A Plea for Religious Tolernance in Iran

If you want to watch a deeply Christian man speaking in the US Senate in a thoroughly Christian way about an issue Christians ought to care deeply about - watch this video. Marco Rubio, US Senator from Florida, is a inspiring model for anyone aspiring to bear a Christian witness into the public square.

This case of Youcef Nadarkhani ought to galvanize world opinion and dominate the news this week. So much that is trivial and ephemeral gets talked about in an endless loop in the media but this is a matter of life and death, rank injustice and oppressive totalitarianism.

Forces within the Iranian government are conspiring to have Youcef Nadarkhani executed for becoming a Christian. It is a moral scandal - and should be recognized by any person or any religion or no religion - that in the twenty-first century a state would presume to bind the conscience of its citizens and strip them of their basic human dignity by passing a law forbidding them on pain of death from choosing which religion, if any, to believe in personally. There is no more inhumane, cruel and intrusive act of a totalitarian regime than the act of inserting a government between an individual and God so as to attempt to bind his conscience in chains. Any state that does this de-legitimizes itself and buys itself the utter contempt of free people and nations everywhere.

Multicultural relativism is a cruel joke. It is a tool of dictators and tyrants. It is anti-human and incompatible with freedom, justice and the natural law. To say that this is Iran's culture and that Islam has different values than us and so we must not judge is to abdicate reason and morality and to lower oneself to the level of thugs and murderers. It is to sacrifice Youcef Nadarkhani on the altar of personal convenience.

The moral basis of this speech is intricately rooted deep in the Christian vision of man made in the image of God and endowed with conscience, reason and the capacity for moral choice. This vision of man has shaped the human rights tradition of the West and without Christian theology undergirding and sustaining it this human rights tradition will collapse. Already there are numerous signs that the collapse is already far advanced. You can see this fact demonstrated by the silence of liberal Protestantism - and politicians shaped by liberal Protestantism - about injustices like this in Muslin countries today. The rejection of the Christian view of man followed by the embrace of multicultural relativism leads inexorably to the silence of those who should speak out and the condoning of murder, tyranny and oppression.

The people of Iran are suffering. Europe frets about its oil supply and is mute, the US pursues its neo-isolationism under Obama and the UN continues it propaganda war against Israel instead of being concerned about genuine human rights abuses in countries like Iran. All this is reprehensible and thank-you to Marco Rubio for speaking out in a reasonable, Christian manner about one of the great issues of our time: the religious liberty of all people rooted in our nature as creatures made in the image of God.



Marco Rubio is an inspiration. May his pleas for justice not fall on deaf ears.

Do Only Republicans Care about Human Rights for Women?

Further to the last post, here is some reaction from Speaker John Boehner and Mitt Romney as summarized by Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post:

House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) condemned the remarks. (“I’m deeply troubled by the comments reportedly made by the Vice President yesterday regarding China’s reprehensible one-child policy, which has resulted in forced sterilizations and coerced abortions and should not be condoned by any American official. No government on Earth has the authority to place quotas on the value of innocent human life, or to treat life as an economic commodity that can be regulated and taken away on a whim by the state.”) He called for clarification or retraction.

Mitt Romney had this swift retort in a statement to Right Turn: “China’s one-child policy is gruesome and barbaric. Vice President Biden’s acquiescence to such a policy should shock the conscience of every American. Instead of condoning the policy, Vice President Biden should have condemned it in the strongest possible terms. There can be no defense of a government that engages in compulsory sterilization and forced abortions in the name of population control.”

I guess Democrats, feminists and liberals just don't care.

Biden on China's One Child Policy: A Shameful Way to Ingratiate Yourself to Dictators and Murderers

In 2008 I wrote on this blob that if left-wingers like Jim Wallis and Brian McLaren got their way and Barack Obama was elected, the outcome would be that the wars they supposedly opposed would continue in the same way as if a Republican and, in addition, we would get the most pro-abortion administration in American history. Well, three years later Obama is involved in three wars, which is one more than George W. Bush was involved in. But the anti-war rhetoric from the anti-war Left has been moderated considerably, actually pretty much abandoned.

Still, the Evangelical Left (which purports to care about women, children and the poor so much) can take pride in one accomplishment: they got a Vice President who went to China and assured the Communist dictators that their coercive one-child policy is just fine by him. This is an improvement on George W. Bush? No, it is a moral embarrassment to all who care about oppressed women and unborn children.

Here are some excerpts from Joe Biden's speech on Aug. 21: [Warning: contains extreme moral relativism instead of the usual Biden profanity]

China has followed a very different economic and political path to prosperity, enhancing some aspects of a free-market system, while resisting political openness and maintaining the state’s deep involvement in economic affairs. That's a decision for you to make.

What is a little thing like human dignity and liberty between trading partners?

Maybe the biggest difference in our respective approaches are our approaches to what we refer to as human rights. I recognize that many of you in this auditorium see our advocacy of human rights as at best an intrusion, and at worst an assault on your sovereignty. I want to tell you directly that this is not our intention. Yes, for Americans there is a significant moral component to our advocacy. And we observed where we have failed, as well. But it is who our people are.

"What we refer to as human rights"? What the heck is he trying to say? "It is who our people are"? Sounds like a concern for human rights is an American quirk that other nations cannot be expected to care about. Well, that sets up the context pretty well for the big bombshell:

In answer to a student's question about the US debt, Biden said:

What we ended up doing is setting up a system whereby we did cut by $1.2 trillion upfront, the deficit over the next 10 years. And we set up a group of senators that have to come up with another $1.2 to $1.7 trillion in savings or automatically there will be cuts that go into effect in January to get those savings. So the savings will be accomplished. But as I was talking to some of your leaders, you share a similar concern here in China. You have no safety net. Your policy has been one which I fully understand -- I’m not second-guessing -- of one child per family. The result being that you’re in a position where one wage earner will be taking care of four retired people. Not sustainable.

So hopefully we can act in a way on a problem that's much less severe than yours, and maybe we can learn together from how we can do that. [my bolding]

Maybe we can learn from China and its one-child policy? This guy is a disgrace to his religion (he is Roman Catholic), to his country and to his office.

Rep. Chris Smith, a stalwart pro-life leader in the House of Representatives was interviewed by Laura Ingrham on this issue. Here is a clip of the interview.

Here are some of Smith's remarks from the show transcript:

This is just exposing what this administration has been doing from day one. Just like the eight years of the Clinton administration, and that is to enable dictatorship, to enable forced abortion and forced sterilization. Let's not forget that at the Nuremburg War Crimes Tribunal​, forced abortion was properly construed to be a crime against humanity. It is no less a crime against humanity today and there is our Vice President saying that he fully understands the one child per couple policy that has made brothers and sisters illegal in China.

...

Hillary Clinton​, en route to Beijing, after being selected as secretary of state, said, I'm not going to allow human rights to interfere -- her words -- with selling or peddling our debt, as well as global warming. Obama -- when he had Hu Jintao​ in town, who ought to be held for genocide and crimes against humanity at the world court, he said nothing, had a state dinner for this man who ought to be behind bars, be held to account for these atrocities, including those focused on women.

Obama, Biden, Clinton - none of them care about the rights of women and children. They ought to be ashamed of themselves and no Christian ought to have anything whatsoever to do with supporting politicians like them.

Your "Right to Travel" - No Kidding!

Europeans are proving that the entitlement mentality of social democracy breeds . . . limitless feelings of entitlement. File this article in the National Post by Tasha Kheiriddin, "Human Rights Take a Trip to la-la Land" under the "Things They Were Doing in Rome Just Before the Barbarian Hordes Broke Down the Gate."

Just what is a human right? The right to life? To freedom from oppression? To equal treatment before the law? How about to... vacations?

Yep, you read that right. Apparently the good bureaucrats in the European Union, not satisfied with the mere time off that they receive, have decreed that travelling during that time is a right as well.

According to Antonio Tajani, the European Union commissioner for enterprise and industry,

"Travelling for tourism today is a right. The way we spend our holidays is a formidable indicator of our quality of life."