Merry Christmas, Day 10 Jan 3, 2025

 

Image: Adoration of the Magi, El Greco, shamelessly pinched from Wiki.

The Holy Name of Jesus falls today, for reasons of shifting the calendar around to accommodate the coming transfer of Epiphany. Did you know that hundreds of thousands of male members of the Holy Name Society used to march in parade through our largest cities from at least the 1920s into the 50s?  Not sure when they petered out, but Mr. W. recalls his male relatives marching back in the day.  (See Formerly Grey Lady coverage from 1935.)

I'm a convert, so what do I know?  But here is a today-astonishing speech to the Holy Name Society of Washington from Calvin Coolidge.  Must give up using the Lord's name in vain for the new year, because low speech makes men weak. 

More than six centuries ago, when in spite of much learning and much piety there was much ignorance, much wickedness and much warfare, when there seemed to be too little light in the world, when the condition of the common people appeared to be sunk in hopelessness, when most of life was rude, harsh and cruel, when the speech of men was too often profane and vulgar, until the earth rang with the tumult of those who took the name of the Lord in vain, the foundation of this day was laid in the formation of the Holy Name Society. It had an inspired purpose. It sought to rededicate the minds of the people to a true conception of the sacredness of the name of the Supreme Being. It was an effort to save all reference to the Deity from curses and blasphemy, and restore the lips of men to reverence and praise. Out of weakness there began to be strength; out of frenzy there began to be self-control; out of confusion there began to be order. This demonstration is a manifestation of the wide extent to which an effort to do the right thing will reach when it is once begun. It is a purpose which makes a universal appeal, an effort in which all may unite.

Very worth R-ing TWT. 

Merry Christmas, Day 6!

 

                    Image credit: Jan de Beer, Flight into Egypt, shamelessly pinched from Wiki. 

ICYMI two days ago:  White House proclamation for the 850th anniversary of martyrdom of Thomas Becket. 

As Americans, we were first united by our belief that “rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God” and that defending liberty is more important than life itself. If we are to continue to be the land of the free, no government official, no governor, no bureaucrat, no judge, and no legislator must be allowed to decree what is orthodox in matters of religion or to require religious believers to violate their consciences. No right is more fundamental to a peaceful, prosperous, and virtuous society than the right to follow one’s religious convictions. As I declared in Krasiński Square in Warsaw, Poland on July 6, 2017, the people of America and the people of the world still cry out: “We want God.”

On this day, we celebrate and revere Thomas Becket’s courageous stand for religious liberty and we reaffirm our call to end religious persecution worldwide. In my historic address to the United Nations last year, I made clear that America stands with believers in every country who ask only for the freedom to live according to the faith that is within their own hearts. I also stated that global bureaucrats have absolutely no business attacking the sovereignty of nations that wish to protect innocent life, reflecting the belief held by the United States and many other countries that every child — born and unborn — is a sacred gift from God. Earlier this year, I signed an Executive Order to prioritize religious freedom as a core dimension of United States foreign policy. We have directed every Ambassador — and the over 13,000 United States Foreign Service officers and specialists — in more than 195 countries to promote, defend, and support religious freedom as a central pillar of American diplomacy.

We pray for religious believers everywhere who suffer persecution for their faith. We especially pray for their brave and inspiring shepherds — like Cardinal Joseph Zen of Hong Kong and Pastor Wang Yi of Chengdu — who are tireless witnesses to hope.

RTWT. 

Kennedy: My Decisions Are Like Those of the Third Reich

Well, here is a new one for the annals of argument ad Hitlerum: a man compares his own side of an argument to the Third Reich. One begins to suspect Justice Kennedy is not a towering judicial intellect.

A Hard Rain Is Falling, Happy Independence Day!

detail, Childe Hassam, Flags on the Waldorf

Literally, as I'm typing on this Independence Day, a hard rain is falling in Washington, DC, as it has been every day -- with intermittent bursts of spectacular sunshine-- since last Thursday & Friday, when the Supreme Court tried its best to end America with a trio of decisions that are spectacularly bad, even for them. They upheld Obamacare by denying the flat meaning of words; they declared that the people have no authority to decide for themselves what marriage is, converting marriage from a natural right that the government recognizes into a power deriving from government to be conferred at will; and they did a major power-grab in a little-noticed elections case, in which it was revealed that 5 of 9 Supreme Court Justices do not know what a "legislature" is.  (And they thought Harriet Miers wasn't intellectual enough for this body?)  Odiousness level: Dred Scott.

Of the three, the gay marriage case is the most pernicious in terms of the hard rain that is going to fall as a result of "penumbrae" emanating from it (see Ken Masugi's fabulous essay). Taken together, it's tempting to feel that the regime of liberty America once represented is like one of the Twin Towers as the flames of 9/11 were melting the steel frame: still standing, but doomed. Rapidly we replace the rule of law with the rule of men -- in Lincoln's words, "the same old snake."

Tempting, but not, in my estimation, manly or noble. The great thing about virtue and about the principles of liberty is that no matter how far you fall, they are eternal, always there to be reclaimed if you have the will to do so.

I'm not being Pollyanna. Persecutions of a certain kind are here, and more are certainly in the offing. Archbishop Wenski enumerated them brilliantly in his homily for the close of the Fortnight for Freedom. And I have personal examples.

For more than five years now several priests of this archdiocese, separately, have said privately to me that they expect to be jailed for upholding the faith at some point, and a friend recently said to me he didn't know if he'd want his kid to become a cop, for fear he'd be asked to arrest priests or that kind of thing. Christians and others are being systematically run out of entire fields: medicine, academia, technology, education -- and now the florist and baking industries too. At the National Catholic prayer breakfast this year I was sitting next to a fellow who runs a marriage preparation program in the projects in DC. It's secular, but the group putting it on is Catholic. Thanks to a provision in DC law that prohibits Christian charities from hiring and firing in accordance with their own faith, their board met to discuss no longer offering the marriage program on their website, but only secretly and by word of mouth. He told me he went home and told his wife, "What is this, Poland? I can't believe we are seriously talking about taking a charity underground in the United States of America!"

Eldest Weed, who is something of a programming whiz, took what happened to Brendan Eich very personally. He is 18 and already sees that he will either never work in his field or will have to squelch anything he actually believes all his life. That makes it very difficult this 4th of July to sing about the land of the free and home of the brave.

My kids are inheriting a very different country than the one I have lived in. I grew up white in an all-black neighborhood and was often the only white person in the game or on the bus; the only Conservative in an entire school; the only outspoken Protestant in Catholic religion class; the only Drama major who wasn't smoking weed and sleeping around; and later the only Catholic in my family and one of the few orthodox Catholics among "the spirit of Vatican II" types at my home parish. I've been the only pro-lifer in a room full of rabid pro-aborts and posed them impertinent questions. For whatever reason, until late in life I've been accustomed to being the sole person who thinks as I do in many situations. I've taken a fair amount of ribbing and been on the ugly side of unfair judgment, but never once have I felt it was unsafe for me to speak up -- to ask a question, to say what I actually think. I never felt physically at risk, nor that my ability to earn a living could be at stake, or that my kids would suffer over something their mom said or wrote. People of all stripes, even those who hated what I said, have been on the whole respectful and willing to engage in debate: sometimes more pleasant, sometimes more heated, but: debate. That is simply not the atmosphere here in the States anymore. For the first time in my life, I often do pull punches, thinking twice before subjecting myself or my family to the consequences of speech I would have uttered confidently a mere five years ago. Not confident of a pleasant response, but confident of my liberty and everyone's respect for it.

It's going to be a rough next decade, and I have to admit when I heard the news while on silent retreat last week, I had to go to my cell and have a good cry. Not because I begrudge gay people anything: that would be seriously to misunderstand the source of my sorrow. I love my gay neighbors and want them to be happy. I was crying for the loss of the rule of law --and the realization that my kids will not know the freedom --the genuine liberty-- that I knew as a kid and young adult. Any liberty they have they will have to fight for, and it's hard to know where they will find allies, since not even the good guys bother to read or study anything relevant to the political order. (Is there any place other than Hillsdale College where a student can learn anything about the principles of American politics?) Christians are good people, but I get frustrated with them in cultural battles, because they seem to like to head straight for the catacombs first, there to complain about how bad things are, rather than recalling the duty of charity to be a witness to the truth. You stand up for what is right not to impose anything, but because you see your fellow men hurting themselves and you wish to propose a better idea. As the archbishop said, we are in the world, not of it; but because we are in the world, we are also for the world.

My other fear is that my kids will eventually hate us for raising them Catholic because of how hard that identity is going to be for the immediate future: the likelihood is great that it will be held against them at university and in job hunts. Our two eldest will have difficulty in college, but at least they will go. I wonder whether in a few years our youngest will even be permitted to attend university if he does not first renounce his faith. The kids may be like Catholics in Communist Poland, those who refused to join the Party: excluded from everything.

But what if, to quote the story of Esther, we were born for such a time as this? If liberty is never more than a generation from failing, it's equally only a generation away from rebirth. In this crisis there's also a great opportunity to stand up, re-teach the principles of law and civic and Christian virtue, and beat back the snake. Catholics have triumphed over Know-Nothingness and other forms of anti-Catholic prejudice before, and they can do so again. In the first place, we've still got it very, very good in comparison with much of the world.  And what we have is very much worth defending, as Charles C. W. Cooke notes in this lovely essay.

Secondly: it's important not to indulge in the same kind of hurt feelings and offense-taking that are the weapons of Progressivism.  Cowboy up, Conservatives, as Andrew Klavan says:

Recently I’ve been hearing a lot of conservatives saying things like, “It’s over. The left has won. This is no longer America. I’m not even going to celebrate the Fourth of July this year.” I confess this disturbs me. I expect feminists to squeal like hysterical little girls. I expect Social Justice Warriors to act like small boys who pretend to be heroes against imaginary enemies then run away from actual danger.
I expect conservatives to act like men and women — men and women who understand they are part of a fight for liberty that began when Moses killed the Egyptian slavedriver and will not end until Jesus comes again.
Open your eyes. The hills are filled with chariots of fire. Those who are with us are more than those who are with them.  

Further reading: 10 Things You Should Know About the American Founding; 12 Things to Remember if Obergefell is getting you down.

Update: This post was intended to be sober, but not enervating, which is why I closed on the "Cowboy Up" note.  We remember Thomas Paine, right? "“Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it.”

Here are a few links to help with bucking up.

The Fourth is a time to Fight

Christian Patriotism after Same-Sex Marriage

Archbishop Wenski's homily for the Fortnight for Freedom

Indiana: Sound the Alarm

You know a tipping point has been reached when Rod Dreher & John Zmirak agree and strike the same note.  More on the astonishing reaction to Indiana's RFRA law later, but first, Dreher: Indiana, a Religious Liberty Bellwether. He does his homework, reading up on the statute and all the law professors -- including those who support gay rights and gay marriage-- who say that those freaking out about discrimination are just flat-out misinformed about what the law does.

His conclusion: things are so bad, I will even vote Republican:

The overreaction, especially the blatant lies and completely invented controversy, in which the media and big business have engaged in the past few days about Indiana and religious liberty, has been a shock to my system — this, even though I am by now used to just about anything from that side. Because religious liberty is the most important political issue to me, it is hard to imagine sitting out the 2016 presidential election, as I have done the past two times because I couldn’t stomach the Republican nominee. It is impossible to imagine voting Democratic in 2016, because the Democrats are actively committed to legislating contempt for traditional Christians like me. If even mild attempts to give minimal protection to religious dissenters is condemned as Jim Crow redux by the Democrats, it genuinely frightens me to think about what a Supreme Court dominated by Obama-Clinton justices would do.
Voting Republican is no guarantee that religious liberty would be strengthened in SCOTUS rulings in the future, but there is some hope that a GOP president would nominate justices sympathetic to religious liberty concerns. With President Hillary Clinton, or any conceivable Democrat, there is no hope at all.
Je suis le First Amendment. Indiana shows why for social and religious conservatives, 2016 is all about the Supreme Court and religious liberty. The past few days have made someone like me, a conservative independent who has little use for either party, realize that I cannot afford to be on the sidelines in 2016. Religious conservative voters must be focused like a laser on religious liberty, right now. It’s that important.

And then Zmirak:

The expected Supreme Court decision imposing on 50 states an entirely new understanding of marriage, and the frenzy of hatred that gay activists have stoked against Indiana for trying to shelter religious believers from crippling lawsuits should wake us to a cold and stark reality: The age of tolerance in America is vanishing before your eyes. The question is how Christians and other people of faith and good will are going to respond.

Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Read the Critique of Pure Reason

Shamelessly pinched from here.

That someone thought to put this disclaimer on Kant as dangerous for children makes me want to enter the catacombs and turn out the lights. There are PLENTY of reasons to keep your babies away from Kant that have nothing to do with his frightening and unacceptable heteronormativity.

"Once The Beating Was Over, We Were Free"

I never thought to take a moral lesson from DailyKos, but read this. An excellent thing for contemporary Christian Step-N-Fetchits to meditate on.

Update: While we're on Dr. King, this is incredible. MLK's "Instructions for Riding an Integrated Bus"

Neither of Whom Is Fit to Live in Andrew Cuomo's New York

 

Shamelessly pinched from the Accidental Talmuldist.

Accepting whatsisname's (that New Republic guy whose name escapes me) definition of gaffe as a politician accidentally saying what he thinks, Gov. Cuomo had a doozy Friday night-- in which he said that pro-lifers are among those who are "extreme" and "have no place in New York."

K-Lo says what needs to be said about that. Her best column ever, I think. And as she points out: there mustn't be crickets about the fact that when a man aspires to run for President as a Democrat, he does so not with some uniting vision of the common good, but by fantasizing about banishing arguably 80% of his home state (since that's the # of New Yorkers who favor at least some restrictions on abortion). As K-Lo says: 

Notice who it is telling New Yorkers who believe we have to protect the most innocent – and we most definitely ought not be making their shot at seeing the light of day any harder – are not worthy of residence in the Empire State. It’s not Cardinal Dolan (who recently won a court victory on religious liberty). It’s not the Little Sisters of the Poor. It’s not pro-life Democrat Ruben Diaz. It’s not even National Review, a New York mainstay since 1955! The assault on religious liberty and conscience in America is coming from a radical secularist ideology on the Left. The narrowing of freedom is not coming from people who propose alternatives to the sexual revolutionary values, but from those, like Andrew Cuomo, who insist on doubling down on a culture of death, coercing submission and banishing dissent, all while using words like tolerance and choice.

I try to keep my darker thoughts to myself, but this illiberal and tyrannical talk from elected officials does frighten me because....

 Shamelessly pinched from American Digest. Click to enlarge.

For the record, I don't think the President plans or fantasizes about the result depicted in the cartoon. I think he's a sophomoric lightweight whose grad-school pieties aren't adequate to the real world. But the result of his policies is the same -- and we have an entire generation of spoiled citizens like him who think liberty just "is" and not something precious that must be thoughtfully maintained. It is deeply creepy to hear politicians speak openly about who is and isn't worthy of living amongst us. In a healthy society, a guy talking like Gov. Cuomo would immediately be in way more trouble than Chris Christie, and would have disqualified himself from the presidency by that single telling remark.

Strong Sign You Need to Re-think Your Life

When you refer to these gals, the Little Sisters of the Poor, whose mission is to serve the elderly poor in impoverished neighborhoods, as "threatening." 

As in:

“The administration must now deal with this latest threat to the nation’s health care law: these ladies, the Little Sister of the Poor.” 

Joanne McPortland, (a sensible Liberal & recently-returned-Catholic) rightly calls this kind of thing the "noveau Know-Nothingism." Here (as noted yesterday in my Twitter feed), she smacks down a frankly bigoted piece from US News denouncing Sonia Sotomayor, who is turning out not to be such a wise Latina in the Left's mind after all. And that because she simply wanted to give a fair hearing to the Ladies in the picture before forcing them to pay for abortions and sterilizations. 

Actually the Anchoress does the best smackdown and the piece, but I highlight McPortland's because she does us all the favor of uncovering a highly relevant letter of Thomas Jefferson to Ursuline nuns at the time of the Louisiana Purchase.  The nuns had fled the French Revolution and, knowing Jefferson to be a fan of it, were worried what might happen to their apostolates. He hand-wrote them the following letter (McPortland's post has a link to the .pdf so you can see his handwriting!):

I have received, holy sisters, the letter you have written me wherein you express anxiety for the property vested in your institution by the former governments of Louisiana.
The principles of the constitution and government of the United States are a sure guarantee to you that it will be preserved to you, sacred and inviolate, and that your institution will be permitted to govern itself according to its own voluntary rules, without interference from the civil authority.
Whatever the diversity of shade may appear in the religious opinions of our fellow citizens, the charitable objects of your institution cannot be indifferent to any; and its furtherance of the wholesome purposes of society, by training up its younger members in the way they should go, cannot fail to ensure it the patronage of the government it is under.
Be assured it will meet all the protection which my office can give it.
I salute you, holy sisters, with friendship and respect.

And that, my friends, is how a genuinely liberal Democrat -- as opposed to a Progressive tyrant-- treats a nun.

I also like McPortland's post for its spunky close for the benefit of US News and its genuinely bigoted author:

please don’t dismiss this as Catholics crying persecution. We’re not stupid. We know the difference between persecution and ignorant, rabble-rousing bigotry. We will pray for those around the world experiencing the former, but by damn we will not stand for the latter.

I Want One!

Did you catch Justice Scalia's weird hat at the Inaguration yesterday? It appears to have been a "statement." Check it out:

The twitterverse is alive with tweets about Justice Scalia’s headgear for today’s inauguration. At the risk of putting all the fun speculation to an end . . . The hat is a custom-made replica of the hat depicted in Holbein’s famous portrait of St. Thomas More. It was a gift from the St. Thomas More Society of Richmond, Virginia. We presented it to him in November 2010 as a memento of his participation in our 27th annual Red Mass and dinner.

Make of it what you will, but I think ALL Catholics in the U.S. should wear one until the HHS Abortion Mandate is fully rescinded and the Administration quits arguing in Court that your right to freely exercise your religion ends the instant you step out of your home or church and onto a public sidewalk. 

LSU Photoshops Crosses Out of Photos of Christians

Public indecency: Of all the things a person might take umbrage with in this shot, LSU chose the teeny tiny little cross on the participants' shoulders. You can fly your freak flag high, but show us your religion and we'll get the vapors.

But don't worry, there's no serious threat to religious liberty in this country.

Closing Mass of the Fortnight for Freedom

Bringing an official close to two weeks of prayer, sacrifice, education and public demonstrations in defense of religious liberty, Cardinal Wuerl will celebrate Mass at noon at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception for Independence Day. Chaput the Great will be the homilist.

P.S. Eric Metaxas says all y'all Protestants should come too.

One For Our Team

Canada's infamous "Section 13" of the Human Rights Act is dead. Good riddance.

Philosophically, it was a cure worse than the disease: Ian Fine, the senior counsel of the Canadian “Human Rights” Commission, declared that his organization was committed to the abolition of hatred—not “hate crimes,” not even “hate speech,” but hate—a human emotion; you know, like the human emotions the control-freak enforcers attempt to abolish in Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Stepford Wives. Any society of free peoples will include its share of hate: it could not be human without it. And, as bad as racists and homophobes and Islamophobes and whateverphobes may be, empowering Mr. Fine’s ever more coercive enforcement regime to micro-regulate us into glassy-eyed compliance is a thousand times worse.

Rally for Religious Liberty June 8th at Noon

The problem with the HHS contraceptive mandate is not contraception. The Catholic Church opposes contraception, but it isn't trying to ban its use nor does it deny an insurance provider's ability to cover it if it chooses. The objection to the HHS rule is that by it, the government presumes to define what is and is not religious activity and essential church doctrine -- precisely the same claim the Supreme Court just shot down 9-0 in the Hosanna-Tabor ruling now appearing through the back door.

The attacks on the free exercise of religion are not merely at the federal level and not merely from the Obama administration and not merely directed against Catholics. Consider:

• In New York City, church groups are forbidden to rent public facilities open to all other citizen groups.
• In Alabama, if an illegal alien is dying at your door, it is nonetheless illegal to baptize him or hear his confession. 
• The Connecticut state legislature recently tried to re-configure parishes as if that were any concern of the state.
• Universities such as U. California and Vanderbilt have driven Christian groups off campus. 

Do we believe in the First Amendment guarantee of Free Exercise? And if we concede government intrusion on conscience, how long do we think the freedoms of speech, press & assembly will stand?

Therefore, tomorrow noon at a location near you, rally for religious liberty as a proxy for all liberty. (In DC, at Upper Senate Park, just West of the Russell Senate Office Building, and there are two sites in Maryland).

And June 22-July 4th, observe the Fortnight for Freedom. Read all about it in the excellent document prepared by the U.S. bishops ad hoc committee on religious liberty.

Here are 18 ways to defend religious liberty.

And for inspiration, go see For Greater Glory. Not a great movie qua movie, but intensely inspiring and moving -- and timed fortuitously.

Everybody Blog Brett Kimberlin Day

Today is everyone blog Brett Kimberlin day. Michelle Malkin writes:

the past eight years that I’ve been blogging and operating Internet media companies, I’ve witnessed or experienced firsthand some of the most unhinged behavior against conservatives — from individual harassment and intimidation, to e-mail bombs and e-mail hackings, to troll infestations, distributed denial of service attacks, coordinated spam block attacks, and death threats.
Over the past twenty years that I’ve worked in daily opinion journalism, written books, and traveled across the country speaking in every type of venue, I’ve always believed that the most effective response to attempted censorship of conservatives is more speech, not less.
More. Louder. Bolder.
For conservatives online, it is also a time-tested truism that there is great strength in numbers. When bloggers, activists, video content creators, and Twitter users on the Right unite behind common principles — fighting jihadi propaganda, exposing corruption, calling out media bias, following the progressive money trail, holding the Republican Party’s feet to the fire, etc. — we can accomplish uncommon things.
Over the past year, Aaron Walker (who blogged as “Aaron Worthing”), Patterico, Liberty Chick, and now Stacy McCain have been targeted by convicted Speedway bomber Brett Kimberlin because they dared to mention his criminal past or assisted others who did. The late Andrew Breitbart warned about Kimberlin and company.
I have spoken directly with both Patterico and Aaron about their ongoing battles.
The mainstream press, not just the conservative blogosphere, needs to hear and report their stories.
This is a convoluted, ongoing nightmare that combines abuse of the court system, workplace intimidation, serial invasions of privacy, perjury, and harassment of family members. McCain was forced to move with his family out of his house this week, and has just gotten a small taste of what Aaron and Patterico have been enduring over the past year. Aaron and his wife were fired from their jobs after their employer feared the office would be targeted next. Convicted bomber Kimberlin has filed bogus “peace orders” against Aaron, when it is the Walkers who are the victims, not the perpetrators.

Read blogger Patterico's firsthand experience with "SWATTING", which as he points out, can get people killed and is a terrific waste of police time and community resources.

He documents the literal daily harassment (including not only SWATing but harrassment lawsuits and posting phony naked pictures supposedly of himself) of him and other bloggers (AaronWorthing, Stacey McCain, Ace of Spades among others) and he names names of at least some of the individuals and entities behind it.

Excellent run-down not only of Kimberlin's antics, but of his Soros-funded front groups.
Good round-up here.

Notre Dame & Other Un-Persons

Now, finally, can we all agree the media abdication of duty and lapdoggery is undeniable? How is it possible that 43 organizations (including the Obama-awarding U. of Notre Dame, with many more expected to follow) file suit simultaneously in 12 jurisdictions and ABC World News and NBC Nightly News literally (and I mean that literally, Mr. Biden) don't mention it? (CBS gave it a thorough-going 19-seconds.)

Folks is hoppin' mad, but don't they get it? Catholics and their institutions already don't exist. The history books have already been updated, and all the double-plus-ungood people were never there.

The chancellor of the Archdiocese of Washington explains the suit here:

 

Update: EJ Dionne explains why the press isn't covering the 43 lawsuits. It's because the REAL story is that many bishops AREN'T suing.
Yes, Dear.

Just as on 9/11 the REAL story was the number of Muslims who weren't attacking us.

Dionne rests his case on the word of one bishop, actually: Stephen Blaire of Stockton. He's the guy who says Paul Ryan's budget is a moral failure. I haven't gotten around to fisking him yet but he's way overdue. An interview he gave in the NC Register recently shows beyond doubt he hasn't even read the dang budget. He thinks the Church should not defend itself because it gives the GOP a talking point. And we all know the Church exists for the purpose of denying talking points to the GOP, and political neutrality means never telling politicians they are wrong. Except Paul Ryan, apparently.

Dionne is angry that the Church hasn't been mollified by the "compromise" on the HHS mandate, in which the government allows an accounting trick so Christians can pretend on paper they aren't funding abortifacient drugs and sterilizations. E.J., Baby: THERE IS NO COMPROMISE. The HHS rule was finalized as written on the same day the Administration floated it as some kind of maybe possibility down the road. It was a trick and a lie from the beginning, and only you and Sr. Carol fell for it.

Standing With Geert Wilders

Mark Steyn's forward to Geert Wilders' new book is up at The Corner. It makes me ashamed because I confess from press stories I had the idea Wilders was a bit of a right-wing fanatic -- someone one is put in the awkward position of defending against Islamic extremism but with whose ideas one really doesn't wish to associate. (I don't care how crazy you are or how provocative what you say is, Islamic youths don't get to kill you on the streets of a Western democracy.)

As Steyn shows, this opinion is the product of lazy journalism. Discussing a big flap in Oz when an Aussie politician had the gall to want to meet Wilders and size him up in person rather than relying on rumor, he writes:

In that Cory Bernardi flap Down Under, for example, I’m struck by how much of the Aussie coverage relied on the same lazy shorthand about Geert Wilders. From The Sydney Morning Herald:

 “Geert Wilders, who holds the balance of power in the Dutch parliament, likened the Koran to Mein Kampf and called the Prophet Muhammad a pedophile . . . ”

The Australian:

“He provoked outrage among the Netherlands’ Muslim community after branding Islam a violent religion, likening the Koran to Hitler’s Mein Kampf and calling the Prophet Mohammed a pedophile.”

Tony Eastley on ABC Radio:

“Geert Wilders, who controls the balance of power in the Netherlands’ parliament, has outraged Dutch Muslims by comparing the Koran to Hitler’s work Mein Kampf and calling the Prophet Muhammad a pedophile . . . ”

Golly, you’d almost think all these hardworking investigative reporters were just cutting-and-pasting the same lazy précis rather than looking up what the guy actually says. The man who emerges in the following pages is not the grunting thug of media demonology but a well-read, well-traveled, elegant, and perceptive analyst who quotes such “extreme” “fringe” figures as Churchill and Jefferson. 

 Well, that's what you get for believing anything you read in the papers. Mea maxima culpa.

Steyn opens the forward by saying he considered not writing it because he's had enough of his own struggles with Islamist extremists trying to shut him down, brand him an extremist or threaten him with death and who needs it? But then he felt ashamed of that impulse. He concludes:

I have no desire to end up living like Geert Wilders or Kurt Westergaard, never mind dead as Fortuyn and van Gogh. But I also wish to live in truth, as a free man, and I do not like the shriveled vision of freedom offered by the Dutch Openbaar Ministrie, the British immigration authorities, the Austrian courts, Canada’s “human rights” tribunals, and the other useful idiots of Islamic imperialism. So it is necessary for more of us to do what Ayaan Hirsi Ali recommends: share the risk. So that the next time a novel or a cartoon provokes a fatwa, it will be republished worldwide and send the Islamic enforcers a message: Killing one of us won’t do it. You’d better have a great credit line at the Bank of Jihad because you’ll have to kill us all.

 Quite.

Shall There Ever Be An England?

They say the Right is fear-mongering and hysterical. I only wish we were making this stuff up. The "Advertising Standards Authority" is going after a blogger for running an ad in defense of marriage. Please click through and see the ad to understand how utterly innocuous it is. It's a bunch of photos of couples on their wedding day together with a statistic (w/ source citation) about how many people favor keeping marriage as it is and a plea to sign a petition.

He's getting threatening letters, requests for documentation and -- especially important-- insistence that he keep this process "confidential," all because some homosexuals complained it was "homophobic."

Rightly he calls BS on that and is shouting it to the world.

Since His Grace does not dwell in Iran, North Korea, Soviet Russia, Communist China or Nazi Germany, but occupies a place in the cyber-ether suspended somewhere between purgatory and paradise, he is minded to ignore that request. Who do these people think they are? 

Read his entire response. It's very satisfying, though we shall see whether he ends up shut down. I don't know what power this ASA has, if any.

Meanwhile on this side of The Big Pond (speaking of hate speech), my illusion that the WaPo editorial board is slightly more sane and capable of rational discussion than The Formerly Grey Lady has been shattered. Look what ad they ran on Wednesday. Even shameless bigots might think twice about offending a big population of potential subscribers one might think. But one would be wrong. Hatred for Christianity and Christians trumps all.  Here's the excellent response from the Archdiocesan newspaper.

It is slowly becoming a crime to be openly Christian.

Bully For You

As we gradually destroy our civilizing institutions, people are gradually reverting to barbarism and therefore not necessarily learning at home how a civilized person behaves. I acknowledge that schools may need to address certain basics such as, "Dogs establish Alpha order and intimidate everyone else into submission; people don't do that." Nevertheless, while I'm sure they are well-intentioned, I mistrust anti-bullying campaigns for three reasons.

1) I don't think the advice to never fight for any reason is sound. Always walk away from confrontation? That's right if we're talking about having your fancy shoes taken from you at gun-point. Don't die for shoes. When some loudmouth is picking on the class weakling, though, the right thing is to tell him to knock it off. Avoiding confrontation yields the schoolyard to the bully. Remember how horrified we were by the failure of Penn State asst. coach Mike McQueary to intervene in an abuse situation he walked in on? I think we're training our young people to do just that: never think about direct intervention, always wait and call for the teacher. Trained helplessness is good for the bullies long-run.

2)  Based on news stories about "bullying" incidents, I think they fail to properly discriminate between bullying behavior and mere insults. If I'm a 13-year-old girl and my BFF from twenty minutes ago switches allegiances to another girl on the playground and I call her a b**** on Facebook, that's uncharitable and immature speech, but it's not bullying. Every expression of anger is not bullying. Bullying is aggressive use of superior force to badger, intimidate or coerce another person. It's a power game. Single instances of lashing out don't qualify, and teaching kids --especially males-- to always suppress anger is a great way to make an adult who is cynical and bullying.

3) The anti-bullying movement is gradually becoming identified solely with eradicating "homophobia." No one wants a kid persecuted for his sexual orientation, but belief that same-sex attraction is an unfortunate cross to bear and not a gift to be celebrated is not commensurate with bullying. That won't wash. Political correctness is itself a form of bullying and there is no bully like the homosexual lobby. As witness this lovely outburst from Dan Savage of the It Gets Better project.

“I thought this would be about anti-bullying,” Tuttle told Fox news. “It turned into a pointed attack on Christian beliefs.”
Tuttle said a number of his students were offended by Savage’s remarks – and some decided to leave the auditorium.
“It became hostile,” he said. “It felt hostile as we were sitting in the audience – especially towards Christians who espouse beliefs that he was literally taking on.”
Tuttle said the speech was laced with vulgarities and “sexual innuendo not appropriate for this age group.” At one point, he said Savage told the teenagers about how good his partner looked in a speedo.
The conservative website Citizenlink was the first to report about the controversy. They interviewed a 17-year-old girl who was one of students who walked out of the auditorium.
“The first thing he told the audience was, ‘I hope you’re all using birth control,’” she told CitizenLink. “he said there are people using the Bible as an excuse for gay bullying, because it says in Leviticus and Romans that being gay is wrong. Right after that, he said we can ignore all the (expletive deleted) in the Bible.”
As the teenagers were walking out, Tuttle said that Savage heckled them and called them “pansy asses.”

Dan Savage is not a man who is against bullying; he is a bully himself. Unfortunately for Christian teenagers there will be no celebrity assurances that public attacks on them will get better. On the contrary, they are liable to get worse.

Sudden Clarity

Shamelessly pinched from a facebook page called "We the Individuals"

...about what that slogan means.