Posts with the tag 'Judeo-Christian Civilization'
The underlying good sense and adherence to basic morality is coming through even in California:
According to the latest poll from California, those fighting for the defense of traditional marriage have a nine point advantage over activists seeking state recognition of same-sex marriage.
The poll released on Tuesday afternoon by the Knights of Columbus, reports that the drive to pass California’s Proposition 8 is leading among likely voters 52 to 43 percent. If Proposition 8 is passed, it will amend the state Constitution to say, “Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid and recognized in the state of California.”
The poll also shows that Proposition 8 leads in every region of California except the San Francisco Bay Area, where 58% are opposed to the measure.
Californians’ opinions on the State Supreme Court ruling that allowed same-sex couples to be recognized as “married” by the state are evenly divided.
Fifty two percent of likely California voters believe the ruling was wrong to have overturned the 2000 referendum in which voters approved reserving marriage for opposite-sex couples, and 72 percent believe the decision should be left to the voters, the poll found.
The Marist College Institute of Public Opinion, which conducted the poll between September 28 and October 5, 2008, also uncovered some results that point to the cultural and moral uncertainty surrounding the controversial issue of homosexual “marriage.”
For instance, more than half of the 43 percent against the bill said they were likely to change their mind when reminded that Proposition 8 would not affect same-sex couples’ ability to form civil unions. Moreover, 88 percent of those in favor of civil unions said they viewed marriage as between one man and one woman.
And this is why the proponents of gay marriage prefer to go through the courts - the supporters of such a thing are a tiny minority, even among many Americans who consider themselves liberal. Its not wanted, it never was wanted, it never will be wanted - save by a small group which, unfortunately, is tremendously well funded and has the support of the so-called “commanding heights” of American culture and higher education institutions.
As unpopular as it is and as potentially destructive of other liberal hopes, you’d think the proponents of gay marriage would give it a rest and move on to other issues which have more popular support, but they don’t. Why is that? Because the eventual goal is the end of faith and family, and gay marriage is just another useful tool in destroying both. Raised up against real families and real religions will be counterfeits of both - with the addition of the fact that in the name of “protecting” the counterfeits, the real things must be curbed in the public square.
The left never gives the non-left a moment’s peace - they are ever busy finding new ways to chip away at this or that aspect of our civilization. Defend this area, and they move off to that area, knowing that the whole thing stands or falls as a unit and any support damaged weakens the whole structure. This unremitting war against us must be fought in the same way - we must defend our civilization tooth and nail; the line must be drawn and our demand of “thus far, and no further” prevail - it is either this or we’ll just throw away 2,000 years of human advancement and turn our selves and our children over to monsters in human skin who think they can create the Kingdom of God here on earth.
Tags: California, Christianity, conservative truth, gay marriage, Judeo-Christian Civilization, liberal lies
October 23rd, 2008
Being interviewed by Hugh Hewitt, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver states clearly the need for injecting faith into politics:
HH: Now Archbishop, let’s dive into the book. Again, for the benefit of people tuning in, it’s Render Unto Caesar: Serving The Nation By Living Our Catholic Beliefs In Public Life. And I want to emphasize, it’s not just for Catholics, though that’s obviously the intent of this. I was trying to figure out your motive, and then I came across a quote from a Vietnamese bishop, later made a cardinal, which was, “The greatest failure in leadership is for the leader to be afraid to speak and act as leader.” Is that part of the motive, Archbishop?
CC: Well, I have a responsibility as a bishop to clearly proclaim the Gospel in its entirety, even when people don’t want me to do that, and even when it’s difficult. So I wouldn’t claim to be particularly courageous, but I feel responsible. And if I don’t speak on the issues that I think the Lord calls me to speak, I feel guilty about that. So for me to be quiet on these issues would have been a harder burden for me to carry, perhaps, than speaking about it. Actually, I mentioned two reasons why I wrote the book. One is some Catholic political folks asked me to, people who ran for office, and were having struggles because of that. But more importantly, I’ve grown tired of so many people in our culture saying to believers that they ought to be quiet, that there’s no place in the public square for the voice of faith. I wanted to make a distinction between separation of Church and state, and separating our faith from our politics. You can embrace the concept of separation of Church and state, but that’s not at all the same thing as separating our faith from our actions, from our political actions.
Bravo, Archbishop! All of the people must be allowed to bring their beliefs into the public square and be allowed argue that their worldview should be adopted, in whole or in part, in law and custom. What the secularists of today are trying to do - especially through such things as the ACLU’s war on Christmas - is to say that the believer, especially the Christian believer, must check his beliefs that door to politics. This attitude is unjust, un-American and, fundamentally, a fascist point of view, and it must be fought against tooth and nail.
I don’t have a right to insist that my fellow citizens worship in the Catholic Church or believe any of the dogmas of the Church. We are free in our consciences. But it is not an imposition of my religion if I convince a constitutional majority of my fellow citizens to enact into law some thing which also happens to be in accordance with Catholic teaching. If what I advocate seems good and true and appears to meet some need identified by the citizenry and the resultant law is enacted under whatever constitutional reguirements prove necessary, then all I’ve done is creat a law - not established a religion or imposed a particular religion on everyone.
Outside of that, I also argue that our secularists are not just wrong to attempt this separation of faith and politics, but are also foolish. The plain fact of the matter is that our way of life is built upon a Judeo-Christian base. The fundamental concept that we, as individuals, are valuable and have endowed rights is a Judeo-Christian concept - cut our politics off from its wellsprings and it will dry up and die. At bottom, if you wish to live your life as an agnostic secularist, you desperately need the cooperation of believers who sustain the concepts which allow you to live as you do.
In our faith we find our true political beliefs, and as long as our political beliefs are grounded in our faith, so they will be healthy and beneficial to the world. Seperate the two and faith will continue to thrive, but politics will die - and with it many of the liberties we cherish.
Tags: Archbishop Charles Chaput, Christianity, church and state, Iraq Campaign, Judeo-Christian Civilization
August 21st, 2008
R. R. Reno over at First Things has some interesting insights into the alleged “pregnancy pact”:
…it seems pretty clear that some teenage girls in Gloucester wanted to get pregnant, talked about it with their friends, and succeeded in conceiving. The school offers free pregnancy testing, and the school nurse reported girls celebrating when the tests came back positive. So, official pact or not, there has been an upsurge in Gloucester of something that our oh-so-inclusive age finds alien and threatening: planned teen pregnancies.
One predictable reaction has focused on sex education, or more accurately the bemoaned lack thereof. If only the students had better information about the real consequences of sexual intercourse! If only the school health clinic were permitted to dispense birth control pills! If only Gloucester didn’t suffer from the repressive mentality of a majority Catholic culture!
Hello. We’re talking about girls who wanted to get pregnant. Is it so difficult to notice that girls who want to get pregnant are not victims of supposedly prudish culture that won’t teach children the truth about sex and give them condoms?
Another reaction is less easily dismissed: It’s not about sex but parenting. If only these girls knew the extraordinary difficulties of raising a child, then they never would have done such a silly thing! So the way to prevent teen pregnancies is to dramatize the challenges of motherhood, especially single motherhood.
Mr. Reno says he has to chuckle about these reactions - especially the suggestion of “if they only knew”, that would have stopped them. My reaction is this - given what we teach our children these girls did absolutely nothing wrong.
Now, as a Christian I can say quite properly that what the girls - and the boys who impregnated them - did was wrong. But our society is, at least in popular culture, entirely post-Christian. These girls violated very basic Christian morality, but what they did is entirely in keeping with the morality prevalent in our public square in 2008. To throw up our hands in horror and ask how this could have happened is akin to a drunk asking how he could have passed out on the floor again: We tell the kids how to have sex; we refuse to tell them not to have sex; we refuse to impart to them Judeo-Christian morality; we do impart to them the concept that “right” and “wrong” are mere social constructs subject to our individual will; we place no moral opprobrium on those who engage in extramarital sex and/or have children out of wedlock - and in conjunction with this we propagandise them massively via books, magazines, music, movies and television that sex is just the coolest thing anyone can do. What is surprising is that many of our youngsters still refuse to be drawn into this sort of thing - not at all surprising that large numbers of them get into it.
People make rational decisions based upon the information they have - we are, after all is said and done, creatures who have reason at our command…the only thing which can be different from one person to another is the sort of information they have to base their decisions upon. Can anyone out there demonsrate that these girls had information which in any way, shape or form would dissuade them from their actions? Only if its Judeo-Christianity…and we don’t know if they had any of it at all or, if they did, how strongly they had been instructed in it vis a vis how strongly they were instructed in the morality of our public square. If this event in any way disturbs you, then there’s only one thing for you to do - insist upon a greater application of Judeo-Christian values.
Tags: birth control, Judeo-Christian Civilization, pregnancy pact, sex education, teen pregnancy
July 6th, 2008
A news story to get the ball rolling:
Cardinal Juan Luis Cipriani of Lima, Peru, has warned against a proliferation of supposed human rights that are “invented” by international organizations, the ACI-Prensa news agency reports.
In his weekly radio address, Cardinal Cipriani observed that genuine human rights are “based on natural law, a law that is etched on men’s hearts.” These rights, he added, are not created by a mandate from the UN or any other human organization.
The cardinal went on to put his listeners on guard against political organizations that push for recognition of new forms of “human rights,” including alleged rights to abortion or to define one’s own gender preference.
Citing the speech delivered by Pope Benedict XVI during his visit to the UN in April, the Peruvian cardinal emphasized the human rights must be defended on the basis of a secure and unchanging appeal to natural law, which endures across the boundaries of times and places. He added the observation that human rights imply corresponding human duties, and those duties, as well as the rights, should be properly understood and defined.
In my view, something can only be called a human right if it is something which is at least potentially inherent to an individual human being - I can at least potentially talk on my own, so I have a right to free speech. I can at least potentially defend my own life, so I have a right to self defense. On the other hand, I cannot perform surgery on myself, so I have no right to health care. I cannot marry myself, so I have no right to marry. And so on.
There is a lot of nonsense spoken these days about human rights - a right to marry, a right to health care, a right to education, a right to housing…if I have a right to housing, what sort of house? Where located? Containing what household goods? Once you start asking these rather basic questions, the whole concept of a right to housing is immediately shown to be asinine. Unfortunately, our leftists never ask such questions (intellectual curiosity has never been encouraged on the left), but by packaging the desire for these things in the guise of Judeo-Christian morality, the left has successfully convinced a very large number - and some times a majority - that their spurious rights are real, and must be accorded legal status.
It is useful that Benedict XVI, Cardinal Cipriani - as well as many others - are now pointing out that human rights are precious things, and must not be cheapened by making every political desire a campaign for a mythical human right. If everything is a human right, then nothing is a human right - and so by insisting I have a right to health care, I’ve been stripped of my right to life, as the government-run health care (designed to secure my supposed right to health care) comes at the cost - as we see more and more often - in a government bureacrat deciding if I’ll obtain life-saving care or, even, if I’ll be killed (”assisted suicide” and euthanasia, eg) because my continued living is inconvenient and/or expensive.
Our rights are granted to us - without charge and, indeed, without deserving it - by God on high, and are only to be taken away by Him, as He sees fit. Without this fundamental principle, all government becomes a tyranny - and all attempts at justice a sick fraud. But God didn’t grant us a right to everything our little hearts desire - he granted us those rights we need to be the creatures he wanted us to be, and health care and pre-K education aren’t among the vital things a human needs in order to be a child of God. I am a staunch defender of human rights - but only of real human rights, not the mythical human rights created by people to justify their varied desires for power, fame or simple relief for the guilt they feel over their undeserved good fortune in life.
Tags: Judeo-Christian Civilization, liberal lies, Philosophy
May 7th, 2008
Yet another modern horror brought to us courtesy of liberalism and, in the end, every man jack of us due to failure to stand up and be counted. Detailed over at Battle Born Politics.
Tags: Judeo-Christian Civilization
March 30th, 2008
Its a movie, and its causing a bit of controversy. Why? Because it connects the Koran with violence. Diana West notes the pre-emptive rage being directed against the film, and the nauseating cowardice resulting from the rage:
Pre-Emptive Rage is something new. It works like this: Because the Wilders film is expected to criticize Islam, Muslims who brook no religious criticism are expected to freak out. Therefore — just as if this were the most normal, everyday, ordinary state of affairs — Muslims and Europeans are making their respective arrangements.
In Afghanistan, Muslims have been igniting Dutch and Danish flags (did I mention Danish Cartoon Rage is back?), threatening to eject Dutch and Danish troops, and practicing their “Death to America” chants. Iranian officials have promised diplomatic rupture and worse if the film comes out. Meanwhile, the Dutch have embarked on a veritable world tour of pre-emptive appeasement. The MEMRI blog reported this week that the Dutch government sent a letter disavowing Mr. Wilders to Sheikh Muhammad Sayyed Tantawi, Sunni Islam’s foremost figure (who has variously called for “jihad” against U.S. forces in Iraq and sanctioned suicide bombings against Israeli women and children). The sheikh’s response? He “demanded that the Netherlands government take more action against Wilders, and added that protection given to those harming Islam will negatively affect Egyptian-Dutch relations.” Pre-emptive “Fitna” rage has also made European elites hopping mad — only not at the rioters and blackmailers (the healthy, normal reaction), but at Mr. Wilders. Here, multiculti Europeans and perpetually aggrieved Muslims are finding common ground.
Thus, as reported by Dutch blogger Klein Verzet, the grand mufti of Syria, Ahmad Badr Al-Din Hassoun, admonishes the European Parliament about potential film-related “riots, bloodshed and violence” for which “Wilders will be responsible.” And thus Dutch Prime Minister Jan Balkenende says exactly the same thing. At a press conference earlier this year, the online Dutch site NIS News Bulletin reported that Mr. Balkenende “stressed repeatedly and with irritation that Wilders and no one else was responsible for any violence that might break out after his film’s release.” And when Sheikh Tantawi indicates that providing “protection” for Mr. Wilders is a bad idea, it not only sounds like a mafia don calling for a hit, it also echoes the dean of Dutch journalists, Henk Hofland. As Thomas Landen of The Brussels Journal reports, Mr. Hofland urged the Dutch government to withdraw state protection from Mr. Wilders, who lives under constant threat of assassination. “Let him feel what it is like for those whose lives he endangers,” said Mr. Hofland, adding that any murders committed in retaliation for Mr. Wilders’ opinions on Islam would be the responsibility of Mr. Wilders, not the murderers.
From the American point of view, Wilders is wrong - we should not ban the Koran. But what is just astounding is the level of cowardice on display amongst Europeans on this subject. Rather than pleading that they agree with the Islamists that Wilders shouldn’t have made his film, the European governments should be promising stern actions against anyone who takes to violence over the film, including threats to deport all non-native Moslems, if necessary. One doesn’t wish to un-necessarily offend people - but if Moslems keep this sort of thing up, I’m going to start advocating a national “piss on a Koran” day. Moslems would consider my mere presence in Mecca to be a defilement, and with such an attitude they expect me to show respect for their sacred things? Respect should be a two way street, ya know?
But the cowardice is even worse than the Islamists making threats - if these Europeans wish to be slaves to Islamic masters, then just go ahead and sell yourselves. Get it over with, for crying out loud. The Moslems will treat you well…provided you kneel and scrape and pay tribute and don’t mind if your sons and daughters are taken away for the sexual and military service of the Moslem elite. Other than that, plus the odd beheading, you can just keep on with your lives, Europeans. Or, you can get off your knees and tell Islam where to stick it.
UPDATE: Little Green Footballs, naturally, has a link to the film. As for me, I’ve downloaded it - the Islamists and their leftwing enablers will not make this thing go into the Memory Hole.
Tags: Fitna, Islam, Judeo-Christian Civilization
March 28th, 2008
