The Rage Against God by Peter Hitchens

Peter Hitchens, brother of famous new atheist Christoper Hitchens, has written a moving, lyrical and clear-sighted memoir of his journey from atheism to Christian faith. He has debated his brother publicly and takes this opportunity to clarify and elaborate on his arguments against the atheism espoused by the new atheists.

Peter Hitchens is a journalist who writes for the Mail on Sunday and a distinguished author, broadcaster and sometime foreign correspondent who lived for three years in Moscow during the fall of Communism in that country.

One of the best features of this book is that it is written by someone deeply concerned about politics and not by a philosopher concerned with highly abstract, logical arguments for or against the existence of God. As a result, this book deals with the "So what?" question of what difference belief in God makes for politics, ethics, culture and human life.

I have thought for years that the difference between the atheism of the 18th century Enlightenment and the 20th century movement dubbed "the New Atheism" is that the older movement was really about epistemological and metaphysical questions while the newer one is really about politics. The New Atheism is part of the "long march" of cultural Marxism through Western institutions by which the socialists hope to undermine the resistance of Western civilization to the imposition of Marxism collectivism on a free people. Peter Hitchens' book confirms this hypothesis and fortifies my conviction that the New Atheists must be confronted on the level of morality and politics and not merely on the level of logic and philosophical debate. As a former Marxist himself, he is familiar from the inside with the role atheism play in Marxist thought.

Peter Hitchens trenchantly goes after those who claim not to be supporters of the Soviet Union even though they are Marxists and attempt to evade responsibility for the historical incarnations of their creed. Here is a passage which serves as a sample of his attack:

Any student of gullibility among the intelligent and worldly should study first of all the work of Sidney and Beatrice Webb on the Soviet Union. Their perfectly enormous book Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? purports to be a respectable and carefully researched account of the USSR under Stalin. Its picture of a rational paradise of human progress is so wholly and completely false and can now be shown to be so at every turn by libraries full of records and by mountains of human skulls. Yet, on publication in the late 1930s it was generally regarded as a respectable work of scholarship and research. It is a sore shame that its authors did not live to see their work thoroughly shown up for what it was, a mass of self-deceiving lies. These lies served a filthy despotism, but perhaps more importantly encouraged the rational, materialist intellectuals of free nations in dangerous delusions, which still trouble us.

In realizing this we need to remember that the Webbs were not themselves revolutionary Marxists or even former Tortskyists, but gentle Fabian social democrats, believers in lawful, democratic process, in the inevitability of graduallism, honorable in their personal dealings, honest according to their own lights. They were kind to their domestic servants, modest in their lives, studious, responsible, and serious, by no means stupid or ill-educated or personally callous. (p. 167)

That such people could be unwitting dupes and enablers of some of the greatest evils the world has ever seen is surely a clear lesson to those who think that it is harmless to dabble in a little bit of fashionable leftism without taking the whole materialist, collectivist system seriously. Peter Hitchens admits that he himself was one of those "useful idiots" and "fellow travelers" who helped undermine Western civilization from within and his conversion represents hope for all those blinded by socialist ideology.

No one needs to learn this lesson more urgently than the typical liberal Protestant clergyman who likes to fancy himself a social democrat while functioning as an apologist for Marxist ideas that are antithetical to the theological, philosophical and political underpinnings of Western civilization and who has never met a left-wing policy he did not like. Such people undermine the faith from within and are the most dangerous heretics around simply because they appear to be so genuinely concerned about the poor and so kindhearted.

The War on Terror Should Be a War on Islamism

Andrew McCarthy has an important article, "It's About Sharia" in National Review Online, in which he discusses a speech that Newt Gringrich recently gave at the American Enterprise Institute on the jihad against the West that is currently underway.

McCarthy's recent book, The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America, is a fascinating look at the campaign for world domination that political Islam is waging and the complicity of Western leftists because of their anti-Christian bias. Perhaps Gingrich has been reading McCarthy's book or perhaps he has been dipping into the work of Melanie Philips or Jamie Glazov or Christopher Caldwell.

But whoever he has been reading, Gingrich seems to be the one re-focusing the debate in such a way as to face up to the reality of the threat we face to freedom.

The former speaker of the House gets the war on terror. For one thing, he refuses to call it the “war on terror,” which should be the entry-level requirement for any politician who wants to influence how we wage it. Gingrich grasps that there is an enemy here and that it is a mortal threat to freedom. He knows that if we are to remain a free people, it is an enemy we must defeat. That enemy is Islamism, and its operatives — whether they come as terrorists or stealth saboteurs — are the purveyors of sharia, Islam’s authoritarian legal and political system.

This being the Era of the Reset Button, Gingrich is going about the long-overdue business of resetting our understanding of the civilizational jihad that has been waged against the United States for some 31 years. It is the jihad begun when Islamists overran the American embassy in Tehran, heralding a revolutionary regime that remains the No. 1 U.S. security challenge in the Middle East, as Gingrich argued Thursday in a provocative speech at the American Enterprise Institute.

Liberals like to disguise the nature of the threat by various strategies. They peddle a Marxist interpretation of the reasons why people fly planes into buildings or blow up subways when they try to link such actions to the poverty of the third world and supposed rage over the neglect of the poor. Yet, the perpetrators do not sound like Marxists with their Islamic Supremicist rhetoric. Sometimes liberals, particularly the Obama administration, talk as if Islamic terrorist were just random acts of senseless violence committed by people who are insane or on drugs. There is no evidence to support this hypothesis whatsoever.

This is why it cannot be a war on "terror." Terror is a political tool and the Islamists have a political goal: the imposition of Sharia law on us.

The single purpose of this jihad is the imposition of sharia. On that score, Gingrich made two points of surpassing importance. First, some Islamists employ mass-murder attacks while others prefer a gradual march through our institutions — our legal, political, academic, and financial systems, as well as our broader culture; the goal of both, though, is the same. The stealth Islamists occasionally feign outrage at the terrorists, but their quarrel is over methodology and pace. Both camps covet the same outcome. Second, that outcome is the death of freedom. In Islamist ideology, sharia is deemed to be the necessary precondition for Islamicizing a society — for Islam is not merely a religious doctrine, but a comprehensive socio-economic and political system.

It is not responsible to call Islam a "religion of peace," as both Bush and Obama have done, when Muslims and Westerners mean two completely different things by that phrase. For Muslims, peace is what you get when all have submitted to the will of Allah as defined by the clerics in charge of the theocracy. For Westerners it means that Muslims live side by side with others in a pluralistic liberal democracy.

When people talk about "moderate Muslims" it is left unclear what is meant by the description. Those Muslims who want to impose Sharia on us and turn the West into an Islamic theocracy, but who think terrorism is counter-productive, are not the true moderates. They are fellow-travelers of the terrorists. True moderates are those Muslims who are willing to live in Western societies under Western law and reject the goal of imposing Sharia. They can be good Muslims and good citizens of Western countries as long as they agree to the separation of Mosque and State. Gingrich gets this:

The war is about the survival of Western civilization, and we should make no apologies for the fact that the West’s freedom culture is a Judeo-Christian culture — a fact that was unabashedly acknowledged, Gingrich reminded his audience, by FDR and Churchill. To ensure victory in the United States we must, once again, save Europe, where the enemy has advanced markedly. There is no separating our national security and our economic prosperity — they are interdependent. And while the Middle East poses challenges of immense complexity, Gingrich contended that addressing two of them — Iran, the chief backer of violent jihad, and Saudi Arabia, the chief backer of stealth jihad — would go a long way toward improving our prospects on the rest.

Most significant, there is sharia. By pressing the issue, Newt Gingrich accomplishes two things. First, he gives us a metric for determining whether those who would presume to lead us will fight or surrender. Second, at long last, someone is empowering truly moderate Muslims — assuming they exist in the numbers we’re constantly assured of. Our allies are the Muslims who embrace our freedom culture — those for whom sharia is a matter of private belief, not public mission. Our enemies are those who want sharia to supplant American law and Western culture. When we call out the latter, and marginalize them, we may finally energize the former.

Newt Gingrich, as McCarthy cogently argues, has set the agenda for the debate that will, in my opinion, go a long way toward toward determining the 2012 Presidential election.

Interview on Contraception

The Interim, Canada's Life and Family Newspaper, recently interviewed me on the subject of contraception. The interview is available on their website as "A Baptist's Opposition to Contraception." Joseph Jalsevac was the interviewer and he had great questions. I think the interview is a good beginning point for anyone who wants to reflect on contraception as a moral issue.

Vacation

I'm off camping and canoeing for the next week, so blogging will be light or non-existent. I trust that you are getting some time in God's great outdoors this summer and some time away from traffic, noise and pollution. I'll be back the week of Aug. 15 and vacation will be over for this year. I'll deal with comments when I return.

How Same-sex "Marriage" is Changing Marriage

What does support for homosexual "marriage" mean? Many naive people assume that it simply means that the institution of marriage remains unchanged while people who were previously excluded from it are now included. This is wrong. In fact, the only way homosexual relationships can be considered as "marriage" is if marriage is re-defined drastically.

The re-definition of marriage did not start with the push for homosexual "marriage." It began with the rise of promiscuity, the widespread acceptance of contraception, the advent of no fault divorce and the acceptance of cohabitation as "equal" to marriage. This is just another step (maybe step 5 of 10) in the complete and total destruction of marriage as the basis of society.

Canada's re-definition of marriage in Bill C-38 leaves out permanency as an essential part of the definition of marriage in addition to making marriage into a union of any two persons. Next on the agenda is the weakening of monogamy as the ideal. An article by Matthew Cullinan Hoffman shows that this is well underway:

Forty-seven percent of gay couples in a recently published study said that they had "sex agreements" with their partners, which clarify how often and in what circumstances they are permitted to have sex with others. Only 45% said that their relationships were monogamous, while another 8% disagreed about whether their relationship was "open" or exclusive, according to an ongoing study by the Center for Research on Gender & Sexuality at San Francisco State University.

The Gay Couples Study said that the couples interviewed typically put a positive spin on "open" relationships, with three out of four participants describing non-monogamous agreements as "positive" because it eliminates the need to lie to one's partner.

The authors also claimed that, "we found that couples make sexual agreements because they want to build a strong relationship rather than for HIV protection."

"With straight people, it's called affairs or cheating," according to Colleen Hoff, the lead researcher for the Gay Couples Study, "but with gay people it does not have such negative connotations."

"Agreements about whether or not to allow sex with outside partners covered a wide range of types, including 'traditional' monogamous arrangements as well as those that permitted sex with outside partners," the study's authors write. "For those couples who allowed sex with outside partners, most placed rules or conditions limiting when, where, how often, and with whom outside sex was permitted."

The study's authors note that examining homosexual relationships is important because "previous research shows that gay and bisexual men in relationships engage in substantially higher rates of unprotected anal intercourse (UAI) with their primary partners than do single men with their casual partners."

Anal intercourse and other forms of homosexual behavior are associated with a variety of diseases and syndromes, including high rates of sexually transmitted diseases such AIDS, syphilis, and hepatitis, which homosexuals suffer at rates many times higher than the general population. It is also associated with damaged rectum linings and a variety of anal and intestinal diseases that were once known in the scientific literature as "gay bowel syndrome," until the term was dropped following pressure from homosexual activists.

The New York Times, writing about the study in January, before its release, noted that the study tends to vindicate those who have warned that homosexual "marriage" will lead to a redefinition of the institution itself, destroying its traditional meaning.

Noting that "gay nuptials are portrayed by opponents as an effort to rewrite the traditional rules of matrimony," the Times added that "quietly, outside of the news media and courtroom spotlight, many gay couples are doing just that," citing the Gay Couples Study. The Times also noted that the homosexuals they tried to interview were worried about what would happen to the gay "marriage" movement if the truth were known about homosexual behavior.

For once, the New York Times (even the New York Times!) gets it right. Read the rest here.

David Fitch thinks the Church should adopt a stance of "welcoming and mutually transforming" toward homosexuals and refrain from saying that homosexual behavior is wrong. He is basically adopting the position adopted by the Anglican Church of Canada in the 70s, which is a step toward embracing the heretical position the ACC takes today. The constant calls for "dialogue" and "listening" are really meant to facilitate desensitization toward sin and soften up the Church for the radical step of calling good what Scripture calls evil.

A reader asked me what I thought of Fitch's position. I have read four or five of his posts and I think the whole trend of his thought is just a replay of the thought process through which liberal Protestantism moved to get to the culturally accommodated position it is in today.

Of course condemning what "everybody" says is good is unpopular, but Jesus did not say that discipleship was supposed to be easy.

Should There Be Religious Freedom for Groups Trying to Take Away Religious Freedom?

At what point should people who wish to take away the religious freedom of others be prevented from doing so? Clearly, some forms of religion should be prohibited in a liberal democracy - human sacrifice, wife-abuse, Jew-killing and slavery for example. If your religion permits or commands such things you should not have religious freedom to do them no matter how loud the appeals to "tolerance" or "cultural relativism" and no matter what threats are made against the State or individuals. Compulsion is in order and the State should be firm about protecting fundamental rights of all citizens.

Here is the website for a group called Former Muslims United (FMU). They sent a letter to 165 Muslim groups asking them to sign the following pledge of religious liberty:

To support the civil rights of former Muslims, also known as apostates from Islam, I sign “The Muslim Pledge for Religious Freedom and Safety from Harm for Former Muslims”:

I renounce, repudiate and oppose any physical intimidation, or worldly and corporal punishment, of apostates from Islam, in whatever way that punishment may be determined or carried out by myself or any other Muslim including the family of the apostate, community, Mosque leaders, Shariah court or judge, and Muslim government or regime.

This seems like a clear, unambiguous statement of religious freedom and I, as a Westerner, would be confident that any Muslim organization that signed it would have committed itself to abide by the rule of law and the freedom of religion that are basic to Western culture.

Unfortunately, out of 165 Muslim organizations and individuals that received this request, a grand total of 2 individuals replied affirmatively. CAIR (the Council of American Islam Relations) did not. MSA (the Muslim Students Association) did not. Yet these organizations (see the whole list here) are considered "moderate Muslim voices" by the American government. It seems to me that no Muslim organization that refuses to wholeheartedly endorse such a clear and simple statement can be considered "moderate."

Nonie Darwish describes in her article "Muslim Groups Attack FMU with Doublespeak" what they did instead. She describes the campaign of disinformation mounted by Muslim groups unwilling to deny the Muslim teaching that apostates should be killed and yet wanting to lure the Western public into thinking that tyranny is not creeping into the West. :

On Nov. 19, 2009 Sheila Musaji, editor of The American Muslim, wrote an article attacking Former Muslims United (FMU). Ms. Musaji stated “This FMU pledge is simply another attempt to create propaganda. Thus, she [Darwish] planted the idea that American Muslims have not taken a position against punishments for apostasy and attempted to make it seem as if only former Muslims can stand for what is right, and frankly to attempt to increase the visibility of the FMU at the expense of the Muslim community. This is shameful behavior (although typical of members of this group who go beyond denouncing Islamic radicalism to denouncing all of Islam) and is simply another example of attempting to marginalize the Muslim community."

But if Muslim groups have already taken a stand against punishments for apostasy, they should expect to be asked about their position every time there is another well publicized case of Muslim violence or threats of violence in the name of Islam. This is too bad for them, but it is not the fault of those asking the questions. They should blame the radicals. How does it marginalize the Muslim community for Muslim groups to affirm religious freedom? Why is it shameful to ask Muslim leaders to re-affirm what they already claim to have affirmed? Why blame the messenger?

If you go on You Tube and search for "Hamas" and "demonstrations" you will see disturbing clips of anti-Israel and anti-American demonstrations will calls to "Nuke Israel" and comparisons of Israel and George Bush to Nazi Germany. This sort of thing is increasing and it does not inspire confidence, to put it mildly.

Darwish goes on to describe how Islamic governments, sensing the disapproval of the West, try to disguise what they are doing:

Muslim apologists often speak from both sides of their mouths. On the one hand, they assure Americans that Islam has nothing in it that condemns apostates to death. On the other hand, they state that announcing publicly that one has left Islam and stating the reasons for leaving, are grounds for charges of treason. After world condemnation of Islamic tyranny, many Muslim countries are working around the law of apostasy by still killing apostates but for a different stated reason. If a Muslim declares publicly that he has left Islam and why, that in itself is considered treason, and thus governments can arrest apostates, torture, imprison and kill him, but they officially state that it is due to treason, as if the person had committed espionage or some other crime against national security.

Now, in my opinion, to take this tact is to turn Islam into a totalitarian political ideology similar to Fascism - one that is incompatible with the West and which the West must eradicate from its lands. We cannot tolerate totalitarian acts on our soil. They can have freedom of speech because sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. But if they issue threats against specific individuals or take actions to hurt former Muslims they should feel the wrath of the law. And any Muslims who support this barbaric practice should be publicly shamed and shunned so that they find life here difficult and unpleasant.

To speak as if there was no problem of killing apostates is just ridiculous. Well-known cases like those of Salman Rushdie and Ayaan Hrisi Ali are all around us. The Danish cartoon violence is well-documented, as is the large number of terrorist attacks - some very recent and others narrowly averted - against the West. You can't blame Westerners for wanting reassurance.

So much for the "religion of peace." If it really wants to be a religion of peace it can start by unambiguously affirming religious toleration for former Muslims. Any Muslim group that will not do so clearly, unambiguously and in writing should be considered as extreme and Islamist.

I would have no problem with "moderate" Islam. I have no problem with Muslim individuals coming to Canada. But I do have a problem with Muslims coming to Canada who will not accept the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and apply the freedom of religion principle to former Muslims. As far as I'm concerned this is a deal-breaker. If we can't get Muslims to agree to freedom of religion then they should be prohibited from entering Canada. Those already here should be stripped of their citizenship and deported at the first sign of persecution of former Muslims. If they see we are serious they will either stay away or accept our deeply-held and hard-won convictions in this matter.

The Struggle for the Soul of the Republican Party

David Frum has an article in today's National Post in which he does his best to confuse the serious issues of political philosophy being debated today in the United States. He begins by asking: "Is Obama a socialist?" and he says that no, he is not, even though he simultaneously admits that a lot of current US federal government policy looks socialist. So why not call Obama a socialist?

Frum says we should not call Obama a socialist because many of the entitlement programs and much of the national debt is the responsibility of George W. Bush and how can we call Republicans socialists? The problem here is that "socialist" is used in the US as a smear; it is such an unpopular view that to label successfully your opponent as "socialist" is to discredit him or her in the minds of the majority of voters. We can call this the "connotative meaning" as opposed to the "descriptive meaning" of the word. In the UK, where socialism is vastly more advanced and more popular, politicians who advance Obama-like policies are content to be known as socialist; it is just a description of what they stand for.

But why does Frum shrink from describing Obama's big government, high taxation, expansion of the welfare state as moving toward socialism or as socialism in stages? He is afraid that the label will be turned back on him and the big government wing of the Republican Party of which he is a part.

The Republican Party has been cautiously progressive, that is, committed to the New Deal for over half a century. The party establishment beat back the Goldwater challenge in the 60s but found itself unable to prevent Reagan from becoming president in 1980. But it fought a quiet rearguard action against the small government wing of the party represented by Reagan in order to prevent the dismantling of the welfare state or even the shrinking of the size of government during the Reagan years. All Reagan was able to do was to slow the rate of growth of the federal government.

So the Republican Party is divided into a big government wing and a small government wing and the uneasy compromise achieved during the Bush years was an agreement to lower taxes without cutting the federal budget. This, of course, is not a viable long-term strategy. It is a temporary truce which allows the Republican Party to avoid a division into two parties that would ensure a permanent majority for the Democratic Party.

Why does David Frum criticize Sarah Palin so much? It is because she comes from the small government wing of the Republican Party. Why does he fear and seek to discredit the Tea Party? Same reason. Why does he not label Obama a socialist? It is because he is just as much a socialist as Obama and he is allowing the progressives to shape the narrative.

The progressive narrative sees the big government, ever-expanding welfare state as America's inevitable destiny. So the political spectrum has to be defined as those who want to proceed full steam ahead toward European-style social democracy (liberal) versus those who want to go more slowly and carefully and bring more of the undecided voters along (conservative), which is how the spectrum is defined in Europe. This debate was at the heart of Democratic debates over health care (i. e. single-payer now or eventually?). In this narrative, then, big government Republicans are "good little Republicans" - essentially just like "conservative Democrats." They get invited to swanky cocktail parties with celebrities and the NYT employs them as columnists. They play a useful function for the goal of the progressives is to control both parties and thus block out any serious challenge to their power.

The Tea Party, however, is a threat because it seeks to take over the Republican Party and marginalize the big government Republicans like Lindsay Graham and John McCain. At stake is the definition of what it means to be conservative. If the Reagan, small-government wing of the Republican Party prevails, then conservative will mean their stance rather than the Bush, big government wing's stance. Frum is not just concerned about the reputation of his former boss, he is concerned about the big government Republican wing losing control of the party.

He distorts the motives of the small government wing of the party badly in the following passage:

In 2009, the US health economy reached a symbolic tipping point: for the first time, more than 50% of the dollars spent on health were spent by some agency of federal or state government. Sounds like socialism, right? But this tipping point was not driven by President Obama. It was driven by the growth of Medicare – and last I heard, it was President Obama who was proposing slowdowns in Medicare spending, and it was Sarah Palin and the Tea Party activists who were denouncing reductions in Medicare as tantamount to “death panels.”

Where to begin in untangling this mess. First, there are two ways to reduce Medicare spending. One is the Democratic way of death panels. Essentially, what they propose is to reduce spending on seniors during the expensive last couple of years of life and ration resources. This will have the effect of letting people die a little earlier than otherwise, but the potential for savings is huge. The other way to reduce the unsustainable growth in Medicare spending is the one proposed by Paul Ryan's "Roadmap." He proposes that Medicare become a means-tested social safety net instead of a middle class entitlement. Basically, he wants middle class Americans who can afford it to pay for their own health care and use government programs only for those in need. But this is anathema to Democrats because it reduces the size and control of government.

Frum does not distinguish between those who want the status quo and those who want to reform the welfare state to preserve a safety net for the poor and needy while simultaneously reducing taxes and growing the private sector. Why? Because this distinction does not fit the progressive narrative. They want you to believe that there are only two choices: bankruptcy or higher taxes. And any other choice involves being heartless, cruel and having no social conscience. This is a self-serving piece of propaganda whether it is spouted by the Democrats or by the Republicans.

Academic Freedom = Freedom from Christianity

The concept of academic freedom has been severely distorted and degraded in recent years. In this post, "No Christianity Please, We're Academics" Tim Larson of Wheaton College reflects on the phenomenon of overt discrimination against Christians in contemporary universities. The exclusion of Christian thinking from the university is a phenomenon which requires some kind of explanation and any such explanation will need to provide a reason why it is possible to assume without question that Christianity is a bad thing when it has been regarded as the moral foundation of our culture for over a thousand years. Here is the beginning of Larson's post:

I had lunch this summer with a prospective graduate student at the evangelical college where I teach. I will call him John because that happens to be his name. John has done well academically at a public university. Nevertheless, as often happens, he said that he was looking forward to coming to a Christian university, and then launched into a story of religious discrimination.

John had been a straight-A student until he enrolled in English writing. The assignment was an “opinion” piece and the required theme was “traditional marriage.” John is a Southern Baptist and he felt it was his duty to give his honest opinion and explain how it was grounded in his faith. The professor was annoyed that John claimed the support of the Bible for his views, scribbling in the margin, “Which Bible would that be?” On the very same page, John’s phrase, “Christians who read the Bible,” provoked the same retort, “Would that be the Aramaic Bible, the Greek Bible, or the Hebrew Bible?” (What could the point of this be? Did the professor want John to imagine that while the Greek text might support his view of traditional marriage, the Aramaic version did not?) The paper was rejected as a “sermon,” and given an F, with the words, “I reject your dogmatism,” written at the bottom by way of explanation.

Thereafter, John could never get better than a C for papers without any marked errors or corrections. When he asked for a reason why yet another grade was so poor he was told that it was inappropriate to quote C. S. Lewis in work for an English class because he was “a pastor.”

In this professor's world, anyone who expresses a Christian thought must be a "pastor." What lurid connotations that word must dredge up from the professor's subconscious would likely be fascinating to explore. But surely such anti-Christian passion requires explanation. What follows is my explanation of this phenomenon.

The Left, which has virtually captured our universities as a result of its "long march" through the institutions of our culture, does not really believe in academic freedom as a good. How could it? After all, from the point of view of the Left, capitalism is slavery and the goal of education is to liberate us from our capitalist oppression and raise our consciousness. So from a left-wing perspective, education is not neutral but liberating when it is done from the perspective of Marxist theory. But when education is not done from a Marxist perspective it is enslaving and therefore harmful. And any "ideology" that perpetuates false consciousness (like Christianity) is harmful.

So academic freedom is good from a left-wing perspective when it allows academics to challenge traditional ideas, especially religious ones and particularly Judeo-Christian ones. Iconoclasm, free-thinking and revolutionary thought are therefore to be encouraged. However, to do so it is also at the same time necessary to stifle traditional, conservative, religious thought. Since academic work is never neutral, therefore academic freedom must be redefined to apply to that which is not revolutionary or, to use the preferred term (which causes less alarm among the natives), "progressive."

So whatever is compatible with Marxism is good; whatever is rooted in Christianity and opposed to Marxism is bad. Freedom is equated with freedom from Christianity and all other forms of traditional or conservative thinking. So the concept of academic freedom is given a Marxist twist and the idea of tolerating that with which the majority disagrees is transformed into political correctness.

I believe that this Marxist deformation of the concept of "academic freedom" explains the phenomena described by Larson so eloquently in his article. He ends with a call to protest and activism, which does sometimes work. I agree that it sometimes works, but not because of any lack of ideological determination on the part of Leftists. It works because a few strategic retreats along the way allows the forces on the Left to keep their powder dry for the crucial battles and keeps the naive from becoming aroused when they still have the votes to win key battles. Better to keep on taking over the key positions until the whole agenda can come out in the open.

I believe that the Left has exploited a twisted and distorted definition of academic freedom to marginalize Christianity and other conservative points of view in the contemporary university in the interests of advancing their Marxist ideology and taking over society slowly without overt violence, but very surely.

The Federal Government Can Do Anything

Seldom does the totalitarian face of raw, naked power show its contempt for the citizens of the United States of America so openly. Watch this clip of Rep. Pete Stark as he answers a question from a constituent. There are some reasonable answers to her question but he appears not even to be aware of the debates carried on by constitutional law experts and philosophers as to the different schools of constitutional interpretation. And there are political ways to answer this question by appealing to democracy.

But he is either ignorant of the issues or he just plain chooses to answer in the way he does. His words should send a shiver up the spine of any descendant of those Englishmen who wrung the Magna Carta out of King John on June 15, 1215.



HT Michelle Malkin

It is beyond ridiculous to see this kind of politician as a "Progressive" when he is trying to take the country back to the 12th century when kings ruled with no constitutional check on their power. King Barack I and his merry court feels free to ignore the constitution; I think we already knew that. Did he not arrogantly administer a tongue lashing to the Supreme Court in his State of the Union address?

But for a Democrat to sit in a town hall meeting and show this level of contempt for the serfs is astounding. If this attitude does not provoke an electoral backlash then I don't know what would.

More on the Ground Zero Mosque

I believe that the momentum is growing against the building of the Ground Zero Mosque. Any politician who takes a stand against it in this election cycle is going to win votes. Here are two straws in the wind that support this view.

First, Peter Beinart writing on the Daily Beast goes after the Anti-Defamation League for departing from the liberal script on the Ground Zero Mosque controversy, "Hateful Ground Zero Hypocrisy." All he has for an argument is that it is hypocritical to be against the Muslims building a mosque anywhere if you believe in religious freedom for Christians. Of course, the Left does not believe in religious freedom for Christians, so one wonders how sincere they are in their great concern for religious freedom for Muslims. It is interesting that the story functions as a premise for him to attack Israel, which is what the Left likes doing more than anything else these days. The Left trying to portray Jews and conservatives as "hateful" and "intolerant" is just getting harder and harder to take seriously.

Second, Maggie Haberman has uncovered an article in which Rudy Giulliani comes out against the Ground Zero Mosque. Here are some quotes she has in her post "Rudy: GZ Mosque is a 'desecration,'decent Muslims' won't be offended."

It sends a particularly bad message, particularly (because) of the background of the Imam who is supporting this. This is an Imam who has supported radical causes, who has not been forthright in condemning Islamic (terrorism) and the worst instincts that that brings about.

"So it not only is exactly the wrong place, right at Ground Zero, but it's a mosque supported by an Imam who has a record of support for causes that were sympathetic with terrorism. Come on! We're gonna allow that at Ground Zero?

"This is a desecration," he added. "Nobody would allow something like that at Pearl Harbor. Let's have some respect for who died there and why they died there. Let's not put this off on some kind of politically correct theory.

"I mean, they died there because of Islamic extremist terrorism. They are our enemy, we can say that, the world will not end when we say that. And the reality is it will not and should not insult any decent Muslim because decent Muslims should be as opposed to Islamic extremism as you and I are."

Giulliani is right: decent Muslims won't be offended. But Leftists will. Go figure.

Should the Burqa be Banned in Canada?

Should the burqa be banned in Canada? At the moment, only 54% say "yes." Ezra Levant has a column in the Sun on the issue, "Will Your Daughter Play with the Burqa Barbie?" and he points out that religious freedom is in conflict with the equality of women and men on this issue.

So let's be honest here: the problem is not that extreme right-wingers are being intolerant; rather, it is that we are struggling to figure out how to respect the religious beliefs of Muslims without enabling the oppression of women, which is a legitimate and serious problem with which to grapple as a liberal democratic society. As a conservative, I am willing to admit that religious freedom is not unlimited. When a religion goes against the law of the land, it is no longer tolerated; this is a well-established principle in law and many Christian beliefs are not reflected in Western law. Islam does not have unlimited freedom to remake Western society in its image. Liberals who are busy trying to eradicate all Christian influence from our legal and educational system should have no problem admitting that principle with regard to Islam.

Yet we find that so-called "liberals" are increasingly finding themselves aligned with Islamic male oppression of women - treating women as property, obsessing about obedience and sanctioning "honor killing" - instead of being on the side of the individual as liberals used to be. Levant takes it to the feminists:

Canada’s misguided experiment with multiculturalism pretends that all cultural ideas are equal, and Canadian values, such as the equality of men and women, are no better than foreign values like the subjugation of women.

Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, enacted in 1982 when our Muslim population was tiny, is contradictory.

Section 27 of the Charter calls for “the preservation and enhancement of the multicultural heritage of Canadians.”

But Section 28 says that rights “are guaranteed equally to male and female persons.”

Well, which is it? “Enhancing” Saudi values? Or guaranteeing women’s equality?

Because you can’t have both.

Margaret Atwood published her sci-fi novel The Handmaid’s Tale, about America being taken over by a Christian theocracy that treats women as sexual property, 25 years ago.

It has become trite to watch cultural liberals like Atwood bravely attack imaginary discrimination, while staying silent on real discrimination.

The Handmaid’s Tale won Atwood the Governor General’s Award for fiction. A book about the subjugation of women in radical Islam would win Atwood a death threat.

Atwood loves posing as a feminist at champagne receptions in her honour. But she’ll leave the heavy lifting to people like Ayaan Hirsi Ali.

She’s the Somali refugee who wrote and narrated a movie called Submission, about the place of women in radical Islam.

The film’s producer, Theo Van Gogh, was murdered for it, but a note pinned with a knife into his body referred primarily to Hirsi Ali, who has had to live under around-the-clock security ever since.

That’s all a bit too real for Atwood, and is the reason why other feminists like the once-noisy Judy Rebick are so meek and gentle with the real butchers of women’s rights.

Levant mentions Ayaan Hirsi Ali, who has emerged as a spokeswoman for women who are being oppressed by a religious-political system that is brutal, unjust and violent toward women. To give you an idea of how pernicious and craven the Left has become and how dangerous postmodern moral and cultural relativism actually is to those under oppression, have a look at this interview of Hirsi Ali by the anti-American, ultra-Leftist Avi Lewis on the CBC show "On the Map."



It is pretty amazing to watch this doctrinaire Leftist try to tell Hirsi Ali, who herself is a victim of female genital mutilation, that a lot of Muslims are content with their religion and that there is actually no real difference between religions. The idea that all religions are the same is an article of faith with Leftists. Otherwise, it would be meaningful to discuss the question of which is better and which is worse and that is a debate the Left wants to stifle because it would result in Christianity being preferred as a superior religion in the sense of being more compatible with liberal democratic values. Since liberal democracy emerged in the context of a Christian civilization, this is hardly surprising. But the Left wishes to conceal this truth because it does not fit its narrative of how Christianity (and religion in general) is the source of all evil in the world while secular statism is the source of all good.

It is entertaining watching Hirsi Ali take this guy apart; it is like watching an adult school an adolescent. My favorite part is near the end when he claims that democracy is "broken" in America and refers to "stolen elections." Then he laughs at her for saying that anyone can come to America and get wealthy and stand for public office. In response to his mocking, she says:

I read Alexis de Tocqueville and I heard about democracy and I lived in countries that have no democracy . . . so I don't find myself in some lecture as you do. You grew up in freedom and you can spit on freedom because you don't know what it is not to have freedom. I haven't. I know that there are many things wrong with America but I still believe it is the best nation in the world.

The interviewer comes off looking like a smiling apologist for tyranny, which of course is what he is as a Leftist subversive. Usually, however, that fact is disguised whereas in this interviewer the Leftist sympathy for a totalitarian regime is unveiled in all its ugliness and hatefulness.

Is the UK Anti-Semitic?

The left-wing 87 year old President of Israel, Shimon Peres, thinks so and has come right out and said it.

Shimon Peres said England was "deeply pro-Arab ... and anti-Israeli", adding: "They always worked against us."

He added: "There is in England a saying that an anti-Semite is someone who hates the Jews more than is necessary."

His remarks, made in an interview on a Jewish website, provoked anger from senior MPs and Jewish leaders who said the 87-year-old president had "got it wrong".

But other groups backed the former Israeli prime minister and said the number of anti-semitic incidents had risen dramatically in the UK in recent years.

The controversy follows the furore last week over David Cameron's remark that Gaza was a "prison camp", as he urged Israel to allow aid and people to move freely in and out of the Palestinian territory.

Mr Peres, a Nobel Peace Prize winner who is three years into his seven-year term as president and was awarded an honorary knighthood by the Queen in 2008, said that England's attitude towards Jews was Israel's "next big problem".

"There are several million Muslim voters, and for many members of parliament, that's the difference between getting elected and not getting elected," he said.

"And in England there has always been something deeply pro-Arab, of course, not among all Englishmen, and anti-Israeli, in the establishment.

"They abstained in the [pro-Zionist] 1947 UN partition resolution ... They maintained an arms embargo against us in the 1950s ... They always worked against us. They think the Arabs are the underdogs."

Wow, can you say "undiplomatic"? David Cameron's grovelling remarks in Turkey the other day were pretty shocking coming from a leader of a major Western country. He basically said that Israel should drop the blockade that prevents Iran from smuggling highly destructive missiles into Gaze within range of major Israeli population centers. Israel unilaterally withdrew from Gaza, but where are the concessions in response to enhance Israeli security? The Palestinians and their puppet masters in Tehren just took it as a sign of Israeli weakness and sought to press their advantage. Cameron basically told the Turks that they were right and Israel is wrong, despite the fact that Turkey has swung around behind Hamas, which wants Israel destroyed.

Here is a one minute clip from the BBC that shows what Cameron actually said. Note the deliberate use of the provocative phrase "prison camp." No wonder Peres was outraged.

So here we have yet another left-wing Jew, and this time a very prominent one, coming to the conclusion that the safety and security of Israel is not safe in the hands of a Europe under siege by Muslims or a United States as long as it is governed by unapologetic leftist Barack Obama. If Israel can hold on, Obama's wings are due to be clipped soon in the mid-term elections. As for the UK, however, that is a different story.

Darkness is descending on London and the British Isles in general as the Muslims become more and more emboldened.



Here is an excerpt from a CNN report on the anti-Christian protests after Pope Benedict spoke the truth about Islam.