Chrenkoff's 24th

When next you hear someone opine that America should get out of Iraq at once, ask them if they've been reading Arthur Chrenkoff's series of posts titled Good News From Iraq. Of course, the answer will be that they have not, for if they had they wouldn't be uttering such fatuities.

Chrenkoff's 24th installment is now up and the posts keep getting longer and longer as the news from Iraq keeps getting better and better.

There is so much good happening there that Iraq bids fair to become not only the political, but also the economic, envy of the Middle East. It will be increasingly difficult for the tyrants in neighboring states to keep their citizens down on the farm once the transformation that's taking place in Iraq begins to sink in elsewhere, and the citizenry begins to ask why they can't have some of the freedoms and advantages that they see their Iraqi neighbors enjoying.

Freedom is on the march. Tell your liberal friends it ill-becomes them to be so glum about it.

Flying Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Thank goodness the likes of Paul Krugman stand sentry at the gates of society to warn us of the approaching horde of Vandals and Visigoths who threaten all manner of rapine and mayhem. Krugman sounds the tocsin in this New York Times column:

Democratic societies have a hard time dealing with extremists in their midst. The desire to show respect for other people's beliefs all too easily turns into denial: nobody wants to talk about the threat posed by those whose beliefs include contempt for democracy itself.

Interpretation: The extremists (guess who they are) are a threat to democracy and should not be tolerated.

We can see this failing clearly in other countries. In the Netherlands, for example, a culture of tolerance led the nation to ignore the growing influence of Islamic extremists until they turned murderous. But it's also true of the United States, where dangerous extremists belong to the majority religion and the majority ethnic group, and wield great political influence.

Interpretation: The dangerous extremists are white, conservative Christians (bet you knew that).

Before he saw the polls, Tom DeLay declared that "one thing that God has brought to us is Terri Schiavo, to help elevate the visibility of what is going on in America." Now he and his party, shocked by the public's negative reaction to their meddling, want to move on. But we shouldn't let them. The Schiavo case is, indeed, a chance to highlight what's going on in America.

Interpretation: Let's tell America that Christians have been trying to save Terri Schiavo's life and liberal Democrats have been trying to have her tortured to death. That'll be a sure-fire winner in the 2008 elections.

One thing that's going on is a climate of fear for those who try to enforce laws that religious extremists oppose. Randall Terry, a spokesman for Terri Schiavo's parents, hasn't killed anyone, but one of his former close associates in the anti-abortion movement is serving time for murdering a doctor. George Greer, the judge in the Schiavo case, needs armed bodyguards.

Interpretation: The spokesperson for the Schindler family knows someone who committed murder, therefore Judge Greer needs bodyguards. Everybody knows how violent those Christians are.

Another thing that's going on is the rise of politicians willing to violate the spirit of the law, if not yet the letter, to cater to the religious right. Everyone knows about the attempt to circumvent the courts through "Terri's law." But there has been little national exposure for a Miami Herald report that Jeb Bush sent state law enforcement agents to seize Terri Schiavo from the hospice - a plan called off when local police said they would enforce the judge's order that she remain there.

Interpretation: Unelected political appointees are sovereign in Mr. Krugman's United States, and the representatives of the people have no business exercising their constitutional prerogatives over them.

It should be pointed out, in this connection, that Gov. Bush sent his agents to rescue Ms. Schiavo because there was a lack of clarity as to who, exactly, had jurisdiction in the matter. When the local police said they would enforce the judge's odious order, the Governor pulled back. Where's the dire threat to democracy here? It's purely in the fevered recesses of Mr. Krugman's paranoid mind.

And the future seems all too likely to bring more intimidation in the name of God and more political intervention that undermines the rule of law. The religious right is already having a big impact on education: 31 percent of teachers surveyed by the National Science Teachers Association feel pressured to present creationism-related material in the classroom.

Interpretation: Parents and school boards are trying to take some control over what their children are taught. Democracy is imperiled! The sky is falling!

But medical care is the cutting edge of extremism. Yesterday The Washington Post reported on the growing number of pharmacists who, on religious grounds, refuse to fill prescriptions for birth control or morning-after pills. These pharmacists talk of personal belief; but the effect is to undermine laws that make these drugs available. And let me make a prediction: soon, wherever the religious right is strong, many pharmacists will be pressured into denying women legal drugs.

And it won't stop there. There is a nationwide trend toward "conscience" or "refusal" legislation. Laws in Illinois and Mississippi already allow doctors and other health providers to deny virtually any procedure to any patient. Again, think of how such laws expose doctors to pressure and intimidation.

Interpretation: No medical professional should have the right on religious grounds to deny a woman an abortion if she wants one. If a woman presents herself as a patient for an abortion, a doctor should be obligated, under pain of having his license revoked, to perform it even if he or she thinks a murder is being committed. Now that's "pressure and intimidation."

But the big step by extremists will be an attempt to eliminate the filibuster, so that the courts can be packed with judges less committed to upholding the law than Mr. Greer.

Interpretation: The senate, in keeping with the constitution, intends to change a procedural rule which has been abused by a minority of senators in order to prevent the full senate from voting on the president's judicial nominees. Mr. Krugman's idea of religious extremism is the conviction that in a democracy the majority should get to pick the judges as it had for two hundred years until the last congress. That is indeed extremism of the most insidious kind.

We can't count on restraint from people like Mr. DeLay, who believes that he's on a mission to bring a "biblical worldview" to American politics, and that God brought him a brain-damaged patient to help him with that mission.

What we need - and we aren't seeing - is a firm stand by moderates against religious extremism. Some people ask, with justification, Where are the Democrats? But an even better question is, Where are the doctors fiercely defending their professional integrity? I think the American Medical Association disapproves of politicians who second-guess medical diagnoses based on video images - but the association's statement on the Schiavo case is so timid that it's hard to be sure.

Interpretation: Mr. Krugman implies that those best positioned to thwart people motivated by religious conviction are the Democrats. This is evidently because he thinks that Democrats have no religious convictions themselves. This is a stunning admission which will not be welcomed by beleaguered Democrats in red states.

The closest parallel I can think of to current American politics is Israel. There was a time, not that long ago, when moderate Israelis downplayed the rise of religious extremists. But no more: extremists have already killed one prime minister, and everyone realizes that Ariel Sharon is at risk.

The United States is pretty much just like Israel where religious extremists have killed a prime minister and threaten another. Yes sir, the U.S. is just like that. It was, after all, religious extremists who killed JFK and tried to kill Ford and Reagan, or maybe not, but if it wasn't, it could've been. We'll just bet that Timothy McVeigh, who blew up the Murrah Building in Oklahoma City, was a Christian. After all, he was named after a book in the New Testament. And besides, white, conservative Christians have the highest crime and political assassination rates of any demographic group in the world. You can look it up.

America isn't yet a place where liberal politicians, and even conservatives who aren't sufficiently hard-line, fear assassination. But unless moderates take a stand against the growing power of domestic extremists, it can happen here.

Yes, indeedy. It doesn't happen here, but it darn well could. Just let doctors refuse to perform abortions, return majority rule to the senate, and let people fight to save a woman from being starved and dehydrated and the next thing you know the religious nuts will be assassinating our presidents.

Instead of mocking Mr. Krugman perhaps we should show a little compassion for a man clearly in the advanced stages of psychosis. Let's hope he's getting treatment.

Breakthrough in the Death Penalty Debate

There are those who say that Terri Schiavo is not being killed, rather the state of Florida is simply letting her die by not feeding her. Of course, if a mother chose not to feed her infant we wouldn't call it "just letting" the child die, we'd call it murder.

Nevertheless, perhaps the argument has more merit than it might at first appear. It certainly suggests a novel solution to the vexing debate in this country over capital punishment.

With the reasoning of those who favor "letting Terri die" in mind Viewpoint proposes that we abolish the death penalty altogether. We recommend that every electric chair and gas chamber around the country be immediately dismantled and that we, as a nation, foreswear ever executing another murderer.

The only penalty we should impose upon them is to confine them to their cells...and withhold food and water until they die.

Moral Imbecility

Belmont Club tips us to a survey done by the BBC which asks readers to answer the question "What are your hopes for Iraq's parliament?"

Replies came from all over the world. Many were supportive of American efforts there, some were critical, and some were like that of Nina from Toronto:

I hate to say this to Iraqis, but I pray for chaos and civil war: it's the only way to stop Bush's policies and show that peace can never come through force. If Iraq gets peace, Bush wins credibility. It cannot be allowed to happen. Nina, Toronto, Canada

Nina pretty much shines the light on the dark places where the Left's priorities are concealed. She's willing to sacrifice the lives of thousands, maybe millions of Iraqis, just to keep Bush from looking good. She's so committed to the idea that peace can't come through the use of force that she'd rather see millions suffer than have her belief be proven wrong.

One tragic irony offered by people like this (there are several) is that they are moral imbeciles who are convinced that they're morally superior to anyone who sees things differently than they do. Sadly, there may be many more like Nina out there who secretly hope for failure in Iraq for the same reasons she does, but who realize that it would sound terrible for them to say it.

What ugly, twisted, hate-filled lives they must live.

Hentoff on Judicial Murder

The Democrats and others on the Left have been repeating the vacuity that Republicans have been using the Terri Schiavo case for political gain. The charge is moronic on its face but especially so now that Jesse Jackson has gone to Pinellas Park in solidarity with Terri's family and such right-wing Republican journals as The Village Voice are excoriating the judicial murder of Terri Schiavo.

Nat Hentoff, who no one will ever mistake for a Republican, unloads both barrels at those who have brought Terri Schiavo to the brink of death.

The whole tragic affair hinges on Michael Schiavo's testimony that Terri told him once that she wouldn't want to be kept alive if she were in a persistent vegetative state. There is no corroboration, however, that Terri ever said this, only the memory of her husband who recalled it seven years after she suffered her brain injury. But even if she had said it, it's not clear that she's actually in a PVS, and even if she is, it's not clear that she would want to die the way the state of Florida is killing her.

There is absolutely no good reason, no good argument, for doing what is being done to Terri Schiavo. None. The judge in this case is either an incompetent buffoon or a moral pygmy. The husband is utterly contemptible. The MSM has been irresponsible and disingenuous, as is its wont. Polls which show large pluralities of Americans siding with Michael Schiavo are going to soon begin showing those numbers swinging the other way as more people learn how Terri Schiavo's tragic situation unfolded.

If they don't, then we are no better than Sodom and Gomorrah.

And The Beat Goes On

It was the late Murray N. Rothbard who said "fiat currency by any other name smells just as sour". He may very well have been talking about the Euro.

The Euro was conceived as a new and "different" currency that would ultimately compete with and perhaps replace the US dollar in its role as a world reserve currency primarily because it was "backed", although not redeemable, by the 30% gold holding of the ECU whose singular mandate was currency stability.

Well, it looks like that mandate has caved to political pressure and now that...

"EU member states have agreed to relax constraints their budgets are subject to under the Stability and Growth Pact which underpins the euro".

the euro is no better than the worthless dollar and destined to suffer the same fate.

See this link for the full story.

So it appears that the ECU, too, succumbs to Mr. Rothbard's proclamation and the Euro is on track to follow the way of the US dollar into unlimited inflation. Note that nothing is said regarding the 30% gold "backing" which ultimately will have to be reduced as the Euro is inflated into oblivion.

The take home message is that all of the individuals who acquired Euros, in the belief that they would represent a stable currency, have been defrauded by the ECU since now the ECU will produce as many Euros as necessary to accommodate economic growth, diluting the value of each individual Euro. Is anyone really surprised?

As the article from the link above points out, this is good for gold advocates because the price of gold will undoubtedly rise against all currencies as, once again, there is no alternative unit of measure that represents true wealth.

How You Likin' Them Now, Teddy?

ABC News reports that:

Iraqi soldiers, backed by US helicopters, are reported to have seized 131 suspects in a dawn raid on insurgents planning attacks on the holy city of Kerbala.

The Defence Ministry says troops also retrieved tons of explosives. The Defence Minister, Hazim al-Shaalan, described it as a very successful operation based on intensive surveillance.

Several suspected militants were reported killed in the operation, which began late on Friday and culminated in the dawn raid just outside Kerbala, about 100 kilometres south-west of Baghdad.

Officials say say those arrested included foreigners using fake Iraqi identification papers. Three tons of TNT explosive, hundreds of rocket-propelled grenade launchers and at least three prepared car bombs were also found.

Earlier this week Iraqi police commandos said they killed 85 militants in a raid on a suspected insurgent training camp near Baghdad, hailing it as a breakthrough against the insurgency.

Somebody ask Ted Kennedy and his portside colleagues how they're liking the Iraqi security forces now. It was just a few short months ago, we recall, that there were no words disdainful enough to capture the contempt the Dems sought to heap upon the Iraqi effort to police themselves. There were too few troops and police, we were advised, and what there were of them, the stalwart warriors of Capitol Hill scoffed, turned tail and ran at the first sign of danger. We would be bogged down protecting people who wouldn't fight for themselves for years to come, they whined.

Our military cautioned us to be patient. They told us that training takes time, and that the Iraqis were brave and talented and that eventually they were going to prove it. Now they are. We'll wait patiently while the Democrats cobble together an admission that they were wrong, again.

The Twilight of the Insurgency

Three stories mentioned by Arthur Chrenkoff's article in the WSJ of Iraqi civilians taking up the fight against terrorists themselves are more evidence that the insurgency is doomed. When insurgents lose the battle for the hearts and minds of the people they cannot win. The terrorists in Iraq lost this battle when they turned from the militarily suicidal practice of targeting Americans to the politically suicidal practice of targeting Iraqis.

Here's an excerpt from the first account:

Just before noon today, a carpenter named Dhia saw a troop of masked gunmen with grenades coming towards his shop and decided he had had enough.

As the gunmen emerged from their cars, Dhia and his young relatives shouldered their own AK-47's and opened fire, police and witnesses said. In the fierce gun battle that followed, three of the insurgents were killed, and the rest fled just after the police arrived. Two of Dhia's young nephews and a bystander were injured, the police said.

"We attacked them before they attacked us," Dhia, 35, his face still contorted with rage and excitement, said in a brief exchange at his shop a few hours after the battle. He did not give his last name. "We killed three of those who call themselves the mujahedeen. I am waiting for the rest of them to come and we will show them."

Two other fairly recent examples can be found here and here.

Another sign of failure for an insurgency is when it ceases to be indigenous and is forced to rely on alien forces. The presence of so many foreigners among the dead is an indication that popular support among Iraqis for the terrorist effort is waning. Indeed, when the bulk of the adversary is foreign it really is no longer an insurgency, and perhaps it's time for the media to stop referring to it as such. No doubt a lot of the Iraqis who are left among the opposition are thinking that it's time to get out or to cut a deal.

Steyn On Schiavo

Mark Steyn is always worth reading. He is especially so in this column on Terri Schiavo. His article is a bracing splash of common sense and needs to be read by everyone who thinks that Terri Schiavo ought to die.

Powerful Stuff

There is a remarkable piece by the Albanian ambassador to the U.S., Fatos Tarifa, in the March 27th edition of the Washington Times. Tarifa writes:

The announcement several days ago Albania -- a small country with limited resources -- was sending an additional 50 well-trained troops to Iraq came as a surprise to some observers. But it really should not have surprised anyone.

Albania was one of only four countries to send combat troops during the operation "Iraqi Freedom." Albania is probably the most pro-American country on Earth. It showed its support of the United States early, when it initially sent 70 commandos to join the Coalition of the Willing's effort to bring peace, stability and free elections to Iraq. These new troops bring to a total of 120 Albanian soldiers serving in Iraq.

From a country with only 3.5 million people, the troops -- the flower of Albania's youth -- represent the best Albania has to offer. Why does Albania do this when it could have avoided President Bush's call for support, or when it could have dropped out as others have done when the going got tough? The answer is not difficult to find. If you believe in freedom, you believe in fighting for it. If you believe in fighting for freedom, you believe in America.

Unlike people in other countries in Europe and elsewhere, the Albanian people have not forgotten what it is like to live under tyranny and repression. The Albanians for more than 40 years were held in thrall by the repressive forces of the communists, living like prisoners without rights in their own country. It was to the United States that freedom-loving Albanians looked for inspiration during those dark years, and the Americans have not let us down.

"We Albanians are a nation of freedom fighters who know something about living under oppression," Albanian Prime Minister Fatos Nano wrote in a letter to President Bush. "That is why we wholeheartedly support the American-led effort to free the people of Iraq. And though we are a small country with a small military, we are proud to stand side by side with our allies in the fight to end the reign of terror in Baghdad."

Europe is a small place and it is hard not to run into history there. It is also hard to avoid the historic contributions of the United States in the defense of freedom and liberty on the Continent. There are cemeteries throughout Europe -- in France, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg -- containing the remains of American soldiers who died in battle to free Europe in two world wars.

Although it is not fashionable to talk about it, the face of Europe would indeed be much different today were it not for the Americans who died storming the Normandy beaches. Were it not for the Americans, there is a good chance there would be no France, nor a United Kingdom nor a Belgium, as we know them today. Were it not for the United States it also is very possible no Balkan countries would be free.

Upon committing Albania to the Coalition of the Willing, Prime Minister Nano urged his fellow European leaders to visit Normandy "to see for themselves what the United States has been willing to undertake in the name of freedom. We should all visit Normandy. We should pay homage to those brave Americans who stormed ashore at Omaha Beach and gave their lives for the freedom of others. The wonder of it is that the Americans are willing to do it again," Mr. Nano said.

And of course, it was the U.S.-led effort of NATO to rein in Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic and his ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo that proved to the world that, in the name of freedom, the United States was willing to fight for the freedom of the oppressed, regardless of religious belief.

So it is with Iraq. The importance of the American-led effort to liberate Iraq and establish a democratic government for the first time in this country's history cannot be underestimated. It is not the first time the United States has faced suicide bombers trapped in a cult of death. The Japanese kamikazes sought to do to the Americans toward the end of World War II what the terrorists are attempting in Iraq today. The kamikazes failed then, the terrorists will fail now. Japan became a democracy and so will Iraq.

Tarifa brings his essay to a moving conclusion:

The difference between the United States and the Islamic terrorists is this: The terrorists export death. The Americans export freedom.

The surprise is not in Albania's decision to send more troops to fight for freedom in Iraq. The surprise would have been if Albania did not.

These are powerful words. Who, in 1970, at the height of the cold war between America and totalitarian communism, would ever have thought an Albanian spokesman would be writing columns like this? Who, we might ask, is writing columns like this today about, say, France?

Biting Off More Than You Can Chew

You might recall the news reports of an MP unit that was ambushed in Iraq last week and how they handled the fight. The After Action Report is here and it makes very interesting reading. It describes the engagement in considerable detail and concludes with this:

Those seven Americans (with three wounded) killed in total 24 heavily armed enemy, wounded 6 (two later died), and captured one unwounded, who feigned injury to escape the fight. They seized 22 AK-47s, 6x RPG launchers w/ 16 rockets, 13x RPK machineguns, 3x PKM machineguns, 40 hand grenades, 123 fully loaded 30-rd AK magazines, 52 empty mags, and 10 belts of 2500 rounds of PK ammo.

After reading the whole thing there's little wonder the insurgents have turned their attention to marketplace crowds and elementary schools.

That's Rich

Frank Rich of the NYT offers up a buffet of anti-Christian delicacies for the Christophobes among us to savor. Rich applies the broadest of brushes, painting both the deserving and undeserving as hypocrites and frauds. He's an equal opportunity slanderer. You don't have to be really guilty of any moral fault to fall prey to his self-righteous inquisitorial judgments, you need only be a Christian trying to do what you believe to be right.

For Rich, being a Christian is prima facie dispositive of guilt, and he's far from alone. Thursday night on Scarborough Country lawyer Jeffrey Feiger dismissed the testimony of a doctor in the Terri Schiavo matter ostensibly because the man was a Christian.

The Left despises Christians, although it doesn't scruple to exploit them if the believers take positions of which the Left approves. As soon as someone takes a stand for life, or traditional sexual standards, or traditional marriage, however, or as soon as someone expresses doubts about Darwinian orthodoxy, the Left's big guns are quickly brought to bear on the hapless soul who is subjected to a barrage of vituperation and contempt. For Rich, to take a stand against the tide of our culture is to prove oneself to be an "extremist", a "fundamentalist", a jihadist, the American equivalent of the "Taliban", a "bullying mob", a theocrat, and, of course, a hypocrite and a fraud.

The Left demands tolerance of everything and anything, no matter how degenerate or dysfunctional, except conservatives, Republicans, and Christians. Combine them all in one person and it becomes a burden too great for even great-souled liberals like Frank Rich to bear.

Resurrection Day

Jon Meacham of Newsweek, perhaps chastened by the criticism he received following his foray into Christian theology over Christmas, pens a much less offensive column about the Resurrection of Jesus in the current issue. He notes that the tomb of Christ was almost certainly empty that first Easter morning. If it were not, he observes, the opponents of Christ had only to produce the body to abort the religious turmoil that the sect of Christians was beginning to arouse. This they did not do, a startling historical fact, really, which leads us to the obvious conclusion that they couldn't do it. This leads us in turn to ask why not.

No naturalistic explanation of the empty tomb makes sense. The most common of these is that the disciples stole the corpse, but this hypothesis is credible only if one assumes a priori that non-natural explanations are impossible. To believe that the disciples stole the body one must believe that a band of terrified fishermen overpowered an armed military guard, a crime for which they were never arrested or charged, stole the cadaver, and eventually underwent torture and martyrdom for preaching around the world what they knew to be a lie. People will die for a lie they believe to be true, but only men suffering from some form of dementia would die for a lie they knew to be a lie, and there's no reason to think these men were demented.

Surely, if the authorities believed the disciples had stolen the body they would have brought irresistibly persuasive techniques to bear to coerce them into divulging its whereabouts. Yet there's no indication whatsoever that this was even attempted.

The skeptic says, as was noted above, that no matter how implausible a given naturalistic explanation may be it is still more believable than the claim that a man rose from the dead. This objection, however, rests on the assumption that there is no God, an assumption that is much easier to make than to defend. If, contrary to the skeptical view, it is possible that God exists then miracles are indeed also possible, and if they are possible, we have to examine the evidence for an alleged instance of one, especially one as significant as the resurrection of Jesus, to determine whether it is, in fact, credible. The evidence for the historical, physical revivification of Christ, many scholars have concluded, is at least as powerful as that for any other event in antiquity.

Other attempts to avoid the conclusion that a miracle actually occurred are equally unimpressive. Dan Brown in The Da Vinci Code adopts a version of the swoon theory, that after some thirty six hours without medical care, Jesus somehow recovered from his wounds, including the spear thrust, with sufficient vigor to roll away the heavy stone blocking the tomb. He accomplished this astonishing feat without being detected by the Roman guard, and subsequently appeared to the disciples and dozens, even hundreds, of others, looking so hale and hearty that they believed that he had conquered death and was the very Son of God.

Even if something like this could have happened, the disciples would have known that Jesus had not "risen from the dead" in any theologically significant sense. He would have eventually died (or, as Brown has it, absconded to France with his beloved Mary Magdalene), and his dead body would be proof that he was not the Messiah. This, then, brings us back to the question above: Why would so many have been willing to be tortured and martyred for a man they would have realized was a false messiah?

Skeptics scoff at miracles, but the most important miracle in the history of Christendom is one which defies any attempt to explain away. The most plausible explanation for the empty tomb, unless one holds an a priori commitment to atheism, is that God actually did raise Jesus from the dead just as we are promised that we will be. Because death did not result in the annihilation of His being we have the hope that neither will it result in ours.

This is the wonderful significance of the event Christians celebrate every Easter. Happy Resurrection Day.

How the Jews Saved Civilization

Kathryn Lopez of NRO interviews David Klinghoffer about his new book Why the Jews Rejected Jesus. It's a fascinating interview. A couple of excerpts:

Klinghoffer: I...hope that my book will remind believing Christians of the most important thing we have in common: a belief that there is such a thing as religious truth in the first place. That idea is under attack from the secular left. In this sense, my book is a battle cry on behalf of both Jews and Christians.

NRO: How can the whole of Western Civilization rest on the [Jewish] rejection of Jesus (as Klinghoffer claims in his book)?

Klinghoffer: The earliest Christian church was initially hobbled by insisting that new converts adhere to Jewish law - keep kosher, be circumcised, etc. For an adult man to be circumcised was a bummer, let me tell you. The decision was made, however - at a church council in Jerusalem in 49 - to jettison Jewish law as a requirement for new Christians. This was done at the apostle Paul's insistence, and he explains in Acts that since the Jews were rejecting his presentation of Jesus as savior and messiah, the Christian message would now be taken to the gentiles. Dispensing with Jewish practices like circumcision made this possible. Had the Jews not rejected Paul's preaching about Jesus, the church likely would have held on to those laws. Had it done so, the church would have remained hobbled, and could hardly have become the world-bestriding institution it is today. Jewish Christianity would have remained a sect in Judaism, and probably would have died out along with other such sects in 70 when the Temple was destroyed by Rome and the Jews scattered. In that case, there would be no Christian civilization, and, among other things, no America as we know it - a country whose founding was deeply influenced by Christian faith. There is a possibility that we would all be Muslims.

NRO: Besides maybe converting us, what would you like the Christian reader to get from your book?

Klinghoffer: I don't want to convert you, Kathryn, and I know I couldn't do so no matter how I tried. People believe what we believe for reasons that transcend argument. We believe because we have a certain kind of relationship with God, a certain spiritual experience. The arguments come later. What I want to do for the Christian reader is satisfy your curiosity. Jews, especially those who like me work and socialize with committed and conservative Christians, are asked why we don't share their faith in Jesus. Or Christians wants to ask, but stop themselves. The question is meant sincerely and seriously. It deserves an answer.

Klinghoffer: If you look at the top 20 political issues today, as I will in [my next] book, it turns out there's much stronger support in the Bible from the conservative side in almost every case. The reason has to do with the question of whether people are morally accountable for their actions. The conservative view assumes we are free and responsible, which liberals don't. That same assumption undergirds the Bible everywhere. How else could God issue us commandments?

Klinghoffer is a Jew who doesn't resent being surrounded by expressions of Christian devotion and indeed believes that the best for Judaism is a healthy, vibrant Christian orthodoxy. As you might expect, he's not fond of Abe Foxman or the Anti-Defamation League.

Mendacious Mullahs

The Wall Street Journal has an excellent overview by Carla Anne Robbins of the reasons for U.S. concern over Iran's nuclear weapons program. It is a history of Iran's deception and dissimulation that the world needs to be made aware of.

The Meaning of Good Friday

I sit at my computer on this Good Friday listening to Bach's St. Matthew's Passion and Henryk Gorecki's Symphony of Sorrowful Songs looking forward to this evening when I have a "date" with my daughter to watch Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ, and I wonder. I wonder if I, or anyone, can possibly understand the significance of Good Friday. Can I ever comprehend what it means that God, the creator of worlds, would care enough about me to endure what He did, so that I could have the hope that death does not have the final word about human life.

My existence, the existence of each of us, is astonishing enough. That mere matter could be so arranged as to generate a consciousness, a self-awareness, a rational mind, is, when one thinks about it, a truly amazing thing. That this consciousness might survive death in another reality, another world, is even more astounding. For some it's too astounding to be credible.

And yet if it's true...if it's in fact true that our eternal survival is a gift from God, purchased by Jesus Christ at a cost we may never be able to fully appreciate, it is a breath-taking, ineffable truth.

Some people think the Christian narrative is simply the apotheosis of an ancient myth, that a truly sophisticated, omniscient God would have found some way other than a primitive blood sacrifice to usher us into eternal joy. I don't know if there were other means at God's disposal or not, but it seems to me that the way the Bible tells us He chose is perfect for what He wanted to accomplish.

In the Christian account, God made us as an object of His love. He desires to live in a love relationship with us, but for whatever reason we often want no part of such a relationship. It's too confining, it involves too much self-abnegation, it entails too much of a constraint on our Dionysian appetites, it's too much of an affront to our pride, reason and dignity. Confident in our independence, we don't need God. In our autonomy we distort God's purposes and design plan for human life in order to suit and pursue our own selfish ends.

Nevertheless, God would not be dissuaded or put off. He persists in His relentless attempts to show us that all of our rationalizations for demanding our Promethean emancipation are just so many childish and foolish masks we put on to conceal the fact that we just don't want Him in our lives. He chooses to woo us to Himself not with threats or fear but with love. He chooses to demonstrate in an extraordinarily vivid way that His love for us is deeper than we could ever imagine.

To this end he does something totally unexpected and supererogatory. He becomes a man like one of us, shares in our humanity, our sufferings and joys, and ultimately endures the pain and terror of crucifixion. His life and death is the price that He is willing to pay, for reasons that we cannot understand this side of eternity, to secure eternal life and to make it available to everyone. He didn't have to do it, He could have left us alone to destroy ourselves and our planet, to fade into the cosmic oblivion that rejection of our Creator would have warranted. But because He did do it, He shows us not only that He is not simply some abstract deity, too transcendent to matter, but that He is personal, immanent, and that His love is not just a theoretical exercise, it has consequences which can change a life now and forever.

Charles Dickens captures something of the Divine love in the climax of his Tale of Two Cities when he has Sydney Carton, moved by his deep love for Lucie, smuggle himself into prison to take the place of Charles Darnay, the man Lucie really loves, knowing full well that his love is ultimately going to bring him to the guillotine. Carton substitutes himself for Charles and goes to the death to which Charles was sentenced in an expression of almost superhuman love.

Out of the depths of His love, God substituted Himself for us, enduring torture and humiliation at the hands of His own creation, and going to a death so that we could live. He asks of us in return only our love.

We are in the position of a man clinging by his fingers to the edge of a cliff and slowly, inexorably losing his grip. The abyss of nihilism, of meaninglessness, emptiness and death, lies far below, but because of the cross there's a chance to be rescued. God stands above the struggling man, kneeling down and holding out His hand, urging the man to seize it. It's up to the man about to die, it's up to us, to accept the rescue that God offers. God has done all He can to persuade us, but He won't force us to grasp His hand. He won't override our will. He allows us to make the final decision whether to live or die.

That, at any rate, is the best I can do to explain my own wholly inadequate understanding of the Christian story and the meaning of Good Friday.

Rather-fication

Michelle Malkin offers further evidence, if any were needed, that the MSM in this country is either incompetent or dishonest or both. She looks at the recent ABC poll that shows large numbers of people supporting Michael Schiavo's wish to kill his wife and asks if maybe the poll question wasn't a smidgeon disingenuous:

However you feel about the Terri Schiavo case, one fact is indisputable: The mainstream media (MSM) coverage of the matter has been abysmal. On a fundamental matter of life and death, the MSM heavyweights have proven themselves utterly incapable of reporting fairly. Take a widely publicized ABC News poll released on Monday that supposedly showed strong public opposition to any Washington intervention in Terri's case. Here is how the spinmasters framed the main poll question:

"As you may know, a woman in Florida named Terri Schiavo suffered brain damage and has been on life support for 15 years. Doctors say she has no consciousness and her condition is irreversible. Her parents and her husband disagree on whether or not she should be kept on life support. In cases like this who do you think should have final say, (the parents) or (the spouse)?"

A follow-up question asked:

"If you were in this condition, would you want to be kept alive, or not?"

The problem is that, contrary to what ABC News told those polled, Terri Schiavo is not on "life support" and has never been on "life support." The loaded phrase evokes images of a comatose patient being artificially sustained by myriad machines and pumps and wires. Terri was on a feeding tube. A feeding tube is not a ventilator. Terri can breathe just fine on her own. And as many of her medical caretakers and parents have argued, if given proper rehabilitation, Terri could learn to chew and swallow on her own as well. She is disabled, not dead.

But ABC News did not see fit to inform either the poll takers or its viewers of the truth. Instead, it misled them -- and the result was a poll response that produced -- voila! -- "broad public disapproval" for any government intervention to spare Terri from slowly starving to death. Blogger Ed Morrissey of Captain's Quarters noted: "Either ABC is completely incompetent in conducting research, or they have attempted to fool their viewers and readership with false polling that essentially lies about the case in question. Since when does ABC conduct push polling for euthanasia?"

Imagine how the poll results might have turned out if ABC News had made clear to participants that Terri is not terminally ill. Not in excruciating pain. Capable of saying "Mommy" and "Help me." And of "getting the feeling she's falling" or getting "excited," in her husband's own testimony, when her head is not held properly.

Imagine how the poll results might have turned out if ABC News had informed participants that in a sworn affidavit, registered nurse Carla Sauer Iyer, who worked at the Palm Garden of Largo Convalescent Center in Largo, Fla., while Terri Schiavo was a patient there, testified: "Throughout my time at Palm Gardens, Michael Schiavo was focused on Terri's death. Michael would say 'When is she going to die?' 'Has she died yet?' and 'When is that bitch gonna die?'" Now, if you were in this situation, would you want to be kept alive, or not?

Not to pick on ABC News, but, well, let's. In an attempt to embarrass Rep. Dave Weldon (R.-Fla.) who noted that withdrawing food and water from someone like Schiavo was extremely rare, ABC's Jake Tapper last week featured this counter-quote from Prof. Bill Allen, of the University of Florida College of Medicine:

"Feeding tubes have been removed in the United States for many years, and it's been a common practice. This has happened in many cases, probably a hundred thousand times in this country."

"A hundred thousand times"? There have been a hundred thousand cases of non-terminally ill, non-brain dead individuals slowly starved and forced to die in this country? Tapper demanded no proof from his professor. Instead, he dismissed lawmakers as ignoramuses contradicted by "experts," cited the biased ABC News poll cited above, and tossed it back to Jennings with this slam: "Terri Schiavo and her family deserved better than the way Congress worked this week."

Meanwhile, contradicting the experience of every starved child in Africa and abandoned street animal at your SPCA shelter, the New York Times informs us: "Experts Say Ending Feeding Can Lead to a Gentle Death."

Little wonder that people hold the major news outlets in such low esteem. So many of them seem to have accepted Rather-fication.

Just Wondering

This is going to sound to some as though I've taken leave of my senses, perhaps, but I feel it needs to be said. In fact, I'm a little surprised that I haven't heard anyone else say it.

How many men, listening to the facts surrounding the tragic case of Terri Schiavo, have not wondered what they would do if they were the father of a girl whose husband was doing to her what Michael Schiavo is doing to Terri? Suppose a man is convinced that it was an act of physical violence at the hands of her husband that put his daughter into this terrible condition. Suppose the father is convinced that in the years following, the husband has treated his daughter callously and cruelly, exploiting her condition for financial gain and then abandoning her to start another family. Suppose the husband refuses to relinquish custodial authority over the daughter so that he can retain the right to insist that she be killed. Suppose the father loves his daughter deeply and both father and mother are distraught at what has been, and is being, done to her. Suppose, finally, that the courts side with the husband and refuse to save the life of this man's precious "little girl" opting instead to let the husband kill her through a long slow process of starvation and dehydration. I don't know that all of these suppositions actually obtain in the Schiavo case, but suppose they did.

I don't wish to sound overly Clint Eastwoodian, but how many men have had the thought cross their mind in recent days that if their daughter were in such straits the contemptible husband would have long ago been given an ultimatum: If she dies, he dies.

The threat alone might effect a better circumstance for the suffering woman, but, on the other hand, perhaps the husband would be unmoved. In that event, I wonder how many fathers could stand by and watch another man who has no love whatsoever for their daughter, who only wishes her to be gone, coldly starve her to death. How many men would stand by helplessly watching their little girl's life ebb away knowing she could be saved if her killer's life were taken? What are the moral implications of such an act? If it would be wrong, precisely why would it be wrong?

Surely it is not an option open to a Christian, but then why isn't it? A Christian might enjoin us to ask what would Jesus do, but that's a poor guide in the present situation. Jesus would probably heal the woman. The father can't. A Christian might say that violence is not a legitimate option, but that's only true if one is a pacifist. What is the salient difference, given all our suppositions, between what is happening to the daughter in this instance and the case of a man using deadly force to protect his family?

Perhaps it could be argued that eliminating the odious son-in-law, so far from being an act of unjustifiable violence, would be, in fact, an expression of deep self-sacrificial love. At the cost of spending the rest of one's life in jail, or maybe even incurring the death penalty, one could insure by one's action that custody of the impaired woman would revert to the family who could then give her proper care and possible rehabilitation.

There's an outside chance that a jury wouldn't even convict a father who so acted to save his daughter's life, if it were the only recourse left to him. Jury nullification saved O.J., it might well work in favor of a man willing to sacrifice his freedom and risk execution in order to see his daughter's life saved. Indeed, we should ask ourselves whether, if we were on the jury, we honestly think we could vote to convict in such a case.

Just wondering if this solution ever occured to anyone else.

Women's Champion

Which is a better measure of a president's commitment to the rights and status of women, guaranteeing them the unfettered right to kill their unborn children or liberating 25 million women from tyranny in Afghanistan and Iraq and appointing women to positions of power and influence in government?

As long as liberal democrats think the answer is the former they'll continue to see their support among women erode until all that's left in their camp are a few embittered members of NOW and a motley collection of radical professors.

Atheism and Christian Salvation

Christianity Today has a piece by Alistair McGrath which he excerpts from his book The Twilight of Atheism. McGrath argues that atheism reached its zenith sometime before WWII and has been in decline ever since. The reason for its appeal is disapproval of the moral temper of Christianity, but Christians have done a much better job of representing Christ to the world in the last sixty years than atheists have in presenting a plausible alternative. McGrath says:

The failure of atheism to capture the public imagination in the West reflects its failure to articulate a compelling, imaginative vision of a godless future that is capable of exciting people and making them want to gather together to celebrate and proclaim it.

Listen to John Updike: "Among the repulsions of atheism for me has been its drastic uninterestingness as an intellectual position." I have to confess that I now share his catatonic sense of utter tedium when I reread some of the atheist works I once found fascinating as a teenager. They now seem simplistic, failing to engage with the complexities of human experience, and seriously out of tune with our postmodern culture.

The battle, however, is far from won:

The moral passion of atheism, especially when set alongside the laziness and complacency of European state churches in the 18th century, cannot be dismissed.

In the end, debates about whether God's existence can be proved remain marginal. The central issue is moral and imaginative. The most fundamental criticisms directed against Christianity have to do with the moral character of its God. They often focus on the issue of eternal punishment.

"Eternal punishment must be eternal cruelty," said secular humanist orator Robert G. Ingersoll (1833-1899), "and I do not see how any man, unless he has the brain of an idiot, or the heart of a wild beast, can believe in eternal punishment."

We cannot assert eternal damnation and expect Western culture to nod approvingly. This culture is not predisposed to reject Christian doctrines as a matter of principle; rather, it is surprised by what seems a massive retreat from society's fundamental notions of decency and evenhandedness. Atheism arises mainly through a profound sense that religious ideas and values are at least inferior to, and possibly irreconcilable with, the best moral standards and ideals of human culture.

In other words, Western culture finds implausible and repugnant the conviction, widely held among evangelicals, that no matter how much in love with God a person might be, if he or she has not accepted Christ as Lord, God rejects them, and they are eternally damned. McGrath, in fact, believes this doctrine to be the major reason why people who become atheists abandon theism.

I'm not sure he's right about this. I think that most people who reject theism simply don't want there to be a God even remotely like the God of the Bible and wouldn't embrace Him regardless of what the Church taught about salvation.

Even so, McGrath is doubtless correct that there are many who find Christian exclusivism morally incomprehensible if not repellant and reject the Gospel because of it. It is on behalf of these that the Church, in our view, should revisit its thinking on this very important issue. If the doctrine is clearly and unambiguously taught by scripture then so be it, but if scripture admits of other ways of thinking about what it means to be saved and what it means to be lost, then it would be a worthwhile project to reconsider some of the arguments, some of the exegesis, and some of the theology involved in deciding exactly what God's plan of redemption involves.

Scripture may be inerrant, but our understanding of it surely is not.