Culture war

Mugged by Mythology, Liberals Believe the Darnedest Things

Liberal Myths Obama by Jeff Bergner –
Sometimes talking with liberals is perplexing. You never know what claim they will make next or what name they will call you. Take David Axelrod’s response to Standard & Poor’s recent credit action: He calls it the “Tea Party downgrade.” Amazingly, he blames the United States’ loss of its AAA bond rating on the one group that has sounded the alarm about our fiscal crisis. How did the president’s leading adviser come up with a label so detached from reality?

Comforting as it would be to dismiss this as a one-off comment, Axelrod’s words spring from the mental universe of liberalism. It is a vast sphere of assumptions that are found nowhere else. In an effort to promote the civility of debate that is so much in demand these days, here is a compendium of the myths underlying some of the strange things liberals say.

Myth #1: Conservatives are outside the American mainstream. Conservatives can’t be mainstream because it is liberals who speak for the American people. [Read more…]

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Why Young Americans Can’t Think Morally

Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager
by Dennis Prager –
Last week, David Brooks of The New York Times wrote a column on an academic study concerning the nearly complete lack of a moral vocabulary among most American young people. Below are some excerpts from Brooks’ summary of the study of Americans aged 18 to 23. (It was led by “the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith.”)

“Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing …

“When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all …

“Moral thinking didn’t enter the picture, even when considering things like drunken driving, cheating in school or cheating on a partner …

“The default position, which most of them came back to again and again, is that moral choices are just a matter of individual taste … [Read more…]

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Dreher: ‘Anti-Bullying’ Another Battle in the Culture War

Rod Dreher
Rod Dreher
by Rod Dreher –
For many years now, the gay movement has been using school bullying as a wedge to work pro-gay teaching into curricula and into the life of public schools, and to marginalize religious students and others who hold a traditional view of the morality of homosexuality.

It goes under the mantra of making schools “safe.”

If you don’t affirm homosexuality explicitly, the argument goes, then you are making your schools unsafe for gay kids. You can well imagine how lawsuit-fearing school administrators hate to hear that.

It’s nonsense, of course.

There is no reason at all why pro-gay instruction, either in classrooms or extracurricular, has to happen for bullying to be opposed effectively. What’s wrong with a school administration saying that bullying will not be tolerated, and making good on that policy by coming down like a ton of bricks on bullies, no matter their target? That would be the most value-neutral way to handle it. [Read more…]

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How to defend your children against pro-gay lessons in the classroom

How to Defend Children in Classroom against Gay Agenda by John-Henry Westen –
As young people across North America head back to school next week parents need to attend to more than just making sure the back-to-school clothes and utensils are in place. There is an unprecedented attack on morals coming from the school.

Particularly in the area of sexuality, so-called public morality has moved outside of the realm of life-and-family-affirming principles to such an extent that a veritable anti-morality is being fed to our children. And this year there is a concerted effort to restrict parents from countering the efforts of the school to promote this anti-morality.

Both in California and Ontario pro-homosexual curricula are to be introduced into public schools forbidding parents from opting their children out from such instruction.  Even where parent opt-outs are permitted, however, some schools have resorted to instructing students to keep secret from their parents sexuality discussions held in the school. [Read more…]

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The Church as the Bride of Caesar

Rev. Robert A. Sirico
Rev. Robert A. Sirico
by Fr. Robert A. Sirico –

It is telling that the Washington Post report on the religious Left’s Circle of Protection campaign for big government describes the effort as one that would “send chills through any politician who looks to churches and religious groups as a source of large voting blocs,” because, in fact, this is not an honest faith-inspired campaign to protect the “least of these” from Draconian government cuts, as claimed. It is a hyper-political movement that offers up the moral authority of churches and aid organizations to advance the ends of the Obama administration and its allies in Congress.

The Circle of Protection, led by Jim Wallis and his George Soros-funded Sojourners group, is advancing a false narrative based on vague threats to the “most vulnerable” if we finally take the first tentative steps to fix our grave budget and debt problems. For example, Wallis frequently cites cuts to federal food programs as portending dire consequences to “hungry and poor people.” [Read more…]

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Families of 9/11 Victims Knocking on America’s Door

Bishop Savas Zembillas with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg NYC
Bishop Savas Zembillas with Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg NYC

by Rev Michael Bresciani –

It is no secret that New York’s Mayor Bloomberg has decided not to ask clergy of any religion to be part in the tenth anniversary ceremonies at Ground Zero. A cross section of responses from both religious and secular sources shows that most people are shocked or at the least scratching their heads in wonderment at Bloomberg’s decision.

Bloomberg said that government “shouldn’t be in the business of picking” one minister or religion over another. That being true, it raises two simple but important questions. The first is, who asked him to pick? Is Mr. Bloomberg the Mayor, or is he New York’s pastor?

The second question should be whether he has considered asking the families of 9/11 victims if they want clergy to be present and to offer prayers. The ceremony is not about the government and it has never been.

In the gospel of Luke Christ gave a parable about a woman who comes to a judge to seek avengement in her cause. The judge ignores her because it is said that he “feared not God, neither regarded man.” (Lk 18: 2) In today’s twisted world who would have guessed we have come to a place where even this has been reversed and now it seems there are those who “fear man and don’t regard God” Has it come to this? [Read more…]

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Archbishop: New York Times, CNN, MSNBC can’t be trusted on abortion, faith

Archbishop Charles Chaput
Archbishop Charles Chaput
by Jeremy Kryn –
When it comes to finding information on vital issues like abortion, same-sex “marriage,” and faith, the mainstream media simply can’t be trusted, the incoming archbishop of Philadelphia told a group of youth in Spain last week.

“Being uninformed about the world and its problems and issues is a sin against our vocation as disciple,” Archbishop Charles Chaput told his audience during a special World Youth Day session in Madrid. And yet, he went on to note, the Christian believer is faced with a unique challenge in finding accurate sources of information on key issues.

“In the United States, our battles over abortion, family life, same-sex marriage, and other sensitive issues have led to ferocious public smears and legal threats not only of Catholics, but also against Mormons, evangelicals, and other religious believers,” he said. [Read more…]

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7 Reasons Why Liberals Are Incapable of Understanding The World

by John Hawkins –
To understand the workings of American politics, you have to understand this fundamental law: Conservatives think liberals are stupid. Liberals think conservatives are evil. — Charles Krauthammer

Even liberals who’ve accomplished a lot in their lives and have high IQs often say things on a regular basis that are stunningly, profoundly stupid and at odds with the way the world works. Modern liberalism has become so bereft of common sense and instinctually suicidal that America can only survive over the long haul by thwarting the liberal agenda. In fact, liberalism has become such a toxic and poisonous philosophy that most liberals wouldn’t behave differently if their goal were to deliberately destroy the country. So, how does liberalism cause well-meaning, intelligent liberals to get this way? Well, it starts with… [Read more…]

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Christian Church facing a revolution that is shaking its foundations: the gay revolution

Albert Mohler
Albert Mohler

by Albert Mohler –
The Christian church has faced no shortage of challenges in its 2,000-year history. But now it’s facing a challenge that is shaking its foundations: homosexuality.

To many onlookers, this seems strange or even tragic. Why can’t Christians just join the revolution?

And make no mistake, it is a moral revolution. As philosopher Kwame Anthony Appiah of Princeton University demonstrated in his recent book, “The Honor Code,” moral revolutions generally happen over a long period of time. But this is hardly the case with the shift we’ve witnessed on the question of homosexuality.

In less than a single generation, homosexuality has gone from something almost universally understood to be sinful, to something now declared to be the moral equivalent of heterosexuality—and deserving of both legal protection and public encouragement. Theo Hobson, a British theologian, has argued that this is not just the waning of a taboo. Instead, it is a moral inversion that has left those holding the old morality now accused of nothing less than “moral deficiency.” [Read more…]

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Facebook “Listening” Group Drags Culture Wars into the Orthodox Church

Culture Wars Orthodox Church facebook by Fr. Johannes L. Jacobse –
Progressive fads sweep through the culture like clockwork. Remember the impending global ice age in the 1970s that morphed into global warming today? How about the fight about abortion where anyone who dared criticize it was branded as a hater of women? Remember the Equal Rights Amendment and how convinced its supporters were that it was absolutely necessary for a just society?

None of these movements should be taken lightly of course but that doesn’t disqualify them as fads. There is always a strong strain of self-justification among Progressive Culture Warriors; a posturing that creates a facade of virtue and labels the critic as ignorant. Fellow travelers bask in that warm glow of imputed righteousness that they generously confer on each other. The rest of us can return to our caves.

That kind of arrogance informs the new Facebook group “Listening: Breaking the Silence on Sexuality with the Orthodox Church.” The tendentious title is the first clue something is seriously skewed. What silence needs to be “broken”? Who are the people breaking it? Is the Orthodox Church really silent on sexuality? [Read more…]

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