Wallis and Boyd

In a friendly debate before an overflow crowd Sojourners' editor Jim Wallis and pastor/theologian Greg Boyd exchanged views on what should be the nature and extent of the involvement of Christians in politics.

Wallis argues that the church should be deeply involved in the political wars and that a Biblical politics would look a lot like contemporary liberalism. It's through political engagement that one lives out the Gospel in the world. He urges Christians to follow the examples of Dietrich Bonhoffer and Martin Luther King in working for justice in the societies in which we live:

To be a Christian means to care about social justice. Gandhi and King didn't just live the principles: They engaged the culture to fight for them.

Aside from the fact that mention of Ghandi as an example of Christian obligation seemed a little dissonant, I agree with Wallis on his general point. Christians should be politically engaged. Part of the reason that our culture is in the depauperate condition it is is because too many Christians had, throughout the 30s, 40s, and 50s, ceded much of the culture to the world and retreated to the shelter of personal piety largely disengaged from the arts, education, science, philosophy and politics. By the time this started to change in the 60s there was simply too much ground to make up, the church was too far behind, and the train of secularization and degeneration was accelerating unimpeded down the track.

On the other hand, I think Greg Boyd is correct when he insists that no political stance should be labeled Christian and that a Christian is defined by his or her imitation of "the self-sacrificial love of Christ," and not by his/her political stance. He's also on target when he says this:

Jesus never said a word about political issues .... I worry about calling some stands 'God's politics' (The title of Wallis' recent book). It invites polarizing politics into the church. Republican Christians care as much about the poor as Democratic Christians do; they just have different ways of approaching it. Good Christians can agree or disagree on war, abortion, taxes and immigrants.

There's more on their debate at the link.

More From Murray

Last Sunday I posted an article about a book titled Andrew Murray on Prayer. This book is simply packed with meat for the soul. I mentioned last week that Andrew Murray on Prayer is actually a compilation of six of his works and here's another chapter from Abide in Christ, As the Branch in the Vine.

"I am the vine, ye are the branches." - John 15:5

It was in connection with the parable of the Vine that our Lord first used the expression, "Abide in me." That parable, so simple, and yet so rich in its teaching, gives us the best and most complete illustration of the meaning of our Lord's command, and the union to which He invites us.

The parable teaches us the nature of that union. The connection between the vine and the branch is a living one. No external, temporary union will suffice; no work of man can effect it: the branch, whether an original or an engrafted one, is such only by the Creator's own work, in virtue of which the life, the sap, the fatness, and the fruitfulness of the vine communicate themselves to the branch. And just so it is with the believer too. His union with his Lord is no work of human wisdom or human will, but an act of God, by which the closest and most complete life-union is effected between the Son of God and the sinner. "God hath sent forth the Spirit of His Son into your hearts." The same Spirit which dwelt and still dwells in the Son, becomes the life of the believer; in the unity of that one Spirit, and the fellowship of the same life which is in Christ, he is one with Him. As between the vine and branch, it is a life-union that makes them one.

The parable teaches us the completeness of the union. So close is the union between the vine and the branch, that each is nothing without the other, that each is wholly and only for the other.

Without the vine the branch can do nothing. To the vine it owes its right of place in the vineyard, its life and its fruitfulness. And so the Lord says, "Without me ye can do nothing." The believer can each day be pleasing to God only in that which he does through the power of Christ dwelling in him. The daily inflowing of the life-sap of the Holy Spirit is his only power to bring forth fruit. He lives alone in Him and is for each moment dependent on Him alone.

Without the branch the vine can also do nothing. A vine without branches can bear no fruit. No less indispensable than the vine to the branch, is the branch to the vine. Such is the wonderful condescension of the grace of Jesus, that just as His people are dependent on Him, He has made Himself dependent on them. Without His disciples He cannot dispense His blessing to the world; He cannot offer sinners the grapes of the heavenly Canaan. Marvel not! It is His own appointment; and this is the high honour to which He has called His redeemed ones, that as indispensable as He is to them in heaven, that from Him their fruit may be found, so indispensable are they to Him on earth, that through them His fruit may be found. Believers, meditate on this, until your soul bows to worship in presence of the mystery of the perfect union between Christ and the believer.

There is more: as neither vine nor branch is anything without the other, so is neither anything except for the other.

All the vine possesses belongs to the branches. The vine does not gather from the soil its fatness and its sweetness for itself - all it has is at the disposal of the branches. As it is the parent, so it is the servant of the branches. And Jesus, to whom we owe our life, how completely does He give Himself for us and to us: "The glory Thou gavest me, I have given them"; "He that believeth in me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works shall he do." All His fullness and all His riches are for thee, O believer; for the vine does not live for itself, keeps nothing for itself, but exists only for the branches. All that Jesus is in heaven, He is for us: He has no interest there separate from ours; as our representative He stands before the Father.

And all the branch possesses belongs to the vine. The branch does not exist for itself, but to bear fruit that can proclaim the excellence of the vine: it has no reason of existence except to be of service to the vine. Glorious image of the calling of the believer, and the entireness of his consecration to the service of his Lord. As Jesus gives Himself so wholly over to him, he feels himself urged to be wholly his Lord's. Every power of his being, every moment of his life, every thought and feeling, belong to Jesus, that from Him and for Him he may bring forth fruit. As he realizes what the vine is to the branch, and what the branch is meant to be to the vine, he feels that he has but one thing to think of and to live for, and that is, the will, the glory, the work, the kingdom of his blessed Lord - the bringing forth of fruit to the glory of His name.

The parable teaches us the object of the union. The branches are for fruit and fruit alone. "Every branch that beareth not fruit He taketh away." The branch needs leaves for the maintenance of its own life, and the perfection of its fruit: the fruit itself it bears to give away to those around. As the believer enters into his calling as a branch, he sees that he has to forget himself, and to live entirely for his fellowmen. To love them, to seek for them, and to save them, Jesus came: for this every branch on the Vine has to live as much as the Vine itself. It is for fruit, much fruit, that the Father has made us one with Jesus.

Wondrous parable of the Vine - unveiling the mysteries of the Divine love, of the heavenly life, of the world of Spirit - how little have I understood thee! Jesus the living Vine in heaven, and I the living branch on earth! How little have I understood how great my need, but also how perfect my claim, to all His fullness! How little understood, how great His need, but also how perfect His claim, to my emptiness! Let me, in its beautiful light, study the wondrous union between Jesus and His people, until it becomes to me the guide into full communion with my beloved Lord. Let me listen and believe, until my whole being cries out, "Jesus is indeed to me the True Vine, bearing me, nourishing me, supplying me, using me, and filling me to the full to make me bring forth fruit abundantly." Then shall I not fear to say, "I am indeed a branch to Jesus, the True Vine, abiding in Him, resting on Him, waiting for Him, serving Him, and living only that through me, too, He may show forth the riches of His grace, and give His fruit to a perishing world."

It is when we try thus to understand the meaning of the parable, that the blessed command spoken in connection with it will come home to us in its true power. The thought of what the vine is to the branch, and Jesus to the believer, will give new force to the words, "Abide in me!" It will be as if He says, "Think, soul, how completely I belong to thee. I have joined myself inseparably to thee; all the fulness and fatness of the Vine are thine in very deed. Now thou once art in me, be assured that all I have is wholly thine. It is my interest and my honour to have thee a fruitful branch; only Abide in me. Thou art weak, but I am strong; thou art poor, but I am rich. Only abide in me; yield thyself wholly to my teaching and rule; simply trust my love, my grace, my promises. Only believe; I am wholly thine; I am the Vine, thou art the branch. Abide in me.

What sayest thou, O my soul? Shall I longer hesitate, or withhold consent? Or shall I not, instead of only thinking how hard and how difficult it is to live like a branch of the True Vine, because I thought of it as something I had to accomplish - shall I not now begin to look upon it as the most blessed and joyful thing under heaven? Shall I not believe that, now I once am in Him, He Himself will keep me and enable me to abide? On my part, abiding is nothing but the acceptance of my position, the consent to be kept there, the surrender of faith to the strong Vine still to hold the feeble branch. Yes, I will, I do abide in Thee, blessed Lord Jesus.

O Saviour, how unspeakable is Thy love! "Such knowledge is too wonderful for me: it is high, I cannot attain unto it." I can only yield myself to Thy love with the prayer that, day by day, Thou wouldest unfold to me somewhat of its precious mysteries, and so encourage and strengthen Thy loving disciple to do what his heart longs to do indeed - ever, only, wholly to abide in Thee.

While I feel all of this is truly inspiring, what really aroused my sense of conviction of falling short was the paragraph about the fruit. It is so counter to our nature of the Flesh to live for anything other than ourselves. Yet our new nature of the Spirit not only calls us to live for others but also provides the means to do so through Jesus. Robert Mulholland made the same point in The Deeper Journey as he developed the theme that "we are to live in God for the world".

The parable teaches us the object of the union. The branches are for fruit and fruit alone. "Every branch that beareth not fruit He taketh away." The branch needs leaves for the maintenance of its own life, and the perfection of its fruit: the fruit itself it bears to give away to those around. As the believer enters into his calling as a branch, he sees that he has to forget himself, and to live entirely for his fellowmen. To love them, to seek for them, and to save them, Jesus came: for this every branch on the Vine has to live as much as the Vine itself. It is for fruit, much fruit, that the Father has made us one with Jesus.

Got fruit?

The Bush Plan

Bob Casey, Democratic candidate for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania, was asked recently what he would do differently than Rick Santorum to promote success in Iraq. He replied that the first thing would be to get rid of Don Rumsfeld. Firing a cabinet secretary, of course, is not within the power of a senator so it's not something that distinguishes Mr. Casey from Mr. Santorum. Even so, it appears that Mr. Casey has no recommendations for Iraq that differ substantially from what the Bush administration is already doing there, unless he believes we should withdraw from Iraq immediately. This, however, he does not say, so his plan appears to be essentially to do what Bush is already doing, except do it better, whatever that means.

What is the Bush policy for Iraq? Do the Bush people really have a strategy? I think they do, but for whatever reason they're not very interested in articulating it. Their plan, as best as I can tell, involves the following four elements:

1. Hold the lid on in Baghdad for the time being. Most of the violence that is occurring in Iraq is occurring in and around Baghdad. There are two reasons for this. The coalition has been effective in suppressing the insurgency in much of the rest of the country, and second, the insurgency knows that if they're going to break the will of the American people they have to strike where the American media are.

2. Gradually secure the border (would that that were part of their domestic plan as well). As long as the insurgents are able to be resupplied across the Iranian and Syrian borders destabilization efforts by those neighbors will continue. The infiltration of men and material has to be stopped, but this takes time. Once the border is secured the insurgency in Baghdad will begin to suffocate.

3. Continue to build and protect the infrastructure of the country so that the people have a sense of being better off than they were under Saddam. This means, in addition to building schools, hospitals, electrical grids, etc., supporting the government of Iraq until it is strong enough to withstand the sundry threats to its existence.

4. In the long-term Syria and Iran must be dealt with. Until they are they will continue to make the lives of the Iraqis as hellish as they possibly can.

That's what I surmise the Bush plan to be, and I think that's what they're doing. Indeed, what else could they do short of nuking the entire country? Certainly none of the Democrats have offered an alternative course of action that makes any sense. I just wish the administration had a better PR program to explain their goals to the American people, and I wish they had more troops there to help expedite #1 and #2.

If the Democrats win the House and/or Senate on Tuesday it will, of course, be very much more difficult, if not impossible, to achieve these objectives, and, if they're rendered unattainable, the only recourse will be to withdraw. Withdrawal, however, would precipitate an unmitigated human disaster. The reasons why this would be so are explained here.

Israel Will Go To War Again. Soon.

John Keegan predicts in The Telegraph U.K. that before the year is out Israel will again be at war with Hezbollah, and this time it will be for keeps.

There will soon be another war in the Middle East, this time a renewal of the conflict between the Israel Defence Force (IDF) and Hizbollah. The conflict is inevitable and unavoidable. It will come about because Israel cannot tolerate the rebuilding of Hizbollah's fortified zone in south Lebanon, from which last year it launched its missile bombardment of northern Israel.

Hizbollah has now reconstructed the fortified zone and is replenishing its stocks of missiles there. Hamas is also creating a fortified zone in the Gaza Strip and building up its stocks of missiles. Israel, therefore, faces missile attack on two fronts. When the Israel general staff decides the threat has become intolerable, it will strike.

What happened in south Lebanon earlier this year has been widely misunderstood, largely because the anti-Israel bias in the international media led to the situation being misreported as an Israeli defeat.

It was no such thing. It was certainly an Israeli setback, but the idea that the IDF had suddenly lost its historic superiority over its Arab enemies and that they had acquired military qualities that had hitherto eluded them was quite false. Hizbollah suffered heavy losses in the fighting, perhaps as many as 1,000 killed out of its strength of up to 5,000 and it is only just now recovering.

Read why Keegan thinks a return to fighting is inevitable and imminent at the link.

It Must Stop Now

Everyone has by now heard of the allegations against Ted Haggard, pastor of New Life Church and president of the National Association of Evangelicals. It appears that the charges are true although the person who made them has nevertheless failed a polygraph test.

Whatever the case, if they are found to be factually correct then Mr. Haggard has done immeasurable harm to his family, his church, and to Christians everywhere. By maintaining a secret lifestyle steeped in sleaze, perversion, and illegal behavior he has brought discredit to everyone who calls him or herself a Christian and has done irreparable harm to the cause of keeping marriage a union of one man and one woman.

Much will be written about Mr. Haggard's hypocrisy in the days ahead but at this point the most important thing to be said, in my view, is that Christian leaders need to understand that if they are living lives that are a reproach to the principles they claim to cherish they must step down from their position of authority immediately. This goes for pastors and priests, parachurch ministry leaders, anyone, in fact, whose life is disgracing the name and body of Christ.

None of us is perfect. All of us have faults, but when our faults are such as to bring derision upon the Church we claim to love and serve, when our appetites are so undisciplined that we give the gospel of Christ a kick to the solar plexus, or worse, when we are found out, we have a moral obligation to step down from our pedestals until we get ourselves straightened out whether our derelictions have been discovered or not.

The image of the Church has suffered severely from the adulteries of the Jimmy Swaggarts and Jim Bakkers, and the pederastic abuses of dozens of priests over the last couple of decades. It has to stop, there has to be zero tolerance of such behavior among our putative leaders, and those who compromise the witness of the Church by living lives of debauchery while maintaining a facade of piety need to recognize the serious harm they are doing and need to withdraw themselves as models of Christian man and womanhood. Now.

Rick Santorum, Redux

We ran the following post at the end of last month, but, with the election coming up on Tuesday, I thought it important to have it on the current page. This is an important article, and I encourage readers who agree with that assessment to link it to their friends and family.

The New York Times has a column by David Brooks that a friend passed along and which one wishes every Pennsylvanian, indeed every American, would read. The complete essay follows:

Every poll suggests that Rick Santorum will lose his race to return to the U.S. Senate. That's probably good news in Pennsylvania's bobo suburbs, where folks regard Santorum as an ideological misfit and a social blight. But it's certainly bad for poor people around the world.

For there has been at least one constant in Washington over the past 12 years: almost every time a serious piece of antipoverty legislation surfaces in Congress, Rick Santorum is there playing a leadership role.

In the mid-1990s, he was a floor manager for welfare reform, the most successful piece of domestic legislation of the past 10 years. He then helped found the Renewal Alliance to help charitable groups with funding and parents with flextime legislation.

More recently, he has pushed through a stream of legislation to help the underprivileged, often with Democratic partners. With Dick Durbin and Joe Biden, Santorum has sponsored a series of laws to fight global AIDS and offer third world debt relief. With Chuck Schumer and Harold Ford, he's pushed to offer savings accounts to children from low-income families. With John Kerry, he's proposed homeownership tax credits. With Chris Dodd, he backed legislation authorizing $860 million for autism research. With Joe Lieberman he pushed legislation to reward savings by low-income families.

In addition, he's issued a torrent of proposals, many of which have become law: efforts to fight tuberculosis; to provide assistance to orphans and vulnerable children in developing countries; to provide housing for people with AIDS; to increase funding for Social Services Block Grants and organizations like Healthy Start and the Children's Aid Society; to finance community health centers; to combat genocide in Sudan.

I could fill this column, if not this entire page, with a list of ideas, proposals and laws Santorum has poured out over the past dozen years. It's hard to think of another politician who has been so active and so productive on these issues.

Like many people who admire his output, I disagree with Santorum on key matters like immigration, abortion, gay marriage. I'm often put off by his unnecessarily slashing style and his culture war rhetoric.

But government is ultimately not about the theater or the light shows of public controversy, it's about legislation and results. And the substance of Santorum's work is impressive. Bono, who has worked closely with him over the years, got it right: "I would suggest that Rick Santorum has a kind of Tourette's disease; he will always say the most unpopular thing. But on our issues, he has been a defender of the most vulnerable."

Santorum doesn't have the jocular manner of most politicians. His colleagues' eyes can glaze over as he lectures them on the need to, say, devote a week of Senate floor time to poverty. He's not the most social member of the club. Many politicians praise family values and seem to spend as little time as possible with their own families, but Santorum is at home almost constantly. And there is sometimes a humorlessness to his missionary zeal.

But no one can doubt his rigor. Jonathan Rauch of The National Journal wrote the smartest review of Santorum's book, "It Takes a Family." Rauch noted that while Goldwaterite conservatives see the individual as the essential unit of society, Santorum sees the family as the essential unit.

Rauch observed, "Where Goldwater denounced collectivism as the enemy of the individual, Santorum denounces individualism as the enemy of the family." That belief has led Santorum in interesting and sometimes problematical directions, but the argument itself is a serious one. His discussion of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, for example, is as sophisticated as anything in Barack Obama's recent book. If Santorum were pro-choice, he'd be a media star and a campus hero.

The bottom line is this: If serious antipoverty work is going to be done, it's going to emerge from a coalition of liberals and religious conservatives. Without Santorum, that's less likely to happen. If senators are going to be honestly appraised, it's going to require commentators who can look beyond the theater of public controversy and at least pretend to care about actual legislation. Santorum has never gotten a fair shake from the media.

And so after Election Day, the underprivileged will probably have lost one of their least cuddly but most effective champions.

Santorum is a wonderful example of "compassionate conservatism". He embodies so much of what voters claim they want their politicians to be, but he's about to fall victim to an adversary media and an uninformed public. The media doesn't seem to care about qualifications or accomplishments. They care about only three things: Party label, the candidate's stance on abortion, and his stance on the war.

Thus Santorum has three strikes against him and, short of a surge in Republican turnout, he will be replaced next week by a man, Bob Casey, whose only qualifications for the office seem to be that he has the right party affiliation, the right stance on getting out of Iraq, and his daddy was a popular governor. Santorum will lose the election, if he does, largely because the public simply hasn't taken the trouble to compare him with his opponent.

It's the sort of thing that sours people on American politics.

Mr. Compassionate Conservatism

OpinionJournal has a nice feature piece on former Bush speechwriter David Gerson who talks about his vision of compassionate conservatism, national polarization, foreign policy and other matters. It's an interesting article.

Here he is, for instance, on freedom and democracy:

Must there be a "democratic culture" before one can have a democracy? Mr. Gerson says that democracy took hold despite Confucianism in Asia, Catholicism in southern Europe and Orthodoxy in Eastern Europe. "All of these," Mr. Gerson notes, "were regarded as cultural impediments to democratic progress. In fact our ideals, the ideals of freedom, turned out to be more appealing than we thought." Mr. Gerson is confident that the same will prove true in Iraq and Afghanistan. "I have a deep belief that liberty improves human life. . . . People eventually find that to be true, but that doesn't mean they immediately find it to be true."

Mr. Gerson looks back on the last few years of trying to spread freedom as "a time of exhausting international engagement on a variety of fronts." And he doesn't see it ending any time soon. But if the war on terror is really going to occupy our focus for the foreseeable future, why should Republicans run on improving education and ending poverty? Did 9/11 spell the end of compassionate conservatism?

Mr. Gerson believes the answer is no; the administration's foreign policy, he says, represents an expansion of the philosophy of compassionate conservatism. Bringing freedom and democracy to other parts of the globe has required military action, but Mr. Gerson is annoyed by Mr. Bush's critics on the left who say the president only uses force to solve global problems. "The administration's increases in foreign assistance have percentage-wise been the largest since the Marshall Plan," he notes.

Read the rest of the column at the link.

The Boatman Is Closing In

Strategy Page discusses the implications of the recent strike on a terrorist training facility in Pakistan that killed over 80 Taliban.

Bill Roggio at The Fourth Rail also has several posts up on the strike (Go here and scroll down for other posts).

It appears that the sand is just about through the hour glass for al Qaeda's #2 guy Ayman al-Zawahiri. He's been spotted twice now and barely escaped both times. The intelligence on him must be pretty good, and like Abu al-Zarqawi, who managed to elude capture or death several times before being sent to his 72 virgins by a laser guided munition last summer, al-Zawahiri must realize that the boatman waiting to ferry his blood-drenched soul across the river Styx is breathing heavily down his neck.

Winning Through Racial Bigotry

News comes that black Democratic senator Barack Obama was derided this week by a conservative journal as a "lawn jockey". This is the sort of racist bilge we've come to expect of conservatives, I suppose. They can't defeat black candidates by engaging their ideas so they resort to racial epithets to disparage and dehumanize them.

What? You say you hadn't heard anything about this? You say that if it were true it'd be all over the media and all the anti-racist talking heads would be pontificating about how this kind of reprehensible talk has no place in our shared culture?

Well, maybe the media silence about the story has something to do with the fact that I apparently got the details confused. It wasn't a conservative journal that employed the insult, it was the very liberal Esquire magazine, and it wasn't the Democrat Barack Obama who was the object of the aspersion it was Republican senatorial candidate Michael Steele of Maryland. Steele is the black Lieutenant governor of Maryland who has suffered racist contumely from Democrats throughout his campaign for the Senate.

It's not just Steele, of course, who gets subjected to racial affronts by the "liberal" Left. Any black conservative can point to numerous instances of humiliations suffered at the hands of those who tout themselves as champions of racial comity and harmony. Clarence Thomas, Condaleeza Rice, Ken Blackwell, Alan Keyes, J.C. Watts, LaShawn Barber, Shelby Steele, Ward Connerly, Stephen Carter, and many others have all had to bear the slings and arrows of outrageous bigotry from the "anti-racist" Left.

It's past time that the media called them on their hypocrisy and their bigotry. See Michelle for more on the story.

Teaching Values at U of Pennsylvania

A lot of people wonder about the sense and sanity of our elite university administrators. They just don't seem to be living in the real world, some say. They're much too Politically Correct others aver. We think this is all a bunch of overwrought hooey, actually. We believe our university administrators are the best and brightest among us, dedicated to teaching our young to value those things which conduce to strong character like, say, peace and the intrinsic worth of human life.

Take Amy Gutmann, for example. She's the president of the University of Pennsylvania and demands high standards of deportment at Penn. She's the fairy queen on the right in the photo below. The picture was taken at a campus Halloween event, and she's shown in the company of an Islamic student dressed as a, uh, homicide bomber. Not that Ms Gutmann condones such things, you understand. You can tell by the stern expression on her face that she feels the Halloween jihadi is exhibiting very bad taste and insensitivity. You can tell by her angry look that she has no tolerance for those who appear to be glorifying murder. You can tell that she's outraged to be photographed with someone posing as a killer of women, children and American soldiers.

At least you can tell these things if you have a very good imagination. Otherwise, you might mistakenly think she's rather enjoying the company of this moral nitwit.

See Michelle for details.

Endorsing the Democrats

It's hard to believe that this article is not a spoof, but if it's indeed genuine, and it evidently is, it at the very least constitutes an endorsement the Democrats would undoubtedly rather not have. The article is the product of a number of interviews with various Palestinian terrorist leaders by Aaron Klein of World Net Daily. In the interviews these jihadists urge Americans to vote for Democrats next week. They as much as say that a victory for the Democrats will be a victory for jihad:

Everybody has an opinion about next Tuesday's midterm congressional election in the U.S. - including senior terrorist leaders interviewed by WND who say they hope Americans sweep the Democrats into power because of the party's position on withdrawing from Iraq, a move, as they see it, that ensures victory for the worldwide Islamic resistance.

The terrorists told WorldNetDaily an electoral win for the Democrats would prove to them Americans are "tired."

They rejected statements from some prominent Democrats in the U.S. that a withdrawal from Iraq would end the insurgency, explaining an evacuation would prove resistance works and would compel jihadists to continue fighting until America is destroyed.

They said a withdrawal would also embolden their own terror groups to enhance "resistance" against Israel.

"Of course Americans should vote Democrat," Jihad Jaara, a senior member of the Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigades terror group and the infamous leader of the 2002 siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity, told WND.

"This is why American Muslims will support the Democrats, because there is an atmosphere in America that encourages those who want to withdraw from Iraq. It is time that the American people support those who want to take them out of this Iraqi mud," said Jaara, speaking to WND from exile in Ireland, where he was sent as part of an internationally brokered deal that ended the church siege.

It gets better (or worse, depending upon your point of view). Read the rest of the article at the link.

Here's what the Islamic terrorists' reaction was to Nancy Pelosi's suggestion that we can end the insurgency in Iraq by pulling out:

WND read Pelosi's remarks to the terror leaders, who unanimously rejected her contention an American withdrawal would end the insurgency.

Islamic Jihad's Saadi, laughing, stated, "There is no chance that the resistance will stop."

He said an American withdrawal from Iraq would "prove the resistance is the most important tool and that this tool works. The victory of the Iraqi revolution will mark an important step in the history of the region and in the attitude regarding the United States."

Jihad Jaara said an American withdrawal would "mark the beginning of the collapse of this tyrant empire (America)."

"Therefore, a victory in Iraq would be a greater defeat for America than in Vietnam."

Jaara said vacating Iraq would also "reinforce Palestinian resistance organizations, especially from the moral point of view. But we also learn from these (insurgency) movements militarily. We look and learn from them."

Hamas' Abu Abdullah argued a withdrawal from Iraq would "convince those among the Palestinians who still have doubts in the efficiency of the resistance."

"The victory of the resistance in Iraq would prove once more that when the will and the faith are applied victory is not only a slogan. We saw that in Lebanon (during Israel's confrontation against Hezbollah there in July and August); we saw it in Gaza (after Israel withdrew from the territory last summer) and we will see it everywhere there is occupation," Abdullah said.

It is disturbing to think that if the Democrats win 15 House seats next Tuesday Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker of the House and third in line for the Presidency.

I wonder if the Republican ad companies are not right now turning this news report into television ads to run this weekend. If they're not they sure should be.

Hazleton's Attempt to Save Itself

How many American towns will follow the example of Hazleton, PA in passing laws which make it difficult for illegal aliens to live there? I suspect that if the courts uphold the Hazleton regulations a lot of other towns across the nation will follow suit. This is unfortunate for legal immigrants whose livelihoods depend upon a growing ethnic community, but if these towns are going to save themselves from ruin, both financial and cultural, measures like those taken in Hazleton really are necessary.

Some may disagree with this assessment, of course, but I urge anyone who does disagree to read not only the above-linked article but, more importantly, to also read Pat Buchanan's excellent book State of Emergency.

Five Crucial Differences

On Tuesday voters across the country will pull levers and poke computer screens to determine what sort of future we wish for our children. There's much at stake, and sometimes the clashing ads and unctuous voices make it difficult to know who the best person is to send to Washington to represent our views and concerns. One thing that's helpful in clearing up the confusion is that despite many loud laments to the contrary, the differences between the parties is perhaps more stark today than it has ever been. There are important matters at issue whose outcome will be very different depending upon whether it is Democrats or Republicans which control the congress.

The following is an outline of how I see the differences between the two parties on five of the most important of those issues:

War on Terror: The Democrats wish to abolish or weaken the Patriot act and the various terrorist surveillance programs initiated by the Bush administration. They want to treat terrorism as a police, rather than as a military, matter. They want to give terrorist detainees the same rights American citizens get in a court of law, including the provision of a lawyer, at taxpayer expense, to each suspected enemy combatant.

Republicans tend to believe that we must do everything legal to make it impossible for terrorists to strike us again here at home, and that terrorists should not have the same legal rights as foreign soldiers, much less American citizens.

War in Iraq: To the extent that the Democrats have a coherent policy on Iraq it is to get out immediately, if not sooner. Republicans see an early pullout as opening the sluice gates to disaster.

Taxes: Democrats are eager to raise taxes by rescinding the Bush tax cuts of the last few years. Republicans believe that people should be allowed to keep as much of what they earn as possible. They believe that the more money we have the more we'll spend, the more we spend the more jobs that will be created and the more total tax revenue that will ultimately flow back to the government. The Bush tax cuts are seen by Republicans as the reason why unemployment is currently down to near record lows and the stock market is up to record highs.

Illegal Immigration: The differences on this issue aren't quite as clear, but generally Democrats tend to favor open borders with Mexico and amnesty for illegals. Republicans tend to favor stopping the flow of illegals by increasing border patrols, technology and by building a fence. Even so, there are some Republicans who also favor open borders and some Democrats who oppose them. Both of these are minorities in their parties, however.

Life Issues/Supreme Court: Democrats almost universally favor abortion rights and will block the nomination of federal judges and Supreme Court justices they deem likely to be unsympathetic to the pro-choice cause. They tend to take a very flexible view of the constitution, interpreting it to mean whatever they think it should mean. Republicans believe that judges and justices should rule according to what the constitution actually says, and they don't think the constitution contains anywhere in it a right to abortion or a right to gay marriage.

Ten Reasons For Keeping Them in Office

NewsMax offers ten reasons for keeping the Republicans in Washington:

Reason #1. The economy is kicking butt. It is robust, vibrant, strong and growing. In the 36 months since the Bush tax cuts ended the recession that began under President Clinton, the economy has experienced astonishing growth. Over the first half of this year, our economy grew at a strong 4.1 percent annual rate, faster than any other major industrialized nation. This strong economic activity has generated historic revenue growth that has shrunk the deficit. A continued commitment to spending restraint has also contributed to deficit reduction.

Reason #2. Unemployment is almost nil for a major economy, and is verging on full employment. Recently, jobless claims fell to the lowest level in 10 weeks. Employment increased in 48 states over the past 12 months ending in August. Our economy has now added jobs for 37 straight months.

Reason #3. The Dow is hitting record highs. In the past few days, the Dow climbed above 12,000 for the first time in the history of the stock market, thus increasing the value of countless pension and 401(k) that funds many Americans rely on for their retirement years.

Reason #4. Wages have risen dramatically. According to the Washington Post, demand for labor helped drive workers' average hourly wages, not including those of most managers, up to $16.84 last month -- a 4 percent increase from September 2005, the fastest wage growth in more than five years. Nominal wage growth has been 4.1 percent so far this year. This is better or comparable to its 1990s peaks. Over the first half of 2006, employee compensation per hour grew at a 6.3 percent annual rate adjusted for inflation. Real after-tax income has risen a whopping 15 percent since January 2001. Real after-tax income per person has risen by 9 percent since January 2001.

Reason #5. Gas prices have plunged. According to the Associated Press, the price of gasoline has fallen to its lowest level in more than 10 months. The federal Energy Information Administration said Monday that U.S. motorists paid $2.21 a gallon on average for regular grade last week, a decrease of 1.8 cents from the previous week. Pump prices are now 40 cents lower than a year ago and have plummeted by more than 80 cents a gallon since the start of August. The previous 2006 low for gasoline was set in the first week of January, when pump prices averaged $2.238. In the week ending Dec. 5, 2005, prices averaged $2.19. Today, gasoline can be found for less than $2 a gallon in many parts of the country.

Reason #6. Since 9/11, no terrorist attacks have occurred on U.S. soil. Since 9/11 the U.S. has not been attacked by terrorists thanks to such programs as the administration's monitoring of communications between al-Qaida operatives overseas and their agents in the U.S. and the monitoring of the international movement of terrorist funds -- both measure bitterly opposed by Democrats.

Reason #7. Productivity is surging and has grown by a strong 2.5 percent over the past four quarters, well ahead of the average productivity growth in the last 30 years. Strong productivity growth helps lead to the growth of the Gross Domestic Product, higher real wages, and stronger corporate profits.

Reason #8. The Prescription Drug Program is working. Despite dire predictions that most seniors would refrain from signing up to the new Medicare prescription benefits program, fully 75 percent of all those on Medicare have enrolled, and the overwhelming majority say they are happy with the program.

Reason #9. Bush has kept his promise of naming conservative judges. He has named two conservative justices to the Supreme Court, Chief Justice John G. Roberts and Justice Samuel Alito. In addition, he has named conservative justices who are devoted to the Constitution as it is written and not as activist liberal judges think it means. The strong likelihood that one or more justices will retire from the Supreme Court makes it mandatory for the Republicans to hold the Senate and have a chance to name new conservative justices.

Reason #10. The deficit has been cut in half three years ahead of the president's 2009 goal, with the 2006 fiscal year budget deficit down to $248 billion. The tax cuts have stimulated the economy and are working.

In contrast to this stunning record of real achievement, the Democrats seem reluctant to offer any clear plan for how they would improve the state of the nation or make us safer. Their campaign strategy has essentially been one of rope-a-dope -- bobbing and weaving on the issues with every now and then a wild roundhouse swing at Republicans based on Mark Foley's salacious e-mails to House pages.

For some unfathomable reason, however, the polls show that a lot of Americans appear to have bought the Dems' speak-no-ideas strategy and are intending to vote for Democratic candidates on November 7th.

Why?

Five Reasons For Optimism

Time reporter Mike Allen lists five reasons why Republican leaders are optimistic about Tuesday even though the polls tell them they shouldn't be:

1) No Republican is being taken by surprise, unlike many Democrats in 1994. Shortly after Bush's reelection, White House and Republican National Committee officials began working to convince House members that the formidable reelection record for incumbents (since 1996, 97.5 percent) was not something they could take for granted. "What we attempted to do last year," said one of these officials, "was to go out of our way to say to people: 'You face a potential of a race. In order to win as an incumbent, you better have a plan,' " including an intensive focus on voter registration, a message plan that would unfold in phases, and a ground organization that was operating in a measurable, quantifiable way. One official involved in the process said Republican officials deliberately "scared" lawmakers, telling them: "You face a very tough road. You better be ready."

2) Absentee ballot requests and returns, closely tracked by the party, are meeting or exceeding past levels for Republicans in key states and districts. Republican officials say White House Deputy Chief of Staff Karl Rove and party operatives are scrutinizing this data with the same intensity that they followed metrics like voter registration earlier in the cycle. For at least 68 races, they have been getting reports once a week on the number of voters registered, phone calls completed and doors knocked on. Now, they're getting a second report on the number of absentee ballots requested, absentee ballots returned and early votes cast. "We can look at that data flow and make an assumption about what's going on and plotting it out," a Republican official said.

3) When the national parties, national campaign committees, state "victory" committee accounts and competitive campaigns are added up, Republicans maintained a substantial financial advantage over Democrats at the last filing period. "We didn't look on it as one pot," said one official involved in the process. "We looked upon it as four pots, with synergy available through all four."

4) Republicans say the district-by-district playing field favors them in several structural ways not reflected in national polls. Here is their thinking, starting with statistics from the President's 2004 race against John F. Kerry: "There are 41 districts held by a Democrat that Bush carried, and 14 seats held by Republican that Kerry carried, so we're fighting on better turf. You see it in the open seats, where Bush carried 18 of the Republican open seats and Kerry carried two. So we're fighting on better turf."

5) The get-out-the-vote machine designed by Rove and now-Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman in 2001 was dubbed the "72-hour" program, but officials say that's quite a misnomer and that it's really a 17-week or even two-year program. "In Ohio, we are making more phone calls this year than we made two years ago," said an official involved in the process. "Now, that's not the case necessarily in Virginia, which was not a battleground state. You have to build that. In other places, we built that and built it early."

Polls can give a skewed picture, to be sure, because they really can't measure how many voters will turn out to vote. If one party leads another in the polls but winds up on election day trailing in voter turnout, the poll figure affords little consolation. The Republican hope is that people who will pull the lever for Republicans will turn out in massive numbers on November 7th. If they do, then all those discouraging poll results showing a Democratic sweep of Congress will not have meant a thing.

Stuck in Iraq

Senator Kerry's infelicitous remark on Monday implying that American troops are the intellectual dregs of our society who wind up "stuck in Iraq" elicited this reply from some of the guys to whom he referred:

Rick Santorum

The New York Times has a column by David Brooks that a friend passed along and which one wishes every Pennsylvanian, indeed every American, would read. The complete essay follows:

Every poll suggests that Rick Santorum will lose his race to return to the U.S. Senate. That's probably good news in Pennsylvania's bobo suburbs, where folks regard Santorum as an ideological misfit and a social blight. But it's certainly bad for poor people around the world.

For there has been at least one constant in Washington over the past 12 years: almost every time a serious piece of antipoverty legislation surfaces in Congress, Rick Santorum is there playing a leadership role.

In the mid-1990s, he was a floor manager for welfare reform, the most successful piece of domestic legislation of the past 10 years. He then helped found the Renewal Alliance to help charitable groups with funding and parents with flextime legislation.

More recently, he has pushed through a stream of legislation to help the underprivileged, often with Democratic partners. With Dick Durbin and Joe Biden, Santorum has sponsored a series of laws to fight global AIDS and offer third world debt relief. With Chuck Schumer and Harold Ford, he's pushed to offer savings accounts to children from low-income families. With John Kerry, he's proposed homeownership tax credits. With Chris Dodd, he backed legislation authorizing $860 million for autism research. With Joe Lieberman he pushed legislation to reward savings by low-income families.

In addition, he's issued a torrent of proposals, many of which have become law: efforts to fight tuberculosis; to provide assistance to orphans and vulnerable children in developing countries; to provide housing for people with AIDS; to increase funding for Social Services Block Grants and organizations like Healthy Start and the Children's Aid Society; to finance community health centers; to combat genocide in Sudan.

I could fill this column, if not this entire page, with a list of ideas, proposals and laws Santorum has poured out over the past dozen years. It's hard to think of another politician who has been so active and so productive on these issues.

Like many people who admire his output, I disagree with Santorum on key matters like immigration, abortion, gay marriage. I'm often put off by his unnecessarily slashing style and his culture war rhetoric.

But government is ultimately not about the theater or the light shows of public controversy, it's about legislation and results. And the substance of Santorum's work is impressive. Bono, who has worked closely with him over the years, got it right: "I would suggest that Rick Santorum has a kind of Tourette's disease; he will always say the most unpopular thing. But on our issues, he has been a defender of the most vulnerable."

Santorum doesn't have the jocular manner of most politicians. His colleagues' eyes can glaze over as he lectures them on the need to, say, devote a week of Senate floor time to poverty. He's not the most social member of the club. Many politicians praise family values and seem to spend as little time as possible with their own families, but Santorum is at home almost constantly. And there is sometimes a humorlessness to his missionary zeal.

But no one can doubt his rigor. Jonathan Rauch of The National Journal wrote the smartest review of Santorum's book, "It Takes a Family." Rauch noted that while Goldwaterite conservatives see the individual as the essential unit of society, Santorum sees the family as the essential unit.

Rauch observed, "Where Goldwater denounced collectivism as the enemy of the individual, Santorum denounces individualism as the enemy of the family." That belief has led Santorum in interesting and sometimes problematical directions, but the argument itself is a serious one. His discussion of the philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, for example, is as sophisticated as anything in Barack Obama's recent book. If Santorum were pro-choice, he'd be a media star and a campus hero.

The bottom line is this: If serious antipoverty work is going to be done, it's going to emerge from a coalition of liberals and religious conservatives. Without Santorum, that's less likely to happen. If senators are going to be honestly appraised, it's going to require commentators who can look beyond the theater of public controversy and at least pretend to care about actual legislation. Santorum has never gotten a fair shake from the media.

And so after Election Day, the underprivileged will probably have lost one of their least cuddly but most effective champions.

Santorum is a wonderful example of "compassionate conservatism". He embodies so much of what voters claim they want their politicians to be, but he's about to fall victim to an adversary media and an uninformed public. The media doesn't care about qualifications or accomplishments but cares only about three things: Party label, the candidate's stance on abortion, and his stance on the war.

Thus Santorum has three strikes against him and, short of a surge in Republican turnout, he will be replaced next week by a man, Bob Casey, whose only qualifications for the office seem to be that he has the right party affiliation, the right stance on getting out of Iraq, and his daddy was a popular governor. Santorum will lose the election, if he does, largely because the public simply hasn't taken the trouble to compare him with his opponent. It's the sort of thing that sours people on American politics.

The Milk of Human Kindness

Mike Adams reports on an abortive confrontation with uber-Darwinian P.Z. Myers at TownHall.com. Myers is widely known for his kind, gentle and irenic demeanor evidenced by this excerpt from his blog the day before Adams' lecture at Myers' university:

"Mike S. Adams, columnist for TownHall, Horowitzian shill, anti-feminist, creationist clown, homophobic bigot, warrior for free speech, professional racist, gun kook, academic-by-accident, beauty contest judge, and just generally contemptible far, far right-wing nutcase."

"I'm very disappointed in our students. We're far off the beaten track and we don't get that many speakers passing through our area, and they had to go exhibit the poor taste to invite this sorry sack of rethuglican excreta to our campus. Couldn't they have at least tried to find an intelligent conservative to bring out here? Why'd they have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for this guy? At least we're seeing our rather dismal right-wing campus rag's fading credibility implode with their sponsorship of such a low-wattage guest speaker."

Well, okay, maybe he's not exactly kind, but such qualities are relative among the victims of arrested development who travel in Prof. Myers' political circles. I mean it could have been worse. He could have called him a "Bush-lover".

Read how the confrontation between the two antagonists ended up at the link. Thanks to Uncommon Descent for the tip.

Feedback

A number of thoughtful responses to recent posts grace our Feedback page. Check them out.

Do They Want Us to Win?

Byron takes us to task on the Feedback page for oversimplifying a complex issue in Yes or No. In that post I wondered why people like Letterman seem unwilling to give a straight answer to the question of whether they want the U.S. to win in Iraq. Winning in Iraq means, of course, accomplishing our stated goals (What else could it mean?), and these from the beginning have been to establish a free nation based on democratic principles, human and civil rights, and a stable government free from the threat of terrorism.

I don't think the question is nearly as complicated as Byron does, but you can be the judge.