Culture war

Moral Myopia at Ground Zero

Park51 - Site of Ground Zero Mosque
Park51 - Site of Ground Zero Mosque

8/20/2010 – Charles Krauthammer –
Supporters of the mosque fail to see its true significance.

It’s hard to be an Obama sycophant these days. Your hero delivers a Ramadan speech roundly supporting the building of a mosque and Islamic center at Ground Zero in New York. Your heart swells and you’re moved to declare this President Obama’s finest hour, his act of greatest courage.

Alas, the next day, at a remove of 800 miles, Obama explains that he was only talking about the legality of the thing and not the wisdom — upon which he does not make, and will not make, any judgment.

You’re left looking like a fool because now Obama has said exactly nothing: No one disputes the right to build; the whole debate is about the propriety, the decency of doing so. [Read more…]

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Civilizational War

8/19/2010 – Bill Warner –

The Civilization of Islam
One of the clearest lessons about Islam is found in the Sharia. The largest part of the Sharia is devoted to regulating the life of Muslims down to the smallest detail. There is no aspect of life that is not regulated — sex, food, art, business, education, prayer, manners, speech, and how to think and not to think. There is no aspect of life that is outside the power of Sharia — religion, politics, ethics, and culture are included. The Sharia is the operating manual for a complete civilization. Islam is complete within itself and needs nothing from the outside. [Read more…]

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Gay Marriage and the End of Christian Civilization

Fr. Thomas Euteneur
Fr. Thomas Euteneur

8/16/2010 – Father Thomas Euteneur –
So why, you ask, is gay marriage wrong? Let me count the ways.

While we respect all people as they are, we don’t have to respect such a wholesale assault on everything that is sacred to us and good for our society; no, in fact, we must fight against it with our very lives. The question is not whether or not we can win the battle; the question is whether we will join it.

FRONT ROYAL, VA (HLI.org) – Back in the 90s when Fr. Paul Marx, founder of HLI, was asked his opinion about the efforts to legalize “same-sex unions” he commented in his usual forthright fashion, “When they do that,” he said, “it’s the end.” He meant “the end” of the Christian civilization whose values used to form the basis of American common life. Fr. Marx, in a prophetic sense, saw rightly that a society cannot survive the perverse manipulation of the very structure of reality that God Himself has revealed to us, one very fundamental element of which is the institution of marriage. When we allow that to be changed-“It’s the end.” [Read more…]

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Fr. Peter Preble interviews Fr. Hans Jacobse on the Mosque at Ground Zero

Shepherd of Souls Fr. Peter-Michael Preble
8/18/2010 – Fr. Johannes Jacobse and Fr. Peter Preble –

Fr. Peter-Michael Preble interviewed Fr. Hans Jacobse about the building of the mosque at Ground Zero after my article was published on Catholic Online. In it Fr. Hans discusses some of the ideas that inform the argument he made in his earlier article on the same topic.

Mosque at Ground Zero? – 8/18/2010 http://audio.ancientfaith.com/shepherdofsouls/sos_2010-08-18.mp3|titles=Mosque

Fr. Peter blogs at Shepherd of Souls, and Fr. Peter-Michael Preble. He hosts the Shepherd of Souls podcast on Ancient Faith Radio Orthodox website. [Read more…]

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2010 Politics and the Cult of Me

8/16/2010 – Jeremy Meister –
The “Me Generation” was cute until it got in charge.

The “Greatest Generation” came home from fighting and suffering in World War 2 and gave birth to the “Baby Boom.” Like most children, these “Boomers” rebelled against their parents’ values, like honor, duty, and sacrifice. It was the ’60s, and the old fuddy-duddy ways of doing things were frowned upon by the new generation. The “Boomers” were going to have a good time regardless of the consequences. [Read more…]

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Re-education, It’s Not Just for Tyrants Anymore

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson
8/16/2010 – Chuck Colson –

The threat to religious freedom in this country is not a hypothetical threat. It’s real, and real people are suffering as a result.

When we wrote the Manhattan Declaration last fall, we warned about “the decline in respect for religious values in the media, the academy and political leadership.”

An example of this decline is on display currently in Georgia. Jennifer Keeton, who is a 24-year-old studying for a master’s degree in counseling at Augusta State University, has been threatened with expulsion. The grounds for the threatened expulsion are not poor grades or misconduct – they are Keeton’s beliefs.

Specifically, they are Keeton’s beliefs about the morality of homosexuality. In written assignments and classroom discussions, Keeton has said that people’s sexual conduct is “the result of accountable, personal choices,” and not “a state of being.” [Read more…]

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Manufacturing Liberals

8/12/2010 – Larrey Anderson –
Liberals are not insane, as many conservatives believe. Most liberals (I am not speaking here of the political or intellectual class) are ordinary human beings pursuing everyday human lives — just like the rest of us. Here is a brief summary of why most liberals are liberal and what we can do to help at least some of them understand conservative thought:

1) Indoctrination, not education
Polls consistently find that over 70% of college professors identify themselves as liberal. The percentage of liberal faculty members is even higher if one removes responses from those teaching the “hard” sciences. In our prestigious universities, the figure approaches 90%. Both of these reported percentages are probably lower than the real figures [i]. [Read more…]

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Christian Academics Cite Hostility On Campus

8/3/2010 – Barbara Bradley Hagerty –
One of the hot debates in academia is now reaching the courts. The question: Do universities discriminate against religious conservatives? Some professors and students say they do, but it’s not an easy charge to pin down.

When Elaine Howard Ecklund began asking top scientists whether they believe in God, she got a surprise. Ecklund, an assistant professor at Rice University and author of the book Science Vs. Religion, polled 1,700 scientists at elite universities. Contrary to the stereotype that most scientists are atheists, she says, nearly half of them say they are religious. But when she did follow up interviews, she found they practice a “closeted faith.” [Read more…]

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Free Speech Lawsuit: NYC Bans ‘9/11 Images’

8/10/2010 – Pamela Geller –
It seems that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg invokes certain freedoms only when they serve his 2012 agenda — and freedom of speech is not high on his list. Doing away with term limits wasn’t enough (which is why we are still suffering under his no-salt, no-trans-fat regime). He is now widening his ayatollah-like power-grab to imposing blasphemy laws (Islamic sharia laws) on the secular marketplace. Bloomberg’s frenzied Ground Zero mosque push may have inspired al-Azhar clerics to oppose the Ground Zero Mosque, calling it a “a zionist plot.”

Last month, I signed a contract with CBS Outdoor to run a “Preservation of Ground Zero” bus ad campaign. The campaign was paid for in full.

Here is the ad I submitted:
Preservation of Ground Zero
[Read more…]

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Same-Sex Marriage Judge Finds That a Child Has Neither a Need Nor a Right to a Mother

Judge Vaughn R. Walker
Judge Vaughn R. Walker

8/9/2010 – Terence P. Jeffrey –

U.S. District Judge Vaughn R. Walker, who ruled last week that a voter-approved amendment to California’s constitution that limited marriage to the union of one man and one woman violated the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, based that ruling in part on his finding that a child does not need and has no right to a mother.

Nor, he found, does a child have a need or a right to a father.

“Children do not need to be raised by a male parent and a female parent to be well-adjusted, and having both a male and a female parent does not increase the likelihood that a child will be well-adjusted,” the judge wrote in finding of fact No. 71 in his opinion. [Read more…]

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