Rapprochement With The Muslim World Not Working

We think he's the first Muslim president; Iran thinks he's the first Jewish president (and his mother was like Carla Bruni!).

Well, That's Alarming

Instapundit's friend predicting imminent collapse of Mexico into anarchy. Not first person I've heard say that.

He Wore His American Flag Pin

I was out this evening and came home to an inbox full of righteous denunciations of the President's speech. Maybe because they were so vociferous, I was prepared for worse, but I didn't think it was too bad given the fact that he opposed the Iraq War.
It's being attacked as a rhetorical flop. Fair enough, in that I doubt the speech will shift a single vote in November; but forgive me, those who are only just noticing the sophomoric tendencies of the White House speech shop are woefully behind the curve.
As for substance, I agree with Bill Kristol.  It was basically inoffensive (though it got off to a rough start and he could have been more gracious to Bush, barely managing to utter one positive sentence), and I was pleased by his commitment to "defeat" al Qaeda and break the Taliban's momentum in Afghanistan. He's still calling for leaving earlier than I think we can, but for the first time he said the troop draw-down would be dictated by conditions on the ground, not necessarily a date certain. And his tribute to our troops and what they've achieved in Iraq was pretty good, considering.

Update: Julie Ponzi and Peter Robinson think the speech was disgraceful.
I reserve the right to revise and extend my remarks after studying the text, but first impression was that it's one of his better speeches, actually. He may have been cold but he wasn't smug, and I didn't feel like I wanted to spank him like a spoiled child, which hasn't happened since before the Democratic convention.

Jonah Goldberg found the speech positively offensive, and for reasons I can't disagree with (Mr. W's with Goldberg --he says Obama's praise of Bush was really a way of calling himself a patriot); but it's late and I can't muster surprise, and my takeaway is the major concession to "conditions on the ground" in Afghanistan. (Jennifer Rubin's with Goldberg, and she links to Krauthammer, who is too. I agree with all of them, but think they were asking the wrong guy. They want a presidential speech reflecting a good policy. Kristol & I know we ain't gonna get that, so we're pleased it wasn't worse).

Anyway: Bush wins again! It was kind of like a G-8 summit.

Obama & The Iftar Dinner

Yay, our blogging buddy Prof. K is back, with a unique take on President Obama's remarks about that Muslim center of some kind sorta close to Ground Zero. First let's deal with what he's not commenting on:

I’m not particularly interested in what these remarks and the President’s reaction to the reaction tell us about his political judgment or leadership style (though, of course, they do tell us volumes about both).

He takes up instead the question of what the remarks tell us about religious liberty. He finds that Obama's remarks at the dinner are pretty much parallel to what President Bush said at the first White House iftar dinner back in 2001. And he finds the message lacking in both cases:

For the most part, the proclamations and dinners have addressed a largely international audience and served a largely diplomatic purpose.
Indeed, for me it’s that audience that makes both President Bush’s 2002 statement and President Obama’s 2010 statement problematical.  The former statement refers to toleration and the latter to religious freedom as an American principle.  Both presidents insist that part of what defines us as Americans is our embrace of these principles.  When you’re speaking to a purely national audience, this is very effective rhetoric, appealing to solidarity, pride, and love of one’s own as motives to adhere to a universal principle.  But when there’s an international audience in the room, you can give them the impression that devotion to such a principle is merely a national idiosyncrasy, something that we Americans do because we want to, not because it’s just plain right.  Articulated in this way in front of this audience, commitment to religious liberty is as American as apple pie, but not necessarily as Scottish as haggis, as Japanese as sushi, or as Kurdish as kebabs.  When as a nation you wish to hold others accountable for their infringement on the universal natural right to religious liberty, this is not the right message to send.

Probably both Presidents were genuinely thinking of the Muslim American rather than the international audience, along the same lines as Washington's letter to the Jews of Newport, cited in the Bush remarks. I agree completely, however, that the remarks in both instances carry the danger Prof. K mentions. With this distinction: while Bush's wrong-message iftar dinner can be seen as a rhetorical aberration in light of his administration's firm and consistent stand in favor of religious liberty and defense of dissidents world-wide, Obama's statement is increasingly reflected in Administration policy, as we've had occasion to note.

And it turns out Prof. K. has written quite a bit about that as well.

On a different note, but still on the topic of this mosque, Msgr. Charles Pope wonders if Christian opponents of the Cordoba Initiative/Park 51 have given sufficient thought to how their own arguments could be turned on them. He thinks the mosque is manifestly a bad idea if "healing" is what's desired, and acknowledges the legitimate reasons for Americans to mistrust Islam.

But let’s be honest and sober. We as Catholics are heading south in the popularity ratings too. There are increasing  numbers in this country who consider us hateful, backward, sexist, homophobic, judgmental, and so forth. They think this of us because we have not signed on 100% with the cultural, sexual and social revolution. Many also distrust us on account of our handling of the Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis. It is not that far of a stretch to consider that within the next decades we too will discover many obstacles toward building Churches in prominent or visible places. At first opposition to us will be rooted in complaints that we will cause traffic etc. But the next step will be to refuse us zoning easements because we are sexist (no women priests, opposition to abortion) or anti-homosexual (No Gay marriage), insensitive (e.g. no Euthanasia),  and thus our “values” do not comport well with the community in question or our presence causes some to experience outrage or hurt. Hence our prominent presence in a community could be denied simply because others experience hurt or rage. (I do not say that such feelings about us are fair or right, I simply note their current existence).

Gee, I Thought This Was About Caring For The Disadvantaged

Planned Parenthood has stripped several of its San Francisco area clinics of its affiliation. Please to note the reason: the clinics ain't makin' money.

Planned Parenthood Golden Gate said it planned to continue to offer the same services in the same facilities, under the name Golden Gate Community Health. Yet tax filings show that the nonprofit lost $2.8 million during the 2008-9 tax year, at the same time its chief executive’s total compensation exceeded $340,000. The organization has not broken even since the 2005-6 tax year, records show. 

All those clinics caught on hidden camera giving bad medical advice or covering for statutory rapists? They're good.
But who the hell cares? It's only women.

Curtsy: Jill Stanek

Hindenbuicks?

Fueling station for GM's hydrogen-powered cars blows up. Don't know if the cars have anything to do with it. I only bring this up because any time I hear about Hydrogen fuel cells, I think of this scene from Top Secret.

Curtsy: Steve Hayward

"Carla, You Ignorant Slut!"

That's the official Iranian policy on the French First Lady. Oddly, Iranian State Media did not seem to care about the Sarkozy personal life until Madame S. defended a woman condemned to death by stoning.

How to remain silent after learning of the sentence against you?" Bruni-Sarkozy wrote, adding that the stoning would "deeply wound all women, all children, all those who have feelings of humanity."
"Deep within your jail cell, know that my husband will plead your cause tirelessly and that France will not abandon you," she wrote.

I don't know why the Iranians care. It's only women.

What Original Intent Originally Intends

Short video, great guests (one of them recognizable to some of you), irresistable title...and what's at stake in the upcoming court cases over Obamacare. (And P.S., Elena Kagan thinks the government can require you to eat fruits and vegetables daily under the commerce clause.)

Curtains For The Free World

Shamelessly pinched from here.

No Longer Conspicuous By His Absence

Leo Strauss Center at U. Chicago uploading his lectures.

Greater familiarity with Strauss's lectures may demolish this myth of him as a neoconservative Svengali. Instead, people may come to recognize him as, among other things, an engaging teacher.
Students loved Strauss because he rebelled against his profession's norms, especially historicism—the belief that all thought is the product of its time and place. Aristotle, historicism contends, believed the Greek city-state was the best regime because he lived in one. His insights are inapplicable to a modern liberal democracy.
This tenet still infects political science today, causing students excruciating boredom in their (typically, required) classes on political theory. Why should students care about Plato if they're taught that his philosophy is obsolete?

Gosh, I love the Journal. What other paper would include an argument against historicism in an op-ed? Here's a little more:

Instead of cataloging philosophers for rows of classroom note takers, he throws students into an ongoing argument: How should we live? He forces students not merely to study political philosophy but to engage in it.
For example, in one class he asks whether a leader should have guiding principles or he should judge each situation independently.
On the tape, we hear Mr. Levy, a student, ask cheekily, "Did Montgomery have to know anything about Aristotle to win the battle of El Alamein?"
"That is an entirely different question," Strauss replies—referring to Aristotle's written works—"whether rules means rules to be found in this or that book."
"I was just using that as an example," Mr. Levy fires back.
"There was one thing I believe which was quite clear in the case of Montgomery," Strauss responds, "that he had to win it…. [I]n the case of politics as distinguished from generalship, the end is somewhat more complicated…the political good consists of a number of ingredients which cannot be reduced to the simple formula, victory."

And this is fun:

he spent so much time answering students' questions that his class often ran past its allotted time. "At times a course went on for so long that Mrs. Strauss had to come in and stop it," says Werner Dannhauser, a former student of Mr. Strauss.

Chaput The Great: Systematic Discrimination Now Seems Inevitable

Read his entire address to the Canon Law Association of Slovakia. He makes the point that aggressive secularization is converging in both the US & Europe and while it sounds right in a diverse society, it's a flawed model for at least two reasons. First:

“freedom of worship” is not at all the same thing as “freedom of religion.”  Religious freedom includes the right to preach, teach, assemble, organize, and to engage society and its issues publicly, both as individuals and joined together as communities of faith.  This is the classic understanding of a citizen’s right to the “free exercise” of his or her religion in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  It’s also clearly implied in Article 18 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.  In contrast, freedom of worship is a much smaller and more restrictive idea.

Second: how does this play out in real life? Are religious people actually free?

In the United States, a nation that is still 80 percent Christian with a high degree of religious practice, government agencies now increasingly seek to dictate how Church ministries should operate, and to force them into practices that would destroy their Catholic identity.  Efforts have been made to discourage or criminalize the expression of certain Catholic beliefs as “hate speech.”  Our courts and legislatures now routinely take actions that undermine marriage and family life, and seek to scrub our public life of Christian symbolism and signs of influence.
In Europe, we see similar trends, although marked by a more open contempt for Christianity. Church leaders have been reviled in the media and even in the courts for simply expressing Catholic teaching.  Some years ago, as many of you may recall, one of the leading Catholic politicians of our generation, Rocco Buttiglione, was denied a leadership post in the European Union because of his Catholic beliefs.
Earlier this summer we witnessed the kind of vindictive thuggery not seen on this continent since the days of Nazi and Soviet police methods:  the Archbishop’s palace in Brussels raided by agents; bishops detained and interrogated for nine hours without due process; their private computers, cell phones, and files seized.  Even the graves of the Church’s dead were violated in the raid.  For most Americans, this sort of calculated, public humiliation of religious leaders would be an outrage and an abuse of state power.  And this is not because of the virtues or the sins of any specific religious leaders involved, since we all have a duty to obey just laws.  Rather, it’s an outrage because the civil authority, by its harshness, shows contempt for the beliefs and the believers whom the leaders represent.

Not so much: 

These events suggest an emerging, systematic discrimination against the Church that now seems inevitable. 

Here we go again, though the last batch of atheistic ideologues were, you know, a bit gauche.

Today’s secularizers have learned from the past.  They are more adroit in their bigotry; more elegant in their public relations; more intelligent in their work to exclude the Church and individual believers from influencing the moral life of society. Over the next several decades, Christianity will become a faith that can speak in the public square less and less freely.  A society where faith is prevented from vigorous public expression is a society that has fashioned the state into an idol. And when the state becomes an idol, men and women become the sacrificial offering.

The rest is about the Catholicism of the resistance. RTWT. 

Our societies in the West are Christian by birth, and their survival depends on the endurance of Christian values. Our core principles and political institutions are based, in large measure, on the morality of the Gospel and the Christian vision of man and government. We are talking here not only about Christian theology or religious ideas. We are talking about the moorings of our societies -- representative government and the separation of powers; freedom of religion and conscience; and most importantly, the dignity of the human person.
This truth about the essential unity of the West has a corollary, as Bonhoeffer also observed: Take away Christ and you remove the only reliable foundation for our values, institutions and way of life.
That means we cannot dispense with our history out of some superficial concern over offending our non-Christian neighbors. Notwithstanding the chatter of the “new atheists,” there is no risk that Christianity will ever be forced upon people anywhere in the West. The only “confessional states” in the world today are those ruled by Islamist or atheist dictatorships -- regimes that have rejected the Christian West’s belief in individual rights and the balance of powers.
I would argue that the defense of Western ideals is the only protection that we and our neighbors have against a descent into new forms of repression -- whether it might be at the hands of extremist Islam or secularist technocrats.

Alternate Location Found

Ramirez' latest, shamelessly pinched from here.

Can't Buy Me Love

"Most tragic love story of our time" = most excellent Sharron Angle ad.

Curtsy:Campaign spot

We Need The Rationing You're Foolish To Worry About!

That is the highly rational position of the Formerly Gray Lady. Those rascally Republicans are fear-mongering Obamacare, warning against rationing that is never going to exist.

Republicans in both the Senate and the House have introduced bills that would eliminate the new Independent Payment Advisory Board, which is supposed to come up with ways to rein in excessive Medicare spending — and stiffen Congress’s spine. ...None of this poses any real threat to Medicare beneficiaries.

Plus, they're beating up on a guy who wouldn't dream of rationing care:

Republicans are also eagerly, and shamefully, pillorying Dr. Donald Berwick, the new head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. There are few figures who command greater respect for uniting health professionals and institutions to improve the quality of medical care while reducing costs. That is not stopping these critics from implying — baselessly — that he will introduce socialized medicine and death panels in this country.

Except for when he's praising it in the British system and "rightly" calling for it here.

The truth is that Dr. Berwick has praised the socialized British health care system, especially for its emphasis on primary care. This country certainly needs to do more to develop its primary care system. And he has, rightly, called for an open discussion of the health care rationing that is already widespread in our system.

[snip] Dr. Berwick has endorsed the use of “comparative effectiveness” research to determine which treatments work best. He would use such research to judge whether a new drug or procedure is worth the cost of coverage, a step the reform law shies away from.

Clearly she is too old and feeble-minded to merit any further waste of resources. Curtsy: SHS

Feminists Against Burqas Found!

We had to go to Oz to find them, but they exist.

It is embarrassing to hear people oppose the ban on the burqa out of slavish commitment to multiculturalism. Western apologists who furnish arguments of cultural protectionism in an attempt to atone for past colonial ugliness seem unaware they have jumped into bed with the murderous regimes that enforce the cloaking of women by pain of violence …

Viva Miss Universe

I didn't think I gave a fig, but Miss Universe is alright by me.

The silent protest at Monday night's Miss Universe Pageant in Las Vegas was invisible to nearly everyone — except Venezuelans. On her final catwalk, the ranking Miss Universe, Stefania Fernandez, suddenly whipped out a Venezuelan flag in a patriotic but protocol-breaking gesture.
Fernandez waved her flag for the same reason Americans waved theirs after 9/11 — to convey resolution amid distress. Her flag had seven stars, significant because Chavez had arbitrarily added an eighth, making any use of a difficult-to-find seven-star banner an act of defiance.

Instacurtsy

Finnish Vodka Again

This has to be the vodka, right?

On Monday the head of Finland’s branch of Amnesty International, Frank Johansson, termed Israel a “scum state.” Writing in his blog, which appears on the Web site of Iltalehti, one of Finland’s largest newspapers, he based his characterization of Israel on his “own visit[s], which occurred during the 1970s and for the last time in the 1990s.”

We are assured:

I am writing those [blogs] in my capacity as a private person, not as an Amnesty official.

More Adulation of the Fat Man

Gov. Christie discusses the loss of a grant because of a clerical error. It's wonderful that he calls out the stupid bureaucracy, but I draw your attention to his refusal to fire, blame or even name the person who made the error. That's the kind of leader who creates trust and inspires fierce loyalty in his people, because they learn he will defend them.
Curtsy: CMR 

Update: He did end up firing someone though: Bret Schundler.

Now THIS Is Blatant Anti-Semitism

Fuggedabout da mosque. NY imposes 8-cent bagel tax.

In New York, the sale of whole bagels isn't subject to sales tax. But the tax does apply to "sliced or prepared bagels (with cream cheese or other toppings)," according to the state Department of Taxation and Finance. And if the bagel is eaten in the store, even if it's never been touched by a knife, it's also taxed.

You get taxed for wanting lox and a schmear? Is there a tax for slicing open pita at the falafel stand? Do the goyim get charged extra for sliced white bread?

Update: GDE in comments: "First they came for the transfats...." Heh.

Gaza, Seat Of Intellectual Freedom

Muslim youth glued to the computer screen. 60 percent Internet penetration. The literacy rate (not computer, but what’s on the page) is over 90 percent. Where is this outpost of modernity and intellectual freedom? Gaza. Yes, the supposed ”hell hole” of the Middle East — the alleged virtual prison — is doing quite a bit better than its Arab neighbors. And the oppressors whom the people must outwit are not the Israelis but Hamas

That's Jennifer Rubin, riffing on this (subs only).

Out-Outing Yourself

Bush's 2004 campaign manager and former RNC chair Ken Mehlman has "outed himself." In the Atlantic he's quite angst-ridden over not being a more vocal advocate for same-sex marriage when he was in politics. This is another of those puzzling non-revelations (see update here). There is not a soul in politics who didn't already know Mr. Mehlman was homosexual; it was an active part of conversations about the GOP's response to same-sex marriage activism.
I raise the point so when the columns about the terrible stifling homophobia of the GOP ("their most loyal workers unable to be true to themselves") follow in the next few days, you will remember that everyone already knew this and had no problem working with Mr. Mehlman, and give the appropriate snort of derision.

Update: But don't take my word for it....

Voice of the Face-Full

Oh, my. Mark Shea says obesity is a valid lifestyle choice:

my Jesus calls me to be the Voice of the Face-full and to keep changing the Faith until it tastes just the way I want it to. That's why, in addition to calling for a boycott on "obesity engineering" for children, I'm calling on all you closeted Jolly readers to join me in the struggle to bring the Church into the 21st century by finally throwing off the shackles of the Dark Ages and facing the need for re-visioning the Sacrament of the Eucharist to celebrate and embrace the gifts we Jollies bring to the Church! When will the Church realize that the gift of Jollity is not about shame-based nonsense like the "sin of gluttony," but rather about the joyful appetite for wolfing down as much life as possible without regard for dry Dark Age pedantries about "natural law" and "the common good"? The Church's views on food and eating may have made sense in an era when people were stupid and medieval and poor. But in this day and age, when we are smart and living now and have a lot of food, I can't see why we need to practice outmoded notions like temperance. All that matters is love, and I love Ding Dongs.

Stay Of Execution

Injunction against government funding of embryonic stem cell research. Judge Royce Lamberth is an intersting fellow. Takes the law very seriously and absolutely hates Presidential power. Always takes the side of Congress. In this instance, his argument is very strong, will be interesting to see if it holds. Government to appeal. 

Mosque-ow On The Hudson

Opponents of the mosque near ground zero have not exactly covered themselves in glory in my view, even if I share their conclusion. Besides Bill McGurn's piece on why the Cordoba House people ought to cease and desist, this is the best and most reasonable piece on the issue I've seen. It puts forth the facts dispassionately (without the "monument to sharia casting its shadow over sacred ground!" rhetoric which is a distortion, plain and simple); but it also focuses on the real issue, which is not symbolism, but the possibility the mosque could be an enemy front group. Uprooting sedition is a legitimate reason to limit freedom of religion, which is not absolute as polygamy laws demonstrate, at least for the 20 more minutes they hold now that there is no "essence" to the marriage bond (thank you SO much Olson & Boies).

(And by the way, if you really want to keep sharia out of our law and culture, you might think about not undermining our legal ability to defend against polygamy, which is the main way it's entering in all the nations of Europe -and NY- already. You cannot maintain both polygamy and the principle of equality before the law, yet I wonder how many "conservatives" apoplectic over Cordoba House are willing to defend one man one woman marriage in public. Just askin').

Update: Judea Pearl's view.

Literature Pop Quiz

If you believed that fossil-fueled travel might kill our grandchildren, where would you choose to hold Europe's largest literary and arts festival? 

Why, the Maldives of course!

Follow-up question: if you were going to hold Europe's largest literary and arts festival, who would you invite?

the line up of environmental writers and campaigners like Montagu Don, Tim Smit – the businessman who founded the Eden project, the largest green house in the world – Mark Lynus, activist and author of several books on climate change including the acclaimed Six Degrees, and Chris Gorell-Barnes.

Right! A bunch of people who have nothing whatever to do with literature or art.

Bonus question. What looks like a really cool Maldives hotel if you were fabulously wealthy? Right!

Curtsy: American Digest

The Case of the Disappearing Fatwa

Michael Ledeen on dissent from the mullacracy. Forgive me, this is no laughing matter, but it cracks me up:

Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei—against whom Iranians chant "Death to the Dictator!" at public gatherings and nightly from their rooftops—has sought to reaffirm his authority. Late last month he issued a fatwa declaring that his opinions had a status equal to those of the prophet Mohammed. The fatwa caused such consternation that it was removed from his website, then quietly returned a few days later.

Hey, just like the White House site!

Behold The Bolivarian Revolution!

In which a beautiful nation becomes murder central, and deadlier than a war zone.

The Myth of The Latin Lover

Someone's done an international promiscuity test. Not that I'm proud of it, but the French, Italians & Spanish are less promiscuous than we are, Brazilians about the same.

The most promiscuous nations are not known for breeding lotharios: Finland, New Zealand (but not Australia, which falls middle-of-the-road, like us), Slovenia, Lithuania & Austria. Russia's not on the list at all that I can see, but I am forced to conclude that vodka plays a larger role than I'd realized in the lowering of moral standards (yes, even in NZ).

I also point out that the test does not include the question: "agree or disagree, I would have to be married to a person before sleeping with him." Therefore the test itself is naughty. And, alas, sleeping around doesn't make us happy. Which leads to more vodka, which seems to explain Finnish culture completely.

The Tomatoes Don't Lie, But The Squirrels Do

I have been neglecting my tomato-blogging, largely because there's little good to report. Early drought and later floods have brought a listless tomato season, and for the first time ever I can't keep the dang squirrels away, so the data have been majorly tampered with. Only the yellow tomatoes are thriving --apparently squirrels don't know tomatoes come in other colors.

But for the garden journal nonetheless, let the record show the first tomato of summer was plucked: July 23, 2010.

Previous results:

• July 16, 2009  
• [July 12th, 2008]
• July 8, 2007
• July 5, 2006
• June 23, 2005

So...the cooling trend appears to continue, but better data may have been digested by squirrels.

Shell Shock

"Bad Eggs," from Hope n' Change cartoons

Click to enlarge.

President Sophomore

I think we can lay any doubt about the President's being ready for his job to rest definitively. The administration is calling for the Libyans to send the Lockerbie bomber back to jail.

Brennan criticized what he termed the “unfortunate and inappropriate and wrong decision,” and added: “We’ve expressed our strong conviction that al-Megrahi should serve out the remainder - the entirety - of his sentence in a Scottish prison.”

Heaven help us, that's the president's counter-terrorism advisor talking. It's bad enough our administration is cynically behaving as if it hadn't by its silence signed off on the bomber's release in the first place. But asking the Libyans to send him back is absurd. Remember when that dummy Bush so frightened the Libyans they gave up their bad weapons programs and kow-towed to us? Under the President of the Sophomore Class they're just laughing their heads off --and do you suppose they're still out of the weapons business?

Christians Expelled From Morocco

An exchange between a member of the human rights division of the Christian Legal Society and the ambassador of Morocco.

I bring it up because it's interesting, but also because it illustrates the distinction between freedom of worship and freedom of religion -- and our State Department has recently switched from defending the latter to the former. First Things first noted the switch back in February, in speeches from the President and Sec. of State Clinton.

If the swap-out occurred only once or twice, one might appropriately conclude it was merely a rhetorical accident. However, both the President and his Secretary of State have now replaced “freedom of religion” with “freedom of worship” too many times to seem inadvertent.

Obama did this at Ft. Hood, and then repeatedly on his trip to Asia. And then Hillary Clinton acquired the habit. This is a very troubling linguistic change, especially if you're following the subject:

The reason is simple. Any person of faith knows that religious exercise is about a lot more than freedom of worship. It’s about the right to dress according to one’s religious dictates, to preach openly, to evangelize, to engage in the public square. Everyone knows that religious Jews keep kosher, religious Quakers don’t go to war, and religious Muslim women wear headscarves—yet “freedom of worship” would protect none of these acts of faith. 

Naturally this has enormous implications for foreign policy and whether the US is prepared to defend genuine freedom around the world. If freedom of religion is reduced merely to freedom of worship, then the US must fall silent before the claims of the Moroccan ambassador. And those of the Saudi and Chinese ambassadors as well.

In April the US Commission on Religious Freedom issued its annual report, which shows religious persecution on the rise worldwide, and the Administration in retreat as a force against it. Here's how they summarize their complaint against our policy at their website:

The 11th annual report by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom says Obama's recent call for nations to respect "freedom of worship" rather than "religious freedom" allows regimes to claim they are not oppressing certain religions if those faiths exist in a form acceptable to the regime.

"When you start narrowing the discussion, the signal the administration is sending to the international community is that as long as they prop up a few churches or houses of worship (of minority faiths), there isn't going to be a problem," Leonard Leo, the chairman of the commission, told USA TODAY.

It's clear the President believes we have to find some way to deal with Islam and this is meant to be conciliatory to Muslim nations. But this is a bad move. Bad for the persecuted, bad if we hope to help radical Islam moderate itself, and bad at home too as the idea spreads. This is the position of those who would arrest Christians (and orthodox Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, too) for saying they don't believe there's such a thing as homosexual marriage. Oh, you're free to believe it...quietly, in your own home...but you may not speak it. We've already seen such prosecutions in Europe and Canada. And it is now a "finding of fact" in the decision overturning Prop 8 in California that the Pope harms homosexual persons (remember, the judge put on trial the interior intentions of Prop 8 organizers). HHS is trying to force Catholic hospitals to perform abortions.

"Freedom of worship" is no actual freedom at all. It means the state can compel you to do or prevent you from doing or saying anything it wants and is a mere nod to the reality that it has no actual control over what you secretly actually think.

Paging Brett McS

Oz is bound for a hung parliament, maybe? Seems like Julia Guillard's election gamble backfired on her, but I need a certain intrepid correspondent on the scene to 'splain it all to me. (Though the Taiwanese, bizarrely, have a pretty good cartoon summary.) Meanwhile, PM-for-now is left to bluster:

"There are anxious days ahead, but I will keep fighting," Gillard said.

Why do politicians feel the need to say things like that in instances when "fighting" means "waiting anxiously for a final vote count"?
Update: Brett McS is cautiously happy, thinks this will turn out well for our man Abbott:

the best coverage as usual is at sites like Tim Blair's and Andrew Bolt's.  The usual media and the TV talking heads are useless. The Blairiites and I are mightily chuffed.  Under Abbott's predecessor, the sook Turnbull (google, nb) the conservatives were looking at losing another 15 seats against Rudd, because of Turnbull's Labor-lite positions (ala Cameron in the UK), which could have lead to a Cameron-like (almost) eternal opposition, waiting and waiting for the government to finally self-destruct.  Instead, Abbott turned it around in one election cycle (actually, half of one) by virtue of decisive positions against Cap and Tax like proposals and the slackening of immigration controls under Labor (which still look like Fort Knox compared to yours, but that's another story).

So either the government will try to hang on in minority for a while - which will be mightily entertaining for the Blairites et al - until the in-fighting results in self-destruction - or else, more likely, Abbott will form the next government and then go on to a solid majority at the next election.  He really has been a bit of a revelation - very much misunderestimated!

 So, yay! He left some additional details at ninme's.

Muslim Americans

The formerly gray lady finds Muslims who are Americans.

True Colors

What ultraviolet light reveals about ancient statues.

I like the blue-maned lion in the slideshow accompanying this piece in Smithsonian.

Come To Jesus

Though a bit over-produced, this fascinates me as one of a continuing stream of stories I keep hearing about Christ appearing to Muslims.

Obama The Muslim

The number of Americans who now believe the President is a Muslim has climbed over the past few months, and a plurality of Americans say they don't know what his faith is, if any. Over at First Things, Joe Carter is mocking the idea and commenters are joining in.

I don't think Obama thinks of himself as a Muslim and consider it rather nutty to think so. His religion in his own words seems to be Harvard. He is a Christian in the same sense that formerly Catholic institutions call themselves "in the Catholic tradition." And this account of his faith, while it rings true in essence, also seems to have an element of election-year please-everyoneism:

OBAMA: I am a Christian. So, I have a deep faith. So I draw from the Christian faith.
On the other hand, I was born in Hawaii where obviously there are a lot of Eastern influences.
I lived in Indonesia, the largest Muslim country in the world, between the ages of six and 10.
My father was from Kenya, and although he was probably most accurately labeled an agnostic, his father was Muslim.
And I’d say, probably, intellectually I’ve drawn as much from Judaism as any other faith....
So, I’m rooted in the Christian tradition. I believe that there are many paths to the same place, and that is a belief that there is a higher power, a belief that we are connected as a people. That there are values that transcend race or culture, that move us forward, and there’s an obligation for all of us individually as well as collectively to take responsibility to make those values lived.And so, part of my project in life was probably to spend the first 40 years of my life figuring out what I did believe – I’m 42 now – and it’s not that I had it all completely worked out, but I’m spending a lot of time now trying to apply what I believe and trying to live up to those values.
GG: Have you always been a Christian?
OBAMA:I was raised more by my mother and my mother was Christian.
GG:Any particular flavor?
OBAMA:No. My grandparents who were from small towns in Kansas. My grandmother was Methodist. My grandfather was Baptist. This was at a time when I think the Methodists felt slightly superior to the Baptists. And by the time I was born, they were, I think, my grandparents had joined a Universalist church. So, my mother, who I think had as much influence on my values as anybody, was not someone who wore her religion on her sleeve. We’d go to church for Easter. She wasn’t a church lady.
As I said, we moved to Indonesia. She remarried an Indonesian who wasn’t particularly, he wasn’t a practicing Muslim. I went to a Catholic school in a Muslim country. So I was studying the Bible and catechisms by day, and at night you’d hear the prayer call.
So I don’t think as a child we were, or I had a structured religious education. But my mother was deeply spiritual person, and would spend a lot of time talking about values and give me books about the world’s religions, and talk to me about them. And I think always, her view always was that underlying these religions were a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act, not just for yourself but also for the greater good.

It should be noted that his father was Muslim at least in name, and for adherents of Islam, the son of a Muslim father is a Muslim. So for much of the world (and for some number of our citizens) he is a Muslim, though it may be secret even from himself.

Siege Of Vienna, VA?

Each national election of the past decade, it has appeared to me that Western Civilization itself has hung in the balance, and if possible each one moreso. Here's Thomas Sowell on this November (and listen to the whole interview while you're at it):

The 2010 elections are one of the most, if not the most, important elections we’ve ever held.  Because if Obama doesn’t get stopped in this fall’s election, I don’t know how he’ll ever be stopped.  For one thing, people talk about his falling poll numbers.  He’s still in the 40% range.  If he can somehow make millions of illegal immigrants legal voters before 2012, he can win a second term.  That would be the point of no return.  The November elections are like the battle of Poitiers or the seige of Vienna.  If those battles had gone a different way, the entire history of the world would have been different.  In the November elections, this country will be at stake.

Coincidentally, kind friends just sent me a novel on the Siege of Vienna. Hope it's not an omen. Or maybe I hope it is, since we won the first one.

How Could I Resist?

Here's a discussion of the effect (or lack thereof) of Ex Corde Ecclesiae. It's good in its own right, but there was no resisting "Preferential Option for the Poor Ignoramuses."

I'm not sure I fully buy the premise and conclusion. They are surely correct in instances; but we have also seen Catholic institutions moderate, improve markedly or turn around altogether since the promulgation of ECE; there've also been a flurry of new and worthy colleges founded. Maybe our key institutions haven't been affected: maybe that's his point.

Curtsy: Fr. Z.

Do We Know The Freedom Intended For Us?

What A Merry Christmas It Will Be!

Now that the Left has re-discovered free exercise of religion (in connection with Cordoba House), I look forward at last to a Christmas with no fights over creches in public spaces.

Update: Pelosi wants to investigate people opposed to Cordoba House. Like Harry Reid? And Abdul Rahman Al-Rashid, director of Al-Arabiya TV? And the Muslim Canadian Congress?

He Was For It Before He Wasn't Against It

The President says one thing to a Muslim audience and another to the infidels, both of which statements are largely for show, with no real bearing on anything? He really does know how to speak the language of Arab leaders!

Gray Lady Dons A Chemise

We know she hates him, having savaged him 9 ways to Sunday in the past weeks. So why is the Formerly Gray Lady puffing Paul Ryan in this piece? Simple seduction. The idea is to make Ryan the figurative head of the party and get him to compromise on something -- say taxes-- in exchange for Obama granting him some portion of his Road Map. Don't fall for it. MoDo will be back to saying something vicious shortly.

Out & About

The Bushes were at DFW today to greet 150 troops returning from Afghanistan. Yesterday he was in Haiti checking out charities supported by the Bush-Clinton fund.

Curtsy: Brutally Honest

Mere Lewis

Apparently the only surviving C.S. Lewis radio address. This series became Mere Christianity.

Pell Unfair To Watermelons

Compares Green Party to them: "Green on outside, red on the in."

Most Americans Aren't Bigots

Money quote from Bill McGurn's column today:

As the controversy over the planned Islamic Center near Ground Zero escalates, we have had many secular sermons on the need to recognize that the vast majority of Muslims should not be confused with the terrorists. No argument there. But how much more fruitful our own debates might be if the Judge Walkers, Mayor Bloombergs and Speaker Pelosis could extend that same presumption of decency to the American people.

Patricia Neal

Patricia Neal passed away yesterday. I think of her frequently because she was Dominique Francon in The Fountainhead. She was fine, but the film a little campy and the character I find ridiculous, since her view is that any slight capitualation to the heart or to the flesh is enslavement.
Thanks to her, whenever Mr. W. asks when dinner is, I tend to put on my deep breathy voice and proclaim, "Those who eat merely because they are hungry are slaves!"
There's an interesting backstory to that role, which she played opposite Gary Cooper. I assume it was while working on that film that they carried on their famous affair. Here's what a priest friend said of her while presenting her with a pro-life award back in 2003, (as reported by CMR at the link above):

I met Patricia Neal over 20 years ago, and we have become good friends ever since. One time when she was on my television show, I said to her, "Pat, in so many ways you are a female Job." She had, as you know, several strokes which put her in a coma for a month. She had a daughter who died of the measles at the age of seven. She had a son who was hit when he was an infant by a car in New York City, and he remains alive but brain-damaged and will be forever. Another daughter who suffered from drug and alcohol addiction; a husband [Roald Dahl-ed] who was great to her once she had the strokes, but he ultimately left her for a younger woman.

And I said, "In your life, Pat, if there was one thing you could change, what would it be?" And Patricia Neal said, "Father, none of the things you just mentioned." But she said, "Forty years ago I became involved with the actor Gary Cooper, and by him I became pregnant. As he was a married man and I was young in Hollywood and not wanting to ruin my career, we chose to have the baby aborted." She said, "Father, alone in the night for over 40 years, I have cried for my child. And if there is one thing I wish I had the courage to do over in my life, I wish I had the courage to have that baby."

Patricia Neal has put herself on the line in saying to many, many women who have experienced abortion or thought about abortion, "Don't make my mistake. Let your baby live." What's particularly painful, but poignant in this story is that some years later, Patricia became good friends with Maria Cooper, the only child of Gary Cooper and his wife. And Maria Cooper said, "You know, I know you had the affair with my father and I have long ago forgiven that. But one thing I find it hard to accept is that as an only child, I so wish that you'd had my brother or my sister. Because in so many ways, I wish so much that you had chosen life."

 It was Maria Cooper who later befriended Neal and brought her back to her Catholic faith. Incidentally, her strokes came while she was pregnant and left her in a coma for three weeks, followed by partial paralysis and speech impairment, but she had the daughter successfully, and through extensive therapy learned to walk and speak again.
 
We often hear stories of nice girls corrupted by Hollywood, but rarely of reversions to being nice girls. She won every award: Oscar, Tony, Emmy, Golden Globe, with multiple nominations over the years for all those figurines --and, gosh, she worked with just everybody.

There's a nice tribute to her at her pioneering Patricia Neal Rehabilitation Center's site. Apparently she visited there every year right up until the end. And, we're told,

On the eve of her death, Miss Neal told her family, "I've had a lovely time."

Senator Akbar

Shamelessly pinched from here.

Potpourri of Popery, Summer Doldrums Edition

It's so hot even the pope's been slumming it, though the Daily Mail calls it "stylin.'"

He's been spending the summer at Castel Gandalfo, praying, relaxing and writing, watching movies, and making day trips, like this one to Abruzzo to the Shrine of Our Lady of the Needy. And hosting 50,000 altar servers at a papal audience (pix here --scroll down to Aug 4.)

Good news and bad news at the Vatican website. On the plus side, remember that fantastic wrap-around virtual tour of the Sistine Chapel? Now there's the same for all the Papal Basilicas and Chapels. Cool beans.

I'm a bit miffed at the re-working of the Benedict XVI page. Instead of categorizing his spoken and written words (Angelus, Encyclical, speech), they have a calendar of his activities only --and at least so far only 2010 available. So when I want to see what he said to the Swiss bishops in 2006? Bah. This puts a serious crimp in my Ratzingroupie-ing style. Put perhaps the redesign isn't yet complete.

His September visit to Great Britain's on the horizon. Too much commentary about that, but here's a whole site dedicated to it.

Popery: 

• China: status of the underground Church; former underground bishop ordained 
• France: Fr. Samir on the burqa ban.
• Kenya: Biden-backed abortion constitution approved -- and an American martyr

US:

• Prop 8, the Catholic angle: Apart from Judge Genius' abolition of marriage, he also cites Card. Ratzinger's document on homosexuality as part of the "finding of fact" that religious belief in the harmfulness of homosexuality harms gays. Orthodox adherence to any major religious creed is an affront to the 14th amendment rights of homosexual persons!

• New hats: Detroit's Bishop Tobin made Secretary of Congregation for Religious (which has a more convoluted name now, but it's August and I ain't typing all that); former CUA President David O'Connell ordained bishop of Trenton (read/watch his fine homily):

This is how a bishop serves, not by being served through compromise or taking the easy way out, not by being served saying only what people want to hear or what makes them comfortable, striving to be popular. As Pope John Paul II wrote, the truth that we teach “has its origin in God himself … (but) people can even run from the truth because they are afraid of its demands (Fides et ratio, 7; 28).” Christians cannot run from the truth for this reason. Nor can the bishop. This is how he serves.

• Archbishop Burke on why he built the Shrine to Our Lady; national congress on theology of the body; catholic new media conference;

And finally: OSV's Catholic Guide to the Internet;  and very bad language alert, but....Dante's Internet

Paul Ryan Must Be Getting To Them

So the Formerly Grey Lady has released her vituperative old ladies on Paul Ryan. First Paul Krugman pens a column called the FlimFlam Man and today Frank Rich gets into the act.

Krugman's complaint is particularly rich. Megan McArdle explains to Mr. Krugman that the CBO doesn't score tax portions of bills (Krugman says not getting the CBO to score the tax portion was flim-flammery). But what I love is that this exact point came up in the debate against Obamacare, and Krugman wasn't complaining then that there was no CBO score of the taxation involved.

We know they're both on deck, so whose slam will come next, MoDo's or Tom Friedman's?  5...4...3...

Flannery To Anne

It is tantamount to apostasy to admit one doesn't really like Flannery O'Connor, but I really don't. Her fiction means little to me. Her letters, though are awesome. And Rod Dreher's dug up one that could have been written to Anne Rice.

All your dissatisfaction with the Church seems to me to come from an incomplete understanding of sin. This will perhaps surprise you because you are very conscious of the sins of Catholics; however, what you seem actually to demand is that the Church put the kingdom of heaven on earth right here now, that the Holy Ghost be translated at once into all flesh. The Holy Spirit very rarely shows Himself on the surface of anything. You are asking that man return at once to the state God created him in, you are leaving out the terrible radical human pride that causes death. Christ was crucified on earth and the Church is crucified in time, and the Church is crucified by all of us, by her members most particularly because she is a Church of sinners. ...  All human nature vigorously resists grace because grace changes us and the change is painful. Priests resist it as well as others. To have the Church be what you want it to be would require the continuous miraculous meddling of God in human affairs, whereas it is our dignity that we are allowed more or less to get on with those graces that come through faith and the sacraments and which work through our human nature. God has chosen to operate in this manner. We can't understand this but we can't reject it without rejecting life.
Human nature is so faulty that it can resist any amount of grace and most of the time it does. The Church does well to hold her own; you are asking that she show a profit. When she shows a profit you have a saint, not necessarily a canonized one. I agree with you that you shouldn't have to go back centuries to find Catholic thought, and to be sure, you don't. But you are not going to find the highest principles of Catholicism exemplified on the surface of life nor the highest Protestant principles either. It is easy for any child to pick out the faults in the sermon on his way home from Church every Sunday. It is impossible for him to find out the hidden love that makes a man, in spite of his intellectual  limitations, his neuroticism, his own lack of strength, give up his life to the service of God's people, however bumblingly he may go about it.
It is what is invisible that God sees and that the Christian must look for. Because he knows the consequences of sin, he knows how deep in you have to go to find love. ... You don't serve God by saying: the Church is ineffective, I'll have none of it. Your pain at its lack of effectiveness is a sign of your nearness to God. We help overcome this lack of effectiveness simply by suffering on account of it.
To expect too much is to have a sentimental view of life, and this is a softness that ends in bitterness. Charity is hard and endures; I don't want to discourage you from reading St. Thomas but don't read him with the notion that he is going to clear anything up for you. That is done not by study but more by prayer.

Curtsy: Arwen Mosher 

One White Man's Vote Worth More Than Millions of Blacks & Hispanics

"Justice Denied," from 4-Block World

ninme writes: 

I’m waiting for someone to ask Obama’s black voters how they feel being robbed of their vote like this

Happy Feast Of The Transfiguration

Transfiguration, Rubens

I put before you the one great thing to love on earth: the Blessed Sacrament. There you will find romance, glory, honor, fidelity and the true way of all your loves upon earth, and more than that.

 --JRR Tolkien, in a letter to his son

Carter-Obama Nexus According To Archie

Hitch Vs. Kübler-Ross

You really do need to read Topic of Cancer as everyone's telling you to.

They Don't Really Mean It

Simcha Fisher smacks down that COEXIST bumper sticker that irritates the stuffing out of me every time I see one. It's not the smug moralizing, it's the fact that it is itself an act of disrespect of precisely the kind it's supposedly decrying.

this is worse than using a picture of child’s face as a mouse pad, which is unseemly. This is worse than using the American flag as boxer shorts or dish towels, which is disrespectful. By using meaningful symbols as mere letters in a word, this bumper sticker subsumes the significant and specific into a suffocating mass of indiscriminate acceptance.
Don’t use the cross as a T, okay? And don’t use the star of David as an X. They’re not, like, logos for “Jesus Brand” and “Judaism, Inc.” Don’t tell me “it’s just a design” or “we were going for the visual impact — don’t read too much into it.” You should be glad someone’s paying attention to your message.

What that sticker says to me when I see it is "Religious people, shut up." Which is why it's the perfect accompaniment to the old "Bush scares me" sticker, which was also false --because anyone scared would not be driving around with that bumper sticker.

Update: GDE notes in my combox an excellent comment from the original post:

Also the blithe unwillingness to accept that the biggest tolerance problem in our world, by far, is that the capital “C” is trying to kill all the other letters. If they fully accepted this fact and wanted to spread their message as effectively as possible, they’d take their next holiday in Pakistan, and be sure to slap this bumper sticker on their rental car. But it’s ever so much safer to harangue the “x” and “t” from the comfort of a free and peaceful society, isn’t it?
Also the realization that if the “e” were replaced by a Republican elephant (ignore the difference in shapes…just roll with me on this), the sales of this bumper sticker would decline by 97% in university towns, whether or not the “s” were at the same time replaced by a Democrat donkey. Even though that’s one variety of tolerance these people actually do need to be reminded of each and every day.
(And can you even imagine if there were universally-recognized symbols for “pro-life” and “pro-Proposition-8″ and “I support Arizona on immigration”?)

Update: More on what the sticker really means.

Toldja They Would

I take no joy in pointing out that I was right: Feds admit storing checkpoint body scan images. As I have said on previous occasions

our nekkid body scans will last forever.

No matter how much they said they wouldn't, it was obvious they would. Just so they aren't sending them to the SEC. Or the Defense Dept. Curtsy: ninme's Twitter

Prop Infinity

A gay judge overturned Prop 8 as expected. William Duncan summarizes the opinion as the belief that since the beginning of time, across all cultures and religions,

the world’s cultures all consulted about how to put down gay people and came up with marriage as the solution.

Iowahawk tweets the question:

If Prop 8 has been overturned, does that make it Prop Infinity? 

No, but that's how long the appeals process will continue.

Update: Mr. W. w/ an excellent comment.

OK, gender is no longer essential, but does this judge at any point tell us what IS essential for marriage?  That's a serious question, because I believe there can be no answer at all if "gender" is not essential.

Our judge-philosopher who must know an "essential" in order to make such a ruling, has not expanded marriage, he has abolished it.  I defy anyone to give me anything that is "essential" to marriage now, i.e., just say what it really is.  I say it can't be done.

Me Like Dick Van Dyke

He's become a spokesman for adult stem cell therapies. See his ad here, it's good.

Carmel & Cordoba

To shed light on the "mosque" at Ground Zero, Bill McGurn revisits the convent at Auschwitz.

Without doubt Pope John Paul II did not share the more malevolent interpretations attached to the presence of the Carmelites at Auschwitz. By asking the nuns to withdraw, he didn't concede them either. What he did was recognize that having the right to do something doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

"I Am A Runaway Slave"

This looks interesting. Curtsy: AmDig

Godspeed, The Happy Couple

Amen. Love the 2nd photo.

Get Thee Behind Me, Zappos

Lately every website I open has gorgeous supple leather pumps of a kind I perpetually covet on display in the sidebar. "Lookee how beautiful we aaaaaaare" they seem to whisper, "you know you want us." Is the whole internet conspiring against my quest for moderation, my determination to cease buying essentially the same pair of shoes again every year I have asked myself? Yes, as it turns out. Now I understand all: The Web's New Gold Mine: Your Secrets.

Tracking technology is getting smarter and more intrusive. Monitoring used to be limited mainly to "cookie" files that record websites people visit. But the Journal found new tools that scan in real time what people are doing on a Web page, then instantly assess location, income, shopping interests and even medical conditions. Some tools surreptitiously re-spawn themselves even after users try to delete them. These profiles of individuals, constantly refreshed, are bought and sold on stock-market-like exchanges that have sprung up in the past 18 months.

So it's not my imagination.

A Hitch In Recovery

Everyone's praying for Christopher Hitchens' recovery from throat cancer, but here's a particularly nice column on that from Austin Ruse. Meanwhile, Christopher Blosser's found the most insightful analysis of Hitchens' atheism I've seen.

because so much has already been said about what makes Hitchens interesting, and because, thanks to this memoir, it is so easy to verify for one’s self that this is so, I’d like to spend this review pointing out the one way in which Hitchens has become less interesting in the second half of his life: his loss of faith. Not his faith in God - in his memoir, Hitchens says that he probably never had much of a faith in God to begin with - but his faith in Marxism. Not (as the pundits would have it) his supposed switch from “leftist” to “neocon,” but rather his much more dramatic, and underappreciated, transformation from being a revolutionary to just another voter like the rest of us.

About That Green Economy

Europe Slashes Low-Carbon Energy Subsidies As Budgets Shrink

LONDON -- What appears to be a bonfire of low-carbon energy subsidies has been lit in Europe as cash-strapped countries grapple with their empty coffers and start to cut back on what many see as over-generous support for industries from wind to solar that has created a green energy bubble.

Interesting discussion of this in comments here.