Steyn: "A Nation of Sandra Flukes"

The always brilliant Mark Steyn, on one of the Democrats prime-time speakers...

So this is America’s best and brightest — or, at any rate, most expensively credentialed. Sandra Fluke has been blessed with a quarter-million dollars of elite education, and, on the evidence of Wednesday night, is entirely incapable of making a coherent argument. She has enjoyed the leisurely decade-long varsity once reserved for the minor sons of Mitteleuropean grand dukes, and she has concluded that the most urgent need facing the Brokest Nation in History is for someone else to pay for the contraception of 30-year-old children. She says the choice facing America is whether to be “a country where we mean it when we talk about personal freedom, or one where that freedom doesn’t apply to our bodies and our voices” — and, even as the words fall leaden from her lips, she doesn’t seem to comprehend that Catholic institutions think their “voices” ought to have freedom, too, or that Obamacare seizes jurisdiction over “our bodies” and has 16,000 new IRS agents ready to fine us for not making arrangements for “our” pancreases and “our” bladders that meet the approval of the commissars. Sexual liberty, even as every other liberty withers, is all that matters: A middle-school girl is free to get an abortion without parental consent, but if she puts a lemonade stand on her lawn she’ll be fined. What a bleak and reductive concept of “personal freedom.”

Another Steyn must-read.

Are Christians Obsessed With Gays and Abortion?

David French, the the director of the Alliance Defense Fund Center for Academic Freedom, has an excellent piece at Patheos.com this morning on the topic of Christians, priorities, and the culture war.

How do those numbers stack up with leading Christian anti-poverty charities? Let's look at just three: World Vision, Compassion International, and Samaritan's Purse. Their total annual gross receipts (again, according to most recently available Form 990s) exceed $2.1 billion. The smallest of the three organizations (Samaritan's Purse) has larger gross receipts than every major "pro-family" culture war organization in the United States combined. World Vision, the largest, not only takes in more than $1 billion per year, it also has more than 1,400 employees and 43,000 volunteers.

And I don't begrudge them a single dime. In fact, I'd say our relative priorities are just about right. When you see World Vision efforts on the ground in Africa, you see they are often standing as a firewall between life and death, hope and despair. Samaritan's Purse and Compassion International are likewise standing in the gap for the "least of these," living out the pure religion that scripture commands.

So given these realities, what is our real "obsession"? Historically, monetarily, and with our time and lives today, it is serving our fellow man. We fight the culture war, but largely as a defensive struggle—fighting against changes instigated by the Left, like legalized abortion, the redefinition of marriage, and attacks on the basic free speech rights of Christian parents and students. Do critics expect no opposition to such cultural change? Do they believe any such opposition is inherently illegitimate?

I think that the highlighted quote in that last paragraph is vitally important. The "culture wars," to the extent that they exist, are instigated and promulgated from the left. There is no fight from Christians to oppress homosexuals; there is a fight from the left to redefine the institution of marriage. The "prayer in school" movement is a response to the attempt, from the left, to criminalize religious speech. The fight against abortion is a fight against killing babies, instigated by a fight from the left to enshrine it as a right.

But I don't know any Christian who is "obsessed" with any of those issues to the exclusion of helping feed the hungry, house the homeless, care for the sick and spread the Gospel...

Chicago Boyz » Blog Archive » Brooding

At the Chicago Boyz blog, Lexington Green is brooding on the cultural confidence of the American cultural elite (i.e., leftists). And he has an excellent question.

But I go back to my initial question. Why does an elite that is actually not admirable in what it does, and not effective or productive, that has added little or nothing of value to the civilizational stock, that cannot possibly do the things it claims it can do, that services rent-seekers and the well-connected, that believes in an incoherent mishmash of politically correct platitudes, that is parasitic, have such an elevated view of itself?

Read it all...

Lying with facts - Taunton school edition

Here is a followup to Tuesday's story, about the boy from Taunton who drew the crucifix, that demonstrates how easy it is to lie without actually giving any false facts.

Although reporters regionally and nationally jumped on a story about a 9-year-old boy supposedly suspended for drawing a stick-figure Jesus on the cross, it now appears the tale was overblown.

Contrary to news reports -- including a story on ParentDish -- the boy was never suspended. He and his classmates at Maxham Elementary School in Taunton, Mass. (40 miles south of Boston), were never given an assignment to draw pictures that reminded them of Christmas.

Lie number 1: "The boy was never suspended." According to the boy's father, and, as far as I know, neither addressed nor contradicted by anyone in the school department, he was told that he could not return to school until he had gone through a psychological evaluation. Was he removed from class before the school day was over? Were his parents called to come get him? Were they told that they couldn't come back until he'd been evaluated?

After being removed from the school on Wednesday, he finished that evaluation on Monday, and returned to school either that afternoon or the following morning. Assuming that this is true, he may not have received a nominal suspension, but he certainly received a de facto suspension.


Lie number 2: "He and his classmates...were never given an assignment to draw pictures that reminded them of Christmas." According to the father, they were given the assignment, two days after their Thanksgiving break, of drawing something that reminded them of their Thanksgiving holiday, which had just finished. And the boy had visited the La Salette shrine with his family over the holiday weekend.


In other words, this news report attempts to debunk the story without actually contradicting anything the father said. Given how careful the Superintendent is being with the words she's using, I assume that the father is right. They aren't saying that the boy wasn't given an assignment to draw a picture about their holiday, only that he wasn't given an assignment to draw something about "Christmas or any religious holiday." They aren't saying that he wasn't banned from the school until after an evaluation, only that he wasn't "suspended." Those are weasel words. Rather than debunking the story, they tend to confirm it. I believed it the other day when I posted it - the officials in the Taunton school system have, thus far, strengthed my belief.

"America Through the Reality Lens"

Excellent piece from Jonah Goldberg:

British historian Arnold Toynbee argued that civilizations thrive when the lower classes aspire to be like the upper classes, and they decay when the upper classes try to be like the lower classes. Looked at through this prism, it’s hard not to see America in a prolonged period of decay.

It’s not all bad news, to be sure. The elite minority’s general acceptance of racial and sexual equality as important values has been a moral triumph. But not without costs. As part of this transformation, society has embraced what social scientist Charles Murray calls “ecumenical niceness.” A core tenet of ecumenical niceness is that harsh judgments of the underclass — or people with underclass values — are forbidden. A corollary: People with old-fashioned notions of decency are fair game.

Long before the rise of reality shows, ecumenical niceness created a moral vacuum. Out-of-wedlock birth was once a great shame; now it’s something of a happy lifestyle choice. The cavalier use of profanity was once crude; now it’s increasingly conversational. Self-discipline was once a virtue; now self-expression is king.

Having never watched a minute of any of the "reality" shows, I may not be perfectly positioned to judge. But I agree with everything here.

The death of Britain continues apace...

The practical result of education in the spirit of The Green Book must be the destruction of the society which accepts it.

- C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

Evidence of his prescience continues to mount. The only questions which remain are, is it possible to arrest the decay? Or has British society already been destroyed? These may just be the death throes of a historical remnant...

Culture and marriage

A nice article from K-Lo at NRO. Nothing new, nothing ground-breaking, but a point that cannot be made too often, and isn't made anything like often enough.

In her book The Abolition of Marriage, Maggie Gallagher, one of the most committed marriage-protection activists in the country, wrote: “Marriage, like a corporation or private property, is an institution that must be supported by law and culture if it is to exist at all. . . . To have the choice as individuals to marry we must first choose as a society to create marriage.”

I attended a wedding at St. Patrick’s Cathedral that same Labor Day weekend, the run-up to which was a more traditional kind of single boy meets single girl that didn’t make any features sections. During the sermon, the rector implored those in attendance to be a support for the couple, because they will have hardship ahead, as all couples do. (You actually can’t legislate it away.) Marriage requires work and sacrifice. Family and friends are vital supports; in fact, they can often help make or break a marriage.

But what about the culture? Will the culture make a positive contribution to the institution of marriage? Or will we forever hold our peace in the face of blatant offenses to all that we should hold dear?

I prefer my culture, thank you very much...

So, does a proper respect for other cultures demand that I acknowledge the culture that produced this story to be equal to, or better than, American culture?

Five armed men burst into the small room and courtyard at dawn, just as 21-year-old, 22-week pregnant, Sunita was drying her face on a towel. They punched and kicked her stomach as she called out for her sleeping boyfriend "Jassa", 22-year-old Jasbir Singh, witnesses said. When he woke, both were dragged into waiting cars, driven away and strangled. Their bodies, half-stripped, were laid out on the dirt outside Sunita's father's house for all to see, a sign that the family's "honor" had been restored by her cold-blooded murder.
...
"From society's point of view, this is a very good thing," said 62-year-old farmer Balwan Arya, sitting smoking a hookah in the shade of a tree in a square with other elders from the village council or panchayat. "We have removed the blot."
...
At their house, Sunita's mother did not emerge to talk. Instead, a young man on a motorbike tried to intimidate the Reuters team into leaving. It turned out he was another of Sunita's cousins, his father and brother held by police. "We are not ashamed of it, absolutely not, we have the honor of doing the village proud," he said. "We would not have had a face to show if we had not done this. It was the act of 'real men'."

So in some parts of India, it is the act of "real men" to gang up on and beat to death a pregnant girl. Thank God for India that they were able to throw of the imperialist yoke of the British Raj!

And let us ponder, one more time, Sir Charles Napier's approach to the culture wars...

"[Sir Charles Napier] also," says Sir William Napier, "put down the practice of Suttee, which, however was rare in Scinde, by a process extremely characteristic. For judging the real cause of these immolations to be the profits derived by the priests, and hearing of an intended burning, he made it known that he would stop the sacrifice. The priests said it was a religious rite which must not be meddled with, that all nations had customs which should be respected and this was a very sacred one. The general, affecting to be struck with the argument, replied, 'Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom. Prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs." "No Suttee," adds the historian, "took place then or afterwards."

Sometimes, cultural intolerance is a good thing

Having just finished listening to Jim Dale's wonderful reading of the Harry Potter books again, we're taking a Potter break, and currently are listening to Dale's reading of Verne's Around the World in 80 Days. (It's an understatement to say that Dale is very good at this.) Yesterday, we heard the scene in which Fogg and Passepartout rescue the widow from her husband's funeral pyre. That's the hook upon which I'm hanging my posting of the following quote, which I've seen in a few places recently, and which I enjoy on a couple of levels.

The source that I'm using is The Administration of the East India Company: A history of Indian Progress by John William Kaye, published in 1853. At a time and in a place where men believed that not all cultures were equally worthy, and were willing to defend their own.

"[Sir Charles Napier] also," says Sir William Napier, "put down the practice of Suttee, which, however was rare in Scinde, by a process extremely characteristic. For judging the real cause of these immolations to be the profits derived by the priests, and hearing of an intended burning, he made it known that he would stop the sacrifice. The priests said it was a religious rite which must not be meddled with, that all nations had customs which should be respected and this was a very sacred one. The general, affecting to be struck with the argument, replied, 'Be it so. This burning of widows is your custom. Prepare the funeral pile. But my nation has also a custom. When men burn women alive we hang them, and confiscate all their property. My carpenters shall therefore erect gibbets on which to hang all concerned when the widow is consumed. Let us all act according to national customs." "No Suttee," adds the historian, "took place then or afterwards."

Let me just say that I love that approach to that problem...

The culture war is over. We lost...

Is there any doubt that Great Britain is a post-Christian nation? I don't think so...

A supermarket chain got itself into a huge muddle over the meaning of Easter yesterday in its attempt to sell more chocolate eggs.

“Brits are set to spend a massive £520 million on Easter eggs this year — but many young people don’t even know what Easter’s all about,” said the press release from Somerfield after a survey.

It then went on to claim that the tradition of giving Easter eggs was to celebrate the “birth” of Christ.