Grippin 'n Grinnin

I remember meeting Dr. Milton Eisenhower, President of Johns Hopkins University and Ike's younger brother, when I was a seventeen year-old in Baltimore. He heard that I played the organ and invited me, through a third party, to try out the vintage Hammond B-3 in his parlor. When I arrived, the butler answered the door, instructed me to wait in the library, and retreated upstairs as I entered the wood-paneled room. I'd never been in such a mansion, and already a bit intimidated, I decided to pass the time by browsing the titles of the large, leather-bound books.

That's when I really became unnerved. Most of the books were by Dr. Eisenhower. And there were photographs of him, the man whose hand I was about to shake, gripping the hands of his President brother, as well as future President Nixon, and other dignitaries.

Grip-'n-Grin photos, that's what they're called, and I started thinking back this past week to all the ones I've never taken during my thirty-six years of trains, planes, and foreign automobiles.

Reader Advisory: If you dislike name-dropping, stop reading now, because what follows is a veritable pig's wallow in it. Oh, and onstage sightings have been excluded (e.g., attending a concert) unless I was onstage with them.

Airports and Planes

I flew next to TV star Alan Thicke twice, and shared the airline lounge with him another time.

Infomercial super-salesman Kevin Trudeau was dressed in black, and reading a tabloid. This was at the height of his mega-speedreading period, so I was interested to see how quickly he'd be turning pages. Must've been looking at pictures, because he stayed on each page awhile.

Impressionist Rich Little and Singer Buddy Greco sat together in first class, as I walked back to the rowing section. They must have taken my upgrade.

Angelo Dundee stood in the Atlanta airport, looking like he was waiting for somebody.

Ditto for Andy Williams, who is actually an even smaller guy than Dundee. Probably weighed no more than 120 pounds.

Shared the row with Gorden Jump a few years back as he returned home from a Maytag convention in Tulsa. Jump was already famous from his role as an incompetent radio station manager on "WKRP in Cinncinnati."

Switched seats with jazz great Diane Schuur, who need the bulkhead seat in first class.

Sat in first class across the aisle from golfer Paul Azinger. Gave him my book, How a Man Stands Up For Christ, because I'd heard his Christian testimony about his bout with cancer.

Saw golfer Hale Irwin at the Jacksonville airport just a couple of months ago.

Legendary bluesman Bo Diddley lives nearby and we've flown out of Gainesville together several times.

Sudden Encounters:

Stepped off my team's tour bus in New York City just as Lawrence Welk walked by. Little guy.

Waited for the hotel elevator in Atlanta only to have Muhammed Ali slowly step out into the lobby in front of me. Big guy.

Studios and Onstage:

Sat about 30 feet behind President and Mrs. Bush and Governor Jeb Bush last October 30 at an outdoor rally here in Gainesville. (I've also been in the Oval Office twice on private White House tours, but obviously never with a President.)

Introduced Oliver North at the Fishnet festival in Virginia a few years back. Very nice guy offstage too.

Ditto for Pat Robertson and his security detail, when he was running for President. Robertson has also interviewed me a time or two on the 700 Club.

Fishnet also provided opportunities to work with various Christian recording artists, some more famous than others. Amy Grant is probably the best known of the lot, although lots of folks know Michael W. Smith, Phil Driscoll, Petra, and others.

Don't know whether to admit it, but I've also appeared on Jim Bakker's PTL Club back in the 1970s, and on Trinity Broadcasting, although never with Paul Crouch.

I recorded several albums and did some studio singing from 1970 through the late 1980s. One cool encounter was with David Clayton Thomas, lead singer for Blood, Sweat and Tears, who was playing pinball in the lounge. Saw Ross Martin (Wild, Wild West's Artemis Gordon) in the lobby.

Met actress/singer Jane Powell in the studio.

Also met musical legends Larry Carlton and Ron Tut (aka "Elvis' drummer") when they played on one of our albums in 1970.

Did a concert appearance with B.J. Thomas during his "Christian" period. Never spoke.

Appeared on British television with Charley Pride and the Chieftains, whose lead singer, Paddy, appeared pretty soused. Pride was a terrific guy. George Hamilton IV hosted the series.

Significant Times and Favorite Relationships:

Former baseball All-Star and Baltimore Orioles pitcher, Scott McGregor has become a friend in recent years, even though we first met outside the Orioles' locker room way back in the late 1970s. Met Eddie Murray and Al Bumbry that same day, and pitcher Tippy Martinez later. Scott's a true man of God, and now a coach in the Baltimore farm system.

Pro golfer Ron Streck gained his first victory on the Champions Tour last month, becoming the first golfer in history to win on all three PGA tours. I performed Ron's wedding to wife, Jodi, a few years back, and we remain close friends.

Sang (with my team) for Billy Graham's 1973 crusade in Durban, South Africa. Met the Zulu chief, Gatsha Buthelezi at a pre-service reception with Dr. Graham backstage.

Oral Roberts is one of my favorite famous people. I attended ORU for a semester in 1969. I was there on a music scholarship, and President Roberts bought me an ice cream one evening in the student union. We met several times in subsequent years, since the evangelism team I helped to found became a source of fatherly pride to him. He remember everybody's name except mine; always called me "little buddy." Might be an eccentric guy, but he's very honest and sincere, and a genius.

Got to meet and share both the stage and living room with Gospel great Andrae Crouch several times from 1969 through 2002. Nice guy who always appears to be falling asleep. One time he told me he regularly took a swig of Tabasco Sauce to open up his throat just before his concerts. That would do it!

Also met British pop star Sir Cliff Richard on several occasions, first singing backup for him for a week in South Africa in 1970. Later appeared with him onstage in England, and then met him for dinner again in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Not ever a big star in the USA (by his own choice) Cliff nonetheless is joined by Elvis and the Beatles as history's three biggest rock stars worldwide.

Saved my current favorite for last: Harald Bredesen is legendary, not so much with the public, as within church and political circles around the world. He's had enough favor to minister significantly (i.e., in a life-changing way) to VIPs ranging from Pat Boone to Anwar Sadat, and to more than a few billionaires who trust him to keep a secret. And for some reason this little 85 year-old man of prayer loves Dolly and me. Can't fathom why, but it sure is precious.

If you've made it this far, you're either my mother or a true friend. In any case, as I said at the top of this little exercise in ego, I never bothered pulling out the camera for a grip-'n-grin on any of these occasions (except with Harald), because...well, I figured these folks had to cope with such glad-handing every day of their lives, and I wanted to give them a break.

Besides, the only "brush" with real greatness is when God's hand touches a man. And frankly, that's the one that's made all the difference.

God's Politics 3: The Original Venture Capitalist

God is not a Republican, or so say the more spiritually minded folks on the left, like Howard Dean. Well, that may be true, but I can assure you He's no socialist either. After all, the very first test God gave Adam and Eve was that they should respect private property. Let's face it, that wasn't the "people's tree" Eve burgled, was it?

Yes, God is a capitalist. In fact I'm pretty sure He's a venture capitalist, seeing that He gave the First Couple some start-up funds in the form of a small, well-stocked Garden, and told them to expand the family business to the ends of the earth. Sounds a bit like Sam Walton, who—come to think of it—may have gotten his Walmart idea from God.

One thing I know for sure: the Almighty (God, not Mr. Dean) doesn't like high taxes. He, Himself, requires only the first ten percent of our income, and has even implied that any earthly government exacting that much is tyrannical. Don't believe me? Look at this:

These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen and to run before his chariots. And he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots. He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his servants. He will take the tenth of your grain and of your vineyards and give it to his officers and to his servants. He will take your male servants and female servants and the best of your young men[a] and your donkeys, and put them to his work. He will take the tenth of your flocks, and you shall be his slaves. And in that day you will cry out because of your king, whom you have chosen for yourselves, but the LORD will not answer you in that day 1 Samuel 8:11-20.

Yes, a tax rate of ten percent, one of the marks of tyranny. It would be scary, except that it sounds more like tax relief than an undue burden, doesn't it?

Another thing about God's tax: It isn't "progressive," i.e., rich and poor alike pay the same rate, no exemptions. Furthermore, God promises that tithe evasion brings a curse, more poverty, not less. That's not because He capriciously zaps people who tick Him off, but because failure to honor Him with the first fruits of what, in reality, already belongs to Him constitutes theft. And a culture of such thieves is more likely to breed Sam the Sham than Sam the Walton.

God also knows the surest way to keep a man poor is to teach him to (a) feel sorry for himself, (b) convince him his problems are always someone else's fault, (c) give him enough to get by without working over a long period of time, (d) convince him he's too inferior to make it in life without lowering the bar.

Ah, but if God's a capitalist, how then does He help the poor, whose side He claims to be on?

Well, beyond coming down hard on those who would exploit them, God also gives economic lessons. (I'm not going to link every sentence to a Scripture. You'll have to look these principles up for yourself!)

First, He differentiates between the deserving poor and the undeserving poor, suggesting that anyone who won't work shouldn't be fed. Implementing that approach would clear out a lot of underpasses by the end of the second day.

Second, when He does institute a welfare program, such as manna in the wilderness, He makes sure there's a sunset clause. When Israel finally entered the promised land, it was time for them to transition from the category of homeless to that of the working poor. So the manna stopped. Period. End of program.

Third, in another example of biblical welfare, God commanded that everyone bring an extra tithe every third and sixth year of His seven-year economic cycle, and that this tithe be distributed to the poor. What's interesting, and ever so capitalist, about it is that it was given in a lump sum, not a regular handout. This meant the poor:

(a) Could not develop a mentality of permanent dependence;

(b) Could choose to use it as start-up capital, thus becoming productive workers;

(c) Could choose self-rationing, thus learning self-discipline in saving.

Jesus also gave a powerful capitalist lesson in Luke 19:11-27, a parable He told about three men who were each given start-up money, with the specific assignment to invest it while their benefactor was out of the country. One man multiplied his capital by a factor of ten, a second man by a factor of five, and the third just hid it, because he was afraid of risk. The ruler's response to these men (and remember this is Jesus' story, so the principles in play are His) is fascinating.

The first two men are rewarded commensurately with their productivity, the former being given provincial governorship over ten cities, and the latter being given provincial governorship over five. The ruler then calls the third man, who merely preserved his original capital, "wicked" and orders him executed, but not before the little he has is given to—get this—the guy with the most, i.e., the richest one!

But why? Why is God suddenly apparently hard on the poorest man, and on the side of the rich?

I think the lefties are right on this much: God isn't a Republican, because if He were, He'd have caved in to pressure and given it to the middle guy.

But if God were a Democrat, He'd have taxed the stuffing out of the most productive man, taken a fair bit from the factor-five guy, and completely excused the laziness of the third, while underwriting his future on the dole. And of course, the lion's share of everyone's earnings would have to go to administration.

No, here's what Jesus was getting at, and it's my main reason for claiming God is the original venture capitalist: The question is never about wealthy versus poor, and who deserves what. Rather, the important thing with God is productivity with what He has given you. Maybe you're rich, or maybe you're poor and maybe your initial lot in life was indeed someone else's fault. Doesn't matter, because you're still responsible for what you do with what you have, even if all you have is the breath in your lungs.

God is into multiplying resources, not redistributing them. If you're poor, don't let the Schumers and the Kennedys hornswoggle you. If you're rich, don't think you've got one ounce of immunity, much less buying power, with Heaven. If you're black, don't let the Mfumes and the Bonds breathe resentment into you. If you're white, don't let the Jacksons and the Sharptons shake you down.

Just look at your own hands, at what you've got to invest, and then go build His kingdom. And be sure to take someone with you.

American Liberalism:Feelings, Nothing More Than...

Billy Crystal's Saturday Night Live character "Fernando" immortalized—in the Andy Warhol 15-minute sense—the line: "To look good is better than to feel good." Today's liberals might well turn the fictional Latin lover's signature on its head to express their own credo: "To feel good is better than to do good."

Much of the modern (or postmodern) American's view is based more on how he feels than on reason or logic. In fact, watch a television interview and the question for the expert usually is shaped more along the lines of "what's your feeling" rather than "what do you think". Such an emotive approach to life is one of the reasons for the staying power of cultural and political liberalism. Thinking through many liberal concepts, policies and schemes would have put them to rest long ago.

It is far more important to the average liberal to "feel" like he's making a difference in the world than actually to make a difference. Cases in point are 1985's two Live Aid concerts, and the annual Earth Day demonstrations held on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The former ultimately lined the pockets of African dictators, while saving hardly any African lives, and the latter concentrates heavily on anti-business rhetoric, while ignoring the amazing progress that has been made by corporations on environmental issues. Apparently environmentalists are in much the same predicament as liberal civil rights activists: If they achieve their stated goals of curing whatever ills they oppose, they'll go out of business. So for every demon exorcised they have to find a new one.

This afternoon I headed out of the natural food market towards my SUV, and noticed a few anti-George Bush stickers checkering the rear window of a station wagon. "Get rid of Bush" read one, while another snugged against its lower edge lamented "Never before have so few taken so much from so many for so long."

Now think of the logic, or lack of it, in that statement, and ask yourself: Exactly who are these thieves, and how have they "taken" so much for so long without getting caught, tried, and convicted? The obvious translation is that the "few" are conservatives who drive nicer cars than that particular wagon, the "many" are lower income Americans, and the means by which they have "taken so much" are primarily the reduced taxes that have taken effect since W took office. In other words we took by not paying enough.

Ten minutes after leaving the market I decided to tune my Xm Radio to channel 167, Air America, aka America Left, a station I usually listen to only if my blood pressure has dropped too low. Talk-show host Ed Schultz was discussing the nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court with a caller, who observed (without protest or contradiction from Schultz) that Roberts' confirmation hearing needs to be a lot tougher this time around than his previous one, because "the Supreme Court makes the law." Now, the caller sounded too young to be Souter, Breyer, or Kennedy, and I assume from his empathetic tone towards his host that he's probably not a Republican. But he stated his conviction with emotion. Not a moment's thought, but lots of emotion.

Now, in the spirit of true liberalism, I'm going to skip proof-reading this little note, because it's late and I feel tired.

Coming tomorrow: God's Politics 3: God the Venture Capitalist.

God's Politics 2: The Case of the Missing God

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, (d) Nevada, has launched "A Word to the Faithful," a "faith-based" section of the Senate Democrats' main website, "dedicated to illustrating how people of faith and Senate Democrats can work together to lift our neighbors up and achieve our common goals." (Hat Tip: World Magazine Blog)

I've just spent the better part of an hour searching and reading Senator Reid's overtures on "faith," and why the Democrats are so full of it. Now, you'd think that if they're trying to appeal to Christians and other religious Americans—you know, the ones who did not vote for them last November—that they would at least mention God at some point on a website dedicated to that purpose. But alas, it turns out the Almighty is AWOL, His name evidently not a suitable "word" to us faithful.

Hillary Clinton, in the transcript of her speech to a Seventh Day Adventist group, did manage to refer to a "God-given" right, but that was about it for Name-Above-All-Names dropping with her, and she was speaking to an exclusively Christian group. But Senator Reid, a Mormon, can't manage a even one, solitary euphemistic reference to a "higher power," or "Providence," or even "the Deity," as Bill O'Reilly likes to call Him. (The Bible says God knows us by name, but I can't help wondering if He refers to O'Reilly as "that Fox host.")

Of course I expect Jesus to get left out. That's been happening to Him ever since our revered Framers decided to leave Him out of both the Declaration of Independence and our Constitution. But God? You know, Mr. Reid, up there, in Heaven? Don't you think at least one, eensy weensy reference might make you a little more believable?

I've never met Senator Reid, but I have met his Republican counterpart, Senator John Ensign, a Foursquare Church member in whose Las Vegas church I speak annually. Ensign has said he considers Reid a friend and a good man. Maybe so, but the good senator sure knows how to waste website money.

This is an effort that will accomplish nothing, other than preaching to a choir that already sings the tired song of the "religious" Left. Reid, for example, doesn't even get past the second sentence on his home page, before referring to "the immorality of a budget that cuts programs for the neediest among us while rewarding those with the most," the same tired accusation made by Kennedy, Schumer, Pelosi, et al, before they all got saved. Class warfare with a halo, and a crooked one at that.

Call Me Captain Sisko

This started as a "fun rant" over a luscious Horiatiki salad at Arkadia, my favorite Greek restaurant and Internet cafe. An hour later it had become a letter to the editor, and by the next morning the Gainesville Sun said they'd like to feature it as a guest column this weekend. Would I please email them a picture? Don't know if it'll make their web version, but if you're local, look for "Worm Hole Spotted Near Haile Plantation" in the dead tree edition.

There's a worm hole exactly one point one miles from my house, a gateway to another dimension into which so many cars and SUVs have disappeared that many motorists now just stop and stare, frozen with fear at the sight of it, unable to drive any further without a liberating blast of the horn from the driver behind them, which is often me.

I know it's a worm hole, even though our county commission tries to pass it off as a "roundabout" where SW 91st Street used to cross SW 24th Avenue. On first glance it's beautiful, just like the one on Star Trek Deep Space Nine, except instead of star dust around its perimeter, there are palm trees, eight of them, specially designed to look just like the ones here in Florida. But it isn't Florida, of course. It's, well, the other end of the universe somewhere, or maybe San Francisco, which is somewhere near the other end of the universe.

One reason I know it's not a roundabout is the fact that it stops traffic dead rather than "easing congestion," which is what the aliens on our county commission assure us it was put there to do. Or maybe they're San Franciscans; they certainly act and vote like it, as does our mayor, who heads up a Borg-like collective at the city commission, which in turn is probably hooked right into the county one. I know this: Resistance, say in the form of conservative opinion, is futile.

Another reason I'm sure this little orbital paradise is not what it appears to be is the paralyzing effect of the yellow "yield" signs at the worm hole's four entry points. The aliens must somehow have installed a hypnosis ray, or something else really strong, because approaching those signs usually results not in yielding, but total surrender, on the part of most drivers.

Now, it is possible to make it through to the other side of the worm hole, still earthbound and in Gainesville. But the technique is tricky, and most drivers I've seen just can't execute it. The key is to keep moving when you see that yellow triangle, maintaining a speed of five to fifteen miles per hour. Stopping is okay only if there's another vehicle presently maintaining similar speed within the circle itself. There's something about moving steadily along that evidently disrupts the hypnosis ray, causing the worm hole, in fact, to ease traffic flow just like a roundabout.

I don't know, maybe I'm an emissary, like DSN's Captain Sisko, sent with a message for the citizens of Gainesville. I am, after all a bridge species—a Republican—sort of a cross between our alien commission and intelligent life. Hmmm, Sisko...San Fransisco; it even sounds like an emissary's name. Yep, call me Sisko, Gainesville. And here's my message to anyone traveling in the vicinity of SW 91st Street and SW 24th Avenue: Keep it moving!

God's Politics Indeed

Leaders of the "Christian Left" are starting to come out of the woodwork as they realize they'll get plenty of sympathetic coverage from MSM. (For new readers that's blogspeak for MainStream Media, e.g., established media giants like the New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, all dominated to the point of ideological lockdown by liber—uh, progressives.)

I expect them to be somewhat popular but ineffective. Lest the reader think that's an oxymoron, let me explain. First, they'll be fashionable with the media, just like the National Organization for Women, a small clique of propagandists who always show up as the opposing view on Crossfire types of shows. They'll be interviewed for "balance" whenever a large crowd of Christians gathers on the Mall in Washington, D.C., and they'll talk about the "chilling effect" they expect such a gathering to have on gay rights, civil rights, international relations, and the like. But they won't make a big difference in the long run, first, because such organizations are always made to look bigger, ergo more important, than they really are, and second, because falsely representing God ultimately doesn't work.

Their current leading spokesman—er, spokesperson—is Jim Wallis, founder of Sojourners, a group whose byline is "Christians for Justice and Peace," justice being socialistic policy and peace meaning appeasement of anybody who hates the USA. Wallis' latest book is God's Politics : Why the Right Gets It Wrong and the Left Doesn't Get It. It's a call to arms—no, a pacifist wouldn't issue a call to arms, so let's call it a rallying whine—to non-right-wing Christians, i.e., real Christians (the ones who rarely attend church but prayerfully remember the Columbine killers as victims too) to take back their faith and do what Jesus would really do. And what is that, pray tell? Well, I have not read and will not read Wallis' book, but I've heard him talk for thirty years, and he's utterly predictable in preaching the Socialist Jesus, the one who would have Uncle Sam pay for redistributing everyone's wealth, provide nationalized cradle-to-grave health care, show more sensitivity to "our homosexual brothers and sisters," protect a "woman's right to choose," get out of Iraq while starting a meaningful dialogue with the "insurgents," blah, blah, blah.

It's amazing, on first glance, that someone accusing evangelical conservatives of arrogance would have the chutzpah to call his book "God's Politics," but then again, it's the nature of the Left to proudly point out pride in others.

Wallis is just the latest spokesperson for justice and peace. In the 90s the microphone often landed in front of Clinton confidant Tony Campolo, a popular campus speaker who frequently resorts to clever one-liners when good theology just won't do. Campolo's no-holds-barred style made him a regular on the Jesus festival circuit a few years back, until World Magazine starting pointing out a few of his other speaking engagements (like this one), and he fell out of favor with many. You can read about Campolo's views on various issues, in this Beliefnet interview.

Then there's Ron Sider, author of the best selling Rich Christians In An Age Of Hunger, a book I have long loathed by a man I have grown to respect. Sider recently was interviewed by World's Magazine's Gene Edward Veith, and came across as someone genuinely sharpened by all the iron with which his fellow Christians have rubbed him since Rich Christians first came out more than twenty years ago. The book, in fact, has gone through several serious, sometimes unacknowledged, revisions since Sider's views were first challenged in the 1980s by David Chilton's Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators: A Biblical Response to Ronald J. Sider. (If you order Chilton's excellent rebuttal, please do so through the Amazon search box in the sidebar of my blog!) In essence he's now a little further to the right, but still not even close to center field.

I disagree with Sider's fundamental, and predictably leftist, view that tax dollars should be a primary source of funds for curing virtually every extant social ill. But at least he comes across as someone who realizes there's a bit of difference between the Nicene Creed and the Communist Manifesto.

All in all, there's no doubt that a foot stompin' revival has started over there in the Church of No-God-in-Particular, the Reverend Howard Dean presiding. And the latest pew jumpers come from just up the road here in north Florida. A friend alerted me the other morning to the Christian Alliance for Progress, which rather messianically bills itself as "The Movement to Reclaim Christianity and Transform American Politics." They've put up a slick website, complete with testimonials and an invitation to "join the movement," and have even issued The Jacksonville Declaration, an open letter, inviting signatures, to American Christians who are tired of having right-wingers like Dr. D. James Kennedy presume to speak for them.

To which I say...go ahead! Gather your signatures. Let Jim Wallis explain God's Politics on CNN and other channels with audiences declining for exactly the same reasons as liberal churches' attendance. Let the Campolos and the Bill Moyers harp on about those wealthy friends of Bush whose true duty to justice is to pay for all the compassion these messiahs can muster. Let them try and mobilize all the moral milquetoasts whose idea of famine relief is to attend a rock concert every couple of decades. Go ahead! And remember to play John Lennon's "Imagine" while you're giving your altar call.

You'll be about as effective as a Madonna pre-concert "prayer."

Because they hated knowledge and did not choose the fear of the LORD, would have none of my counsel, and despised all my reproof, therefore they shall eat the fruit of their way, and have their fill of their own devices. For the simple are killed by their turning away, and the complacency of fools destroys them; but whoever listens to me will dwell secure and will be at ease, without dread of disaster Proverbs 1:29-33.

Ah, the beauty of Providence. Every pundit Left and Right can sit under studio lights, spinning facts and spouting truisms, but sooner or later God Himself vindicates the truth for His own name's sake.

Just as Jannes and Jambres opposed Moses, so these men also oppose the truth, men corrupted in mind and disqualified regarding the faith. But they will not get very far, for their folly will be plain to all, as was that of those two men 2 Timothy 3:8-9.

Selah.

Fat Man Walking

I'm not sure I've ever urged my readers to make a contribution to any cause, but this site inspires me beyond words. Please check out Steve Vaught's The Fat Man Walking. Already hopelessly behind schedule, Vaught nonetheless has picked up a huge Internet following, so reminiscent of a certain movie that he's picked up the moniker Forrest Lump.

I'd love to see the guy make it all the way to New York City and a nice FAT book contract.

Loose Ends

The Big Fight: Folks inside the Beltway may have put on their trunks and gloves for nothing, as John Roberts' confirmation (coronation?) to the Supreme Court is looking more and more like a sure bet. The accolades from all corners, if nothing else, show yet again that George Bush is a lot smarter and shrewder than (a) his critics give him credit for being, and (b) most of his critics, themselves.

Cult of Islam: Cults, by popular definition, are religious groups with strange, often sinister beliefs and/or practices. Some are small, but notorious, like the Branch Davidians. Others, like the Jehovah's Witnesses, are larger and, with regard to physical violence, comparatively benign. But what happens when the tail wags the dog, when the cult becomes the mainstream? Islam, that's what.

Kudos to Cal Thomas for this:

"I don't want to understand why they hate us, anymore than my father's generation sought to understand Nazis, or the ideological slaves of Hirohito. Like that generation, since the jihadists have declared war on us, I want to kill them before they kill me.

"To make us feel better and allow us to 'get on with our lives,' we make believe the jihadists are a tiny minority and not 'mainstream Islam.' But what if they are mainstream - part of an elaborate conspiracy designed to dupe the West while the infiltration of Britain, America and all of Europe continues unabated?

"What if the 'moderates' are too intimidated to speak out for fear they will be killed? If that is the case, it is all the more reason to declare total war on the jihadists, because that is what they have declared on us."

Liberals will accuse Thomas of being paranoid, but then again they would have loved Lord Chamberlain.

Millstone Milestone: July 24 marked the 80th anniversary of the end of the Scopes Trial, which made monkeys out of Christians for half a century following. Gary North, a brilliant historian best known for his spectacularly wrong Y2K predictions, has written a great summary article on this culturally important episode in which attorney Williams Jennings Bryan "won the case and lost the war." Bryan died two days later.

Coming Monday: "God's Politics." Yes, we'll finally learn what He thinks.

Read More...

From Blogville Elementary, a private school, of course:

I finally figured out, with the help of a distant friend, how to use "post summaries" in my blog. This means you'll see just the first few paragraphs of long articles, no more than a screenful, and can then click on the words "Read more..." at summary's end to go to the full post page.

Whoever invented HTML code should be...SHOT!—Or congratulated and paid more. I can't decide.

Fire Chicken Little

Scott Ott, aka ScrappleFace, and one of my favorite brainiac satirists, is taking a week off from skewering politics to serve as a counselor at a Christian kids' camp. In explaining to us addicts why we won't get weekly our fix, he wrote a rare serious piece that included this paragraph:

"When you read the news, and write about it, daily you can begin to share the cynical view of life held by many journalists. 'News,' as my journalism professor used to say, 'is about coups, earthquakes and three-legged chickens'. As a result, the world seems chaotic and sometimes hopeless."

That's the nature of news when it's dominated by the fallen. It tells us what went wrong with the world last night, not what went right. Your local anchor's teleprompter doesn't scroll through the list of kids who did their homework, or husbands who took out the trash without being reminded. That's not news. But if someone's husband is found dead in the trash can, that awful fact gets broadcast far and wide.

Many of my Christian friends believe the Lord's coming is just around the corner, because the world seems so irreparably screwed up. "Look at the news," they say. "The world's in the worst shape it's ever been."

But they're wrong. Man is no more sinful now than before; total depravity can't get more total. Sure, there are unspeakable savageries being committed today, but a serious check of history—for example, the dirty little habits of Emperor Nero—shows a past every bit as grisly as the present.

The difference between then and now is our ability to witness evil live and in living color, all over the world, all at once, in real time.

I remember one young evangelist, Rob, who travelled with my missions team for a few months. He specialized in those statistics-filled sermons that are supposed to scare the hell out of young people, so they'll run to the altar and "get serious about God." (I detested that approach, but was happy to pray with them at the altar.)

Rob would quote numbers from the National Weather Service logs: How many more tornadoes and hurricanes there were during the past ten years than at any time before in history. Then he'd turn to war stats, then population increases, and finally technological advances and the exponential growth in human knowledge (the Antichrist's computer in Belgium, and the like).

Yet technological advances have made possible successful wars where fewer people die, medical care that saves and prolongs more lives, and weather predictions that enable people to escape storms that would have killed tens of thousands a few decades ago.

Furthermore, let me ask you a question: If you had a heart attack, would you rather it occur in 2005 or back in 1805? As P.J. O'Rourke (my other favorite satirist) says, for anyone longing for the good old days, he has just one word: Dentistry.

The fact is, these days are becoming the good old days for more and more people around the world, as God's grace allows life-saving technologies to reach further than ever before. I have friends who take portable cardiac monitors into the Himalayas to examine Tibetan children, who, because of the high altitude, suffer a greater number of heart malfunctions. They then transport those needing minor surgery to Lhasa, while the serious cases go to Beijing, a trip which affordable, modern transportation makes possible within days, as opposed to a hundred years ago, when such a journey would have been impossible.

No, the news hasn't gotten worse; the technology has just gotten better. What matters most is how we use that technology. The problem is, most Christians over the past hundred years have been reactive rather than proactive about new inventions, leaving unbelievers to monopolize their early usage and establish provincial industries. Then, when we finally catch on, it's hard to catch up. As outsiders we have to counteract, establishing "Christian" versions of whatever it is we formerly despised. Christian television is a prime example, but it would be unkind to elaborate, except to point out that we have "ghettoized" evangelism.

But God is merciful. We can catch up, and even surpass, worldly media monopolies, first in excellence, and finally in impact. A good example of that excellence can be found at Travel the Road. Tim Scott and William Decker not only take the Gospel around the world, but they document their adventures with an excellence to rival anything you'll ever see on the Discovery Channel. An example of greater impact—and this one shows how God exploits and plunders His enemies—is Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. Hollywood balked at such an honest portrayal of the Savior's suffering, so Gibson simply performed an end run around his enemies. By using the Internet and other electronic gifts from God to mobilize Middle-America's masses, the once-praised, now-reviled star set box office and DVD sales records all over the world. Christian movie-makers should take note: Gibson presented the Gospel, not a sci-fi version of the Rapture as directed by Chicken Little.

God's mercy is also evident in the birth and growth of the Blogosphere. The anti-Christian left no longer controls what America—indeed the whole world—reads. Godly, gifted writers are on equal footing with everyone else. Thus quality can, and already does, win out. News gathering and reporting have already been transformed, but the metamorphosis has only just begun. Radio, television, movie distribution, and live meetings are next.

Christians have no excuse this time. Opportunity is staring us in the face, and we must seize it, rather than leave it to Philistines. News gathering and reporting up to now have been the province of the unregenerate, but who says that has to continue? Goliath and Dan Rather are both gone. Now it's time for the very nature of news to change.

Man's fallen nature makes it easier to curse eloguently than to commend feebly. Even as a Christian writer my mind is still far from transformed, and I find it easier to polemicize than to praise on any given day. Certainly it is sometimes necessary to prophesy, as I intend to do in an almost-finished post on "God's Politics." Nevertheless blogging presents Christian writers the opportunity to bless a world inured to cursing.

It's time to fire Chicken Little and let the Good News shine.

Mr. Roberts Goes to Washington

President Bush surprised everyone both inside and outside the Beltway by nominating Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court. In case you're wondering whether that's good news or not, given the sorry record of past Republican Presidentsial nominations, this little tidbit from Jay Sekulow, at the American Center for Law and Justice, should quell your misgivings. Sekulow has won fame over the past twenty years as the Christian Right's most reliable advocate in arguing cases before the Court.

If Counselor Sekulow's imprimatur doesn't alleviate your fears, then here's true cause for rejoicing: The far, far left People For the American Way say they are "extremely disappointed" with the President's pick. Makes me want to speak in tongues!

The even farther left MoveOn.org, as of 10:57 pm Tuesday night, has not had time to post a reaction on their website. I'm hoping that's because they're sitting there in front of CNN, frozen with shock and wondering if maybe Michael Moore can whip up some scandalous little PowerPoint presentation about Roberts' obvious lack of qualification and his accidental tipping of an illegal immigrant waiter back in the 90s.

Yes, it's a great night in North Central Florida.

Reverse Litmus Testing for the Court

Surfing about Edith (Joy) Clement took me to Jack Balkin's blog, Balkinization, and this post, wherein Mr. Balkin suggests that the President has imposed a "reverse litmus test" in searching out his nominee to replace Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court.

Such testing looks for a strict constructionist, i.e., someone who would interpret the Constitution in light of the framers' original intent, which, contrary to liberal complaint, is easy to see right there in print. (What a concept: They meant what they wrote exactly as they wrote it, so people years later could understand what they meant by reading those little markings called words!) Justices Scalia and Thomas are known as strict constructionists too.

What would this mean for prospects to overturn Roe v. Wade? First, Balkin says it would mean "Justices who will preserve Roe but chip away at it slowly, for example, by devising new procedural rules that make it difficult to challenge abortion regulations in federal court, by upholding restrictions on particular medical procedures like partial birth abortion, and by further limiting abortions for minors and poor women." Second, it would mean Roe v. Wade eventually could be overturned, after having been weakened. Third, if that happened, the matter of abortion would be turned back to the states, unless a federal prohibition were passed.

In essence a strict constructionist is not concerned with the morality or criminality of abortion—that's for legislatures to decide—but with what the Constitution has to say about it, if anything. So Roe v. Wade needs overturning someday because it should have been refused a hearing in the first place.

As always, I want to make clear that I hate abortion and think it should be criminalized in every instance, including rape and incest (a living baby is a living baby), and legal only if to save the life of the pregnant woman. My grounds are a biblical doctrine of self-defense.

Vlogging Redux

After I wrote about video-blogging, aka vlogging, yesterday, along came this tantalizing bit from Appleinsider. Cupertino demigod Steve Jobs apparently has been secretly wooing Disney execs to license video content to Apple for use on a "vPod," i.e., the iPod-like video device long rumored but always denied.

Disney, of course, not only owns a vast animation empire, but also ESPN, ABC News, and other content likely to be downloaded and watched.

Jobs, who is also CEO of Pixar Studios (Toy Story, et al), is smart to court Disney, because he appears to be aiming the new device at kids, the one audience who'll sit still and stare at a three-inch screen until the battery goes dead.

Smart guy.

Star Parker Shines

Bravo to Star Parker for her latest article, via the Scripps Howard News Service. Here's a snippet:

The single most important factor in establishing economic earning power is education, and the single most important factor that drives the educational accomplishment of a child is family. Blacks lag economically because we lag educationally, and we lag educationally because the black family in America's cities barely exists.

The biggest contributing factor to the disintegration of families is irresponsible, absentee fathers. Having Uncle Sam step in and try to be a stepdad, no matter how well intentioned the bureacracy may be—and I'm cutting them lots of slack here—only exacerbates the problem by furthering that irresponsibility.

Star is founder and president of CURE, the Coalition on Urban Renewal and Education. Her dramatic transformation from a Los Angeles welfare mom to social activist, author, and syndicated columnist did not come because the NAACP (the subject of this week's column) or someone in Washington righted wrongs for her. No, it happened because she committed her life to Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit transformed her.

And no, that's not one path among many.

Ms. Parker's book, Uncle Sam's Plantation, is the first one listed on my Amazon sidebar.

Vlogging a Dead Horse

Fads and movements are entirely different creatures. Fads sometimes grow legs and become movements, but usually they're just replaced by TNBT (the next big thing). They fail to sustain momentum, an important quality in movements. Movements, if they stick around long enough to mature, become institutions.

Blogging was a fad that became a movement and is becoming an institution. It is, in fact, all three at once, an evolving universe: The twenty thousand new blogs spewing themselves into existence every day, most rife with poor grammar and/or "pictures of my cat," reveal a fad still in progress. So do the multitude that die off daily.

The so-called "long tail," where I live, is made up of the millions of blogs that may not wield a lot of clout individually, but in the aggregate form galaxies too big to ignore. We're the movement and most of us are here to stay.

Then there's the institution, anchored by the blogs with enough talent and audience to accomplish big things, like putting Howard Dean on the political map and knocking John Kerry off. They are phenomena in their own right, from stars to black holes, and MSM is learning to pay attention to their gravity.

The blogosphere also has extended and transformed itself. Podcasting, the publication of audio files via the Internet, swept the iPod generation in 2004, having gestated as "audioblogging" the year before. Podcasting is definitely a fad that seems to have become a movement, but its potential to dethrone radio, as some podcasting evangelists prophesy, is doubtful. For one thing, it isn't as instant as blogging, and in communication these days, immediacy is everything. It takes awhile to record and upload audio, which still must be downloaded, even for professional podcasters like Adam Curry, who invented iPodder, the software application that made the process easy enough to give rise to the phenomenon.

Podcasting also doesn't offer the instant "slickness" that's built into blogging by hosts such as Blogger and Typepad. There are no audio templates to make a newcomer sound good to the average iPod toting listener, who is quite used to production excellence. Today's podcast quality is reminiscent of early rock and Motown records: The singers often sang out of tune and the lyrics were insipid—mostly clean but insipid. But the music was new and that made it exciting. Today's pop music may still offer insipid lyrics—now mostly dirty but insipid—but its production values are without parallel. In fact, out-of-tune, awful singers (Jessica Simpson comes to mind) can be "fixed in the mix."

One expert who does not expect podcasting to endure is Mark Cuban, best known as owner of pro basketball's Dallas Mavericks (HT CNET News.com). Cuban netted his fortune in 1999 when Yahoo bought his four-year-old business, Broadcast.com, the original trailblazer in streaming video on the Internet. Cuban points out. . .

the obvious similarities between what happened with streaming in the 90s, and what is happening with Podcasting 10 years later.

Podcasting is hot. Podcasting is cheap and easy. Podcasting can be fun.

Creating your own podcast and trying to make a business out of it is a mistake.

Unless you are repurposing content from another medium, it will be rare to find anyone making money from originating podcasts.

Cuban thinks podcasting will significantly cool off and so do I. It will settle into a niche market, somewhat more popular, and definitely less eccentric, than ham radio. And it will remain relatively popular if for no other reason than (a) its archivability—podcasts are collectable—and (b) the incorporation of iPods, et al, into automobiles, podcasting as audio TiVo.

But podcasting will not replace radio the way blogs are replacing newspapers, and neither will radio absorb podcasting. Instead the two will develop a symbiotic relationship. First, the most popular, i.e., best produced, podcasts will find themselves on radio, rather like some bloggers are being signed by print publishers. Second, established media personalities like Rush Limbaugh are already utilizing their studios—Rush has one at home—to branch into the podcasting market. But it will still remain a niche.

The obvious next step, after blogging and podcasting, would add video to the self-publishing mix, and sure enough, video-blogging (vlogging) is already a reality, and being hailed as TNBT. Former Democrat vice-presidential nominee, John Edwards, is a vlogger. (I'd have suspected as much even before I knew what it meant!) Edwards, perhaps customizing a campaign trail he never left, answers viewer questions. He's recreating the town hall meeting, this time even more "up close and personal," albeit even more artificially spontaneous too. Other politicians will follow his lead.

Video-blogging, like podcasting, brings with it issues of production quality, although the popularity of "reality" television, with its shaky, hand-held look, mitigates the problem to some degree. Nonetheless I don't expect vlogging to become the new Internet TV anymore than podcasting will defeat radio. Instead, vlogging has the same potential as that which Mark Cuban expresses about podcasting:

Talk Radio Shows repurposed from radio to a podcast. No brainer. It’s cheap and easy. Repurposing industry specific information from tradeshows, speeches, product presentations for employee or customer education or as sales support. No brainer. These are just extensions of existing content into a new low cost medium.

Repurposed video: As Jon Lovitz might say, "Yeah, that's the ticket." Political stump speeches, already-archived church services, even corporate board meetings and presentations, all lend themselves to video-blogging.

Network television, not willing to be caught unawares by another Internet phenomenon, will accommodate vlogs the way radio stations are slotting podcasts into their lineups. But they'll do so on the Net, not on television.

Remember all the talk a few years back about the convergence of television and the Internet? Most people, including a few cable moguls, envisioned 500 channels of interactivity in their living rooms, because they thought in terms of TV assimilating the Net. (One clever commentator predicted "TV that crashes.") But nobody took portability into account, and portability is everything to Generation iPod. In fact, full-motion video is already appearing on mobile phones, because that is the platform that rules in the lives of Gen-iP. And for those of us who tote laptops around the world, the sudden ubiquity of wireless networks (Wi-Fi) has further broken the big-screen, living room tether.

In this light, the networks must become true networks. USA Today reports that CBS, for example, is preparing to launch a 24-hour Internet news network. I think the Big Eye might succeed, though lingering distrust from their erstwhile Dan Rather association could doom their effort. On the other hand, if FOX News goes live online, more than a few servers might overload and crash during the launch. That's because early vlog viewers will come from the blogosphere, and FOX News is about the only MSM network they trust. (FOX News has become the real American mainstream: On one side many bloggers don't trust FOX either, and on the other, MSM doesn't want to claim them as one of their own.)

In any case, CBS doesn't have much choice, and neither do the other networks. The wired world of broadcasting is a dead horse. They may as well vlog it.

Rove Rage

Sunday morning musings after Saturday night church:

What bothers me most about "Rove Rage," as Fox's Fred Barnes calls the current Capital brouhaha, is the utter predictability of the parties weighing in. The truth simply is irrelevant to most of Karl Rove's Democrat opponents, many of his Republican defenders, and virtually all of the news organizations covering the story. Moreover, even for the few members of Congress to whom it does matter, party loyalties will probably trump conscience if called upon to act. They all know that in a tug of war you just jump in and pull against the other side with all your might.

Our local paper, the Gainesville Sun, is a daughter publication of the New York Times, and every bit the Gray Debutante in stories like this. Yesterday's edition included an online poll, which posed one of those unanswerable "do you still beat your wife" questions that reveal rank prejudice: "Should Rove be fired if he revealed a CIA operative?" Wanting to accumulate as many "yes" responses as possible, they word the question so as to make "no" unthinkable. They might well ask: "If President Bush were caught downloading child pornography..."

The Times itself weighs in this morning somewhere to the left of, oh, Vladimir Putin, with at least one article summarizing MSM's unvarnished desire: Anne Kornblut's article, titled "'Indispensable': Does It Have a Shelf Life?," opens by asking, "Is there a tipping point where the presence of Karl Rove would simply not be worth the unwanted attention that goes with it?".

That's what most rankles Rove's detractors (aka Bush haters): His presence. Not his possible commission of a crime or politically dirty deed—no, it's his very presence they detest, because, more than George Bush, Karl Rove is the guy they perceive as having beaten them in the 2004 election. So they want him gone, which beyond scratching an infernal itch for revenge, will injure Bush's presidency. It is sheer, just-for-the-taste-of-it perfidy.

Why bother putting a microphone in front of Nancy Pelosi, whose botoxed personality recites only the party monologue? Pull the ring in her back and she rattles off the same line, if not the same key words, as Senator Schumer. (Remember the accusation from a hundred directions early in W's first term that he lacked "gravitas"? Sure, we use that word all the time!) And Schumer, whose very voice torques me like a rusted ratchet, merely parrots the junior liar from Massachusetts, whose senior lout invariably doubles the lard.

Meanwhile the Republicans mount a tired, "is not!" defense that's as boring as Ben Stein's personality, the difference being that Stein acts that way on purpose.

The available truth of this case is easy to tell:

1. Valerie Plame worked at the CIA.
2. She had not been covert for six years.
3. CIA rules/policy dictate changing an agent's status to non-covert if they haven't been active for five years.
4. The CIA failed to change Plame's status as the rules dictated.
5. Someone, maybe Karl Rove, made the statement that she worked for the CIA.
6. Robert Novak wrote about it in the press.
7. Seeing as the CIA had failed to reclassify her status, revealing her employment status may have been a crime.
7. Several of her friends and associates say they knew she worked there, so it wasn't a secret, and therefore may not have been a crime.
8. A grand jury is investigating, so in the meantime...
9. They have requested no comment from Rove and the White House.
10. Everyone Congress should shut up about it.

There...that wasn't hard. Was it?

Now THIS is Sharp!

Just checked my RSS feeds and came across Sharp's new Multitasking monitor. This has got to be the most unusual piece of electronics I've seen in a long time.

I'd buy one if they make it for me to look at a GPS monitor in the car while Dolly and Lexi watch a movie.

Wow.

Shameless Self-Promotion

I have been involved in missionary work for 36 years, but I actually pay for most of it (i.e, make my living) as a guest speaker at conferences and in churches. Sometimes a host will ask how he should introduce me. "Just tell them I'm your friend," is my standard reply, sometimes suggesting adding that I'm "internationally unknown."

This blog is like my career: Known by just a few, but spread across the world, from Latvia to Japan. (And who's checking us out in Finland? Drop me a comment!) Of course I'd like to change this lack of notoriety and become king of the world, or at least a little more widely read. So I have a couple of requests of you.

First, if you purchase items from Amazon, please consider using this blog as your Amazon search tool. The search field is in the left hand column, and clicking there will take you to Amazon. Their usual great discounts will apply as always, but they'll also throw a few cents my way.

Second, click on the comment link at the bottom of this post and let me know where you are in the world. And if we haven't met, tell me how you came across this blog.

Third, if you like a particular post (blogosphere talk for an article), click on the email icon and share it with a friend. In fact, why not tell a few friends about @Large?

Finally, there are some great blogs around, and I've listed a few favorites to the left in my blogroll, "The Blorg," named after the Borg, from Star Trek (In the blogosphere, resistance is futile!). The Blorg is updated from time to time as well.

Aaannndd....Cut! End Promo.

Gonzales: Spanish for Souter?

Bruce Fein opposes Attorney General Alberto Gonzales as a Supreme Court nominee in a Washington Times article, likening President Bush's good buddy to Justice Souter, who recently authored the majority's confusing explanation of their inane Ten Commandments ruling. If only Justice Souter could think this clearly:

The First Amendment prohibits Congress from enacting laws "respecting an establishment of religion," such as erecting a national church or punishing recusancy or heresy. The establishment clause does not forbid official acknowledgments of religion or God, as in the Declaration of Independence or in Thanksgiving Proclamations issued by various presidents. Further, the Congress that endorsed the Bill of Rights provided for legislative prayer, a practice that endorsed religion yet was sustained in Marsh v. Chambers (1983).

Then he makes one of the most eloquently worded observations on the matter I've ever read:

The establishment clause did not create a "heckler's veto" right to silence any noncoercive official recognition of God to avoid anxieties in nonbelievers. Indeed, the First Amendment's protection of free speech and freedom of religion contemplate confronting citizens with differing or infuriating expression.

Wish the President would nominate Fein.

Meanwhile, in a Christianity Today weblog article, former Solicitor General Ted Olsen writes thoughtfully about Gonzales, pointing out the fact that many Christian conservatives are so hasty to get Roe v. Wade overturned that we miss the point of what a Supreme Court justice's duty is:

"There are no litmus tests for judicial candidates," Gonzales told the Los Angeles Times in 2001. "My own personal feelings about [abortion] don't matter. … The question is, what is the law, what is the precedent, what is binding in rendering your decision. Sometimes, interpreting a statute, you may have to uphold a statute that you may find personally offensive. But as a judge, that's your job."

That's a point many well-meaning, but ignorant, Christians miss. I abhor abortion, and believe it should be criminalized in every instance short of saving a pregnant woman's life, including cases of rape or incest, but we cannot simply turn the tables on ungodly judicial activism and expect to implement some sort of "godly" version in its place, because there is no such thing as godly judicial activism. The job of a judge is to interpret the law as it stands, and the job of a Supreme Court justice is to interpret law in the light of the Constitution. Period.

The argument can be made, and American Life League President Judie Brown makes it, that stopping widespread infanticide should trump bad law, but such action would be executive, not judicial, thus violating the separation of powers. Juries can nullify bad laws, because as citizens they are executives (the President is merely the chief executive), but judges cannot. Judges—and not just any judge—must find a law unconstitutional in order to set it aside. Juries can simply call them bad laws. (Learn more about jury nullification here.) General Gonzales is simply holding to the view of a strict constitutionalist, and should not be faulted on that ground alone.

There is other ground, however. The Supreme Court, while not empowered to make law, can change its own "mind" by reversing earlier rulings. Such reversals are extremely rare, however, because of a doctrine called stare decisis, which simply means they take their forebears decisions quite seriously. After all, the republic would really be up a creek if the Court got flighty. Gonzales apparently believes stare decisis would apply to Roe v. Wade, if this report is accurate, and that may a good reason to oppose his nomination. (I've heard that Justice Scalia also takes stare decisis very seriously, while Justice Thomas does not.)

Ted Olsen, citing a National Review article by Edward Whelan, gives one more reason to oppose Gonzales ascension, and it's the one that makes the most sense to me:

But National Review's Edward Whelan suggests another reason Gonzales would be bad for conservatives—he would have to recuse himself from several cases, probably including the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Act. (A Gonzales recusal in that case would almost certainly ensure an invalidation of the ban, Whelan notes.) He may even have to recuse himself "from virtually all the cases of greatest importance to the administration." That would include the Patriot Act, too, something Bush probably cares more about than the Partial-Birth Abortion Act. (And something on which Christians are quite divided, by the way.)

This gives pro-lifers an opening without compromising their commitments. They don't have to fight Bush on Gonzales on the abortion front; they can claim to protect Bush from Gonzales, or at least from the legal implications of appointing any attorney general to the bench. Such a shift from ideology to strategy would shift the nomination debate significantly.

It is the sad legacy of past Republican presidents to have chosen "acceptable" Supreme Court nominees, who later turned out to be activist liberals only slightly less nutty than the extreme leftists (such as Justice Ginsburg) put there by Democrat presidents. God help President Bush to flout that precedent, and fight the Nomination War as boldly as he has the Terror War.

Banned from the Beeb

Bill O'Reilly was the first pundit I heard, barely a week ago, talk about the New York Times' elision of the word "terrorist" when referring to Al Qaeda or insurgents in Iraq. Now comes this from Britain's Daily Telegraph, about the BBC's unofficial policy of doing the same. The article quotes a BBC spokesman who insists that "The word terrorist is not banned from the BBC." Yet the paper seems to offer clear proof that the T word indeed is banned from the Beeb, at least when talking about Muslim cultists who blow up buses and trains and kill or maim anyone not willing to embrace their demonic misery.

The policy supposedly has to do with avoiding "careless use of words which carry emotional or value judgments." Gee, if only such sweetness and caring applied when writing about the American President.

The GOP's Sally Field Syndrome

In 2004 Republican Party candidates won the Presidency and widened their majority in the House and Senate. Why? Because a majority of Americans wanted more conservative governance. Period. So why does Sally Field Syndrome have such a grip on the winners, whose only policy goal seems to be getting Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to "like me, really like me." Thomas Sowell asks essentially the same question:

What is the point of having elections if the winners are to act like losers and vice versa? Too many conservative Republican administrations have put too many liberal judicial activists on the Supreme Court already in an effort to avoid confirmation battles and get along with Senate Democrats.

Statements by Republican Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and John Warner of Virginia after the O'Connor retirement suggest that, once again, the Republicans' favorite exercise may be running for the hills. All those who contributed time and donated money to get Republicans elected may be forgotten in Senate Republicans' desire to get along with the Democrats.

Winning elections evidently is okay only if you don't actually do what the voters elected you to do. Instead, you've got to do everything in your power to "act in a bipartisan manner," which means sharing power with committee co-chairmen who don't merit such authority, and caving in to the losers' demands on every issue. And besides, nobody likes a sore, uh. . .winner.

At least that's what congressional Republicans seem to think. Decade after decade they have sped directly past cooperation to concession, so often that one wonders if there might not be some Frenchman in the Capitol basement, clandestinely teaching "Surrender 101" to all incoming GOP freshmen.

The Dems, meanwhile, continue to swagger through the District's halls and chambers like the winners they aren't, virtually prophesying the President's nomination of a right-wing extremist from the day Justice O'Connor announced her retirement. And if Republicans have learned to whimper, Schumer, Kennedy, Pelosi, et al, have by contrast perfected the choral shriek.

The result, once again, brings fulfillment to an ever more prescient remark by Howard Philips some years back. Conservative incumbents in Washington don't really want to win the culture war; they just don't want to lose it on their watch.

Discoshaman, the brain behind Le Sabot Post-Moderne, has posted this piece on how Liberals, in past confirmation hearings, have played Conservatives like a harp, without reprisal.

Mind you, it isn't that I wish the GOP would match dirty tactics with dirty tactics. To the contrary I appreciate their civility and patience, especially when having to endure some degenerate buffoon like Senator Kennedy. I just wish they would wipe the campaign grins off their faces and quit trying to win their opponents' votes.

Hey GOP. You won. Act like it.

Desert Stun?

I mentioned to a newly engaged friend at dinner last night that, back in 1975, I proposed to my future wife via telegram from South Africa. His response took me completely aback, and provided telling evidence that we live in the Dotcom Generation. "Hey, would you explain to me," my fully adult homebuilder buddy sheepishly asked, "what is a telegram?" For a moment I felt like ordering take-out (one raw chicken to go) and skulking back to my cave, before it dawned on me that, old geezer or not, I'm techier than this kid ever hopes to be.

Good thing too, because today I discovered that Wired News is running a fascinating piece on directed-energy weapons, which emit energy in various forms from laser beams to electromagnetic pulses in order to stun or incapacitate their targets, either mechanical or living. The upside of such weapons is that they can be programmed to incapacitate without harm, i.e., capture the bad guys without harming innocents. Beyond intentional misuse, which can happen with any weapon, there really is no downside.

It would be wonderful to see such technology supported by the public, which would assure accelerated development and deployment. This is a cause that bloggers can and should embrace, and I hope my fellows will dutifully examine it and spread the good word. If the blogosphere wields enough power of persuasion to bring down the likes of Dan Rather and John Kerry for their dishonesty, why not flex our muscle—the collective muscle of those of us in the blogosphere's Long Tail included—to disembowel Al Qaeda and disable Usama Bin Laden and, hopefully, his dialysis machine.

The Nolan Chart: PGE Responds

PG Epps has responded quite thoughtfully to my Nolan Chart post:

A political philosophy is, of course, influenced by an ethical system. Its concern, however, is not with the righteousness or libertinism of its people; its concern is with the distribution and use of power. To say that drug use or sodomy should be outlawed by the State is to say that, in those domains of life, the State should have the power to force people to do what the State deems right.

I am very reluctant to give anyone power over any domain except those which are unavoidably public and cause harms that humans can see, measure, and judge responses to. We have a hard enough time deciding what is the right response of the State to foreigners who kill thousands of our people--why should we be so eager to think the State can competently administer our sex lives?

I concur with much of what Peter says, but with qualification. Granted, the power of the State is the power of force. That's why its biblical symbol is the sword, in contrast to the Church's keys to the Kingdom or the Family's rod of discipline. And having delegated this dangerous power to the State, God also warned in Scripture against the potential for tyranny. (The mark of tyranny? That the king would levy taxes at ten percent, equal to the Almighty's rightful cut.)

But God also criminalized certain immoral behavior, such as abortion, and even adultery, which was one of nineteen capital offenses under Mosaic law. My point is not to argue for a revival of that system, but to highlight an important aspect of it: In the Mosaic system, the punishment always fit the crime. In other words, a crime was punishable to the same degree that it harmed society. So adultery—and I choose this one because it seems so cruel to us—was punishable by death precisely because it was deadly to society if left unpunished.

I agree with Peter's reluctance "to give anyone power over any domain except those which are unavoidably public and cause harms that humans can see, measure, and judge responses to," but I do not see why he draws the line at the bedroom door. Homosexual behavior, adultery, and rape are all "deadly" sins, not because they tick God off, but because they're fatal to society if tolerated (much less celebrated or protected). Why should we tie the State's hands in areas where God has specifically empowered it to act?

This is not a license to "administer our sex lives" (PGE's only cheap shot), any more than criminalizing pedophilia unfairly regulates a child molester's sex life.

Bunny trail: Various objections can be raised, but past discussion has shown that one is inevitable: What about the woman caught in adultery (John, chapter 8)? Didn't Jesus let her go? Indeed He did, but only because He refused to preside over a kangaroo court. First, the Law (in Numbers 5) prescribed that her husband prosecute the case against her. In this instance a religious mob was taking the law into their own hands. Second, when He released the woman with an admonition to stop sinning, He dismissed the case, not the law. If there were no accuser, there could be no case. In this way Jesus upheld the law. End bunny trail.

Too little government intervention is always preferable to too much. I'm dead sure that PGE and I agree on that. But the trap of libertinism, beyond the fact that deviant practices are legitimized by default, is that such deviants invariably try to codify their sin. Is this not the case today? Beyond legalizing homosexual marriage, several countries have passed, or are considering, legislation that criminalizes the mere criticism of homosexual behavior.

My carp with Libertarian philosophy stands: It legitimizes immoral behavior by default, because it appeals to autonomous human reason over biblical reason. Like it or not, Boortz and O'Reilly are its poster boys in this regard ("Okay God, I'll give You the last word...Fine, I think You're over the top, but You're God and You have a right to Your opinion. Thanks for coming on.")

I heartily recommend PGE's blog, Comment Me No Comments. He's as quick as he is sharp, and always kind, even when he's right. If I keep babbling, he's certain to teach me a few things. Such are the joys of the blogosphere.

The Nolan Chart: What Good is a Table Without Legs?

More and more American Christians, fed up with Democrat/Republican partisan warfare, find Libertarian political philosophy alluring, while I find it potentially dangerous. That's why I write about it.

Two months ago, in a piece called Libertarianism & Justice for All, I made the assertion that:

Conservatives prefer to leave economies alone, while addressing moral issues; Liberals want to leave moral issues alone, while rectifying economic inequality. Libertarians don't think civil government should stick its nose into either area, except in times of crisis.

Turns out that was a fairly accurate assessment, or at least in agreement with David Nolan, who founded the Libertarian Party back in 1971, and who charted the differences that distinguish Libertarians from Liberals and Conservatives.

Nolan admitted from the beginning that his chart was simplistic, but his purpose was to measure relative, not precise, position, so it suffices. I prefer the revised, contemporary version to his original in one regard, because it correctly shows just how closely related are the so-called "opposite extremes" of Communism and Fascism.

The word "fascist" gets tossed around quite a bit these days, especially at those Evangelical Christians who believe that the lordship of Christ extends to civil government, hence threatening the religious hegemony political and educational secularists have long enjoyed in the guise of neutrality.

Those who view authority as inherently repressive will hurl any convenient epithet at it. Hence Liberals accuse Christians, with our claim that politicians are accountable to God, of totalitarian motives. Left-wing conspiracists rail at "religious fascists" who want to take over America, with invective right-wing conspiracists once aimed at "atheistic communists" who wanted to take over America (but who settled for professorships and seats on editorial boards).

Accountability is the fundamental area of disagreement here. Conservatives generally believe man is accountable to God. Liberals want to make man accountable to other men (think "Animal Farm"). Libertarians want to make man accountable to himself, which is impossible without accountability to a conscience informed by God. (Self-government is trustworthy only if it is self-government under God.)

Of course, the "Communism/Fascism" lower left corner of the Nolan Chart is not the one that gives me pause. It's the upper right quadrant, which idealizes Libertarianism, that I find deceptive. Libertarian philosophy doesn't foster true liberty anymore than destroying railway tracks frees a locomotive. Firm guidelines are sometimes good, in fact indispensable.

My big gripe with Libertarians in general, and Nolan in particular, is that they paint moral license as personal freedom. (Listen to Bill O'Reilly long enough and you'll find that his objections to homosexual marriage are pragmatic, not morally principled.) This skews Nolan's whole chart. His Right-wing (in fact, anyone opposing abortion, drug legalization, homosexual marriage, etc., on grounds other than pragmatism) becomes oppressive with regard to personal freedom, making his Left-wing morally agreeable.

What would happen if Biblical teaching, as voiced in Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion, for example, took its place on the Nolan Chart? The old Frenchman would have scored Low and to the Right. (Does this mean Calvin would have been a Republican? Sure, and George Beverly Shea secretly recorded a "Stryper's Greatest Hits" album.)

The fact is, the Nolan Chart is useless without—and here comes the "A" word—absolutes. Freedom is nothing more than license to autonomous man. A liberal woman is "free" to murder her unborn baby. A conservative man is "free" to be greedy. You're free as long as you don't "hurt" anybody.

"Hurt" in turn is murky by definition. Libertarians would usually limit it to individual suffering, Conservatives add a traditional moral criterion, and Liberals invent new injuries daily.

A Scriptural concept of freedom, on the other hand, reveals that greed and abortion both are sinful license, abortion also being a criminal offense worthy of prosecution. And hurt finds original definition in that which offends God, i.e., what He deems hurtful to oneself and one's neighbor. The Bible, then, becomes indispensable for definition and clarification.

Indeed, the Founders assumed definition and clarification would come from Scripture, which is why the American Constitution does not attempt to supply them. Murder, for example, if not defined therein. Thus, if the Bible is discarded as the source of definition, then murder is defined by nothing more than five votes out of nine. And the Constitution, itself, is in turn nothing more than what five votes say. (Justices as far back as Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. have openly admitted this, some quite happily.)

Libertarianism then, is a bit like government, itself: Good men make good Libertarians. Corrupt men will be libertines. And the Nolan Chart, without a foundation of Absolutes, is like a four-cornered table with no legs: Useless.

A more accurate, if not more useful, chart is one generated by taking the World's Smallest Political Quiz. I answered a few questions (eight, I think) and it pegged me squarely where, given the chart in advance, I would have pegged myself. Try it for yourself, and then come back and leave a comment telling me if it accurately assessed you too.

Upd8

I was too one-sided in my criticisms of Live8 yesterday. I apologize. While I do believe the Live8 related debt-relief plan is conceptually faulty, there is nonetheless much to admire in these efforts, especially further aspects of Bono's ONE Campaign, namely not just increasing aid to poor countries, but putting accountability systems into place to go with it.

CBN reporter Melissa Charbboneau's article on CBN.com shows how Bono and friends have been able to achieve unbelievable—I mean, unbelievable—unity in their cause. Can you conceive of another campaign that could enlist both George Soros and Pat Robertson, Madonna and Jesse Helms?

Bono clearly operates at a level of understanding that surpasses his cohorts, yet he seems willing to abide their immaturity and socialistic foolishness in order to gain their labor and good will. He's an amazing man.

It will take amazing people to ensure that all this verbal beneficence translates into real progress for Africa's peoples. Unity in executing the actual distribution of aid, for example, will be a lot harder than pulling off a successful sound check before the concert, because of the widely—nay, wildly—varying worldviews of the ONE Campaign participants.

For example, the CBN.com article quotes actor Chris Tucker, who said, "I think the meaning is One, we all are one, and we are all equal around the world, and we should all start paying attention to this.”

"We are all one." Hmm. . .

Tucker is right in one sense. Everyone on earth is in the same big blue boat, and those of us with a surfeit of food are inherently no better than the starving Ethiopian poster child. But we are also no worse, and that is where our "we are all one" philosophies begin to diverge.

The Left invariably insists that poverty is an injustice caused by unequal distribution of limited resources in a "closed-system" world. Somewhere, sometime in history, selfish people exploited weaker people and caused this injustice. Helping Africa, then, is not so much an act of compassion as it is contrite redistribution. Such a closed-system worldview says that if someone in India goes barefoot, and I have two pairs of shoes, an injustice exists. Therefore I am obligated to give one pair away, since there are only so many shoes in the world. "We are all one" demands redistribution. (This worldview almost always attributes innocence, if not righteousness, to the poor. Their poverty is never their own fault. Never.)

The Right typically takes a more Judeo-Christian view. We are all one in our sin before a righteous God. Sin, not a lack of fairness, explains the problem of evil, and ultimately explains poverty as a consequence of evil. Some poverty is caused by injustice and exploitation, but much is due to the poor man's own lack of repentance toward God. Spiritual poverty precedes physical poverty, and physical poverty often is an external portrait of the soul. Ergo, widespread poverty reveals a culture's soul. Curing poverty, then, is an act of compassion, a response to the grace of God, Who has blessed us with the resources to act. This is why the Right so often ties "proselytizing" to feeding. The starved soul needs curing in order to permanently eradicate physical starvation.

This understanding of the true nature and cause of poverty is also why missionaries historically have led the way in fighting it. But of course Mainstream Media are so prejudiced against belief in God (which would expose their own moral emaciation) that they ignore the battle's most effective fighters. (They also ignore domestic programs like Teen Challenge, the Christian drug rehab program whose cure rate is much higher, and recidivism rate is dramatically lower, than any government program has ever achieved.)

I wish Bono well, but I also wish he'd enlist the wisdom of others like Mark Steyn, whose column yesterday needs to be read over and over by Geldof, Clooney, Soros, et al, until they get it.

If you'd like to compare opposing Christian views on these issues, I suggest reading Ronald Sider's well-known Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger, (IMO a socialist tract with which I completely disagree), and then a rebuttal by the late David Chilton, Productive Christians in an Age of Guilt Manipulators: A Biblical Response to Ronald J. Sider. I promise you, no matter whether you land to the Left, Right, or somewhere else, you'll be invigorated by the jump!

From Live8 to G8

WORLD Magazine, my favorite news weekly, put Bob Geldof on last week's cover, with a big Live8 story by Mindy Belz. Ms. Belz laid out the five main criticisms of Sir Bob's and Sir Bono's African-debt-relief-plan:

Debt relief goes to governments of poor countries, not to poor people. . .

Debt relief rewards poor countries with high debt without assisting the impoverished in equally poor but low- or no-debt countries. . .

Macro-goals make little room for the only kind of accountability that works: local supervision over the performance of specific programs on the part of bureaucrats, nongovernmental aid agencies, and church-based relief workers. . .

Debt elimination would have a chilling effect on credit. 'If it becomes clear that debt will be written off in the future, then it is no longer a loan but a gift,' said Mr. Thornbury. . .

Debt elimination would have a chilling effect on private charity.

The most effective criticism of Live8, however, comes from—who else?—Mark Steyn.

By filing for probate in New York rather than the United Kingdom, Linda McCartney avoided the 40 per cent death duties levied by Her Majesty's Government. That way, her family gets all 100 per cent - and 100 per cent of Linda McCartney's estate isn't to be sneezed at.

For purposes of comparison, Bob Geldof's original Live Aid concert in 1985 raised £50 million. Lady McCartney's estate was estimated at around £150 million. In other words, had she paid her 40 per cent death duties, the British Treasury would have raised more money than Sir Bob did with Bananarama and all the gang at Wembley Stadium that day.

Liberals lack the integrity and conservatives the cojones to make that kind of observation. Steyn shoots straight past a bunch of Saturday Night Live alums to the top of my "favorite-Canadians-who-made-it-big-in-the-States" list because of columns like this one. Who else mixes wisdom, moral courage, a command of English, and a sharp wit as well as this guy?

Meanwhile the Washington Times presents both the pro and con sides of the debt-relief debate, with Kofi Annan and James Glassman in opposing corners. Annan might as well be running for the 2008 Democrat Presidential nomination. He says that we can, by 2015:

Reduce by half extreme poverty and hunger in the world, as well as the proportion of people without safe drinking water.

Achieve universal primary education.

Eliminate gender disparity in education at all levels.

Cut child mortality two-thirds, and maternal mortality by three-quarters.

Turn the tide against HIV/AIDS, malaria and other major diseases.

And halt the depletion of our environmental resources.

At least Secretary Annan is honest when he says it's necessary that we have the "political will" to accomplish this messianic task. Most American Libs would slyly call for "moral courage," because they know they're playing to Boonsboro, not Brussels.

Glassman, on the other hand, comes out swinging at the real culprits (and Annan's apparent spiritual heritage), Africa's kleptocracy. His article is not as compelling as Steyn's, but he nails the problem nonetheless.

Africa's biggest obstacle, in terms of its various economies, is thievery, deprivation at the hands of dictators, not cruel, calloused, wealthy Americans, as personified in George Bush. But singing socialists will be singing socialists: Geldof, Annan, and company predictably—and not very melodiously—call for more socialism. Which will only produce more thieves, hence more poverty, and more socialists calling for even more socialism.

Any one of several of Live8's aging rockers, ironically, could singlehandedly donate more hard cash than this past weekend's Lalapalaver. And who knows what that Band of Brooders could accomplish together, in secret, without the enormous expense of worldwide television production devoting itself to covering all that love and compassion prancing about onstage.

In any case, at least one African child was rescued from physical poverty this week. People Magazine's website reports today that Angelina Jolie is adopting a baby girl from Ethiopia. One hopes that this precious little gift will not be lifted from a life of starvation into a life of Hollywood excess, but Ms. Jolie should be commended nonetheless. Take a look at the picture of her on People's website and see if you don't agree with me: The utterly joyful smile of Angelina the Mom beats all those sexy, pouty, P.R. shots by a mile. Her agent should learn a lesson.

And Justice (Souter's Property) For All!

Yesterday I said the following about Supreme Court Justices Breyer, Stevens, Ginsburg, Kennedy, and Souter: "Alternatively, you may pray that their homes are taken from them (with 'suitable' compensation, of course) by their local governments for the sake of some innovative 'public purpose,' such as the construction of a convenience store, or some other tax generating private endeavor."

That was an oblique reference to one Logan Darrow Clements' initiative to take possession of Mr. Justice Souter's New Hampshire home, in order to build "The Lost Liberty Hotel." Mr. Clements is dead serious, and judging from the traffic on his website (more than 750,000 unique visitors over the past few days) I'd say he'll have a ten year waiting list for rooms, booked by people all too happy to wait their turn. Weare, NH will surely benefit dramatically from the tax revenues.

(Hat Tip to my brother, Kevin, who beat most news media to the punch in alerting me to this story.)

Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell: Read 'Em and Reap

Walter Williams repeatedly exposes the utter hypocrisy of Liberals regarding race. Here's Williams at his laconic best, writing for the Washington Times:

What about the decline of the black family? In 1960, only 28 percent of black females between ages 15 and 44 were never married. Today, it's 56 percent. In 1940, the illegitimacy rate among blacks was 19 percent, in 1960, 22 percent, and today, it's 70 percent. Some argue the state of the black family is the result of the legacy of slavery, discrimination and poverty. That has to be nonsense. A study of 1880 family structure in Philadelphia shows three-quarters of black families were nuclear families, comprised of two parents and children. In New York City in 1925, 85 percent of kin-related black households had two parents. In fact, according to Herbert Gutman in "The Black Family in Slavery and Freedom: 1750-1925," "Five in six children under the age of 6 lived with both parents."

Therefore, if one argues what we see today is due to a legacy of slavery, discrimination and poverty, what's the explanation for stronger black families at a time much closer to slavery -- a time of much greater discrimination and of much greater poverty? I think a good part of the answer is that there were no welfare and Great Society programs.

The whole piece is here: Victimhood: Rhetoric or reality?

Thomas Sowell exposes the false compassion of the Left just as well as Williams, and is equally succinct in this piece. Here's a snippet:

Differences between people in different income brackets tell you absolutely nothing about who those people are or how long they have been in those brackets. Most Americans who are at some point in their lives in the bottom 20 percent in income are in the top 20 percent at some other point.

They usually start at the bottom and work their way up, with a few blips up and down along the way. The more affluent the country becomes, the less those transient statistical differences really matter, except to those with the money, the leisure and the inclination to adopt indignation as a way of life.

The great difference between these two black American analysts and their liberal counterparts is not just their philosophy. They also actually quote statistical facts, the one thing Liberals cannot afford to do under any circumstance.

The Truth will set free only those who wish to embrace it. It'll burn the masks off those who don't, so they try and avoid it.

God Save (Us From) The Court

President Bush undoubtedly will be remembered in terms of the Terror War and how he waged it, but his nomination(s) to fill Supreme Court vacancies arguably will be every bit as important to America's future.

I would have said those words before last week, and in fact they have been spoken about various presidents enough times throughout the years to have become a truism. But now I am ready to preach, proselytize, and otherwise publish them everywhere I can and to anyone who will listen.

How in the world could the Court have come to the point of such inanity as was revealed in this past week's decisions on "eminent domain" and the Ten Commandments? (If you haven't read about these decisions and their implications, check out both Thomas Sowell's and Mark Steyn's insightful columns.) How could Justices Breyer, Souter, Kennedy, Stevens, and Ginsburg so forsake reason and decency, and not just in a single aberration, but twice in one session, as if parading their contempt for God and Man?

The Court is supposed to clarify law by interpreting it in light of the Constitution, yet their Ten Commandments decision simply throws mud, if not defecation, on the lens. How does approving a display in one instance while banning it in another clarify anything other than the desire of five people to bypass congress and the people and write their own caprices into law? How does giving civil government the power to confiscate people's property and reassign it for profit clarify anything more than the utter disqualification of this unholy quintet? Barney Fife could make better decisions.

Even Swinging Sandra Day O'Connor couldn't swing this vote. The Court is simply too far gone, and I don't mean to the left. They're way past that. Congress' endless quest for an "independent" judiciary—independent from any semblance of reliance upon God in their decision-making—has given us an apostate one. It's one thing for the Court to rule in favor of an outrage like abortion; at least they've been consistent in their support of that particular thuggery. But these decisions are more anarchic than barbaric. They reflect a society that has proceeded from savagery to suicide.

I remember how, in the early 1960s, Baltimore's Brooklyn Park High School removed my Uncle Edward from his post as teacher of comparative religion and replaced him with an atheist, on the grounds that an unbeliever would teach more objectively. It was an obtuse decision by any standard. Now it has been matched at the highest level.

There's a scene in Mouse Hunt, a great kid's movie, where Nathan Lane and Lee Evans corner themselves in a kitchen full of armed mousetraps, subsequently to be pinched and snapped nearly to oblivion by their own devices. America has engaged in a similar, but more lethal, and all too real, folly. We have surrounded ourselves with traps—nine expansive, sharp, fallible minds—hand-picked, confirmed, and baited by a society obsessed with ridding itself of that sly little mouse called conscience. Now five of them have snapped and we are ensnared. Alas, last week we began chewing our own leg off.

Congratulations Old Buddy!

Congratulations to my good friend, Ron Streck, his wife Jodi, and kids, for Ron's 3-stroke win today at the Commerce Bank Championship, on the Champions Tour.

I've known Jodi since she was a little girl, and was honored to officiate at their wedding several years ago in Tulsa.

Ron was the first player on the PGA tour to use metalwoods, the first player to win with metalwoods, and is now the first player in history to have won on all three pro golf tours: PGA, Nationwide, and Champions.

In this case, it really couldn't have happened to a nicer guy!

Further Reading: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES

Please take time to read the world's most amazing, enduring political document, the THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES .

Happy 4th!

P.S. If you personally know Supreme Court Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, Souter, Kennedy, and/or Stevens, please suggest that they read it as well. Their decisions this past week regarding "eminent domain" and the Ten Commandments suggest that these five badly need to reacquaint themselves with it.

Alternatively, you may pray that their homes are taken from them (with "suitable" compensation, of course) by their local governments for the sake of some innovative "public purpose," such as the construction of a convenience store, or some other tax generating private endeavor.

Thank you.

The Declaration of Independence

Please Read This Without Skipping Anything. And Have a Happy 4th!

The Declaration of Independence

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett
Lyman Hall
George Walton
North Carolina:
William Hooper
Joseph Hewes
John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge
Thomas Heyward, Jr.
Thomas Lynch, Jr.
Arthur Middleton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock
Maryland:
Samuel Chase
William Paca
Thomas Stone
Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe
Richard Henry Lee
Thomas Jefferson
Benjamin Harrison
Thomas Nelson, Jr.
Francis Lightfoot Lee
Carter Braxton
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris
Benjamin Rush
Benjamin Franklin
John Morton
George Clymer
James Smith
George Taylor
James Wilson
George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney
George Read
Thomas McKean
New York:
William Floyd
Philip Livingston
Francis Lewis
Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton
John Witherspoon
Francis Hopkinson
John Hart
Abraham Clark
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett
William Whipple
Massachusetts:
Samuel Adams
John Adams
Robert Treat Paine
Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins
William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman
Samuel Huntington
William Williams
Oliver Wolcott
New Hampshire:
Matthew Thornton

Public Education Redux

Robert Charles has written a Washington Times piece on Education and democracy, once more begging the question: Where in the world/Bible do we get the idea that education is the responsibility of the state?

Charles, who clearly cherishes democracy and reveres our nation's founding fathers, goes so far as to say "The answer is not to have the federal government underwrite local schools, but to reorient our thinking." But in the very next paragraph he resorts to the same, tired plea to what never works:

To be sure, we need more teachers. We also need more teachers -- and parents -- inspired by our Founding principles. We need wider teacher training, better schools, higher pay, more technology, less interference by lawyers and more attention to outcomes. Perhaps rising state revenues and real estate values will help. We need to address the immigration issue as a nation, and reclaim lost order. But we need more.

There's the answer: More. More teachers, money, etc. More of what isn't working. More socialist implementation of what should be a matter of a free market initiative fed and financed by strong parental demand. Sheesh.

Two Dads in Tennessee

My father died nineteen years ago, a few days before he would have turned fifty-seven. Last week I visited his grave in Tennessee for only the second time since we laid him to rest. It's not that I have avoided returning, but rather that Cleveland is in a corner of Tennessee I don't frequent.

I reminisce about Dad's death from time to time, but actually standing there reading his name on a headstone was more a reckoning that a memorial. I didn't dread it, and in fact there was something sweet in being there. But this was the first time I was "with" Dad as a dad, and that gave the episode a whole new flavor, one I cannot exactly describe. Perhaps "strangely sweet" will do.

He and I related well as father and son. We were also good friends, and by the time he died, we had been ministerial colleagues for exactly half of my thirty-six years. But since Dolly and I were childless back then, Dad and I never got the chance to visit as dads. Not until last week, albeit with a few feet of topsoil blocking the hug I wanted to give him.

I stood there, so close to the remains of the arms that once had carried me, protected me, healed me, And I wondered how many years it will be until Lexi is looking down on a clover barrier between us. My goal is to make it to 87, when she's 36, the same age I was when Dad departed.

I hope she brings her kids.

Steyn's Saudwatch

I have never believed the celluloid lies of that gelatinous slob, Michael Moore, aka Jabba the Nut, but this piece by Mark Steyn, undoubtedly the real backstory behind Moore's seditious exaggeration, nonetheless makes me angry with a President I otherwise love and respect. The only reasons Mr. Bush can possibly have for not tossing Prince Bandar and company out of the USA on their oily ears must be classified ones. Perhaps he is, as Steyn suggests, playing a bit of 007, wining and dining the enemy in order to keep an eye on him. Then again, maybe Bandar, or someone very close to him like his wife, is a double agent. But if that's the case, he or she would have to be a fantastic asset, in order to offset the incredible harm wrought by Bandar's long stay in America.