harmonicminer

That’s It? Tebow Ad Unmasks the Abortion Movement

In the days running up to last weekend’s Super Bowl, the media and blogosphere erupted in a frenzy of debate over an innocuous pro-life ad sponsored by Focus on the Family. The news was that 2007 Heisman Trophy winner Tim Tebow and his mother Pam would be featured in a “Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life” spot, which, it was assumed, would tell the story of Tim, “the miracle baby” whose mother refused an abortion during a difficult pregnancy. Missionaries in the Philippines, Pam and Bob Tebow refused to choose the doctor-advised abortion option, although Pam had been taking heavy medication following a bout with dysentery.
Without seeing the ad – and with very little information – groups like Planned Parenthood, NARAL Pro-Choice America, and NOW (National Organization for Women) responded with a fury that awakened mainstream America. Expecting the ad to convey an anti-abortion message, they demanded CBS remove it from airing. A protest letter, penned by the Women’s Media Center, suggested the ad be refused because it was sponsored by Focus on the Family. “By offering one of the most coveted advertising spots of the year to an anti-equality, anti-choice, homophobic organization, CBS is aligning itself with a political stance that will damage its reputation, alienate viewers, and discourage consumers from supporting its shows and advertisers,” the letter said. Jemhu Greene, president of the group, said, “An ad that uses sports to divide rather than to unite has no place in the biggest national sports event of the year — an event designed to bring Americans together.”
The characters of both Tim and Pam were maligned and subjected to malicious gossip. A charge by feminist Gloria Allred that Pam Tebow was a liar grew wings of its own as it spread throughout talk radio and the Internet. Allred based her charge on the fact that abortion was illegal in the strongly Catholic nation of the Philippines. An ESPN columnist warned Tim not to be manipulated by the far right. “Tebow is not an innocent, and he does not appear to be deluded. He may agree with everything Focus on the Family represents. But he’s still a young man, still breathing the fumes of a home-schooled background with two parents who believe in the inerrancy of every single word of the Bible. Now, they could be right and I could be wrong on the Bible thing – although it’s going to be hard to convince me the whole belly-of-the-whale thing wasn’t allegory – but he could be setting himself up to be associated with causes and beliefs that may not be his own. All the qualities that make him admirable – earnestness, devotion, a willingness to expound on his beliefs – make him vulnerable.”
Both CBS and Focus on the Family assured audiences that the ad had been approved and was suitable for broadcast. Yet the nation was drawn into this debate, as the life issue made its way onto business and sports pages, talk radio, and Facebook pages. Over 250,000 “fans” joined one Facebook group supporting the commercial. Surveys found support for CBS to run the commercial outnumbering its opposition.

Much more at the link above. And it reveals the Left for what it is… essentially totalitarian and against free speech, interested in muzzling anyone who disagrees, and believing that they should be able to suppress a message just because of its source….  or its content.

Here is a post that began as a facebook discussion with my friend Kirsten…  and since I can’t bear to type anything and only use it once, read on.  Warning:  in this discussion, the labels “liberal” and “conservative” must be understood historically.  Modern “conservatives” believe about the same things as 18th- and 19th-century “liberals.”  Modern “liberals” are often somewhere on the spectrum between late 19th-century “progressives” and 19th-century “socialists.”  In the 18th century, “conservatives” were those who wanted to maintain the governing status quo involving royalty, aristocratic privilege, and the like, bearing no resemblance to modern “conservatives.”  So watch your head, or you might bump on on a low hanging ideological pipe.

In a lengthy article that purports to report on sociological research into the indeological predispositions of university faculty and people’s reactions to them, we are reminded that Professor Is a Label That Leans to the Left. (Much more at the link.)

The overwhelmingly liberal tilt of university professors has been explained by everything from outright bias to higher I.Q. scores. Now new research suggests that critics may have been asking the wrong question. Instead of looking at why most professors are liberal, they should ask why so many liberals — and so few conservatives — want to be professors.

A pair of sociologists think they may have an answer: typecasting. Conjure up the classic image of a humanities or social sciences professor, the fields where the imbalance is greatest: tweed jacket, pipe, nerdy, longwinded, secular — and liberal. Even though that may be an outdated stereotype, it influences younger people’s ideas about what they want to be when they grow up.

At least it’s nice that the NYTimes acknowledges that academics are mostly leftists.  Now if only they admitted the same about the mainstream media, and themselves, we’d be in a more honest place.  In any case, the conjecture here only explains (to some extent) why academia remains leftist. It doesn’t explain how it got that way, except with a pretty thin reference to reaction to the New Deal.

As is often the case with attempts at sociological explanation, the central roles of ideas and values are shunted aside in favor of demographics. Ask yourself this: without a Marx or Nietsche in the history of ideas, would the academic establishment have trended left? What if the favorite ideas of the left had not developed in the 19th century? They didn’t HAVE to develop then. They just did.

What if Dewey had not influenced the public educational establishment as he did?  What if progressive politics had not found a home in activist universities? 

Ideas have consequences. The leftist academic establishment, all the while that it derides the notion of “progress” in society, still thinks its ideas are better than the old ones that were replaced… all the while denying that there is a universal standard by which they can be judged “better”…. but nevertheless being quite confident that there really aren’t such things as right and wrong, God and Satan, etc.  Except, of course, in the case of global warming deniers, who clearly are destined for the pit of Hell.

I think the nature of the ideas explains much more than demographic “typing.”  People have always been looking for two things: ways to get power over others, and ways to maximize personal freedom for themselves.  Very, very much of the liberal left is well-described by that.

The case of sociology is especially instructive, given that from the beginning it was a social/political agenda masquerading as an academic discipline.

Reformed Pastor Kevin DeYoung has A Modest Proposal.

I’d like to make a modest proposal for Christians of all theological and political persuasions: don’t use the term “social justice” without explanation.

The term is unassailable to some and arouses suspicion in others. For many Christians, social justice encompasses everything good we should be doing in the world, from hunger relief to serving the poor to combating sex trafficking. But the phrase is also used to support more debatable matters like specific health care legislation, minimum wage increases, or reducing carbon emissions. If something can be included as a “social justice” issue then no one can oppose said issue, because who in their right mind favors social injustice?

So begins an interesting article (read it all) that makes the very simple point that “social justice” is not well-defined.  It is not a friendly term, nor a particularly honest one. That’s because just about anything that anyone thinks society “should do” can be called a matter of “social justice.”  It is a term designed to stop discussion, because who can be against “justice” of any kind?

More pointedly, it is a term that is used mostly by people who want the government to do something, generally something broadly redistributive, or some exercise of government power to force people to do something “for society” that they don’t want to do.

A few questions will make the point.

1)  Why isn’t the epidemic of unwed birth since LBJ’s “great society” programs began considered to be a matter of social justice? This is especially so since the best way to be a poor child in the USA is to be the child of a mother who is not married to the father. That’s also the best way to wind up in jail.

2)  Why isn’t protecting the lives of the unborn a matter of social justice?

3)  Why isn’t the unavailability of jobs for poor American citizens, due to illegal aliens taking the jobs, considered to be a matter of social justice?

4)  Why isn’t the negative effect on school performance brought on by the flood of children of illegal aliens in our schools, a negative effect which degrades the quality of education received by the children of American citizens, considered to be a matter of social justice?

You get the idea. Some things are matters of “social justice” in the minds of those who are fond of the term. Some things aren’t.

But the distinction has nothing whatsoever to do with “justice,” and has everything to do with Leftism.

When Leftist Christians use the term “social justice,” and specifically exclude the first two questions above, the smokescreen is suddenly very easy to see through.

In a recent discussion here, I tried to illustrate that saying about a negative behavior that “everybody does it” is generally misleading, unless some numbers are put to the observation. Yes, some groups have some bad apples. But some groups have a lot more than others. Some ideologies have had unfortunate consequences… but some have had far worse consequences.

Especially perverse is the notion that both sides have the same numbers of people with equally good motivations, so that we must “respect” all those on the other side as if they really want the same things we do, and have the same values we do.  So in a fit of undoubtedly childish sarcasm, I illustrated the absurdity of the notion that “everybody does it” and “everybody really means well” this way:

There is no difference in behavior between the right and the left. Both sides are equally respectful (or disrespectful) of the other. Both sides are equally right. Both sides are equally wrong. Both sides have the same tendency to speak hatefully of the other. Both sides have the same number of radicals. Both sides care equally about everybody and everything. Both sides have the same number of people who are committed to doing the moral thing. Both sides have the same numbers of people who are committed to their perspectives for purely selfish reasons. Both sides lie exactly the same amount. Both sides celebrate equally the personal misfortunes of the other.

Everyone is just as equal in everything as it is possible to be. We’re all just the same. No one is any more correct than anyone else. There are no absolutes, no one knows any more than anyone else, and everything is up for reconsideration at any time.

Furthermore, the communists in the Soviet Union were no worse and no better than any other political party or entity in any other nation, because everyone is basically the same, and there are no real moral differences between people who believe different things honestly.

In fact, the Chinese Communist Maoists were no worse than the Whigs…. just different. Who is to say whose values are better than whose? What gives anyone the right to say that one side’s values and policies are better than the other’s?

After all, good Christians were in favor of slavery, and quoted scripture to support it.

So nobody really knows anything with any certainty. In fact, stating one’s opinion too strongly is probably a sign of intellectual immaturity and possibly colonial intentions.

Can’t we all just get along?

(my tongue is starting to hurt, and I will now remove it before it becomes permanently bonded to the inside of my cheek)

Manifestly, everyone and every group and every ideology is NOT the same in negative consequences, negative motivations, and just plain evil.  I believe that it is far more often the Left that makes the claim of a false equality, especially by saying “the Right does it too” when some really obvious transgression is pointed out regarding the Left.

Very simply, I have the impression that the Left is rarely embarrassed, or will admit being embarrassed, by anything that anyone on the Left says or does. On the other hand, when someone on the Right goes over the line, they are likely to be chastised FROM the Right.   For example, very many on the Right were very critical of the overspending, pork barreling, and ear marking of the Republican congress before 2007.  So were many on the Left.  But the Democrat congress has topped Republican excesses by at least an order of magnitude…  and the Left is mostly silent about it.

The difference is telling.

Christian Mother Fails to Transfer Daughter to Former Lesbian Partner by Deadline

A Christian woman in Virginia who was ordered to turn over her daughter to her former lesbian partner in Vermont did not do so by the set deadline, a lawyer for the second woman reported.Lisa Miller had been ordered by a judge in Vermont to turn over her daughter, Isabella, to Janet Jenkins by 1 p.m. Friday, but has not shown up, Sarah Star, Jenkins’s lawyer, told the New York Times.

Officer Tawny Wright, a Fairfax County police spokeswoman, meanwhile, said the Jenkins family had called the police and that a detective is investigating.

For the time being, the case remains a civil matter, Wright added.

Last week, Vermont Family Court Judge William Cohen, who awarded custody of Isabella to Jenkins on Nov. 20, noted that Miller appeared to have “disappeared with the minor child” and ceased communication with her attorneys.

For the past five years, Miller and Jenkins have been engaged in a custody battle over Isabella, who was conceived when the two women were living together in Virginia. Miller, a born-again Christian, had renounced her homosexuality just a few years after entering into a civil union with Jenkins in Vermont in 2000. Jenkins, on the other hand, is today still an active lesbian and has expressed disapproval in raising Isabella in a Christian home.

More at the link.

It’s about the welfare of the child, which I think is very clear in this case.

Showing the true nature of the condition of their souls, Leftist Blogs Take Glee in Pope Attack

It was only minutes after Pope Benedict XVI was violently attacked on Christmas Eve by a woman described by authorities as mentally deranged, but leftist blogs lit up with joy over the assault.

The Daily Kos’s “Late Afternoon/Early Evening Open Thread,” for example, featured this posting at 8:10 PM Eastern Time: “Having just about enough of this male dominance bull—t, one bold Italian woman ran up and knocked down the Pope and a Cardinal!”

The woman, Susanna Maiolo, 25, was actually Swiss-Italian, and while the Pontiff himself came out of the episode unhurt and able to complete his celebration of Midnight Mass, 87-year-old French Cardinal Roger Etchegaray was left with broken bones requiring hip replacement surgery.

The comments that soon appeared on blogs known to be critical of the social teachings of the Catholic Church were so harsh that even fellow bloggers of similar ideological bent were outraged.

In a Dec. 26 a Daily Kos article entitled “Anti-Catholicism,” a “former Republican” Catholic woman and “forester/biologist” from the Deep South wrote, “I logged onto HuffingtonPost.com and read about the Pope getting knocked over by a mentally disturbed woman.

While several people pointed out the Pope’s age and how this could have easily resulted in a broken hip, many more rejoiced in the event.” One blogger’s “attack on Catholicism and Catholics was met with near universal approval within the HuffingtonPost community.”

She added, “I have read numerous, nearly identical comments and posts at Daily Kos.”

A number of HuffPost bloggers were also amazed at the venom of some of the responses, like one woman who observed, “This incident with the Pope has brought lots of Christmas cheer to the HP community. Wow.”

No doubt someone will say that “the right does it too.”

I invite those wishing to make such an assertion to provide examples. It will take a LOT of them just to “balance” this single incident.

The previous post in this series is here.

There is very little here with which to disagree, so I present in its entirety this post at BLOG and MABLOG

Carl Henry once said, “If evangelicals lose the battle for the mind of contemporary man it will be in their own colleges.” That’s the kind of prophetic and semi-inscrutable statement that we could use a lot more of, and which unfortunately, we don’t hear a very much any more. Since Henry wrote those words, the tide of the battle to which he referred has generally gone against us, and it was grim in his time. There are some hopeful signs here and there, but by and large, the Christian establishment for higher education has presented to a disintegrating world mere echoes of that disintegration, instead of a robust alternative to it. The academic fads that tear through the secular halls of learning stroll through our halls of learning. The virulent forms of unbelief that plague the postmodern mind commend themselves (always in milder forms) to us. We have come to believe that Christian counterculture consists of driving down the road to perdition at a slower rate of speed. But slow damnation is not the biblical alternative. The higher education of evangelicalism resembles the unfortunate politician that Winston Churchill once compared to a seat cushion — he always bore the impress of the last person who sat on him.

Henry again. “My guess would be that on balance the secular universities more effectively communicate humanism than many of our religious colleges succeed in communicating biblical theism.” They catechize their own more effectively than we do. They train their next generation in the tenets of their faith more rigorously than we do.

When the secular great ones assemble in their magnificent banquets, and a faithful believer comes into their hall, his presence will generally take one of two forms. Either he will attend as John the Baptist did, with his head on a platter, or he will attend as Daniel did, in order to translate the words of judgment that were written on the walls by a celestial hand. But we show up with all the confidence of a leper in a rented tux two sizes too large.

This is all very general, so let me mention a few specific areas where Christian higher education has lost its bearings and consequently its way. Our institutions (generally) do not exhibit biblical faith and fidelity on matters of: human sexuality that reflects God’s image, male and female; the doctrine of biblical creation; the meaning of history and the glory of Christendom; the serious idolatry of Enlightenment categories; the risible idolatries of postmodern rejection of Enlightenment categories; and the foundational need for Christian colleges to be free of financial entanglements with the secular state. For starters.

In short, Christian higher education no longer believes that Jesus Christ is the savior of the world. Having begun with Carl Henry, let me conclude with another of his most trenchant observations.

“The intellectual decision most urgently facing humanity in our time is whether to acknowledge or disown Jesus Christ as the hope of the world and whether Christian values are to be the arbiter of human civilization in the present instead of only in the final judgment of men and nations.”

And so let me propose a little thought experiment. Suppose that glorious statement above were to be presented to the board of trustees of every Christian seminary, college and university in North America, as well as to every faculty senate, and suppose it were presented for a straight up or down vote. How would the vote go? How would the truth fare? Exactly, and therein lies our problem. And the only way out is repentance.

So, now I am prepared to answer the question posed in the title of this post, “Does the secular Left believe its faith more firmly than the Christian academy believes its own?”

The answer? It depends on what you mean by the notion of “the faith of the Christian academy.”

And therein lies the problem, since, it seems, no one is quite sure these days.  And sadly, with all of that, there seem to be all too many matters of essentially complete agreement between the Christian academy and the secular Left at secular institutions.  Those matters of agreement seem to be far more determinedly defended by Christian academics than the things that make them distinctively Christian.  We can talk about whether Jesus’ message and life were more about personal salvation or corporate lifestyle and social justice, but woe to anyone who questions the underpinnings of anyone’s secularly defined disciplinary methodology, or the theory of knowledge that underlays it.  After all, some things are just too important to trifle with.

Did Jesus rise from the dead?  It depends on what you mean by “rise from the dead.”    If Jesus rose from the dead, does that matter to us today?  It depends on what you mean by “matter.”  Or maybe “today.”  Or “us.”  Or even “Jesus.”

But in some quarters, “diversity” and multiculturalism are without doubt absolutely required perspectives, more or less without nuance, for all good Christians who are listening to the Holy Spirit.

Whatever the Holy Spirit may actually be, I mean.  And whatever you mean by “Christian.”

H/T:  Melody

The next post in this series is here.

Animal activists torch home of Novartis chief

Anti-vivisectionists in Austria are thought to be behind a string of attacks on the Swiss-based pharmaceuticals giant Novartis.

In the most recent attack, on Monday in the Austrian town of Bach, activists are believed to have set fire to the holiday home of the company’s chief executive officer, Daniel Vasella. A fire accelerant was found at the scene, suggesting it was started deliberately, reports Reuters.

Last week, activists desecrated the graves of Vasella’s parents, stealing an urn containing the remains of his mother. That echoes a similar incident in the UK in 2004, when activists dug up a coffin and stole the remains of a woman whose family had run a business breeding guinea pigs for research.

If this had been done to an abortionist, it would have made major headlines around the world, accompanied with bloodcurdling cries of “terrorist!” and dark comparisons to “religious fundamentalists” who have violent tendencies.  Of course, in this case, since the religion in question is earth-worshipping paganism, and the target was the CEO of an evil corporation (never mind that abortion is ALSO big business, VERY big business, but one that is considered holy by some people), no such connections will be made.

In Austria, the activists also left the message “Drop HLS Now” on the headstone of Vasella’s mother’s grave, a warning for Novartis to cease funding animal experiments at Huntingdon Life Sciences – a company in the UK that conducts animal experiments for pharmaceutical companies.

Huntingdon Life Sciences has been the focus of a huge campaign by activists whose leaders are now mostly in jail following trials last year. But Novartis says it has not worked with HLS for years.

About three weeks ago, graffiti attacking Novartis and Vasella was scrawled over the church in Vasella’s village of Risch in central Switzerland. According to CNBC, messages have also been left on roads (with video) near Vasella’s home, including: “Vasella is a killer”, “We are watching you”, “Death to Vasella”, and “We’ll be back”.

What’s really crazy: this sort of talk wouldn’t even qualify as “hate speech” under the USA hate speech laws that the Democrat congress is trying to ram through. That’s because people who support basic medical research that saves lives are not a protected group.

Exit question: did you hear about this story ANYWHERE else in the media? If you did, did it get anything like the play it would have gotten if it was about something done to an abortionist? This post is going to be posted about two weeks after the events. So there will have been plenty of time for the coverage to happen…. if anyone cares.

Class dismissed.

Mr. Schaeffer, your dad would be proud. Very proud.

For the record, he was a great man.

But in the meantime, you really don’t have much to worry about.

And Ms. Maddow, as hard-hitting journalism goes, including probing questions, the challenging of facts not in evidence, etc., that was simply a tour de farce.   (Spelling intentional)

And your, uh, former audience is on to you.

UPDATE:  Mr. Schaeffer, is this one of the angry white men you had in mind?  I would purely love to see you attempt to debate with him.

H/T:  Melody

Sympathy for America’s Devils Click the link and read it all.  It’s simply brilliant.

For the past decade, the sight of Western liberals gathering in defense of terrorists seeking to impose a medieval patriarchal cult on the rest of the world by force seems incongruously odd. What is there about Islam that is so appealing to the erstwhile defenders of minorities, women and gays– all of whom have next to no rights under Islam?

Looking over tomes by liberal authors that argue that Islam is truly feminist, progressive and shares all their basic values, the rational observer is forced to wonder, “Who exactly are they kidding?” The answer is a complicated one, but the problem is not as new as it seems.

A friend of mine read my recent blog, “The Left At Christian Universities, Part 13,” and went to the website of one of the organizations that I identified as being problematic, CLUE.

On that website, she found links to this text, reporting CLUE’s activities in regard to trying to get “green truck” regulations implemented at Long Beach harbor:

We take it for granted that protectors of the environment and defenders of commerce are natural adversaries. Here in Long Beach, we are often asked to weigh the concerns of the uninsured mother of a severely asthmatic child against those of the woefully underpaid truck driver who would be deprived of his livelihood if required to purchase a greener rig.

Sameerah Siddiqui, an organizer for Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE-LA) isn’t interested in any false compromise between the two: She wants Long Beach residents to see that local poverty and pollution are inextricably linked, and to that end, she is asking city clergy to help her start a dialogue between residents and port workers, as well as city officials and port management. “We’re calling on the clergy in Long Beach to organize around this issue, and to address the dual problems of poverty and pollution,” Siddiqui says. “And we would like interfaith leaders to respond in the way that they know best.

“Religious leaders are in contact with the community on a day-to-day basis, and they see the suffering: the rising incidence of asthma among children, the respiratory illnesses of older members of the congregation. At the same time, we invite them to talk to port truck drivers, to hear their stories about not being able to make ends meet, of how the burden of maintaining their trucks is so onerous that they can’t provide for their families, and on a day-to-day basis, they themselves are exposed to the highest levels of pollution [without benefit of] medical insurance. . . . If we really want to enact green policies-holistic policies that address both the environment and worker health-we need to look at that relationship between the two.”

CLUE-LA is a major partner in the Coalition for Clean and Safe Ports. The Coalition-which pushed for the port’s adoption of the Clean Trucks Program-maintains that protecting the health of Long Beach residents requires a stable trucking work force that can afford to make capital improvements. And that requires employee status for truckers and, of course, an employer. Siddiqui isn’t directly involved with labor organization, but she argues that a coherent environmental policy can’t be accomplished without cohesion between labor and environmental constituencies. Facilitating a personal understanding between the two at the ground level with the support of Long Beach’s religious communities-getting people to sit across the table from one another in church meeting halls, to share their stories-is work she feels called to as a Muslim. “This is the future of America. All of our interests are interconnected.”

My friend’s question to me was, “What do you think of this?”  I think the subtext may have been that this seems to be a public spirited group doing a good thing, and what’s wrong with that?

Continue reading “Facts not in evidence”

The previous post in this series is here.

From the Cardinal Newman Society

A national Catholic higher education organization has identified 10 Catholic colleges and universities that are promoting student internships with organizations whose missions or activities are directly opposed to the moral teachings of the Catholic Church, including on fundamental issues such as abortion and marriage.

“This discovery validates the concerns of so many thousands of faithful Catholic parents and students, that public scandals at Catholic colleges are just the tip of the iceberg,” said Patrick J. Reilly, President of The Cardinal Newman Society. “Under what definition of ‘Catholic education’ do students receive academic credit to work for leading pro-abortion organizations?”

Last week, CNS wrote to the presidents of these colleges and universities to inform them of the problems with their internship programs. None have yet indicated that they will take steps to remedy the problems.

The internship programs—along with concerns about theological dissent, weakening academic standards and declining campus culture at many Catholic colleges and universities—help explain why most students and recent graduates of Catholic institutions believe that abortion and gay marriage should be legal, despite the Church’s clear teachings to the contrary. That was one of the disturbing findings of a November 2008 study published by the CNS Center for the Study of Catholic Higher Education and titled “Behaviors and Beliefs of Current and Recent Students at U.S. Catholic Colleges.”

This is not only a Catholic problem, of course.  Many evangelical colleges and universities bring speakers to their campuses who undermine the central missions of the institutions, as well as encouraging student participation in organizations that support pro-abortion and anti-family public policy.   Certainly, there will be times when a “professional internship” may require a student to participate in or with an organization whose ethos is questionable in these matters.  (Student teaching comes to mind.  The NEA is pro-abortion and anti-family through and through, and indirectly controls a great deal of American public education.)  But there seems to be an unfortunate pattern at some Christian colleges and universities of encouraging student participation in essentially leftist organizations promoting socialism, abortion-on-demand, leftist public and foreign policy, etc., such as CLUE, Progressive Christians Uniting, NAACP, Faith Voices for the Common Good, etc.  Such organizations may even be invited to campus to recruit students with week-long workshops.

Some of these organizations take moral stances at odds with Christian tradition, but may nevertheless do some good work.  Even Hamas hands out food and clothing in Gaza.  Not that these are “terrorist organizations” (although Progressive Christians Uniting seems quite fond of CAIR, which is a HAMAS supporter), but the point is that “doing good” is not a sufficient cause to place students with organizations that support evils like abortion and the destruction of the traditional family, or simply deafeningly bad ideas like socialism and pacifism, which generally lead to evil down the road.

At a minimum, if Christian universities/colleges are going to place students in internships with left-wing groups such as these, part of the “critical thinking and evaluation” exercises surrounding the intership should involve challenging the underlying assumptions and associations of the groups where students are placed.

Christianity is not distilled essence of leftism with scripture quotations.  The book of Luke is not a license for the government to play the role of Robin Hood, even if “red-letter-Christians” might wish otherwise.  And our failure as a society to protect the unborn remains the single biggest moral divide in our nation, much as slavery was 200 years ago, even if “enlightened evangelicals” are embarrassed to stand up against abortion-on-demand, when the cost is the good regard of the secular world with which they want to be friends.

If an organization passes out food to the hungry, and then supports politicians and policies that promote easy access to abortion, exactly what is that organization’s moral status?

Before we place our students with organizations whose values are divergent from Christian tradition (regardless of the religious clothing these organizations may wear), we’d better seriously consider what other options we have, and we’d better be certain we have prepared those students with sufficient intellectual and spiritual armor to resist the values-bending pressures they’ll have to endure.

There is a followup to this post here, about CLUE and the agenda they pursue.

H/T:  Christiansagainstleftistheresy

The next post in this series is here.

Latino Identity Politics and Immigration Payback

Over the past several years, pro-immigrant groups, Latino organizations, and Democratic Party-linked institutes in Washington have been on the same page about immigration and politics. Basically, it’s been a politics of numbers—bringing the growing number of Latinos and immigrants into the Democratic Party.

The entire article is basically a confession that both Democrats and “immigration rights” activists intend for people who entered the USA illegally to become Democrat voters, overwhelming the electorate with people who don’t understand the foundations of US society.  The article is not written by raving right-wing lunatics.  It is written by the people who are DOING it.

There is even a thinly veiled admission that “comprehensive immigration reform”  and “pathway to citizenship” are simply code phrases for “adding more Democrat voters who came here illegally.”

Read and weep, if you love your country.

Then call your senator and congressional representative. You haven’t been hearing so much about this issue lately, with economic issues center-stage. But “comprehensive immigration reform” is still back in the dressing room, waiting to make a dramatic appearance in the second act.

It’s popular to view so called “right-wingers” as nuts with guns and bad attitudes, not really suitable for polite society, probably unstable and dangerous.  From the panicky news coverage given to the murder of a late-term abortionist, to the Napolitano Homeland Security Office labeling conservatives as possible terrorist threats, to lies about how many US firearms make it to Mexico for use in the murderous drug wars,  the general feeling is that conservatives are just barely holding themselves back from mass murder….  and that’s on a good day.

So, for the innumerate among you, a little analysis.  First, some raw numbers.

America is now estimated to have between 238 million and 276 million firearms, compared with some 250 million legally owned guns, or 84 for every 100 people, recorded in a July 2001 survey.

This survey is a bit old.  There are now lots more guns in civilian hands in the USA.  In fact, there’s been something of a boom in gun sales since the 2008 elections.

It seems likely that a disproportionate number of firearms are in the hands of conservatives.  Given that a great many people own more than one firearm, there are likely a very large number of liberal-left folks who own none (although the rich ones hire bodyguards who are armed…  and are probably conservatives), while probably a majority of conservatives do own guns of some kind.

Let’s say, just for a talking point, that 50 million conservatives in the USA own guns, or have easy access to them in their households.

When was the last time you heard of a liberal/left government official of any kind, whether elected or appointed, who was murdered by a conservative with an agenda, using a firearm?  If conservatives are just angry people looking for an excuse, they certainly have the means.  If just a thousandth of a percent of conservative gun owners are looney-tunes crazy enough to shoot a lefty politician, that would leave 500 crazy, roaming Rambos, each one with blood in his eye and a round in the chamber.

I was just wondering.  Did they all miss?  Did they all take a shot and miss and get arrested?  Did the major media (with it’s well-known reticence about saying negative things regarding conservative gun owners) just fail to report it?  Were they all mistaken for ex-lovers of the lefty/lib politicians they shot at, and therefore ignored?  (After all, dog bites man isn’t news, is it?)

I dunno….  but IF the folks I saw out on the range last week wanted to shoot themselves a commie pinko gay-loving taxing/spending multi-cultural  baby-killing global warming socialist, I don’t think they’d be likely to miss.  Those conservative folks may be ignorant, selfish, bigoted and gap-toothed, but they can hit what they aim at, usually more than once, even if their drive-bys involve shooting from the back of a 1962 Ford pickup the color of primer.

If there were 500 of them (or just one!) out looking to kill a lefty tonight, it would show up on the news tomorrow.  I’m thinking that while some of them may have considered it, just about none of them would do it…  because, unlike the Left, they actually believe in right and wrong, and divine judgment.

So, lefty/libs everywhere, some advice.  Better stop accusing conservatives of the thing they almost never do.  Better stop accusing them of conspiring to murder the righteous redistributers of wealth.

First, it’s not true.  And second, you wouldn’t want to give them ideas.

In a wide-ranging interview of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, we get this damning admission.

Frankly I had thought that at the time Roe was decided, there was concern about population growth and particularly growth in populations that we don’t want to have too many of.  So that Roe was going to be then set up for Medicaid funding for abortion.

Are you a not-so-wealthy person of color?  Judge Ginsburg thinks we just don’t want to have too many of your kind.  Clear?

In fact, you should abort more often, so there won’t be so many of you.  Apparently some of you agree.  Quite a lot of you, based on abortion statistics for African-Americans.  Black babies are five times more likely to be aborted than white ones.  Are you trying to beat the racial percentages in the NBA, or what?  I think you won the race already.  But you sure aren’t winning FOR your race, if you’re aborting your babies, or encouraging easy availability of abortion, or voting for candidates who support that.  All you’re doing is making it easier for massa to make a buck controlling the population that he doesn’t want too much of.

That would be you.

Thankfully, and to the dismay of the White Left, some of you are fighting back.  Not enough of you yet, but the numbers may be gradually growing.  Some of you are getting positively uppity about the whole thing, for which I applaud you.

Here’s a new movie you’ll want to see:

Because it’s hard to get movies on topics that threaten the Left into the theaters, you’ll probably have to buy the DVD.

Massa is hoping you won’t bother.  Massa wants you to just shut up and chill.  Do what massa wants, OK?  Massa knows best.

UPDATE:  Ken Blackwell has some comments on the matter here.