A note on the Amazon ads: I've chosen to display current events titles in the Amazon box. Unfortunately, Amazon appears to promote a disproportionate number of angry-left books. I have no power over it at this time. Rest assured, I'm still a conservative.
|
Friday, November 30, 2001
I know it's late, but sometimes the silly things some people say just won't wait until morning.
In an interview Thursday morning with CNN's Paula Zahn, Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) addressed the challenges facing women in Afghanistan.
You know during the Clinton administration, we took some very strong stands. We refused to recognize the Taliban. I and Secretary Albright and others were very vocal in saying that you can not recognize a regime that basically has imposed an apartheid system on half their population, which has attempted to deny women all their rights.
Refusing to recognize the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan was a strong stand? Before President Clinton left office was Denise Rich promising to make a big donation to the Clinton Presidential Library if Clinton pardoned her ex-husband, fugitive financier Marc Rich, AND recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan? Did Hillary and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright come stomping into the oval office saying: "Pardon her husband, but you must NOT recognize the Taliban!"
Three governments had recognized the Taliban as the legitimate government of Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates. Sen. Clinton loses what little credibility she still has when she attempts to rewrite history to give the Clinton administration some moral standing that it never had with regard to its dealings with Afghanistan. I truly believe that she does care about what happens to women in Afghanistan. But, the only time President Clinton did anything for Afghanistan was to blow up some tents using cruise missiles. Oddly enough, this happened about the same time that uncomfortable questions were being asked about his difficulty keeping his pants on.
Of course, sensible people don't buy this load of manure. Afghanistan's only woman general, Suhaila Siddiq, 60, a trained physician, says that people shouldn't be so preoccupied with the burkha, an all-enveloping veil women were forced to wear under Taliban rule.
"The first priority should be given to education, primary school facilities, the economy and reconstruction of the country but the West concentrates on the burkha and whether the policies of the Taliban are better or worse than other regimes. Let these things be decided by history.”
Gen. Siddiq also has words for Sen. Clinton: "She cannot defend her own rights against her husband. How can she defend the rights of my country?"
1:26 AM
(0) comments
Tuesday, November 27, 2001
If you're not reading the Wall Street Journal's "Best of the Web Today" every day, you should. Often informative, often witty, and often containing information that gets my Irish up, the article is full of inspiration for writing columns. (You can find a link to the Wall Street Journal in the links to the left.)
Today's inspiration, as noted in "Best of the Web Today," comes from James Carroll, one of the plethora of voices out on the far left of the American political spectrum. Carroll manages to demonstrate, in his column entitled "This war is not just," that scientists have succeeded in removing a person's brain, but leaving them able to speak, breathe, and write.
Carroll says he is skeptical of the methods by which the war in Afghanistan is being waged. He says he is skeptical of the justification being used for waging a war at all. He says he is skeptical of what the United States' goals are in waging war.
Unfortunately, he's not really skeptical, he's anti-war (for whatever reason), and anti-America. Carroll has every right to his opinion. Fortunately, the majority of Americans have the right call him....well, he predicts what will happen.
Anyone still refusing to sign onto this campaign is increasingly regarded as unpatriotic. Next, we will be called ''kooks.''
Carroll's language is a little strong. "Kooks" is an offensive term for mentally-ill people, and we wouldn't want to lump Carroll in with them. I think "stupid" is a better term.
Carroll believes the war in Afghanistan is unjust for three reasons, each more mindless than the one before.
First, ignorance. The United States government has revealed very little of what has happened in the war zone. Journalists impeded by restricted access and blind patriotism have uncovered even less. How many of those outside the military establishment who have blithely deemed this war ''just'' know what it actually involves? It is clear that a massive bombardment has been occurring throughout Afghanistan, but to what effect? And against whom? Is the focus on the readily targeted Taliban, in fact, allowing a far more elusive Al Qaeda to slip away?
Carroll obviously didn't do any research on what a "Just War" is. What constitutes a "Just War" can be found here. The United States' war in Afghanistan meets all of the tests, despite Carroll's refusal to admit it.
Let me answer Carroll's questions one-by-one:
Q: How many of those outside the military establishment who have blithely deemed this war ''just'' know what it actually involves?
A: I don't know, and I'm not sure that anyone can truly answer this question. I think that some reporters are smart enough can figure this out, but it's also clear that there are a lot of morons on television (and writing for the Boston Globe) that may not be able to.
Q: It is clear that a massive bombardment has been occurring throughout Afghanistan, but to what effect? And against whom?
A: Well, if Carroll had read a newspaper in the past week, it would appear that we have been able to run the Taliban out of northern Afghanistan and the capital of Kabul and force them into a small enclave around Kandahar. But I just get this from reading the newspaper...what hole has Carroll been in for the past week?
Q: Is the focus on the readily targeted Taliban, in fact, allowing a far more elusive Al Qaeda to slip away?
A: Well, one does not presuppose the other. Just because we're targeting the Taliban now doesn't mean that al Qaeda will slip away.
Does this intervention break, or at least impede, the cycle of violence in which terrorism is only the latest turn? Or, by affirming the inevitability of violence, does this war prepare the ground for the next one?
With this series of questions, it becomes clear that Carroll has spent too much time getting in touch with his feelings. Break the cycle of violence? This is the most stupid thing I've seen written since the script for "Battlefield Earth." Does Carroll really, honestly believe that if we didn't do anything after the twin towers were destroyed that Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda would just figure: "Okay, we've punished them enough," and we wouldn't see another attack on America ever again? The only way we can stop terrorism is to kill all of the terrorists. It's pretty basic and pretty obvious when you think about it.
Third, wrongly defined use of force. This war is not ''just'' because it was not necessary. It may be the only kind of force the behemoth Pentagon knows to exercise, but that doesn't make it ''just'' either. The terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 could have been defined not as acts of war, but as crimes. That was the first mistake, one critics like me flagged as it was happening.
As perhaps the most savage crimes in history, the terrorists' acts should have been met with a swift, forceful response far more targeted than the present war has been. Police action, not war.
This war was not necessary? Could have been handled as a police action? If I recall correctly, the last time we called something a police action, people like Carroll came out of the woodwork, loudly deriding the use of that term. I'm all for truth in advertising. Vietnam was a war, and so is this.
If Carroll would remember back just a few weeks, this didn't start out as a war in Afghanistan. We asked, nicely, if you take into account what had just happened, for the Taliban to hand over bin Laden and his cohorts. They refused. As nice and tough as Sgt. Joe Friday was, I don't think he'd have gotten anywhere in Afghanistan.
The criminals, not an impoverished nation, should be on the receiving end of the punishment.
The criminals are on the receiving end of the punishment. Carroll, remember all the video of those food packets being dropped? How about the extraordinary efforts to avoid civilian casualties. Yes, some civilians have been killed -- accidentally -- far fewer than the approximately 4,000 American civilians that were killed on Sept. 11 purposefully. Nearly every media report coming out of Afghanistan recounts how the Afghan people are elated to be free of the authoritarian rule of the Taliban. Girls are returning to school. Music is playing. Kites are being flown. Life is far better for the common Afghani today than it was just three months ago.
Undoubtedly, if they were ever to read this page, liberals like Rep. Cynthia McKinney, D-Ga., Susan Sontag, and Noam Chomsky would decry my attack on Carroll's free speech. As if free speech were something that would insulate someone who writes something stupid from being called on the carpet.
I'm proud to say that only in America would a newspaper like the Boston Globe have the freedom to print a piece of useless drivel like that produced by Carroll. And only in America do I have the freedom to dissect, decry and destroy it.
5:05 PM
(0) comments
Sunday, November 25, 2001
The big news Sunday wasn't war in Afghanistan, where Taliban fighters in Konduz were beginning to surrender to Northern Alliance forces. Nor was it holiday travel, military tribunals or the fact that Democrats are still bottling up President Bush's judicial nominees (which should be a major story). Instead, the talk of the Sunday morning news shows was that scientists at Advanced Cell Technology (ACT) in Worcester, Mass., had created a human clone. You can read the U.S. News & World Report story here. On "Meet the Press" this morning, Dr. Michael West, president of ACT, emphasized that they were not planning on creating a cloned human being -- yet.
"And indeed, there is nothing to prevent people right now in the United States from doing that, except for one major point, and that’s that the Food and Drug Administration, by law, regulates the reproductive uses of cloning, so that they would be breaking regulations with the Food and Drug Administration if you tried to clone a human being today," West said. A complete transcript of the interview can be found here.
There is a regulation that would stop the cloning of humans. I feel very relieved now. I guess that "The Boys from Brazil" was just way-out wacko science fiction.
No, these scientists don't want to make cloned human beings, instead they are using these embryos, referred to as "preimplantation embryos," to create stem cells with the same genetic code as the afflicted person, so that there is no worry about rejection when the cells are implanted in the body. The use of the term "preimplantation embryos" is very interesting, and we have Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, to thank for prominent use of the term. When stem cell research was being debated on Capitol Hill earlier this year, Sen. Hatch, a pro-lifer, came out in favor of the research because, according to his (twisted) logic, an embryo isn't a human being until it resides in a woman. This theory that whether something is human or not depends on it's location is curious. Are human beings in space still human beings? How about human beings in the oceans' depths? That where we are located changes the status and worth of our life is a troubling concept.
Logically, life must begin at conception. I have heard of no persuasive argument for another time at which "life" could begin. At conception, that one-cell organism has within it all of the genetic material necessary to become a human being. Given time and sustenance, that cell will grow up to be a human. Not a pig, not a giraffe, not a flower. A human being.
In my college speech class a young woman and myself ended up on different sides of the abortion debate. One of this woman's better arguments (and this is saying a lot) was to liken human reproduction to that of a chicken. The comparison is silly on its face, but that didn't seem to faze most of the "pro-choice" people in the room. Her argument was: When we have eggs for breakfast, we say we had eggs, not chicken. When we have chicken for dinner, we don't say we had eggs. Likewise, a fetus isn't a human, otherwise we wouldn't have two different words for it. This argument is stupid. Baby -- human or not? Toddler -- human or not? Teenager -- human or not? Adult -- human or not? Senior citizen -- human or not? That people actually thought that this was strong argument just shows a lack of critical-thinking skills.
Others suggest that life begins at birth. I don't buy the theory that a pair of scissors is what makes us human. Yes, after the umbilical cord is cut, the baby is definitely separate from its mother. Pro-choice proponents suggest that because at that point the child is no longer dependent on its mother for sustenance, it's a human being. Unfortunately, that baby is still dependent on its mother (or someone) for sustenance for at least a few more years, and many, including my parents, would argue that the number of years is closer to 18.
What these scientists are doing is creating human life for the purpose of dicing it up for spare parts. It is ethically and morally wrong on its face. But that doesn't stop scientists from trying to justify what they are doing.
"If you ask the average person, they will tell you (embryos are) a tiny little person with buggy eyes," says West. "But, in fact, these are just a few reproductive cells, not much different than eggs or sperm. They are the raw materials of life, but they are not a person." Most scientists agree. During the first 14 days after an egg is fertilized, the group of cells is known as a "preimplantation embryo." In nature, the majority of these pass from the body without ever attaching to a woman's uterus and developing further. If one truly believed that these were individual human lives being lost, argues Ronald Green, director of the Ethics Institute at Dartmouth and chairman of ACT's bioethics committee, then this should be considered a huge public-health crisis, and there would be a massive medical campaign launched to save these "lives."
-- U.S. News & World Report
What "most scientists" apparently don't recognize is the difference between themselves and God (or nature if you prefer). When these embryos do not attach to the woman's uterus it is nature taking its course. When scientists decide that these embryos are good for spare parts, they are making a decision about who lives and who dies. If you were to implant these embryos into a woman and wait nine months, there's a possibility that you would have a baby.
I hope that science eventually finds a cure for diabetes, Parkinson's disease and spinal cord injuries. However, scientists should not be creating and destroying human life in order to ensure that Christopher Reeve walks again.
Luckily, there appears to be good news from the two senators interviewed on "Meet the Press," Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Richard Shelby, R-Ala., both said that it was very likely, after a lengthy debate, that the Senate would ban human cloning.
9:48 PM
(0) comments
Saturday, November 24, 2001
Well, I didn't write my Thanksgiving column as promised. It's two days later, and I guess it's not going to get written. Right now, in my mind, what I'm thankful for is nothing more than a laundry list which really doesn't lend itself to a column. Also, I'm not sure what I'm thankful for is all that different than what everyone else is thankful for.
"History is the witness that testifies to the passing of time; it illumines reality, vitalizes memory, provides guidance in daily life and brings us tidings of antiquity."
Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC - 43 BC), Pro Publio Sestio
On the list of things I'm thankful for (below things like friends and family) is my education. I had quite a few good teachers in high school and college. I passed the Advanced Placement U.S. history test in high school, allowing me to skip Hist 214 in college. (Sometimes in nightmares I imagine how my history-teacher father would have reacted had I failed that test.) But Cal Poly San Luis Obispo does require a course in U.S. history, and another in world history. Some of the latest news is that there are many colleges -- including some of the most prestigious in the country -- that allows students to graduate with NO history requirement. For a list of the offensive (or offending) institutions, click here.
UC Berkeley, also known as Bezerkeley, actually allows students to skip U.S. history if they received a "C" or better in the subject in high school. It doesn't matter if you went to the best high school in the country, a "C" in a college prep course satisfying a requirement in a four-year university is criminally stupid.
I'm not opposed to technical schools, but I've always been a little miffed when they try to promote their programs by suggesting that English, history and other humanities courses are "stupid" or "unnecessary." These schools have a place in our educational landscape, but there should be some difference in the academic requirements at Coleman College and those at Harvard or Yale.
And the fact that these instititutions aren't educating students is becoming more and more apparent -- and I'm not referring to the idiots that they get to appear on the TV show "Street Smarts." In a recent survey of college seniors, only 34 percent knew that George Washington was the commanding general at the battle of Yorktown. This is troubling, because you'd figure, that even if you didn't know -- the best guess would be good ol' George. Unfortunately, a greater number, 37 percent, thought that the commanding general at that battle of the American Revolution was Ulysses S. Grant.
I guess that I'm lucky. I like to read. I'll read just about anything, and, due to the fact that my father was a history teacher, I've often had good, interesting books to read. I think it's very unfortunate that so many people don't read. They miss so much. They learn so little.
Please feel free to use the comment link at the bottom of each post if you'd like to say something about what I've written for everyone to see.
6:56 PM
(0) comments
Wednesday, November 21, 2001
I like to write, but this past week has just been crazy with work and, I am happy to announce, social activities with members of the fairer sex. You, dear reader, can complain all you want, but when it comes to a choice between writing this free column and spending free time with lovely ladies, the ladies win.
A lot's happened in the past week, so I'm going to just make some quick notes on a variety of different subjects. Someday when I have more time (sorry, it's you vs. the ladies again) I'll find a good way of formatting this for easier reading.
Alan Dershowitz, moron: I've never been really impressed by the Harvard University law professor. I didn't particularly care for him pre-O.J., but I definitely didn't like him post-O.J. The man has no moral grounding. He may have ethics, but they certainly don't take into account right and wrong. Dershowitz is so much fun to watch when he tries to explain morality. About one year ago, Dershowitz debated former ambassador and GOP presidential candidate Alan Keyes (probably the best orator in America today) about religion's role in society. Dershowitz may practice law, but he doesn't want people to practice religion, especially if that religion (Christianity is the one he consistently singles out) outlines what is right and wrong. C-SPAN periodically replays this debate, if you can catch it, it's well worth the 2 hours it runs, especially the last 30 minutes or so, when questions from the audience are read.
I told you that story so I could tell you this one. Dershowitz is just one of a number of prominent people who are crying foul over the Bush administration's decision to keep open the possibility of trying terrorists who plot against the United States in military tribunals. I don't see why this is a big deal. U.S. citizens would be unaffected by this, but Dershowitz and his cohorts think that we have to make sure that every terrorist has full use of the Bill of Rights that they would plot to destroy. It is silly. Dershowitz basically claims that U.S. military officers would be under pressure from their commander-in-chief, George W. Bush, to find everyone guilty. Well, we could always have the trials in Manhattan. I'm sure Dershowitz could find an impartial jury there. I don't think the president should just keep the possibility of military tribunals open -- I think he should do it. Dershowitz decried the fact that residents of this country could be tried before a military tribunal. These "Americans," as Dershowitz called them on "Fox News Sunday," are no such thing. They are foreign nationals. Citizens of another country. If there is evidence they are plotting the destruction of this country, then I think a military court is enough process for them. It is certainly more process than would be accorded them in their homeland.
What Reuters reaps, it sows: Well, Reuters, the British news agency, said it would not refer to the Sept. 11 attacks as "terrorist attacks," nor would it refer to the 19 madmen who flew airliners into building as "terrorists." "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom-fighter," said Stephen Jukes, Reuters global editor for news. Last week two Reuters photographers were among four journalists murdered in Afghanistan by Taliban soldiers. Other news agencies opined that Reuters management was afraid that if it appeared to take sides in its reporting by calling the attackers "terrorists" then its reporters and photographers might become targets of violence throughout the Muslim world. Well, I'm not sure that the Muslims who are predisposed to killing journalists are the type that read Reuters reports and are sufficiently educated to appreciate the nuances of the news agency's choice of labels.
My theory on matchmakers and blind dates: In the past couple of years, I've been set up on two blind dates. Neither went especially well, and I'm becoming more and more skeptical of the entire process and the abilities of these matchmakers. I've talked with other "victims" of blind dates, and I've come up with the following theory in the hopes that someday, some matchmaker will prove me wrong.
Matchmakers choose to set up people who they believe would look good together. They do not take into account similar personalities, interests or sense of humor in making a match.
What society generally frowns upon, and every single person denies that they do, the typical matchmaker does. That is, people are matched based on a similar physical appearance. I'm reminded of Rosie O'Donnell's rant in the movie "Beautiful Girls." In the scene Rosie lectures Timothy Hutton and Matt Dillon on women, appearance and relationships. "If there's nothing else going on in the relationship, besides the physical, I guarantee you'll get sick and tired of her."
So, what should you, the potential matchmaker out there, be looking for in a woman for me?
Christian.
Smart.
Conservative.
Interest in politics and current events.
Someone with an artistic bent (female engineers and mathematicians would not fall into this category).
A good sense of humor and an affinity for foreign films and British humor.
Interest in photography, art, history and the outdoors.
A good cook (I know it's cliche, but I can cook for her too).
Everyone have a happy turkey day tomorrow. I'll prepare the standard: "What I'm thankful for" column, that is mandatory for aspiring columnists like myself, for tomorrow.
10:54 AM
(0) comments
Wednesday, November 14, 2001
Good news! All eight of the foreign aid workers held for three months in Afghanistan by the Taliban have been freed. It's still unclear whether or not they were released by their captors or freed by Northern Alliance fighters or, possibly, U.S. special forces. How they were freed isn't important right now, what's important is that they're coming home.
I arrived home after a long day at work and had a half-nap, the kind where you're never really asleep but not quite awake, while replaying the two news programs that I record each day: "Special Report with Brit Hume" and "The O'Reilly Factor." I really wasn't awake for "Special Report," but I was conscious enough for old Bill and his talk with a Muslim woman who opposed the increased scrutiny being proposed for Muslim/Middle-Eastern foreign nationals currently in the United States. The Immigration and Naturalizaton Service, along with the FBI, wants to talk to about 5,000 young men from Middle-Eastern countries that are currently in the United States. They aren't being forced to talk, just asked to tell us anything they may know about terrorist cells. I don't find this the slightest-bit troubling. They're not being forced to do anything. These people are guests in our country. Any rights they have are rights we have decided to give them -- and those rights are likely more extensive than those they would receive in their home country.
There was an article in the San Diego Union-Tribune a couple weeks ago, and similar articles have appeared in papers across the country, about an Arab man, an engineer of some sort, who has been stopped and searched several times in airports. He feels that he is being singled out because of his religion/ethnicity. In eleven trips through airport security, he said that his bags had been searched nine times. Well, he probably is being searched because of his religion/ethnicity -- and it's NOT a bad thing. I know it's not politically correct to say this nowadays, but we know what the enemy looks like. The enemy is a young man, from a middle-eastern country and is a Muslim fundamentalist. Are all men fitting this description terrorists plotting destruction in America? No. But all terrorists plotting destruction in America DO fit that description.
This is different than cops pulling over a black person driving a Lexus. As of this writing, no black people have hijacked airliners and flown them into buildings. Any sane person would acknowledge that there must be a different standard when dealing with mass murder. If young, overweight white guys sporting flat-top haircuts had killed 1,000 people in Saudi Arabia, I would expect that the Saudi government would look at me funny, follow me around, and, at the very least, toss me out of the country.
Unfortunately, our cultural aversion to racial profiling is making the scene in airports a little silly. Whose bags need to be searched? Young Muslim mens'. It is silly to search the bags of elderly black women. On "Larry King Live" tonight, Barbara Walters revealed that the random computer program that airlines are using had twice chosen her to have her bags searched. The only thing the American public has to fear from Barbara Walters is sappy journalism. Let's use some common sense; Barbara Walters is no threat to ram a plane into a skyscraper. What worries me more is that the Arab engineer went through security twice without having his bags searched.
I'm sorry that it has come to this, but Arabs in American must expect increased scrutiny at airports and other places that would be considered "high value" targets by terrorists. There were undoubtedly Muslims in this country that knew the terrorists were up to no good. Likely most of them are now in government custody. But the Muslim community cannot stay silent when they know that terrorists are in their midst.
Unfortunately, there are also many Muslims in this country who hate this country; who hate Jews; and who hate the West. I do not know what is being said in mosques around this country, but I fear that some of it is not good. Lies and hatred are being preached, in at least on New York mosque, if what the former imam is telling the Arab press is what he was also telling his congregants.
In an October interview for an unofficial Al-Azhar University Web site, Sheikh Muhammad Al-Gamei'a, former Imam of the Islamic Cultural Center and Mosque of New York City, spewed lies designed to rile the "Arab Street" against Jews and the United States. The full interview can be found here. But a little is enough to give you a taste of the lies:
"When a group of people attacked my home, I went out to them and asked why they were doing this. They said that because we were Muslims we were linked to terrorism. I explained to them that what they were doing was uncivilized and was, in effect, a twofold crime, you let the criminals go free and attack innocents. This does not suit a modern state and a modern people, and is opposed to human values."
"During my conversations with this group, it became clear to me that they knew very well that the Jews were behind these ugly acts, while we, the Arabs, were innocent, and that someone from among their people was disseminating corruption in the land. Although the Americans suspect that the Zionists are behind the act, none has the courage to talk about it in public."
There is too much hatred in this world as it is. There will be no peace in the Middle East between Israel and its arab neighbors as long as Muslim religious leaders spew this hate.
11:10 PM
(0) comments
Well, it's just one post after another. I wish I had time to write this stuff earlier in the day, but with work being the way it is, I really didn't get time to do it. Normally I'd put this in some sort of bulleted list and just post once, but I'm still working on bringing my html skills up to snuff, so I'm just going to do separate posts for the time being.
It was great to wake up this morning and see that the Northern Alliance had driven the Taliban southward and out of the capitol city of Kabul. What was disappointing, however, was that the eight foreign aid workers were taken with the fleeing troops. I've been praying for their release ever since they were captured. It is troubling that there are still many countries in this world (mostly Arab) that do not allow people to worship God as they please.
I caught a few minutes of "Dateline NBC" on Wednesday night. A couple of talking heads, I have no idea who they were, were talking about the work that the aid workers from Shelter Now were doing. The talking heads also discounted the possibility that the two Americans, Dayna Curry and Heather Mercer had actually been trying to convert Muslims when they were discovered and arrested. Why did the talking heads make this claim? I'm guessing that they were trying to make Curry and Mercer look as innocent as possible. I don't think that they were innocent of the charges. The materials they had were in the local languages, Pashto and Dari. If they were for Curry and Mercer's own consumption, they would have been in English. I don't care how fluent you are in another language, I don't think there's any reason to have these sorts of materials in your possession if they are for English-speaking persons.
The truth of the matter is that I'm sure that Curry and Mercer were trying to convert the Muslims that they were found with. The fact that the media and their American apologists would want to, or would have to try to make it seem innocent is troubling. Why should people be prohibited from hearing or learning about other religions? Eight years ago, I went with a couple of my fraternity brothers to the Muslim equivalent of a Bible study. We discussed the Quran, how Muslims view Jesus Christ and a variety of other issues. In America, I, a Christian, was free to go to a Quran study and learn about Islam. (I was puzzled by the microphone that was in the room -- it wasn't until later that I realized that our discussion was being piped into a nearby room for the women.) One of the Muslims in the room was a white guy, a former Roman Catholic, he told us, who had converted to Islam. Now, I'm sure that this guy's conversion to Islam caused some ripples with his friends. Maybe he was ostracized, but nothing that happened to him, I'm sure, compares with what Christians who convert from Islam must suffer in the Middle East.
In most Muslim countries, Bible studies must be done in secret...or Christians die or, if they are foreigners, are expelled from the country. In recent article in the National Review, Julia Duin recounts some of what Christians must go through in what passes for a more liberal, tolerant Muslim country:
We got to sample this during an interview with Akel Biltaji, then minister of tourism for Jordan. All was serene until he was asked why Muslims were not allowed to change their religion in Jordan. Muslims could convert to Christianity, he said smoothly, but they must expect to suffer, if not die for their new faith. After all, he added, Christ died for them.
One could almost hear jaws drop around the room. He was quite cold about it.
That is Jordan. King Abdullah of Jordan has lived in the United States. He even had a bit role in a Star Trek episode. He is probably as Westernized as an Hashemite Muslim can be, yet, in the country that he rules Christians can be killed for their beliefs.
The United States' ally, Saudi Arabia, is far worse. Bibles are not allowed into the country and converting to Christianity is punishable by death.
A popular civil rights refrain in the 1960s was "No Justice, No Peace." Well, in many of these Middle Eastern countries, I fear that there will be no peace until there is freedom. Freedom from totalitarian regimes. Freedom to worship. Freedom to believe.
It is not a natural part of the human condition to be chained under the yoke of oppression.
Let Freedom Ring.
12:23 AM
(0) comments
Tuesday, November 13, 2001
"The Best of the Web Today" is probably one of the best features to be found. Monday through Friday I have a browser window up and start refreshing it around 11 a.m. PST awaiting its appearance. There's always some good stuff there. Today, they featured a letter to the editor to The New York Times by a First Amendment lawyer/professor at Hofstra.
As we have just been forcibly reminded, some people believe that America is a land of murdering barbarians, and that their institutions are of much higher moral quality than ours. The job of journalists is to ensure that the public has access to all of the viewpoints that underlie current events so that, in our role as citizens, we may make sound public policy choices.
ERIC M. FREEDMAN
Is a college professor serious in stating that the media should always be completely neutral and that all viewpoints are equally valid? Should the Flat Earth Society's white papers on astrophysics be treated with the same degree of respect and seriousness as those that come from Cal Tech? The media's job isn't simply to repeat what it's told, but to also explain, scrutinize and test the validity of various viewpoints.
Cyclists and other athletes train in high altitudes to improve their body's oxygen capacity. Rarified air may help athletes, but the cognitive abilities of these college professors high atop their ivory towers are obviously adversely affected.
11:26 PM
(0) comments
Monday, November 12, 2001
So, the public library in Boulder, Colo. won't fly Old Glory, but has no problem with displaying "art" that consists of ceramic phalluses in knitted pouches attached to a rope with a noose at one end.
More proof that political correctness has taken too much hold on our country. Especially in places of "education."
Of course, one of my co-workers, the vivacious Kate, observed: "I can't believe this penis thing, it's turning into a really big thing."
As I began to laugh hysterically she clarified: "The whole story has been blown out of proportion."
At least we can laugh at something.
5:21 PM
(0) comments
|
|
