Category: Uncategorized

HS poses a theological question

I am an Orthodox Jew in Montreal who finds many of your columns interesting. Being acutely aware of the long history of hostile (to put it mildly) relations between Jews and Christians, I am intrigued and gratified by the Evangelical support of Jews and Israel which I am convinced is, in large measure, genuine. In your latest piece, you state that “Most Christians don’t question the imperative to bless Israel any more than they question ”thou shalt not kill.” And certainly, if you compare the life of the average Israel-cursing Muslim with that of the Israel-blessing Christian, there would appear to be some truth to be found in that particular verse.” Yet, here in Canada (and elsewhere) we are witnessing calls for boycotting Israel and other morally-bancrupt anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sentiment on the part of the United Church of Canada and other Protestant denominations. Clearly the latter are not ‘blessing’ Israel. Do you see any evidence, then, that the Almighty bestows more blessing, however one wishes to define it, on the Evangelical community than on the UCC and their ilk? (I sincerely hope the answer is yes because I wish all Evangelicals and other Christians of good faith who truly support Israel be rewarded with commensurate blessing from On High).

I don’t know enough about the United Church of Canada to answer this question, but if I’m correct in assuming that the UCC is akin to the various mainline Christian denominations that have moved dramatically away from Christian doctrine as espoused in the Bible, then the answer is definitely yes.

While I don’t buy into the notion that Megachurchism is in itself proof of Divine favor, I do tend to see church growth and the successful proselytizing of the formerly disbelieving as probable evidence of it. And I see a decline in membership and evangelical activity as the expected result of a theological falling away.

On a tangential note, I told Big Chilly that several years ago that I expected Woodland Hills to dramatically decline in membership when it became clear that Greg and the other church leaders rejected any strictures on female leadership. While this was apparently not a causal factor in the actual decline that subsequently appeared, it is an interesting coincidence. In any event, it’s important to note that spiritual logic necessarily differs from its material cousin even if similar rules appear to govern both.

From NRO:

If you want to feel just a little more anxious about the military situation in the Iraq theater of the war, read this Christian Science Monitor piece by Patrick Lang, a former official in the Defense Intelligence Agency. Lang analyzes a basic logistics issue: lines of supply. Because virtually all of our forces’ materiel and supplies are trucked from Kuwait, the lines stretch through large swaths of southern Iraqi territory that are quiescent at present but “thoroughly infiltrated by Iranian special operations forces working with Shiite militias.” Thus, if tensions over Lebanon or nuclear-weapons development escalate further, Lang argues that Iran could essentially order a serious harassment campaign against the American supply lines, lightly guarded and operated largely by skittish Turkish and South Asian truck drivers.

Meanwhile, the idiot neocons want to attack Iran and Syria. Now, Michael Ledeen vehemently denies he is calling for military conflict when he ends every column with “Faster, Please”, he insists that he is merely supporting regime change because with but a little external cheerleading, the people of those countries are sure to rise against the oppressive regimes that currently rule them.

When one considers how much this resembles the brilliant plan of Enjolras in “Les Miserables”, one is left with two conclusions. One, the neocons really are a bunch of thinly disguised Reds. Two, their strategic ability is somewhat lacking.

It’s ironic that it takes a man from the East to inform men of the West how they have gone awry:

The truth is, a real man doesn’t care what any woman thinks of him. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks of him: he answers solely to his spirit.

Real men don’t pretend or even try to understand women. They simply love them for being the mysterious, capricious creatures that they are. And they don’t take them too seriously, either. They know the vicissitudes of the female mind, its constant insecurities and the fluctuations in mood.

Rather than pander to them, they simply watch them drift by like so many clouds on the horizon.

The whole article is interesting, even if he puts a little more emphasis on sexual dominance than I deem fitting. While he is clearly somewhat of a cad, the truth is that cads understand women much better than nice guys, which is why they can dominate them so easily. In any event, the section quoted is the most important part. Women can no more define masculinity than men can define femininity. Women are manipulators, so they’ll never shy away from saying stupid things like: “I think doing the laundry is sexy!”

The fact that the guy will figure out that she’s full of it the first time he does the laundry and she does not exhibit the customary physical reactions nor does she come through on the implied promise tends to escape them. But then, logic and accountability are not strong points for the average woman.

One must always give more weight to what any individual does than what he says. But it’s particularly important with women, who seldom put much thought into what they’re going to say before they say it. I can’t tell you how many men I know have dwelled for weeks on something mentioned in passing by a woman with whom they’re involved, meanwhile, she doesn’t even remember saying it.

It’s nice when a woman approves of you. But there will always be times when her female grasp of the situation will be fundamentally at odds with a man’s. It’s at those times that your true measure will be taken.

Linda Chavez is the latest to try defending neocons from getting blamed for their manifest failure:

Gibson’s claim that Jews have caused all the world’s wars is only a less subtle and more grandiose version of the current mantra that “neoconservatives” have led us into war in Iraq. Make no mistake, most critics on both the left and right who inveigh against “neoconservatives” really mean “the Jews” or “Jewish influence” has caused this war.

What’s with the scare quotes around neoconservatives? Kristol and company are overt neocons, there’s nothing imaginary about it. And as I’ve repeatedly demonstrated, many of the neocons who come in for criticism aren’t Jewish, ergo the attempt to slur the critics of neocons with anti-semitism is wildly dishonest.

Thus far, the list of right-wing figures pushing this blatant lie include:

Rush Limbaugh
Joel Mowbray
Michael Ledeen
Linda Chavez

Got any more examples?

A reader and his family embark on the grand educational adventure:

I thought you and Spacebunny might want to know that the wife and I finally pulled the trigger on homeschooling. We were trying to decide between [X], which would technically keep our kids in public education, and [Y]. We chose the latter because when it came down to it, our decision to homeschool was based on our desire to raise our children as Christians, not as secular humanist/Christian hybrids. The thing about [X], though, is that it’s completely free with all materials provided, a credentialed teacher who parents can call at any time and a loner computer and stipend for internet access. I can imagine that would be pretty attractive to those with few resources, and I think it’s interesting that the state is making homeschooling through them much easier. They must know something….

I have to admit that before I started reading your paranoid ramblings, I viewed homeschooling as a habitat for granolas and PTL members. But the more I warmed to the idea, the more my family and friends pushed the tired arguments you continuously shred. If there’s a guaranteed way to convince me to do the opposite, it’s to spout talking points. The more “socialization” came up, the more I thought about the wonderful anatomy lessons I learned on the school bus when I was six or the myriad examples (excluding the even greater numbers rumored) of teachers who had relationships with students.

So, if my kids grow up to be toothless mountain folk, I’ll blame you guys and homeschooling not my Southron DNA.

Good for him, and better yet, good for his kids. I strongly doubt any of them will have cause to regret the decision. It’s also encouraging to be informed that my paranoid ramblings are not entirely pointless.

By the way, one reason I’m never shy of indulging in what looks like repetition to the regular reader is that the arguments faced in almost any area of life, from economics and education to military action and religion, simply do not change. We are still, more than 2,000 years on, battling the pernicious ideas fostered by Plato in his Republic. Plato, Rousseau, Dewey and other revenant-heads of the educational hydra must be slain anew by every generation of parents.

Americans are increasingly skeptical of the Official Story:

More than a third of the American public suspects that federal officials assisted in the 9/11 terrorist attacks or took no action to stop them so the United States could go to war in the Middle East, according to a new Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll.

The national survey of 1,010 adults also found that anger against the federal government is at record levels, with 54 percent saying they “personally are more angry” at the government than they used to be.

Widespread resentment and alienation toward the national government appear to be fueling a growing acceptance of conspiracy theories about the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

It shouldn’t be surprising that computer-savvy Americans, many of whom grew up with Photoshop and CGI, should prove to be less susceptible to getting whipped into a war fever than past generations. But here’s the truly interesting part:

The survey also found that people who regularly use the Internet but who do not regularly use so-called “mainstream” media are significantly more likely to believe in 9/11 conspiracies. People who regularly read daily newspapers or listen to radio newscasts were especially unlikely to believe in the conspiracies.

Question: which group is generally considered to be more intelligent and better educated, those who use the Internet or those dedicated to the mainstream media? What would really settle this to my satisfaction is learning what the women who get their news from local television believe. Whatever that might be, the truth is guaranteed to be the opposite.

From The Smoking Gun:

NOVEMBER 21–Meet Deanna Bobo. The 37-year-old Arkansas woman is the 3,496th teacher to be arrested this year on charges that she had sex with an underage student (in this case, a 14-year-old boy).

I was surprised to see that there are that many arrests per year. Keep in mind that those 3,500 annual arrests doesn’t cover all of the other school employees, and one would presume that not every incident of improper teacher-student relations leads to an arrest. Furthermore, a significant percentage teachers arrested have been involved with more than one student over the course of their career. The children’s “advocates” like to describe teachers as being the first line of defense against parental child abuse, but at least where sex is concerned, I suspect that there are far more teachers screwing around with the kids themselves than are reporting cases of incest.

Of course, it’s nice to see that the teachers of America are taking such a personal, hands-on approach to providing sex education. If only they were half as motivated to teach history and economics.

From a Feministing comment:

Yes, she’s blonde, young, wealthy, and thin, but is that really what makes her opinion invalid?

The answer is obviously yes. Being blonde, young, wealthy and thin, (or to simply be attractive to men), reduces a woman to being a helpless tool to the Patriarchy. Worse, a woman intentionally doing anything that might make her more attractive to men, such as getting breast implants, wearing makeup or not eating that seventh bowl of ice cream, is nothing less than sex treachery.

Here’s a nice means of nailing an atheist’s hide to the wall and having some fun at the same time. When one goes on the customary “religion is responsible for most of the wars in history” rant, instead of arguing with them, agree wholeheartedly and state your admiration of their brave, contrarian support for Mel Gibson’s idea that the Jews are responsible for all the war in the world.

This, of course, will lead to an immediate and vehement denial that they meant to blame it on the Jews. So, ask them what religion they had in mind, if they weren’t thinking of Jews. These days, most atheists will say Islam, and some will say Christianity. In response, ask them who started the Roman-Jewish wars, the Muslims or the Christians. (The Jews started all three, by the way, as all three were revolts against Rome. Can’t say I blame them either.)

If your poor atheist is slow enough, you can have some fun when they try to blame it on the Romans in order to avoid being accused of anti-semitism. If not, you can ask them who started the wars that Sun Tzu was writing about, the Muslims, the Christians or the Jews. At this point, they’ll probably admit that they have no idea what they’re talking about, unless they’re particularly stubborn, in which case they’ll bring up the Crusades, the Thirty Years War and the Spanish Inquisition.

If you can’t handle it from that point, you haven’t been paying attention here.

Another, similarly amusing tactic can be to ask an atheist who the greatest general in history was, then ask what religion Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Sun Tzu or Genghis Khan subscribed to. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of intelligent and historically knowledgeable atheists out there, it’s just that such a wildly stupid comment is a sure sign that you’re not dealing with one of them.

Derbyshire explains the true evil of white-on-black crime:

The working assumption here is that black Americans are like children, requiring special protection from abusive adults, and not really responsible for their own misdeeds. The corollary is that a crime committed by a white American against a black American is especially heinous, and demands especially savage punishment, because it is really a species of child abuse.

This is why blacks and women are seldom held fully responsible for their misdeeds, because in the eyes of the American legal system, they are children. Except, of course, for feminist criminals, who are retarded children and therefore doubly incapable of experiencing the consequences of their decisions.

I’m not sure about the correct analogy for a black feminist criminal, however. Perhaps a crippled, retarded child? No, because a chair won’t get you out of anything as effectively as the appropriate skin color or sex. Oh, I’ve got it! They’re like retarded kids with cancer.