Big Harriet Deal: My 180 on Miers

CLARIFICATION: I was so tired last night that I failed to explain a key point in the fifth paragraph below. I think second-term Presidents try and move to the center in order to avoid becoming lame ducks. In other words, they're still running for something: a legacy. Here's the original post:

OK, I used to be FOR Harriet Miers' nomination, but now I'm glad she asked President Bush to withdraw her name.

The end of my confidence in Miers' potential as a Constitutional originalist appears to have coincided with the end of Mr. Bush's confidence, and comes on the heels of fresh revelations about a speech she made in 1993. In that address to a group called the Executive Women of Dallas, Miers made it fairly clear that she would be willing to leave questions like abortion up to individual conscience rather than the rule of law.

The President certainly has egg on his face in withdrawing her name, but already there is speculation from both Left and Right that he planned on this eventuality from the beginning. He nominated Miers, so the idea goes, knowing that she would take flak from conservatives and draw blanks from Democrats, in order to be able to withdraw her name and then swiftly nominate a true conservative in the mold of Priscilla Owen or my favorite, Janice Rogers-Brown. This way he could say to the Dems, "you had your chance; you had someone the Right despised, someone you could live with. But you blew it, and now I've got to rally my base, so I'm going to nominate a conservative."

Further, if he nominates someone like Rogers-Brown, the Dems will have a hard time resisting her, since she is both female and black (having attended segregated schools in the deep south as a child).

One thing I think I discovered in all of this is that second-term Presidents tend to try and move to the center, just like candidates do after they've won their party's nominations. If this is the case, it certainly backfired on President Bush, because it doesn't matter how far left he moves, the Left will still hate him, since their hatred is visceral, not principled.

Forgive me for cutting this post short, but I'm on the road, in Tulsa where I used to live, and have had an exhausting day. I'll post about my time here more after I obtain certain permissions and clearances. Suffice it to say, I had supper last evening and today with the former head of the Iraqi air force, who more recently served as spokesman for the current Iraqi prime minister. What this Christian man told me is astounding, and sure to make headlines when he goes public in a new book coming out in January.

I'll dangle one carrot for you now: Saddam Hussein staffed his sixty-eight palaces entirely with Christians, because he knew they would not try to assassinate him. He did not have the same confidence in Moslems. More when I get permission. . .

Ann Coulter, Skinny Legs and All

Ann Coulter spoke at our local GOP's annual Ronald Reagan "black tie and blue jeans" dinner this past Thursday evening. She of the historical insights, rapier wit, and world's longest legs has long been among my favorite commentators, although recently I have been piqued by her catty criticisms of Harriet Miers. It's one thing to issue a legitimate negative appraisal, but Coulter lately has been just plain snotty about the President's nominee.

I wish she would speak as clearly about the issue on television as she did Thursday evening, saying that the President, by avoiding a clear-cut originalist in the mold of Justice Scalia, missed his chance to pick a fight that would have put the Democrats on the ropes. How? He could have beaten them at their own game by nominating the eminently qualified Janice Rogers-Brown, with the delicious irony that she is a black female, the Left's favorite symbol of the downtrodden they're out to rescue from the evil Republicans' oppressive grip. I was delighted to hear that Rogers-Brown was Ann's first choice, as she has long been my own, and for the same reasons.

I am disappointed that President Bush chose Miers, not because I don't think she'll make a fine member of the high bench. I do, as I'll explain in a moment. But I'm disappointed because I think Rogers-Brown would make an incredible justice, that she has unassailable credentials, and that the Left's utter hypocrisy about race, gender and "values" would have been on display during her confirmation hearings.

As it is the President presently looks timid, as though he, himself, "borked" potential nominees in advance, so the Dems wouldn't have a chance. Gee, I always though beating your opponent to the punch meant slugging him, not yourself.

Still I trust this President's judge of character and ability, as well as his knack for making his opponents swing wildly at the air, which I think he prefers to a brawl, and which still leaves him with a win. I also think Mr. Bush understands that interpreting the Constitution does not require a degree in rocket science. It was written plainly to be interpreted plainly. Thus the non-scientist Ms. Miers.

I'm not alone in my opinion. Attorney Steven Diebold made the same assertion in an email to World Magazine editor, Marvin Olasky:

It has always seemed to me that much of what passes for constitutional philosophy, that which Ms. Miers supposedly lacks, is merely sophistry. The constitution itself is fairly straightforward and easily understood by any reasonably educated person. Someone who has read The Federalist and who is familiar with the history and concepts--like enumerated powers and rule of law--that underlie the Constitution has a much greater understanding of the Constitution than does a professor of Constitutional law.

I opined similarly in the comments section of another blog and was roundly criticized by snobs and trolls, but I stand by it. The Constitution of the United States is the product of brilliant minds, no doubt, but their brilliance shines most in the very accessibility of it. It is not a political apocrypha, something that only a judicial Hal Lindsey can figure out.

It really peeves me that two literary gifts from God, the Constitution and the Revelation of St. John, are both treated as though they can't be understood without a decoder ring. And the result is that moral dunderheads like Justice Souter discover in it justification for everything from property seizure to baby killing, while theological dolts -- fill in your own blanks -- similarly read backfire bombers and ozone-layer holes into God's last word. For goodness sake, St. John said in his very first sentence that he was writing about "things that must soon take place." Soon. That's not a hard word to figure out. It doesn't mean two thousand years later!

Sheesh. Back to Ann Coulter. . .

Speeches like this one, as well as Michael Reagan's two months back, are essentially sound-bite medleys. Coulter does this well, since after all, she's phenomenal with one-liners. Whereas Michael Reagan began with sound bites that fished the audience awhile before finding his theme in a rote, but inspiring, personal testimony, Ann discreetly used five by eight cards and stayed with the plan she no doubt follows all the time. Such cards enable one to revise and freshen the speech on the spot from the day's events, but the plan essentially stays the same: Just be Ann Coulter, the scourge of pundits on the Left and cowards on the Right. Thank the Dems for seating Michael Moore next to President Carter at their convention. Flip the long blonde mane every couple of minutes and give 'em what they want, which is Hillary's head on a platter. And if you're Ann Coulter, it's Hillary's head on a platter with an apple in its mouth.

The biggest applause of the night came when Coulter mentioned her Christianity. Someone had asked her where her passion and belief system came from. She answered without hesitation: Passion from her mother, and values from both parents, adding that her confidence is centered in her Christian faith. After all, she said, how could the petty accusations of her critics bother her when she rests in the fact that Christ died for, and forgave, her sins.

I was delighted to hear the line, one which I'd heard quoted from an appearance she made a few weeks back, after someone in the audience had approached the Q&A microphone and let loose with an extremely obscene suggestion. I trust that she's telling a heartfelt truth, and not merely playing to the Republican Party's increasingly Christian constituency. After hearing person after person remark about how down to earth she was before and during the reception, I'm inclined to believe she means it.

Now if we can keep Coulter on the air and put Condi in the White House, America will be in good hands. That those hands are one pair white and one pair brown, and both well manicured, says a lot about how far the party of Lincoln has come.

Starbucks' Stupidity (UPDATED SUNDAY)

SUNDAY UPDATE: Fellow blogger Hoots drew my attention to a report that Starbucks, in continuing their American Thinkers series in 2006, will feature a cup quote by Pastor Rick Warren.

This raises Starbucks a notch in my eyes, since they appear to be genuinely committed to their project, rather than mere secularlist activism. But this doesn't change the fact that including the Maupin quote was bad business. Even if the quote were promoting some other lifestyle or act besides homosexuality, it still promotes rebellion against parents and other authorities. My original post from Saturday follows:

WorldNetDaily.com reports that Starbucks coffee stores around the nation are serving customers in cups inscribed with quotes from famous American thinkers, including one by homosexual novelist Armistead Maupin.

"My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it for so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short."

Needless to say, Christian groups around the nations are up in arms, and at least one Christian school, Baylor University, has ordered its Campus Starbucks store to remove the offending cups.

Starbucks is defending their inclusion of the quote by saying their intention is to "encourage discourse." If that's the case, they ought to include a counter quote by a respectable opponent of Maupin's view.

As it is, what they're really encouraging is youthful rejection of parental or pastoral counsel, the counsel of "people I feared," i.e., authority figures. And for that they'll lose my business.

This is such a stupid business decision, just like American Girl magazine's "I Can" campaign I referenced last Thursday. Millions of evangelical Christians don't drink liquor, but they do drink soft drinks and coffee. In fact, they probably drink it in greater quantities than alcohol drinkers, since their beverage choices are fewer.

I encourage you to write to them. Here's a link to their Contact Form.

Here's what I wrote:

To my favorite coffee company: Your decision to "encourage discourse" by including Armistead Maupin's quote on homosexuality in your American Thinkers cup series will cost you the business of millions of Christians who choose coffee more often than most, because they don't drink liquor. In short, it's BAD business. Too bad. I loved your coffee, and spent hundreds per year, but won't be back until you either pull the cup or "include" an opposing quote.

Peter Singer: The World's Worst Singer

Unless you're a medical doctor or philosophy major, you've probably never heard of Peter Singer. But your life has been affected by him, and not for the better. Here's what World Magazine said about him in an article last November:

"The New York Times, explaining how his views trickle down through media and academia to the general populace, noted that 'no other living philosopher has had this kind of influence.' The New England Journal of Medicine said he has had 'more success in effecting changes in acceptable behavior' than any philosopher since Bertrand Russell. The New Yorker called him the 'most influential' philosopher alive."

Singer, who teaches a course called "Practical Ethics" at Princeton University, has influenced American academia, European social policy, and medical practitioners worldwide, more than any other living human being. I don't usually give him a lot of thought, but then a horrible news story broke this morning:

An apparently mentally ill woman seen dropping her children into the chilly waters of San Francisco Bay (search) was behind bars Thursday on three counts of murder after being arrested pushing an empty stroller away from the end of a downtown pier.

Lashaun T. Harris, 23, of Oakland, was arrested Wednesday night after a witness saw her drop her children from the 10-foot pier.

Awful isn't it? Not justifiable under any circumstances, right? Well, here's a quote from the website of the world's "most influential" philosopher, himself:

Q. You have been quoted as saying: "Killing a defective infant is not morally equivalent to killing a person. Sometimes it is not wrong at all." Is that quote accurate?

A. It is accurate, but can be misleading if read without an understanding of what I mean by the term “person” (which is discussed in Practical Ethics, from which that quotation is taken). I use the term "person" to refer to a being who is capable of anticipating the future, of having wants and desires for the future.  As I have said in answer to the previous question, I think that it is generally a greater wrong to kill such a being than it is to kill a being that has no sense of existing over time. Newborn human babies have no sense of their own existence over time. So killing a newborn baby is never equivalent to killing a person, that is, a being who wants to go on living.  That doesn’t mean that it is not almost always a terrible thing to do.  It is, but that is because most infants are loved and cherished by their parents, and to kill an infant is usually to do a great wrong to its parents...

Q. What about a normal baby? Doesn’t your theory of personhood imply that parents can kill a healthy, normal baby that they do not want, because it has no sense of the future?

A. Most parents, fortunately, love their children and would be horrified by the idea of killing it.  And that’s a good thing, of course.  We want to encourage parents to care for their children, and help them to do so. Moreover, although a normal newborn baby has no sense of the future, and therefore is not a person, that does not mean that it is all right to kill such a baby.  It only means that the wrong done to the infant is not as great as the wrong that would be done to a person who was killed. But in our society there are many couples who would be very happy to love and care for that child.  Hence even if the parents do not want their own child, it would be wrong to kill it.

Singer is best known for his advocacy of infanticide, and his suggestion that parents have a 28-day post-natal option on whether to keep or kill their newborn babies. And not being nearly so pretentious or cautious as various Congressional left-wingers, he does use the word "kill." His most terse comment on infanticide: "Why should the killing stop at the womb?"

In preparation for a sermon this past weekend my biblical text was 1 Peter 3:14-16:

But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, in your hearts regard Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

One of my main points was that we must not only be able to speak about our own faith and worldview, but should also be aware of the paradigms of our inquirers. Those paradigms, however, are largely not self-consciously, but unconsciously held, inherited from guidance counselors and television as much as (perhaps more than) from parents. The average American these days is a humanist, but only because he has absorbed humanism, not actually studied it. Singer, more than any other philosopher in a generation, is the one who has shaped that worldview. Thus knowing what he thinks and says greatly simplifies the matter of defending the faith "with gentleness and respect."

Singer's views extend well beyond typical sanctity-of-life issues. Here's another excerpt from World:

While politicians debate the definition of marriage between two people, Mr. Singer argues that any kind of "fully consensual" sexual behavior involving two people or 200 is ethically fine.

For example, when I asked him last month about necrophilia (what if two people make an agreement that whoever lives longest can have sexual relations with the corpse of the person who dies first?), he said, "There's no moral problem with that." Concerning bestiality (should people have sex with animals, seen as willing participants?), he responded, "I would ask, 'What's holding you back from a more fulfilling relationship?' [but] it's not wrong inherently in a moral sense."

If the 21st century becomes a Singer century, we will also see legal infanticide of born children who are ill or who have ill older siblings in need of their body parts. Question: What about parents conceiving and giving birth to a child specifically to kill him, take his organs, and transplant them into their ill older children? Mr. Singer: "It's difficult to warm to parents who can take such a detached view, [but] they're not doing something really wrong in itself." Is there anything wrong with a society in which children are bred for spare parts on a massive scale? "No."

When we had lunch a month after our initial interview and I read back his answers to him, he said he would be "concerned about a society where the role of some women was to breed children for that purpose," but he stood by his statements. He also reaffirmed that it would be ethically OK to kill 1-year-olds with physical or mental disabilities, although ideally the question of infanticide would be "raised as soon as possible after birth."

You might be tempted to stop reading now, on grounds that such extreme views have nothing to do with your life. But they do. Every day Singer's philosophy of Utilitarianism ("the greatest happiness for the greatest number") colors more and more of American life, from TV sitcom scripting to insurance industry policy-making, and everywhere in between. A case in point is American Girl magazine, as popular with the kids of traditional families as the Daughters of the American Revolution is with their mothers. Here's the story from WorldNetDaily:

Family advocates are warning parents that the popular American Girl doll maker, owned by Mattel, is partnering with a group that supports abortion and lesbianism.

In August, American Girl launched the "I Can" campaign with Girls Inc., urging girls to take a pledge and purchase a special bracelet.

With every purchase of the "I Can" band, 70 cents is given to Girls Inc. in addition to American Girl's contribution of $50,000.

"Parents need to know that this effort to promote self-esteem among girls is not as innocent as it seems," said Ann Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League. "While Girls Inc. has some good programs, they also support abortion, oppose abstinence-only education for girls and condone lesbianism."

Peter Singer's Utilitarian philosophy is at the heart of several contemporary movements. His book, "Animal Liberation," was highly instrumental in the founding of the animal rights movement, and other groups, from homosexual activists to groups promoting pedophilia and even bestiality, have grounded their philosophies on his.

What is perhaps most bothersome about Singer's views is how much they have infiltrated the thinking of American Christians, whom one of my favorite authors has accurately characterized as "functional humanists." We say we're Christians, and that we embrace Christian values, but such is not the case. Our values have come from everywhere else. We learn about death from watching bad guys get blown away on television. Our generation's attitudes about animals have been shaped more by watching "Bambi," and from in-school propaganda than by reading Scripture. Ditto for ecological concerns.

And sex -- sexuality is everywhere to some degree, and Singer's philosophy of "anything goes" has influenced the lines-drawn about where sexual activity begins (with a hug, a kiss, petting outside/inside clothing) more than the Bible and prayer.

You may think I am giving Peter Singer more credit than he deserves, that one man cannot possibly hold so much sway. Well in a sense you're right. Singer is not the only such Doctor of Death in the world. But he is the most explicit and persuasive, perhaps due to his soft-spoken, gentlemanly manner. And Princeton, a school whose founding purpose was to prepare young men for Gospel ministry, has granted him membership in the world's academic mainstream by affording him tenure on their faculty.

No, I do not think all the world's evil comes from Peter Singer. I blame that on his father.

The Gods of Tampa Bay

The school board down in Hillsborough County, Florida (aka greater Tampa) managed to make national news twice this month, but I'm sure they'd have been happier if only the first story had gotten out. Here's what I mean...

The School District of Hillsborough County in Florida has been named the winner of the 2005 Council of Urban Boards of Education's (CUBE) Urban School Board Excellence Award.

The award is presented annually to a school district that best demonstrates excellence in four core areas: board governance, closing the achievement gap, academic achievement, and community engagement. The award, sponsored by McGraw-Hill Education, was presented to the Hillsborough School Board at CUBE's annual conference in Las Vegas on October 1. A press conference and community gathering to recognize the school board will be held on October 6 at the Sam Rampello Downtown Partnership School in Tampa, Fla.

"We applaud the Hillsborough school board and its community for taking risks and bringing change to ensure each student achieves. This board is truly an outstanding role model for school boards across the country, whether urban, rural, or suburban," said Anne L. Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association. "Hillsborough County School District has shown terrific leadership by defining its priorities and committing itself to public engagement and, in doing so, finding a winning formula for creating high performing students at all levels."

So what kind of priorities make for such a winning formula? Here's the second story, this one from the St. Petersburg Times.

The Hillsborough School Board appeared to endorse a school calendar Wednesday that takes away student vacation days for religious holidays, despite concerns from one member that the action "waters down our values."

All but one of the six board members at a workshop said they support the proposed 2006-07 calendar, which substitutes three secular vacation days for three Christian and Jewish holidays.

The new holidays are being called secular, as opposed to religious, but in fact this is atheism as work. "Secular" traditionally has meant non-religious, but this is an impossible concept. "Atheism," which means either antipathy for God or non-belief in God, is far more accurate. If these five citizens -- public servants -- go forward with their plans, all Tampa Bay area public school students, including the children of tens of thousands of Christians, will be spending more than thirty hours per week learning in one of America's first fully functioning atheist learning environments. My, my, no wonder they win such awards!

Board member Jennifer Faliero is the lone dissenter, rightly asserting that granting the days off while denying their inherently religious nature is nonsensical and repressive of free expression. But she is fighting a losing battle, not only because her five colleagues disagree, but because of the nature of the fight itself.

They said the proposed calendar is more fair because it more clearly separates church and state and may thwart future requests from other religious groups.

Ms. Faliero's fellow board members know to whom the schools belong, and it is the State, not God. If the separation were merely an administrative one between church and state, with the two institutions separately accountable to God, that would be different. It still would not assign civil government responsibility for education, but it would be less egregious. But the current "doctrine" of separation, which is found nowhere in our Constitution, is beyond administrative. It is innate, an entrenched paradigm on both sides of the political aisle.

Even those conservatives who fight to include creationism in curricula, put prayer back in school, and keep "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance, do not question the state's role in education. Yet where in Scripture is there any justification, any model, any precedent, for the existence of public schools? Such crusades are misguided and such activism is ultimately useless. It is nothing more than shadow-boxing with the devil, and it keeps us from the real task: Parents, according to Scripture (remember that?), must take direct responsibility for their children's learning. This would mean thousands of new private schools, not the rare, expensive institutions the term usually brings to mind (another false paradigm), but educational cooperatives. In other words, private enterprise.

I am confounded most of all by the apparent lack of outrage at these goings on by Hillsborough County's Christian parents, but their relative silence is, I suppose, mute testimony to the fact that America's evangelicals, while embracing the jargon of a Christian worldview, are functional humanists. Many Christian parents, in fact, are not even familiar with the term "worldview." They do not see what reading, writing, and arithmetic have to do with serving God. They see them as -- here's that word -- neutral.

I'd love to give these folks a tour of the halls of American academia, to show them where such "neutral" subjects lead. Neutral reading leads to amoral philosophy. Neutral writing leads to revisionist literature and biased journalism (or outright lying in print if you're the New York Times). Neutral arithmetic leads to a universe by the numbers, a mechanistic, impersonal view of existence, itself.

Neutrality is an impossibility, a myth. The real questions for Christians, in Tampa Bay and elsewhere, are these: Does the state, especially an explicitly non-Christian state, have a place in education? Should a board of six strangers, most of them apparently non-believers, decide what your children will study, and what they may or may not celebrate? If so, where in Scripture do you find a commandment, or justification, or even permission, to educate children in a such a manner?

If you live in Tampa, you had better answer these questions, before the school board makes another "high performing student" out of your child.

Update

My friend, Nick Burt, went to Heaven last evening, shortly after 8 p.m.

Tribute to a True Saint: Nick

My good friend, Nick, will finish his life's race sometime this weekend or soon thereafter, unless God heals his body. Six months ago he was the picture of health, but Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (very similar to mad cow disease) has felled him. He is fifty-six years old.

I met Nick in November, 1973, just a couple of days before Living Sound, my team of "musicianaries," left the USA for a four-and-a-half-month mission to southeast Asia. We were desperate for a drummer, and Nick -- I still don't know how he heard about us -- volunteered.

Nick wasn't the best drummer we'd ever had, but from day one he was a fantastic missionary. Everything about him, from his mellow temperament to an adventuresome appetite, was suited to the Orient, and it soon became clear that this bespectacled, mustachioed young blond was more at home in Hong Kong and Seoul than he'd ever been on his dad's sheep farm back in McMinnville, Oregon.

Lately looking back I have realized that most of my favorite moments from that tour directly involve Nick, whose easy laughter -- breathed more than uttered -- could diffuse a whole day's tension in seconds.

We bowled away Christmas Eve, '73, and most of our meager spending money, in Hong Kong, both playing well on what could have been a depressing evening so far away from our families. In fact I hit 220 for the first of only two times in my life that evening, using a house ball with a huge chip in it. Calunk, calunk, calunk, STRIKE! Calunk, calunk, calunk, another STRIKE! The ball was so bad, and our bowling so good, that we laughed about it for the next thirty-two years.

We told bad jokes and threw socks at the ceiling fan in Saigon. . .The Vietnam ministry had been sobering, especially one evening: Our audience was 3,000 South Vietnamese troops, some as young as twelve, in a camp that was losing a thousand soldiers per month. Statistically speaking, the commanding officer had told us minutes before our first song, every man there would be dead within ninety days. And so we sang. Perched on an enormous flat-bed truck with an awful piano, bad lighting, and iffy electricity, we sang our hearts out and told those men in the clearest of terms about Jesus Christ.

Packing up afterward was difficult, and getting to sleep later was even harder. So we single men, bunking together in a roomful of cots, developed a nightly routine. We'd turn the ceiling fans on high, and then lie awake and tell jokes while hurling socks into the blades to see who could fling one the farthest. Of course single men, Christian or not, will dive into the depths of Dumb and Dumber humor pretty quickly when they're tired enough, and we did.

"This is the greatest medicine in the world. Why, it made. . ." (Then fill in the blank with a famous name.) "It made Victor Mature! It made Claire Boothe Luce! It made -- (think harder now) -- Buddy Hackett!" Laughter at the pun. Then. . ."It made Roger Mudd!" (Hey, it was 1973.) We'd laugh awhile and then pause, trying to come up with more names. "It made Gomer Pyle!" Peals of laughter mixed with moans. "Gross!" would come a judgment, but we knew it would get worse. Then more silence. Then another joke, maybe funnier, maybe lamer, followed by more silence. Eventually we'd doze off.

That's when Nick would laugh, or at least it's when he laughs in my memories. He'd think of another pun and wake up the room, laughing so hard he couldn't tell the joke. Then he'd hesitate and say never mind, it wasn't that funny. Then he'd laugh some more and have to tell us anyway or we'd never sleep. It was usually funny.

Singapore, KL, Bangkok, Bandung, Quezon City, Baguio City. . .every city forged a stronger bond amongst us, rather like what happens when men have fought a war together. And of course we had.

The team ended with the tour, that chapter of our lives' work done. Joel and I stayed with the ministry in Tulsa. The McKibbens opened our new base in England. ReNelle and Barbie and Chris all married. Mike and Don Gossett rejoined their father's ministry, as did Pete Sumrall. But Nick went back to Asia.

Way back, to the Himalayan foothills, and to the interior of China. He would trek, on foot or hitching, to remote villages where he knew the Gospel had never been heard. He would stay in the peoples' huts, eat their food, bathe in their streams. And he learned enough Mandarin to either share his faith directly or find a translator for virtually any local dialect.

Eventually Nick developed a strategy that made him an apostle of sorts. He had heard about the Yi peoples of southwestern China, an ethnic group of more than six million who were unevangelized, and he wanted to alter that statistic. So he rigged his laptop computer to a car battery, which he lugged in his backpack, and armed with the JESUS Film on video disc, headed into territories where not even the communist authorities bothered to police his work. He could show the film for a month that way, and of course whole villages often wanted to watch it. Thousands of people were born again.

Nick planted churches, raised up pastors, and then returned, year after year, to check on them, to bring them Bibles and supplies. The sheep farmer's son from Oregon had become a shepherd of Chinese souls. Hundreds of thousands of Chinese souls.

The doctors in Pittsburgh are not sure whether it was on his dad's farm or in his Father's field that Nick contracted the deadly proteins that are killing his body. But we do know that soon, very soon, this faithful shepherd's flocks will bid him farewell. But only for awhile.

The Lodge Philosophy

Dr. George Grant is an accomplished historian and author, but is most famous around my house as an educator. His Franklin Classical School, just south of Nashville, has established itself as one of America's premier private K-12 institutions.

I met Dr. Grant once in Franklin when a retreat I attended held its sessions at his home church. I'd been reading several of his books on politics and social issues, and had emailed him to ask if we could meet, telling him we'd be in his neighborhood. He wrote back to say we were not only in the same vicinity, but would be in the same building on Wednesday evening for Christ Community's weekly "fellowship supper." Thus we dined and chatted for an hour that was probably instantly forgettable for him, but remains a highlight for me.

In the midst of all the hubbub about Harriet Miers and whether or not she's a constitutional "scholar," is or is not qualified to sit on the SCOTUS, etc., Dr. Grant offers this insight in a short piece, American Exceptionalism, extolling the virtues of the U.S. Constitution, itself.

The English pundit G.K. Chesterton once quipped, “America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed.” Other nations find their identity and cohesion in ethnicity, or geography, or partisan ideology, or cultural tradition. But America was founded on certain ideas—ideas about freedom, about human dignity, and about social responsibility. They are objective ideas—as must be the case if they are to take the form of a creed—codified in a sovereign standard of law, a constitution.

Dr. Grant also offers quotes from several statesmen, including this one from the late Henry Cabot Lodge:

“Government is but a tool. If ever we come to the place where our tools determine what jobs we can or cannot do, and by what means, then nary a fortnight shall pass in which new freedoms shall be wrested from us straightway. Societal problems are solved by families and communities as they carefully and discriminately use a variety of tools."

The word "tool" reminded me of yesterday's news picture of President Bush working on a Habitat for Humanity project in Covington, Louisiana. Mr. Bush, like Mr. Lodge, believes societal problems (such as rebuilding after Katrina) should be "solved by families and communities as they carefully and discriminately use a variety of tools."

I was glad to hear the President reiterate his philosophy that the rebuilding efforts should be locally planned and executed. Even in a state where corruption is the political culture, the money is likely to be better spent by local officials than it would be by federal bureaucrats, in the same way that a car thief is a better driver than a blind nun.

If only Mr. Bush would pick up his veto pen and impose the Lodge philosophy on Congress.

Flopping Around Gommorah

Saturday at 33,000 feet:

Gay and Lesbian Pride Week started in Gainesville yesterday with a downtown parade, welcomed to town by our tickled pink, pro-homosexual city council and the University of Florida. Such is life in the People's Republic of Alachua County.

My buddy, Mark, wasn't thinking about all that when he went to dinner at a local hole-in-the-wall last evening, nor when he later called to tell me about the loud, profanity-laced lovers' spat that had ruined it for him. But after I had reminded him that, with such festivities, we could expect a higher level of sexual tension around town, he recalled that both voices were quite high-pitched, and struck him as somewhat feminine. The half-laugh that followed took me back about fifteen years to a very strange night Dolly and I once spent in Visalia, California. . .in the Twilight Zone.

We were there to visit friends, who had decided to treat us to a fancy hotel room at the convention center downtown. They'd meet us at check in, they said, so I dropped Dolly at the circular drive out front and went to park the car. Three minutes later, luggage in tow, I walked to the front desk, stopping momentarily to let a woman in a stunning sequined gown pass in front of me. Dolly was still at the desk, along with our benefactor, who was prepaying our room bill. Both women were wide-eyed and giggling for some reason, and I noticed that the desk clerk had his face almost buried in the paperwork that would make us official residents for the night.

"That was a man," said my wife. "What?" I asked incredulously. "In the gown -- that was a man," she whispered, explaining that our hostess had just asked the clerk and, instead of answering, he had lowered his head and muttered something about the evening being really weird.

Just then, another -- uh, person in an evening gown paraded across the lobby, this one trailed by a uniformed wardrobe attendant sashaying a rolling rack of gowns with every ounce of exaggerated wiggle he could muster.

We headed up to our room to store suitcases and then bounded back downstairs for dinner with our now mortified hostess and her husband, who had just arrived. The wardrobe queen was back too, this time leaving the circular drive in a white stretch limousine with his star, while several chunky, tee-shirt clad women arrived simultaneously on motorcycles. I had heard of a lesbian group called "Dykes on Bikes," and wondered if this might be them. One had a cigarette soft-pack rolled into her tee-shirt sleeve, like Richie Cunningham's mom trying to pass for the Fonz.

The four of us walked into the hotel restaurant and took our table, our waiter introducing himself with the requisite, "Hi, I'm Robert (or whatever it was) and I'll be taking your order." "Hi, I'm heterosexual," I replied, "and we'll be your customers." Everyone laughed half-heartedly and our server expressed sheer relief to be serving us. Then he told us the unnerving truth: The convention center adjoining our hotel was hosting a transvestite fashion show. We were, as far as we could tell, the only straight couple staying there overnight.

The restaurant wall was a floor-to-ceiling window with a view to the garden-like front drive. Something long and white caught my eye. It was the wardrobe queen's limo arriving outside, barely ten minutes after leaving. WQ and his star exited grandiosely, carrying Hardee's drive-thru bags, and prancing as if they hoped the world were watching.

Odd, bizarre, freakish: Any word is a weak one to describe the fourteen hours from dinner that night to check-out the next day. We were in a surreal microcosm, a world without gender roles, or perhaps with too many. In either case, Visalia was gone and Gommorah had taken its place.

I found myself glancing, unconsciously, at hips and bosoms, not for kicks but for a security that had abandoned me. Reality, or at least my lens on reality, was suddenly, totally unreliable.

Even worse was being stared at, looked up and down in the same way. Was this a man or a woman looking me over? And was it lust out prospecting, or two heteros conducting a mutual security scan before the elevator doors closed? Whatever, just don't smile and nod like you usually do Gilbert. And who cares -- just get me to my floor and outa here quick!

Paradigms give reality its atmosphere. We don't see them anymore than fish see water. But we do see through them, and like the fish, we gasp and flop for dear life when they're gone.

Dolly and I flopped -- more like fish than sleepy people -- into bed that night, and then flopped down to the lobby and into our car and on down the highway the next day, gradually reentering the more familiar currents of life.

Yet somehow the whole world changes once you've spent a night in Gommorah. You are forced to realize that alternate perceptions of reality do exist, that depravity stains the soul the way blue jeans stain white laundry, i.e., completely.

God, don't ever let me get used to the stains. Amen.

Pause

Publication is shifting from Mondays and Thursdays to Tuesdays and Thursdays/Fridays, due to heavy weekend travel schedule. New article tomorrow.

A Supreme Mystery

Conservatives and liberals alike have been wringing their hands over President Bush's nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court, moaning about what an "unknown" she is. I even heard Judge Judy (on Larry King via XM Radio) bemoaning Miers' "lack of judicial experience," as if presiding over a tabloid TV show that competes with the likes of "Elimidate" would actually make her opinion count.

One doesn't have to look very far to see that the President has made a pretty conservative pick: Miers is not only an evangelical Christian, but she pays her tithe and more, a level of commitment she shares with only about twelve percent of America's evangelicals. In other words, she's a committed evangelical Christian.

It's sad to have to use such a modifier; "committed evangelical" ought to be a redundancy. Nonetheless, what else can one expect in an era when the average Christian is biblically illiterate?

There's more indication of Miers' solid Christian beliefs (which almost surely would put her in the same ethical stream with Justices Scalia and Thomas) at World Magazine Blog. Just scroll down the past few days' posts, particularly those by Marvin Olasky, and you'll see what I mean.

I'm surprised big shot Lefties like New York's Senator Schumer and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi haven't already checked such sources and pronounced Miers unfit, if not a religious extremist. Then again the idea of either of those particular anti-Christian ideologues checking World Magazine for anything is a bit like the Pope searching the cosmetics ads in Cosmo. Ain't gonna happen, and that's fine by me.

I think the President decided to blindside liberals by picking someone whose religion is not politics. The irony is that he's also fooled more than a few conservatives, who ought to know better, but whose angst about Miers shows how much they, like liberals, worship at the Bar rather than the altar. No wonder today's conservative is farther to the left than yesterday's liberal.

One of the most reassuring items I've read about Miers is that she has never needed to be part of the Ivy League crowd or the District's cocktail circuit. So she's fairly impervious to social pressure, remaining very principle-centered. That's great news to me, because I think just such pressure is what has made so-called conservative justices, like Sandra Day O'Connor, become more liberal once they've secured a job from which they cannot be fired.

That conservatives like Tony Blankley and George Will are sniffing over Miers' nomination shows just how elitist both Left and Right have become in Washington. The simple truth is that the Constitution is simple, i.e., it was written to be easily understood by the American people, not decipherable only by an effete, black-robed oligarchy. Legal brilliance is wonderful, but an understanding of American history founded upon a reliable moral foundation is more wonderful. In fact, if anything, a Supreme Court justice's job ought to be to untangle and simplify what lower courts either could not straighten out or, as is often the case, twisted beyond redemption.

Maybe Harriet Miers will disappoint me and head to the left like several of her predecessors. Maybe she'll be a dim bulb amongst the nine stars, although I cannot imagine any lesser lights than Souter and Ginsburg, who clearly have proven that they are -- to quote the late Kathryn Kuhlmann -- "educated beyond their intelligence." But I think she's worth the risk that this cagey President has taken.

Jesus was viewed as too meek to be the king His contemporaries expected. He was too plain, too uncomplicated, with a background too pedestrian to their liking. But He was the real deal. I think Harriet Miers is too.

Best Friend

Saturday, October 1st, is Dolly's birthday. She's "29," which is amazing since that's also how many years we've been married. We have been best friends for even longer, officially gluing our eyes to one another at a Japanese steak house in Towson, Maryland on Valentine's Day evening, 1975, a year to the day before we wed.

I still remember the day later that spring when my dad, who later presided over our vows, expressed his doubts about our prospects for becoming husband and wife. "I don't think you two will ever get married," he said. "You're just too much friends." He was wrong, of course, and in fact we forged a good marriage precisely because we were best friends. Making one life out of two was the logical next step.

On this day paeans are due:

Dolly amazes our friends, and wins new ones, with her fierce loyalty, undying diligence, and uncanny ability to get vendors (Airline personnel in particular) to do her bidding and think it was their own idea.

I'm so glad I gave her my last name, because she wears it well. In fact, she makes me look good all over the world by remembering the birthdays, concerns, and collectables of people whom I can't even recall meeting. Nonetheless apparent total strangers regularly thank me because of something considerate she did in my name. Makes me far more aware of what it means to minister around the world in the name of Jesus; it's a name I have learned to wear carefully, but proudly, and largely due to learning from her example.

My wife also amazes me with the way stress simply rolls off of her. (She jokes that she doesn't suffer it, but is a carrier.) If she's stressed, it shows immediately on her deeply reddened face, but she just deals with it and it's gone. Permanently. Consequently the girl falls asleep within thirty seconds of her head hitting the pillow.

And as easily as she falls asleep, my Dolly can also stay awake. In fact, when we moved from Oklahoma to Florida she skipped sleeping two nights in a row, rising on a Tuesday and not hitting a pillow again until Thursday night. A lesser creature would collapse (me being the lesser creature), but her amazing constitution not only kept her going, but enabled her to look as fresh on Thursday as she had on Tuesday. Of course, the minute we settled into the U-Haul truck she was asleep.

Sitting straight up.

That's another amazing trick. This girl can sleep soundly while sitting straight up in a sticky vinyl U-Haul seat, an ergonomically disastrous airplane seat, or just about anywhere else her dainty backside alights.

Our daughter, Lexi, turned four three weeks ago, and already she's her mama's Mini-Me. What a fortunate little girl my junior Princess is, to learn from the very best.

Happy Birthday Sunshine!