Developments in Cancer Research

In light of the recent news about cell-phones causing brain cancer this report is especially relevant: Scientists have made a remarkable discovery in the treatment of cancers, specifically, but not solely, brain cancer.

It had been thought that all the cells in a tumor were identical, but it has been discovered that the tumor is actually fed by stem cells that reside in the tumor near blood vessels from which they derive their nourishment. Drugs that attack the blood vessels cause the stem cells to die off which, it is thought, cause the tumor to whither.

There's a story and video here.

RLC

African Hero

Dr. Paul Kengor, noted biographer of Ronald Reagan, pens a fascinating article about George Bush's leadership, derived from his Christian faith, in mitigating the miseries of Africans. The fascinating thing about what Bush has done is how quiet the left has been about it. Much of Kengor's column recounts the history behind Bush's initiative in the course of which he writes this:

If a Democratic president had done what Bush has done for Africa, the New York Times would recommend a 100-foot bronze statue on the Mall. Instead, there is utter silence concerning this stunning, expensive act of human charity-one certainly beyond what American presidents would ever be expected to do. Liberal college professors and Hollywood types would be walking around with special little ribbons on their lapels representing the president's Africa initiative.

Then Kengor says:

George W. Bush, devout Christian, in the role of Good Samaritan, was doing what no leader of any country had ever done for Africa.

I wrote on this in an op-ed for the San Francisco Chronicle in September 2004. The opinion editor of the Chronicle was, like Bob Geldof, a fair liberal; he happily ran the piece, thinking it would enlighten his readership, especially the faith component-a bracing revelation to an angry left that insists Bush's "born-again faith" makes him a narrow-minded troglodyte.

What was the response? I received hateful e-mails telling me that not only was Bush - and myself as well - a "moron," but the entire Africa AIDS thing was a ruse, a sham, and the money wasn't even being spent. Bush was a "liar," and so was I. One e-mailer acted like a child with his hands over his ears screaming, "Liar, liar, pants on fire!" Facts made no difference whatsoever.

Likewise, there is denial or disinterest by liberals who dominate America culture and shape perception: Hollywood, academia, media. The left so detests this president that it will not give him credit for anything. He is a new kind of Frankenstein's monster: half Torquemada and half Boris Karloff.

I'm not surprised by the lack of credit Bush has received on this from the right. Conservatives don't like how this president spends money like a drunken sailor, and his action toward Africa is viewed as another such manifestation - a raft of do-gooder poppycock that isn't the job of the federal government.

The big story is why the left isn't thrilled, and then, beyond that, the deeper silence that refuses to acknowledge the link between this work of Bush benevolence and his Christian faith. For George W. Bush, this is simply a reward he will need to receive much later - much like the Good Samaritan.

The fact is that many on the left are not as fair-minded as Geldof or Bono. Their hatred for Bush is personal, not just political. The New York Times won't be erecting any monuments, but I'll bet a few go up in Africa someday, which is where it counts, anyway. I'll bet a few also go up in Afghanistan and Iraq as well. I wonder how many monuments there are in foreign countries to any other American president.

RLC

Show of Hands

Speaking of Africa, let's have a show of hands - How many think we should use force to rescue the Sudanese? More than 200,000 people have died, and 5.4 million have been driven from their homes as the devastating war continues in Darfur, Sudan. Suffering children and families urgently need food, water, and medical care to survive according to World Vision.

This tragedy is little different than the one in Rwanda in 1994 when the nation's of the world stood around twiddling their collective thumbs while a million Tutsis were savagely butchered by the Hutus. The pace of the genocide in Sudan is somewhat slower, but it's just as deadly.

Diplomacy seems to have little effect on the thugs in Khartoum. The only way to save these wretched people from the ravages of the militias who are murdering, maiming, raping and enslaving them appears to be to use military force. Let's take a stand. Should we rescue them or should we not? Should we send in troops and pacify the countryside and topple the brutes who hold power in Khartoum or should we sit around the air-conditioned United Nations, wining, dining and generally talking the problem to death while the Sudanese starve in the oppressive heat? These seem to be our options, so which do you support?

I think our answer to that question says a lot about what kind of people we are, don't you?

RLC

Liberal Governance

Rich Lowery illustrates in just a few short paragraphs why liberalism is a terrible philosophy by which to govern. Many of our major cities are disaster areas, like New Orleans but without the hurricane, and almost every one of them is managed by liberal Democrats. Lowery focusses on just one particularly egregious example, Detroit.

Detroit suffers from every possible malady except a plague of locusts, and that's only because they find urban living uncongenial. The city has a revitalized downtown, but all around it, the city rots. Forbes magazine declared Detroit "America's Most Miserable City," on the basis of its unemployment and crime rates, among other things. The unemployment rate of 8.2 percent is the highest of any major urban area in the nation, and its homicide rate is higher than New York's in the bad old days of the early 1990s.

The city has lost 1 million residents since 1950. It was hit by the decline of the auto industry and white flight, fueled partly by racism. These trends would have rocked the city no matter what. Detroit compounded them with disastrous governance, personified by Mayor Coleman Young, who held office for 20 years beginning in 1974.

His record raises the question why, if it wanted to engage in a nefarious plot to hurt blacks, the federal government would invent the AIDS virus when it could simply emplace mayors like Coleman Young instead. "Imagine a Rev. Jeremiah Wright with real power," says urban expert Fred Siegel. Coleman taunted suburbanites, accusing them of "pillaging the city," while his scandal-plagued administration managed the city into the ground.

Read the rest at the link for which thanks are due to Jason for passing it along.

To Lowery's column we might add the recent news that seventeen of the nation's 50 largest cities had high school graduation rates less than 50 percent, with the lowest rates reported in Detroit, Indianapolis and Cleveland.

Nevertheless, the people of these cities keep electing the same party to run the schools despite their abject and catastrophic failure. It would be amusing were it not so tragic.

RLC

Build the Wall

How many of our sons and daughters will have to be killed by illegal immigrants either in automobile accidents or by violent crime before our leaders experience a little electoral fear and trembling? Jamiel Shaw is the latest of a long list of people who would be alive today were our borders properly defended against the tidal wave of criminal and otherwise irresponsible aliens that has flooded this country in the last fifteen years:

What part of "close the border" does our political leadership not understand? Watch this to get a sense of the magnitude of the tragedy of our refusal to control who comes into this country:

RLC

Resurrecting the <i>Betray Us</i> Meme

It's been some time since I've seen anything quite so embarrassingly absurd as this column by Robert Scheer. The reader can't get past the first two paragraphs without wondering whether Mr. Scheer needs to be tethered to earth to keep from floating away:

General Betray Us? Of course he has. MoveOn.org can hardly be expected to recycle its slogan from last September, when Gen. David Petraeus testified in support of escalating the U.S. war in Iraq, given the hysterical denunciations that worthy group received at the time. But it was right then -- as it would be to repeat the charge now.

This is a libel and although he wouldn't do it, Petraeus should sue Scheer down to his Birkingstocks. Listen to Scheer's reason for his slander:

By undercutting the widespread support for getting out of Iraq, Petraeus did indeed betray the American public, siding with an enormously unpopular president who wants to stay the course in Iraq for personal and political reasons that run contrary to genuine national security interests.

It's almost demeaning to respond to this sort of flapdoodle. In Scheer's mind it's an act of treason to hold a minority view on the war, if indeed it even is a minority view. It is furthermore an act of treason, Scheer declaims, for a military officer to support his commander-in-chief.

Never mind whether what Petraeus said was actually true or not, that evidently is of no concern to Scheer. What Petraeus said was a betrayal because it was not what Mr. Scheer, no doubt himself a highly acclaimed expert on Iraq and the military, wanted to hear.

Mr. Scheer also, mirabile dictu, has a fiber optic tube running right into George Bush's brain enabling him to discern exactly what the President's motives are, and he's here to tell us that they're not pretty. They're "personal" and "political," don't you know. Scheer is certain of this despite the fact that it defies all common sense since Bush has paid an enormous political price for his steadfastness in the war and his personal grievance with Saddam, who tried to kill Bush's father, was satisfied when Saddam was captured. Nevertheless, when the denizens of the paranoid fever swamps start popping their hallucinogens, common sense and rationality are rendered irrelevant.

Scheer goes on to embarrass himself further:

Once again, the president is passing the buck to the uniformed military to justify continuing a ludicrous imperial adventure, and the good general has dutifully performed.

This is gratuitously insulting, a not uncommon resort among the President's critics. How is the President passing the buck to the general? Congress called Petraeus to appear before them. What was he supposed to do? Refuse?

There's more to Scheer's column, but don't waste your time. You can probably find more thoughtful commentary in the student newspaper of your local high school.

RLC

Moral Inequivalence

In terms of consistently good content few columnists are the equal of Dennis Prager. His recent column got me to thinking...

Palestine is at least 1,400 years old, is one of the world's oldest nations, has its own language, its own religion and even its own ethnicity. Over 1 million of its people have been killed by the Israelis, its culture has been systematically obliterated, 6,000 of its 6,200 mosques have been looted and destroyed, and most of its leaders have been tortured, murdered or exiled.

It seems there should be far more outrage about this than there is. It seems that the U.N. should be doing more than it is to condemn Israel for its treatment of the Palestinians. It seems that the U.S. should be distancing itself from the Israeli government instead of drawing ever closer to it. Why isn't Israel a pariah among civilized nations? Why does anyone have anything, commercial or diplomatic, to do with it?

Perhaps because none of the above is true of the Israelis and their treatment of the Palestinians. It is all true, though, mutatis mutandis, of China and Tibet.

Prager's column is about the differences between how the world treats the Israeli/Palestinian problem and how it reacts to the Chinese repression of Tibet:

Palestinians have none of the characteristics [of the Tibetans]. There has never been a Palestinian country, never been a Palestinian language, never been a Palestinian ethnicity, never been a Palestinian religion in any way distinct from Islam elsewhere. Indeed, "Palestinian" had always meant any individual living in the geographic area called Palestine. For most of the first half of the 20th century, "Palestinian" and "Palestine" almost always referred to the Jews of Palestine. The United Jewish Appeal, the worldwide Jewish charity that provided the nascent Jewish state with much of its money, was actually known as the United Palestine Appeal. Compared to Tibetans, few Palestinians have been killed, its culture has not been destroyed nor its mosques looted or plundered, and Palestinians have received billions of dollars from the international community. Unlike the dying Tibetan nation, there are far more Palestinians today than when Israel was created.

....of all the causes the world could have adopted, the Palestinians' deserved to be near the bottom and the Tibetans' near the top. This is especially so since the Palestinians could have had a state of their own from 1947 on, and they have caused great suffering in the world, while the far more persecuted Tibetans have been characterized by a morally rigorous doctrine of nonviolence.

Prager points out that despite almost perennial U.N. condemnations of Israel there has never once been a condemnation of China. Indeed, China was voted onto the Security Council and enjoys considerable prestige as it continues its genocide against Tibet and offers its support to murderous regimes like the Sudanese, the Burmese, and the North Koreans.

You'll have to read his column to find out why he thinks this is, but here's a thought to tide you over: Yesterday's protests in San Francisco notwithstanding, being on the ideological left too often means never having to say you're sorry whereas being an ally of the U.S. too often means nothing you do to protect yourself is ever justifiable.

For many in the United Nations and on the secular left justice is merely a word that's used to surround oneself with a cachet of moral righteousness, but it doesn't actually mean anything.

RLC

Girls Will Be Girls

The parents of the girl who was beaten for thirty minutes by a bunch of high school savages are pulling their daughter out of public school and home schooling her. Who can blame them?

Perhaps the proceeds they'll no doubt receive from suing the parents of the eight individuals involved will enable them to hire full-time tutors or send their daughter to a private school.

The victim suffered a concussion and damage to her eye and hearing. The girls and two boys who were involved in this sickening episode are facing felony charges. They should also be facing a massive financial judgment that'll take them many years to pay off.

HT: Hot Air

RLC

Upper-Class Misers

Jason calls our attention to an article in NRO by Arthur C. Brooks on Mr. and Mrs. Obama's charitable giving habits. It turns out that the Obamas managed to free themselves of a whopping 1% of their income between 2000 and 2004 despite earnings of about $245,000. Their explanation for their niggardliness (look it up) was that they just couldn't afford to give more.

You'd think that the only Americans with the nerve to use such an excuse for not giving would be the poor. But in fact, it is the poor - specifically the working poor - who can most teach upper-class misers a charity lesson. The working poor are America's most generous givers when we measure giving as a percentage of income. Most studies have shown that the working poor tend to give away between four and five percent of their incomes, on average, while the rich give away between three and four percent. (Both groups give away significantly more than the middle class.)

The Obamas got rich in 2005. Their income increased sevenfold from 2004 to 2005, mostly because of Mr. Obama's book royalties, and stayed very high in 2006 for the same reason. In 2006, another wealthy political couple with significant book royalties was Mr. and Mrs. Cheney, who had a combined income of $8.8 million, largely due to Mrs. Cheney's books and the couple's investment income. Just how much did the Cheneys give to charity from their bonanza? A measly 78 percent of their income, or $6.9 million. (No, that is not a misprint.)

The Obamas' penny-pinching would not be at all offensive if it weren't for their eagerness to raise the taxes the rest of us pay to essentially fund programs that would help the same people that much charitable giving helps.

Brooks goes on to note another astonishing fact:

In 1996, the General Social Survey asked a large sample of Americans whether they agreed that, "The government has a responsibility to reduce income inequality." Those who "disagreed strongly" with this statement gave an amazing twelve times more money to charity per year, on average, than those who "agreed strongly." People disagreeing strongly also gave nine times more to secular causes than those agreeing strongly, and even gave more to traditionally progressive causes, such as the environment and the arts.

When the government becomes anything more than a last resort for people who are struggling it does several things. It discourages the development of the virtue of charitable giving, it generally does little to help the people who receive the taxpayers' largesse, and it impoverishes you by taking more money out of your wallet and filtering it through several layers of bureaucracy before it gets to its intended recipient.

I read once that out of every dollar taxed for welfare, only twenty seven cents makes it to the person in need. No wonder people don't want the government doing welfare.

RLC

Why the Poor Stay Poor

There are lots of reasons why the worst off among the world's people are mired in poverty. Some of it is due to forces beyond their control, as Paul Collier points out in his excellent book titled The Bottom Billion, but as he also points out a lot of it is not.

This e-mail from a missionary friend of mine in Haiti suggests that there is an ingrained self-destructiveness and stupidity afflicting at least some of the poor that just traps them in perpetual poverty and wretchedness:

Hello, everyone.

Prices have been rising here (as everywhere, apparently). The problem here is that people always seem to think that taking to the street and breaking up stuff will bring a solution. SO, the last week has been marked with riots and road-blocks all over the island. In the name of protesting against high prices, rioting crowds have burned vehicles, broken into food-storage buildings, burned houses, and blocked major roads. It's one more episode of shooting at your own feet.

Sadly, the president here has been making jokes about the situation. That only seems to send the crowds toward greater mischief. We're not sure where this is headed. Prices are high. No supplies will be coming in our way. I'm already out of cash. We're not sure when we'll be able to move around again, and even if the roads open up that doesn't mean that businesses will be back on line right away. So, we can say it's getting worse quickly.

Pray for peace here in this crazy place. The UN has been under attack as part of the riots. They're eating well and driving nice vehicles while no one is able to really determine what good they are actually doing here. That makes them a target.

We'll be in touch. Andy

I don't know which is more pathetic, the behavior of the mobs or the fecklessness of the U.N. Given the history of the last sixty years neither is very surprising.

If anyone would like to help Andy, let me know, and I'll put you in touch with him.

RLC

Change We Can Believe In

"We need more white people." At least that's what the Obama people were saying as they tried hard to manufacture the appearance of diversity at a campaign rally. Can you imagine a Republican operative saying something like that? The media would attack him like a swarm of bees until the unfortunate fellow was forced to flee his post.

Don't expect journalists in the liberal media to point out hypocrisy in the Obama camp, though. They're hip-deep in it themselves. Sam Alito was almost denied an appointment to the Supreme Court because when he was in college he held nominal membership in an all-male, all-white organization. Barack Obama belongs for twenty years to a church whose pastor is a bigoted fabulist, and the media quietly tip-toes away from the implications of his association, as though they were leaving the bedroom of a sleeping child.

Obama is, moreover, an acquaintance, and possibly a friend, of a man named William Ayers who in the sixties was responsible for bombing several government buildings and who recently averred that he wished he'd done more damage than he did and wouldn't rule out doing it again. You probably haven't heard about this if you get your news from the MSM, but if a GOP candidate had had such an association that'd be all you'd be hearing about. Ayers has contributed to Obama's campaign and the two of them have been neighbors and associates for years. At the very least Obama should explain the nature of the relationship, it being a little awkward to have a president who consorts with unrepentant terrorists, but don't count on the media to force the issue.

Obama also has ties that go back 17 years to an indicted political financier by the name of Tony Rezko, a Chicago slumlord, currently under indictment for demanding kickbacks from companies with which he had business relationships. Obama worked for the law firm that Rezko employed during the nineties.

Rezko's housing units in Chicago lacked heat from December 1996 to February 1997 because Rezko claimed he didn't have the money to get the heat turned on, but during that span he came up with $1000 for Obama's campaign for the state senate. Since then he's raised over $50,000 for Obama and worked out a sweetheart sale of a house and lot to Obama, selling him a home for $300,000 less than the asking price.

The irony of this is that Obama was a community advocate for affordable housing for the poor, and here he was being mentored by a man who was a typical slumlord. The association certainly has the odor of political and ethical sleaze about it, but the media seems unable to catch the scent. Their noses are attuned only to sleaze that bears the smell of GOP corruption.

Nor is Hillary in a position to press Obama on matters of ethics, so it's doubtful that she'll bring it up except as a last ditch attempt to wrest the nomination from Obama. It'll be interesting, though, to see the extent to which Republicans in the general campaign will demand answers to the questions raised by Obama's coziness with Wright, Ayers, and Rezko.

RLC

Connections

The development of grain-based biofuels has provided us with some great illustrations of the Law of Unintended Consequences. The shift to corn-based ethanol to wean us away from our dependence on oil certainly seems like a good idea - after all, what could go wrong? Ethanol is easy on the environment and will allow us to wean ourselves away from our dependence on petroleum and Middle Eastern sources of supply.

Well, it's not that simple. Ethanol and other bio-fuels are made from grain. The increased demand for these commodities drives up their price which is good for farmers, but bad for consumers, and absolutely disastrous for the third world poor who rely on grains like corn for food.

Here's an example I came across recently which shows how tinkering with one part of the economic web produces consequences completely unanticipated and unwanted elsewhere in the system: The increase in corn price due to demand for biofuels recently caused a large poultry operation to lay off hundreds of workers because they could no longer afford to buy feed for their chickens. Evidently chicken food is no longer chicken feed.

Paul Krugman lays out the problem in a bit more detail and spares us the bad puns in the New York Times:

Where the effects of bad policy are clearest, however, is in the rise of demon ethanol and other biofuels. The subsidized conversion of crops into fuel was supposed to promote energy independence and help limit global warming. But this promise was, as Time magazine bluntly put it, a "scam."

This is especially true of corn ethanol: even on optimistic estimates, producing a gallon of ethanol from corn uses most of the energy the gallon contains. But it turns out that even seemingly "good" biofuel policies, like Brazil's use of ethanol from sugar cane, accelerate the pace of climate change by promoting deforestation.

And meanwhile, land used to grow biofuel feedstock is land not available to grow food, so subsidies to biofuels are a major factor in the food crisis. You might put it this way: people are starving in Africa so that American politicians can court votes in farm states.

Oh, and in case you're wondering: all the remaining presidential contenders are terrible on this issue.

There's a lot of other interesting stuff in Krugman's piece. For example, did you know that we are in a world food shortage partly because the Chinese, having moved toward a market economy, are becoming more affluent? This means they're eating more meat which increases the demand for feed grain on the world market which means the price goes up, and poor people in the third world have to go with even less food for themselves and their families than the meager portions they were previously able to scrabble together.

What's the lesson? Exploit the oil reserves we have off-shore and in Alaska that Democrats in Congress have placed off-limits. Increasing the supply of oil would drive down its price which would lower agricultural and transportation costs associated with grain and provide a boon to the poor both at home and abroad. Indeed, reducing their cost of living may be the best way to bring relief to people who exist on the edge of starvation.

So why are Democrats, the self-proclaimed party of compassion, opposed to drilling?

Check out Krugman's column at the link.

RLC

After-Action Analysis

Bill Roggio explains what happened with the Iraqi assault on the Mahdi army in Basrah:

Eleven days after Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki launched Operation Knights' Assault in Basrah, the picture of the fighting in the city has become clearer. Maliki launched the operation after giving limited notice to Multinational Forces Iraq, and an inexperienced Iraqi Army brigade from the newly formed 14th Division cracked during the opening days of the fighting. The Iraqi Army [then] rushed forces into Basrah, including Army and elite police units, to stabilize the fighting, and six days after the operation began, Muqtada al Sadr ordered his Mahdi Army to stand down in Basrah, Baghdad, and the South.

There's much more here.

RLC

The Darwin Fish

It may seem odd at first, but the 17 minute film Fitna puts Jonah Goldberg in mind of the "Jesus fish" commonly seen attached to cars and jewelry. More precisely, it puts him in mind of those who seek to deride Christianity by sporting a "Darwin" fish, a fish symbol with four tiny legs and the name Darwin supplanting Jesus.

Given the history of how early Christians used the fish symbol (The letters for the Greek word fish form an acronym for the Greek words Jesus Christ Son of God, Savior) as a sort of password or silent identity badge and who often paid for their conviction by dying horrible, brutal deaths, the Darwinist knock-off is more fatuous than clever, but that's often the case with those who mock Christianity. Most of the people who amuse themselves by laughing at a symbol of Christian suffering would not dare mock the Star of David or some symbol of Islam, and this is Goldberg's point.

He puts it this way in his concluding sentences:

It's not that secular progressives support Muslim religious fanatics, it's that they reserve their passion and scorn for religious Christians who are neither fanatical nor violent.

The Darwin fish ostensibly symbolizes the superiority of progressive-minded science over backward-looking faith. I think this is a false juxtaposition, but I would have a lot more respect for the folks who believe it if they aimed their brave contempt for religion at those who might behead them for it.

Read the whole thing. It's pretty good.

RLC

Islamo-Fascism Awareness

This week is Islamo-Fascism Awareness Week on campuses across the nation. The aims of the observance are simple - to educate students about the threat posed by global Islamism and to urge students of all ethnicities and religions to renounce genocide and hate. David Horowitz, the founder of IFAW, discusses what is happening on more than 100 campuses this week here.

Horowitz writes:

The centerpiece of this year's campaign is the Declaration Against Genocide. The Declaration calls on "student governments and Muslim groups" to condemn Hezbollah and Hamas, and repudiate the saying of the prophet Mohammed that redemption will only come when Muslims fight Jews and kill them, when the rocks and trees cry out Oh Muslim there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him. The charter also affirms such radical notions as:

• The right of all people to live in freedom and dignity
• The freedom of the individual conscience: to change religions or have no religion at all
• The equal dignity of women and men
• The right of all people to live free from violence, intimidation, and coercion.

Students around the country will try to spread the call for this generation to respect the innate dignity of every human being.

One hundred Muslim Student Associations were asked a month ago to sign the Declaration. None of them have. That is because the Muslim Student Associations are not religious or ethnic or cultural groups. They are political arms of the Muslim Brotherhood, the parent organization of al-Qaeda and Hamas. As documented in a series of Frontpage articles and in the pamphlet The Muslim Student Association and the Jihad Network, the campus MSAs are part of the "soft jihad," the movement which provides moral and economic support to the terrorists and seeks to undermine the foundations of western civilization.

When students refuse to repudiate murder, when they refuse to endorse basic human rights for all people, then we have reason to fear that the night is falling rapidly upon us. Go to the link and read about IFAW.

RLC

A Shared Pain

A very dear friend of mine recently shared with me and several others a personal story of heartache and grief that he's been enduring. Since his story is one to which so many others can relate, I asked him if it would be okay to put it on Viewpoint. He replied, in effect, that if it could provide some measure of solace to just one person undergoing similar trials, it'd be worth it. He didn't ask for it, but I promised him anonymity so I've changed the name of his son. Here's what he wrote:

To my closest friends and family,

As you know, the past months have been a battle for my wife and I. In recent days I have been reflecting on the situation in my journal. I don't know why, but I felt compelled to put into writing the heart of the struggle for me. I'm sharing it with you so that you will see the inside of my heart. I hope this will help you understand what this battle has been for me. I'm not sure why this is even important to me, but it is. I hope you will take the time to read this and then, just keep it in prayer:

Dear Journal,

I have been an advocate for marriage and family for a long time. I suppose the roots of my passion go back to my childhood. I grew up in a family of seven children. While not a perfect family, I grew up thinking we were. We always had vacations, we worshipped together, we were spared the typical dysfunctional elements that families often bear - alcoholism, infidelity and serious illness. My Dad was a preacher and he believed very much in marriage and family. He helped instill these values in me.

After I married, I fathered four sons of my own. While not as large as my family of origin, having four children was somewhat uncommon. There were times we would walk into a mall or restaurant and feel the stares of people. Birth control had become increasingly available and popular. Population control was in vogue. Young couples were encouraged to have only two children. I guess I was breaking the rules. Then too, having four boys was out of the norm. The perfect family was two children---one boy and one girl. We were not the normal family, but I was convinced that we were a family to be proud of.

I entered college after my wife and I had children. As part of my studies, I chose subjects to research or write on that pertained to marriage and family. Woman's liberation had emerged, and in my opinion was an attack on the traditional family. I was particularly engaged in the arguments against working moms--something that became increasingly popular and common during those years as well. I read articles and wrote papers on the dangers of working mothers and the statistics that indicated woman in the workforce contributed to infidelity and divorce. My wife was in agreement with me and never worked outside the home. She devoted her time and energy to provide an awesome home environment for both myself and my children.

While growing up I had never personally experienced a broken marriage. Neither my parents, none of my aunts nor uncles, nor any of my grandparents on either side, had ever divorced. The first deviation from this pattern and norm came while I was in my first year of college. My Dad's brother, my uncle, had an adulterous affair. He had two daughters---my cousins. I lived only a short distance from my uncle when I discovered that he was cheating on his wife, my aunt. It angered me. I confronted him about it and begged him to stop and to make his marriage work. The entire situation hurt my grandparents deeply as it ended in a divorce and the selling of long-time family-owned farm property.

Not many years afterward, while I was still in college, I got a phone call from my twin brother. I will never forget his first words. He asked me if I was sitting down. Choking back tears he informed me that he discovered that his wife, a long-time friend of my wife and I, as well as being my sister-in-law, was having an affair and indicated she wanted out of the marriage. Again, as an advocate of marriage and family, I offered my help and counsel. I had several conversations with my sister-in-law, presenting evidence that I had amassed in my head of the long-term damaging effects of divorce upon children. They had two children, my niece and nephew. I had first witnessed the devastating effect of divorce on my two younger cousins, now I watched in horror as the pain ripped through the lives of my even younger niece and nephew. My sister-in-law not only ended up leaving her husband, but, seemingly out of guilt, also left my brother with the two children. My parents were devastated as divorce now wreaked the same havoc in their family that it had in my grandparent's family.

The epidemic continued. Several years later, I learned that a younger brother of mine, a man ordained in the ministry, had an affair with his church organist. Again, I felt my heart break, and I offered my help and advice. Thankfully, they were able to mend their marriage, but they never fully recovered. Now, years later, they have filed for divorce. They have four young-adult, unmarried children. Several of the children have been involved in drug usage. None of them are interested in Christian discipleship or the Christian life-style.

Enough is enough, but it wasn't over yet. After I graduated from college I entered the full-time ministry myself. With my passion for family and marriage I started immediately in ministry to offer help to troubled marriages. I continued to read book after book and article after article to gain information to help protect marriages. I began to preach several series of sermons on marriages and even taught marriage seminars. My wife and I conducted additional marriage retreats for couples. There were times we took troubled married spouses into our home. Despite my efforts, of course, I encountered marriages that failed. Through my counseling office door came person after person who either was in a troubled marriage or had been affected by one as a child. I grew quite familiar with the stories of adult children of divorce. The more I heard first hand and learned, the more my heart broke and the more passionate I became to help save marriages.

Then came a real bomb shell, although it would be small compared to what would come later. Another brother of mine who attended the church I pastored, informed me that his wife had cheated on him. This was a woman who he had met in the same Bible college I had attended. They had partnered together in ministry and had even served on staff at the same church early in their marriage. They had four children whom they had home-schooled. Immediately I tried to intervene and help them. Both came for counseling, both seemed to want to work through their issues, though at unmatched intervals. Finally, after months and months of chaos, fighting, lying and screaming, the thing ended in divorce. Helplessly, I watched my parents suffer through grief and watched once again as my nieces and nephews were thrown into the divorced parent whirlpool. The years ahead of them held in store drug use, addiction and even arrest.

On September 7th, 2008 the atomic bomb dropped. While on the way home from an enjoyable evening out, I received a phone call from my daughter-in-law asking if she could spend the night at our house. When I questioned why, her voice quavered and she said: "Rick (my son) is having an affair." Immediately my mind was flooded with all the history of the above. I went into shock. My wife and I made an immediate trip to their house. There, I met face to face the denial, the excuses, the lies and the dishonesty that I had seen in the faces of many, many people from the past. This time it was my own son wearing the mask. The real Rick, the son I had known all his life, was strangely absent. I didn't know the person who was trying to convince me that what he was doing was unavoidable. Married seven years they had just had their first baby. There hadn't been any evidence of a troubled marriage. How could I, a marriage counselor have missed this? How could this be happening? I offered one hour of counseling every day for the next week. Surely this would end, it would stop. This was insanity! My son only attended two sessions with me. He walked out angrily during the second one when I confronted him with the immorality of his behavior.

Now it's been seven months. Things have only gotten worse. The affair has matured into a living together arrangement. The "other woman's" husband has left her. She has two small children. Rick has refused to go to counseling or seek help. His wife, my daughter-in-law is on the verge of a nervous breakdown after months of incredible and insane treatment, arguments, lies and deception. She is doing her best to be a mother to their son, now one year old. Recently, she moved out of the house they bought and remodeled together and put it up for sale. Rick has supposedly filed for divorce. He has rejected all possibility of reconciliation at this point. He will not listen to his father's advice and is in complete denial of the consequences of his choices.

As a pastor, a father and a marriage advocate and counselor, the actions, behaviors and decisions of my son are an absolute nightmare. There are mornings I wake up telling myself this can't be happening and there are nights I don't sleep. Marriage and family, the very thing that I have invested much of my life protecting and promoting, has failed to take root in a member of my first congregation--my family. My son has made friends with the very enemy I have spent a lifetime trying to defeat. I think of this like a father who might be the founder of a safe-haven for pregnant girls who discovers his own daughter is planning to have an abortion, or as a father who travels the country preaching against drunk driving only to discover that his daughter has been arrested for DUI.

I don't know what the outcome of all this will be. There is salvation in the Lord and sometimes those who fail become the strongest allies of reform. As for myself, I am determined to sound the alarm and preach the message. By God's grace I will never cease to be an advocate of marriage and family. If anything, this has strengthened my resolve. At the end of my life, I hope there are at least a few people who, because of my message and example decided to make their marriage work. Perhaps a few will even decide to take up the torch themselves. God knows, we need Christians who will champion the cause.

RLC

Charlton Heston

Actor and former National Rifle association president Charlton Heston has passed away at the age of 84. Heston had the leading role in a number of classic films, The Ten Commandments, Ben Hur, Planet of the Apes, Solyent Green and many others, but my personal favorite was The Agony and the Ecstacy in which he portrayed Michaelangelo opposite Rex Harrison's Pope Julius II. Pope Julius commissioned the great artist to paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, which, to those who have been lucky enough to see it in person, ranks as perhaps the greatest achievement of one man in the history of art. The historical accuracy of the movie has been questioned, but it's still a wonderful film, and the interplay between Heston's Michaelangelo and Harrison's Julius is outstanding.

Heston was a great figure in America's culture and culture wars during the second half of the twentieth century and conservatives will always be grateful for his memorable contributions to both our film heritage and to our political debates over the second amendment.

See the link for more details.

RLC

<i>Absolut</i> Insult

I don't drink vodka, but if I did I'd never touch a drop of Absolut vodka after they pandered for Mexican business with this ad touting an absolut (perfect) world:

The really sad thing about this ad is that the map reportedly came from John McCain's office. Anyway, the story behind the ad can be found here. One commenter notes that Mexicans don't really want to push the border this far north. It'd mean they'd have to travel further to sneak in.

Just kidding, by the way, about McCain and the map.

RLC

Perspective

A friend e-mails that he saw a billboard in Michigan that read something like this:

FIVE YEAR DEATH TOLL

-- Military personnel killed in Iraq: 4,000

-- U S. citizens murdered in the country: 83,500

-- U. S. citizens killed in auto accidents: 210,000

-- U. S. citizens killed in home accidents: 340,000

-- Infants killed in their mother's wombs: 6,400,000

I can't vouch for the accuracy of the statistics, but they sound about right. Isn't it just a little bit ironic that judging by the amount of attention in the media some of the same people who are most outraged over the first statistic seem only perfunctorily concerned about the next three and are zealously committed to perpetuating the last?

RLC

Europe Needs Us

Europe needs America, argues Martin Kettle in the Guardian. The one thing worse for Europe, he writes, than fighting a war with America as an ally would be to fight one without America:

Although the defects and failures of the current [European] strategy are obvious, the only serious alternative to the unilateral bring-the-troops-home mentality is to try to get the existing strategy to evolve into something more credible, shared and effective. The next US president will certainly press that case. Nicolas Sarkozy certainly had a stirring answer to it when he told the assembled houses of parliament this week that the return of the Taliban and al-Qaida to Kabul was unacceptable and that France was therefore, albeit belatedly, committing a thousand troops to Kandahar. But how many European nations are prepared to follow suit?

For years now, Nato nations have been committed to reach a minimum defence spending target of 2% of GDP. Yet 20 of them, including Canada, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain, have fallen far short. Among the six that have reached the target, the shares of four (including Britain and France) are in decline. Inevitably, that means the US carries ever more of the load and becomes ever more sceptical about taking Europe seriously.

For years also, European nations have talked about the importance of avoiding duplication in equipment and weapons. But the talk has largely remained just that. It is barmy that Europeans have four different models of tank, compared with America's one; 16 different types of armoured vehicles as against America's three; or 11 types of frigate to America's one. Once again, Europe's failure highlights the US predominance.

As Kettle says, the U.S. is carrying much of the financial burden of NATO which has essentially been a free-rider since WWII. It would be well for the critics of America's generosity abroad, both domestic and especially European, to keep this in mind when next they're tempted to complain about our relatively "meager" contributions to things like tsunami relief efforts, etc.

RLC