"My fear of Islamic terrorism is not irrational. It's quite well-founded. "

From Christopher Hitchens, part of a must-read interview with Michael Totten.

"The useless and meaningless term Islamophobia, now widely used as a bludgeon of moral blackmail, is testimony to its success."

Hitch gives us the word on yet another insidious plan to stifle free expression, in the name of "not offending Islam":

Yes, I think we can see where we are going with that. (And I truly wish I had been able to attend that gathering and report more directly on its rich and varied and culturally diverse flavors, but I couldn't get a visa.) The stipulations that follow this turgid preamble are even more tendentious and become more so as the resolution unfolds. For example, Paragraph 5 "expresses its deep concern that Islam is frequently and wrongly associated with human rights violations and terrorism," while Paragraph 6 "[n]otes with deep concern the intensification of the campaign of defamation of religions and the ethnic and religious profiling of Muslim minorities in the aftermath of the tragic events of 11 September 2001."

No decent person wants to defend actual bigotry against Muslims, or ethnic profiling, but there is something subtle and wholly sinister at work here. He continues:

You see how the trick is pulled? In the same weeks that this resolution comes up for its annual renewal at the United Nations, its chief sponsor-government (Pakistan) makes an agreement with the local Taliban to close girls' schools in the Swat Valley region (a mere 100 miles or so from the capital in Islamabad) and subject the inhabitants to Sharia law. This capitulation comes in direct response to a campaign of horrific violence and intimidation, including public beheadings. Yet the religion of those who carry out this campaign is not to be mentioned, lest it "associate" the faith with human rights violations or terrorism. In Paragraph 6, an obvious attempt is being made to confuse ethnicity with confessional allegiance. Indeed this insinuation (incidentally dismissing the faith-based criminality of 9/11 as merely "tragic") is in fact essential to the entire scheme. If religion and race can be run together, then the condemnations that racism axiomatically attracts can be surreptitiously extended to religion, too. This is clumsy, but it works: The useless and meaningless term Islamophobia, now widely used as a bludgeon of moral blackmail, is testimony to its success.

First off, I find it morally absurd to be lectured, via the agency of the U.N, by theocrats who commit unspeakable acts such as these, on the virtues of tolerance. Secondly, 9/11 wasn't just tragic. When someone drowns in a lake, that's tragic. 9/11 was an abomination, and an act of war. A lot of decent, freedom-loving, non-terrorist-loving people have decsribed it as a tragedy, but in this context (tragic events), it comes off as an insult, much like the whole of the document.

Read the whole thing.

"Sooner or later, he just might have to stand for something."

Ouch. Apparently, the fallout over Obama's choice of Rick Warren to perform to invocation at his inaguration has yet to subside, and many of Obama's committed supporters are damn near close to having buyer's remorse:

Not that he was planning to attend, but Barack Obama should know that my sister's inauguration night party -- the one for which she was preparing Obama Punch -- has been canceled. The notice went out over the weekend, by e-mail and word of mouth, that Obama's choice of Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation had simply ruined the party. Warren is anti-gay, and my sister, not to put too fine a point on it, is not. She's gay.

Richard Cohen explains further, why his sister has called the party off:

Obama has chosen above all other religious figures to represent him in this most solemn moment. He likens my sister's relationship -- three children, five grandchildren, so loving as to be envied and so conventional as to be boring -- to incest or polygamy.

The conventional thing to say is that Obama has a preacher problem -- first the volcanic Jeremiah Wright and now the transparently anti-gay Warren. But the real problem has nothing to do with ministers and everything to do with Obama's inability or unwillingness to be a moral leader. Sooner or later, he just might have to stand for something.

OK, then. Now, I come at this issue from a different perspective, and I happen to have a much more positive view of Warren than most involved here. I'm an evangelical Christian myself. I've discussed my views on gay marriage elsewhere, and yet I understand why people have taken issue with many of Warren's statements here. I think many of his statements are problematic, to be polite. That being said, I don't see Warren as the raving bigot many others see him as, and I don't think Obama does either.

There's no doubt that Obama (and most of his supporters) and Warren, on many key social issues don't end up in the same place, but I think Obama has made it clear that he is going to try to build bridges to various constituencies that haven't exitsed in a long time. Most of the political moves Obama has made regarding his new administration have been basically those of a pragmatic centrist liberal. This is good news in my book, although there is something to be said of the limits of pragmatism. Pragmatism only gets you so far, and there is a difference between cautious moderation and self-serving political calculation. I'm saying he's anywhere near that point yet, but a lot of his supporters voting him into office expecting a sweeping revolution. This is the view they imposed upon him, not so much what he promised, although he did not do that much during the campaign to dispel those notions, and frankly used them to his benefit. I voted for a centrist, so I'm not upset, although some lefties are starting to feel like they've been hosed.

I'm also not disappointed, because what I've seen from the President=elect so far hasn't fallen below my expectations. I voted for Obama, because I liked most of what he brought to the table. I did not however, fall in love with him to the extent that others did. Like I've said before, we may have elected a new kind of politician, but we still elected a politician.

HT: Simon

UPDATE: Mileage is your own, and I'll have to check this out as far as Warren's views on torture and global warming are concerned, but as Sara Robinson explains here, it's not just gay marriage that's the issue here.

UPDATE#2: Via Pat (with clear-headed wisdom as usual), comes this spot-on defense of Rick Warren, from that crazy, closeted right-winger named....Melissa Etheridge. Read it folks. Like I told you, things aren't always what they seem at first:

I told my manager to reach out to Pastor Warren and say "In the spirit of unity I would like to talk to him." They gave him my phone number. On the day of the conference I received a call from Pastor Rick, and before I could say anything, he told me what a fan he was. He had most of my albums from the very first one. What? This didn't sound like a gay hater, much less a preacher. He explained in very thoughtful words that as a Christian he believed in equal rights for everyone. He believed every loving relationship should have equal protection. He struggled with proposition 8 because he didn't want to see marriage redefined as anything other than between a man and a woman. He said he regretted his choice of words in his video message to his congregation about proposition 8 when he mentioned pedophiles and those who commit incest. He said that in no way, is that how he thought about gays. He invited me to his church, I invited him to my home to meet my wife and kids. He told me of his wife's struggle with breast cancer just a year before mine.

Not the hate-monger you might have been expecting, huh? Now, as noted earlier, others may still take issue with Warren's pro-life views, or his supposed squishiness on global warming, or his supposed endorsement/non-rejection of torture. I choose to take those with a grain of salt at this point. At this point, Obama has embraced someone with whom he disagrees. Wow, who knew he'd get so much heat for living up to his campaign promises?

About That Saddleback Forum Saturday Night...

OK, I'm pretty sure most watched, or at least heard about the Saddleback Forum at Rick Warren's church Saturday night, and the continuing controversies. I watched it, and just had some quick thoughts:

I thought Rick Warren did a good job. He was trying to create a civil discourse with both candidates, and I thought he did that to the best of his ability. As to the debate itself, I thought both did a good job, although as far as getting done politically what needed to get done, McCain did better than Obama. Despite the growing consensus in many quarters, I don't think Obama did that bad, although he did make some missteps. First off, let me say that McCain had some implicit advantages in some of the questions.

I don't mean that there was cheating or foul play afoot (I'll deal with that in a moment), but I think certain questions intrinsically favored McCain. The "gut wrenching decision" question is an example. I've no doubt that Obama wrestled with the decision to support the Iraq war, but that doesn't really compare with the decision to turn down early release from that Vietnamese prison camp. It just doesn't. There's really nothing Obama could've done to counter that, although I find myself wishing he had a better answer. In fact, Obama had no real legislative authority to effect the decision to go to war (Not that settling the moral question in one's heart and mind isn't a serious one), so the effect is diminished slightly. Some may balk at this, but I think he should've mentioned his decision to break with his former church. Surely it would've opened him up to more scrutiny by his opponents, but I take Obama at his word on his explanation of why he left Trinity.

The gay marriage answer was pretty good, although he did stumble through the last part. McCain does get a benefit on the gay marriage, abortion, and the question of judges, because his views on those issues are more in line with those of the audience. McCain is pro-life, and has a 20-plus year pro-life record. It's easier for him to explain that.

Staying on the abortion question, I think Obama's biggest gaffe was the obvious one, the "above my pay grade" answer, to Rick Warren's question. That was a sloppy mistake. I know what he was trying to say (it's up to God), but it came off as evasive, cold, and stupid. I think Ann Althouse hits the nail with her explanation:

Now, let's also look at Rick Warren's rhetoric. He asked, after a preface about abortion, "when does a baby get human rights in your view?" And, most obviously, his use of "baby" instead of "fetus" or at least "unborn baby" conveys a lot of opinion. But look at what else Warren is doing. He is not asking when does life begin?, a question that is much more susceptible to Obama's answer that only God knows. Warren is asking when do rights begin? That makes it a legal question. And Warren even appends the phrase "in your view."

So Obama's answer — that it's not for him to say — is inapt. Obama answered the question he expected to hear. But Warren had the wit to frame the question in terms of a legal opinion that Obama was fully equipped to give. When does the baby have legal rights?

Exactly. Warren was prepared, and asked a question Obama apparently wasn't ready for. Obama answered the question he either thought was asked, or thought should be asked, and missed it on this one. Warren himself expounds on Obama's answer(link via Althouse):

No. I think he needed to be more specific on that. I happen to disagree with Barack on that. Like I said, he's a friend. But to me, I would not want to die and get before God one day and go, 'Oh, sorry, I didn't take the time to figure out' because if I was wrong then it had severe implications to my leadership if I had the ability to do something about it. He should either say, 'No scientifically, I do not believe it's a human being until X' or whatever it is or to say, 'Yes, I believe it is a human being at X point,' whether it's conception or anything else. But to just say 'I don't know' on the most divisive issue in America is not a clear enough answer for me.

Nope, not clear enough at all.

However, as I saw it, those were his only major gaffes. I do think he had a different attitude about the debate than McCain did, that may count as a mistake. I do think some of his answers, particularly his foreign policy answers, were a but too abstract and philosophic, while McCain went directly to policy and specifics. When asked about evil, McCain went directly to 9/11 and al-qaeda. McCain mentioned Russia and Georgia. McCain sounded forceful on those answers. Obama's answers weren't bad, it's just that McCain seemed to keep the focus on the issues at hand. I still hesitate somewhat to call this a mistake on Obama's part, as both candidates have different approaches, and had different tasks during the debate. McCain saw this as his opportunity to shore up his evangelical base, and the talk from many righties is that they like what they saw. Obama had to make a good impression with evangelical voters, ans he may have hurt himself somewhat with the abortion answer, and the dis to Clarence Thomas.

Not that most conservatives were going to vote for Obama, anyway.


A quick point about the cheating controversy. I don't believe it. While it's apparently true that McCain wasn't in the "cone of silence," Rick Warren says he took real steps to keep McCain from hearing Obama, and I believe him. McCain says he didn't hear the questions, and I believe him as well. Also, I wonder what difference it would have made. I think those amongst the Obama circles who advance this story aren't helping, as it makes Obama look whiny and weak.

All in all, mistakes included, they both did a decent job. Besides, I think Ann is right when she points this out:

There were many other differences on display at the forum. Compare their answers on abortion and their efforts to put a number on "rich." It's this displaying of differences that matters far more than any conclusions about who won.

Yeah.


ADDED: Sully also misses the point, but Ross Douthat gets it right.

AND: This from Glenn Loury and John McWhorter, on why the dis to Clarence Thomas could be a major disaster.

Ben Stein Has Lost His Mind

Maybe, as Tully suggests, it's because his problematic movie isn't doing so hot, or considering some of the faulty arguments he makes in his film, he really believes this, but this has got to be one of the revolting things I've ever seen:

Stein: When we just saw that man, I think it was Mr. Myers [i.e. biologist P.Z. Myers], talking about how great scientists were, I was thinking to myself the last time any of my relatives saw scientists telling them what to do they were telling them to go to the showers to get gassed … that was horrifying beyond words, and that’s where science — in my opinion, this is just an opinion — that’s where science leads you.

Crouch: That’s right.

Stein: …Love of God and compassion and empathy leads you to a very glorious place, and science leads you to killing people.

Crouch: Good word, good word.

Good word!? Come on Paul, you ought to know better. Stein ought to know better as well, but as Tully suggests in his post, it's all about coarsening the culture. Advance the idea that science is anti-God, yet rail against evolutionists who argue that belief in God is anti-science. The cultural divide deepens, and Stein wins more money. Oh yeah, and throw some Holocaust imagery for good measure, never mind the context. I guess anything goes in the culture war.

I mean, Stein has been known to advance absurd lies in the service of narrow ideological causes before, but this is just beyond the pale.

Wright Is Still Wrong

More on Wright's latest speech, in which he basically says the same hateful things he's said before, just with more bad political analysis thrown in, is forthcoming, but I just wanted to offer up this, via Dana Milbank in the WaPo:

His views on Farrakhan and Israel? "Louis said 20 years ago that Zionism, not Judaism, was a gutter religion. He was talking about the same thing United Nations resolutions say, the same thing now that President Carter's being vilified for and Bishop Tutu's being vilified for. And everybody wants to paint me as if I'm anti-Semitic because of what Louis Farrakhan said 20 years ago. He is one of the most important voices in the 20th and 21st century; that's what I think about him. . . . Louis Farrakhan is not my enemy. He did not put me in chains, he did not put me in slavery, and he didn't make me this color."

First off, Farrakhan did in fact call Judaism a gutter religion, and even if he was talking about Zionism, and I know I should know better considering who we're talking about, but are we supposed to treat that statement as if calling Zionism a "gutter religion" is somehow a good thing? Are we supposed to agree with you, and Jimny "Douchebag Diplomat" Carter, that standing up for Israel is somehow a bad thing? I think not. Farrakhan was wrong then, and he's wrong now, and so are you.

Also, there's this:

Wright also argued, at least four times over the course of the hour, that he was speaking not for himself but for the black church.

"This is not an attack on Jeremiah Wright," the minister said. "It is an attack on the black church." He positioned himself as a mainstream voice of African American religious traditions. "Why am I speaking out now?" he asked. "If you think I'm going to let you talk about my mama and her religious tradition, and my daddy and his religious tradition and my grandma, you got another thing coming."

One of the big problems I have with Wright, is his assertion that his brand of preaching and theology represents the mainstream of the black church. I find that assertion ridiculous. The prophetic tradition of black preaching is one thing. Wright's sermons are something else. Don't get me wrong, it's not as if Wright's the only one who preaches this way, but the idea that this is how the black chuch, or the church in general is to function is revolting.

And lastly, there's this, in which he totally throws Obama under the bus, and may cost him the Presidency:

Wright suggested that Obama was insincere in distancing himself from his pastor. "He didn't distance himself," Wright announced. "He had to distance himself, because he's a politician, from what the media was saying I had said, which was anti-American."

Explaining further, Wright said friends had written to him and said, "We both know that if Senator Obama did not say what he said, he would never get elected." The minister continued: "Politicians say what they say and do what they do based on electability, based on sound bites, based on polls."

Ouch. To paraphrase the proverb, "My enemies I can handle, God save me from my friends."

Obama needs to cut this guy loose. I mean, he can't totally disown him, but he needs to publicly denounce Wright's views some more, and with more force than before.

HT: Instapundit, Patterico, and Sully

"He knows how to bring trash and soul together in a way that doesn't make one get in the way of the other"

Via Booker Rising, is this by Stanley Crouch, on the genius of Tyler Perry:

What Perry has mastered is the perfect mix of buffoonery, anguish and spiritual redemption. He knows he can hold his audience with variations on slapstick, pies in the face and clown costumes as long as he does not avoid the sandpaper that has scraped the hearts of so many who are lost, living far above or all the way down at the bottom. Finally, Perry knows that he must take his characters and his audience back to the church, where the greatest use of the English language other than Shakespeare lives. It's right there in the King James Bible, where forgiveness and redemption are made more than real in the big feeling of those who truly believe and who live it by the day.

Indeed.

Hitchens and Huckabee

Although it is triple-marinated in insufferable anti-religious contempt, Christopher Hitchens' Slate piece on the right of people to consider religious views when judging candidates is nonetheless correct on the constitutional question:

As so often, the framers and founding fathers meant what they said, said what they meant, and risked no waste of words. A candidate for election, or an applicant for a post in the bureaucracy, could not be disqualified on the grounds of his personal faith in any god (or his disbelief in any god, for that matter).

He reminds us, though, that:

However, what Article VI does not do, and was never intended to do, is deny me the right to say, as loudly as I may choose, that I will on no account vote for a smirking hick like Mike Huckabee, who is an unusually stupid primate but who does not have the elementary intelligence to recognize the fact that this is what he is. My right to say and believe that is already guaranteed to me by the First Amendment. And the right of Huckabee to win the election and fill the White House with morons like himself is unaffected by my expression of an opinion.

Like I said, chock-full of anti-religious poison, but on the facts of Article VI, he's right. I have the right to consider someone's faith (Or lack of faith) when judging a candidate, and be quite vocal about doing so. Just because the government cannot impose a religious test, that doesn't mean the people can't. Contra Dennis Prager, Keith Ellison had every right to swear on the Koran, but voters do have the right to consider his adherence to that book when voting for him. Many will consider Romney's Mormonism, or Rudy's Catholicism. Hitchens will doubtless ask himself "does this candidate hate God as much as I do, and is he as self-absorbed and arrogant about it as I am?"

The wisdom of such considerations depends on your perspective, but let me add my view: I'm a Christian. Huckabee's faith isn't a problem for me (although he is a socon Republican, so I have issues with many of his policies). My problems with Romney have nothing to do with his Mormon faith, although there are questions he will have to face.

Back to Huckabee for a moment, while I totally understand the concern of improperly mixing religious and politics, I don't see what the big fuss is about on Huckabee's new Christmas ad, with the "floating bookshelf cross" in the background. It's a Christmas ad, and Huckabee has never hid his Christian faith. I'm not naive enough to think that he didn't know it was there, or at the very least the camera guy didn't know or plan it), I just don't see the big deal.

Before anyone asks, I'm not stumping for Huckabee. Being that he's a pretty conservative guy, chances are I'm not going to vote for him, but he seems like a decent man, and the pile on is getting silly.

There is a thought that I'm planning to expand on, about a possible anti-Huckabee conspiracy coming from the right, masking as a critique of hypersecularism, but that comes later.

HT: Althouse and Stubborn Facts

Anti-Gay, America-Hating Kooks Get Their Comeuppance

That's the only title I could come up with to describe this victory:

A federal jury in Baltimore awarded nearly $11 million in damages yesterday to the family of a Marine from Maryland whose funeral was disrupted by members of a Kansas-based fundamentalist church.

One of the defendants said the civil award was the first against the church, whose members have stirred anger across the nation by picketing at funerals for service members killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, often carrying placards bearing virulent anti-gay slogans. The church maintains that God is punishing the United States, killing and maiming troops, because the country tolerates homosexuality.

Unrepentant Fred Phelps is somehow undeterred, and continues to somehow see in the First Amendment the right to disturb private military funerals with hate speech:

"It was a bunch of silly heads passing judgment on God," he said. "I don't believe anyone in the courtroom knows what the First Amendment is. Religious views are expressly protected by the First Amendment. You can't prosecute a preacher in civil law or in criminal law for what he preaches."

Fred Phelps and his ungodly coterie miss the mark big time, but the family of Lance Cpl. Snyder sets them straight:

"The fact of the matter is, a funeral's private," said one of their attorneys, Sean Summers. "There was no public concern when [church members] showed up with a 'God Hates You' sign."

Exactly. This is open and shut for me. Not only are these rogues utterly hateful in their rhetoric, they do not have the right to invade private funerals with their rhetoric. For the life of me, I cannot fathom why the ACLU has taken sides with the Phelps, although if you ask some people, they'll tell you it makes perfect sense.

Of Heroism, Courage, Sorrow, and Pride

"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends."

John 15:13

I dare say it is your duty to read in full this deeply moving piece by Christopher Hitchens, on the heroic life of Lt. Mark Daily, and the emotion Hitchens felt when he learned that his words inspired a young man to fight and sacrifice for his country. Quite possibly the best and most emotional piece he's ever wriiten, and maybe one of most moving pieces on this war you'll ever read.

HT: Centerfield

UPDATE: He's still utterly lost when it comes to religion, though:

He also told the crowd that heaven would be comparable to North Korea, as they both embody a totalitarianism of eternal gratitude.

Hitchens pointed to the “horrific pointlessness and misery” of having to thank a leader for everything when the leader was never asked for in the first place — which he said is intrinsic to both the concept of heaven and in North Korea.“At least you can fucking die and get out of North Korea,” Hitchens added.

Sigh. I'm praying for you, Christopher. I really am.

Heads Still Placed Firmly In The Sand

One of my favorite movie lines ever is the line from The Usual Suspects, in which Verbal Kint, speaking of mystery villain Keyser Soze, remarks that "the greatest trick the devil ever pulled, was convincing the world he didn't exist." Apparently, even if he came out and told them, some people still wouldn't believe. Consider this from Christopher Hitchens:

Over the past few months, I have been debating Roman Catholics who differ from their Eastern Orthodox brethren on the nature of the Trinity, Protestants who are willing to quarrel bitterly with one another about election and predestination, with Jews who cannot concur about a covenant with God, and with Muslims who harbor bitter disagreements over the discrepant interpretations of the Quran. Arcane as these disputes may seem, and much as I relish seeing the faithful fight among themselves, the believers are models of lucidity when compared to the hair-splitting secularists who cannot accept that al-Qaida in Mesopotamia is a branch of al-Qaida itself.

Now, there is obvious religion-bashing going on this statement (we're all aware of Hitchens' God-hatred), but the highlighted part appears to be tragically true. Some people just don't get it, and they continue to abide under the most idiotic of assumptions.

Read the whole thing, but check out another excerpt:

We can not only deny the clones of Bin Ladenism a military victory in Iraq, we can also discredit them in the process and in the eyes (and with the help) of a Muslim people who have seen them up close. We can do this, moreover, in a keystone state of the Arab world that guards a chokepoint—the Gulf—in the global economy. As with the case of Afghanistan—where several provinces are currently on a knife-edge between an elected government that at least tries for schools and vaccinations, and the forces of uttermost darkness that seek to negate such things—the struggle will take all our nerve and all our intelligence. But who can argue that it is not the same battle in both cases, and who dares to say that it is not worth fighting?

Dennis Kucinich, Mike Gravel, and regrettably others, who ought to know better.

HT: Instapundit

The Massachusetts Bar Exam Is Anti-Christian?

This man thinks so. From Law.com:

A Massachusetts bar examination applicant who claims he failed the test because he didn't answer a question about homosexual marriage and parenting is suing the test administration agency, the state Supreme Judicial Court and four individual justices for constitutional violations

The story continues:

Dunne claims his score of 268.866 on the November 2006 bar exam just missed the passing score of 270 points because he didn't follow the prescribed format for an unlawful question about gay marriage. Dunne said the question required applicants to "affirmatively accept, support and promote homosexual marriage and homosexual parenting." Dunne claims the defendants violated his First Amendment right to exercise his religion and violated the due process and equal protection clauses of the U.S. Constitution. He also claims their actions impose illegal state regulations on interstate commerce.

Interesting. I certainly respect Dunne's right to morally oppose same-sex marriage being the law, but I'm wondering if he has a case here. Whether he likes it or not, same-sex marriage is legal in Massachusetts. If the question did actually require him to support a policy he disagrees with, then there's a big problem, but you'd have to prove that (and farnkly, I find that kind of dubious, considering this is the Bar exam). Also, what of the fact that he must have certainly gotten other questions wrong? Can you argue that you failed because of that question, when there are clearly others you got wrong as well?

Of course, as I said, if the Bar exam does actually force applicants to potentially compromise their beliefs (as opposed to simply applying laws), then he has a case. I'd really like to see that question, in order to determine whether we have a case of authentic anti-Christian bias, or someone with a political axe to grind, who cannot pass the bar. Who knows?

HT: Pam's House Blend

Christopher Hitchens on the Stakes, and how the Far-Left Fails To Acknowlege Them

This is good. A little religion-bashing thrown in, but it is good. The look on lack-witted Chris Hedges' face at the end is priceless.



Hat tip: David Thompson

UPDATE: From Zombietime, comes a full-report on the debate, and the context, as well as more videos.

Speaking of Evil Books...

In this TNR piece, Andrew Sullivan thoroughly reviews Dinesh D'Souza's latest book, which argues that the cultural Left caused 9/11, and that the only hope for America is to take up common cause with the theocratic order of radical Islamism. Sullivan basically argues that this is the logical end route of conservatism's current course, only with the veil torn down:

It is crucial to remember that, for all the conservative criticism of The Enemy at Home, this argument is just as central to the base of the current Republican Party as it is to this book. In this respect, The Enemy at Home is an utterly unremarkable exploration of what theoconservatism really requires. It demands that individual autonomy be sacrificed for obedience to the external moral order. Theoconservatism refuses to accept the notion that government can ever aspire to be neutral with respect to competing visions of morality

You really do need to read the whole thing. D'Souza's thesis almost reads like a cartoonish parody of the far-right, but his argument is hardly unserious, profoundly dangerous, and poses a fundamental threat to the fabric of Western thought.

Not to mention it's just out and out crazy.

Hat tip: Red Letter Day

I'll Take My Money Elsewhere, Thank You

Says one now ex-donor to the College of William and Mary, after their foolish decision to remove the historic cross from the Wren Chapel:

Advocates of keeping the cross in Wren Chapel pointed to the school's founding 300 years ago as an institution of the Anglican Church. The cross, they argued, should be displayed not only as a symbol of faith but as an acknowledgment of history and tradition.

Agreed. This has nothing to do with church-state separation. This is about the traditions of the school. I'm perfectly fine with allowing other faiths to worship there, as this is proper and just. Why can't they just put up their symbols alongside the cross? Why must they take the cross down to accomodate other faiths? The traditions of the school shouldn't be undermined in an attempt to appease the overly-PC.

Hat tip: Centerfield