Via Hugh Hewitt, I’ve found an interesting piece on Barack Obama’s relationship with the Ayers family and his involvement in the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. The author, Steve Diamond, is a California law professor and no conservative—more like a Naderite liberal, by the sound of it—but he expresses considerable concern over authoritarianism in the global labor movement and its links to authoritarian movements and tendencies in the political arena. Per the author’s expressed wishes, I won’t excerpt the piece here—I’ll simply recommend you read it, and consider the ramifications of the answer he offers to the question “Who ‘sent’ Obama?” It offers an interesting angle on the Obama campaign’s efforts to suppress any inquiries into the details of the Annenberg Challenge.
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Where are the defenders of privacy now?
The folks of the pro-abortion lobby would have you believe that they hold a woman’s privacy as sacrosanct.Apparently, that only applies to liberal women. Conservative women, in their view, don’t have rights—they’ve forfeited them from the heinous crime of departing from liberal orthodoxy.If what’s been done to Sarah Palin and her family this time doesn’t make you sick, and worried about the direction politics is taking in this country, then you don’t deserve this country. There is absolutely no place in political discourse for hacking into a candidate’s e-mail, much less using that to publish their e-mails, e-mail addresses, unlisted numbers, private photos, and voicemail messages. If the Bush administration did this to terrorists, these folks would be rioting in the streets—but if you do it to a Republican, it’s OK?For shame. For shame!
Did Barack Obama try to manipulate Iraq?
So says Amir Taheri in an article in the New York Post:
WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence. According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July. “He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington,” Zebari said in an interview.
The McCain campaign, in the person of Randy Scheunemann, had this to say:
At this point, it is not yet clear what official American negotiations Senator Obama tried to undermine with Iraqi leaders, but the possibility of such actions is unprecedented. It should be concerning to all that he reportedly urged that the democratically-elected Iraqi government listen to him rather than the US administration in power. If news reports are accurate, this is an egregious act of political interference by a presidential candidate seeking political advantage overseas. Senator Obama needs to reveal what he said to Iraq’s Foreign Minister during their closed door meeting. The charge that he sought to delay the withdrawal of Americans from Iraq raises serious questions about Senator Obama’s judgment and it demands an explanation.
The Obama campaign defended their candidate by saying that
in fact, Obama had told the Iraqis that they should not rush through a “Strategic Framework Agreement” governing the future of US forces until after President George W. Bush leaves office.
As a defense, that leaves much to be desired, since it essentially confirms Taheri’s report; they tried to split hairs over which agreement they were talking about and used the word “rush” instead of the word “delay.” It’s nothing more than spin, and pretty thin spin at that. What’s more, it may have been a mistake, as it provoked a rebuttal from Taheri in which he analyzed and dismantled the Obama campaign’s response.Technically speaking, Sen. Obama acted in violation of the Logan Act which “prohibits any private citizen or party from negotiating with a foreign power in matters of national policy or military action”; this has led to a few people asking if he should be prosecuted, though wiser heads have correctly said that criminalizing political conduct is a bad idea and should be avoided (even if Joe Biden didn’t get the memo). That said, his actions clearly merit some sort of censure or rebuke from the Senate, and call into question not only his judgment but his political integrity. Personally, I find the latter more disturbing than the former; Pete Hegseth, on the other hand, takes the opposite view:
I believe, rather, that the underlying naivety of Obama’s overtures is the more disturbing lesson to be distilled from this discovery.It’s not just that Sen. Obama doesn’t believe in the mission in Iraq, it’s that he still doesn’t get it (to plagiarize from the senator himself). Fundamentally, he doesn’t understand the mission in Iraq, what it takes to win a war, or the ramifications of the outcome of this war for the U.S.’s enduring national security. He just doesn’t get it.In Obama’s world, foreign-policy contorts to meet domestic politics, and commanding generals accommodate arbitrary political timelines. From his perspective, facts on a foreign battlefield exist to the extent they comport with his judgment, rather than his judgment comporting to facts on a foreign battlefield.Despite recognizing security gains in Iraq, Sen. Obama continues to declare the surge a strategic failure because it hasn’t created necessary political progress—an assertion that has been patently false for some time now. Nonetheless, Senator Obama won’t adjust his stance before the election because, as Taheri so aptly points out, “to be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire.” . . .Once again, Sen. Obama and his fellow Democrats continue to insist that they know better than generals. They won’t let the facts get in the way of a good political narrative. Taheri’s article is the latest crack in the facade of Sen. Obama and his fellow travelers, and signals their flip, naïve, and self-serving approach to strategic objectives on the battlefield.
This is an explosive story. In considering all this, I can’t help thinking of the howls we’d be hearing if such a charge were laid against a Republican—and I’m not alone in that:
Obama should be compelled to provide some basic facts: who was present, what record of the meeting exists and what precisely was he communicating to the Iraqis. If we had an independent, truly adversarial press (that is one not adversarial just towards one candidate), they would be screaming for this plus access to those present at the meeting. Can you imagine if John McCain were accused of asking a foreign government to accelerate or retard progress on a matter of national security because of the upcoming election?That may or may not be what happened here. But it is time to start asking hard questions.
Reformation from the DNA out
Jared Wilson is always one of my favorite bloggers, and right now, he’s really on a roll. I’m particularly struck by a couple of posts which he doesn’t explicitly connect, but which I think do connect on a deep level. The first, “Ever the Cross,” is a riff on this line from C. J. Mahaney:
It is increasingly obvious that people are prepared to tolerate Christianity up until the point that it begins to define its terms.
The Rev. Mahaney’s right on with that, and not just with regard to the world outside the church—this is often the case within the church as well, and especially within congregations that seek to engineer success by accommodating themselves to that attitude. As Jared puts it,
Modern sermons and teaching that do not center or focus on the cross only reinforce this for us. Without meaning to, the church itself can support our error of judging God’s faithfulness to us based on our present circumstances, rather than on the great love he has shown to us in the past. Which is why we must always bring the glory of that past movement into our present worship and obedience. That’s the need for the call to a cross-centered life.
This is a critical point, because any other way of life leads us away from Christ, not towards him:
The call to follow Jesus is the call to die. Following Jesus means renouncing comfort, safety, and happiness in circumstances as the prime virtue of life. . . .What does it mean to remember the cross of Christ as a sign upon our right hand, between our eyes, and in our mouth? It means that Jesus is our way, Jesus is our truth, and Jesus is our life, and when the way, the truth, and the life heads toward crucifixion, we don’t part ways. We remember. We commemorate. We look to the cross like a pillar of cloud by day and to the empty tomb like a pillar of fire by night, the signs to follow. Where the world walks the wide path away from the point at which Christ defines his terms, the disciple continues on the narrow path into the way of the cross.
That’s powerful truth, and profoundly important. Unfortunately, as Jared notes in his post today on the missional reformation of the church, it’s also profoundly unsettling to many, many congregational (and denominational) leaders in this country, and profoundly threatening to their whole idea of how we’re supposed to lead the church, and what we as the church are supposed to be. For all that most of the fights in American churches are over style and programs and other matters that are superficial and therefore clearly visible, the real issues and the real problems are much deeper, and can be summed up in the statement that most churches don’t “remember the cross of Christ as a sign upon our right hand, between our eyes, and in our mouth.” We have not renounced comfort, safety, and happiness in circumstances as our goals, either in the church or in life in general, much less accepted the call to die. As a consequence,
What we are dealing with . . . is not a crisis of programming or style, but a crisis of culture. . . . Because of the state of the modern Church’s collective values and community identity, the call to reform cannot be met merely by offering alternative programming or adding an “emerging” service or what have you. We’re messing with DNA here.
This is long, slow work, which in most cases will not produce dramatic turnarounds suitable for book tours and TV appearances; that’s why so few people have the heart for it. It’s important work, though; I’ll never denigrate the valuable work of church planters, but it would be wrong to focus on church planting and just write off existing congregations because changing them would be too much work. Yes, there are congregations that simply will not change; but there are others that will, because the Holy Spirit is not going to abandon the people of God. And ultimately, the commitment to the work of the missional reformation of the church is not one that can be judged by results alone—even if it doesn’t “work,” that doesn’t mean it’s not worth doing. The task itself is worthy, whether “successful” or otherwise. As Jared concludes,
It is wearying trying to sell our churches on the notion that what they’ve been selling for so long doesn’t work. It is difficult suggesting that the service-centered approach to reaching the lost has failed. It is a delicate thing to suggest that we have not exalted Christ and we have not glorified God and therefore we haven’t really served the people we’ve claimed to.And yet for some of us inside this culture, slogging away at discipling the culture into a more vital discipleship, it is incumbent upon us to, in our hearts and minds, say “Here we stand. We can do no other.”
To which I can only add, “God help us. Amen.”
Who’s lying here?
I never cared for the McCain campaign’s “Education” ad; throwing in the Illinois sex-ed bill and calling it his “one accomplishment” was a cheap shot, in my book. (It was also bad politics, since it took all the attention from the actual point of the ad.)
That said, I also don’t care for the Obama campaign and the MSM getting away with labeling Sen. McCain a liar when the ad’s description of the bill is, in fact, accurate—as Brit Hume points out, quoting from the bill itself:
HT: Jennifer RubinAs Byron York points out,
Obama’s explanation for his vote [that he voted for it because of his concern over inappropriate touching] has been accepted by nearly all commentators. And perhaps that is indeed why he voted for Senate Bill 99, although we don’t know for sure. But we do know that the bill itself was much more than that. The fact is, the bill’s intention was to mandate sex education, especially concerning contraception and the prevention of sexually-transmitted diseases, for children before the sixth grade and as early as kindergarten. Obama’s defenders may howl, but the bill is what it is.
Update: Here’s what Sen. Obama told Planned Parenthood last year about this:
sex education for kindergarteners, as long as it is “age-appropriate,” is “the right thing to do.”
Obama, Prince of Denmark: To drill or not to drill
I’ve been meaning to post on this for a while now: amid the posturing and the squabbling over offshore drilling, there was an interesting contradiction in Barack Obama’s acceptance speech a few weeks ago that few people have caught but that’s worth pointing out. I suspect the reason so few people have caught it is that it takes someone in the energy business, like The Thinklings‘ Bill Roberts, to see it:
Tonight, Obama said that drilling is a “stopgap measure”, not a solution. Right after that he said he’s going to promote clean-burning Natural Gas.Which is great, because the company I work for explores for and produces natural gas.But that’s where it gets weird: to get to natural gas you have to drill for it. And there are trillions of cubic feet of it in the outer continental shelf (OCS) that we’ve all been arguing about all this time.It gets even more complicated: It’s extremely common to get BOTH natural gas and oil out of the same wellbore.Sometimes natural gas is on top of the oil, kind of like a “cap” (and water is often under the oil—oil floats on water). So many wells produce all three products—water, gas, and oil. Sometimes the gas is dissolved in the produced oil and is separated when it gets to the surface.But, bottom line—it makes no sense to say no to drilling while simultaneously touting natural gas.I realize this is probably boring to many of you, but because I work with people who do the work to find the darn stuff, I found that to be a pretty interesting comment.
What this shows is that, like most of us (including Nancy Pelosi and the rest of the leadership in Congress), Sen. Obama doesn’t really know much about energy production and the issues related to it. That’s hardly surprising, but it does mean that at a time when energy prices are a major concern in our economy—and when, as John McCain and Sarah Palin have both pointed out more than once, oil and gas imports are a major foreign-policy concern—the Democratic presidential candidate is offering policy prescriptions in this critical area that are based not on actual knowledge of that area but rather on ideology and political convenience. Thus we see him doing things like “saying no to drilling while simultaneously touting natural gas,” just because he doesn’t know enough to know that he’s contradicted himself.This is one of the things which makes Sen. McCain’s choice of Gov. Palin so striking. She’s taken flak from both sides of the aisle for not being broadly and deeply versed in foreign policy and matters of national security, and he’s taken flak for choosing a nominee who lacks that kind of understanding; and there’s no question that she has a lot to learn in that area, and that the wisdom of choosing her as the VP nominee will depend to a considerable extent on her ability to do so quickly. That said, however, what she does have that’s far harder to find is a broad and deep understanding, both at the political level and at the down-and-dirty practical level, of the energy industry, energy policy, and all its manifold ramifications. She knows how to address these issues, and she’s managed to do so without ending up in Big Oil’s pocket, which is probably almost as valuable. At a time when energy policy is critically important both domestically and internationally, when the GOP nominee for President is already more than qualified to handle national-security issues but is not conversant with energy issues, I think Gov. Palin’s expertise in this area is a powerful qualification—and a pointed contrast to the ignorance on the Democratic ticket.
The Gospel for 9/16/01
For me (and, I suspect, for many preachers), 9/16 is a date inextricably linked to 9/11: it was the day we had the task of standing in the pulpit and presenting the gospel response to the terrorist attack on America. That day found me the guest preacher at the Church of the Good Shepherd, a congregation of my denomination (the Reformed Church in America) in Lynnwood, WA, on the north side of the Seattle area. They were between permanent pastors at that point, and I had agreed several weeks before to fill in for the Sunday between the departure of one interim pastor and the arrival of the next. To preach to a strange congregation five days after 9/11 was a daunting task, especially with one as inexperienced as I was, but it had one great benefit: it gave me something to focus on that helped me absorb and process the shock of what had happened.It’s interesting, seven years on, to go back to that sermon; it certainly shows my inexperience, but I think the thrust of it was right. If I needed to use it again, I would no doubt rewrite a fair bit of it, but I could keep the core as is. Indeed, when almost three years later, our community in Colorado was hit by what I think we can fairly call an act of local terrorism, that’s pretty much what I did. For all that it’s clearly the work of someone who hadn’t preached very much, I can stand by what I was doing my best to say. (For anyone who’s interested, the sermon follows after the jump.)***********The world changed this week. When terrorists flew airliners into the twin towers of the World Trade Center and into the Pentagon, the earth shook, and those towers, those great mountains raised up by human effort, fell; and the world changed. It was not just Manhattan or Washington, D.C. that shook, it was the earth under our feet; we were shaken, as these symbols of our country were attacked in a way that we have never been attacked before. We were shaken by the loss of life—the hundreds aboard those four airliners, the thousands more who died in the buildings which were hit; the firefighters and police officers who died trying to help those caught in the wreckage. Through the network of relationships that unites us across this country as family, friends, and colleagues, we have all been touched by the fear and pain of this last Tuesday. September 11, 2001: this day will live in infamy alongside December 7, 1941, and we will never be the same again; we mourn the loss of thousands of lives, but we also mourn the loss of a little more of our innocence. What words can possibly work to describe what happened? Unthinkable? Unbelievable? Horrific? This was a disaster movie produced and directed by Satan; it was designed to kill and to destroy, as our enemy so loves to do, but also to shatter the foundations of everything we hold true. The world has changed, the earth has moved, and we will never again trust it in quite the same way. Yet there is hope, even as the horror of last Tuesday echoes in our minds and hearts: in the midst of this upheaval, there is still a place to stand where we will not be shaken. With all that has changed, we need to remember what has not changed. We need to remember that God is, and what that means for us.Let’s look to the Psalms this morning, and hear God’s reassurance. Open your Bible with me to Psalm 46, and let’s read that together:God is our refuge and strength,
an ever-present help in trouble.
Therefore we will not fear, though the earth give way
and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea,
though its waters roar and foam
and the mountains quake with their surging. Selah
There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God,
the holy place where the Most High dwells.
God is within her, she will not fall;
God will help her at break of day.
Nations are in uproar, kingdoms fall;
he lifts his voice, the earth melts.
The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah
Come and see the works of the LORD,
the desolations he has brought on the earth.
He makes wars cease to the ends of the earth;
he breaks the bow and shatters the spear,
he burns the shields with fire.
“Be still, and know that I am God;
I will be exalted among the nations,
I will be exalted in the earth.”
The LORD Almighty is with us;
the God of Jacob is our fortress. Selah“God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble.” “Trouble” seems far too mild a word for what the psalmist has in mind—“disaster” would be more to the point. First, there is natural disaster, and the language is vivid, evoking the earthquake to end all earthquakes: the earth heaves so fiercely that the very mountains crack and collapse; their rubble falls into the ocean and causes great waves, great enough to shake the remaining mountains all over again. It is a scene of incredible physical terror—but the psalmist says, “We will not be afraid, because God is our refuge, our strength and our help.” Second, there is potential national disaster, the threat of the nations against the city of God; but the city will not fall, because God is there. No matter what disaster may come, God is very near to us, and he is our refuge.In the midst of disaster, God is our refuge. We can rest in him and he will protect and comfort us, body and soul. If you look at your outline you’ll see the opening of another psalm, one of my favorites, Psalm 91: “He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty,” as the NIV has it. The psalm gives us the image of a bird comforting its chicks, protecting them from the traps left by the hunter and from diseases which could kill them; under God’s wings, in his shadow, we are safe from diseases of the spirit and those who would attack our souls. We may not be free from pain, but we are comforted.But as we look out at the world this week, we still see the suffering. Who can forget the images of a 110-story building collapsing into so much twisted, broken wreckage? Who can forget the nightmare thought of secretaries, janitors, and receptionists who actually found jumping out of windows 90+ stories up their best hope of survival? And it doesn’t end there. The television still shows us shattered buildings, rubble everywhere, people in grief and shock; how could this happen? Is the Devil bigger than God after all?The Psalmist’s answer is firm: No. Even in the midst of suffering, destruction and war, God is in control. In Isaiah 45, the prophet puts this even more strongly, as God declares, “I am the LORD, and there is no other. I form the light and create darkness, I bring prosperity and create disaster; I, the LORD, do all these things.” In other words, what happened on Tuesday didn’t take God by surprise; he isn’t pacing around his throne room pulling out his hair trying to figure out what to do about this situation. In all the circumstances of life, in all the trials we face both huge and smaller, the one who is our refuge and our help is in control of the situation. As your congregation looks for a new pastor, and as you suffer setbacks in your search, God is in control. As you struggle with difficult relationships, whether in your family, at work, or elsewhere, God is in control. As you or someone you care about fights serious illness, God is in control. As those of us who are unemployed look for jobs, God is in control. And yes, as men with evil in their hearts turn our airlines into weapons of inconceivable mass destruction, God is in control. He has not been outwitted; he has not lost the battle, much less the war. The God who is our fortress and our help is still the one writing the story, and evil will not have the last word.But this raises a hard question: if God is in control, if he is the one writing the story, then why do we get chapters like this week? Why does he allow such evil and suffering?I don’t have any easy answers; and if I did, I don’t imagine you’d trust them. There aren’t any easy answers. In part, we know that when God created us, he gave us the dignity of freedom, to choose to follow him or not; and he respects us and leaves us free to choose, even though so often our choices pierce his heart. At the end, God will tell all the nations, “Be still, and know that I am God,” and all evil will be banished, but until then he gives us the dignity of being able to say no to him. But that’s only part of the answer; it doesn’t tell us why evil succeeds, why things don’t go right the first time. How much of a change, really, would it have taken for the men who carried out this attack on our country to fail rather than succeed in their efforts? A few alert, suspicious security guards, perhaps, and none of those planes are hijacked.I don’t know; but if I have learned anything in my life, it is the lesson C. S. Lewis put so well: that “God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain.” God is shouting to us in this time—it may just be a coincidence, but did you notice that the date of this attack was 9/11? 911. Perhaps this is an emergency call to a nation that is in desparate need of God. And people are picking up the phone. On CNN, a newscaster admitted that “Even if you don’t believe in God, at times like this you want to reach out to a higher being for salvation.” As horrific as this attack was, even this God can turn to his purposes, even this he can use to rescue people who are lost and need him; even from these black, evil, poisonous roots, God can grow beautiful flowers.God whispers in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pain. And so, as the great Catholic mystic Julian of Norwich once wrote, God did not promise us, “You will not be troubled, you will not be belabored, you will not be disquieted”; but he did promise us this: “You will not be overcome.” Therefore we will not fear, though the earth shake, the mountains fall, and our cities be attacked; we will not fear, though we struggle financially, or with our families, or with our past; for God is our fortress and our help, and he is still in control, whatever may come.And we will not fear because in the midst of our weakness, God is our shepherd. Let’s turn to our second psalm, Psalm 23:The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.
He makes me lie down in green pastures,
he leads me beside quiet waters,
he restores my soul.
He guides me in paths of righteousness
for his name’s sake.
Even though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil,
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff,
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies.
You anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows.
Surely goodness and love will follow me
all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever.Our God is no impersonal God—he knows each of us by name, and he watches closely over each of us; he cares for us and takes care of us as a shepherd watches over and takes care of his sheep. He wants us to know and love him as he knows and loves us, and he wants us to call on him when we are uncertain, when we are in need, when we are in pain, when we are in danger. That, after all, is what a sheep does: when it realizes that it is lost in the wilderness and has no idea where its flock and shepherds are, it will lie down and begin to bleat at the top of its lungs so that the shepherd can come and find it and bring it back to the flock. The sheep knows it’s in a bad situation, but it trusts the shepherd to take care of it, and God wants us to trust him in the same way.We can trust him for a couple of reasons. First, in our uncertainty, God is our guide; he leads us as a shepherd leads his sheep. He leads us in the paths of righteousness—not crooked paths which will wear us out uselessly and waste our efforts, but the right paths, those which will take us where he has called us to be; the paths which will lead us to growth in righteousness. When we wander from the path, he leads us back, even when that means lifting us up and carrying us. But the straight path is often not the easy one; in Israel, the best way from one pasture to the next often led through deep, narrow canyons and ravines where the steep, high slopes kept out the light, where the sheep could only trust and follow the sound of their shepherd’s voice. In the same way, the path for us often leads us through pain and suffering, through valleys like this week when the road is too dark for us to see beyond the next step. In times like these for our nation, when the weight of suffering and loss seems too great to bear, God is our shepherd. In this time of uncertainty for you in this church, God is your shepherd. We are in this place, we are in this time, dark as it is, because God has led us here, because this is the right path, the path that will bring each of us where he wants us to be; but he has led us into the valley of the shadow of death in order to lead us through it and out into the light once more, and he is here to comfort and protect us in the darkness. “God did not say, ‘You will not be troubled, you will not be belabored, you will not be disquieted’; but God said: ‘You will not be overcome.’” That is a promise for us this morning, here in the valley of the shadow.The promise, too, is that God will meet our needs, because he is our shepherd; in our need, he is our provider. That, after all, is how Psalm 23 begins: “The Lord is my shepherd, I will not be in need.” He provides us with green pastures and quiet streams, not merely meeting our physical needs but doing so in a way which refreshes us and gives us rest. He restores my soul, the Psalmist says.Do any of you feel the need to have your souls restored this morning? I know I do; there have been times in the last few days when it seemed wrong and unfair somehow that we had blue skies and sunshine and could still see the beauty of the day when at the World Trade Center the sun had not shone since Tuesday for all the smoke. Others I know felt violated by this attack; my brother’s comment, after a long conversation, was, “I want my country back.” Another friend of mine said he has been walking around in shock since hearing the news, that part of him is frozen up inside. The promise to us this morning is that God meets us at this place of our need, that he will restore our souls.God is our strength in the midst of disaster, and our shepherd in the midst of our weakness; he provides for us in our need and guides us through the darkness. Through everything we face, God is with us. That is why we need fear no evil as we walk through the valley of the shadow of death—because God isn’t leading us from up ahead somewhere, he isn’t sending us on from behind, he is walking through the valley with us, carrying his staff to keep us on the right path and his rod to drive away enemies. That’s why he is able to restore our souls, because he is with us in our hurts and losses and fears. That’s why he is our refuge and strength when we are under attack. And it’s why we can trust him when we don’t know how we’ll pay the bills . . . when we fear what the future holds for us . . . when we don’t know what to do next . . . when someone we love is sick . . . and even when we watch the news and hear the death toll from Tuesday’s attack: because he is with us. He was there with those people who lost their lives in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, he was there with the passengers who died on the airliners, he was there with the firefighters who rushed in when the first tower was hit and died when it fell on them, he is there with those who have lost sons, daughters, husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters; he is here with us this morning as we struggle to come to grips with what has happened, as we think of those we know who escaped or are among the missing, and as we deal with all the other problems and struggles that fill our lives. He is here with us in his Spirit, and his Son came and walked the very same earth we walk. He knows us, he knows us inside and out, he loves us more than we will ever understand, and he is here with us to care for us as a shepherd cares for his sheep. We worship a God whose name is Immanuel, God with us, and if we are too weak to stand that is just fine with him; he wants us to lean on him as he leads us through—and out of—the valley of the shadow of death and into his glorious light.
Positive feminist perspectives on Sarah Palin
As Jonah Goldberg and the Anchoress, among many others, have commented on, there’s been a veritable avalanche of hysterical attacks on Sarah Palin from various liberal feminists; I suggested earlier that a lot of liberals were furious that the GOP put a conservative woman on the ticket—how dare they!—and the more recent wave seems to bear that out. A number of feminists are even going so far as to deal with the cognitive dissonance of Gov. Palin’s existence by denying that she’s really a woman. (Shades of Elizabeth Moon.)They are not, however, the only voices out there. Though fewer, there have also been liberal feminists who have expressed appreciation for Gov. Palin, even as they disagree with her positions. Perhaps the most important such voice is the redoubtable Camille Paglia, whose essay in Salon is profoundly important; though her description of Gov. Palin’s “brand new style of muscular American feminism” has drawn the most attention, she has a number of important things to say. I was particularly struck by her critique of her own party:
The witch-trial hysteria of the past two incendiary weeks unfortunately reveals a disturbing trend in the Democratic Party, which has worsened over the past decade. Democrats are quick to attack the religiosity of Republicans, but Democratic ideology itself seems to have become a secular substitute religion. Since when did Democrats become so judgmental and intolerant? Conservatives are demonized, with the universe polarized into a Manichaean battle of us versus them, good versus evil. Democrats are clinging to pat group opinions as if they were inflexible moral absolutes. The party is in peril if it cannot observe and listen and adapt to changing social circumstances. . . .It is nonsensical and counterproductive for Democrats to imagine that pro-life values can be defeated by maliciously destroying their proponents. And it is equally foolish to expect that feminism must for all time be inextricably wed to the pro-choice agenda. There is plenty of room in modern thought for a pro-life feminism—one in fact that would have far more appeal to third-world cultures where motherhood is still honored and where the Western model of the hard-driving, self-absorbed career woman is less admired. But the one fundamental precept that Democrats must stand for is independent thought and speech. When they become baying bloodhounds of rigid dogma, Democrats have committed political suicide.
Also of interest is a perspective from the British press, Rebecca Johnson in the Telegraph:
Politics be damned, Palin was a woman and she was an Alaskan! Moreover, I had been impressed with her when I interviewed her—not for her politics (I’m one of those east coast liberals she doesn’t care about) but for the other things that people across the country are responding to right now: her warmth, her work ethic, her “can-do” attitude.We should celebrate what is groundbreaking about Sarah Palin: a card-carrying member of Feminists for Life is a big step forward from Housewives for Life. And then we should talk about the issues.
Finally, DeeDee Myers offered the Obama campaign some wise advice in The New Republic, making the case that they should leave Gov. Palin alone:
What Sarah Palin has done, and this is something I like about her, is that she’s a women who has succeeded very much on her own terms. She talks about motherhood as a training ground for leadership; she manages and balances her family and her work in her own way. It’s very hard to see where her family ends and her work begins. I think a lot of women see their lives that way. Not everyone’s going to go out and shoot a moose and put their hair up in a bun and put on their sexy open-toe shoes and go to dinner. . . . But does everybody have to be lock-step on every issue? Or can somebody who’s outside—in Sarah Palin’s case, very much outside—the traditional feminist agenda still move the ball forward for women? I think the answer is yes. When I hear Pat Buchanan on TV, decrying sexism in the media, you know? This is not all bad. . . . I don’t know where abortion rights are going to end up in all this, and honestly that concerns me, but I think we need to find a different language to talk about it. I think that there are more women who identify with Sarah Palin than Gloria Steinem right now. Even if they don’t agree with 100 percent of her agenda, her life looks more like their lives.
HT: Jennifer RubinUpdate: see also Camille Paglia’s latest contribution on Sarah Palin, and this comment from Elaine Lafferty, the former editor-in-chief of Ms. magazine.
Saying goodbye
What shall I render to the Lord for all his benefits to me?
I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord,
I will pay my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people.
Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his saints.—Psalm 116:12-15 (ESV)I tell you this, brothers: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable. Behold! I tell you a mystery. We shall not all sleep,
but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised imperishable, and we shall be changed. For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?”The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God,
who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.—1 Corinthians 15:50-57 (ESV)It’s been a long couple days. Sunday I had a meeting after church and places to be all afternoon, and then yesterday was my first funeral here in Indiana, as we buried one of the lovely old saints of this congregation, someone who’d been a part of the church here for 44 years. On the one hand, it was a real celebration of a woman who’d lived a remarkable life and blessed a great many people; we did not grieve as those who have no hope, nor did we weep for her, because no one had any doubt at all that she died in Christ. On the other hand, that doesn’t make our loss right now any less real, and it was a very emotional service.Still, I would have loved to have been able to bear witness to the Resurrection the way Sir Winston Churchill did at his state funeral in St. Paul’s Cathedral. For most of the service, it was a very traditional Anglican funeral, but after the benediction, a bugler positioned high in the dome of St. Paul’s began to play Taps: “Day is done, gone the sun from the hills, from the earth, from the sky. Go to sleep, rest in peace, God is nigh.” Not typical procedure at an Anglican funeral, but normal for a military funeral, and so certainly fitting for Churchill. But no sooner had the last note faded to echoes than another bugler, positioned across the dome from the first, began to play Reveille—“It’s time to get up, it’s time to get up, it’s time to get up in the morning!” It was Churchill’s final testimony, that at the end of history, the last note will not be Taps, it will be Reveille—a Reveille to wake the very dead, as the trumpet will sound not an end but a beginning, not death but resurrection, and the end of all death. That is the promise of Easter; that is our hope in Christ.
What ABC didn’t show you
Check out this article on the various pieces of Charlie Gibson’s first interview with Sarah Palin. Looking at the parts of the transcript that weren’t aired, it’s clear this wasn’t just editing for length—it was editing to put as bad a face as possible on Gov. Palin’s answers. No surprise, but if you really want to know how well Gov. Palin understands foreign policy, read the article—and then go on and read the transcript.It’s enough to make me think that Glenn Reynolds is right: politicians who agree to interviews should bring their own cameras and post the raw video themselves so that people can see what really happened.