Danger: Right Wing Radical Extremists

According to a piece by the Associated Press: "Nearly 1.5 million babies, a record, were born to unmarried women in the United States last year, the government reported Friday. And it isn’t just teenagers any more".

Does that trouble you? If so, it probably means you're a right wing extremist.

Would you prefer to legally limit abortion? You would!? You must be a radical. Are you also one of those nuts who wants to keep marriage between a man and a woman? You're kidding? You're definitely a far right extremist with views that are dangerous to society.

According to Senator Charles Schumer, and I assume his many like minded colleagues, the withdrawal of Harriet Miers for consideration to the Supreme Court Schumer was orchestrated by conservative forces he labeled as "extremist" and "radical", forces who are jeopardizing American society with their odious agenda. But who is he referring to, exactly? Well, certainly one of those forces is Concerned Women for America, who the day prior to Mier's withdrawal came out publicly against her confirmation on the grounds that she made speeches soft on abortion. So what are the beliefs of CWA that Schumer finds so "extreme". Let's see, I went to their web site and pulled down the following issues CWA sees as "core." Here they are:

Definition of the Family
CWA believes the traditional family consists of one man and one woman joined in marriage, along with any children they may have. We seek to protect traditional values that support the Biblical design of the family.

Sanctity of Human Life
CWA supports the protection of all life from conception until natural death. This includes the consequences resulting from abortion.

Education
CWA seeks to reform public education by returning authority to parents.

Pornography
CWA endeavors to fight all pornography and obscenity.

Religious Liberty
CWA supports the God-given rights of individuals in the United States and other nations to pray and worship without fear of discrimination or persecution.

National Sovereignty
CWA believes that neither the United Nations nor any other international organization should have authority over the United States in any area, including economics, social policy, military, and land ownership.

Sound extreme? I've got new for you. If you align with any of these, the odds are that you too are viewed by a growing number of Americans as a dangerous "radical". Read these core issues again. Do you find it hard to believe that Senators Schumer, Reid, Boxer...et-al, and the millions that vote to keep them in office find such beliefs so viscerally offensive? Well, they do. But they despise these views what is it that they want to promote? Well, since the CWA's core issues are "extreme", it's logical to conclude that the Democratic Party supports the opposite position:

1) Sanctity of Human Life. The Democratic Party does not believe in the sanctity of human life and wants no limits against abortion.

2) Education. The Democratic Party wants to keep educational authority in the state and out of parent's control.

3) Pornography. The Democratic Party does not want to fight pornography and obscenity but rather seeks to support and promote it.

4) Religious Liberty. The Democratic Party apparently does not like religious liberty but seeks to discriminate and persecute religious observance.

5) National Sovereignty. The Democratic Party believes that the United States should cede authority, by one degree or another, to the U.N, and other world bodies, like the International Criminal Court in Belgium.

Hyberbole? I wish it were, but on issues small and large the Democratic Party has fought for and defended each and every one of these platforms. But they are not the radicals; you are.

Mark

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"Offenses" All Around

by Mark Schneider

Among the many benefits society derives from its children one is, perhaps, not so obvious. Children instinctively, unless prematurely jaded, understand the difference between right and wrong and in this regard offer adults a reliable barometer of good and evil.

This observation hit me not too long ago when my eight year old son was riding with me in the car one afternoon. I was half listening to the radio. The station was NPR when suddenly the topic changed to a frank discussion about abortion. I quickly changed the channel. Why? Because I am not yet ready to introduce my child to the grim reality that people in America legally kill children in the womb. I know with certainty, from discussions we've had on other moral subjects but far less ominous, that my son would understand immediately that abortion is a great wrong. But much worse for his vulnerable soul would be the moral dissonance he would undoubtedly experience upon learning that such an act was the law of the land.

The same sort of thing has happened - me having to take steps to shield my children - concerning the subjects of homosexuality and gay marriage. How am I to explain such things? It is a terrible irony that adults are much better equipped to exercise the ethical malleability required to confuse in subtle shades of gray moral distinctions that to a child are simple and easily understood.

Now my eight year old is certainly aware that people lie, cheat, steal and murder. But he can already reconcile these things. There is less dissonance because, like him, at least for these sins the rest of society is in accord with his own moral conscience. He knows that the people that do these things, if caught, pay consequences. It makes sense to him that society condemns these acts and punishes them. That's why, in his mind, we need the police, whom he views with an appropriate measure of fear and reverence. The dissonance arises when society protects and even celebrates acts he knows by nature to be evil.

Try this test. Think about how you might feel explaining why the Allies during WWII had to kill Axis soldiers. Would explaining this historical fact present a moral dilemma to you? Is it something your child would struggle with emotionally? Probably not. But what about having to explain the topless nightclub or bath house downtown?

We can usually know something is wrong (that adults call right) when it becomes distasteful and unnatural to explain it to a child. A bad omen for our society is that it's getting much more difficult to avoid these unnatural conversations. Today, for instance, while watching a golf match on ABC I dared not abandon the remote during the commercials becuase of the constant bombardment of Sunday afternoon sports with commercial teasers from Desperate Housewives, the latest horror flick and other raunchy material. Dissonance. Neither can I allow my child freely, without vigilance, to look over my shoulder when I read the newspaper due to its inescapable and lurid content. Dissonance. In the mall on Saturday, I had to guard against walking past certain advertisements and stores that predictably parade and celebrate the sensual, grotesque and evil manifestations of Halloween. Dissonance. Confusion. It's everywhere these days.


For good reason our Lord cautioned...

"It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they come. It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones" Luke 17: 1,2

Increasingly, it seems, the fear of millstones is going away.

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The devil in the details

Never say never. Here I am, posting a link to an OP-ED piece that ran today in the Los Angeles Times, a paper renowned for its intolerance on non-leftist philosophy. But the season may be a changing, for I have noticed a change since the annoucement of Michael Kinsley's deparature. Here's an example, a compelling article on the postmodernism's assault on truth by Amos Oz.


By Amos Oz, Israeli novelist AMOS OZ is the author, most recently, of the memoir "A Tale of Love and Darkness" (Harcourt, 2004). This article is adapted from a speech he gave when he received the Goethe Prize in


JUST AS IT IS immensely difficult to define the truth, yet quite easy to smell a lie, it may sometimes be hard to define good, but evil has its unmistakable odor: Every child knows what pain is. Therefore, each time we deliberately inflict pain on another, we know what we are doing. We are doing evil. Ever since the Book of Job, and until not so long ago, Satan, man and God lived in the same household. All three seemed to know the difference between good and evil. God, man and the devil knew that evil was evil and that good was good. God commanded one option. Satan tried to seduce the other. God and Satan played on the same chessboard. Man was their game-piece. It was as simple as that. Get rest of Article here

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Worldly word

New Bible texts translate the Bible away | by Gene Edward Veith

As evangelicals debate the inclusive-language Today's New International Version (TNIV), many liberal mainline churches have slipped far down the slippery slope in what they have done to the Bible. Get rest of Article here

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Don't Misunderstand Miers

by Thomas Lifson

President Bush is a politician trained in strategic thinking at Harvard Business School, and schooled in tactics by experience and advice, including the experience and advice of his father, whose most lasting political mistake was the nomination of David Souter. The nomination of Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court shows that he has learned his lessons well. Regrettably, a large contingent of conservative commentators does not yet grasp the strategy and tactics at work in this excellent nomination.

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Remote Control

The Supreme Court's greatest failing is not ideological bias—it's the justices' increasingly tenuous grasp of how the real world works

by Stuart Taylor Jr.

.....

I've been working on some questions in case the makers of Trivial Pursuit ever decide to put forth a Supreme Court edition: Now that Sandra Day O'Connor has announced her retirement, how many remaining justices have ever held elected office? How many have previously served at the highest levels of the executive branch of government? How many have argued big-time commercial lawsuits within the past thirty-five years? How many have ever been either criminal defense lawyers or trial prosecutors? How many have presided over even a single criminal or civil trial? The answers are zero, zero, zero, one, and one, respectively. (David Souter was a New Hampshire prosecutor once upon a time, and later served as a trial judge.) Get of rest of Article here

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