A consistently entertaining and thought provoking blog is the Earnest Iconoclast.

He often makes me think and laugh at the same time which is a rare gift.

After saying some nice things about my discussion of Terri Schiavo and my stint trying to fill in for the Lord of the Free Blogs of the West, he moves on to point a problem he had with my discussion. First, he is correct to note that newbie that I was I introduced too many ideas into a nine minute segment (I clear my throat in that time in Torrey!). Second, I think I might be able to make my point clear here in the much more relaxed world of blogs.

He asks what gay marriage has to do with Terri Schiavo:

But I’m not sure what any of that has to do with gay marriage. The fact is there are gay people. The fact is that they often form couples and live together like heterosexual married couples. The fact is that unless they file a bunch of legal papers, they can find themselves without some fairly basic rights that married couples have, like the right to visit critically injured partners. Even with legal papers and contracts and powers of attorney, I would bet that parents could still find ways to interfere in the lives of gay couples. Allowing gay couples some of the same basic legal protections that heterosexual married couples have would hurt no one and would help them to live their lives the way they want to. Whether they can get “married” or form civil unions isn’t all that important. In fact, the whole issue is relatively unimportant compared to the more general problem of courts legislating from the bench. Dr. Reynolds distracted me from his argument about the courts and defining life issues with his comment about gays.

I think this is quite wrong, though it is motivated by charity so appealing. The problem with judges in the Terri Schiavo case and in homosexual marriage cases is that they have rejected the teleological view of the mankind that forms the basis for American law and democracy. American constitutionalism is based on the idea that some rights come from God. The state does not give them and the state cannot take them away. One of these rights is the right to life.

Each life has a purpose in Divine Providence as the Founders, not all of them traditional Christians, would have put it. So do body and even cosmological “parts” of the Divine order. Stars are at least partly to light the night for humanity. Eyes are for seeing. Ears are for hearing. In a world that rejects Divine order as our cultural elite do humans are free to make up functions and meaning for themselves.

At first this seems liberating, especially if you have a desire to try something unusual or new. In the end, men realize that there is no real meaning when they create their own meaning. Their personal meaning is dependent on the whims of the majority or the powerful. They also discover that defying teleology is not good for the soul which is the hidden part of a human courts no longer are allowed to consider.

I agree that gay marriage is not the most important issue out there. However, it is a piece of man defying God’s order. The state is sanctioning something unnatural and protecting it. What the state protects it gets more of. . . and I don’t mean more gay marriage. What will be next? With no sensible view of Divine order how many other things will the state be asked to declare wholesome and equal? A gay man and another gay man cannot be married, because they cannot form the one flesh union that can (in God’s good grace) produce children or the union of souls possible in a man and a woman. Thousands of years of human experience and common sense suggest that though pity would avert the eye from such a relationship the state has no business giving a blessing to it.

In the same way, it seems to me courts are now in the process of deciding which lives are worth living. Without a divine framework, there is no limit to what a court can say. I am not looking forward to seeing the results. This new secular picture of what makes a man a man is much more horrifying to me.

Poor Robert Byrd from my home state of West Virginia is being exploited.

Liberals are afraid of losing his safe vote. They do not trust the voters of West Virginia once he is allowed to retire. So they flog the aging lion to action, who seemingly has no friends to warn him of his condition, instead of encouraging him to retire to a dignified senior statesman role.

He is still useful to them so they use him. Doesn’t anybody care for him enough to tell him that he can no longer make a coherent argument? Doesn’t he have family who can warn him that he is helping his foes more than his friends?

Traditionalists believe in life. We believe in the dignity of each human being. Even if a human cannot help us, or society, they must be treated with dignity. We are horrified when even criminals are mistreated. This is why we believe that Terri Schiavo must be allowed to live with dignity.

The left, however, seems to favor killing those who inconvenience them, the very young or the very sick, while exploiting those who can still help them. This is the sad fate of the senior Senator from West Virginia.

Traditionalists believe that the old have a wisdom that the young would do well to hear. However, no person is immortal. The very old, and Robert Byrd is very old, lose physical energy. I do not agree with Byrd’s politics and never found him compelling. Safe to say nobody in my family ever voted for him. (My grandfather once told me, “Never buy a Ford, vote for a Democrat, or leave the faith.” I am not sure of the exact order of importance.) However, he has been in political office since 1948. He has a deep institutional memory of the Senate.

Instead of being allowed to share those memories and whatever wisdom might come with them, because he is still useful to them as a vote and someone who can say what those with a political future (or what they think is a political future) cannot say. As a result, they prop him up and keep him going and make him look foolish.

They use him for their own ends.

Zel Miller is a very wise man. He is always worth hearing and his opinions are often of more value than less experienced persons. However, Miller saw the wisdom in harboring his energy and retiring. He left the younger man’s world of the Senate and moved to a different role.

I find this sad, though I suppose he must participate in having his vote decided by the twenty-somethings who run his office and really act as the representatives of the people of West Virginia.

As a traditional Christian, I would see Bobby Byrd live in dignity. Of course, nobody should force Byrd to retire. Many seniors still have the energy to do highly rigorous jobs, Byrd is just not one of them. That is not my decision to make. . . and old fools should be allowed to go on being fools since the rest of us dare not regulate folly. There must be someone that can help Byrd watch a tape of himself on the floor of the Senate and see that his time for platform oratory is past. Can’t someone in his family end the self-inflicted exploitation of Robert Byrd?

The West is that part of the world that has been deeply influenced by the morality of Christianity and Judaism. Combined with her Greek and Roman heritage, this part of the world invented the modern University, discovered science, brought the blessings of modern medicine to the world, and helped perfect constitutional government.

Western civilization has been far from perfect. Sometimes it fails to live up to its commitment to justice and other virtues. As commitment to religious values has declined, it has more and more engaged in massive genocide and cultural suicide. However, I can think of no better place to live in all of human history. To this point, defenders of best best of Western civilization have been able to hold off the worst abusers.

Sadly, much of Western Europe has turned from its cultural heritage. It has embraced what Pope John Paul II calls the “culture of death.” This culture glorifies the living at the expense of the unborn and the dying. It seeks to perpetuate its own comfort and ease at the expense of the pain that the Designer uses to make great souls. At the start of life it murders the inconvenient. At the end of life, it kills the expensive and disturbing.

As a result, most of these nations cannot even reproduce themselves. These are nations in decline that are living off the past. What will happen when their populations, aging and without transcendent purpose, can no longer sustain the democratic structures they have been given? Plato would predict tyranny. That seems about right to me.

Florida is a very religious state. There is no doubt that the vast majority of its people, of all races and ethnic groups, embrace traditional Western values. It is a conservative state as the last presidential election proved beyond a shadow of a doubt. Traditional believers, Christians and Jews, form a powerful block in state politics. Their governor, Jeb Bush, is a great example of a real Republican who is willing to risk his political clout on defending human life.

Today a member of the judicial branch, the least representative of all the branches of government, decided that the executive could not protect a citizen to that state. Unelected judges at a higher level of government decided that this judge, himself elected, can decide who lives and who dies. The Founders believed a human right to life came from God. The judicial branch of Florida now believes that this right depends on the whims of judges.

Terri Schiavo must not be killed. She is a woman about my job who could live for decades. No man knows the state of the human soul during those decades. What might she be learning? What might she be experiencing when she has visitors? Can she still experience love? No person can say, but a judge has decided that she must die.

What is to be lost if Terri Schiavo is allowed to live? If she is brain dead, then allowing her parents to care for her will not cause Mrs. Schiavo any pain. She is gone. It would be a mercy to her parents to allow them to care for the daughter they love or at least her physical shell. If she is not brain dead, as the husband claims, then keeping food and water from her is murder of an innocent.

It might be replied that the husband knows that in this case Mrs. Schiavo would wish to die. However, this is not his decision. In the end, it is not even the decision of Mrs. Schiavo. Our life comes from God. We have no right to take it. In most states there is no right to suicide. One cannot give life and so one cannot take it. If I cannot take my own life, then certainly government or family members have no right to take my life.

We are not talking about prolonging death or extreme measures to keep “nature” from running its course. All persons in a coma need feeding. Many recover. Schiavo will not die for decades with basic medical care. There is no need to prolong dying if a person expresses a wish not to have extreme medical care. In the end, all of us will die and there is no reason to hide from that moment. It can be allowed to happen in God’s good time. Schiavo is a middle-aged woman who will not die unless we make her die.

Will Florida join the Netherlands and other dying lands in declaring that the right to innocent human life can be taken away be human decisions? Will Florida leave the West for the uncertain land governed by tyrannical judges most of them unelected by the people? (The judge in this most recent case is elected, but the judicial precedent he uses came from the higher court decisions.)

How can the people of Florida allow a man’s daughter to be taken from him by the decision of a court?

I got to guest host the Hugh Hewitt Show today.

It was exhilarating. . . Difficult. . . and the chance of a lifetime.

I am so thankful to Hugh and to Frank Pastore (who got me a start on radio) for letting me be substitute. Everyone will be relieved to know that I still have my day job. . . but I now know why Rush calls hosting “more fun than a human being should be allowed to have.”

It was. I hope they let me play again!

GOP Senators Seek Victory on Abortion Vote

The AP notes (I comment):

As for the abortion-related showdown, “it’s an uphill fight, but it isn’t over,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., author of a proposal to prevent protesters at abortion clinics and elsewhere from using bankruptcy to avoid payment of court judgments.

Protests at an abortion clinic are so bad from Schumer’s point of view that he must allow the government to hound them past bankruptcy.

The skirmishing over two controversial issues occurred on legislation to overhaul the nation’s bankruptcy laws, a measure with bipartisan support that is expected to clear the Senate later this week.

Conservative Republicans in the House have blocked passage of bankruptcy legislation in the past because it contained a provision relating to clinic protesters. This year, with Senate GOP leaders trying to craft legislation that can reach President Bush’s desk quickly, the issue has taken on a new significance.

In other words, Democrats have killed reform in the past by turning this bill into a way to save their favorite civil right: abortion.

Naral-Pro Choice America showcased the vote, calling it the first abortion test of the new Congress.

“Senators need to decide who they will stand with. There is not a single state where there is widespread support for turning this bill into the Firebomber Legal Protection Act,” said Nancy Keenan, president of the organization.

I get it. By NOT changing the law, Republicans are acting to protect “firebombers.” But isn’t firebombing illegal now? Violent protest is always wrong and we have laws to deal with it. Civil disobedience also (rightly) carries consequences which the protestor is willing to take to make his point. However, going after peaceful people expressing their views after they are broke to make political points is bad.

The next time someone tells you it does not matter which party is in power show them this story. The next time you hear that the Democrat Party welcomes pro-life points of view show them this story. The Democrat Party so venerates the notion of killing the unborn that it erects higher protections around an abortion clinic than it does around a church.

First he gave us California Adventure.

Now Michael Eisner is giving us a birthday party that consists of paint. Mostly.

Will someone, anyone, please fire this guy?

Disneyland is an American original. It is the only theme park that Walt Disney used.

Couldn’t we get a new E Ticket (first-class) ride to celebrate?

The last great ride at Disneyland was Indiana Jones a decade ago. Since then, we have gotten nice smaller rides (Pooh), but nothing to make someone go buy a ticket. It appears to me that the plans for the Golden Anniversary consist of a re-built old ride (Space Mountain), a new small ride (Buzz Light Year), and some gold paint and parades.

Pardon me if I hold my applause. Disney is telling everyone this is the Biggest Celebration ever, but I think the forty year celebration was better conceived. The park felt more alive. Tomorrowland (especially) had more rides. . . and then came the policy of closing rides when one was added or just closing rides period.

The team who believed running Millionaire eight days a week was a good marketing move and who made Cinderella II (the horror!) now brings us Celebration on the Cheap!

I can only hope the pocket book for the new Narnia movie is not coming from Burbank.

Will someone bring in the creative folk at Pixar or a risk taking business man of the sort that runs Walden Media before Disney just is not Disney anymore?

HughHewitt.com

One can dare to dream.

I dream of a day when Michael Jackson is not on the news for an entire week.

I dream of a day when the Packers sign a quality defensive end again.

I dream of a day when baseball has a real commissioner.

I dream of Frank Pastore running a blog.

I dream big. . . and I dream of Hugh Hewitt as president of the University of Colorado.

If a former Clinton administration official can be President of Harvard, couldn’t Hewitt be President of the University of Colorado?

If administrative hacks can be promoted to the job (pick your favorite University of California school), why can’t Hugh be President of the University of Colorado?

The essential job of a University president is to provide vision, contacts, and raise money. Mostly, the president raises money from deep pockets. . . lots and lots of money. In a state context, he also provides political cover for the system. Who could do all that better than Hewitt?

Hewitt could help transform one state university into a place where conservatives were welcome. He could transform the humanities from their “publish or perish mentality” to a “teach the stuff that makes for great adults” mentality. He could restore the dignity of the college professor as teacher.

Shouldn’t one state university be as open to the right as it is to the left? Think of the money Bush raised to run for President. Now imagine that money applied to a state University system. Imagine a state University where the professors and the people of the state were not utterly at war with each other!

Of course, we would lose Hugh on the radio, but tough times call for great sacrifice on the part of the conservative masses.

You too can dream. Support Hewitt for President. The time is now: Hewitt ‘05.

American leftists are not communists.

Thank God.

Communism has killed more people than any ideology in history.

Today thousands of people will be forced into slave labor to support communist regimes in places like China and North Korea.

I have met men forced to shovel human waste daily in concentration camps in communist nations for the crime of being Christian.

Nobody disputes these facts, but on the left there is none of the rage they correctly muster against much smaller abuses.

Today Koreans will die because an insane half-imbecile sits at the levers of power. Placed in power by his father, this diminutive dictator continues to starve his people. A photograph from a satellite of Asia is most instructive. Asia glows with the lights of human civilization. North Korea is dark. The follies of socialism do not allow the economic development needed for light.

Rightly or wrongly, Nazi ideology became associated in the public mind with the Right or the conservative movement. Properly, conservatives felt the need to denounce the fascism in all its forms. No man wants to be associated with Hitler and his works. No conservative group, outside of the marginal fringe, dares to utter a kind word for the thugs of the Third Reich. This is no loss. There is nothing good worth saying. If the dictators of Italy and Germany made the trains run on time, it was in order to practice genocide

The left has no force or fervor in the war against communism. Why?

Hugh Hewitt points all of this out using an LA Times article as an example. The LA Times reserves its harshest rhetoric for James Dobson and his putative assault on Sponge Bob or Christian generals who compare the foes of the USA to Satan. Jim Dobson would never get a story giving his side with little or no filter, because the Times knows Dobson is an evil man.

But for North Korea, a regime as bloody as any in history, pound for pound, the LA Times allows an operative of that government a large amount of precious space to tell lies.

The left, I think, operates in world where feeling and words matter more than truth. North Korea, as a communist regime, tells leftist lies. It talks about human rights and equality. It starves everyone (but the son of the former dictator, the Mini-megalomaniac) so it does practice rough equality. It talks a great deal about human rights, hates industry, and so it gets just a shade of sympathy.

Communist revolutions always go bad in the hearts employed at the LA Times. Of course any communist revolution is a horror from the start, butchering anyone connected with the Old Regime (even if the connection is having owned a slightly nicer hovel than the farmer next door), but the Times cannot see it. Every communist revolution is full of promise, a potential spring, because the words are right. Since the words go on being right, the LA Times knows (in its heart) that there is hope for redemption. Every revolution is a spring mysteriously blighted by winter. . . perhaps caused by the USA or colonialism or something. Communism has gone astray while fascism is evil.

The LA Times will never learn that fascism and communism are both evil. Why? It would require the sort of mind change that implies an organization governed by mind and not the heart. The LA Times does not argue, but cajoles. It does not reason for it can bluster. It is a paper without a head, but a very big chest.

The NT Times is always wrong. (See my own NT Times Rule.) It advances propositions and makes errors. Always. The LA Times is never exactly wrong, since the writers seem to know too little (or its editorial policy is too confused) to form meaningful propositions. The LA Times is a leftist feeling looking for an editorial position. It lurches about in a series of disjointed directions hoping to say something. Like Hollywood, which it represents, it follows its heart and believes in itself.

North Korea makes the right propaganda noises. The LA Times, which thinks even the little dictator may be one shoe lift or implant from redemption, can be conned by myth that communism can be redeemed. Anti-communism is so right wing. . . there must be another side to the story. It knows with its head (see the knowledge displayed by the LA Times writer at the Hewitt sight), but its head is not guiding the paper.

So goes an editorial meeting at the LA Times: somewhere given the leftist rhetoric of North Korea there must be something good! After all they hate the USA! They ride bikes! They eat natural foods! Let’s not think in terms of black and white/ good and evil! No stereotypes! There must be some good somewhere in this communist state. Isn’t there? Don’t they have a point of view? Doesn’t our government lie to us? What about Ohio? Was that a free election? Perhaps a government agent, with “courage” to let a few “critical comments” out which will be censored from the people of north Korea (how this is like the Times and the Soviet Union!) can be found to show the human face of communism. Perhaps the regime is about to change/is not so bad/has a good side. Someone can find that story? Right? Right? Anyone?

The Times keeps on searching for the Communist reformer with a zeal that makes Quixote look sane while following its heart to oblivion. If it were enabling murder, it would be amusing.

My own comments inserted in lovely Packer Green.

Liberal and weak clergy blamed for empty pews (U.K.)
The Times (U.K.) ^ | March 05, 2005 | Ruth Gledhill

Posted on 03/07/2005 9:13:24 AM PST by nickcarraway

CHURCHGOING is in freefall in Britain because clergy and ministers are failing to stand up for moral values and treasured beliefs, a new survey has found.

A follow up study has discovered that over eating makes people obese. Future studies hope to examine the link between membership in the Democrat Party and small family size.

Churches are being “silent” and “lukewarm” in the face of moral and social collapse, according to the £20,000, year-long study of 14,000 British churchgoers and those who have left the Church.

The next time someone suggest any manner of “up dating” of the Church in order to attract the youth of America copy this story and hand it to them. British Christianity destroyed itself in order to re-invent itself for a new generation.

Here is a good rule: Don’t offend your core customer base (see Disney’s California Adventure with its lack of rides for children) while attemting to get a group that will never come your way. (Let’s turn off the growing number of conservative, homeschooled young people in order to vainly try to reach the hedonist!)

Researchers found “a widespread sense of anger and frustration” at what was happening to churches in the UK and Ireland. The 42-page report is an indictment of modern preaching and worship, illustrating how excessive liberalism and lack of conviction are driving worshippers from the pews.

The report portrays a desire for sermons based on the Bible and traditional teaching, rather than on politics, social affairs or audience-pleasing stunts.

Who would have thought that people who come to Church want the Bible and tradition? The goal to get everyone in Church may be to blame. If you are in the “in crowd,” then there is a deep urge to get the rest of the “in crowd” to go to Church with you. It shames you to see all those Church ladies and badly dressed men. Of course, the Church ladies had the children that sustain the culture and the badly dressed men were the Tommies that saved England in World War II.

I love to have people over to my house for dinner. We try to accomodate their desires and not offend them. On the other hand, they are coming to my house. They expect things to be “different.” In the same way, Church can welcome guests, but does not have to kow-tow to their desires. Being hospitable does not mean that you quit being who you are.

Feminism (more than anything else) killed the church in Britian. See The Death of Christian Britain.

The report calls for better apologetics and Christian teaching, and claims that many clergy are unable to mount a convincing argument in defence of Christianity and are not interested in trying. When asked to explain why Christianity might be true, the common response is: “It is just a matter of faith.”

We are here to serve.

The report says: “This has resulted in a growing number of people being left with the false impression that there are no strong reasons for Christian belief. Ultimately they abandon churchgoing and are mystified that Christianity continues to grow elsewhere in the world.”

Richard Swinburne is British. Have most British Christian heard of him? I suspect most Church leaders in Britain fear making arguments that Christianity is true, because it will disconcert their tony friends who are not Christian.

The report blames the contemporary practice of teaching the universal nature of God’s love. Because people believe God will continue to love them no matter what they do, they no longer see any need to go to church to confess their sins or seek guidance on how to change their lives. The aim was to explore the reasons why Christianity is in decline in Britain and Ireland but thrives in other parts of the world, including prosperous countries such as the US.

Researchers found that the thousands of people who still do go to church do so out of a sense of duty and not because it brings them any fulfilment. They report widespread criticism of the current fashion for “family” or “all age” services for bordering on entertainment rather than worship. One Shropshire churchgoer said: “I’ve seen balloons rising from the pulpit, fake moustaches and all manner of audience appeal . . . but with no real message behind it.”

No comment is really needed. Clownish tricks may work in the short term in places like the USA with a large number of curious half-churched people that can be tricked into Church by stunts. However, these folk do not form the core of any Church. At the same time, abandoning the core convictions of the faith will drive away the people who make the Church go.

As to theology: telling people there is no reason to be a Christian and that God (if there is one) will love them even if they don’t believe in him is not unlike selling a product where you claim in the advertising that there is no reason to buy it and that the company will be sending it to you for free in any case next week.

Sigh.

Instead, churchgoers want to be told how to live a Christian life, and to understand how to evangelise in a society distracted by materialism. The report correlates statistics from the past 150 years showing attendance rising in the last half of the 19th century and peaking around 1905 before going into steady decline, with an inverse trend of crime, drunkenness and illegitimacy falling to a low at the turn of the 19th century and then steadily rising.

The Death of Christian Britain puts the entire process within the context of a single decade. It relates to the acceptance out-loud of liberalism and feminism in the Church.