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Faith in our future?
Michael Barone
April 25, 2005

If you read the headlines, you run the risk of thinking we are headed toward a theocracy.

Alarmists note that George W. Bush invokes his religious faith in many speeches and that his positions on abortion, embryonic-stem-cell research and faith-based charities are informed by it. They decry the law Congress passed to provide federal judicial review in the Terri Schiavo case. Vocal American Catholics bewail the election of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as Pope Benedict XVI.

Blogger Andrew Sullivan called it “a full-scale assault” on liberal Catholics. One of his correspondents called the new pope “this headstrong, self-assured, anti-democratic and egotistical little man.” We all look abroad at the violence done by Islamist fanatics and wonder, without any clear way of being sure, how far such doctrines have taken hold among the world’s 1.2 billion Muslims. We note, more reassuringly but perhaps with some wariness, that most Iraqi voters seem to have followed the lead of the country’s most powerful cleric, Ayatollah Ali Sistani.

But whether the United States is on its way to becoming a theocracy is actually a silly question. No religion is going to impose laws on an unwilling Congress or the people of this country. And we have long lived comfortably with a few trappings of religion in the public space, such as “In God We Trust” or “God save this honorable court.” The real question is whether strong religious belief is on the rise in America and the world. Fifty years ago, secular liberals were confident that education, urbanization and science would lead people to renounce religion. That seems to have happened, if you confine your gaze to Europe, Canada and American university faculty clubs. …

Read the rest at Townhall.com:
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michaelbarone/mb20050425.shtml

but getting close to something I can live with. It will be a three column layout. -jweaks

Excerpt from the April 21, 2005 edition of the Christian Science Monitor:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0421/p09s01-coop.html

Why Air America doesn’t fly
By Brian C. Anderson

NEW YORK - The liberal Air America Radio, just past its first birthday, has probably enjoyed more free publicity than any other enterprise in recent history. But don’t believe the hype: Air America’s left-wing answer to conservative talk radio is failing, just as previous efforts to find liberal Rush Limbaughs have failed.

Wait a second, you say, didn’t I read that Air America has expanded to more than 50 markets? That’s true, but let’s put things in perspective: The morning talk show hosted by William Bennett, conservative pundit and former Reagan administration official, launched at the same time as Air America and reaches nearly 124 markets, including 18 of the top 20, joining the growing ranks of successful right-of-center talk programs (Mr. Limbaugh is still the ratings leader, drawing more than 15 million listeners a week).

And look at Air America’s ratings: They’re pitifully weak, even in places where you would think they’d be strong. WLIB, its flagship in New York City, has sunk to 24th in the metro area Arbitron ratings - worse than the all-Caribbean format it replaced, notes the blog “radioequalizer.” In the liberal meccas of San Francisco and Los Angeles, Air America is doing lousier still. …

For the rest of the story:
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0421/p09s01-coop.html

Brian C. Anderson is senior editor of City Journal, the quarterly published by the Manhattan Institute. © Los Angeles Times.

I’m not happy with any themes I’ve found, so I’m building one, not from scratch but highly modified. It’s going to take another day or two. Until then the theme will change as I’m working on it. -jweaks

Theme design and CSS changes are under way. If you are viewing with Internet Explorer you can expect it to look odd until the new theme is done. -jweaks

“a nail in His place” is undergoing conversion to new blogging software. All the articles won’t be available until converted over. The site may go back and forth between the new and old software for a few days.

Thanks,
james

So good I’ll repeat this here…

THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN LEFT
by Ann Coulter
April 6, 2005

It’s been a tough year for the secularist crowd. There was Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” the moral values election, the Christian hostage subduing her kidnapper by reading from “The Purpose Driven Life,” and the Christian effort to save Terri Schiavo. Not only that, but earlier this year, James Dobson insulted the Democrats’ mascot, SpongeBob SquarePants, with impunity.

And now, for all the hullabaloo in the media, you’d think the Pope had died.

The liberal take on Catholicism is that it’s a controversial religion because of its positions on abortion, sodomy and various other crucial planks of the Democratic platform (curiously, positions that are shared by all three of the world’s major religions).

In defense of the Catholic Church’s most “controversial” position (meaning “contrary to the clearly stated opinion of CNN”), I wanted to return to a story from a few weeks ago that passed from the headlines far too quickly. The “controversial” Catholic position is the ban on girl priests.

read more…

by Gregg Cunningham

RATIONALE FOR THE GENOCIDE AWARENESS PROJECT (GAP)

As part of its Genocide Awareness Project, The Center for Bio-Ethical Reform exhibits large photo murals comparing aborted babies with Jewish Holocaust victims, African Americans killed in racist lynchings, Native Americans exterminated by the US Army, etc. Our purpose is to illuminate the conceptual similarities which exist between abortion and more widely recognized forms of genocide. This is important because perpetrators of genocide always call it something else and the word “abortion” has, therefore, lost most of its meaning.

GENOCIDE AS INDESCRIBABLE EVIL

Visual depictions of abortion are indispensable to the restoration of that meaning because abortion represents an evil so inexpressible that words fail us when we attempt to describe its horror. Abortion will continue to be trivialized as “the lesser of two evils,” or perhaps even “a necessary evil,” as long as it is allowed to remain an invisible abstraction. Pictures make it impossible for anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty to maintain the pretense that “it’s not a baby” and “abortion is not an act of violence.” Pictures also make clear to people of conscience the fact that abortion is an evil whose magnitude is comparable to that of any “crime against humanity.” Educators properly use shocking imagery to teach about genocide and we insist on the right to do the same.

Read the rest here:
cbrinfo.org/Resources/abortion.html (opens in new window)