instruments of Communion." We are further distressed that such sanctions do not, apparently, apply to those parts of the Communion that continue to hold one view in public and exhibit other behaviors in private. Why is there no sanction on those who continue with a double standard? [This is an effective shot at the Church of England for tolerating homosexual activity among its clergy.] In our context bowing to anxiety by ignoring that sort of double-mindedness is usually termed a "failure of nerve." Through many decades of wrestling with our own discomfort about recognizing the full humanity of persons who seem to differ from us, we continue to work at open and transparent communication as well as congruence between word and behavior. We openly admit our failure to achieve perfection!

The baptismal covenant prayed in this Church for more than 30 years calls us to respect the dignity of all other persons and charges us with ongoing labor toward a holy society of justice and peace. That fundamental understanding of Christian vocation underlies our hearing of the Spirit in this context and around these issues of human sexuality. That same understanding of Christian vocation encourages us to hold our convictions with sufficient humility that we can affirm the image of God in the person who disagrees with us. We believe that the Body of Christ is only found when such diversity is welcomed with abundant and radical hospitality. [So diversity in ethics is hereby elevated to one of the marks of the Church. I don't think Paul's Churches would qualify as real "churches" in her theology.]

As a Church of many nations, languages, and peoples, we will continue to seek every opportunity to increase our partnership in God's mission for a healed creation and holy community. We look forward to the ongoing growth in partnership possible in the Listening Process, Continuing Indaba, Bible in the Life of the Church, Theological Education in the Anglican Communion, and the myriad of less formal and more local partnerships across the Communion – efforts in mission and ministry that inform and transform individuals and communities toward the vision of the Gospel – a healed world, loving God and neighbor, in the love and friendship shown us in God Incarnate.

May God's peace dwell in your hearts,

There is no mention of God the Father or the name "Jesus Christ" in this letter. In sum it represents a revival of the Montanist sect. The Church of Jesus Christ has seen these sects come and go and you can be sure that The Episcopal Church, like the Unification Church, the Jehovah's Witnesses and the Mormans, will fade eventually while the true Church of the Prophets and Apostles will endure until our Lord returns.

"The World Turned Upside Down" by Melanie Phillips: A Review

I came to The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power by Melanie Phillips (NY: Encounter Books, 2010) after having read a number of the author's columns in London's Daily Mail that I respected for independent thinking and clear analysis of current events. Educated at Oxford, Phillips is a journalist who won the Orwell Prize for journalism in 1996 and this book is one that continues in the iconoclastic tradition of George Orwell in its search for truth amid the posturing, insincerity and manipulative machinations of those who wish to destroy freedom but cannot come right out and say so lest they be made pariahs immediately.

Phillips is no conspiracy theorist, but she is attempting to reach a rational explanation for otherwise difficult to comprehend trends in contemporary thought among the Western political class and she offers an original thesis. Her contribution is to seek out what connections there may be between four seemingly disparate trends among left-leaning intellectuals, politicians, bureaucrats and members of the media (the political class). She discusses the "myth of environmental Armageddon," (i.e. global warming), "the misrepresentation of the Iraq war," "the misrepresentation of Israel," and the "scientific triumphalism" of Dawkins and company. How are these four disparate movements connected?

Phillips' answer is that they all embody a serious and worrisome irrationality and abuse of science and reason. Each of these movements turn truth upside down and degrade science and reason into a caricature of themselves in order to promote an irrational, leftist agenda. How can the alliance of Western leftists with Islamic jihadists be explained rationally? One is libertarian and the other is theocratic. What could anti-Jewish hatred, weak-kneed appeasement of Islamic terrorism, Marxism and anti-Christian hatred possibly have in common?

Phillips' answer is that they have almost nothing in common in terms of their positive vision of what they hope to accomplish once they gain power. But all have a common enemy: Western civilization, which is built on the foundations of Jewish law, Greek philosophy and the Christian revelation centered on Jesus Christ. Marxists, Islamofascists, and their left-leaning sympathizers, apologists and fellow-travelers share a pathological hatred of Western civilization and are therefore united in their desire to destroy Israel, America and the historical religious and philosophical foundations of the West. Science is a fruit of the Jewish-Christian worldview and grows out of Western civilization and this explains the anti-rational attitude and the willingness to descend into irrationality.

An implication of Phillips' thesis, which is by no means unique to her, is that anti-Westernism (as defined above) is essentially irrational. So it is irrationality that binds together movements that have nothing in common except a hatred of God and the West. The discredited Marxist Utopia is irrational, suicide bombing and endless war against the entire non-Muslim world by the Jihadists is irrational and the eagerness to tear down institutions like the family, democracy, a natural law-based legal system and so on is simply irrational.

Reason, when it is separated from a Trinitarian metaphysics in which God is integrally related to the world, which is His creation and has the Logos as its animating principle and is therefore rational, simply withers and dies. This is the story of Modernity starting with the unraveling of the participatory metaphysics of the Fathers and Scholastics in the dark 14th century. The story of Modernity is the reverse of what the propaganda in the leftist textbooks tell you; it is not the story of the rise of Reason and Science triumphing over Medieval darkness and superstition, but rather the decline of Reason and Science and a new descent into irrationality and darkness. What begins in Nominalism and the Cartesian revolution that places man in the place of God ends in Nazism and Stalinism. The rise of the autonomous self in Modernity is fully revealed in Nietzsche's Overman.

Phillips' book could not be written as a book to get tenure in most Western universities today because it challenges too many of the lazy assumptions of the cultural Marxism that dominates the academy. That there is more academic freedom today outside the academy is a sad commentary on the health of our culture. But whatever it source, we should be thankful that creative, tough-minded thinking can be published and this book deserves a wide readership.

Ezra Levant on the Sinister "Opus Dei" Affair

Ezra Levant's op ed in the National Post is terrific: "Why is it OK to pick on Christians?"

Ihave never told him this, but I was tremendously disappointed when I first met Monsignor Fred Dolan, the Canadian vicar of Opus Dei.

It was about six or seven years ago, around the time The Da Vinci Code was published, and frankly I was hoping that he would be a dark and conspiratorial figure -- someone who would fit the words "ultraconservative" and "shadowy." I didn't quite want him to be an assassin, like the Opus Dei priest was in the book and film, but I surely wanted someone who was mysterious and secretive and powerful.

Like if the Pope had a CIA agent.

I admit it: I wanted an Opus Dei friend so I could shock the liberals in my life, and perhaps seem like I had a few exotic secrets of my own. And I thought it would be nice to have a friend who was more right wing than me.

To my regret, Msgr. Dolan is just a mild-mannered priest and worse, Opus Dei doesn't have any secret handshakes or midnight meetings. I don't want to sound lazy or selfish, but joining Opus Dei sure looks like a lot of do-goodery and just plain work (I asked Msgr. Dolan for a brochure and I read it carefully, even looking for hidden clues). I already had enough pro bono commitments and I didn't need any more. (As a Jew, I could join Opus Dei as an associate member).

I've stayed in touch with Msgr. Dolan since then and we're friendly. I admire his charity and his ecumenicalism. He sends me notes from time to time, about Passover or Holocaust remembrance, and he always asks when I'll be in Montreal again. In seven years, he's never tried to put the shadowy moves on me, and I'm starting to worry that he never will.

Pat Martin worries, too. Oh, does he worry.

Mr. Martin is the NDP MP for Winnipeg Centre. And his secret sources told him that Msgr. Dolan met with a dozen or so MPs in the Parliamentary dining room last week. (Actually, every MP received an invitation, and not even in invisible ink.)

Mr. Martin didn't attend. But he sought out reporters to tell them that Opus Dei members "give me the creeps."

That's fine, if rude. Though someone ought to tell Martin that The Da Vinci Code is not a documentary.

That last line is good, but the most unbelievable lines come from Mr. Duceppe:

Mr. Martin wasn't the only one worried that Msgr. Dolan might wave a wand and turn him into a newt. Gilles Duceppe, the leader of the Bloc Quebecois, actually asked about it in Question Period. Duceppe named two Conservative party volunteers who apparently are members of Opus Dei, noted that "a Conservative" invited Msgr. Dolan to the dining room and demanded that the Prime Minister "admit that his policy is influenced" by such people.

Neither of the women named by Mr. Duceppe works for the government in any way, and neither was known for their religious views-- until Mr. Duceppe took it upon himself to discuss their private lives in Parliament.

A reporter asked Mr. Duceppe if he wasn't being "a little Mc-Carthyite"; Mr. Duceppe brushed off the accusation and went further: Opus Dei members should not be allowed to participate in political life--even as volunteers --if they identify "as a group."

Stop for a moment and try that sentence out again, substituting the words "gay" or "Jewish" for "Opus Dei members." Jews shouldn't be allowed in politics if they "identify as a group." Sikhs shouldn't be allowed in politics "if they identify as a group." How does it feel?

Mr. Duceppe then went a little Dan Brown himself, claiming Opus Dei "have people in place ... so a lot of things prove that something's going on." He really said that.

Read the rest here.

Duceppe sounds like a crazed conspiracy theorist waving the Protocols of the Elders of Zion around and talking about the Illuminati/Vatican/Jewish/Communist/Capitalist plot to take over the world and invite aliens in to rule us.

If it weren't so serious, it would be hilarious!

Who Started the Culture Wars?

Tom Gilson has an excellent post at First Things' Evangel blog entitled: "Gay Rights: Distortion and Aggression."

Clay Farris Naff asked in the Huffington Post last week, Do We Really Want America to Be a Christian Iran? It only takes a moment’s reflection on that question to realize Naff’s sense of proportion (like Tavis Smiley’s) is tilted. Many of his “facts” and his arguments are too. It’s about the Manhattan Declaration, from which he quotes,

No one has a civil right to have a non-marital relationship treated as a marriage. Marriage is an objective reality — a covenantal union of husband and wife — that it is the duty of the law to recognize and support for the sake of justice and the common good. If it fails to do so, genuine social harms follow. First, the religious liberty of those for whom this is a matter of conscience is jeopardized…

He responds,

What a pantload! This has all the moral suasion of a claim that to salve the conscience of Seventh Day Adventists we should outlaw donating blood.

To which my first response was, Wow. I won’t respond with the same scatology, because it’s not civil—not that his claim here doesn’t reek of stinky thinking. The rest of the article is likewise distorted, but I’ll let this snippet be representative of the whole.

After some clarifying of issues having to do with blood transfusions and the like, Gilson gets down to the real issue:

But Naff’s most egregious distortion (at least in this snippet) is the parallel he tries to draw between outlawing gay “marriage” and outlawing blood transfusions. To put an end to blood donations would take an aggressive legal and public relations campaign, to change existing laws and practices. Where’s the parallel? Are Christians doing anything remotely like that?

No, not Christians. Here we see the magnificently mixed-up success of the gay rights PR machine. They’ve maneuvered the public into believing we’re making some kind of assault on gay marriage. We’re doing no such thing. We couldn’t; it would be strictly impossible for us to do that. You see, “marriage” in same-sex context really belongs in quotes. Marriage is “a covenantal union of husband and wife.” There is no such thing as gay marriage. There never was. There’s nothing there for us to campaign against.

Really, Tom? Then why all the fuss? Why write it into this Declaration? Here’s why: a legal and social assault has indeed been launched. But we didn’t launch it: they did. They’re the ones campaigning to overturn historic laws, customs, and morality. They speak as if we’re the aggressors, when in reality they are. We’ve had to take up a defensive position, to protect an institution as old as recorded history. We didn’t pick this fight, the other side did.

Let me re-emphasize: there are those in Western culture who have mounted an offensive. It’s not the Christians who have taken the aggressive stance, though; it is the gay rights activists.

It pays to stay aware of what’s really going on. Regardless of what some PR machine may be trying to tell you.

That quote sums up so much of the issue: "They speak as if we're the aggressors, when in reality they are." That is the tactic of the Left. Being mostly amoral themselves, but knowing that we have moral qualms about many things, they try to use our own propensity to feel guilty about doing wrong against us by accusing us of things they do routinely but which we don't do because we don't want to do wrong.

If they know we hate racism, they accuse us of racism in order to get us on the defensive and split apart our unity. If they know we find it sinful and despicable to ignore the cries of poor people, they accuse us of being selfish and hard-hearted unless we adopt their totalitarian ideology or, at least become tolerant of it. They know we just want to live and let live, so they accuse us of wanting to oppress homosexuals so that they have an excuse to change laws and impose their own religious and moral views on our children.

Conservatives didn't start the culture wars and they are not the ones who want to impose an intolerant regime. We would settle for not turning America or Canada into a Homosexual Iran.

Let us Face the Ugly Reality That is All Around Us Even When Our Eyes are Shut

God forgive us.

The Message Media Muddles About Jesus Christ

Watch this brief (1 min, 41 sec) video and you will never be impressed by anyone's ability to drop a lot of pop culture references again. Tamara Lowe gets the message out.

A Question We Must Answer If We Want to Prevent Socialist Stagnation and Tyranny

Jonah Goldberg asks, and proposes the beginning of an answer to, this question in a post entitled: "In a Welfare State, How Much is 'Enough'?" at the National Review Online.

Indeed, the mess we have today is merely the natural result of a century-long battle over the size of government. When it comes to the welfare state, liberals want more, conservatives want less. It seems that nobody ever talks about “enough.”

Except that’s not entirely true. Rep. Paul Ryan (R., Wis.) offered an alternative vision of government in his famous “Roadmap.” It was, in the words of New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, a blueprint for a “conservative welfare state.” The idea was that the truly needy would be taken care of because they are truly needy, but middle-class entitlements would be scaled back for two simple reasons: 1) We cannot afford them, and 2) excessive government meddling in areas such as health care increases costs and wastes money.

Ryan’s blueprint was denounced by liberals as too stingy and largely ignored by much of the Republican leadership, who were happy to just say no to Obama’s plans without offering voters anything serious to say yes to.

William Voegeli, a scholar of impeccable conservative credentials, has joined Ryan’s battle in his book Never Enough, a searing indictment of what he calls the Hundred Years’ War between the party of more and the party of less. Voegeli argues that American voters (including most Republicans) will never fully eradicate the welfare state, because they don’t want to. Therefore, conservatives should make peace with the idea that the federal government should help the truly needy, while rejecting both the sorts of middle- and upper-class entitlements that are bankrupting the country and the kind of government “dole” that breeds bad habits among the poor and able-bodied.

Purist libertarians who see in this argument merely a surrender to liberalism should at least acknowledge that liberals would denounce any suggestion of means testing America’s safety net as cruel cutbacks and a violation of FDR’s “vision,” and that many voters would agree with them. Moreover, the current strategy hasn’t worked. We’ve had a century of nearly uninterrupted growth in the welfare state, even under Ronald Reagan. That alone recommends a new strategy.

Consider Social Security. Liberals are absolutely committed to the idea that everybody should be in the same creaky retirement system. They insist that middle- and upper-class voters must be bribed to support the poor. Warren Buffett gets a Social Security check to ensure everyone does. In fairness, some liberals also claim that a universal entitlement binds us together as a nation. The former claim is cynical, the latter poetic nonsense.

Governments do not generate wealth; they can merely distribute it. The challenge for both liberals and conservatives is simply to define how much distribution is “enough.” What would an acceptable safety net look like? Who should be taken care of by taxpayers and for how long? Paul Ryan offered an answer to that question, and liberals scoffed because they reject the question. There’s no such thing as enough, as far as they’re concerned.

The really important point here is that liberals reject the question "How much is enough?" Now, first of all, real liberals wouldn't reject this question. Actually, this question separates the liberals from the socialists. Only socialists would reject this question and the fact that many who call themselves liberals or who are called liberals by others would reject this question shows that they are not really liberals. They just find the label "socialist" too toxic in the American context and so they avoid it for propaganda reasons. But in terms of the actual content of their political philosophy, the only reason to reject the question "How much is enough?" is because you really are committed to equality of incomes in society as your bottom line priority. And that is socialism.

It is possible to care about the poor and to want to lift them out of poverty without being a socialist. Let us consider two scenarios:

Scenario #1 The income of the poor goes up by 100% over a decade and nobody is now living under the poverty line as defined at the beginning of the decade. The income of the richest 10% of the population has seen its income skyrocket by 1000% during the same period.

Scenario #2 The income of the poor goes up by 20% over a decade and only 50% of those living under the poverty line at the beginning of the decade are still living under the poverty line. The richest 10% of the population has seen its income decline by 50% during the same period.

Only a socialist would say that the second scenario is better than the first one and socialist policies are designed to lead to the scenarios more like the second than the first one. Now ask yourself the question: "If I were a poor person which scenario would I prefer?" Only the first scenario guarantees that you will be above the poverty line at the end of the decade and the first scenario means your income is likely to go up more in absolute terms. Who really thinks that actual, living, breathing poor people would opt for the second scenario?

Those who prefer the second scenario are typically middle and upper-class people in the grip of a romantic, revolutionary, Utopian vision. And this is why socialists need to engage in so much propaganda and manipulation in order to sell their vision to the working class only to see the working class so often drift off to vote conservative (like blue collar workers did for Reagan etc.). This is what causes anguished and tortured bouts of "analysis" and "critique" trying to explain why workers supposedly vote "against their own interests." The simpler explanation (remember Ockham's Razor) is that they recognize that socialism is not in their best interests.

The question Goldberg raises and Congressman Paul Ryan is trying to discuss like an adult is absolutely the right question. How much of a safety net for the truly needy should we have in place and how will it be paid for? Ryan is a voice in the wilderness talking about means tests and targeting benefits to those who actually need them, rather than just assuming that the State can afford endlessly increasing financial support programs for all citizens forever. What is going on in Greece and Europe as a whole today shows that this is a pipe dream.

But this pipe dream of the ever-expanding welfare state where the bills never come due is sold as propaganda by socialist in order to fool people into voting for them. It is essentially a form of temptation. But once the socialists gain power, their true philosophy will become visible and living standards will decline and poverty will increase - even as the goal of equality is attained.

If the European crisis brings about a socialist European super state it will be a humanitarian disaster of world historical significance. If you want to visualize concretely what it will mean, dig out some old newsreel footage of breadlines in Moscow and recall Solzhenitsyn's characterizations of the Soviet empire as a giant slave state. We don't even need to talk about the gulag necessary to enforce compliance with socialist totalitarianism.

Either you are willing to come to grips with the question: "How much is enough?" or you head down a road that leads to food shortages, poverty and the gulag. That is how important this discussion is.

Royal Society Says "Maybe Oops!" About Global Warming

From Thomas Lifson at American Thinker comes this helpful summary of recent events at the Royal Society in London entitled: "Global Warming Theory Challenged by Top UK Scientific Body."

"The Royal Society, Britain's version of the US National Academy of Sciences, has been forced by climate dissidents to officially review its previous statements in unquestioning support of global warming theory. The Times of London reports:

Britain's premier scientific institution is being forced to review its statements on climate change after a rebellion by members who question mankind's contribution to rising temperatures.

The Royal Society has appointed a panel to rewrite the 350-year-old institution's official position on global warming. It will publish a new "guide to the science of climate change" this summer. The society has been accused by 43 of its Fellows of refusing to accept dissenting views on climate change and exaggerating the degree of certainty that man-made emissions are the main cause.

The society appears to have conceded that it needs to correct previous statements. It said: "Any public perception that science is somehow fully settled is wholly incorrect - there is always room for new observations, theories, measurements." This contradicts a comment by the society's previous president, Lord May, who was once quoted as saying: "The debate on climate change is over."

Marc Marano of Climate Depot headlines it: "Dam breaks." However, James Delingpole of the UK Telegraph, a leading skeptic, calls it "too little too late." The Royal Society's statement on the review is found here."

The climb down continues. The problem for many scientific bodies is how to reverse their climate alarmism without shredding all of their credibility. I'd suggest that the faster they do it, the better they look. I also think that they should quietly convey to government officials the intelligence that a policy change will be necessary sooner or later so they might want to start preparing by distancing themselves from the most extreme eco-fascist rhetoric.

The McCarthyism of the Canadian Left Picks Up Steam

David Warren had a good column in The Ottawa Citizen the other day about the new McCarthyism that has appeared in Canada recently.

The notion that, simply because people are Christian, they should be "exposed" and hounded out of public life, or dragged before human rights tribunals, is becoming a commonplace of "progressive" thinking. It is hardly confined to Canada: the U.S. Supreme Court is hearing an astounding case (Christian Legal Society v. Martinez), in which the most basic right of free association could be denied to Christians on university campuses; the ACLU has made the removal from public property of all visible evidence of America's Christian heritage an expression of "civil rights."

In Ottawa this week, a "scandal" has been alleged because the member of Parliament for Regina-Qu'Appelle (a Catholic!) arranged a lunch with colleagues (not all of them Catholic) to meet the Canadian vicar of the Catholic lay organization Opus Dei. Neither the organization nor the lunch was in any way secret, unprecedented, nor otherwise abnormal, and yet it was presented in Le Devoir with the gravity of the Spanish Inquisition.

This is an example of the sort of thing that promises to become, in the shadow of McDonald's much-touted book, a "meme" of agenda-driven, liberal journalism: "outing" those who quite openly practice the Christian religion and advocate for its long-received views as if they were subversives.

How does Warren suggest that Christians respond?

How should Christians respond to such attacks? To fellow Catholics, I would suggest, take the Rosary out of your pocket and wave it in their faces. To all other Christians, likewise: do not be cowed, do not retreat an inch. You have every right to maintain the beliefs that built Western Civilization against the beliefs that are taking it down and a duty in good conscience to affirm Christ, regardless of the consequences.

We must not respond passively by allowing ourselves to be browbeaten into silence. That is the coward's way out. Like Peter and John in Acts we have to speak of what we have seen and heard - it is our duty of love to those around us.

Ezra Levant has some comments on the specific individuals involved in a post called
"The McCarthyism of the Canadian Left":

Pat Martin is the NDP MP for Winnipeg Centre. Last week he told reporters that members of the Catholic lay order, Opus Dei, "give me the creeps".

I'm sure that's true. Martin doesn't like Christians in general, even when they're doing social services in his own decrepit downtown, a downtown that has got more decrepit under his watch as MP. Martin would rather have urban decay than development, if the developers are Christian. Here's his own hometown paper calling him out as "irrational" for his anti-Christian outburst earlier this year.

But Martin went further this time. In response to news that fifteen or so MPs and staff had a meeting in the Parliamentary restaurant with the Canadian vicar of Opus Dei, Martin didn't just call conservative Catholics creepy, he expressed his objection that any MP would invite such people to soil the sacred precincts of Parliament Hill. Martin "certainly wouldn't attend anything associated with them," he said.

After discussing Gilles Duceppe's contribution to the witch hunt, Levant ends with a summary of the situation:

So what do we have here?

1. The obvious: that anti-Christian bigotry remains an acceptable form of intolerance in Canadian politics.

2. This bigotry has infected the parties of the left.

3. The mainstream media, and indeed the rest of the political establishment, ignores this bigotry (and in many cases approves of it).

4. Like Marci McDonald's book on Christians, Duceppe's comments are ridiculous on the face of them: to ascribe government policy to two party volunteers without any government office. I doubt that either woman blacklisted by Duceppe have spoken to Harper in a year.

5. Like McDonald's book, Duceppe's comments are error-ridden: he says that a Conservative (MP Andrew Scheer) invited "his colleagues" to dine with Opus Dei "leaders". In fact, Scheer sent an e-mail to all of Parliament Hill -- including to Duceppe himself. And it wasn't Opus Dei leaders, but rather one man, Msgr. Fred Dolan.

6. How terrifying is Msgr. Dolan? Who was attracted to his diabolical meeting? Well, Mario Silva, for one. Who's he? Oh, just a Liberal MP. A gay Liberal MP. That just proves how deep the Christian conspiracy is though, doesn't it -- it even has left-wing gay activists as part of their master plan!

But the real point is this: anti-Christian bigotry has metastasized from quiet prejudices into full-blown witch-hunts. McDonald's hateful book was a catalyst, but as Martin's comments earlier this year (and Duceppe's comments in the Toronto Star in 2008) show, the hatred was already out there.

(By the way, look at Duceppe's comments in that Star article. The atheist Marxist Duceppe is actually giving his political opinions about what Catholic rituals are "questionable" or not. Could you imagine him inspecting an Orthodox Jew or Sikh this way?)

Back to my list:

7. Do Duceppe and Martin meet the definition of "bigot"? I think so; here's the dictionary definition: "one who regards or treats the members of a group (as a racial or ethnic group) with hatred and intolerance". Yeah, the shoe fits.

8. Will Canada's self-appointed anti-hate squads pounce on Martin and Duceppe? The Canadian Human Rights Commission? Of course not: they're part of the anti-Christian persecution themselves, having prosecuted Fr. Alphonse de Valk, Rev. Stephen Boissoin, the Christian Heritage Party, etc. I'm surprised they haven't gone after Msgr. Dolan yet.

9. How about the Canadian Jewish Congress? Pause for laughter.

10. Look at Duceppe's bizarre answer about McCarthyism: "McCarthy was you can’t say something because you can’t prove that you don’t have a card of the Communist Party and prove that you don’t have." We've all heard Duceppe enough to know that his English, while accented, is excellent. He is making the usual Marxist argument: censorship is only censorship if it's applied against the left. Witch-hunts against conservatives, by definition, aren't witch hunts.

11. But he saved the worst for last: he says that Opus Dei should not be allowed to participate in our democracy. He fudged it a bit; saying they ought not to participate "as a group". But that makes no sense: Opus Dei, as a group, is not involved in any political party. It is a lay organization -- it's not a group of priests. It's just a group of Catholics who have a particular belief. The very people he named in Parliament were participating as individuals -- it's ridiculous to claim they were Opus Dei candidates, for example. But they were precisely the ones Duceppe was damning.

12. One more point about the media. Duceppe's attack was either inspired by or coordinated with Le Devoir's Helene Buzzetti, who has written several breathless reports about Opus Dei in recent days. You need a subscription to read the full text, but here are some of her gems (my translation, helped by Google): Opus Dei "arouses suspicions"; it is "controversial"; it engages in "secrecy"; and my favourite: "it urges its members to pursue graduates studies and then mingle with the elite". (How suspicious! Sounds like the Jews, really!) Don't you love it when journalists put their own editorial opinions in as facts, merely by stating them without attribution? They "arouse suspicions", you know! . . .

Levant closes with this challenge:

How do you feel about people being blacklisted because they're Catholic? How do you feel about MPs calling different religions "creepy"? How about a leader of a party declaring certain private religious rituals "questionable"? How about the condemnation of even inviting such people to lunch?

If your answer is anything different than it would be if Marci McDonald and Pat Martin and Gilles Duceppe were counting Jews or Sikhs or Muslims, then shame on you.