Stones Cry Out

• I’m curious about this meme, Mr Obama “on top” because Ms Clinton can’t “mathematically” win without superdelagates. Neither can Mr Obama in any real world sense. Why is there a sense that there is a difference there?
• Jehu and the casual cruelty of the ancient world.
• Kill your sister, get one year … in some countries. The country is Islamic. Why is that not a surprise?
• Three myths on poverty and abortion punctured by reality. The link is to the myths where there is a link to reality.
• Beauty in nature via NASA.
• Wise words from Chuck Norris (I’m not kidding).

When Maureen Dowd finally sees the problems brought on by identity politics, and calls it like it is, you can just see the chickens coming home to roost.  However, in the entire article, there’s something missing.  We’ll get to that, but first…

Dowd lays it on the line as to the choice that Democrats have to make.

With Obama saying the hour is upon us to elect a black man and Hillary saying the hour is upon us to elect a woman, the Democratic primary has become the ultimate nightmare of liberal identity politics. All the victimizations go tripping over each other and colliding, a competition of historical guilts.

People will have to choose which of America’s sins are greater, and which stain will have to be removed first. Is misogyny worse than racism, or is racism worse than misogyny?

As it turns out, making history is actually a way of being imprisoned by history. It’s all about the past. Will America’s racial past be expunged or America’s sexist past be expunged?

My question to this is; in spite of all the common cause the Democrats have made with Martin Luther King, whatever happened to "the content of their character"?  Or their policies, given that this is the highest office in the land?  Instead, Democrats are fixated on race and gender.

Oh, and age, too.

But Hillary — carried on the padded shoulders of the older women in Texas, Ohio and Rhode Island who loved her “I Will Survive” rallying cry that “I am a little older and I have earned every wrinkle on my face” — has been saved to fight another day.

And so we wind up with the very thing Democrats accuse Republicans of doing; voting (or not voting) for someone based on their gender or race or age or some other external characteristic rather than their positions.  This leaves Democrats in the unenviable position,and one of their own making, of seeming racist or sexist even if their true motives have nothing to do with either.

Welcome to our world, folks, where Republicans get accused by the Democrats, the media and the blogs of being racists and bigots regardless of how we explain our positions and our votes.  Stinks, doesn’t it?  So here’s what I see as missing from the article; can we possibly hope that this will be the end of identity politics?

I’m not so sure.  Dowd’s article, while noting the disaster awaiting Democrats…

Just as Michelle Obama urged blacks to support her husband, many shoulder-pad feminists are growing more fierce in charging that women who let Obama leapfrog over Hillary are traitors.

Julie Acevedo, a precinct captain for Obama in Austin, noticed that things were getting uglier on Friday, during the early voting, when she “saw some very angry women just stomping by us to go vote for Hillary. They cut us off when we tried to talk about Barack.

…doesn’t really seem to renounce it.  The sooner Democrats get rid of it, the sooner Spelman students will be able to make an informed decision as to whom to vote for.

[tags]Maureen Down,New York Times,Democrats,identity politics[/tags]

Cross-posted at New Covenant

My cousin asked me, a while back, if I could post some reviews of the various books I’ve read. I’ve wanted to do that for some time, but the task has always seemed a bit daunting (okay… I’ll admit it, I have always thought that it would take too long to write book reviews). After reading Greg Koukl’s Solid Ground article on How to Read Less More (PDF), though, I think I’ve come across a method to both read a book, provide a review, and give my humble opinion about it.

That said, here is my review of Mark Steyn’s America Alone.

The subtitle of Steyn’s book is The end of the world as we know it. On the cover we see a globe, dotted with flags of Islam, and one lonely American flag. The front cover recommendation quote is, “The arrogance of Mark Steyn knows no bounds.” – Prince Turki al-Faisal, Saudi Ambassador to the United States.

Those three items alone should give a clear indication of the direction that Steyn is heading: America (as he will define it), alone, stands in opposition to the rest of the world (again, as defined by him). And, the rest of the world is, by all accounts, looking decidedly Islamic.

From Steyn, “Let me put it in a slightly bigger nutshell: much of what we loosely call the Western world will not survive the twenty-first century, and much of it will effectively disappear within our lifetimes, including many if not most European countries.”

Read the rest of this entry

• Guitar hero Iraq riff by Mr Yon.
• On Obama and his Biblical commentary (and how it doesn’t really compute).
• Not stopping to pee.
• On Tradition and traditionalism.
• Galileo.

Mr Sandefur claims in response to my allegation that he completely misconstrued my first essay, with an essay in which he thinks that a state has “no rights.” And to be honest, I agree with him on that point … it’s just that neither do people. However in the context of his own question:

This is interesting because this really is the very center of the dispute between libertarians and conservatives. Does the state itself have rights valid against its own citizens, to act for its own preservation at their expense?

On this question, Mr Sandefur has five “objections” to that notion that the “state has rights”. So does a state have a right to craft laws which it believes will lead to its continuance? Clearly virtually every state does so and believes it is right in doing so. Clearly as well, that some states craft laws which belie an incorrect assumption about what will allow them to continue … and they ceased to exist. But, it might be interesting to examine Mr Sandefur’s arguments in the light of those I’d propose. Mr Sandefur’s arguments are, I think, derived from classical Libertarian positions … mine are not classical anything, conservative or liberal. Mine largely derive from recent digestion and assimilation of Jouvenel and Solzhenitsyn viewed in the context of modern and ancient historical events.

I’ll examine those five and attempt a response … below the fold.

Read the rest of this entry

Jason Kuznicki has responded to my reply to a post of his on marriage. Timothy Sandefur has noted that exchange, and it seems can’t have misunderstood or misconstrued what I’ve said any more than he did. I’ll start by remarking on Mr Sandefur’s disappointing remarks and then attempt to reply to Mr Kuznicki.

To recap, in Mr Kuznicki’s original piece, he had noted that the marriage, as a state recognized institution, is more about protecting the married couple against the state than the reverse. In my original piece I tried to establish that, while this is true that is compounded by the following difficulties:

1. Marriage is an institution which has been almost universally regarded to have sacred elements. In a “separation” of church and state there are bound to be difficulties.
2. The state has some reasons to need or defend marriage and that those reasons are not shared equally with same sex and traditional marriages.

Now, while I think the state has reasons to strengthen marriage and hold to any number of various laws regulating conduct, I don’t think the organ of government that does that should be the federal or state government. I think that our current state is in peril, in fact will not continue many more generations, because of the increased concentration of power at the highest (state and federal levels). At the very least this has enfeebled our own individual democratic “muscles”, or instincts and practices of a democratic nature are have been and are being replaced with notions which will in the near future (on a historical time-scale) destroy our polis. What is needed is both a strengthening of the state’s ability to regulate our society but that strengthening needs to be local. Decision that highly fractious and divisive which are today made and discussed at the federal level should be regulated instead at the local, village/precinct level. Each village, township, or precinct should be making for itself the decisions that vex us today, such as marriage, abortion, immigration, and so on.

My response and further thoughts on the two essays linked above can be found … below the fold. Read the rest of this entry

A gunman walks into a seminary library and murders 8 people.

The act is celebrated (photo per FoxNews).

The victims were Jewish. The gunman is claimed by Hamas. And the celebrants are Palestinians.

You do the math.

In, what locals refer to as the “southland”, otherwise known as southern California, we have our fair share of commuter traffic. Actually, I think we have more than our fair share. It’s said, and more often hoped, that the commute on Friday mornings is lighter than the other work days, hence the term “Friday-morning-light”. As is often the case, though, reality bites back harder than you’d like.

Here are some Friday-morning-light tidbits for your perusal:

• Please Convince Me offers some free resources (HT: STR) including a three-part video on the existence of God.
• From Crunchy Con, The Bride’s a slut. They call it progress. A link to a NYT article titled, The Bride Wore Very Little.
• Humans wearing blinders – well-to-do couples discovering that children are not decor.
• From MereComments, a story of a youth-pastor advocating, of all things, that age-specific ministry (e.g., youth groups) should be dropped, in favor of worshiping being done together as a family.

• Good news noted.
• The Middle East and the golden rule.
• Homeschooling under attack in the most liberal of states, which it seems is also wants to be the most totalitarian.
• Fun with chlorine trifluoride.
• Home power plants.
• Finally an intriguing quote.

Where were you fellas for the past 2 years?

Former US president Jimmy Carter and former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan wish to arrive in Israel in the coming months in order to help negotiate a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, Army Radio reported.

(Hat tip: Meryl Yourish, where she lists a number of other new stories worth your time.)

Kinda’ gives you a peek into their heads. A ceasefire is to get combatants to stop firing. But apparently hundreds of Qassam rockets aren’t considered “firing” to these guys. Or, more likely, it’s only “firing” if Israel is doing it.

And this is revealing as well.

According to the report, Israel is opposed to the initiative, but officials said that Jerusalem would be well advised to try and channel the visit into a positive track so as not to damage the country’s image in the media.

Don’t know who these officials might be, but it’s interesting to note that Carter and Annan are just shills, knowingly or not, for the Hamas PR machine. Are these the kinds of naive negotiators we need in the Middle East? (Hint: No.)

I know I’ve been on this kick the past few days, but this sort of foolishness and outright bias doesn’t seem to get enough notice generally.

[tags]Israel,Hamas,Jimmy Carter Kofi Annan,Middle East[/tags]

• This is the sort of crap Obama wants to encourage. And some distinct disapproval of some of his legislative stances.
• Nerfing the planet continues.
• Christian living and circumstance around the world, including top 10 most oppressive nations (from the Christian perspective).
• Where two or three are gathered, view one and two.
• Patron Saint of liberty?

• Two things, here and here, both called “bike”.
• I ask you these questions three, “What is your favorite color?”, … uhm. Oops. Wrong questions, try these.
• Some reading lists for global jihad.
• Press and the Clinton campaign. No love lost there, eh?
• Starting in 1976 and for about 20 years … a lot of my time, effort, and imagination  …  Memory eternal.

An Israeli researcher, Benny Shanon, claims that Moses was doing drugs on Mount Sinai when he heard God tell him the Ten Commandments.  We find the crux of the matter in paragraph 3.

"As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don’t believe, or a legend, which I don’t believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics," Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.

Essentially, this "research" started from a conclusion and worked its way back to the explanation.  It’s "very probable" because the researcher dismisses everything else out of hand.  No evidence, just inference based on his own presuppositions.

Oh, and there’s also a bit of projection going on there, too.

He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil’s Amazon forest in 1991. "I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations," Shanon said.

He did drugs, so Moses must have.  There’s "research" for you.

[tags]Moses,Mount Sinai,drugs,Benny Shanon,Hebrew University of Jerusalem,Judaism,Christianity[/tags]

In the few left leaning blogs I manage to read a continual theme comes up, that the right is “fear mongering” or as Mr Greenwald writes:

Thus, white evangelical Ministers are free to advocate American wars based on Biblical mandates, rant hatefully against Islam, and argue that natural disasters occur because God hates gay people. They are still fit for good company, an important and cherished part of our mainstream American political system. [emphasis mine]

My remarks on the bold text above … below the fold. Read the rest of this entry

• Well, not exactly in the best of taste, but I laughed.
• Strategy for the future.
• Faith, politics, and Obama. One view, a second, and another. Romans, obscure? Where’d that come from?
• An opponent searches for the upside to Obama.
• Myanmar.