Jay Nordlinger's Random Thoughts--and Mine
Jay Nordlinger at National Review Online has a few random thoughts on the election and on various reactions to it, mostly from Democratic Party sympathizers in the media and literary hangers-on. With regard to that last link: If Slate thinks that Jane Smiley qualifies as "wise," then I'd hate to see whom they would describe as foolish.
The Garry Wills piece immediately makes me think that Christopher Hitchens must think him a fool. You will recall that I said that Christopher Hitchens gets it only half right. Herewith a little more detail.
Christopher Hitchens needs to understand something--and for that matter, President Bush and his supporters need to understand it, too. We are in a three-cornered war. I realized that as soon as my wife's tears had finally dried from my shoulder on the night of September 11, 2001, and especially after I'd had a chance to look up some choice verses in on-line translations of the Koran. I used to think that Andrew Sullivan got it, too--though why he endorsed Kerry surely must be a mystery to men like Ed Koch, who openly stated that "if we lose our country, debates on domestic side issues are meaningless," or words to that effect.
In one corner, obviously, you can include the Christians. Include me, for starters, and my fellow churchmen, and all those who really "get it" about God and about man's relationship to Him. We say that God is as Real as the computer console and network that carry my words to you. But we also say that God loves you, and would like nothing better than to fold you up in His arms and keep you safe with Him. But there's a barrier: God is Super-clean, and you simply cannot approach Him in a sin-stained condition! So that's why God sent His Son to be the Perfect and Sufficient Sacrifice on your behalf--and mine! I don't represent myself as any more qualified to approach God than you are! We all deserve condemnation--but we have a Good Lawyer to plead our case before God, and He'll gladly take our case, if we would but consult Him.
In another corner, put the secularists--the Maureen Dowds and the Thomas Friedmans and everyone else I have linked to in this post so far today (other than Jay Nordlinger, of course). Until recently, they're all that even I had time to think about. Kerry talked about a "nuisance"? The secularists, for eight years of Bill Clinton, created plenty of nuisance for Christians everywhere, from public-school principals yanking little boys out of their cafeteria seats for saying grace over their school lunch, to teachers basically saying that anyone who disagreed with their sex-obsessed (and bent and inverted) message was, to paraphrase Hans Christian Andersen, stupid or unfit to vote.
Well, September 11, 2001 (or, if you like, 22 Jumada t'Tania in the 1422nd Year of the Hegira) changed everything. Or, it should have. Because the third player in this three-cornered war had just made a devastating, if cowardly, strike. These are the Muslims. Islam is pan-Arab nationalism in religious dress--how do you say Arabia uber alles in Arabic instead of German? The "god" they pray to--actually, a moon god--has given one order: exterminate all who do not believe in him. Forget about "oppression" and "plunder"--they hate us because we are not Muslim, and that's that.
Neither secularist nor Muslim, as far as I know, fully understands the three-cornered nature of this war. All too many secularists say that the Muslim is not their enemy--when nothing could be further from the truth! If Muslims had their way, Barbra Streisand would be told to don the abbayah, shut-up, and start acting like a proper Muslim woman--and James Brolin would be told to keep his wife in line--which literally can mean to crack the whip!--or face a loss of his manly honor. And that in turn brings me to the Muslim's blind spot: He hates Christian and secularist alike (understandable) and fails utterly to distinguish between the two. We Christians are partly to blame for this, in that we have been, in the main, hypocritical in our witness to society. Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson would never have made such a splash, did not millions of people willingly tune in for that spectacle when they ought to have been at Sunday evening services! (I did not find out about Justin stripping Janet on camera until I logged in the next morning and saw a firestorm of controversy--because, observant Baptist that I am, I was in church at the time.) Any time we talk the Talk but do not walk the Walk, we look no better than the secularists, and that diminishes our witness.
Hitchen's problem was that he considered that Bush talks like a religionist (he does not distinguish all that much between Christian and Muslim) but acts like a secularist, on no better evidence than Bush's aggressive prosecution of the War Against Terror. Hitchens fails to grasp that the Christian fears the Muslim just as much as, if not more than, does the secularist, and for good reason. I'm not buying this claptrap that Christians and Muslims pray to the same God. A secularist might believe that. A Muslim certainly knows better. A Christian should never so delude himself.
Andrew Sullivan seems to understand, however. I've seen him round on the Left in this country for failing to support an aggressive pursuit of terrorists everywhere, as they should. But he wimped out at the last, and endorsed John Kerry. If he understood John Kerry as well as the Swiftees do, I am sure he would never have endorsed him. Sullivan's trouble is this lingering thought in his head that maybe Christian and Muslim are not so far apart, after all, in their hostility to all things secular.
Let me make the difference clear: The Christian solution to the secularism problem is usually not to patronize secular entertainments or secular-oriented products. Furthermore, we call upon the government to protect human life at all its stages of development, because Scripture clearly says [Psalm 139:13-16] that life begins at conception, and indeed God knows who we are even earlier. Nor do we care to dignify with the term marriage an overly-intense relationship between (or among) room-mates of the same gender, or more than two. Marriage is, after all, a public act.
But if a man wants his room-mate to be able to visit him in the hospital, or wants to make his will and leave everything to his room-mate, who am I to disagree? That's his property, and his prerogative! (That applies to women, too.) And insurance benefits? Frankly, I think the whole health-insurance system is seriously broken, and the inability of room-mates to list each other on their respective employer-sponsored insurance plans is the least of its problems!
But from the Muslim, such people will get no sympathy. In fact, the Muslim will kick down the door and drag both men (or both women) to the public square, where they will at best, flog them to ribbons, and at worst, cut off their heads with long curved knives. Their founding documents directly order them to do these things.
But don't just take my word for this. Look it up in the Koran!
Now if you think the Koran is contradictory, remember two things:
In closing, I'm going to make a plea that I know will likely fall on some blind eyes and deaf ears. But honor demands that I say it anyway: Let's have an end to the loose talk about Northerners seceding from the Union, and about Christians being no better than Muslims. We have a common enemy, and we need to stick together on this--or else what happened to Theo van Gogh will happen here, and regularly, and even officially if certain people have their way.
The Garry Wills piece immediately makes me think that Christopher Hitchens must think him a fool. You will recall that I said that Christopher Hitchens gets it only half right. Herewith a little more detail.
Christopher Hitchens needs to understand something--and for that matter, President Bush and his supporters need to understand it, too. We are in a three-cornered war. I realized that as soon as my wife's tears had finally dried from my shoulder on the night of September 11, 2001, and especially after I'd had a chance to look up some choice verses in on-line translations of the Koran. I used to think that Andrew Sullivan got it, too--though why he endorsed Kerry surely must be a mystery to men like Ed Koch, who openly stated that "if we lose our country, debates on domestic side issues are meaningless," or words to that effect.
In one corner, obviously, you can include the Christians. Include me, for starters, and my fellow churchmen, and all those who really "get it" about God and about man's relationship to Him. We say that God is as Real as the computer console and network that carry my words to you. But we also say that God loves you, and would like nothing better than to fold you up in His arms and keep you safe with Him. But there's a barrier: God is Super-clean, and you simply cannot approach Him in a sin-stained condition! So that's why God sent His Son to be the Perfect and Sufficient Sacrifice on your behalf--and mine! I don't represent myself as any more qualified to approach God than you are! We all deserve condemnation--but we have a Good Lawyer to plead our case before God, and He'll gladly take our case, if we would but consult Him.
In another corner, put the secularists--the Maureen Dowds and the Thomas Friedmans and everyone else I have linked to in this post so far today (other than Jay Nordlinger, of course). Until recently, they're all that even I had time to think about. Kerry talked about a "nuisance"? The secularists, for eight years of Bill Clinton, created plenty of nuisance for Christians everywhere, from public-school principals yanking little boys out of their cafeteria seats for saying grace over their school lunch, to teachers basically saying that anyone who disagreed with their sex-obsessed (and bent and inverted) message was, to paraphrase Hans Christian Andersen, stupid or unfit to vote.
Well, September 11, 2001 (or, if you like, 22 Jumada t'Tania in the 1422nd Year of the Hegira) changed everything. Or, it should have. Because the third player in this three-cornered war had just made a devastating, if cowardly, strike. These are the Muslims. Islam is pan-Arab nationalism in religious dress--how do you say Arabia uber alles in Arabic instead of German? The "god" they pray to--actually, a moon god--has given one order: exterminate all who do not believe in him. Forget about "oppression" and "plunder"--they hate us because we are not Muslim, and that's that.
Neither secularist nor Muslim, as far as I know, fully understands the three-cornered nature of this war. All too many secularists say that the Muslim is not their enemy--when nothing could be further from the truth! If Muslims had their way, Barbra Streisand would be told to don the abbayah, shut-up, and start acting like a proper Muslim woman--and James Brolin would be told to keep his wife in line--which literally can mean to crack the whip!--or face a loss of his manly honor. And that in turn brings me to the Muslim's blind spot: He hates Christian and secularist alike (understandable) and fails utterly to distinguish between the two. We Christians are partly to blame for this, in that we have been, in the main, hypocritical in our witness to society. Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson would never have made such a splash, did not millions of people willingly tune in for that spectacle when they ought to have been at Sunday evening services! (I did not find out about Justin stripping Janet on camera until I logged in the next morning and saw a firestorm of controversy--because, observant Baptist that I am, I was in church at the time.) Any time we talk the Talk but do not walk the Walk, we look no better than the secularists, and that diminishes our witness.
Hitchen's problem was that he considered that Bush talks like a religionist (he does not distinguish all that much between Christian and Muslim) but acts like a secularist, on no better evidence than Bush's aggressive prosecution of the War Against Terror. Hitchens fails to grasp that the Christian fears the Muslim just as much as, if not more than, does the secularist, and for good reason. I'm not buying this claptrap that Christians and Muslims pray to the same God. A secularist might believe that. A Muslim certainly knows better. A Christian should never so delude himself.
Andrew Sullivan seems to understand, however. I've seen him round on the Left in this country for failing to support an aggressive pursuit of terrorists everywhere, as they should. But he wimped out at the last, and endorsed John Kerry. If he understood John Kerry as well as the Swiftees do, I am sure he would never have endorsed him. Sullivan's trouble is this lingering thought in his head that maybe Christian and Muslim are not so far apart, after all, in their hostility to all things secular.
Let me make the difference clear: The Christian solution to the secularism problem is usually not to patronize secular entertainments or secular-oriented products. Furthermore, we call upon the government to protect human life at all its stages of development, because Scripture clearly says [Psalm 139:13-16] that life begins at conception, and indeed God knows who we are even earlier. Nor do we care to dignify with the term marriage an overly-intense relationship between (or among) room-mates of the same gender, or more than two. Marriage is, after all, a public act.
But if a man wants his room-mate to be able to visit him in the hospital, or wants to make his will and leave everything to his room-mate, who am I to disagree? That's his property, and his prerogative! (That applies to women, too.) And insurance benefits? Frankly, I think the whole health-insurance system is seriously broken, and the inability of room-mates to list each other on their respective employer-sponsored insurance plans is the least of its problems!
But from the Muslim, such people will get no sympathy. In fact, the Muslim will kick down the door and drag both men (or both women) to the public square, where they will at best, flog them to ribbons, and at worst, cut off their heads with long curved knives. Their founding documents directly order them to do these things.
But don't just take my word for this. Look it up in the Koran!
Now if you think the Koran is contradictory, remember two things:
- The Koran has an "abrogation clause" in it, that says that chapter or verse written later takes precedence over anything written earlier.
- The more violent and militant of the Koran's many chapters were written later than the peaceful ones, specifically after Muhammad had to flee from Mecca.
In closing, I'm going to make a plea that I know will likely fall on some blind eyes and deaf ears. But honor demands that I say it anyway: Let's have an end to the loose talk about Northerners seceding from the Union, and about Christians being no better than Muslims. We have a common enemy, and we need to stick together on this--or else what happened to Theo van Gogh will happen here, and regularly, and even officially if certain people have their way.
posted by Temlakos at 10:39 AM
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