At Home On Piety Hill

March 4, 2008, at The University of California, Berkeley

Tiimothy Keller begins by stating the concern that belief  in religion and Christianity, in particular, is  ”too divisive in a free democratic society…” That people with strong religious convictions, “feel impelled… to impose those beliefs and… to really oppress and marginalize people.” He concedes, “I do think that religion is part of the problem with the world,” but goes on to state that robust, crunchy religion is on the ascendancy, so we must find a way to deal with exclusive truth claims. Get a drink and snack, settle in and give him a listen.

How much more, then, will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself unblemished to God, cleanse our consciences from acts that lead to death, so that we may serve the living God! Hebrews 9:14

I was preparing to preach through this passage last Sunday and I stumbled upon this unexpected gem. I found it in the the original edition of The Interpreter’s Bible commentary on page 692. This is a fairly liberal reference and the scholarship, though cutting edge in the mid 20th century, is now dated. This exposition by Quaker New Testament scholar Alexander C. Purdy is refreshingly orthodox and disturbingly insightful:

This verse marks the turning point in man’s salvation. As long as he loses himself in the crowd, submerges himself in the forces that play upon him, blames his failures on his circumstances, finds his purification in external rites that do not touch the self, he is not a person. He has not encountered God. But when he meets God and sees himself, his inmost self, as the source of his misery, he begins to become responsible: i.e., he begins to be a human person. He now knows that no sacrifice will suffice unless it purifies his conscience.

But with this new knowledge comes a new despair. He cannot save himself. However heroic his moral effort, he cannot remove his own self-contradiction, i.e., his alienation from God. However long he may live, however he may multiply good works and penance to “make up for” the evil deeds that he has done, he cannot succeed. For it is not merely his deeds that were wrong, but himself. Not merely his trespasses need forgiving: he himself needs cleansing.

Nor can any easy forgiveness satisfy his conscience. The forgiveness must cost a heavy price, must leave him dwelling in the land of moral reality to which he has just become awake. This despair is the human last, beyond which the divine first begins. Completely humbled, he is finally prepared to receive the divine forgiveness. Only in the eternal self-giving of God can his conscience be purified from dead works. Only in God’s own sacrifice can the believer be restored to his rightful place as a child of God, to find his life, his destiny, his joy in serving the living God.

I think this Washington Post story puts its finger on the problem of declining network viewership, plummeting newspaper circulation and ad revenue.

Lured by an offer of interviews with the Democratic presidential candidate, Brian Williams, Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric will make the overseas trek, meaning that the NBC, ABC and CBS evening newscasts will originate from stops along the route and undoubtedly give it big play.

John McCain has taken three foreign trips in the past four months, all unaccompanied by a single network anchor.

The US has devolved from a representative democratic republic to a two party system with a press that has a cult-like fascination with only one party and philosophy. From the many to the one. Yes, we get one perspective. That’s all. That’s it. One right way to think. One portrayal of how normal people ought to view current events, culture and public policy. 

It’s not as if I don’t understand their strategy. It’s all about being relevant and close to the power people. It’s not about profit and objectivity is definitely out of fashion. When you’re aiming your product to the lowest common denominator and the other guy is indistinguishable from the hip candidate, except for age and ethnicity, follow the buzz and go with the winner! 

One word from a serious news consumer — boring! 

Well, I’ve been busy lately but I should have some time to get some posts out there. Let’s start out with this complaint. We haven’t had a good speaker in the Whitehouse since Bill Clinton left office and, unlike the masses, I didn’t find him that compelling. But, he had an easy style, made me feel comfortable and did a good job of articulating his plans or policies, even when he was lying.

George Bush sounds like a high school public speaking student, which is strange because he’s really a good speaker in small, informal situations. I liked him a lot more in press conferences than in his formal speeches. 

John McCain can say less with far more words than anyone I know of. He is interminably boring. When you add his peevish, smart-aleky inflections we have the recipe for a demogogic train wreck. Please, no…

Then, we have Barak Obama, the star of the 2004 Democrat Convention. Well, he certainly can give a good stump speech or address. But, catch him without a manuscript or teleprompter and Barak is absolutely dreadful… worse that any of the aforementioned. If, um, he’s elected, ummmm… uh, I , uh, think I will, ummm, uh… well, uh, I’ll just have to…. have to, well, I think I will, um, just have to, avoid… um, avoid any of his, okay, well I’ll have to, um, not watch his press, uh, those press conferences he…. um, he will be giving from the, uh, well, from the rose garden. 

I was pondering this question the other day, after hearing that old chestnut about how the religious right is working tirelessly to impose their will on the rest of us (as if the religious left, scientific atheists, secularists, materialists, pagans and agnostics stand passively on the sidelines, while the great cultural and ethical debates rage).

So, what could we expect to see if Christians imposed their morality on others? Well, duh, it’s not like it’s a big mystery or something. We are standing on the shoulders of hundreds of years of western, Christian, democratic history. You don’t have to speculate. You also don’t have to wonder how the imposition of Christian morality would stack up against the imposition of socialism, atheism, Islam, Buddhism, Hinduism, paganism or progressivism on society, since there are plenty of those states or governments around to examine, many of which have been funcitioning for a good long time!

Under a dominant western Christian culture, I would expect to see liberals and progressives, scientific atheists and agnostics, as well as a good number of pagans and adherants to other streams of spirituality, along with Christians, at the highest places in government, educational institutions and social welfare agencies. At the same time, robust women’s, gay and minority movements would be thriving, imposing their values on the majority through the media, the arts, government policy and the academy. That’s because, historically and contemporarily, Christianity has proven to be very tolerant of others in promoting justice and fairness. Of course, I’m sure some would be quick to point to the relative few examples of Christian intolerance or bigotry down through time, but that would be… well, that would just be silly. The fact is, the levels of diverstity and tolerance enjoyed throughout Europe, the Americas, Australia, New Zealand and others who have adopted western democratic and free market ideals is light years beyond Russia, China, the Middle East and repressive nations in the Pacific Rim.

So, back to the “what if” scenario: In western nations built on Christian notions of fairness and tolerence, Christians would be alternately vilified or lampooned in the dominant media and pop culture, yet slavery would be abolished, while it flourishes in Muslim societies and Africa. Every sort of sexual practice and gender confusion would be allowed or even celebrated, while homosexuality is once more being considered a capital crime in socialist Russia, as it was until 1996. Gays, pornographers and others would be brutally treated in atheist China and majority Buddhist nations. And, what about censorship of the internet and the press? The scientific atheist utopias are the biggest offenders. When it comes to the environment and fouling one’s own nest, I’d say the atheists, pagans and Buddhists win hands down.

No, the fact is that, when it comes to imposing values, morality and ideology on others, Christians are probably the last people in the world we should be fearing. When you look at the propaganda poster at the top of the post, I think you need to ask yourself why all those pagan, Buddhist, Islamic and atheist utopians are walking away from their lands and out into the rest of the world with clenched fists and AK-47s. It doesn’t appear as if they are ready to engage in a dialogue… they don’t seem to be rooting for their favorite on American Idol… and, I doubt if they are heading to their local community college to sign up for Anthropology 27 Gender, Sex and Culture.

JF has a blog and it’s totally boss! Comments are switched to “on” and the posts so far are fab.

In a previous post, I identified Camille Paglia as my favorite feminist, lesbian, atheist humanities professor. Her latest opinion piece, Hillary vs. Obama: It’s a drawl!, is another splendid analysis of poilitics, pop culture and media. Camille rarely disappoints, so if you’re not a regular reader of her salon.com column, perhaps you should be. Here are some of her gems:

On Hillary Clinton
Hillary didn’t help herself with her over-the-top sermon at the First Baptist Church in Selma, Alabama, two weeks ago. Her aping of a black Southern accent from the pulpit was so inept and patronizing that it should get a Razzie Award for Worst Performance of the Year. At times, it approached the Southern Gothic burlesque of Bette Davis chewing up the scenery in “Hush … Hush, Sweet Charlotte.”

The Fossilized Media
Of course, any Salon readers who still follow the mainstream media out of numbed habit will never have heard Hillary’s most extreme flights of faux gemutlichkeit. All that Sunday, network radio news, for example, betrayed its liberal bias by running clips of only her noblest phrases. Heaven help any Republican who had made so lurid a gaffe! Fortunately, alternative media now exist: On his radio show that night, Matt Drudge ran huge, hilarious swatches of prophesyin’ Hillary camping it up.

Fox Right Wing Bias
But Fox is certainly disingenuous with its absurd “fair and balanced” motto. Oh, come on, give it up! Why can’t Fox honestly admit its conservative agenda, as do major radio hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, and simply argue that it represents a culturally necessary antidote to the omnipresent liberal line?

Thumbs Up On Feinstein
Dianne Feinstein is far more presidential than Hillary Clinton, who alternates between smugness and defensiveness before pulling out that tiresome middle-aged mom card. Feinstein, even when maneuvering strategically, always seems genuinely focused on the idea at hand, while Hillary isn’t really there — she’s just riffling mentally through her team’s cue cards.

A Sober Take On Ann Coulter
Coulter is a smart woman with formidable energy, and whether liberals like it or not, she is a high-profile feminist role model in her appetite for aggressive debate. But Coulter seems to be regressing rather than growing intellectually and sharpening her analytic skills. She evidently leaves no room in her life for study and reflection… Her books may rake in millions but won’t last because they are shoddily constructed. Coulter should be using her syndicated column for her topical opinions but her books for more considered contributions.

Cheney and Bush
The relationship between Cheney and George W. Bush is also perplexing. Despite the nearness in their ages, Cheney acts like Bush’s father (no coincidence since Cheney served in George H.W. Bush’s administration). There’s something creepy about how Cheney, after heading the candidate search, insinuated himself into the vice presidency. He locked onto Bush like a limpet… It’s an unsavory, toxic relationship, a vampiric pseudo-marriage like that of the shadowy, Machiavellian Roger Chillingworth and the impressionable, waffling Arthur Dimmesdale in Hawthorne’s “The Scarlet Letter.”

A Diversion
I had a diverting experience last Saturday… While my family was at the Camden Aquarium for a special appearance by a SpongeBob impersonator, I walked around the once ravaged and still patchy and economically struggling neighborhoods, where Hispanic immigrants have settled. Suddenly, there was a stream of African-American men cutting across the streets and heading toward the Beckett Street Terminal for what was clearly the start of a work shift. I followed from a distance and gawked at the great warehouses of the South Jersey Port Corporation, which were stacked from floor to ceiling with tens of thousands of burlap bags containing a mystery product. As I approached the main security booth, beyond which only authorized workers could enter the dockyard, flatbed trucks with bright yellow cabs were emerging, one after the other, all laden with fat burlap bags. It was a phenomenally precise and synchronized procession, as each truck swept to a warehouse, was offloaded, and then circled back through the gate to the ship. I was full of admiration at this demonstration of the beauty and efficiency of the modern distribution system, which I extolled in the first chapter of “Sexual Personae” as a male-created artifact of civilization. It is one of the many gifts of capitalism that are invisible to academic leftists, who nevertheless expect the light switch to work, their cars to start, and the grocery store to be constantly stocked with fresh milk, orange juice and produce… I asked a guard what they were: “Cocoa beans”… With great delight, I spent the next 15 minutes dodging the trucks and filling my pockets with the best beans (to send with our son to preschool science class).

What About Capitalism?
Capitalism, which spawned modern individualism as well as the emancipated woman who can support herself, is essentially Darwinian. It expands any society’s sum total of wealth and radically raises the standard of living, but it leaves the poor and weak without a safety net. Capitalism needs the ethical counter-voice of leftism to keep it honest. But leftists must be honest in turn about what we owe to capitalism — without which Western women would have no professional jobs to go to but would be stuck doing laundry by hand and stooping over pots on the hearth fire all day long.

Britney Spears Gets A Break
I’ve commented on Britney’s travails and tacky exhibitionism for Us magazine and for the March issue of Allure (”A Case of Exposure”). The final question (from a lively young woman) after my lecture [video link] on religion and the arts at Colorado College last month was about Britney. My circuits began visibly to sputter and fry, like the overloaded mega-computer at the end of “Desk Set,” because as a public speaker I, unlike Ann Coulter, believe in tempering one’s witticisms out of respect for one’s hosts. Despite her current descent into squalor, I still see Britney as animated by a flame of original energy. Great stars make comebacks. Let’s see what Britney’s got!

Once in a while you may happen upon something you wish you’d written, but in my case that happens, oh, about fifty times a day! I found this poem by journalist Steve Turner at PoemHunter.com and was impressed by his perceptive wit. Often, we deny verities and creeds so vehemently that our persistent dissention becomes dogma which, ironically, congeals into a creed of our own — a positive confession of our contrarian attitude, systematizing the tenets of our rebellion against any form of alien correction or restraint that might hinder us in our pursuit of pleasure and self-interest. In the end, we may become the bigoted haters that so excited our righteous passions in the first place.

Steve has done the contemporary humanist the favor of canonizing his negation of traditional values in this memorable confession:

Creed

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin.
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don’t hurt anyone,
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before during
and after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy’s OK
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything’s getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated.
You can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there’s something in horoscopes,
UFO’s and bent spoons;
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha
Mohammed and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher although we think
his good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same,
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of
creation sin heaven hell God and salvation.

We believe that after death comes The Nothing
because when you ask the dead what happens
they say Nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied,
then it’s compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps Hitler, Stalin and Genghis Khan.

We believe in Masters and Johnson.
What’s selected is average.
What’s average is normal.
What’s normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between
warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors
and the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.
It’s only his behaviour that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth
that is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust. History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds.

Steve Turner

Everyone has a film, a book, a piece of art that has a revolutionary effect on the way they look at everything. And, if one is fortunate (I would say “blessed”), that may happen many times along this journey we call life.

I first read Unholy Devotion as a young Christian, involved in ministry to people caught up in cults. The book received rave reviews within the apologetics community, so it was required reading for any aspiring counter-cult evangelist !

I had no idea what I was in for. Rather than focus on cultic strategies to deceive the naive or unwitting Christian into joining the Baha’i Faith or Watchtower Society, Harold Bussell identifies cultish tendencies among mainline and evangelical groups that set up otherwise solid believers to cash in their pearl of great price for a worthless counterfeit faith, presenting itself as the genuine article.

From the back cover:

The lure of the cults is not doctrine, but style. Not reasoned faith, but the promise of a better life. Many evangelical youth are drawn to cults because too often the marks of spirituality they set forth uncannily resemble the qualities we exhibit in our own Christian churches…

Bussell comes locked and loaded, leaving the evangelical pasture strewn with the carcasses of some of our most cherished sacred cows, including these bogus bovines:

• You Just Have To Hear Our Pastor!
• The Lord Led Me
• But We Have A New Testament Church
• But Mormons Don’t Drink or Smoke
• But You Can See the Love on Their Faces

The author tells story after story of real people he has known during years of youth and college ministry, who became easy prey for the cults. Take Terry for instance:

Terry was an active leader in the youth group of the first church I served in California. He had become a Christian the previous year and gave a glowing testimony. Then, astonishingly, Terry became a Mormon… I still remember my confusion and dumfounded reaction to his defense: “But Mormons don’t drink or smoke.” As with many of us, Terry’s conversion to Christianity included adoption of specific cultural taboos important to American Evangelicals. These taboos, along with the popular emphasis on personal happiness and group support, confused Terry in his journey toward spiritual maturity… Evangelicals tend to yoke their definitions of spirtuality with certain cultural convictions… An overemphasis on taboos has misled some believers to feel more guilty about sipping a glass of wine than about sleeping with a boyfriend or girlfriend.

Rather than focus on the negative, each chapter ends with a set of questions for discussion and lessons emphasizing corrective truths from the Bible on each topic. Bussell points the reader back to Jesus and His Word — the only antidote for false gospels and faux spiritualities. In my case, it caused me to look carefully at my own faulty notions and convictions that have no basis in Christ or His Word. That, in turn, deepened my relationship with Jesus, caused me to treasure Him more deeply and to value His sufficiency in all aspects of my life.

So, this book is for every Christian. It’s not just for those who have an interest in apologetics or the cults, but for believers who want to develop their critical thinking skills, strip away harmful accretions to faith and grow in their affection for the Christ.

If you ever decide to take a trip to Africa, you need to buy and read this book! If you hope to make friends you will keep in touch with, it’s an absolute necessity. In the West, the minute a friend asks for money, things get weird and the friendship probably won’t last long. In Africa, if there is no exchange of money or resources involved, things will get weird and the friendship probably won’t last long. East is east and west is west and there will be no meeting of the minds on the issue of money (and a lot of other customs) without help from someone like David Maranz, a linguist working in Africa since 1975.

I traveled to Uganda twice before I read this book and each page offered at least one “aha!” moment, as perplexing scenes and situations I had witnessed in Africa were given context and clarity. The style makes for a very enjoyable read and the iillustrations by African artists are insightful, amusing and familiar. Even if you have no interest in traveling to Africa, the book is a collection of anecdotes that will keep you riveted for hours.

Reading the book was sometimes uncomfortable as I realized how I had insulted and misunderstood my African friends during my previous visits (though they tell me they understand and knew we were acting out of ignorance). It was also a tragic revelation into the mindset and harmful attitudes of westerners I met, who were living in Africa. For missionaries and Christian workers - next to the Bible, this book is compulsory reading!

The author presents 90 examples illustrating the differences between African and western thinking on:

• Use of Resources
• Friendship
• The Role of Solidarity
• Society and People of Means
• Loans and Debts
• Business Matters

Here is a list of some of the most colorful and crucial examples — I’ve seen most of these first hand and could comment endlessly, but I’ll spare you:

• The financial need that occurs first has the first claim on the available resources
• If something is not being actively used, it is considered to be “available”
• Africans readily share space and things but are possessive of knowledge
• Precision is to be avoided in accounting as it shows the lack of a generous spirit
• Budgeting, in a formal accounting sense, is not an accepted way of handling personal finances
• A network of friends is a network of resources
• People constantly work at maintaining and enlarging their network of friends
• Africans are more hospitable than charitable. Westerners are more charitable than hospitable
• Compliments are frequently given indirectly in the form of requests for gifts or loans and often formulated in questions
• Africans find security in ambiguous arrangements, plans, and speech
• Giving preference to the employment of kin over nonkin is a normal expression of family responsibility and solidarity
• The reputation of people of means is enhanced through the frequent visits of their clients. Foreigners are typically frustrated and inconvenienced by frequent, uninvited visits of African friends and acquaintances
• Old debts are forgotten and are not expected to be repaid, neither by the debtor nor by the lender
• The value of a development project is not to be measured by its long-term success
• The use of the word loan when requesting money from someone is often a euphemism for gift
• Bargaining for a better deal in any transaction involves important social as well as economic factors
• When a customer is told that an ordered article or service will be ready on a specified time or date, it is unlikely to be ready at that time

This is, by far, my favorite and most personally uncomfortable observation in the entire book:

It is also true that Africans readily share space with others… they are with others almost constantly. They avoid being alone… If an individual has a preference for being alone to a noticeable extent, he or she is considered strange, antisocial, or even to be feared.

The Prince of Wales is getting to be a royal pain, flitting around the world, wagging his self-important finger, lecturing the commoners on everything from nutrition to the environment. If you will remember, he consumed thousands of pounds of precious aviation fuel to fly into New York, in order to receive an award for his decades of work promoting environmental sustainability and to raise awareness of global warming. As I remember it, the ceremony was postponed due to a blizzard.

Now, according the Telegraph UK, Charles is doing what he can to deny people the right to eat what they want by targeting certain eeeeeeevil foods and the capitalist pigs, who set up shop on the street corners and in the malls to deal the stuff to kids:

As nutritionist Nadine Tayara told him they discourage children from eating fast food, he retorted: “Have you got anywhere with McDonald’s, have you tried getting it banned? That’s the key.”

This guy is truly a useless appendage. I used to have a different opinion of the monarchy and, though it weathered the Diana debacle, this incident cinches it for me… these people need to hit the streets and earn their own bread. As it turns out in the article, his kids love burgers.

I suppose the real insult came with the graphic shown above from the article. It seems that the readers of the Telegraph like Cornish pasties almost as much as we do here in Nevada City and Grass Valley. In order to put MacDonald’s and the Big Mac into perspective, the journalist compared it to Prince Charles’ favorite country fare, the humble pastie, and sullied the reputation of our esteemed meat and potato pastrie. As you can see, the pastie is deadlier than the Mac. Does this mean Prince Chuck is going to begin calling for a boycott of pasties? Well, if he does, he’ll start a second American Revolution right here in Nevada County. They can have my pastie when they pry it from my cold, dead hand.

Addressing the Suicide of Thought, G.K. Chesterton cites the French Revolution as an example of modern man’s inability to truly be revolutionary (in a good way), because of his self-imposed prison of “objectivity” and open-mindedness — euphemisms for an unhealthy and paralyzing skepticism. This degradation of thought, weaving its way through the 20th century and terminating in 2007, may explain why so many Americans (and cloistered, postmodern epicurean, hedonistic European socialists) will trouble themselves (and, the rest of us) over the genocide in, say, Darfur, while villainizing the liberation, in process, of vast numbers of victims of a large, totalitarian regime. I suppose if a genocide is taking place in relatively close proximity and you are not profiting economically from the status quo and the fighting could spill over and threaten your personal peace and affluence (say, in Bosnia), then that’s a genocide we (meaning a small contingent from our countries and a substantially large contribution from the United States) need to shed blood over. Now, if there’s another genocide in a distant land, which the UN, Germans and French are profiting from and has little chance of upsetting their domestic peace, well that is not a genocide, but a civil war and that nation’s domestic problem. And, if the dictator of that faraway place can keep a lid on things through torture, murder, biological agents and other brutal means, while the skeptics are enriched through their relationship with him, well, they won’t be troubled by that, as long as the press doesn’t publish any disturbing images. Here’s the quote that explains the history behind that sort of odd, self-serving, short-sighted logic:

…an historic example may illustrate it. The French Revolution was really an heroic and decisive thing… But since then the revolutionary or speculative mind of Europe has been weakened by shrinking from any proposal because of the limits of that proposal. Liberalism has been degraded into liberality. Men have tried to turn “revolutionise” from a transitive to an intransitive verb. The Jacobin could tell you not only the system he would rebel against, but (what was more important) the system he would not rebel against, the system he would trust. The new rebel is a skeptic and will not entirely trust anything. He has no loyalty; therefore, he can never be really a revolutionist. And the fact that he doubts everything really gets in his way when he wants to denounce anything. For all denunciation implies a moral doctrine of some kind and the modern revolutionist doubts not only the institution he denounces, but the doctrine by which he denounces it. Thus, he writes one book complaining that imperial oppression insults the purity of women, and then writes another book, a novel, in which he insults it himself. He curses the Sultan because Christian girls lose their virginity, and then curses Mrs. Grundy because they keep it. As a politician he will cry out that war is a waste of life, and then as a philosopher that all life is a waste of time. A Russian pessimist will denounce a policeman for killing a peasant, and then prove by the highest philosophical principles that the peasant ought to have killed himself. A man denounces marriage as a lie and then denounces aristocratic profligates for treating it as a lie. He calls a flag a bauble and then blames the oppressors of Poland or Ireland because they take away that bauble. The man of this school goes first to a political meeting, where he complains that savages are treated as if they were beasts. Then he takes his hat and umbrella and goes on to a scientific meeting where he proves that they practically are beasts. In short, the modern revolutionist, being an infinite skeptic, is always engaged in undermining his own mines. In his book on politics he attacks men for trampling on morality, and in his book on ethics he attacks morality for trampling on men. Therefore the modern man in revolt has become practically useless for all purposes of revolt. By rebelling against everything he has lost his right to rebel against anything.

G.K. Chesterton, Orthodoxy

I read this substantive, relevant article in, of all places, that creaky ol’ Rolling Stone Magazine. The writer puts the spotlight on China’s new, innovative and virtually unstoppable Chinafication strategy in Tibet, expected to wipe out the last traces of traditional culture there in fairly short order. So, you can peel the Free Tibet! bumper sticker off of your Subaru or bio-diesel Mercedes, because the war has been lost — it’s time to shift your “compassion-of-the-month-club” energy to some other lost cause. But, don’t even think about Darfur or the Congo or any other hellhole on earth, where people are committing genocide, fratricide or even polka-cide, for that matter. The people of the US are fed up with such high falootin’, JFK fantasies about “making the world a better place” and, as everyone knows, “if the US won’t go, nobody will go (read UN, NATO, SATO, etc).” I suppose the world community could whip out some sanctions or something… that’s been real effective with Iran, North Korea, China… oops. No, the fact of the matter is that socialists and progressives in those countries will do whatever it takes to subjugate and rule the masses, just like they will in the US.

Well, there’s more good news from the newspaper publishing industry. Metro newspaper readership, like viewership of network news, is down. From Editor & Publisher:

This is the fourth consecutive semi-annual report to register a severe drop in daily circulation and — perhaps more troubling to the industry — Sunday copies…

The Los Angeles Times reported that daily circulation fell 8% to 775,766. Sunday dropped 6% to 1,172,005

The San Francisco Chronicle was down. Daily dropped 5.3% to 373,805 and Sunday fell 7.3% to 432,957.

The New York Times lost 3.5% daily to 1,086,798 and 3.5% on Sunday to 1,623,697. Its sister publication, The Boston Globe reported decreases in daily circulation, down 6.7% to 386,415 and Sunday, down 9.9% to 587,292.

The Washington Post lost daily circulation, which was down 3.3% to 656,297 while Sunday declined 2.6% to 930,619.

Face it. People are tired of the passe´press and their all liberal, all the time editorializing, thinly disguised as reporting. People who want hard news and serious analysis are moving to new media on the web, talk-radio and podcast.

Personally? I enjoy sitting down and reading a real newspaper. But, the content has been so off-putting for the past 30 years, we finally canceled our last subscription last year. Sure, I miss some things, but the relief from the incessant finger-wagging, elitist, tendentious preaching embedded in every AP or Reuters article has been refreshing. I just wish they would read the writing on the wall (instead of their own press) and wake up to the fact that people out here want news, not their personal, bigoted worldview. If they would only listen to the market and suppress their urge to force their convictions upon the rest of us, they may survive.

Why, that would be Camille Paglia, of course! Now, here’s a woman from the other end of the spectrum I think I could have an enjoyable discussion with, even though we strongly disagree on a number of issues. She’s smart, she’s tough, but she’s fair minded and has a good grasp of history, I think. She was interviewed on Salon.com and here are a few choice excerpts.

On religion:

But religion is absolutely central to this country in ways that Europe’s secularized intellectuals fail to understand. I’m speaking here as an atheist who studies religion and respects it enormously. In the history of mankind, the benefits that religion has brought to society in shaping behavior and moral choice are overwhelming in comparison to the negatives, which anyone can list — like religious wars and bigotry. Without religion, we’d have anarchy.

On Condoleeza Rice:

Condi Rice looks lost lately. She’s overstretched and on a learning curve. Her training (by Madeleine Albright’s father) focused on the Cold War era when the world was polarized between two superpowers. It didn’t prepare her for the baffling and frustrating complexities of the highly sectarian and factionalized Middle East. You need to know the turbulent history of the ancient Near East to understand what’s going on there now. It’s always been a roiling cauldron — wars and more wars and massacres from the Egyptian, Assyrian and Roman empires down to the fascist rule by the Ottomans. Every feminist who wants to smash the glass ceiling should realize she has a stake in Condi Rice’s success. Rice is a brilliant woman, but diplomacy is an art.

On George Bush:

I’m not a Bush hater. I’ve always viewed him as a decent fellow who was pushed into the presidency because he was his father’s son. But he’s been out of his depth in foreign affairs from the start. He certainly lacks the basic verbal skills for the presidency — reading speeches authored by others is no substitute. But I’ve become concerned about Bush’s mental state in the past few months. Sometimes in his press conferences or prepared statements (which I listened to on the radio), I heard a sort of Nixonian tension and hysteria. His vocal patterns were over-intense and his inflections impatient, lurching and sarcastic. There was this seething quality to his speech that worried me and that seemed to signal that something major is being planned — perhaps another military incursion.

More excerpts to follow… I really enjoyed this interview.

It’s always disappointing to see Democrats punishing success and Wal-Mart, like the United States military, presents such a juicy target for the blame America first crowd. So, I’m really excited to see the folks at Wal-Mart waking up to the way Washington works. According to this article, Wal-Mart Doesn’t Discount Politicians, the giant has benefited from the lesson Bill Gates learned the hard way back in the ’90’s. If you don’t “remember” your liberal/socialist friends in Congress and the White House, the Justice Department may come knocking at your door. From a progressive news site bemoaning Microsoft’s late entry into the protection racket… er, I mean into the lobbying process:

Microsoft didn’t always seek support in Washington. For years, the software giant prided itself on steering clear of national politics and lobbying. But when their legal troubles started, that attitude quickly changed.

“Microsoft, before their anti-trust case, had almost no presence in Washington,” Arizona Sen. John McCain told The Chronicle editorial board earlier this year. “Now, I almost don’t know a lobbyist who’s not on their payroll.”

Wal-Mart employs so many and ploughs so much back into the community, I’d hate to see them hobbled by further government legislative interference. For low and middle-class earners like my family, Wal-Mart plays an important role.

That was my response to Denise on Saturday night after witnessing a so-called debate over abortion between Katherine Kneer and Scott Klusendorf. Katherine has served as the President and CEO of Planned Parenthood of California and Scott is the President of the Life Training Institute.

One would think that the president of the Planned Parenthood franchise in the most populous and, perhaps, liberal state in the US would have some command of the facts of abortion or a mastery of just a few of the philosophical/moral/ethical justifications for the practice! This was not the case and she conceded over and over that she did not intend to argue a case for abortion. Instead, she played to the emotions of the audience, poured effusive praise upon the work that that the LivingWell Clinic is doing in Nevada County and made the most pathetic plea to embrace her cynical real world view that infanticide is inevitable in our world, so we all need to welcome the culture of death. With the Sacramento cultural and political scene dominated by policy makers like Katherine, it’s no wonder people are plunging into despair and anti-depressant use (abuse)! She almost had me running for the prozac!

Scott responded with facts, well-reasoned arguments and plenty of compassion, even helping Katherine to articulate her position at times. He was kind, gracious and loving. His presentation was one of optimism, hope and courage in the face of a very nasty crowd that imposes their dogma of intolerance, violence and hopelessness on the rest of us.

For those women who have had an abortion and the men who pressured them into that decision, Scott offered compassion, understanding and real solutions.

Denise and I came away with the realization that the combination of government, the media, the educational system… the entire culture, militates against and is prevailing over common sense, common decency and the common good. But, we will not surrender.

Credit: Photo of post-natal abortion courtesy of the University of Maryland

Sadie commented:

Peter Pan syndrome. *nodding head* That makes a lot of sense. This is a really well thought out post, Bo. I enjoyed reading it. I have to say that Bush lacks the personality that JFK had. For some reason that I can’t quite put my finger on–Bush bothers me when he gives a speech. I don’t know why.

Yes, I have to agree that Bush is difficult to listen to, because he has some sort of odd speech pattern. Bill Clinton is a good speaker. He appears comfortable, in control of the facts… almost conversational. I think he makes the audience feel more relaxed. George Bush sounds like he is addressing The Toastmasters or a public speaking class and that’s just too bad, because his unrehearsed press conferences are great… particularly when he unleashes his humor. With that said, I really don’t hear many formal speeches I enjoy.

Now, let’s get a bit more controversial. Check out Dick Cheney on Meet The Press. I think Dick Cheney sounds more presidential than anyone I’ve heard in the past thirty years and the man speaks well in every kind of situation. Bush is strong in press conferences, but weak at the podium. Clinton is a great public speaker, but comes off slick when responding to questions and is childish at times. Cheney does it all well.

P.S. I think the new color scheme of the blog really highlights Sadie’s Blogger profile pic, don’t you?

I went for a run today, following my usual course through the woods and local schools. There were kids in school today! I called the principal’s office and found that they will not be observing Columbus Day today or on the actual date of the 12th of October.

For those crumb-crunchers who are missing out on this holiday and receiving indoctrination, the rest of us are celebrating the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and the spread of European civilization to the New World.

When the explorers arrived on this continent, they found the Algonquin torturing and killing Iroquois, imposing their morals and culture on their neighboring brothers. Maya and Aztec were brutalizing fellow native Americans, while the Blackfoot and other plains tribes were battling one another for turf, well on their way to exterminating the buffalo. Here in the Sierras, the Miwok and Maidu people were found barely subsisting on acorn mush, supplemented by an occasional diseased fish, rabbit or deer that fell victim to their stone-age hunting devices.

While the Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole largely adopted the progressive ways of their European benefactors, most Native American tribes did not and fell by the wayside in the this hemisphere’s move toward modern civilization. Many cherish hatred and bitterness towards those who have moved ahead and overcome the differences highlighted by this inevitable clash of cultures.

In short, the original people here in America really needed some help and the people from the east were brave, self-sacrificing and compassionate enough to bring them the benefits of modern society, medicine and technology. That sort of human endeavor is to be celebrated and remembered!

Brad Pitt told Esquire magazine:

Angie and I will consider tying the knot when everyone else in the country who wants to be married is legally able.

Brad and Angelina Jolie seem to be serious in their convictions that polygamy and other taboo forms of marriage should be legalized in the US. As of today, moral crusaders have seen to it that brothers cannot legally marry their sisters, the man convicted of bestiality cannot wed his horse and, despite the howling of social liberals, older men are not even allowed to date ten year olds, let alone tie the not. The country doesn’t seem ready for such progressive redefinition of the longstanding tradition of one man and one woman, so I suppose Brangelina will have to put off their nuptials for quite some time. Regardless, this is a bold and courageous move by one of Hollywood’s brightest activist couples!