Culture war

The Philadelphia Horror

Kermit B. Gosnell, MD - the Philadelphia Abortionist
Kermit B. Gosnell, MD - the Philadelphia Abortionist

by Michelle Malkin –
Let’s give the “climate of hate” rhetoric a rest for a moment. It’s time to talk about the climate of death, in which the abortion industry thrives unchecked. Dehumanizing rhetoric, rationalizing language, and a callous disregard for life have numbed America to its monstrous consequences. Consider the Philadelphia Horror.

In the City of Brotherly Love, hundreds of babies were murdered by a scissors-wielding monster over four decades. Whistleblowers informed public officials at all levels of the wanton killings of innocent life. But a parade of government health bureaucrats and advocates protecting the abortion racket looked the other way — until, that is, a Philadelphia grand jury finally exposed the infanticide factory run by abortionist Kermit B. Gosnell, M.D., and a crew of unlicensed, untrained butchers masquerading as noble providers of women’s “choice.” Prosecutors charged Gosnell and his death squad with multiple counts of murder, infanticide, conspiracy, abuse of corpse, theft, and other offenses. [Read more…]

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For the Left, There Are No Sacred Texts

Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager

by Dennis Prager – A number of well-known spokesmen on the left have voiced reservations not only about the Republican decision to have members of Congress — both Republicans and Democrats — read the Constitution aloud at the opening of the latest session of Congress. They have also voiced reservations about the American veneration of the Constitution.

Three examples:

In a recent appearance on MSNBC, Washington Post staff writer Ezra Klein said: “The issue with the Constitution is that the text is confusing because it was written more than a hundred years ago and what people believe it says differs from person to person.”

Joy Behar asked her guests on CNN’s Headline News, “Do you think this Constitution-loving is getting out of hand?”

Congressman Jerrold Nadler, D-N.Y., complained that “They are reading it (the Constitution) like a sacred text.” [Read more…]

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Murders, Lies, and Liberal Fantasies of Conservatives

Liberal Tolerance

by Chidike Okeem – The leftist predisposition towards irresponsibly blaming every act of violence with political connotations on the “climate of bigotry” created by right-wingers speaks volumes about the ideology of liberalism.

After the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., and the murder and injury of several others, the liberal media commenced their annual “Let’s Silence Conservatives” campaign. Preposterously, liberal journalists decided to pen uninformed pieces attacking Sarah Palin as being responsible for the shooting due to the “assassination rhetoric” that she engaged in during the midterm election.

At a time when people should be prayerfully considering the victims of the attack and having important debates about how politicians need to be protected from the few homicidal crazies in a country with hundreds of millions of people, liberals see nothing indecorous about instantaneously using the dead bodies of victims as expedient agitprop to silence the voices of their ideological opponents. [Read more…]

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Civic Courage Then and Now, Bonhoeffer and Barmen

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson

by Chuck Colson – July 27, 1945. London is still slowly recovering from six years of war with Germany. Hundreds of thousands of British soldiers are dead. British cities are in ruins. As newsreels expose fresh horrors from the Nazi death camps, the British people wonder, “Is there no end to German atrocities?”

Thus, it was not surprising that many Brits recoiled when they heard about a memorial service at London’s Holy Trinity Church—not for England’s war dead, but for a German. The service would be broadcast on the BBC. Many wondered: Could there be such a thing as a good German, worthy of such an honor?

The answer was emphatically yes. The service was for Pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer, executed by the Nazis three weeks before the war’s end. Bonhoeffer is often remembered for his resistance to Hitler, in fact taking part in the plot to kill him. But Bonhoeffer is also celebrated for his role in a significant event in the life of the Church—the drafting of the Barmen Declaration. [Read more…]

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The ‘Small’ God Who Brought Heaven Down to Earth

Rev. Robert A. Sirico
Rev. Robert A. Sirico

12/23/2010 – Rev. Robert A. Sirico –

That the eternal God should deign to co-mingle in time and space with humanity does tell us something, not about the ‘smallness’ of God, but about the inestimable dignity of the human person who is created in the image of the Lord of History. Thus it tells us about the importance of human history to eternity; of the relation of the visible world to the invisible one; and of the way the mortal life we each live here and now determines our immortal destiny. […]

Some years ago I found myself at a fashionable dinner party in Los Angeles where the lamb was roasted to perfection, and the deep, rich red Australian wine complimented it to a tee. The conversation around the dinner table was likewise high-minded and it did not take this largely secular gathering very long to turn their attention to the Christian sitting in their midst. With all the graciousness and condescension she could muster, my dining companion turned to me and said, “I am not a believer, of course, but I have long admired your Church’s care for the poor and suffering and the generosity and effectiveness of your social agencies who tend to human needs without regard to the belief or non-belief of the recipient.” [Read more…]

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We Must Embrace Conflict

12/23/2010 – Steve Jalsevac –
Christ lived and taught and was Love, but that love and teaching were never politically correct. They often involved the saying of hard truths that many did not want to hear.

Christ’s birth was the ultimate sign of God’s love for the human race. And yet He was hated and there were those who wanted to kill Him, even as an infant and later as He healed thousands of diseases and even raised some from the dead. In the end, He was cruelly murdered.

One of the lessons of His life was that true love does not avoid conflict, and true love is often obliged to say things that are not welcomed or that disturb people, although the intent is never to disturb or to hurt. True love involves sticking one’s neck out where others refuse to do so for fear of personal discomfort, loss of worldly respect, or other less-than-admirable reasons. [Read more…]

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New Report: Prime-Time TV Trend of Sexualizing Underage Girls

TV shows Sexualize Underage Girls
12/18/2010 – CNA –

A new study showing that teen girls are depicted sexually on prime-time TV more than adults has critics condemning the trend as a sinister fixation on underage young women.

The Parents Television Council issued a report on Dec. 15 which found that in popular TV series, underage female characters appearing on screen increases the amount of sexual content in a given show.

The council also found that teen girls demonstrate almost no negative response to being sexualized and that the vast majority of sexual incidents are depicted as occurring outside of a committed relationship. [Read more…]

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Education: The Elephant in the Room

11/19/2010 – Karen Karacsony –
For the first two hundred years of America’s history, there was little in the way of public education. Thus, from the middle of the 17th century to the middle of the 19th century, education was most often a family affair (though churches, literary societies, and apprenticeships also contributed to the education of early America’s youth).

As youngsters, our Founding Fathers were educated like most other children of early America. Of the six Founding Fathers, three were homeschooled: George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison. Two were self-taught: Alexander Hamilton, and Benjamin Franklin (though Franklin did attend primary school for two years). And one, John Adams, was both homeschooled and privately taught (at a very small school). [Read more…]

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Multiculturalism Today

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson
11/7/2010 – Chuck Colson –

“Multiculturalism,” wrote the British scholar Theodore Dalrymple of the Manhattan Institute, “rests on the supposition—or better, the dishonest pretense—that all cultures are equal.”

So, the argument for multiculturalism goes, no culture is superior to another, and no culture should compete with any other. And if we understand that, we can all get along just fine.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel went along with that idea for years but has recently changed her mind. Earlier this month she dared to tell a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union party that multiculturalism is a failed experiment that needs to be rejected. [Read more…]

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Go With God

Nov. 2010 – Stanley Hauerwas –
An open letter to young Christians on their way to college
“The Christian religion,” wrote Robert Louis Wilken, “is inescapably ritualistic (one is received into the Church by a solemn washing with water), uncompromisingly moral (‘be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect,’ said Jesus), and unapologetically intellectual (be ready to give a ‘reason for the hope that is in you,’ in the words of 1 Peter). Like all the major religions of the world, Christianity is more than a set of devotional practices and a moral code: it is also a way of thinking about God, about human beings, about the world and history.”

Ritualistic, moral, and intellectual: May these words, ones that Wilken uses to begin his beautiful book, The Spirit of Early Christian Thought, be written on your soul as you begin college and mark your life—characterize and distinguish your life—for the next four years. Be faithful in worship. In America, going to college is one of those heavily mythologized events that everybody tells you will “change your life,” which is probably at least half true. So don’t be foolish and imagine that you can take a vacation from church. [Read more…]

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