Archive for December, 2006
by Thomas Lindaman
Ah, December. It’s a month full of joy, fellowship, and good times.
Then we have to go to the mall. That’s when things get dicey. Sure, we may sing "Peace on Earth, good will towards men," but that’s before we have to spend the better part of an hour walking from the car to the front door, sometimes in weather that would make the penguins at Ice Station Zero want to put on a parka over their tuxedos.
I may sound like a Grinch, but I think there are some things that we should do away with around Christmas, and I’m not talking about Aunt Edna’s fruitcake, the one that’s been passed from person to person since the fourth Wise Man, Izzy, got turned away at the manger because he brought it. Here is a list of things that should be first to go.
People who get offended at holiday greetings. I’ve heard people actually get upset if you wish them a Merry Christmas and they’re not Christian. We have Islamic extremist terrorists who want us dead merely because we don’t think Mohammed was all that neato, a situation in Darfur that would make a pessimist out of the best motivational speaker, and a declining situation in Iraq. And you’re upset over Merry Christmas? Listen, if a holiday greeting is the biggest thing on your plate right now, you have a pretty sweet life and no reason to complain about anything.
by Robert E. Meyer
It is quite possible that atheists as a group are more intelligent than the community of theists at large. I don't have statistical evidence to support this claim, but anecdotally, I can believe that it is quite likely. Many, who become atheists, probably arrive at a crisis, where there are points of tension in reconciling Christianity with their own constructs of logic and reason. The atheist may say that this migration occurs because intelligent people gravitate toward a worldview distilled from logic and reason, as opposed to one conjured from superstition and unquestioning acceptance. That seems a bit self-serving and laced with hubris, though. Based on my observations, both groups are intellectually stratified—ignorant theists, astute atheists, and vice-versa. You realize that apologists for theism are themselves intellectual giants, when the best are pitted in debate against their atheist counterparts.
The positive argument about intelligent people is easily reversed. I could conclude that greater levels of intelligence present a pitfall of conceit that the atheist steps into. High levels of intelligence can cause a belief of invulnerability and hubris–that humanity will solve all problems and eventually gain a comprehensive knowledge of the universe–thus God is, or will become, unneeded and unwanted. This is the faith (though they might call their faith claims "confidence based on experience," if that is a distinction with a difference) of naturalism. That "faith" is justified according to its devotees, in that once upon a time, empirical knowledge existed as a small corpus of information, yet today it has snowballed into a juggernaut. While is it true that empirical knowledge has grown exponentially, few are sagaciously differentiating between that which is presently unknown and that which is by definition unknowable (as theists might say, hidden in the mind of God).
by Robert E. Meyer
As a Christian believer, I am quite content to let the atheist believe what he or she wants. My rationale for this and other pieces on the subject of atheism is a response to the often hostile and aggressive charges made against Christianity as a system of thought.
Some time ago, I was contacted by the proprietor of some irreverently named atheist website. Apparently he took issue with a certain piece I had written months earlier regarding my conclusions about a biblical passage from Matthew chapter 6 (one can only wonder why an atheist would want to dispute about biblical exegesis). I responded to his inquiry thinking that was the end of the discussion. The next day, I got a wave of E-mails making rather disparaging remarks, which had little to do with the topic in question. Based on what I could glean from the responses, their apparent Modus Operandi , was to roast a selected individual in an attempt to solicit an angry visceral response. If that didn't work, they would bring in their "cleaner" to finish the job, as I discovered yet the following morning. Here was his "love letter."
"As an unrepentant blasphemer, you see me and those like me as damned. Good for you! Enjoy it, Bob. But what you need to know is that all atheists see you as a delusional, intellectually inferior, weak-willed, gullible sucker who's incapable of distinguishing between fantasy and reality, and we laugh at you because of it. I would never hire an evangelical Christian. They believe in nonsense and as such can't be trusted with things of importance. If I were a customer prospect, I'd never buy a thing from you. (I wouldn't trust your ability to support your customers in an effective and intelligent manner.) If I were a loan officer, I'd never put a dime in your hand. (I wouldn't trust your ability to manage your finances or maintain a job through which you could repay me.) If you were a daycare owner, I'd never leave my child with you. (If I couldn't trust you with money, how could I possibly trust you with my child?) In fact, I wouldn't even trust you for the time of day if I had to catch a plane. Your intellect, and that of people like you, is sorely compromised, and I'd never allow your kind to affect me personally in any way shape or form. If the rest of the "god-believing" world wants to trust your intellect, then good for you. You shall have their trust, their employ, their business, their money, and their respect. Kudos!
Enjoy your delusion."
by Thomas E. Brewton
Old Testament tribulations of Judah and Israel, the 19th century events that set the stage for British decline as a world power, and the current state of affairs in the United States have worrisome similarities. All three peoples turned away from God and vaunted their own intellectual powers.
In the Old Testament books of Judges and 1st and 2nd Kings, as well as the numerous books of the prophets, the repeated message to rulers and to the people is that turning away from God to worship idols, whether of man-made gods or of wealth and power, always led to disaster at the hands of foreign aggressors.
A society in which individuals and rulers failed to deal justly with the poor, the widows, and the orphans, a society in which the rulers failed to pray to God for guidance, was a society that disintegrated from internal rot.
England, while it was a united Christian nation, became the greatest commercial power on earth and the nation with the greatest degree of individual political liberty. That began to fall apart by the middle of the 19th century, when the materialistic doctrines of atheism and agnosticism began their rise to dominance in intellectual and political life.
By Thomas E. Brewton
It is said that diplomats must be prepared to negotiate with the Devil, which raises the question whether anything can be gained by negotiating with pure evil. Is it realism to assume that the Devil can be made less than evil?
Release of the Baker-Hamilton Iraq Study Group report puts the doctrine of foreign policy realism in the middle of the table. One implication of that doctrine is that values should play no role in foreign policy; only material national interests deserve consideration.
Yet liberal Republicans and liberal Democrats have been touting the forthcoming report (predictably leaked and already widely discussed by the New York Times) as a counter to the administration's policy.
How does diplomatic realism square with the endless barrages of criticism from liberals that the Bush doctrine of preemptive action has squandered the United States's moral capital with the rest of the world?
How does diplomatic realism square with liberals attacking all forms of clandestine surveillance of enemy activity? with demands that terrorists be treated like prisoners of war under the Geneva convention?
Senators Kerry, Kennedy, Levin, and Dodd apparently regard "sensitivity" and popularity as values that trump other national interests, ergo the UN and not US military action: ingratiation, not defense. Where does the expected diplomatic realism of the Baker- Hamilton Iraq Study Group report fit into that picture? Are "sensitivity" and popularity moral values?
By Alan Caruba
Like the water in the well that goes dry, you don’t miss it until it’s gone and then it is just too late. In a society where our supermarkets overflow with food of every description, the notion that America is forcing its already small population of farmers, ranchers, and dairymen to quit must seem odd.
I was reminded of this by a recent Business Week cover story, “Can Anyone Steer This Economy?” by Michael Mandel. He began by noting that sometime next year the U.S. will hit a milestone. “For the first time in recent memory, the cost of imported goods and services will exceed federal revenues. In other words, Americans will soon pay more to foreigners than they do to their national government.”
If you like imported oil, said some sage, you will love imported food. The price of imported food involves more than one might imagine. Among the cost will be the loss of America’s wheat-growing farms, once known as the breadbasket for the world. That’s because the cost of growing wheat is exceeding the price it can get. Unless a farm bill wandering around Congress looking for a vote insures that farmers can receive a rational target price and the farmers an appropriate direct payment, they will be out of business.
As Jerry Snyder, president of the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, says, if the situation remains as it is, “all wheat growers have a chance of becoming dinosaurs. We will cease to exist.” Right now “farmers are selling out, going broke, or leaving farming altogether.”
by Thomas E. Brewton
Two of the basic recommendations in the Iraqi Study Group Report are utterly unrealistic. In each case the Study Group, in typical liberal-socialist fashion, bases its proposals upon the theoretical assumption that everyone sees the world as they do.
First, stating that the war in Iraq cannot be won without unified support here in the United States, the Study Group recommends that appropriate steps be taken to gain support from those opposed to the war.
One might as well have called for Hitler's support of the Allies' D-Day invasion in World War II. We are engaged in a cultural civil war in the United States in which fundamental compromise is impossible. Liberal Republicans and Democrats are engaged in a jihad against our founding Judeo-Christian principles, a jihad in which there is no middle ground.
By Alan Caruba
The president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, expressing the intention of the ayatollahs, has said he wants to wipe Israel off the map by killing every man, woman and child. Iran will use a nuclear weapon and is close to being able to make one any day now.
If the nuclear option is not used, the proxy armies of the Iranian puppet-masters will be Hezbollah attacking from Lebanon and Hamas from Gaza. Israel is in a pincers between armed camps sworn to destroy it. In the past it has been able to defeat its enemies. It may not be able to do so in the future.
Jerusalem has changed hands many times since the nation of Israel was established in 1321 B.C. Since King David founded it, it has been the Jewish capital for 3,300 years. There are some six million Jews living in the latest resurrection of Israel. They are, combined with all other Jews, a mere 0.02 percent of the world’s population, but they represent 40 percent of all the Jews in the world.
When the Jews declared Israel an independent state on May 14, 1948, five Arab nations immediately attacked it. Offered a state of their own by the United Nations, local Arabs said no. For nearly six decades, Israel has never had a day of real peace.
by Erik Rush
Don’t think for a minute that I live and die by what goes on at Fox News. I know the far Left thinks they’re the George Bush Network and the far Right thinks they’re too liberal. They may be guilty of imprudence for "giving life" to the Left’s more inane claims; for example, The Beltway Boys (Fred Barnes and Mort Kondracke) seriously addressing the mantra "we’re less safe now than we were before 9/11" (the bleat of the completely spineless) is one that should be relegated to the "Bush [somehow] caused Hurricane Katrina" pile. My view is that Fox generally does a pretty decent job relative to objectivity.
The rub for the Left is that objective correspondents and viewers tend to conclude that the far Left is dedicatedly corrupting America on just about every level. This group, as I’ve indicated before, now includes the national leadership of the Democrat Party. Some of its prominent members have been taking potshots at Fox in the last couple of weeks, which should be no surprise given the latter’s ratings, popularity and growing influence.
Some of my readers have noticed I’ve ramped things up over the last couple of weeks. Being in marketing, I even came up with the (downright brilliant) slogan "Full-Contact Commentary" for my website. The reasons for my having done this should be obvious.
by Jim Kouri, CPP
It didn't take long before the new Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and the new chairman of the House Judiciary Committee Rep. John Conyers started making noises on how they can further undermine efforts to protect Americans from terrorist attacks.
Speaker-elect Pelosi (D-CA) is co-sponsoring the "End Racial Profiling Act", according to syndicated columnist Sher Zieve. The proposed bill is said to have been prompted by the recent removal of six Muslim imams, who are reported to have acted in a decidedly provocative manner, from a US Airways’ flight. The problem with using this act to curb so-called profiling is that the persons who demanded the removal of the suspicious Muslims do not work for the US government.
Pelosi and Conyers are calling for the end of all racial profiling, additional severe limits placed on the Patriot Act and the implementation of broad-based US citizenship for illegal aliens.
Pelosi said, "Since September 11th, many Muslim Americans have been subjected to searches at airports and other locations based upon their religion and national origin, without any credible information linking individuals to criminal conduct. Racial and religious profiling is fundamentally un-American and we must make it illegal."