(CCL Juber Al-Haddad)

Don’t sweat the small stuff. That’s the conventional wisdom. Because obviously the big stuff is the most important.

Except not always.

What’s more important than cutting the deficit? Creating jobs? Fixing Social Security and public education and immigration and the environment? Electing leaders of integrity, wisdom and humility?

Lots of things, actually.

Government is like a Kevlar vest. It derives its importance from the importance of what it protects. The really important thing is the life underneath.

We are a nation deeply divided on a host of fundamental issues. Will we come together and change course? It’s possible. But, as Miracle Max would say, it’d take a miracle. The parallels between Rome’s last years and our current ones are numerous and haunting.

How then should we live with the realization that, prattling politicians notwithstanding, our best days are almost certainly behind us? How live with courage, hope and passionate intensity in an age of decline?

Men and women of the early Middle Ages lived through the end of the world as they knew it. (Who would ever have thought that the Eternal City could fall?) Government was in constant flux and, often, chaos. But little people, doing little things, rebuilt slowly, slowly.

Monks and nuns living in thousands of austere little cells spent their days copying out ancient texts. One slow letter at a time, they kept truth and beauty alive for a thousand years.

Politics was never going to save us. And it certainly isn’t now. Yeats could have been speaking of our leaders:

The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

That doesn’t mean we should abandon politics. But it does mean, as always, that we need to focus our best energies on building the most important shelters for human beings. And it does mean we need to realize that each of us has a crucial role to play in preserving whatever is to be preserved.

It’s no accident, in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, that it’s Frodo and Sam who save the world. Not the noble or the wise. Not Aragorn or Boromir or Legolas or Gandalf. Just two unremarkable, insignificant little hobbits who keep putting one foot in front of the other and refuse to quit.

It’s us, the ordinary people in our private lives, who will do the great work of saving whatever is saved.

Husbands and wives who do the hard work of serving each other and the even harder work of creating and maintaining intimacy.

Mothers and fathers who take up the tedious, exhausting, often discouraging job of raising children: feeding and hugging and disciplining and reading aloud and playing catch and talking late at night. And, in the process, rearing children who value, not money, prestige and leisure, but family. Truth. Beauty. Loyalty. Courage. Perseverance. And love that bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

Plumbers and neurosurgeons and stockbrokers and tugboat pilots and, yes, even politicians who work hard and tell the truth. Who don’t have jobs or even professions but vocations–callings–in which to honor God and serve other people.

Cabbies, housewives, teachers and real estate brokers who write and paint and quilt and photograph and arrange flowers and play the cello as truly and as beautifully as they can, not because it brings them money and fame but because it’s part of who they are.

Neighborhoods and communities where neighbors look in on each other and lend a hand. Friends who do coffee or go fishing: who, one way or another, keep in touch.

These will be the great men and women of the 21^st century. The true heroes.

“Blessed,” Tolkien wrote:

. . . are the timid hearts that evil hate,
that quail in its shadow, and yet shut the gate;
that seek no parley, and in guarded room,
though small and bare, upon a clumsy loom
weave tissues gilded by the far-off day
hoped and believed in under Shadow’s sway.

Blessed are the men of Noah’s race that build
their little arks, though frail and poorly filled,
and steer through winds contrary towards a wraith,
a rumour of a harbour guessed by faith.

Blessed are the legend-makers with their rhyme
of things not found within recorded time.
It is not they that have forgot the Night,
or bid us flee to organized delight,
in lotus-isles of economic bliss
forswearing souls to gain a Circe-kiss
(and counterfeit at that, machine-produced,
bogus seduction of the twice-seduced).
Such isles they saw afar, and ones more fair,
and those that hear them yet may yet beware.
They have seen Death and ultimate defeat,
and yet they would not in despair retreat,
but oft to victory have tuned the lyre
and kindled hearts with legendary fire,
illuminating Now and dark Hath-been
with light of suns as yet by no man seen. . . .

I will not walk with your progressive apes,
erect and sapient. Before them gapes
the dark abyss to which their progress tends
if by God’s mercy progress ever ends,
and does not ceaselessly revolve the same
unfruitful course with changing of a name.
I will not treat your dusty path and flat,
denoting this and that by this and that,
your world immutable wherein no part
the little maker has with maker’s art.
I bow not yet before the Iron Crown,
nor cast my own small golden sceptre down. . . .

(You can read the whole poem here.)

The post Don’t sweat the big stuff appeared first on Cry, Beloved Country.

(CCL Pete Riches)

About that whole Second Amendment thing. Is there anybody out there still:

• doubting that tyranny could happen (indeed, is happening) in America?
• cheerfully trusting a government that seizes reporters’ phone records and uses government agencies to target its political foes?
• doubting that our government might use the information gleaned from universal background checks to harass people?

Second Amendment proponents argue that our constitutional right to keep and bear arms is, among other things, a defense against tyranny.

A number of gun control proponents have just rolled their eyes in response. Tyranny? Here?

Inconceivable!

Take the President’s remarks at Ohio State’s commencement exercises two weeks ago:

Unfortunately, you’ve grown up hearing voices that incessantly warn of government as nothing more than some separate, sinister entity that’s at the root of all our problems; some of these same voices are also doing their best to gum up the works. They’ll warn that tyranny is always lurking just around the corner. You should reject these voices. Because what they suggest is that our brave and creative and unique experiment in self-rule is somehow just a sham with which we can’t be trusted.

He’s caricaturing his political opponents, of course, because straw men are easier to knock down. Only anarchists would say that government is nothing more than some sinister entity at the root of all our problems.

But what’s truly unfortunate here is that the voices the President is dismissing so cavalierly (“tyranny is always just around the corner”) are preeminently those of our founders. From dozens of possibilities, I’ll just remind you of Madison’s pointed remark at the Constitutional Convention in July, 1787:

The truth [is] all men having power ought to be distrusted to a certain degree.

And Jefferson’s comment in a letter to Madison:

 I hope therefore a bill of rights will be formed to guard the people against the federal government, as they are already guarded against their state governments in most instances.

Even Piers Morgan has seen the light. On his show last week he told Penn Jillette:

I’ve had some of the pro-gun lobbyists on here saying to me, well, the reason we need to be armed is because of tyranny from our own government. And I’ve always laughed at them.  And I’ve always said don’t be so ridiculous, your own government won’t turn itself on you.

But actually when you look at this, it’s nothing to do with guns, but actually this is vaguely tyrannical behavior by the American government. I think what the IRS did is bordering on tyrannical behavior. I think what the Department of Justice has done actually, to the AP, is bordering on tyrannical behavior.

You can watch it here:

Vaguely? Bordering on?

Well, still, for Morgan, it’s considerable progress.

And then there’s MSNBC talking head and gun control advocate Joe Scarborough. On last Friday’s Morning Joe, Scarborough commented that, “My argument [for gun control] is less persuasive today because of these [IRS] scandals.”

Since Newtown, Scarborough has advocated for expanding background checks for firearms purchases. But Friday he said:

I have been saying for months now, and everybody knows this, that I believe we need background checks. After Newtown, after Chicago, we need background checks.

My argument has been, don’t worry, background checks aren’t going to lead to a national registry. The government’s never going to create a national registry, right? And there’s even something there that says it’s a felony if you get–I don’t even have to complete my sentence, do I?

My argument is less persuasive today because of these scandals. People say, “Hey, if they do this with the IRS–asking people what books you read–then how can I trust them with information about my Second Amendment rights? This is devastating. 

You can watch it here:

Madison, of course, was right. We need to distrust everyone in power. Because, as Lord Acton observed, power corrupts. And, to paraphrase the rest of his aphorism, tremendous power–which is what we’ve given our federal government over the last 150 years–corrupts tremendously.

Which means that we now have a tremendously corrupt government.

So we need the Bill of Rights, now more than ever–yes, even that pesky Second Amendment–to guard the people against their government.

Even Piers Morgan and Joe Scarborough are beginning to get it.

(H/T to Poor Richard’s News)

The post Piers Morgan gets it right appeared first on Cry, Beloved Country.

Barronelle Stutzman (Facebook)

Barronelle Stutzman has decided that the best defense is a good offense. Stutzman, 68, is the owner of Arlene’s Flowers and Gifts, the Richland, Washington, business being sued by state Attorney General Bob Ferguson.

Ferguson is suing Arlene’s because Stutzman declined to violate her faith by doing the floral decorations for the wedding of longtime customer Robert Ingersoll and his partner Curt Freed.

Stutzman filed a countersuit yesterday against the attorney general, arguing that his suit violates her rights under both the United States and Washington State Constitutions, as well as violating the federal Civil Rights Act.

Article 1, Section 11 of the Washington State Constitution protects “freedom of conscience in all matters of religious sentiment, belief, and worship.” It guarantees that:

no one shall be molested or disturbed in person or property on account of religion.

The countersuit, Arlene’s Flowers v. Ferguson, makes clear that Stutzman had no qualms about doing business with gay and lesbian customers in general or Ingersoll in particular:

In her capacity as the owner and primary floral designer for Arlene’s Flowers, Barronelle has been creating floral arrangements for Robert Ingersoll for nearly nine years. Barronelle enjoys the warm and cordial relationship that she has developed with Mr. Ingersoll. . . .

Barronelle has known that Robert Ingersoll identifies himself as gay throughout most of their nine-year relationship. That fact never made any difference in the way Mr. Ingersoll was treated as a customer.

Arlene’s Flowers routinely designs floral arrangements for other gay and lesbian clientele. Arlene’s Flowers has also had openly gay employees.

The countersuit also details Stutzman’s religious convictions:

In accordance with her understanding of traditional Christian and Biblical [sic] values, Barronelle believes that marriage has religious significance apart from any civil significance, and that its religious significance is inherent in the institution of marriage. Barronelle believes, as the Bible teaches, that marriage is defined by God as a union of man and woman.

Barronelle knew that creating floral arrangements for Mr. Ingersoll’s wedding would be contrary to her sincerely held religious convictions. She believed that doing so would compel her to express a message with her creativity that violates God’s commands. She also believed that her creation of the floral arrangements would be perceived as an endorsement and celebration of same-sex marriage.

You can read the countersuit here. (Keep scrolling–it follows Arlene’s response to the attorney general’s original complaint.)

Before voters legalized same-sex marriage last fall, same-sex marriage proponents assured us that, in Rep. Jamie Pedersen’s words:

the legislation will provide strong protection for religious liberty.

Now, of course, we see that it provides no protection at all. And Bob Ferguson’s ham-handed and simplistic solution is simply to trample the rights of people of faith.

Washington State’s non-discrimination statute prohibits discrimination on the basis of creed and religion as well as on the basis of sexual orientation. It’s high time we start talking about how we’re going to actually do that.

Last year was actually the time for the conversation, of course.

But better late than never.

The post Florist fights back: Arlene’s Flowers update appeared first on Cry, Beloved Country.

The Romeike family (HSLDA)

It’s a good thing the U.S. Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals wasn’t around when the Mayflower arrived. Those venerable jurists would have sent its passengers packing.

The Pilgrims’ search for religious freedom is central to our understanding of who we are as a country. But their story would never weather a court challenge today. They weren’t even persecuted in the Netherlands, after all. They simply found the Dutch culture and language strange, and Dutch morals loose–and they feared they were losing their children to the dominant Dutch culture.

Cry me a river, the Sixth Circuit would say.

In fact, they just did.

German immigrants Uwe and Hannelore Romeike have a much stronger case than the Pilgrims ever did. But the Sixth Circuit handed them their hats Tuesday, and told them to go back to Germany.

Home schooling is illegal in Germany. But, concerned about public school teachings at odds with their Christian faith, the couple began home schooling their children in 2007. They were quickly hit with over ten thousand dollars in fines and threatened with the loss of their children. In 2008, they came to the United States and later sought asylum here.

In 2010, U.S. Immigration Judge Lawrence O. Burman granted their petition. He found that they had a “well-founded fear of persecution” for their beliefs if they returned to Germany. He noted in his decision that:

[T]he rights that are being violated in this case are basic to humanity, they are basic human rights which no country has a right to violate, even a country that is in many ways a good country, such as Germany.

But the Justice Department appealed the decision. And, in 2012, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) overturned Judge Burman’s decision. The Romeikes, in turn, appealed that decision. (I wrote about their situation back in February, if you want more detail than I’ve given here.)

Tuesday a three-judge panel of the Sixth Circuit in Cincinnati upheld the BIA decision. (You can read the full decision here.) The appellate court said that the Romeikes aren’t eligible for asylum because they weren’t persecuted in Germany.

Draconian fines? Nope. Threats of losing their children? Pshaw. It’s not persecution, the court said, because the law applies equally to everyone. German law prohibits everyone from home schooling.

It’s a patently ridiculous argument. Suppose  we passed a law requiring businesses to be open on Saturday. It wouldn’t precipitate a crisis of conscience for most Americans. Most of us aren’t adverse to working on Saturdays. (Okay, so maybe we are–but not morally opposed, just a tad lazy.) It would, however, be tremendously oppressive to our Orthodox Jewish, Conservative Jewish and Seventh Day Adventist friends and neighbors.

Notice: The law would apply equally to everyone in the country–but would only persecute a small minority. But, incredibly, the 6th Circuit says that even when a law violates human rights, it doesn’t rise to the level of persecution as long as it is “equally administered to all.”

Bring on the thumb screws and rack! Just be sure you administer them equally to all.

But it gets worse. The German government is on record as saying that the law is specifically intended to target people like the Romeikes. A 2003 German Supreme Court decision held that Germany’s compulsory attendance law served a legitimate state interest by “counteracting the development of parallel societies.” In plain English, that means the purpose of the law is to suppress people who think differently than the majority: religious and philosophical minorities, in other words.

Enforced groupthink doesn’t persecute minorities? Who are we trying to kid?

The Romeikes plan to appeal to the full Sixth Circuit. But if they lose there, they’re probably out of options. Except for bankruptcy, imprisonment and the loss of their children.

Or doing what they believe to be wrong.

Unless, of course, they want to slip into Mexico. There, as Don Vincenzo suggests at The Thinking Housewife, they could wait for the President to get his amnesty plan through Congress before returning as illegal aliens. Then the same Justice Department that is forcing them out would presumably welcome them with open arms.

What’s wrong with this picture?

The post 6th Circuit to Pilgrims: Cry me a river appeared first on Cry, Beloved Country.

3D ultrasound image (CCL Sheila Steele)

Kermit Gosnell was convicted today on three counts of first degree murder–for the murders of Babies A, C and D. Testimony had shown that Gosnell joked to staffers while killing Baby A that the infant was big enough to “walk me to the bus stop.” He was also convicted on one count of involuntary manslaughter in the death of 41-year-old Karnamaya Mongar, whom his medically unqualified staff sedated to death.

Now where do we go from here?

What will we do about the hundreds of other viable babies–probably several thousand–who are being born alive and killed or left to die in our country each year?

About the more than 3,000 other babies killed in this country each day in utero–just a few inches and a few seconds away from where Babies A, C and D were murdered.

At the National Prayer Breakfast in February, 1994, Mother Teresa said (you can watch her whole speech here):

I feel that the greatest destroyer of peace today is abortion, because it is a war against the child, a direct killing of the innocent child, murder by the mother herself. And if we accept that a mother can kill even her own child, how can we tell other people not to kill one another?

How do we persuade a woman not to have an abortion? As always, we must persuade her with love and we remind ourselves that love means to be willing to give until it hurts. Jesus gave even His life to love us. So, the mother who is thinking of abortion, should be helped to love, that is, to give until it hurts her plans, or her free time, to respect the life of her child. The father of that child, whoever he is, must also give until it hurts.

By abortion, the mother does not learn to love, but kills even her own child to solve her problems. And, by abortion, that father is told that he does not have to take any responsibility at all for the child he has brought into the world. The father is likely to put other women into the same trouble. So abortion just leads to more abortion.

Any country that accepts abortion is not teaching its people to love, but to use any violence to get what they want. This is why the greatest destroyer of love and peace is abortion.

Using any violence to get what we want? Mother Teresa never set foot in the 21st century, but she saw it more clearly than most of us do.

The question is, what will we do about what we know?

The trial of Kermit Gosnell has ended. Ours is not yet finished.

The post Kermit Gosnell trial is over–ours isn’t appeared first on Cry, Beloved Country.

I often think it’s comical–Fal, lal, la!
How Nature always does contrive–Fal, lal, la!
That every boy and every gal
That’s born into the world alive
Is either a little Liber-al
Or else a little Conserva-tive!

So sings good Private Willis in Gilbert and Sullivan’s rollicking operetta Iolanthe. And certainly many people do seem to have inherited their politics. I had a friend for many years who was personally conservative, both fiscally and socially, but a major Democratic donor–largely, I suspect, because Mama had been a yellow-dog Democrat.

I, on the other hand, have a good bit of Jeffersonian republican in me.

• I value personal responsibility, self-sufficiency and self-government.
• I favor stronger local and state government and a weaker federal government.
• I think most things are done best at the lowest possible level: local rather than state, state rather than national.
• I think the federal government is valuable in some areas–and dangerous in all.

Maybe it’s because Daddy voted for Goldwater. Or because I was a voracious reader as a kid and Jefferson, a powerful writer. Or because I toured Monticello at a young age and fell under the spell both of its beauty and of the elegance of Jefferson’s inventions, several of which were scattered through the house.

But that’s not all there is to it–not by a long shot.

I value living in community. I believe people are made to live relationally, and that this happens best when we build things to scale for human beings. I’m not thinking here primarily of buildings–though it’s true there as well–but of social structures.

The impersonality of the many bureaucracies required to run an activist transcontinental federal government is inimical to human intimacy. It  leave us feeling alienated, estranged and powerless.

But layer upon layer of faceless bureaucracy is the only thing big enough to supervise the details of the lives of 314 million people–when we commit ourselves to close supervision of those lives, and when we commit ourselves to doing it largely from Washington, D.C.

Small, human-sized social structures, on the other hand, enable us to live connected to each other and to the earth beneath our feet.

Many people eschew Walmart in order to buy local–but vote to be governed by a ginormous one-size-fits-all central government. Portland’s Buy Local campaign offers ten reasons to, well, buy local. (They were straining a bit to come up with 10. But we’ll let that go.) Most of them are arguments, not only for buying locally, but for governing locally:

1. Keep dollars in Portland’s economy.
2. Embrace what makes Portland unique.
3. Foster local job creation.
4. Help the environment.
5. Nurture community.
6. Conserve your tax dollars.
7. Have more choices.
8. Benefit from local owners’ expertise.
9. Preserve entrepreneurship.
10. Ensure Portland stands out from the crowd.

I support a smaller federal government–and less government at all levels–exactly because I care about people. The biggest argument for pruning the federal government is rooted in the reality of what human beings are like and what conditions are necessary for us to thrive.

It’s high time we learn to live more locally–not just in our shopping, but in our governing.

The post Living connected: small government and a sense of community appeared first on Cry, Beloved Country.

(CCL colorblindPICASO)

Okay, it’s time for a little fun. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen: Today is No Socks Day. It’s a day to kick off your socks and wiggle your toes–and perhaps get a pedicure. No Socks Day is even copyrighted–by Thomas and Ruth Roy of Wellcat Holidays. Say the Roys:

If we give up wearing socks for one day, it will mean a little less laundry, thereby contributing to the betterment of the environment.  Besides, we will all feel a bit freer, at least for one day.

Just think: If everyone in the United States goes sockless today, that’ll be 314 million pairs of socks that don’t have to be washed tomorrow.

But. Nothing in this world is ever easy, right?

So before you jump in with both feet, better consider this: Foot Cardigan, a company that will deliver “one random pair of crazy socks” to your mailbox each moth for nine dollars, has put its foot down. Yes, Foot Cardigan is calling for a boycott of No Socks Day. They say no socks, no fun:

Join us on May 8th as we put our feet down and boycott No Socks Day.

This despicable holiday is offending feet everywhere, robbing them of the joy of a nice, cozy pair of socks!

Boycott No Socks Day and you just might win a free six-month subscription of socks from Foot Cardigan. (Details here.)

So the choice is, as always, up to you. But be careful. No matter what you do, you’re likely to put your foot in it.

The post Today is No Socks Day appeared first on Cry, Beloved Country.

Oh, and don’t forget the sunscreen.

Article: Sharia Do Like It

(CCL CharlesFred)

Why you may want to read it: Britain’s Economist runs a feature called Graphic Detail: a new chart or map each day, often interactive and with interesting external links. Oh, I know, it sounds a little wonky, but take “Sharia Do Like It.”

What exactly do Muslims who support sharia law mean by that, anyway? How does Islam in Afghanistan compare with Islam in, say, Kazakhstan? And how do fans of sharia feel about religious freedom, anyway?

Excerpt: Almost 80% of Egyptian Muslims say they favour religious freedom and a similar number favour sharia law. Of that group, almost 90% also think people who renounce Islam should be put to death. Confused? So are they.

♦ ♦ ♦

Article: This New Discovery Will Finally Allow Us to Build Biological Computers

(CCL brian0918)

Why you may want to read it: Computers have three basic functions. They store information, transmit information and have a system of internal rules that govern what they do with input they receive. We already know how to store and transmit data in and between living cells. Now a team of Stanford bioengineers have used genetic material to create a biological transistor with its own internal logic that instructs it how use information it receives. Now that we can run all three functions at a cellular level, the next step is to create a biological computer that will enable scientists to program functions into living cells.

Excerpt: [Stanford bioengineer Drew] Endy plans on starting small. For now, he’s working with bacteria, helping other researchers use his BIL gates to engineer E. coli that can be programmed to change color. . . . “We’re building computers,” [he said], “that will operate in a place where your cellphone isn’t going to work.”

♦ ♦ ♦

Article: Democracy May Have Had Its Day

Why you may want to read it: One of America’s foremost historians, classicist Donald Kagan, recently retired–just shy of his 81st birthday–as Sterling Professor of Classics and History at Yale. A premier authority on ancient Greece, he wrote a four-volume history of the Peloponnesian War which the New Yorker opined just may be “the foremost work of history produced in North America in this century.” And the Wall Street Journal’s Matthew Kaminski recently sat down with him for a wide-ranging interview.

Excerpt: Universities, he proposed, are failing students and hurting American democracy. Curricula are “individualized, unfocused and scattered.” On campus, he said, “I find a kind of cultural void, an ignorance of the past, a sense of rootlessness and aimlessness.” Rare are “faculty with atypical views,” he charged. “Still rarer is an informed understanding of the traditions and institutions of our Western civilization and of our country and an appreciation of their special qualities and values.” He counseled schools to adopt “a common core of studies” in the history, literature and philosophy “of our culture.” 

♦ ♦ ♦

Article: We Are Not The Dead: Soldiers’ Faces Before, During and After Serving in Afghanistan

(CCL banjo d)

Why you may want to read it: British Telegraph photographer Lalage Snow photographed and interviewed 13 members of 1st Battalion The Royal Regiment of Scotland before they were sent to Afghanistan, after three months’ service, and again days after they returned home.

Excerpt: It is always that fear, that apprehension, what is going to happen if I get blown up? When it happened, straight away it was the world’s biggest surprise, the world’s biggest scare. The whole reason I went to Afghanistan was to justify the soldiers who went before me. Why should I sit with my comfy slippers on my carpet, not having done my bit. But it’s as though I’ve got two lives: one where everything is dangerous and everyone is trying to kill us and the other one where you look out of the window in Edinburgh and there are people with pink hair, proper civilians. It’s just a different world.

♦ ♦ ♦

Article: Who Really Runs Wikipedia?

Why you may want to read it: American novelist Amanda Filipacchi recently discovered that Wikipedia was in the process of recategorizing the women in the American Novelists category into a new sub-category: American Women Novelists. There was no comparable sub-category of American Men Novelists. Who exactly made that decision, anyway?

Excerpt:  It might seem that Wikipedia’s problem is that it has too many editors and is too fluid. But the opposite may in fact be the case: the site is stiffening with age. A recent academic study found that the rate of rejection of changes jumped from 6% in 2006 to 25% to 2010 for new editors who had received kudos from other users. Meanwhile, active editors for the English-language version dropped from 50,000 to 35,000 during that period and has stayed roughly steady since. This may simply be an indication of Wikipedia’s maturity. But the more complete Wikipedia becomes on historical, scientific, and other settled factual matters, the fewer people there will be keeping an eye out for odd decisions or inappropriate edits to articles read by hundreds of millions of people. 

The post Meandering Monday: a few good articles appeared first on Cry, Beloved Country.

Mikey Weinstein (CCL truthout.org)

Mikey Weinstein bears considerable watching.

Breitbart set the conservative blogosphere buzzing last Sunday with a claim that Weinstein, founder and president of the virulent Military Religious Freedom Foundation, had been hired by the Pentagon as a consultant. Then on Wednesday Breitbart ramped up the rhetoric with this sure-to-generate-page-views headline, “Pentagon May Court Martial Soldiers Who Share Christian Faith.”

But I can find no evidence of any ongoing professional relationship. And so far all the Pentagon has done is to reiterate a decades-old policy against coercive proselytizing.

In a statement yesterday, a Department of Defense spokesman said:

The U.S. Department of Defense has never and will never single out a particular religious group for persecution or prosecution. The Department makes reasonable accommodations for all religions and celebrates the religious diversity of our service members.

Service members can share their faith (evangelize), but must not force unwanted, intrusive attempts to convert others of any faith or no faith to one’s beliefs (proselytization).

But that doesn’t mean that Weinstein isn’t a grave danger to the very military religious freedom he claims to champion.

The furor began last Friday with Washington Post columnist Sally Quinn’s write-up of a meeting Weinstein attended at the Pentagon. Also present were former Ambassador Joseph C. Wilson (perhaps better known as Mr. Valerie Plame), several generals and a military chaplain. The high-level meeting concerned “religious issues.” 

That’s because, according to Quinn, SecDef Chuck Hagel sees the two most serious issues facing the military as sexual assault and (wait for it, wait  for it) religious proselytizing.

That’s right. In a military being dismantled by the sequester and transfixed by a rising rate of military suicides, Hagel’s biggest worry is people talking about their faith.

But he’s not worried about just any people of faith, of course. According to Quinn, the problem is “fundamentalist evangelical Christians.”

And Weinstein isn’t just worried about some overzealous soldier annoying his roommates. He’s gunning for those pesky chaplains. He complained to Quinn about a chaplain in Afghanistan who recently preached a sermon urging his hearers to “get right with Jesus.”

Oh, the horror.

He and Wilson have their knickers in such a knot about it I’m surprised they can still walk.

Wilson told Quinn:

The chaplain’s role is to minister to spiritual needs. You don’t proselytize. It’s a workplace violation.

How exactly a chaplain can minister to spiritual needs without talking about his or her faith, he didn’t make clear.

Weinstein added:

This is a national security threat. What is happening is spiritual rape. And what the Pentagon needs to understand is that it is sedition and treason. It should be punished.

Treason, of course, is a capital offense.

One item apparently discussed at the meeting was part of a policy document published last August entitled “Air Force Culture, Air Force Standards.” It says:

Leaders at all levels must balance constitutional protections for an individual’s free exercise of religion or other personal beliefs and the constitutional prohibition against governmental establishment of religion.

Yup. That hits the nail on the head.

But Weinstein has his own unique interpretation of military religious freedom. In a recent HuffPo article he wrote:

Today, we face incredibly well-funded gangs of fundamentalist Christian monsters who terrorize their fellow Americans by forcing their weaponized and twisted version of Christianity upon their helpless subordinates in our nation’s armed forces. . . .

If these fundamentalist Christian monsters of human degradation, marginalization, humiliation and tyranny cannot broker or barter your acceptance of their putrid theology, then they crave for your universal silence in the face of their rapacious reign of theocratic terror. Indeed, they ceaselessly lust, ache, and pine for you to do absolutely nothing to thwart their oppression. Comply, my friends, and you, too, become as monstrously savage as are they. I beg you, do not feed these hideous monsters with your stoic lethargy, callousness and neutrality. Do not lubricate the path of their racism, bigotry, and prejudice. Doing so directly threatens the national security of our beautiful nation.

Tell me again why the Pentagon was consulting this guy about religious tolerance?

Weinstein claims he’s not talking about most Christians. Only the “fundamentalist” ones. But then he lumps Focus on the Family founder and evangelical stalwart Dr. James Dobson in with Westboro Baptist Church’s Fred Phelps as “virulently homophobic.”

Dobson’s offense? Defending the historic Christian understanding of marriage as being between one man and one woman.

And Weinstein is loaded for bear. He told Fox News:

If a member of the military is proselytizing in a manner that violates the law, well then of course they can be prosecuted. We would love to see hundreds of prosecutions to stop this outrage of fundamentalist religious persecution.

Keep in mind that this is a guy who thinks a Christian chaplain preaching a sermon urging people to “get right with Jesus” is an outrageous violation of the law.

Bottom line? Breitbart didn’t do us any favors with the sensationalist rhetoric. But on the subject of military religious freedom Mikey Weinstein is plenty scary all by himself.

The post Breitbart on military religious freedom: fact and fiction appeared first on Cry, Beloved Country.

(CCL Jenn Farr)

As we wait for the Gosnell jury to return a verdict, we need to come to terms with the fact that this man is no atypical rogue.

He’s mainstream.

Oh, his clinic may have been dirtier than most. He may have been more abusive to the women who came through his doors than most.

But as far as killing babies born alive after abortions?

I wrote last month (“After-birth abortion and the rise of neo-barbarism”) about Planned Parenthood lobbyist Alisa LaPolt Snow’s testimony in opposition to a bill before the Florida Legislature. The Infants Born Alive Act provides that an infant born alive after an abortion is entitled to “the same rights, powers and privileges” as any other child born alive. It also requires health-care providers to act to save the baby’s life and health.

But Snow was having none of it.

Rep. Jim Boyd: If a baby is born on a table as a result of a botched abortion, what would Planned Parenthood want to have happen to that child that is struggling for life?

Alisa LaPolt Snow: Well, we believe that any decision that’s made should be left up to the woman, her family, and the physician.

Notice: any decision that’s made.

(The Florida Senate, by the way, yesterday passed the bill unanimously, and Gov. Rick Scott is expected to sign it into law.)

During presentation of the bill in committee the following exchange took place between Rep. Mike Cleland and the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Cary Pigman, an emergency medicine physician.

Cleland: How prevalent are situations like this in an abortion setting? I was floored when I heard that this happens at all.

Pigman: We do have some sense in that with perinatal infant mortality data it is recorded. In 2010, there were 24,586 perinatal deaths in the United States, perinatal defined as being from the 22nd week of gestation to seven days post delivery. Those are all coded by International Classification of Disease[s] 10th Edition criteria, of which 96.4 is mortality subsequent to an abortion. And in 2010, 1,270 infants were reported in that category — and I emphasize reported.

(Cleland, by the way, who says in committee that he’s been “pro-choice my whole life,” goes on to vote in support of the bill.)

Cleland and Pigman’s interchange comes at 2:38 in this video:

“P 96.4″ is the code in the International Classification of Diseases for babies who are born alive after an abortion and then die. In the U.S. in 2010, there were 1,270 of them born at 22 weeks gestation or later.

And, as Pigman stresses, those are just the ones that were reported. I’m guessing Kermit Gosnell wasn’t the only abortionist out there who wasn’t doing much reporting of infants born alive. After all, if babies keep being born alive and then dying at your facility, it starts raising all sorts of awkward questions.

Because most of those babies would have survived with medical care.

In a 2009 study conducted in Sweden, almost one baby in 10 (9.8%) born at 22 weeks survived.

By 23 weeks, 53 percent survived.

At 24 weeks, 67 percent.

At 25 weeks, 82 percent.

And, by 26 weeks a whopping 85 percent survived.

But, again, that’s with medical care. Not left in a dirty linen closet to die, naked, unfed and uncared for.

Or brutally–and painfully–killed.

So now we know. Over a thousand babies a year, born alive after abortions in this country, are being either killed or left to die on the sacred altar of A Woman’s Right to Choose.

The 26 victims at Newtown are a blip on the screen in comparison.

Let’s stop fooling ourselves. Kermit Gosnell is not a rogue. Not an outlier. Kermit Gosnell is one of the faces of pro-choice America.

If you don’t believe me, just ask Alisa LaPolt Snow.

The post Kermit Gosnell is no rogue appeared first on Cry, Beloved Country.