Sweet Land of Liberty

Image credit: Independence Day, Andrew Wyeth, shamelessly pinched from here. 

The first post-Roe Independence Day, and I'm feeling more hopeful than I have in a while. Not optimistic, mind you, but hopeful! If that great and wicked spell can be broken, so can others. 

I'm not sure why I'm telling you this because I don't expect anyone to understand,  but yesterday at Mass, our genuinely beautiful choir sang America the Beautiful as one of the post-communion hymns. As I've confessed previously, I can't sing that song, especially the later verses, without tearing up, so when it happened it didn't take me by surprise. 

But I was completely overcome with unexpected weeping when we sang the Battle Hymn of the Republic as our recessional hymn. I'm not positive this meaning was intended (though knowing the choir director I think it was), but it felt like a comment on the Dobbs decision, and in an instant, every bit of joy at finally attaining the long-awaited destruction of that wicked legal fiction, every bittersweet memory of all the heroes of the movement who didn't live to see the day, all the sense of alienation from pastors and erstwhile pro-lifers who couldn't muster a bit of happiness or gratitude for the decision came pouring out. I couldn't stop. It was embarrassing! But cathartic. 

Spent yesterday with some old political philosophers and patriots in a small town on the water where they had a great parade and fireworks, and that was also good for the soul. 

For your Independence Day reading: 

Patriotism as A Virtue.  "John Adams calls us to celebrate our country by prayer, parades, and pyrotechnics. I’m with Adams."

My now-perennial posting of Peter Schramm's Born American, but in the Wrong Place. 

Irving Berlin singing God Bless America. 

Oh, and: the first tomato of summer!  Just a cherry tomato, but the promise of things to come! 

 

 

Christmas 2021, Day 2, Feast of the Holy Family

Nativity Mosaic, by Malaysian artist Hanna-Cheriyan Varghese

Shamelessly pinched from Global Christian Worship

 

If it weren't a Sunday, this would be the feast of St. Stephen, so perhaps an apt day to post this. 

 

Zemmour is a French politician who's only just come to my attention. The press denounces him as Far Right, and I don't know enough about him to say he's been fully vetted (if he later turns out to be a weirdo I'll be sorry), but I like what I see so far. He offers a full-throated defense of Western Civilization and particularly its Christian roots -- and he talks about the massive Christian martyrdom taking place largely unremarked.  I can't think of a Church leader in the West who is as confident in saying these necessary things.  (You can get the gist in a very rough translation if you turn on auto-translate in settings at the bottom of the screen.) 

What I Saw At The Stop the Steal Rally in DC

Since it was predictable that the legacy media would report only on ugly clashes and try to portray everyone as a racist, I spent Saturday afternoon taking pictures and talking to people at #StoptheSteal in DC. Here are some photos and my firsthand impressions of the mood. 

I am aware of only two ugly incidents during the rally and March, both of which preceded my arrival at about 12:30 pm.  You've probably seen the videos:  white folks in BLM shirts harass a black woman taking her kids to the rally. And antifa types mixing it up, being separated out by the cops, and meanwhile, one of the marchers uses his bullhorn to hit.  

Make of that what you will, but I didn't see anything even remotely like that for the four hours I was there, both at the rally at Freedom Plaza and then marching up to the Supreme Court, where a series of folks made remarks. I made it a point to leave before it started getting dark, because that's when Antifa types come out (you know, after the crowds thin and they can pick on the few). 

This was among the most diverse crowds I've seen, rivaling the March for Life for being "here comes everybody." Except there were a lot more working class white men than you might see at the March for Life. Black, white, latino, gay, young, old, families..... The surprise for me was the number of Chinese / Taiwanese immigrants who are deeply fearful the nation's media and other elites are all in the pocket of the Chinese Communist Party. 

I didn't see any signs or hear any slogans that had anything to do with white supremacy. I did stand for a while next to a guy whose appearance gave me the creeps. His look seemed aggressive: lots of tattoos, including on his neck, and piercings involving not earrings but needles and such. And his American flag was mounted on a baseball bat (only thing of that kind I saw). But his comments on the speeches were appropriate and his chit-chat with people standing nearby --including people of color-- was courteous and even sweet, which is not like anything I've heard before from skinheads, so if he was a racist, he was hiding it. 

This young man is the first person I ran into at the rally. He was in the same Metro train with me. I was impressed that he was willing to ride on the train with his big Trump flag when he was traveling alone, and I asked him whether he was afraid at all.  "Not at all." 

I asked him what brought him there and he said he was worried about the loss of the power of "we the people" in light of the non-transparency of many of the vote counts. 

He likes Trump, although is to the right of Trump on several issues -- wants more free market solutions for healthcare, including medicaid. 

I asked him if he'd grown up in a household that thought like that and he cracked up laughing. "Noooooo." So I asked if he got flak from the African American community for supporting Trump. He said his folks and most of his extended family hate that he supports Trump, but that he has been his own man since grammar school, when he took up skateboarding and loved punk rock music. He was bullied terribly for liking punk rock and for being a skateboarder, and that is what put him on the road to doing his own reading and looking into things.  It was sort of funny. He seems to think that in his circle, it was worse to be a skateboarder than to be a Republican. 

These two guys were chinning like old pals, so I asked them how long they'd been friends and they'd just met at the rally. One is from Cincinnati and the other from Detroit. Each came because he thinks his ability to earn a living depends on a Trump presidency, and because they think the fix is in. 

As I say, a sizable contingent of all kinds of Chinese immigrants and Taiwanese who believe everything we hear from legacy media and politicians now comes at the behest of the CCP. They had lots of literature out about this.  (In fact, a Chinese friend of mine is the person who told me about this rally.) 

While my bro and I were at Freedom Plaza listening to the gearing-up before the march, people were mingling and having a good time. A gal originally from Guatemala was going around introducing herself and thanking people for being there. She said she fears the US is falling prey to the kind of tricks she has seen under dictatorships and feels alone when she watches the news.  "We feel so isolated, but when we get together we encourage each other." Here are some other photos, just to give you the mood. 

This man was blessing people in the name of Jesus as they passed by

This man was laughing at CNN. "They say we're just 10,000 people, y'all." (The crowd was at least equivalent to the 2nd- largest March for Life I've ever been at -- on the order of 500-750,000 it seemed to me from within it. Though I am a bit skeptical of the most popular aerial shot of the crowd going around. The crowd never seemed that dense to me and I wonder whether those are photoshopped Obama inauguration photos. Just asking.).  My brother said the solution was that CNN should turn off its cameras and leave the area, and then we would count for them. 

Brandon Tatum in the flesh, doing photos w/ fans 

A drag queen calling herself "Lady Maga" was a popular photo op for the crowd

Make of it what you will, but if you think it was all a bunch of haters, racists, and ignorant boobs, you are being lied to. 

Cuba Libre

Fidel Castro is dead.  In all sincerity I pray for his soul, but it is always a good thing when a dictator dies. A dear Venezuelan friend writes on Facebook: 

Murió en la paz de sus lujos, sin haber enfrentado la justicia por tantos crímenes que cometió. No le deseo mal, solo justicia. [He died in the peace of his luxuries without having to face justice for the many crimes he committed. I wish him no evil, but justice.]

The Miami Herald has an interesting and decent obituary.  What is fascinating, given our current preoccupation with "fake news," is their reminder that Fidel Castro owes a lot to the New York Times. 

His recruiting was aided immeasurably by his skills at propaganda and psychological warfare. Castro’s greatest ploy was luring a New York Times correspondent named Herbert Matthews to his mountain camp. Though the rebels had barely 20 bedraggled men, Castro marched the same group past Matthews several times and also staged the arrival of “messengers” reporting the movement of other (nonexistent) units.
Matthews, convinced Castro controlled a huge army, wrote: “From the look of things, General Batista cannot possibly hope to suppress the Castro revolt.” A wave of favorable coverage followed in the foreign press, and with it, international support.

Lest you think, well, of course the Herald would put it that way, the Formerly Grey Lady herself largely confirms the story, although in her telling she seems to be taking credit for Castro's revolution:

The escapade began when Castro loyalists contacted a correspondent and editorial writer for The New York Times, Herbert L. Matthews, and arranged for him to interview Mr. Castro. A few Castro supporters brought Mr. Matthews into the mountains disguised as a wealthy American planter.Drawing on his reporting, Mr. Matthews wrote sympathetically of both the man and his movement, describing Mr. Castro, then 30, parting the jungle leaves and striding into a clearing for the interview.“This was quite a man — a powerful six-footer, olive-skinned, full-faced, with a straggly beard,” Mr. Matthews wrote.The three articles, which began in The Times on Sunday, Feb. 24, 1957, presented a Castro that Americans could root for. “The personality of the man is overpowering,” Mr. Matthews wrote. “Here was an educated, dedicated fanatic, a man of ideals, of courage and of remarkable qualities of leadership.”The articles repeated Mr. Castro’s assertions that Cuba’s future was anything but a Communist state. “He has strong ideas of liberty, democracy, social justice, the need to restore the Constitution, to hold elections,” Mr. Matthews wrote. When asked about the United States, Mr. Castro replied, “You can be sure we have no animosity toward the United States and the American people.”

I can't imagine being proud of having a reporter shown to be such a wide-eyed romantic and credulous dupe. But in any case, here's an instance in which fake news cost a nation its freedom and doomed hundreds of thousands of people to death at the hands of a tyrant. 

I'm afraid to even look at other coverage, because, as my same friend puts it (can't you feel his deep sigh?):

Y hoy veremos a cientos de políticos (de derecha y de izquierda, del norte y del sur) rindiéndole homenaje a quien causó tanta muerte, hambre y odio. Un profundo silencio es lo que corresponde. [And now we will see hundreds of politicians (right, left, north and south) paying homage to this man who caused so much death, hunger and hatred. Profound silence would be more fitting.] 

(And indeed, as I am composing here,  Eldest Weed just came in to read Justin Trudeau's vomit-inducing encomium.)

They are throwing a party over at Babalu Blog (though heavy traffic has blown them up -- be patient and check back later if you can't get in.)

Mr. W. & I will be dining at Cuba Libre this evening -- if we can get in. 



Update:

Just had a memory of the time in the 70s -- 1978?-- my father was part of a journalistic exchange that took him to Cuba. What I vividly recall from his trip there was that even then Cuba was supposed to have this advanced medical system, and yet my dad found that Cubans on the street were willing to practically give him their firstborn children for one of those little tins of aspirin. 

Also, this memory from another Venezuelan commentator: 

Fui a Cuba en el anio 2001. Visite la casa que le quitaron a mis abuelos ( a mi abuelo se lo llevaron preso por querer entrar a la fuerza a su propia casa) y recorri a Cuba entera... El nivel de miseria y prostitucion me erizaron la piel sobretodo cuando un taxi bicicleta me pregunto que de donde venia? Y cuando le conteste que de Venezuela se compadecio de mi y me dijo "Somos las dos alas de la misma paloma: nosotros ya vamos saliendo del tunel ustedes apenas estan comenzando..." 

Collecting interesting links here as they accumulate. 

Interview w/ Dr. Biscet, cuban doctor imprisoned for many years by Castro (Spanish)

Cuban-American reaction (story accompanying video above).

Re-visiting Michael Totten's The Last Communist City

Who "wears" it better:  Trudeau, Obama, or Trump (and more Trump)? 

Other US politicians react. 

This piece reminds us of the brutal Castro oppression of homosexuals. Wondering how Trudeau and other progressives lauding Castro today square that? 

A reflection from a clergyman of his childhood impression of Castro.

Armando Valladeres' address upon receiving the Canterbury Medal earlier this year. 

Astonishingly, Nancy Pelosi's statement isn't bad.  Other world leaders continue to beclown themselves. 

Mercedes Schlapp talks about her dad's reaction (her dad was a Cuban political prisoner for 8 years). 

Counting Castro's Victims

Ted Cruz on our Cuba policy and Castro's real legacy.

Glenn Reynolds: Castro, Chavez and "bad luck."

Memorial Day, 2015

Image credit

Can't put it better than Archbishop Chaput:

On this Memorial Day, let’s take time to pause in grateful prayer and remembrance for the men and women of our armed forces who have paid for our freedoms with their lives. Let’ also remember those who have had to bear and still bear great sorrow at the loss of a loved one who served our country. May the Lord give you peace.

Here's a nice piece about military chaplains.

Scratch A Priest, Find A Soldier

(Photo credit needed. Help?)

Not pretending to fully understand the situation in Ukraine, but any blow to Putin's effort to rebuild the Soviet Union seems like a good thing, so the flight of Yanukov and release of Yulia Tymoshenko seems positive. (Though when Reuters describes the Ukraine turning from Russia and towards the EU, I'm less certain of that. One is a wicked entity determined to stamp out individual cultures and crush institutions and thoughts it disapproves of and the other is run by Vladimir Putin).

What's been impressive in the midst of these protests is the Orthodox priests standing in the breech between the crowds and the government forces. They remind me of my old Prof. Fritz Wilhelmsen's frequent remark: "When you scratch a priest, you should find a soldier." This guy looks like he's straight out of 300, only he's not animation-enhanced. Here's a gallery of such photos --priests with the wounded, priests with the protestors, priests with the cops. Moving.

The Future of Egypt

My goodness, an Egyptian wunderkind. He's only 12, so I suppose he's repeating what he hears at home or perhaps has been put up to this. But if this is a mere performance, he certainly "owns" it. And anyway, this kind of indoctrination I can get behind. Can anyone confirm the translation? May the Lord keep him safe.

Fortnight for Freedom 2013

Maybe it's because I've traveled so much the past six weeks, but it doesn't seem to me I've heard much about this year's Fortnight for Freedom which kicks off tomorrow at Baltimore's Basilica of the Assumption at 7 pm tomorrow (409 Cathedral St. Baltimore).

It's a two-week period between the feast of the English martyrs for religious liberty and Independence Day to be marked by prayer, fasting, education and action in defense of our first freedom. The USCCB has an excellent (not pretty, but meaty) resources page. It includes fact sheets about the status of religious liberty here and abroad, links to great articles and columns, plus 14 ways to observe the Fortnight in your parish, graphics and downloads for your blog and social media needs, prayers and prayers of the faithful to use, links to events planned all over the nation, a daily quotation from the Founders....everything in a neat package, so go scroll around and start spreading the word and figuring out how you will help.

One thing I hope you will not do is assume the bishops have this covered. Ready for my periodic rant against clericalism and how passive and imprudent American Catholics are? Hah! Don't need it, because here's Chaput the Great saying it for me in an interview at the National Catholic Register. It's a really terrific interview -- I urge you to RTWT-- but here's the point.

Q. What responsibility do laypeople have to take action on behalf of the Church’s religious liberty? Why can’t this responsibility rest solely on the bishops’ shoulders?
The secular world is the place where laypeople exercise their leadership most naturally. It’s the environment of their everyday lives and their primary mission field. Bishops can counsel and teach, but their role in practical political affairs like the fight for religious liberty can only be indirect and secondary.
If laypeople don’t love their Catholic faith enough to struggle for it in the public square, nothing the bishops do will finally matter.

This is straight out of the the Vatican II document on the Apostolate of the Laity, by the way. Lay people aren't called to the sanctuary. They're called to be nourished in the sanctuary and then go out to redeem the secular order through their prayer, their witness of personal holiness, and their active engagement with other people of good will in the political process. The redemption of the secular world is explicitly entrusted to you and me -- not to the clergy.

Mission ought to be sufficient, but there are practical reasons why this fight has to be the laity's. There's the ugly one:

In the wake of the abuse scandal, bishops are too easily caricatured and marginalized by the mass media. The religious-freedom fight needs to be owned and led by laypeople.

And there's the clear-eyed realism one: 

Religious liberty as an ideal sounds lovely. But in the abstract, it has very little power. It has political force only to the degree that ordinary people believe and practice their faith — and refuse to tolerate anyone or anything interfering with their faith. The current White House has a clear track record of ignoring the traditional American understanding of religious freedom and interfering with the activity of religiously inspired organizations.
If lay Catholics accept that sort of government behavior without inflicting a political cost on the officials responsible for it, then they have no one to blame but themselves when they find that their liberties have gone thin.

And, by the way, you don't need your anyone's permission to just be who you are and gather with other like-minded people.

Should the laity wait for the bishops to green-light their ideas, or should they just go ahead and get involved? How do we work together?
Laypeople have the freedom and the obligation to actively witness their faith, alone and together with other believers. Obviously, zeal should be accompanied by common sense. That means keeping your local bishop informed and seeking his blessing for any major apostolate.
But the missionary vocation belongs to all of us — clergy, religious and lay — and we should commit ourselves to pursuing it as our circumstances in life permit.

In case you are not convinced that religious liberty needs defending, behold a short list of grievances. 

• The Administration "strongly objects" (page 4) to protecting the free speech and conscience rights of military chaplains, an amendment proposed because the Administration forbade military chaplains to obey their bishops and speak against the HHS mandate last year and because the freedom of chaplains to express their faith's understanding of the morality of homosexual acts is under fire. 
• The IRS, in addition to targeting Conservatives, has been caught on tape advising pro-life groups to keep their faith to themselves. Additionally, it has been harassing people who adopt kids --for reasons unexplained, but presumably because they are likely to be pro-life and/or religious.
• This policy has been defeated, thank God, but in New Jersey Christian nurses were compelled to participate in abortions or lose their jobs. Their right not to be coerced was protected not because "C'mon, no one would ever infringe on conscience in such a way," but because of an aggressive protest and defense.
• In an excellent piece, Matthew Franck documents the fundamental incompatibility of same-sex marriage with religious liberty. Here are just some examples of ordinary citizens being deprived of their livelihoods because they are Christians: notaries, artists, inn owners, mom & pop businesses. and of course Catholic Charities in multiple dioceses have been forced to halt adoption services. (Got that? The Churches can't do adoption placements; the IRS torments you if you try to adopt; and then Planned Parenthood says we need abortion because people won't adopt.)
• Discrimination against what is universally recognized as the most effective anti-sex-trafficking program there is. This was done merely as retaliation for the bishops' opposition to the HHS Mandate.
• Christian groups increasingly kicked off college campuses.
• And none of that is even touching the contraception mandate which touched off this whole firestorm. You know, the policy by which Obamacare replaces actual health insurance with free contraception for everyone -- except McDonalds and unions and practically everyone "big" gets a waiver from it, so the policy turns out to be more about squelching the consciences of little people in a raw exercise of power than anyone's public health. Check the websites of the key religious liberty law firms to keep up with all the attacks on individual citizens there.

And these are just domestic threats. Around the world, it's the age of martyrs. More Christians (and with them Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, animists and others) are killed for their faith than at any time in all of human history and Christians are the most persecuted. This is why Pope Francis has been calling attention to religious liberty with every world leader he speaks with (here are two examples):

In the world today freedom of religion is often talked about rather than put into practice. Indeed, it is forcibly subjected to threats of various kinds and not seldom violated. The serious affronts inflicted on this primary right are a source of grave concern and must see the unanimous reaction of the world’s countries in reaffirming the intangible dignity of the human person, against every attack. One and all are duty bound to defend religious freedom and to promote it for everyone. The shared protection of this moral good is also a guarantee of the entire community’s growth and development.

 and why at Pentecost he asked Christians to keep their persecuted brothers and sisters in daily prayer.

Libya & Egypt Are Not The Same

So I wish mainstream media and right wing talk shows would quit lumping them together. In Egypt the Muslim Brotherhood is in power and egging on extremists (their new president's first act was to demand the release of the Blind Sheik....which, by the way, the Administration is eerily silent about, as if they might do it.)

In Libya there is a moderate government and moderate people striving to be civilized. To wit: yesterday an angry mob stormed the compound where terrorists are suspected of hiding. 

Hundreds of protesters angry over last week's killing of the U.S. ambassador to Libya stormed the compound of the Islamic extremist militia suspected in the attack, evicting militiamen and setting fire to their building Friday.
In an unprecedented show of public anger at Libya's rampant militias, the crowd overwhelmed the compound of the Ansar al-Shariah Brigade in the center of the eastern city of Benghazi.
Ansar al-Shariah fighters initially fired in the air to disperse the crowd, but eventually abandoned the site with their weapons and vehicles after it was overrun by waves of protesters shouting "No to militias."

They don't want al-Qaeda there.

"I don't want to see armed men wearing Afghani-style clothes stopping me in the street to give me orders, I only want to see people in uniform," said Omar Mohammed, a university student who took part in the takeover of the site, which protesters said was done in support of the army and police.

 When al-Qaeda stormed our consulate (or outpost or whatever we're calling it), here was the spontaneous response of the Libyan people (or at least a sizable chunk of them, since these people weren't afraid to do this --click through and look at all the pictures).

 And here's a piece from earlier this summer about why we should be bullish on Libya. The author argues that unlike most Arab nations, Libya's populace has present the 8 Tocquevillian pre-requisites for democracy.  He reports that yesterday wasn't the first time the Libyan people rose up to shut down a jihadist demonstration.

news coverage that fits a precast narrative of religious fanaticism has left the wrong impression. Witness coverage of the June 7 demonstration in Benghazi's Freedom Square (where the revolution began). We saw pictures of 300 Kalashnikov-toting young men gathered from all corners of Libya waving the black flags of jihad, claiming that democracy is atheistic, insisting that only a government that enforces religion is legitimate. Check. It fits the narrative; end of coverage.
What wasn't widely reported was the locals' reaction to this demonstration: A spontaneous, social media-driven counter-demonstration that made the hard-liners go home. Freedom Square was flooded by thousands of Benghazis - many of them women in veils - who were horrified at this attempt to redefine their revolution and their religion. The counter-demonstrators were Muslims, too; they see Islam as compatible with free democracy. They appear to sense - like Tocqueville - that religion is ultimately more persuasive when it is not entwined with the power of the state.
Imagine the spectacle of hundreds of armed young militiamen turned away by the unarmed women and men of Benghazi! This was a teachable moment. It reveals the Libyan character in the wake of the revolution. Indeed, days before the election, Libya's top cleric went on TV to issue a fatwa instructing citizens not to vote for what he called "secular" parties. The overwhelming majority of Libyans promptly went out and ignored this advice.

So, yes, there is an Arab Spring. It might be limited to Libya and I don't know if their fragile democracy is already falling apart. But Libya ain't Egypt and it deserves the support of freedom-lovers. It breaks my heart to hear them lumped together by folks who are rightly mad about the storming of our consulates all over the world, but unconscionably ignorant.

Update: More reporting on that uprising. "We are sorry, America. This is the real Libya."

The Tyrant Obama

Peter Kirsanow on Everything You Need To Know About the HHS Mandate "Compromise."

1. The administration thinks Americans are idiots.

2. The administration is confident it will be assisted in its chicanery by the mainstream media.

It's worse than that, because there IS no compromise. I don't mean that the compromise isn't worth much, I mean there literally is no compromise.

Prefaced by 17 pages of the kind of rhetorical squid ink that President Obama defensively deployed at his press conference, the words that have the force of law appear on pages 18 to 20. That’s where the actual amendments to the Code of Federal Regulations are made by three departments — Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services — that Congress previously granted joint oversight of employer health plans.

The bottom line is this: “Accordingly, the amendment to the interim final rule with comment period amending 45 CFR 147.130(a)(1)(iv) which was published in the Federal Register at 76 FR 46621-46626 on August 3, 2011, is adopted as a final rule without change.” [Emphasis added.]

The President just fed people a lot of crap and did what he felt like doing. That is all you need to know about Obama.

[For the memory banks: Opposite President! and Opposite President Strikes Again. Doing the exact opposite of what he promises since 2009. If you let him fool you, shame on you.]

Happy Independence Day!

 

A Leon Kass column (behind the WSJ firewall) has people talking about Calvin Coolidge's speech on the Declaration. Kass begins:

Parades. Backyard barbecues. Fireworks. This is how many of us will celebrate the Fourth of July. In earlier times, the day was also marked with specially prepared orations celebrating our founding principles, a practice that has disappeared without notice.
It is a tribute to a polity dedicated to securing our rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness that we can enjoy our freedoms while taking them for granted, giving little thought to what makes them possible. But this inattention comes at a heavy price, paid in increased civic ignorance and decreased national attachment—both dangerous for a self-governing people. 

And therefore highlights this passage from Coolidge.

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful.  It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning cannot be applied to this great charter.  If all men are created equal, that is final.  If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final.  If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.  No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.  If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people.  Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress.  They are reactionary.  Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

So, happy Independence Day, to all genuine revolutionaries. Everyone else: try and catch up.

"Please! Defend Your Freedom! Defend The Heaven You Are Living In!"

Wafa Sultan on Islam.

Don't take anything for granted. I don't. I enjoy every single moment of my American life.

Just walking down the street by myself without being accused of being a whore is a bliss for me.

Just chatting with my next-door male neighbor without being accused of adultery is a bliss for me.

Having a cup of coffee by myself is a bliss. Please, please don't anything for granted. Please defend this beautiful country.

Curtsy: Brutally Honest

Oscar of Oscar's Cuba Released!

Cuban human rights advocate, subject of Oscar's Cuba, released. From the press release:

Óscar Elías Biscet González’srelease from prison in Cuba today is celebrated by the Lawton Foundation for Human Rights and Freedom Now, who are joined by supporters of human rights and democracy around the world. Dr. Biscet, a noted advocate for human rights and democratic freedoms in his native Cuba, had been arrested in late 2002 for merely exercising basic civil liberties, convicted on sham charges, and was serving a 25-year prison sentence. Dr. Biscet’s release follows the July 2010 announcement by the Cuban Catholic Church that a number of unjustly-imprisoned Cuban political prisoners would be freed.

Jubilation, She Hopes?

Michael Ramirez, shamelessly pinched from here.

Praying for your success, Egypt. Here's why I'm hopeful.

Walk Like An Egyptian

Massive protests of the Mubarek government. Shameless pinched this pic from ninme's twitter. Hmm.

Update: So...anyone got a bead on what's going on there? Are we witnessing the glorious dawn of liberty or the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood? Who's got a good source?

Communism, The Board Game

Awesome.

A Polish research institute has developed a board game to teach young people about life under Communism. In the game, which is inspired by Monopoly, players must wait in endless lines at stores for scarce goods. For added realism, they have to put up with people cutting in line and products running out -- unless they have a "colleague in the government" card. 

Curtsy: No Left Turns

Ominous Yet Beautiful

Hani Shukrallah, editorializing in an Egyptian new service on the attacks on Coptic Christians this Christmas.

We are to join in a chorus of condemnation. Jointly, Muslims and Christians, government and opposition, Church and Mosque, clerics and laypeople – all of us are going to stand up and with a single voice declare unequivocal denunciation of al-Qaeda, Islamist militants, and Muslim fanatics of every shade, hue and color; some of us will even go the extra mile to denounce salafi Islam, Islamic fundamentalism as a whole, and the Wahabi Islam which, presumably, is a Saudi import wholly alien to our Egyptian national culture.
And once again we’re going to declare the eternal unity of “the twin elements of the nation”, and hearken back the Revolution of 1919, with its hoisted banner showing the crescent embracing the cross, and giving symbolic expression to that unbreakable bond.

But...

All of it will be to no avail. We’ve been here before; we’ve done exactly that, yet the massacres continue, each more horrible than the one before it, and the bigotry and intolerance spread deeper and wider into every nook and cranny of our society. It is not easy to empty Egypt of its Christians; they’ve been here for as long as there has been Christianity in the world. Close to a millennium and half of Muslim rule did not eradicate the nation’s Christian community, rather it maintained it sufficiently strong and sufficiently vigorous so as to play a crucial role in shaping the national, political and cultural identity of modern Egypt.
Yet now, two centuries after the birth of the modern Egyptian nation state, and as we embark on the second decade of the 21^stcentury, the previously unheard of seems no longer beyond imagining: a Christian-free Egypt, one where the cross will have slipped out of the crescent’s embrace, and off the flag symbolizing our modern national identity. I hope that if and when that day comes I will have been long dead, but dead or alive, this will be an Egypt which I do not recognize and to which I have no desire to belong.

And the blame is not solely al-Qaeda's:

I accuse a government that seems to think that by outbidding the Islamists it will also outflank them.
I accuse the host of MPs and government officials who cannot help but take their own personal bigotries along to the parliament, or to the multitude of government bodies, national and local, from which they exercise unchecked, brutal yet at the same time hopelessly inept authority.
I accuse those state bodies who believe that by bolstering the Salafi trend they are undermining the Muslim Brotherhood, and who like to occasionally play to bigoted anti-Coptic sentiments, presumably as an excellent distraction from other more serious issues of government.
But most of all, I accuse the millions of supposedly moderate Muslims among us; those who’ve been growing more and more prejudiced, inclusive and narrow minded with every passing year.

A distressing message, but the fact that such an editorial is written and printed is heartening, no?

Letter From An Afghan Jail

Said Musa, a convert from Islam to Christianity in prison in Kabul since May for that very reason, was recently able to have a plea to Barack Obama and the Christian world smuggled from jail. He writes:

"To the international church of world and to the President Brother Barak Obama President of the United States and to the head of ISAF [International Security Assistance Force] in Afghanistan!
"My name is Said Musa 45 years old. I have been working since 15 years as a Physiotherapist in I-C-R-C [International Committee of the Red Cross] orthopaedic centre in Kabul, Afghanistan. About four and a half months before by security force of Afghanistan I [was] captured, due to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, Saviour of the world. One person ____ he is spy of ____ [a] leader in Afghanistan. He told about me [to] the Government's officials, 'He's believer, He's head of church in ____'. He showed my house to the security force. Since that time I am in jail. The authority and prisoners in jail did many bad behaviour with me about my faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. For example, they did sexual things with me, beat me by wood, by hands, by legs, put some things on my head, mocked me ‘He's Jesus Christ', spat on me, nobody let me for sleep night and day. Every person spat on me and beat me. Also the prosecutor wrote something wrong against me. He told from himself something wrong against me on my file.
"He is stimulating every day the prisoners against me, ‘He is also in jail due to spy for Iran country', to reveal the church in Kabul. I'm in a very and very bad condition in the jail.
"I agree with long imprisonment about my faith even for long life. Because I'm the sinnest person in the world. Because sometimes they treated for died I refuse my faith due to died. Sometimes I tolerate the persecution but immediately I acknowledge my sin before Lord Jesus Christ: ‘Don't refuse me before your holy angels and before your Father.' Because I am very very weak and sinful man.
"Nobody could accept my defender before the court. If I say I am a Christian man he immediately spat on me and abuse me and mock me! I am alone between 400 handlers of terrible values in the jail like a sheep. Please, please, for the sake of Lord Jesus Christ help me. Please send a person who should supervise my document and my file, what I said in it. My prosecutor has told something wrong to the judge because he asked [for] money but I refused his request. Please, please you should transfer me from this jail to a jail that supervises the believers. I also agree with died on cross of my pride. I also agree with the sacrifice [of] my life in public, I will tell the faith in Lord Jesus Christ son of God and other believers will take courage and be strong in their faith. Hundred percent I am stable to my word. I have family of seven - one wife, three daughters and three sons. My big son [is] about eight years old. One of my daughters can't speak, she has some mental problems.
"This is a request from me to all over the world, people please help me. I could not have any person to help. For [the] sake [of] Lord Jesus Christ please pray and immediately help me and rescue me from this jail. Otherwise, they will kill me, because I know they're very very very cruel and hard hearted!
"Your destitute brother in the world.
"Please my English writing is not enough good. If I did some mistake please forgive me! From Kabul Provincial jail."

Prof. K. reminds us that when President Bush intervened in the similar case of Abdul Raman four years ago, it resulted in his release. Let's ask President Obama to help Said Musa.

Norko Perestroika

I know I missed the news for a week, but I haven't seen any commentary on this.

Bowing to reality, the North Korean government has lifted all restrictions on private markets -- a last-resort option for a leadership desperate to prevent its people from starving. 

Continuing:

In recent weeks, according to North Korea observers and defector groups with sources in the country, Kim Jong Il's government admitted its inability to solve the current food shortage and encouraged its people to rely on private markets for the purchase of goods. Though the policy reversal will not alter daily patterns -- North Koreans have depended on such markets for more than 15 years -- the latest order from Pyongyang abandons a key pillar of a central, planned economy.
With November's currency revaluation, Kim wiped out his citizens' personal savings and struck a blow against the private food distribution system sustaining his country. The latest policy switch, though, stands as an acknowledgment that the currency move was a failure and that only capitalist-style trading can prevent widespread famine.

Isn't that, um, kind of a big deal? Because after Perestroika comes Glasnost, and then....

Bye To The Party of No