Tonight, a good-natured college girl of my acquaintance reacted in a disappointing way to my online statement that some accusations of racism are false. The young woman chose to line up with a boy who thought it was clever to say that all people are racists but not all are bigots. Whatever the heck _that_ distinction means. The young woman sought to refine this dogmatic assertion by "explaining" that if someone's racism wasn't obvious, well then, it simply was _subconscious_ racism. I was reminded of satires of witch trials, like the one in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail," where _every_ possible result of witch-finding tests is _equally_ treated as "proof" that the suspect is a witch. So I wrote the following to the college girl....
A belief in "subconscious" racism, in "subconscious" anything, can be a way of dismissing the need for _evidence_ of what one believes to be true about people. The people can go through every day of their lives without _acting_ like they ha...ve the quality that you insist they have--but that just means they _subconsciously_ have that quality! Then, no matter _what_ they do, it still somehow "proves" the same pre-chosen conclusion. This all-encompassing "subconscious" explanation covers all bases, trumps all contrary evidence.
________, you are the last young person I would have expected to use a "ghost in the machine" argument; but on your own showing, you see a racist ghost in the machine of every human mind. Whoever has encouraged you to think this way, must be smirking over their success--because, although your own friendly and appealing personality is NOT an arrogant and offensive one, this dogma of universally-present racism is causing you to do something which has the same _effect_ as arrogance. That is, it causes you to assume confidently that you know what is in my personality better than I know it. Well, you _don't_ know my personality better than I do.
But I believe I know why it _seems_ as if racism is everywhere. For various reasons which are not _synonymous_ with genetic heredity, certain attitudes and preferences have come to be shared by large numbers of persons who also happen to share an ethnic background. For instance, when politicians spend decades relentlessly telling African-Americans that they are automatically entitled to welfare handouts, there _will_ be many African-Americans believing that they are automatically entitled to welfare handouts. Then, when someone like me _observes_ the concrete fact that many African-Americans have been taught to expect handouts, those who have themselves been _taught_ to see "racism" in everything, will think that they are seeing racism in me. But they're NOT seeing racism in me; what they're seeing is the fact that I'm aware of a _sociological_ process going on. There is enough real racism in the world, that statements NOT motivated by racism can get mistakenly lumped together with actual racist utterances.
Tossing me a bone by telling me that my supposed racism "isn't immoral" does nothing to negate the presumption of _telling_ me I'm a racist. I'm not claiming such conclusive knowledge of _your_ insides as you claim you have of my "subconscious" racism; but if it should ever occur that you wanted to dismiss some opinion of mine as unreasonable without needing to _prove_ it was unreasonable, it would be mighty handy to be able to say, "Well, Joseph just thinks that way because his racism is distorting his thinking."
________, however you personally came to have this belief in that sneaky goblin of invisible racism, it does happen to be identical with a presupposition used by a LOT of hardcore-leftwing politicians. They use it, not to promote understanding of human nature, but to _silence_ all disagreement with _their_ agendas. "If you don't see the _same_ solutions to social problems as we see, that's your subconscious racism impairing your judgment." Only, they're not usually as nice as you are; they'll go ahead and accuse dissenters of _intentional_ racism. But I don't buy it. You shouldn't buy it either; such a well-intentioned girl as you are ought not to fall into lockstep with this politically-correct falsehood.
The young woman then "clarified" further, by citing research findings which prove that people can't easily recognize differences in _visual_ appearance among members of a different ethnic group than they were brought up with. WELL, DUH! By the same token, I could fail to see visual differences among rocks or trees or machines or buildings of types that I was unfamiliar with. But the politically-correct establishment _will_ use this irrelevant fact of sight-perception to support its race-card playing; and this girl, highly intelligent but far from wise, is prepared to let them do it.
Friday, October 29, 2010
Saturday, October 9, 2010
A Timely Intervention
I saw in the news that a schoolgirl in Fresno, California was kidnapped by a pervert. As the pervert was driving to reach whatever place he intended to use to have his evil way with his innocent victim, a man on the same road spotted him, and used his own vehicle to block the path of the kidnapper. This enabled the child to escape.
That's right: a citizen who was NOT a badge-carrying police officer intervened, and SAVED a crime victim. By the exact reasoning which is used AGAINST private gun ownership, this good man should have minded his own business, and said, "ONLY the police are allowed to do anything." Then the little girl would be dead now, but political correctness would be satisfied.
That's right: a citizen who was NOT a badge-carrying police officer intervened, and SAVED a crime victim. By the exact reasoning which is used AGAINST private gun ownership, this good man should have minded his own business, and said, "ONLY the police are allowed to do anything." Then the little girl would be dead now, but political correctness would be satisfied.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Root for the Home(school) Team
Today the online community where I am most active saw some really acrimonious debate over homeschooling. A teenage boy who had been homeschooled accurately identified the bigotry which is often directed AT homeschooling families, but in his bitterness he blamed homeschooling families themselves FOR that bigotry. So I weighed in with the following. (Note that I began by mentioning a forum member who was defending homeschooling.)
This will be courteous, but relevant. ________ and I have never been each other's rubber stamp, so when I take her side here it should be plain that I have a substantive reason.
It often happens with any kind of minority that its members resent _being_ in a minority, resent being treated as inferior outsiders by the majority. So they try to distance themselves _from_ their own group. Pop psychologists refer to this as "self-hatred;" and as usual, pop psychologists are off the mark. It is not _themselves_ that these resentful souls hate; they hate the _circumstance_ of being treated with disdain.
Be that as it may, history provides illustrations of minorities disassociating themselves from their own group. In Fifties America, for example, black women not only went to considerable trouble to straighten their hair, they even purchased cosmetic products to lighten the color of their skin. Persons pursuing self-worth in such ways may despise _others_ of their group--as if it were the fault of those peers that the group was disadvantaged; but they don't really hate themselves. If they truly hated themselves, they wouldn't be seeking to _give_ themselves an improved situation.
If a homeschooled kid rebels against homeschooling because in his or her case there was "cultic" abuse, that simply is not what I'm talking about. Those black women bleaching their skin in the Fifties did not necessarily have bad parents; they were trying to cope with a broader situation in society which affected them. Likewise, a homeschooler with _wonderful_ parents might _still_ rebel, because of pressures which are not at all of the parents' making.
It is alleged that homeschooling demands too much conformity. Excuse me, public school _doesn't_ demand conformity? I went through public school, Kay through Twelve, and THE CROWD there is quite capable of mercilessly persecuting the "different." The administration likewise; remember those kids in California who recently were told they couldn't be seen wearing American-flag shirts because it might "offend" the group the school was pandering to?
Public schools of some kind have to exist in a society which both is pluralistic and forces many households to have both parents working. But having tutored at numerous public schools, I have seen their shortcomings. All other things being equal, a homeschooled child _will_ emerge smarter than a public-school child, at least in the average public school as they are now. So the more families are able to make a go of homeschooling, the better.
This will be courteous, but relevant. ________ and I have never been each other's rubber stamp, so when I take her side here it should be plain that I have a substantive reason.
It often happens with any kind of minority that its members resent _being_ in a minority, resent being treated as inferior outsiders by the majority. So they try to distance themselves _from_ their own group. Pop psychologists refer to this as "self-hatred;" and as usual, pop psychologists are off the mark. It is not _themselves_ that these resentful souls hate; they hate the _circumstance_ of being treated with disdain.
Be that as it may, history provides illustrations of minorities disassociating themselves from their own group. In Fifties America, for example, black women not only went to considerable trouble to straighten their hair, they even purchased cosmetic products to lighten the color of their skin. Persons pursuing self-worth in such ways may despise _others_ of their group--as if it were the fault of those peers that the group was disadvantaged; but they don't really hate themselves. If they truly hated themselves, they wouldn't be seeking to _give_ themselves an improved situation.
If a homeschooled kid rebels against homeschooling because in his or her case there was "cultic" abuse, that simply is not what I'm talking about. Those black women bleaching their skin in the Fifties did not necessarily have bad parents; they were trying to cope with a broader situation in society which affected them. Likewise, a homeschooler with _wonderful_ parents might _still_ rebel, because of pressures which are not at all of the parents' making.
It is alleged that homeschooling demands too much conformity. Excuse me, public school _doesn't_ demand conformity? I went through public school, Kay through Twelve, and THE CROWD there is quite capable of mercilessly persecuting the "different." The administration likewise; remember those kids in California who recently were told they couldn't be seen wearing American-flag shirts because it might "offend" the group the school was pandering to?
Public schools of some kind have to exist in a society which both is pluralistic and forces many households to have both parents working. But having tutored at numerous public schools, I have seen their shortcomings. All other things being equal, a homeschooled child _will_ emerge smarter than a public-school child, at least in the average public school as they are now. So the more families are able to make a go of homeschooling, the better.
Monday, September 13, 2010
A quick invitation
One of my Facebook friends is a Christian woman named Traycee who is a firefighter. She is also a patriotic American--AND an African-American who is NOT fooled by Barack Obama. Traycee started a separate pro-American forum, which I have joined. I recommend it to others. You can find it at:
http://patriotsforfreeamerica.com/
http://patriotsforfreeamerica.com/
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Addendum to my item about HR1388
Snopes.com recently made a big deal of insisting that HR1388 was not nearly as broad in scope as had been thought. (That was why I kept my language moderate on HR1388, though I stand by everything I said about the general issue of government monopolizing humanitarian service.) If the Snopes people have an agenda to cover for leftwing politicians, telling us to quit worrying about HR1388 could be a piece of illusionist's misdirection, to prevent us from looking at ANOTHER piece of legislation which IS more inclusive in its dictatorial effects.
HR5741, the Universal National Service Act, is that other piece of legislation-- which, if what I now hear is true, is FAR more destructive to our liberty than the other law that only affected students. What I am told is that the U.N.S.A. authorizes the President to create new service agencies at his unilateral discretion, and to compel even persons as old as forty to work for them, if those persons have not yet already served in the armed forces or some equivalent.
If anyone is actually looking, I urge you to investigate this act for yourself, and don't take ONLY Snopes.com's word about it. If Barack Obama cared about helping people AS SUCH, he would be just as happy to let private charity do its job. He wants government to GET ALL THE CREDIT for any humanitarian activity, so as to set in concrete our passive dependency ON the government.
HR5741, the Universal National Service Act, is that other piece of legislation-- which, if what I now hear is true, is FAR more destructive to our liberty than the other law that only affected students. What I am told is that the U.N.S.A. authorizes the President to create new service agencies at his unilateral discretion, and to compel even persons as old as forty to work for them, if those persons have not yet already served in the armed forces or some equivalent.
If anyone is actually looking, I urge you to investigate this act for yourself, and don't take ONLY Snopes.com's word about it. If Barack Obama cared about helping people AS SUCH, he would be just as happy to let private charity do its job. He wants government to GET ALL THE CREDIT for any humanitarian activity, so as to set in concrete our passive dependency ON the government.
For the PIECES of Jerusalem
When Christians mechanically recite "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem," I realize that they mean well, that they do wish for the beleaguered people of Israel to be safe. But it comes across to me as--well, to use that particular Scripture just sounds as if they think that Jerusalem CURRENTLY IS at peace, and only needs to maintain it.
This is like looking at a city block which is engulfed in flames, and saying, "I trust that the people on this block will continue to be able to prevent fires. It would be unfortunate if any of these buildings burned."
Jerusalem, with all of Israel, is under attack NOW. All kinds of war are being waged already against the civilized people of the only Middle Eastern country with a stable representative government. The Barack Hussein Obama regime was waging a kind of war against Israel when it pretended Israelis had no right to build homes in THEIR OWN historical capital city. Now Israel is being expected to give up half of that city. The American hard-leftwingers who enable terrorists are CHOOSING to forget that Israel DID offer just such a concession to the Muslims a decade ago, and all the thanks they got was the Islamist rioting that the Palestinians had INTENDED ALL ALONG to do.
Praying for peace is too little and too late. The war IS on, and HAS been on since 1948 at least. Islamic orthodoxy will NEVER tolerate anyone OTHER than Muslims controlling any territory that Muslims feel like saying is theirs. Remember Spain: it pulled its troops out of Iraq, and the only thanks IT got was Islamists continuing to claim that Spain is also their territory.
I don't know what can be done. America has allowed itself to become SO weak and ineffectual. Islamists on Facebook are getting cockier every day, confident that their cause is unstoppable. (One illustration of their smugness was when a character calling himself Xmox Khan had the gall to cite Moammar Qadhafi as an authority on peace!) Of course we can still pray, but I can't help feeling that prayers are better if they are worded in a way that reflects the actual situation that's being prayed about.
The peace of Jerusalem has already been stolen. Hezbollah may open fire from the north at any time now. I pray for the SURVIVAL of Jerusalem, for waffling Westerners to recognize evil when it's spitting in their faces, and for that evil to be DEFEATED.
This is like looking at a city block which is engulfed in flames, and saying, "I trust that the people on this block will continue to be able to prevent fires. It would be unfortunate if any of these buildings burned."
Jerusalem, with all of Israel, is under attack NOW. All kinds of war are being waged already against the civilized people of the only Middle Eastern country with a stable representative government. The Barack Hussein Obama regime was waging a kind of war against Israel when it pretended Israelis had no right to build homes in THEIR OWN historical capital city. Now Israel is being expected to give up half of that city. The American hard-leftwingers who enable terrorists are CHOOSING to forget that Israel DID offer just such a concession to the Muslims a decade ago, and all the thanks they got was the Islamist rioting that the Palestinians had INTENDED ALL ALONG to do.
Praying for peace is too little and too late. The war IS on, and HAS been on since 1948 at least. Islamic orthodoxy will NEVER tolerate anyone OTHER than Muslims controlling any territory that Muslims feel like saying is theirs. Remember Spain: it pulled its troops out of Iraq, and the only thanks IT got was Islamists continuing to claim that Spain is also their territory.
I don't know what can be done. America has allowed itself to become SO weak and ineffectual. Islamists on Facebook are getting cockier every day, confident that their cause is unstoppable. (One illustration of their smugness was when a character calling himself Xmox Khan had the gall to cite Moammar Qadhafi as an authority on peace!) Of course we can still pray, but I can't help feeling that prayers are better if they are worded in a way that reflects the actual situation that's being prayed about.
The peace of Jerusalem has already been stolen. Hezbollah may open fire from the north at any time now. I pray for the SURVIVAL of Jerusalem, for waffling Westerners to recognize evil when it's spitting in their faces, and for that evil to be DEFEATED.
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
HR-1388
Has anyone been paying attention?
I'm told that the "G.I.V.E. Act" has passed Congress, requiring American citizens to serve in federally-controlled public-service organizations. This is the logical progression of a governmental philosophy which I've been denouncing for many years: the lie that, if the central government isn't meeting human needs, then human needs aren't being met at all. The very pretense that this new government service network is necessary at all, is the same thing as claiming that the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, World Vision, Feed The Children, Doctors Without Borders, and other independent humanitarian agencies haven't been doing anything all these decades.
Am I making myself clear enough? Even without bringing hysterical charges of totalitarian tyranny, it should be enough for you to know that I am right when I say that the justification for HR-1388 is a lie. Not a mistake, not a difference of opinion: an intentional falsehood, an attempt by government to make us believe things which government figures themselves know to be untrue. Even if it is only a limited group of persons who are called on to render government service under HR-1388, for those who are affected by the legislation, it remains a piece of indoctrination in favor of government being the source of all humanitarian provisions. One more intentional step in the direction of regarding private charity as redundant and useless.
Independent charities have IN ACTUAL FACT accomplished great things in America's history; and the incremental "change" to federal control of all charity adds nothing good. The one and only thing the "G.I.V.E. Act" adds to the field of charitable activity...is progress toward a federal monopoly in decision-making. Once the same government supremacy spreads far enough, we will no longer be allowed to use OUR judgment about what things people need. When attempting to help our neighbors, we will have to let the government tell us what we are allowed to do for them and give to them. So if some bureaucrat is too stupid to understand a particular need, then it's just too bad for the persons in need--the bureaucrat will insist on distributing air conditioners in Alaska in winter, or providing ground beef to feed our horses.
Can anybody NOT see this?
Anybody who doesn't see it, isn't looking, or does not yet know where to look...and certainly never lived in the Soviet Union.
If Americans can get their act together this November and gain ground against the Government-Is-All philosophy, it will not be even nearly enough just to throw out some of the power-drunk traitors currently in Congress. We must, we absolutely MUST, put the pressure on, and KEEP the pressure on, to repeal and reject this dictatorial centralizing of all humanitarian activity.
I'm told that the "G.I.V.E. Act" has passed Congress, requiring American citizens to serve in federally-controlled public-service organizations. This is the logical progression of a governmental philosophy which I've been denouncing for many years: the lie that, if the central government isn't meeting human needs, then human needs aren't being met at all. The very pretense that this new government service network is necessary at all, is the same thing as claiming that the Red Cross, the Salvation Army, World Vision, Feed The Children, Doctors Without Borders, and other independent humanitarian agencies haven't been doing anything all these decades.
Am I making myself clear enough? Even without bringing hysterical charges of totalitarian tyranny, it should be enough for you to know that I am right when I say that the justification for HR-1388 is a lie. Not a mistake, not a difference of opinion: an intentional falsehood, an attempt by government to make us believe things which government figures themselves know to be untrue. Even if it is only a limited group of persons who are called on to render government service under HR-1388, for those who are affected by the legislation, it remains a piece of indoctrination in favor of government being the source of all humanitarian provisions. One more intentional step in the direction of regarding private charity as redundant and useless.
Independent charities have IN ACTUAL FACT accomplished great things in America's history; and the incremental "change" to federal control of all charity adds nothing good. The one and only thing the "G.I.V.E. Act" adds to the field of charitable activity...is progress toward a federal monopoly in decision-making. Once the same government supremacy spreads far enough, we will no longer be allowed to use OUR judgment about what things people need. When attempting to help our neighbors, we will have to let the government tell us what we are allowed to do for them and give to them. So if some bureaucrat is too stupid to understand a particular need, then it's just too bad for the persons in need--the bureaucrat will insist on distributing air conditioners in Alaska in winter, or providing ground beef to feed our horses.
Can anybody NOT see this?
Anybody who doesn't see it, isn't looking, or does not yet know where to look...and certainly never lived in the Soviet Union.
If Americans can get their act together this November and gain ground against the Government-Is-All philosophy, it will not be even nearly enough just to throw out some of the power-drunk traitors currently in Congress. We must, we absolutely MUST, put the pressure on, and KEEP the pressure on, to repeal and reject this dictatorial centralizing of all humanitarian activity.
Sunday, July 4, 2010
Spiritually Active at the RenFest
Without ever having to be "pushy," I find that customers, by THEIR OWN initiative, will start meaningful discussions with me when I'm in character at the Colorado festival.
Yesterday, for instance, one teenage girl dragged another one up to me. The one being "dragged" was part of the act; she had on weird contact lenses to make her look weird. The one doing the dragging told me "Archbishop, this girl is possessed by a demon!" I sensed that they wanted me to act out an attempted exorcism, SO THAT they could mock me and mock God by having the "possessed" girl act out being unaffected. Instead, therefore, I slipped out of character and told both girls quite solemnly that they would not find ANYTHING fun about a REAL demonic encounter. They were given much food for thought.
Later the same day, a slightly drunk woman asked me where she could find the palm reader. I was obligated to tell her, and did tell her; but she did have the wits about her to realize, if a bit late, that palm reading JUST MIGHT not be compatible with my Christian convictions. Since she herself asked me about that, I could freely tell her that while I couldn't tell her NOT to see a palm reader, it was indeed alien to my faith. She, also, had food for thought when she and I parted company.
Yesterday, for instance, one teenage girl dragged another one up to me. The one being "dragged" was part of the act; she had on weird contact lenses to make her look weird. The one doing the dragging told me "Archbishop, this girl is possessed by a demon!" I sensed that they wanted me to act out an attempted exorcism, SO THAT they could mock me and mock God by having the "possessed" girl act out being unaffected. Instead, therefore, I slipped out of character and told both girls quite solemnly that they would not find ANYTHING fun about a REAL demonic encounter. They were given much food for thought.
Later the same day, a slightly drunk woman asked me where she could find the palm reader. I was obligated to tell her, and did tell her; but she did have the wits about her to realize, if a bit late, that palm reading JUST MIGHT not be compatible with my Christian convictions. Since she herself asked me about that, I could freely tell her that while I couldn't tell her NOT to see a palm reader, it was indeed alien to my faith. She, also, had food for thought when she and I parted company.
Tuesday, June 22, 2010
The Shield Bearer's Tale
Something like eighty-five years ago, on Long Island, an Irish-American lady named Gladys Havens married an Italian-American architect named Erman Scudellari. The surname Scudellari means "Shield Bearer." When Gladys was about to give birth to her first child, a boy to be named Vincent, her doctor warned her of dangerous difficulties, and said it might come to a choice between her life or her baby's. Without hesitation, the courageous Gladys told him, "Save my baby." In the event, Vincent and his mother both pulled through; and Gladys went on to give birth successfully to three more sons, and one daughter.
The one daughter was Mary Anne Cecilia Scudellari, born on 28 January 1937, and destined to be married to me on 15 April 1979. I have wanted, ever since my Mary passed through the Door Into Summer, to write a thorough biography of her; but God has always kept my attention on persons who were still in mortal life and still needed attention. To the extent that I have obeyed God in this, I have been emulating Mary, who was a longtime nurse, a fiercely loyal friend, and a pro-life activist who did NOT "forget about the woman." Still, on this exact sixth anniversary of the Tuesday morning when my first wife crossed over, I can offer some fragments of what belongs in her biography.
Mary was never anything remotely like a pampered child; her father was cold and distant with her. But Mary grew up tough and strong, while still being capable of love. She became a nurse at New York's Bellevue Hospital, where her best pal was a fellow nurse named Meg Hendricks, whom I eventually had the satisfaction of meeting. Mary and Meg enjoyed their work, and enjoyed outdoor activities like camping.
Mary, not her brothers, cared for both parents in their final illnesses; and it was she who inherited the family house. Prior to this, the only one of Mary's brothers to have loved her, David Scudellari, had also died. So with no one left on Long Island to hold her there, she decided to give up the house and move west. Before she had revealed her intention, she experienced what seemed a sign from God that her plan was right. A little girl in her extended family--a daughter of one of her brothers, I believe--came up to her and, out of the blue, said to her, "Happy landings."
She meant to join a concent in Minnesota, but got no farther west than western Wisconsin, where she worked awhile at raising goats. Then she headed south into Illinois, where she made a living for several years by private in-home care for elderly women. She participated in a Catholic Charismatic fellowship in Rockford, and like many Charismatics, was very open about mingling with Protestants. In fact, for a long time she ceased to feel a need to stick with Catholic churches.
I first met Mary at a Charismatic meeting in the summer of 1972, when I was a Fuller Brush salesman. I considered her attractive from the very first instant of our acquaintance; but as she was older than I was, I initially felt she was out of my league. Really, she WAS out of my league until I grew up some more. But there was nothing to stop me from being friends with her, nor from joining the Birthright chapter she had co-founded in Rockford. With no sexual element in our early relationship, we were free to get to know each other as persons in great depth. We also worked together at a nursing home.
Mary was popular with the young men at Faith Alliance, my first church. Some of them nicknamed her "Scoots," in tribute to how energetic she was. Like me, they enjoyed being pals with her; she would give them haircuts and homemade cookies. And she actively encouraged those of us who were in music ministry. Unlike the other guys, though, I progressed into having much deeper feelings for her. (During the same period, she and I went for our first time ever to a Renaissance Festival, the same kind of activity I have now become part of in my old age.)
Mary and I got married on an Easter Sunday. It is a cheerful memory for me that, on our wedding night, we literally collapsed the bed.
At that time, in 1979, I had a blue-collar job in a warehouse. The next year, unfortunately, I was laid off. The Rockford area was suffering economic troubles then (as it still is now). On top of this, in the summer of 1981, Mary suffered a miscarriage, which the Holy Spirit had warned her would happen. God was not going to let us raise a baby of our own begetting; but later, He providentially made the way for us to adopt a Korean toddler named Ahn Mee-Hwa, who was to become Annemarie Rosalind Ravitts--now Annemarie Martinez, the successful working wife of Anthony Martinez and mother of Mary's and my grandson Dominic.
The need for employment propelled me into the U.S. Navy in 1986. Becoming a Navy wife, Mary charged into this new role the way she always charged into things: with a sort of intelligent recklessness, and a resolve to carry more than her weight. She was an ombudsman for my submarine's crew families in Connecticut, and homeschooled Annemarie when we were stationed in Japan.
Our last duty station was at Fort Meade, Maryland. As always, Mary made it her own duty station too. For instance, she participated in a large seminar on base to discuss quality-of-life issues for military families; she even acted in a comical skit which illustrated the issues. She was as brave as ever, taking a commmunity-health nursing job which sent her into the dangerous neighborhoods of Baltimore; and as compassionate as ever, performing volunteer hospice work until she herself was laid low by cancer.
To be truthful, she had her dark side--which was purged out of her by the ordeal of her own cancer. It was an inclination to excessive anger. This well of indignation inside her was partly resentment of unloving family members back in New York, partly annoyance at people who wouldn't do their share the way she did her share, and partly disgust at the moral decay of society that she could see all around her. Though God did not choose to heal Mary's body, her spirit was healed, and the rage eliminated, by experiencing how much love was lavished upon her during her sickness.
She got to plan her own funeral. One Scripture she called for was Job 19:25-27, the famous "I know that my Redeemer lives" passage. And she made her crossing to the sound of the hymn "There Is A Fountain," sung by me, my sister Tammy, and two hospice ladies who were in attendance.
As I near the conclusion of this terribly incomplete biographical sketch of my true love, the time in the time zone where she died is about nine a.m.--less than an hour and a half before the actual time of her departure. As I am fond of saying, if it had been anything like a fair fight, Mary would have kicked the butt of that cancer until it was crying for its mommy. Nonetheless, Mary's grain of wheat fallen into the earth has borne good fruit. Her visitation and burial were attended by an astonishing diversity of people, from a lesbian neighbor we had befriended, to a Muslim couple from next door, to a U.S. Navy admiral who had known us in Japan, to a Navy honor detail which carried her casket.
The maturing I acquired by my life with Mary was what made me a suitable husband for my second wife Janalee. I'm just one of many persons Mary inspired to do better things and be better people. As for my Mary herself, she now dwells where she always longed to be, in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The one daughter was Mary Anne Cecilia Scudellari, born on 28 January 1937, and destined to be married to me on 15 April 1979. I have wanted, ever since my Mary passed through the Door Into Summer, to write a thorough biography of her; but God has always kept my attention on persons who were still in mortal life and still needed attention. To the extent that I have obeyed God in this, I have been emulating Mary, who was a longtime nurse, a fiercely loyal friend, and a pro-life activist who did NOT "forget about the woman." Still, on this exact sixth anniversary of the Tuesday morning when my first wife crossed over, I can offer some fragments of what belongs in her biography.
Mary was never anything remotely like a pampered child; her father was cold and distant with her. But Mary grew up tough and strong, while still being capable of love. She became a nurse at New York's Bellevue Hospital, where her best pal was a fellow nurse named Meg Hendricks, whom I eventually had the satisfaction of meeting. Mary and Meg enjoyed their work, and enjoyed outdoor activities like camping.
Mary, not her brothers, cared for both parents in their final illnesses; and it was she who inherited the family house. Prior to this, the only one of Mary's brothers to have loved her, David Scudellari, had also died. So with no one left on Long Island to hold her there, she decided to give up the house and move west. Before she had revealed her intention, she experienced what seemed a sign from God that her plan was right. A little girl in her extended family--a daughter of one of her brothers, I believe--came up to her and, out of the blue, said to her, "Happy landings."
She meant to join a concent in Minnesota, but got no farther west than western Wisconsin, where she worked awhile at raising goats. Then she headed south into Illinois, where she made a living for several years by private in-home care for elderly women. She participated in a Catholic Charismatic fellowship in Rockford, and like many Charismatics, was very open about mingling with Protestants. In fact, for a long time she ceased to feel a need to stick with Catholic churches.
I first met Mary at a Charismatic meeting in the summer of 1972, when I was a Fuller Brush salesman. I considered her attractive from the very first instant of our acquaintance; but as she was older than I was, I initially felt she was out of my league. Really, she WAS out of my league until I grew up some more. But there was nothing to stop me from being friends with her, nor from joining the Birthright chapter she had co-founded in Rockford. With no sexual element in our early relationship, we were free to get to know each other as persons in great depth. We also worked together at a nursing home.
Mary was popular with the young men at Faith Alliance, my first church. Some of them nicknamed her "Scoots," in tribute to how energetic she was. Like me, they enjoyed being pals with her; she would give them haircuts and homemade cookies. And she actively encouraged those of us who were in music ministry. Unlike the other guys, though, I progressed into having much deeper feelings for her. (During the same period, she and I went for our first time ever to a Renaissance Festival, the same kind of activity I have now become part of in my old age.)
Mary and I got married on an Easter Sunday. It is a cheerful memory for me that, on our wedding night, we literally collapsed the bed.
At that time, in 1979, I had a blue-collar job in a warehouse. The next year, unfortunately, I was laid off. The Rockford area was suffering economic troubles then (as it still is now). On top of this, in the summer of 1981, Mary suffered a miscarriage, which the Holy Spirit had warned her would happen. God was not going to let us raise a baby of our own begetting; but later, He providentially made the way for us to adopt a Korean toddler named Ahn Mee-Hwa, who was to become Annemarie Rosalind Ravitts--now Annemarie Martinez, the successful working wife of Anthony Martinez and mother of Mary's and my grandson Dominic.
The need for employment propelled me into the U.S. Navy in 1986. Becoming a Navy wife, Mary charged into this new role the way she always charged into things: with a sort of intelligent recklessness, and a resolve to carry more than her weight. She was an ombudsman for my submarine's crew families in Connecticut, and homeschooled Annemarie when we were stationed in Japan.
Our last duty station was at Fort Meade, Maryland. As always, Mary made it her own duty station too. For instance, she participated in a large seminar on base to discuss quality-of-life issues for military families; she even acted in a comical skit which illustrated the issues. She was as brave as ever, taking a commmunity-health nursing job which sent her into the dangerous neighborhoods of Baltimore; and as compassionate as ever, performing volunteer hospice work until she herself was laid low by cancer.
To be truthful, she had her dark side--which was purged out of her by the ordeal of her own cancer. It was an inclination to excessive anger. This well of indignation inside her was partly resentment of unloving family members back in New York, partly annoyance at people who wouldn't do their share the way she did her share, and partly disgust at the moral decay of society that she could see all around her. Though God did not choose to heal Mary's body, her spirit was healed, and the rage eliminated, by experiencing how much love was lavished upon her during her sickness.
She got to plan her own funeral. One Scripture she called for was Job 19:25-27, the famous "I know that my Redeemer lives" passage. And she made her crossing to the sound of the hymn "There Is A Fountain," sung by me, my sister Tammy, and two hospice ladies who were in attendance.
As I near the conclusion of this terribly incomplete biographical sketch of my true love, the time in the time zone where she died is about nine a.m.--less than an hour and a half before the actual time of her departure. As I am fond of saying, if it had been anything like a fair fight, Mary would have kicked the butt of that cancer until it was crying for its mommy. Nonetheless, Mary's grain of wheat fallen into the earth has borne good fruit. Her visitation and burial were attended by an astonishing diversity of people, from a lesbian neighbor we had befriended, to a Muslim couple from next door, to a U.S. Navy admiral who had known us in Japan, to a Navy honor detail which carried her casket.
The maturing I acquired by my life with Mary was what made me a suitable husband for my second wife Janalee. I'm just one of many persons Mary inspired to do better things and be better people. As for my Mary herself, she now dwells where she always longed to be, in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ.
Saturday, May 29, 2010
A Civilian Remembrance On Memorial Day Weekend
On Memorial Day weekend of 2005, I was still in the Navy and stationed in Maryland, but was using my time off to visit home to Rockford. Of course I saw family members; but the supreme reason for this _particular_ visit was to see the former Janalee Whippler, with whom my deceased Mary and I had been acquainted long ago. That final Saturday of May 2005 was the first time Jan and I were ever physically in the same place....with both of us unmarried.
For more than two months preceding this meeting, I had been rebuilding and expanding my friendship with Jan via telephone calls and writing. I had learned much about how God had cleansed her from the straying into sin that had ended her first marriage. In fact, Jan's ex-husband Rich had _encouraged_ my growing closer to Jan. So, with geographical distance giving the benefit of keeping our first interactions purely spiritual and personality-based, Jan and I had already grown close in ways that mattered, even _before_ I knocked on her apartment door and saw her again.
Jan and I ended up getting married--with me in my Navy dress uniform--a year and a half after my Mary's arrival in Heaven. Mary had seen me into the Navy; it was left to Jan to share my retirement ceremony. Jan was given two and a half years to live as my wife, before God called her home also. Now, it has been more than two years since Jan crossed over to glory; but on this Memorial Day weekend, I am particularly remembering her.
Some people don't get it. I did not stop loving Mary when I married Jan; and I have not stopped loving Jan just because I don't feel duty-bound to be a hermit for the rest of my earthly life.
For more than two months preceding this meeting, I had been rebuilding and expanding my friendship with Jan via telephone calls and writing. I had learned much about how God had cleansed her from the straying into sin that had ended her first marriage. In fact, Jan's ex-husband Rich had _encouraged_ my growing closer to Jan. So, with geographical distance giving the benefit of keeping our first interactions purely spiritual and personality-based, Jan and I had already grown close in ways that mattered, even _before_ I knocked on her apartment door and saw her again.
Jan and I ended up getting married--with me in my Navy dress uniform--a year and a half after my Mary's arrival in Heaven. Mary had seen me into the Navy; it was left to Jan to share my retirement ceremony. Jan was given two and a half years to live as my wife, before God called her home also. Now, it has been more than two years since Jan crossed over to glory; but on this Memorial Day weekend, I am particularly remembering her.
Some people don't get it. I did not stop loving Mary when I married Jan; and I have not stopped loving Jan just because I don't feel duty-bound to be a hermit for the rest of my earthly life.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Followup on Linda
No, I won't be marrying her. Linda herself has acknowledged that we are very different in our interests and priorities--which doesn't make her a bad person, but makes US a poor combination. The more so, since she has still MORE ailments than I realized at the start, and MY ailments (chiefly high blood pressure) would be aggravated by having full-time responsibility for her welfare. I do, however, find SOME things I can do at times to assist her in her difficulties.
My colleagues in the Colorado Renaissance Festival were told at our first meeting of the season that I was "in a relationship." None of them read this blog. I will, for the time being, NOT be telling them about the "cancellation" between Linda and me. As long as they think I'm still involved with someone, I can enjoy friendly conversations with the women but not be perceived as hitting on them.
My colleagues in the Colorado Renaissance Festival were told at our first meeting of the season that I was "in a relationship." None of them read this blog. I will, for the time being, NOT be telling them about the "cancellation" between Linda and me. As long as they think I'm still involved with someone, I can enjoy friendly conversations with the women but not be perceived as hitting on them.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
Salty Socialism
When I go grocery shopping, I often buy salt-free canned vegetables, in view of my high blood pressure. Salt-free or low-salt foodstuffs have been available for many years, BY THE INITIATIVE of food companies, WITHOUT the government needing to tell them to provide this alternative.
Recently, however, I heard about calls (WHAT a surprise, under the Obama regime) for direct federal oversight of salt content in foods. Big-government advocates are willfully ignoring the fact that there is ALREADY provision being made for those who need to lower their salt intake. And as a caller to a radio program pointed out, forced across-the-board salt reductions would NOT be making provision for persons with severely LOW blood pressure who actually need MORE salt than most of us do.
Count on big government to insist that one size fits all, as well as to insist that no one can do anything constructive unless government is in charge of it.
More recently, I heard Great Britain's Gordon Brown saying something in a debate which didn't make sense at first. Brown was passionately denouncing British conservatives for wanting, as he put it, to take large amounts of money "out of the economy." I knew that British conservatives, like American conservatives, wish to reduce tax burdens, which means common citizens having more money to spend, and money spent by consumers is very much IN the economy. But at last I realized that for Brown, the government and "the economy" ARE ONE AND THE SAME. For this neo-Marxist, money ISN'T in the economy at all, UNLESS it is in the hands of government, or at least having its use tightly controlled by government.
Gordon Brown's notion of what the word "economy" means is akin to our Democratic Party's notion that no one can possibly avoid being overdosed on salt unless government micromanages their diet. It's all part of the relentless push toward putting every last detail of our lives under ironclad supervision.
When you hear leftists talking up the benefits of more and more government control, be sure to take what they say with a grain of salt--if they'll still allow you to HAVE a grain of salt.
Recently, however, I heard about calls (WHAT a surprise, under the Obama regime) for direct federal oversight of salt content in foods. Big-government advocates are willfully ignoring the fact that there is ALREADY provision being made for those who need to lower their salt intake. And as a caller to a radio program pointed out, forced across-the-board salt reductions would NOT be making provision for persons with severely LOW blood pressure who actually need MORE salt than most of us do.
Count on big government to insist that one size fits all, as well as to insist that no one can do anything constructive unless government is in charge of it.
More recently, I heard Great Britain's Gordon Brown saying something in a debate which didn't make sense at first. Brown was passionately denouncing British conservatives for wanting, as he put it, to take large amounts of money "out of the economy." I knew that British conservatives, like American conservatives, wish to reduce tax burdens, which means common citizens having more money to spend, and money spent by consumers is very much IN the economy. But at last I realized that for Brown, the government and "the economy" ARE ONE AND THE SAME. For this neo-Marxist, money ISN'T in the economy at all, UNLESS it is in the hands of government, or at least having its use tightly controlled by government.
Gordon Brown's notion of what the word "economy" means is akin to our Democratic Party's notion that no one can possibly avoid being overdosed on salt unless government micromanages their diet. It's all part of the relentless push toward putting every last detail of our lives under ironclad supervision.
When you hear leftists talking up the benefits of more and more government control, be sure to take what they say with a grain of salt--if they'll still allow you to HAVE a grain of salt.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Almost at the Two-Year Mark
This coming Friday will be the second anniversary of Janalee's arrival in Heaven. Earlier this month was the thirty-first anniversary of my wedding to my FIRST deceased wife, Mary.
A woman named Linda, who knew Mary and me long ago, has reappeared in my life. She has a load of health problems, most of which are not at all of her own making; much of her trouble has been caused by the sinful negligence of healthcare providers. I am praying for God's clear guidance as to whether Linda is meant to be my third wife; God knows, I have experience in caring for ailing women.
A woman named Linda, who knew Mary and me long ago, has reappeared in my life. She has a load of health problems, most of which are not at all of her own making; much of her trouble has been caused by the sinful negligence of healthcare providers. I am praying for God's clear guidance as to whether Linda is meant to be my third wife; God knows, I have experience in caring for ailing women.
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Fighting Apathy
This weblog has lain idle for a long time: for most of the period since Janalee went Further Up and Further In. I myself have not been entirely idle; for one thing, I have performed in a Renaissance Festival--though if it had been up to me, I would have forgone the festival and had Janalee healed. Anyway, here is my latest "Empowered For Freedom" article....
I'M NOT A JUROR, BUT I SEE FALSE WITNESSES
Aurora, Colorado, March 9, 2010: Imagine two things with me, please. Neither of them is that there's no Heaven.
First, imagine that someone says to you, "There's a right, and there's a wrong, and there's a God Who knows the difference." If you have the sense to know it, America's Founding Fathers, and all the saints of the Bible, would have heartily agreed with this plain statement. Even many agnostics would agree on the first part.
Second, imagine that you have written a book, and that you prepare a summary of its contents as a way to get readers interested. You have complete control of what goes into this summary, so that if it fails to be truly representative of the message of your book, this failure is no one's fault but your own.
Okay, hold those two thoughts, while we travel back in time to last spring--by chance, precisely to Cinco de Mayo of 2009, which has no bearing on this article. That just happened to be the day on which I was one of a crowd of summoned people at the Aurora courthouse, waiting to find out which of us would be selected for jury duty. On the waiting-room TV set was the left-wing talk show "The View;" this day they were discussing the issue of whether any Christian ideas can ever be mentioned in public schools, and likewise whether it's okay to speak definitely _against_ faith in public schools.
Joy Behar said something which, taken in isolation, was true and right, even laudable: "The solution to bad speech is not to silence speech; the solution to bad speech is good speech." This statement, applied with anything resembling honesty, would cut the legs out from under all movements to censor the media under the lying pretense of "protecting us from hate." Unfortunately, Ms. Behar was not clear, in this instance, about _which_ speech in school she regarded as the bad speech: a Christian student's expression of belief, or someone else attacking that belief. So I had to suspend forming any strong opinion about Ms. Behar; but I kept it in mind that someone on the left had admitted in principle that truth should be able to refute falsehood _without_ cheating by resorting to forcible censorship.
The year of hope and change proceeded. In July, getting less public attention than the healthcare issue, Senate majority leader Harry Reid was relentlessly promoting the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act. This bill was labelled with intentional and cynical dishonesty, reflecting the lies which had been circulated at the time of Matthew Shepard's murder. The young gay man's death had been loudly blamed on "Christian bigotry;" but in actual fact, the murderers had not been Christians at all, just ordinary thuggish goons. The hard-left media had as usual been selective in their outrage; another homosexual was murdered in the East around the same time as Shepard, but the killers in that case were black, and so that murder was not widely reported. The media establishment would not allow any nonwhites to be seen as bigots (unless the nonwhites were Christians). Reid knew perfectly well that his hate-crime legislation would not add _anything_ to the prevention of murders, because, well DUH, murder already was illegal. The real purpose, just as with the also-falsely-labelled Fairness Doctrine, was to silence Christians and moral conservatives.
Talkers and writers on the left were never worried about the censorship campaign, because they knew it was not aimed against them. It was around this time that an atheistic writer named Joel Grus was promoting his book, Your Religion Is False, which was aimed at "proving" that every sort of belief in the supernatural, with no exceptions, is not only mistaken, but ridiculous. Now, do you remember the second of the thoughts you were holding? That one comes in here. Joel Grus published online a summary of his book; here, he had complete power to present the parts he wanted to present, complete power to make his summary accurate and reflective of his intent. He wasted no time getting into his mockery, which he doubtless regarded as "fair" because he insulted ALL faiths (except his own humanist creed). The following is from the very beginning of his summary:
...you are probably familiar with religion, although –- depending on your circumstances -– you may know it as "why daddy is required to hit me with a brass fireplace poker when I fail to show him proper amounts of respect," or "those expensive skin-galvanometer sessions I submit to in order to further my show-business career," or "the reason the beautiful, beautiful act of a man making love to another man is in fact ‘an abomination.’ “
You can see a powerful hint of his self-serving motives here. He would call anyone who raised ANY objection to his apparent preference a "hatemonger;" but his concern about hate speech only runs in one direction; HE still is allowed to hate as he pleases. And, as if this were accomplishing anything to prove his points true, he had the cover of his book illustrated with a cartoonist's distortion of a famous painting of Jesus taken from the Cross. This is what C.S. Lewis would call Flippancy: acting AS IF you had already proven your opponents wrong, even if you haven't.
Grus' flippancy continues throughout his lengthy summary, seemingly preaching to the anti-choir, counting on a favorable response from cynics like himself who already _want_ God to be non-existent, and so will gladly treat a shallow joke as if it were an awesome intellectual proof, provided it "proves" what they wanted to believe anyway. Here's another bit:
Most of the religions we will show false involve some sort of “god,” a magical being who lives on a cloud in the sky and throws lightning bolts at his enemies and watches you while you’re showering.
You get the idea: by refusing a priori to allow for any possibility of a transcendent moral authority and source of life, he can _pretend_ that faith was proven false at some point in time, use ridicule as a substitute for organized reasoning, and proceed to his victory celebration without having fought the battle.
A weblog visitor challenged the caustic assertions Grus was making; and with a true leftist's faith in the all-purpose "You took me out of context!" defense, Grus raged at his challenger for forming an inaccurate impression due to not having read the whole book yet. But Grus had had every opportunity to make his excerpts truly indicative of the book's content; if anyone took him out of context, he took _himself_ out of context. Grus, in fact, was merely practicing the leftist double standard, giving himself license to say anything about anyone, but acting like a poor wounded victim if anyone talked back. I myself encounter this all the time, and I do mean ALL the time.
Of course, Joel Grus was only one of a legion of hard leftists who knew perfectly well that hate-crimes legislation would never be invoked to censor _their_ hatred. An editorialist for my own local newspaper, the Aurora Sentinel, expected to be taken seriously when he claimed that protestors against the Marxist takeover of all health care were terrorists. This man doubtless would have gone ballistic if anyone had called the war protestors of the Sixties terrorists--yet it was _their_ movement that generated riots, and even acts of targetted violence which really did qualify as terrorism, _unlike_ the Tea Party rallies now held by law-abiding citizens INCLUDING ME.
(The Associated Press, meanwhile, was shamelessly making partisan use of loaded language in supposedly objective reporting of the healthcare debate: calling members of Congress "recalcitrant" if they didn't blindly follow the Democrat Messiah in his campaign to federalize every last aspirin tablet.)
Now it's time to bring forward the first thought I asked you to hold: the thought of someone saying, "There's a right, and there's a wrong, and there's a God Who knows the difference."
The revisionist cable-TV series of "Battlestar Galactica" already made it the murderous Cylons who talked about believing in a single God instead of the multiple gods the humans believed in. But now, in 2010, we have the spin-off prequel series "Caprica" making the earlier God-bashing seem subtle by comparison. In "Caprica," those words about right, wrong and God were spoken by a _human_ character....who was recruiting for a _terrorist_ force called "Soldiers of the One." So it isn't just the Cylons; the writers ruthlessly insist that _anyone_ believing in a single Supreme Being is, by that very fact, a dangerously warped lunatic. That's right, Mother Teresa was no different from Osama bin-Laden. And the _only_ really happy and functional household I've seen depicted in "Caprica" is a bisexual group-marriage commune; so even the _temporal_ norms associated with the Biblical God are to be scorned as inferior if not outright harmful.
The directors and writers working for the SyFy Channel have no fear at all that "hate speech" rules will be invoked against them for any of this; they, too, know that the censorship movement is intentionally selective.
Hard-core leftists, if seeing this column, are likely to miss the point on purpose, and to try to dismiss me by saying, "Conservatives criticize liberals as often as liberals criticize conservatives, so quit complaining." If they say this, they will be proving themselves (depending on the individual) either ignorant or deliberately dishonest. When we conservatives criticize liberals, we are NOT simultaneously working through the judicial and legislative processes to gag and censor our opponents with the force of law. The liberals ARE trying to gag and censor us--as witness brat-actor Sean Penn saying that reporters should face legal penalties for calling Venezuela's Hugo Chavez the socialistic dictator he is. I'm not aware of Mr. Penn ever getting on the case of Democrats who yelled "Bush is Hitler!" (Not idealizing Bush, but he WAS on the receiving end of this double standard.)
I eventually found an answer to the question of whether Joy Behar is fair and impartial. She showed her true colors when Rush Limbaugh got to be a judge at the 2010 Miss America pageant. When Mr. Limbaugh was introduced, and was loudly applauded, Ms. Behar insisted that he was being booed by the audience. She may have had pals seated near her who did boo, but they were a tiny minority at most; nonetheless, she _wanted_ it to be true that Mr. Limbaugh was being rejected and repudiated. My Tea Party friends need to understand that my bringing up Mr. Limbaugh does NOT mean that I regard him as meeting all our standards; but understand further that for someone like Ms. Behar, anyone even _slightly_ aligned with true moral conservatism is an enemy to be smeared, the way Carrie Prejean got smeared last year. What Ms. Behar did to attack Mr. Limbaugh's reputation, she would just as enthusiastically do to any more genuine conservative you care to name.
The previous could have been an adequate wrap-up for my return to real column writing; but there's always more. Just the other day, at a Big Lots store selling books, I encountered a novel whose motivation is again explainable in terms we were given by C.S. Lewis. In the same book where he discussed flippancy, Mr. Lewis pointed out that people tend to guard against imaginary dangers while ignoring the real ones; he called this "rushing about with fire extinguishers when there is a flood, and crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under."
The novel, A Pagan's Nightmare by Ray Blackston, depicts on its cover the Christian fish symbol altered into the likeness of the menacing shark from "Jaws." Blackston portrays a worldwide Christian dictatorship, in which non-Christians are treated as badly or worse than black Africans were treated under apartheid. If this author has ever lived on the surface of the Earth, on an inhabited continent, he _knows_ that right now there are plenty of groups and factions far more likely to create such a dictatorship than modern Christians are; but he feels free to slander us, precisely because he _also_ knows (however much he pretends to be afraid of the "menace"we represent) that we _won't_ issue fatwas calling for his death. In other words, Christian-bashing is a cheap and easy way to flatter yourself that you're "taking a daring stand" when you know you're not really being the least bit brave.
Some people not at all friendly to Ray Blackston, or to Sean Penn, or to Joel Grus, or to Joy Behar, are gleefully taking advantage of the political correctness which focusses on gagging Christians and patriotic Americans. I know from direct dialogue with fundamentalist Muslims that they claim the right to have territory (notably Mecca) reserved for Islam alone; but they don't want anyone _else_ to come even close to having the same right. Thus, when the Mayor of Lancaster, California said in January that his town was "a Christian community," the pro-jihadist organization C.A.I.R. jumped on him furiously, pretending to believe that this was "hate speech." Of course they would be just as furious in their denials if _they_ were accused of hate speech for their _more_ aggressive statements about "a Muslim cantonment."
So the race is on between two forces of tyrannical censorship which are not really compatible with each other, but which are briefly allied because they both want to shut up the testimony of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Sports fans, place your bets: will America's domestic neo-Marxists be first to make open Christian witness illegal as "hate speech," or will imported Islamists pull ahead on the turn and make open Christian witness illegal as "Islamophobia"?
Praying for America,
Joseph Richard Ravitts
Ut fidem praestem in difficultate!
I'M NOT A JUROR, BUT I SEE FALSE WITNESSES
Aurora, Colorado, March 9, 2010: Imagine two things with me, please. Neither of them is that there's no Heaven.
First, imagine that someone says to you, "There's a right, and there's a wrong, and there's a God Who knows the difference." If you have the sense to know it, America's Founding Fathers, and all the saints of the Bible, would have heartily agreed with this plain statement. Even many agnostics would agree on the first part.
Second, imagine that you have written a book, and that you prepare a summary of its contents as a way to get readers interested. You have complete control of what goes into this summary, so that if it fails to be truly representative of the message of your book, this failure is no one's fault but your own.
Okay, hold those two thoughts, while we travel back in time to last spring--by chance, precisely to Cinco de Mayo of 2009, which has no bearing on this article. That just happened to be the day on which I was one of a crowd of summoned people at the Aurora courthouse, waiting to find out which of us would be selected for jury duty. On the waiting-room TV set was the left-wing talk show "The View;" this day they were discussing the issue of whether any Christian ideas can ever be mentioned in public schools, and likewise whether it's okay to speak definitely _against_ faith in public schools.
Joy Behar said something which, taken in isolation, was true and right, even laudable: "The solution to bad speech is not to silence speech; the solution to bad speech is good speech." This statement, applied with anything resembling honesty, would cut the legs out from under all movements to censor the media under the lying pretense of "protecting us from hate." Unfortunately, Ms. Behar was not clear, in this instance, about _which_ speech in school she regarded as the bad speech: a Christian student's expression of belief, or someone else attacking that belief. So I had to suspend forming any strong opinion about Ms. Behar; but I kept it in mind that someone on the left had admitted in principle that truth should be able to refute falsehood _without_ cheating by resorting to forcible censorship.
The year of hope and change proceeded. In July, getting less public attention than the healthcare issue, Senate majority leader Harry Reid was relentlessly promoting the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Act. This bill was labelled with intentional and cynical dishonesty, reflecting the lies which had been circulated at the time of Matthew Shepard's murder. The young gay man's death had been loudly blamed on "Christian bigotry;" but in actual fact, the murderers had not been Christians at all, just ordinary thuggish goons. The hard-left media had as usual been selective in their outrage; another homosexual was murdered in the East around the same time as Shepard, but the killers in that case were black, and so that murder was not widely reported. The media establishment would not allow any nonwhites to be seen as bigots (unless the nonwhites were Christians). Reid knew perfectly well that his hate-crime legislation would not add _anything_ to the prevention of murders, because, well DUH, murder already was illegal. The real purpose, just as with the also-falsely-labelled Fairness Doctrine, was to silence Christians and moral conservatives.
Talkers and writers on the left were never worried about the censorship campaign, because they knew it was not aimed against them. It was around this time that an atheistic writer named Joel Grus was promoting his book, Your Religion Is False, which was aimed at "proving" that every sort of belief in the supernatural, with no exceptions, is not only mistaken, but ridiculous. Now, do you remember the second of the thoughts you were holding? That one comes in here. Joel Grus published online a summary of his book; here, he had complete power to present the parts he wanted to present, complete power to make his summary accurate and reflective of his intent. He wasted no time getting into his mockery, which he doubtless regarded as "fair" because he insulted ALL faiths (except his own humanist creed). The following is from the very beginning of his summary:
...you are probably familiar with religion, although –- depending on your circumstances -– you may know it as "why daddy is required to hit me with a brass fireplace poker when I fail to show him proper amounts of respect," or "those expensive skin-galvanometer sessions I submit to in order to further my show-business career," or "the reason the beautiful, beautiful act of a man making love to another man is in fact ‘an abomination.’ “
You can see a powerful hint of his self-serving motives here. He would call anyone who raised ANY objection to his apparent preference a "hatemonger;" but his concern about hate speech only runs in one direction; HE still is allowed to hate as he pleases. And, as if this were accomplishing anything to prove his points true, he had the cover of his book illustrated with a cartoonist's distortion of a famous painting of Jesus taken from the Cross. This is what C.S. Lewis would call Flippancy: acting AS IF you had already proven your opponents wrong, even if you haven't.
Grus' flippancy continues throughout his lengthy summary, seemingly preaching to the anti-choir, counting on a favorable response from cynics like himself who already _want_ God to be non-existent, and so will gladly treat a shallow joke as if it were an awesome intellectual proof, provided it "proves" what they wanted to believe anyway. Here's another bit:
Most of the religions we will show false involve some sort of “god,” a magical being who lives on a cloud in the sky and throws lightning bolts at his enemies and watches you while you’re showering.
You get the idea: by refusing a priori to allow for any possibility of a transcendent moral authority and source of life, he can _pretend_ that faith was proven false at some point in time, use ridicule as a substitute for organized reasoning, and proceed to his victory celebration without having fought the battle.
A weblog visitor challenged the caustic assertions Grus was making; and with a true leftist's faith in the all-purpose "You took me out of context!" defense, Grus raged at his challenger for forming an inaccurate impression due to not having read the whole book yet. But Grus had had every opportunity to make his excerpts truly indicative of the book's content; if anyone took him out of context, he took _himself_ out of context. Grus, in fact, was merely practicing the leftist double standard, giving himself license to say anything about anyone, but acting like a poor wounded victim if anyone talked back. I myself encounter this all the time, and I do mean ALL the time.
Of course, Joel Grus was only one of a legion of hard leftists who knew perfectly well that hate-crimes legislation would never be invoked to censor _their_ hatred. An editorialist for my own local newspaper, the Aurora Sentinel, expected to be taken seriously when he claimed that protestors against the Marxist takeover of all health care were terrorists. This man doubtless would have gone ballistic if anyone had called the war protestors of the Sixties terrorists--yet it was _their_ movement that generated riots, and even acts of targetted violence which really did qualify as terrorism, _unlike_ the Tea Party rallies now held by law-abiding citizens INCLUDING ME.
(The Associated Press, meanwhile, was shamelessly making partisan use of loaded language in supposedly objective reporting of the healthcare debate: calling members of Congress "recalcitrant" if they didn't blindly follow the Democrat Messiah in his campaign to federalize every last aspirin tablet.)
Now it's time to bring forward the first thought I asked you to hold: the thought of someone saying, "There's a right, and there's a wrong, and there's a God Who knows the difference."
The revisionist cable-TV series of "Battlestar Galactica" already made it the murderous Cylons who talked about believing in a single God instead of the multiple gods the humans believed in. But now, in 2010, we have the spin-off prequel series "Caprica" making the earlier God-bashing seem subtle by comparison. In "Caprica," those words about right, wrong and God were spoken by a _human_ character....who was recruiting for a _terrorist_ force called "Soldiers of the One." So it isn't just the Cylons; the writers ruthlessly insist that _anyone_ believing in a single Supreme Being is, by that very fact, a dangerously warped lunatic. That's right, Mother Teresa was no different from Osama bin-Laden. And the _only_ really happy and functional household I've seen depicted in "Caprica" is a bisexual group-marriage commune; so even the _temporal_ norms associated with the Biblical God are to be scorned as inferior if not outright harmful.
The directors and writers working for the SyFy Channel have no fear at all that "hate speech" rules will be invoked against them for any of this; they, too, know that the censorship movement is intentionally selective.
Hard-core leftists, if seeing this column, are likely to miss the point on purpose, and to try to dismiss me by saying, "Conservatives criticize liberals as often as liberals criticize conservatives, so quit complaining." If they say this, they will be proving themselves (depending on the individual) either ignorant or deliberately dishonest. When we conservatives criticize liberals, we are NOT simultaneously working through the judicial and legislative processes to gag and censor our opponents with the force of law. The liberals ARE trying to gag and censor us--as witness brat-actor Sean Penn saying that reporters should face legal penalties for calling Venezuela's Hugo Chavez the socialistic dictator he is. I'm not aware of Mr. Penn ever getting on the case of Democrats who yelled "Bush is Hitler!" (Not idealizing Bush, but he WAS on the receiving end of this double standard.)
I eventually found an answer to the question of whether Joy Behar is fair and impartial. She showed her true colors when Rush Limbaugh got to be a judge at the 2010 Miss America pageant. When Mr. Limbaugh was introduced, and was loudly applauded, Ms. Behar insisted that he was being booed by the audience. She may have had pals seated near her who did boo, but they were a tiny minority at most; nonetheless, she _wanted_ it to be true that Mr. Limbaugh was being rejected and repudiated. My Tea Party friends need to understand that my bringing up Mr. Limbaugh does NOT mean that I regard him as meeting all our standards; but understand further that for someone like Ms. Behar, anyone even _slightly_ aligned with true moral conservatism is an enemy to be smeared, the way Carrie Prejean got smeared last year. What Ms. Behar did to attack Mr. Limbaugh's reputation, she would just as enthusiastically do to any more genuine conservative you care to name.
The previous could have been an adequate wrap-up for my return to real column writing; but there's always more. Just the other day, at a Big Lots store selling books, I encountered a novel whose motivation is again explainable in terms we were given by C.S. Lewis. In the same book where he discussed flippancy, Mr. Lewis pointed out that people tend to guard against imaginary dangers while ignoring the real ones; he called this "rushing about with fire extinguishers when there is a flood, and crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gunwale under."
The novel, A Pagan's Nightmare by Ray Blackston, depicts on its cover the Christian fish symbol altered into the likeness of the menacing shark from "Jaws." Blackston portrays a worldwide Christian dictatorship, in which non-Christians are treated as badly or worse than black Africans were treated under apartheid. If this author has ever lived on the surface of the Earth, on an inhabited continent, he _knows_ that right now there are plenty of groups and factions far more likely to create such a dictatorship than modern Christians are; but he feels free to slander us, precisely because he _also_ knows (however much he pretends to be afraid of the "menace"we represent) that we _won't_ issue fatwas calling for his death. In other words, Christian-bashing is a cheap and easy way to flatter yourself that you're "taking a daring stand" when you know you're not really being the least bit brave.
Some people not at all friendly to Ray Blackston, or to Sean Penn, or to Joel Grus, or to Joy Behar, are gleefully taking advantage of the political correctness which focusses on gagging Christians and patriotic Americans. I know from direct dialogue with fundamentalist Muslims that they claim the right to have territory (notably Mecca) reserved for Islam alone; but they don't want anyone _else_ to come even close to having the same right. Thus, when the Mayor of Lancaster, California said in January that his town was "a Christian community," the pro-jihadist organization C.A.I.R. jumped on him furiously, pretending to believe that this was "hate speech." Of course they would be just as furious in their denials if _they_ were accused of hate speech for their _more_ aggressive statements about "a Muslim cantonment."
So the race is on between two forces of tyrannical censorship which are not really compatible with each other, but which are briefly allied because they both want to shut up the testimony of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ. Sports fans, place your bets: will America's domestic neo-Marxists be first to make open Christian witness illegal as "hate speech," or will imported Islamists pull ahead on the turn and make open Christian witness illegal as "Islamophobia"?
Praying for America,
Joseph Richard Ravitts
Ut fidem praestem in difficultate!
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