Saving another essay, this one from October 2006

THREE AND A HALF KINDS OF HORROR

I John 4 assures us that perfect love casts out fear. In
Hebrews 2 we read that Jesus frees us from the bondage
of the fear of death. Both of these promises come up
often in my prayers in these perilous times. It may be
edifying to discuss what ARE the fears from which we
need liberation. Christians hear plenty about the supreme
fear of having to face God's wrath for our sins; and about
rather trivial fears, like a fear of social embarrassment.
But there's a vast wilderness of other apprehensions and
anxieties, which often gets less attention than either the
greatest or the smallest fears. The Halloween season
seems like a suitable time to explore this ground a bit.

Lon Chaney Senior, the first superstar of scary movies, once
tried to illustrate the essence of horror thusly: if you saw
a circus clown standing at your front door in the middle of
the night, without explanation of what he was doing there,
it would be creepy. A clown is no more able or likely to
harm you than any other man is, but the situation would
give such a sense of things being out of place as to be
alarming. It would suggest that something was wrong with
the world. Before horror movies degenerated into mere
physical bloodbaths with victims being mowed down like
grass, it was really this sense of things moving outside the
normal that gave us those delightful shudders.

In a way, fears oriented to the state of the universe
are a testimony to our being made in the image of God.
We fear a derangement of the universe because we have
some concept of how the universe SHOULD be--which
means that there is more to us than mere animal desires
for comfort and an animal fear of dying. Folktales have
always been a device to process our fears, both crude
fears and relatively noble fears; and the invention of
motion pictures broadened the folktale audience.

The "big three" of old-time horror cinema were Count
Dracula, bringing the rest of the vampires with him; the
Wolfman, bringing the rest of the werewolves with him;
and Frankenstein, bringing the rest of the mad scientists
with him. Each story type carried a different flavor of
dread, all of them extending beyond characters merely
being afraid of being killed. Each type had a different
way of upsetting the natural order--a different clown
to stand outside your door at midnight.

Doctor Frankenstein stood for man himself upsetting the
natural order, arrogantly presuming that his wisdom can
command all the forces of creation. In the greatest mad-
scientist stories ("Dr. Jekkyl and Mr. Hyde" falls into this
category too), the scientist does not set out _wanting_ to
produce harmful results, but his experiment gets out of
his control. The very _absence_ of supernatural elements
in most mad-scientist stories enhances their brand of
horror; it says that we're on our own, with no grounds to
hope for divine intervention that could remedy our blunders.
A great many recent scientific advances, as they affect
health care and the environment, invite comparison to
the story of Doctor Frankenstein; but people disagree
about _which_ activities of science deserve the reproach,
and this article has no space to sort out their positions.

Dracula stood for something almost exactly opposite
to Frankenstein. Where Doctor Frankenstein probed
_outward_ into the unknown, Dracula embodied evil
breaking _into_ our normal world. He represented a
dark force alien to us, intruding upon us as a predator.
Where Frankenstein caused harm by mistake, Dracula
caused harm very much on purpose, with a gigantic
egotism and selfishness that _should_ be repugnant to
us. I say "should," but increasing numbers of horror
fans wish that they could BE vampires and enjoy the
power to victimize others--an attitude that would have
been unthinkable to classic horror actors like Boris
Karloff, who were highly decent people in real life.

The growing prevalence of movies in which vampires
_cannot_ be driven off by anything associated with
God (the "Blade" movies take this attitude, although
the comic series they came from said that vampires
_could_ be held off with a cross) attests to the wish
of many fans that they could be vampires themselves
...AND be immune to any divine counterforce. This
may be motivated by the wish to escape from having
to answer to God for sin; but the same wish could also
arise from a pessimistic fear that God won't help us
against evil, so that we'd better try to join evil, the
way Saruman sold out to Sauron in "Lord of the Rings."
(The classic horror stories of author H.P. Lovecraft
seem to have been motivated by the same desire to
offer appeasement-worship to evil.)

Okay, so far we've got the fear of our own plans
going disastrously wrong; and we've got the fear of a
diabolical power which so insolently defies God as to
make some of us think our only hope is to placate
it by identifying with it. But for purposes of a fairly
short essay, I think the third archetype of cinematic
horror is actually the most fascinating: the Wolfman.
Larry Talbot, the title character of the film so named,
offers a wealth of material for theological discussion;
but first, let's consider the "mood" of werewolf stories.

Both mad scientists and vampires retain something of
human personality; thus, it could in some cases be
possible to reason with them, to offer them something,
to talk them out of killing and destroying. (Even the
monster created by Frankenstein, in the original book,
was no grunting goon, but an intelligent being, who
would never have become a menace if his inventor
had handled him wisely.) But who can negotiate with
a werewolf while he's in his animal form? Werewolves
(for those who are not wishing to BE them) represent
our fear of chaos, of utter lawlessness. They have no
sophisticated agenda; they merely kill without mercy.
We may be able to destroy them or confine them,
but we can make no treaties with them. If werewolves
really existed, they would be a powerful argument for
a cosmos which has no pity on its inhabitants.

But the werewolf theme can venture in two differing
directions, which is why I titled this essay "Three And
A Half Kinds Of Horror." What I am about to describe
can also occur in mad-scientist or vampire stories, but
I believe it is best understood with werewolves.

The really old folk stories of werewolves or other
"skin-changing" monsters, predating the movies, tend
to depict the monsters as unabashedly evil. They have
complete control over their transformation; they turn
into beasts because they _want_ to, and kill innocent
people because they enjoy it. Several centuries ago
in France, there were some insane men who believed
they were werewolves, and who murdered children
for fun. These men found out too late, courtesy of
angry mobs, that they could be killed _without_ the
use of silver bullets. But speaking of insanity: the
advent of motion pictures roughly coincided with
the advent of Freudian psychiatry. Thus, when the
Wolfman was put on the silver screen, he was at the
same time put on a therapist's couch, so to speak.

Cinematic lycanthropy is a disease, transmitted to
anyone who survives being bitten by a werewolf, not
a premeditated choice to do evil. In "The Wolfman,"
protagonist Larry Talbot is thus bitten, by a werewolf
that is changed all the way to wolf-shape rather than
a still-humanoid shape; the attacking monster fails to
finish him, because he kills it by striking it with a
silver-headed cane; but the curse has been passed to
him. Thereafter, Talbot becomes the Wolfman each
full-moon night, and kills people--entirely contrary
to his good and decent character as a human. When
he is the Wolfman, he loses his own personality, and
afterward he wakes up confused about what happened.
Only gradually does he come to understand. Thus
we have the already-mentioned fear of mindless
violence for all the potential victims; but for Talbot
there is another fear: the loss of humanity, the loss
of reason, the loss of control over his own actions.
All through the movie--and in the sequels, when he
is brought back despite being killed before--the hero
is tragically tormented with guilt.

Larry Talbot's ordeal _could_ have been handled as
a parallel to the Apostle Paul's experience of doing
evil that he didn't really want to do; but the scriptwriter
of "The Wolfman" intentionally dismissed the hope of
grace, as shown by the rhyme the irritating old Gypsy
woman recites: "Even a man who is pure in heart and
says his prayers by night / Can become a wolf when
the wolfbane blooms and the moon is full and bright."
At the end of the series, in a pleasant surprise, Talbot
_does_ get cured of being a werewolf, survives an
encounter with Frankenstein's Monster despite losing
his own super-powers, and even gets the girl. (This
was in the film "House of Dracula;" the Big Three
monsters appeared in each other's movies more than
once in the old Universal Pictures era.) But his cure
is the work of a scientist, not of God.

Working a guilt-obscuring psychotherapeutic view
into horror stories produces an odd spiritual hybrid.
Larry Talbot is dramatically remorseful over all the
murders he commits as the Wolfman, so much so that
it's easy to feel toward him the sympathy we feel
for a criminal who sincerely repents and receives
Jesus as Savior. But at the same time, he's juggling
the implications of his werewolf curse having been
caused without his consent, so that it's not "really"
his fault. Some of us, I'm afraid, would probably like
to be admired for our noble confessions of guilt...but
still go on doing the things we're acting remorseful
about. It's also possible to forget that some truly
uncontrollable urges did not START as uncontrollable
urges. An alcoholic cannot rid himself of the craving
...but there was one point in time when HE CHOSE to
start drinking.

If I were in Larry Talbot's situation, as soon as I
realized what was happening, I would arrange to have
a deep, smooth-sided pit excavated--one from which
even a werewolf could not escape. Then I would have
myself lowered into it shortly before the next full
moon, and make sure there were witnesses watching to
see what happened when the moon rose. With me thus
confined, no innocent person would be in danger, and
efforts could get underway to find a cure for me. If
Larry Talbot had been _entirely_ serious about not
wanting to harm the innocent, he should have done
the same thing. (Indeed, the character of Oz in the
"Buffy the Vampire Slayer" series did come up with
a similar way to keep himself from killing people.)
Without failing to realize that some things _are_ out
of a person's control, we should beware of using a
sense of "uncontrollability" as a blanket excuse for
such sins as we ARE able to restrain ourselves from.

There is a real monster out to get us: the one who
used to be an angel of light, and can still appear to
be one. Satan is in some ways like Dracula; the very
name "Dracula" means approximately "Lesser Devil."
Satan would like some of us to become like mad
scientists, others of us to become like werewolves...
and the rest of us to tremble in helpless fear. But
even some horror movies have acknowledged that there
is a power greater than Satan's; in fact, Bram Stoker's
actual novel "Dracula" testified to the ultimate
superiority of God over all dark powers, and some of
the Hammer Films Dracula movies made it clear that God
intervened to help the good guys. Rather than try to
appease the forces of evil by joining them, we should
be calling on the Name of Jesus Christ, Who crushed
the Serpent under His feet.

-- Joseph Richard Ravitts

One More Before I Go To Bed

THE VARIOUS WAYS THAT GOOD DEEDS ARE PUNISHED


The cynical saying that "No good deed goes unpunished" is not
a verbatim quote from Scripture, but quite a few Biblical characters--
even besides Our Lord Himself--did find themselves being punished
precisely for doing good. Elijah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, Peter
and Paul come readily to mind. But it should hardly be necessary to
explain why they were abused and persecuted: evil, unrepentant men,
who were dedicated to wickedness because they enjoyed the selfish
pleasures wickedness brought them, were trying to silence truth, as
in the case of the corrupt Herod Antipas not wanting to be rebuked
by John the Baptist.
But more examination may be required to understand why doers
of good may be "punished" by persons who are NOT acting out of
a conscious and obstinate persistence in recognizable evil. Friends,
family members, fellow believers, and recipients of acts of mercy
all may "punish" a Christian who acts in good conscience--and they
may even think they are doing it for their target's good. So, allow
me to list, in no particular order, the occasions for "punishment."

1} A Christian--indeed, anyone acting upon even flesh-based
kindness--will often come up against astonishing ingratitude from
persons toward whom he or she has displayed generosity. This is
usually because those recipients, whether as individuals or as a
politically-correct victim-group, have learned to have an inflated
sense of entitlement. They feel that they already had a _right_ to
be given whatever help or benefit the generous person gave them,
so they owe that person no thanks or appreciation. They may even
have the attitude "You should have gotten here sooner and given
me more than this; what's wrong with you?"

2} If we do a good deed that someone else _ought_ to have
done and didn't do, even if we are unaware that this other person
was any part of the situation or had any power or duty to act, the
person who failed to act may feel that we are purposely trying to
shame and embarrass him or her. Now, it is true that we should
try to avoid intruding on someone else's territory carelessly; if
the need was not urgent, we should consider the possibility that
the "assigned" person might indeed have attended to it one hour
later if we had kept our noses out of the business. Unfortunate
misunderstandings in matters like this, even where neither party
started out with anything but good intentions, can devastate
friendships. But on the other hand, sometimes the need we see
IS urgent and can't wait for the expected person to intervene;
in that case, it becomes our duty to do the good deed at once,
and it's just too bad if someone else's feathers get ruffled.

3} Someone who is not evil, but who has a different opinion
about exactly _what_ good people should be doing, may perceive
your good deed as going in the wrong direction. For instance, a
perfectly genuine Christian, who simply has never sufficiently
thought through the consequences of making people passively
dependent on government, may look upon an opponent of big
welfare-state government as "having no compassion" and
"siding with the rich against the poor." The fact that liberal
Christians mean well does not make it hurt any less when they
impose caricatures of "right-wing neofascists" on those of us
who sound the alarm about central-government tyranny. Of
course, the liberals would be quick to retort indignantly that
_they_ are hurt by being stereotyped as associated with hard
Marxism; but although this of course also happens, the plain
fact is that present-day media outlets carry FAR MORE slurs
against conservatives than the reverse. (Just try to find _one_
recent action movie in which any large industrial corporation
is depicted as a _good_ thing!)

4} I recall a saying from C.S. Lewis: "Sometimes your only
reward for doing a good deed is to be called on to do a harder
and better one." If you do a good deed which is very costly to
you, and which you simply do not have the power to repeat at
frequent intervals, onlookers and associates may nonetheless
assume that the deed actually came easily for you--and so it's
perfectly all right for them to start demanding that you DO
keep repeating the action daily.

5} Some fellow believers will concoct reasons to claim that
your good deed was "unspiritual." The self-appointed piety
police will accuse you of "exalting yourself" or "trying to earn
salvation by works"--even if nothing of the sort ever crossed
your mind. If you run into difficulties, as doers of good usually
do, your critics will pounce like the false friends of Job, saying
that this is the Lord "showing" you that you're out of His will.

6} AAAAAAAAAAAND of course....the same God-hating
secular establishment which will call you a hypocrite if you
_aren't_ visibly doing good deeds....will call you self-righteous
if you _are_ doing them.


Nonetheless, I urge you in the words of Paul to the Galatian
church: "Let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due season
we will reap if we do not lose heart." If we wait to be active in
God's service until we feel sure that we will be appreciated and
will not be unjustly criticized, we might never get started.


====================================

After this recent article was distributed by e-mail, one Christian lady who had seen it suggested another "punishment": people might tell you that the good deed you just did should have been done for someone else rather than the person you did it for.

And Now, Back To Preserving Things Written SINCE My Old Blogs Froze Up

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WAVES AND SEAS

6 AUGUST 2007:



If I were a passenger in the foremost car of a bullet train that was traveling south at 100 miles per hour, and if I rose from my seat and began walking toward the rear of the train, would I really be moving north? No, I would be moving south at 100 miles per hour minus my walking speed. For simplicity, I leave out the movement of the Earth in space, and the rotation of our galaxy on its axis. There can be forces in life that carry an individual or a society in quite a different direction than superficial movements may seem to indicate.

I gained a greater appreciation for this truth during my Navy career, when as a submarine sailor I learned the nautical distinction between “waves” and “seas.” Ocean waves, properly speaking, are merely ripples on the surface caused by the wind, in which a momentary _shape_ moves across the water; but “seas” refers to
the water _itself_ really moving, under the influence of tides and currents. Thus, a wind out of the northeast would produce waves that made it look as if the ocean’s water were moving toward the southwest, but the real motion of the current could be in exactly the opposite direction. That’s why the traditional good-luck wish of the Navy is “Fair winds _and_ following seas!”—referring to two independent variables.

Speaking of social trends as being toward “right” or “left” is a simplification, like omitting the Earth’s movement in space from the bullet-train illustration; but as in that illustration, a simplification can sometimes correctly focus our attention on those things that actually affect our lives. Thus it is not wrong to
say that, during my entire lifetime, there have been periods of _wave_ motion in society toward the right, but the _seas_ have always kept moving left.

Forty years ago, anyone who advocated giving homosexual cohabitation the full dignity and honor of marriage would have been universally recognized, by those approving of him as well as by those denouncing him, as being on the left. Now, however, in all trendy circles, dogmatic support of homosexual “marriage” _combined_ with unquestioning approval of totally unrestricted abortion is only _barely_ enough to prevent you from being branded as an ultra-reactionary RIGHT-wing extremist.

Forty years ago, the hippie movement, powerful though it was with the help of other pro-Communist forces, was still on the fringes of American society. By now, the graduates of hippiedom have become the establishment, and have many Americans convinced beyond question that everything hippies ever wanted, including the abandonment of Southeast Asia to tyranny, was always so noble that no one but a depraved idiot could argue against it.

A politician like Rudy Giuliani, who favors both abortion and homosexuality AND is himself an unrepentant adulterer, could never have hoped to pass as a moral conservative when I was a teenager; but now he can. I recently heard conservative
radio host Michael Medved speaking on the air with a Giulani supporter, and Mr. Medved allowed his guest to get away with the weaselling evasion of calling Giuliani’s intentional adultery merely a “mistake”—the very sort of evasion Bill Clinton would use to make premeditated immorality sound like a mere accident. Medved permitted this, not because he himself or the conservative movement as a whole have begun approving of adultery, but because these days there scarcely even _are_ any more politicians of adequate prominence who have not gone even farther left on the scale than Giulani has. Much of politics has gone from good guys against bad guys to bad guys against worse guys. {How I wish Duncan Hunter had been given a fair chance!}

I have pondered how the difference between fleeting waves and persistent seas applies to President George W. Bush, a man who continues to be vilified by the hard left for showing ANY remaining vestige of conservative policies—and yet who is himself an advocate of causes which properly belong to the left, such as pressuring Israel to make suicidal concessions to absolutely unappeasable enemies in the name of “peace.” In at least one area of policy, I think that Mr. Bush in the very act of doing a left-wing thing may be trying to be _relatively_ conservative. I have in mind his endless pandering to illegal aliens, and to the Mexican government which he _knows_ is urging them forward in their parasitism upon the United States.

Mr. Bush has lived around globalists all his life. It is my opinion that he believes that the tide of world events is moving unstoppably toward the merging of nations and the loss of our sovereignty. If Mr. Bush is promoting a North American Union, it may be that he is not preferring this _over_ a free United States, but rather that he is preferring it over a single, complete one-world monopoly dictatorship. It may be that he hopes to make waves contrary to the seas, allowing _only_ a regional union as a power center that could resist the still-worse totalitarian planetary regime that the United Nations wants to impose on all of us everywhere.

If this is indeed the President's opinion and hope, I say that we should be at once more optimistic and more pessimistic than he is. Let us fight global totalitarianism as if it were still possible to keep the United States intact, AND prepare our souls for the worst as if the planetwide commune were certain to be in place next week. And as long as we have any strength and freedom left for the fight, we need to try to understand what are the trends occurring around us--as I have tried to do a little bit in this article. Even if we can't change the trend of the seas, the waves we make might nudge some people a little closer to a saving knowledge of Jesus--Whose authority is what the one-world system _really_ wishes to destroy.




Ut fidem praestem in difficultate!

"Anti-Nonsense Alerts" Also Held What I Saved From The Old Homepage

This example had been one of the longest-kept articles on the "Empowered For Freedom" site, an essay which had gone through several revisions after its debut somewhere around maybe mid-1997.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


*** THE GREAT EITHER-OR

Suppose that a helicopter is carrying you into a country completely unknown to you. While still high in the air, you see below you a gigantic pile of ruins: a great stone structure newly demolished, the dust of its collapse only now settling. Tiny human figures are swarming over the rubble, but you are too far away to see their faces or get any impression of their emotions.

The pilot of your helicopter tells you, "That place was a horrible prison, a dungeon of tyranny and injustice. Those people you see are the prisoners, now liberated from an undeserved confinement. The destruction of their prison was the best thing that could have happened to them; now they're free!" But the copilot immediately contradicts him: "Nonsense! That structure was a fortress, which protected those people from their enemies; it also contained the only modern hospital in a five- hundred-mile radius. Having that refuge didn't mean that those people were prisoners---and losing it is a frightful disaster for them!"

Your pilot and copilot cannot both be equally right. The only way to know which of their explanations, if either, is more accurate, is to land the helicopter and investigate more closely. The "Empowered For Freedom" site is here to help you investigate.

If that unknown country is the U.S.A., the demolished structure is that general consensus on Biblical doctrine and morality which sustained our country from its founding until sometime this century. We say "sometime," because the spiritual structure of the U.S.A. was not shattered at a single stroke; rather, it was eroded and undermined. Many citizens nowadays will tell you that this Judeo-Christian consensus was a prison, unnaturally restraining people, and that Americans are better off without it. But we, and many others of both sexes and all races, maintain that it was our fortress, indeed the very foundation of American law and liberty; and that unless it is rebuilt, our individual freedoms are doomed to be lost. Both views cannot be equally true. Either a cruel dungeon, or a saving shelter; it's in your best interests to determine which it was.

Before anyone objects that this choice is too simplistic, let me show one of the complications myself: what I call a "three-sided dualism." The Biblical worldview has always had two major classes of competition: the belief in false gods, and the belief in no gods. Insofar as these two rivals of the truth are also rivals to each other, each will have its own take on the wrecking of the fortress--actually confusing the other falsehood with the Biblical view! Thusly:

A worshipper of false gods--for instance, your standard-model California New Age occultist--may regard Christianity and scientific materialism as allies to each other--strange news to the Christian and the materialist!---because the Christian and the materialist both use organized logic, and both reject the idea of casting magic spells. The occultist, therefore, will believe that he/she beholds the wreckage of atheistic science right alongside the rubble of Christianity in the demolished edifice, and consider it good riddance to both. Meanwhile, the atheist-materialist believes that the Christian and the occultist are more allied to each other than either is to science--because, of course, the Christian and the occultist both believe in supernatural powers at which the materialist scoffs. The materialist, therefore, sees the ruined fortress as the tomb of two supernatural approaches that are both long outdated and worthless.

It is, however, the Christian who actually stands farther removed from the atheist and the pagan than either of those is from the other...because no two false beliefs can be so profoundly separate from each other as all falsehoods are separate from truth. Any Christian adequately educated in history understands that materialism and counterfeit supernaturalism both helped break up the foundations of America's traditional worldview. So, when Christians try to rebuild a morally upright society, although we need not be so hostile to non-Christian involvement as Nehemiah was to the non-Jews who pretended to offer help in rebuilding Jerusalem (intending to sabotage the work), we must deal with non-Christians having a distorted understanding of what it was that collapsed, and what needs to be rebuilt.

To any non-Christian supernaturalist who reads this, I would say: if you've come this far without quitting the site in a huff, you probably are not someone who consciously desires to sabotage truth. Still, you need to be getting spiritual guidance from the right source--the Word of God--if your good intentions are ever to produce genuinely good results. And to the scientific materialist who's made it to this paragraph, I would say: if you even hope to achieve _material_ good in this life, you'd better work on your intellectual honesty. By this I mean that the materialist dismisses every form of faith held by the recognizably religious--yet the materialist himself/herself also operates on faith: faith in whatever scientific theory is in fashion at the moment.

For my part, I did not become a Christian without first considering the merits both of materialism and of occultism. As you continue through our website, I hope that by God's grace Mary and I will be able to show you that the Christian agenda for society is viable and beneficial--because Christianity itself is true and reasonable, not a thing of empty fantasy. So land your helicopter, and get down to digging for the evidence of what I say. In reality, those whose hearts are in Heaven are those who also do the best job of getting down to earth.

Okay, This Is Going Pretty Well, Knock On Wood

By the way, I accidentally omitted the title of that Islam-related article. It was called "Disarmng The False-Guilt Bomb." And now to share what was the very _next_ "Empowered For Freedom" column that I displayed on "Anti-Nonsense Alerts." This one had first been written, as I recall, in autumn of 2005.

::::::::::::::::::::::::::



PREEE-SENTING THE _VERY_ FIRST
STRONG AND AGGRESSIVE WOMAN
_EVER_ SEEN !!


Forty or more years ago, the British TV series "The Avengers"
helped audiences get used to the idea of women who could fight
physically with men and win. The audiences did get used to it;
after all, they had already seen Wonder Woman comics for years,
and those who followed samurai movies had seen deadly swordswomen
on the screen. By the time "The Bionic Woman" and "Charlie's Angels"
were created, popular culture had almost forgotten that there was
ever a time when warrior women were not regarded as commonplace.

Audiences got used to it just fine. But scriptwriters could not get used to the fact that audiences had gotten used to it. They could not bear to acknowledge that the novelty had already passed. So they kept on trumpeting THE VERY FIRST powerful woman...over and over and over and over. The patriarchal straw man had to keep getting knocked down again and again, with each time the "first" time.

Sigourney Weaver in the "Alien" movies was a bold, innovative, unique, daring new
character: a woman who could fight her own battles! Buffy the Vampire Slayer was a bold, innovative, unique, daring new character: a woman who could fight her own battles! Xena the Warrior Princess was a bold, innovative, unique, daring new
character: a woman who could fight her own battles! Demi Moore in "G.I. Jane" was a bold, innovative, unique, daring new character: a woman who could fight her own battles! Claudia Christian's character on "Babylon 5" was a bold, innovative, unique, daring new character: a woman who could fight her own battles! The "Matrix" heroine Trinity was a bold, innovative, unique, daring new character: a woman who
could fight her own battles! Halle Berry as Catwoman was a bold, innovative, unique, daring new character: a woman who could fight her own battles! Milla Jovovich's character in the "Resident Evil" films was a bold, innovative, unique, daring new character: a woman who could fight her own battles! Aeryn Sun of the "Farscape" series was a bold, innovative, unique, daring new character: a woman who could fight her own battles! Guinevere in the recent "King Arthur" movie was a bold, innovative, unique, daring new character: a woman who could fight her own battles! The rewritten-as-female Starbuck on the new "Battlestar Galactica" is a bold, innovative, unique, daring new character: a woman who can fight her own battles!

Well, since women in Western civilization are so obviously being kept in barefoot-and-pregnant subjugation, what we clearly need is a bold, innovative, unique, daring new TV series which, FOR THE FIRST TIME EVER, will depict a woman as being strong and independent, able to think and act for herself. That series, now to be seen on ABC-TV, is "Commander in Chief," starring Geena Davis of "Thelma and Louise" fame as President Hillary Clinton --excuse me, I mean as a fictional female U.S. President.

>> The male-chauvinist straw-man characters on this program plainly have never watched "The Avengers," "Buffy," "Xena," "Babylon 5," or the "Matrix" trilogy, since they just can't believe that a woman could be capable of leadership. I expect, however, that the real message of the show, aimed at us flesh-and-blood men, will be: "If you don't approve of a woman leader practicing far-left-wing politics, that is one and the same thing as you opposing ANY and all women in leadership!"

There's a message fit to fertilize the cornfields of Iowa.

Admirers of Ronald Reagan are typically also admirers of his ally Margaret Thatcher. The United States Armed Forces are full of men who have largely conservative political views, yet have no trouble at all obeying orders from female officers. Millions of conservative American men would happily vote for Condoleezza Rice as our next President, and are delighted to receive the socio-political insights of Michelle Malkin, Janet Parshall, Ann Coulter, Laura Ingraham, Star Parker and other smart women. Last time I checked, none of those women were being kept in slavish submission by conservative men.

So let Geena Davis have her TV fantasy of being THE VERY FIRST woman allowed to attain a position of leadership. But all of us who pay attention to actual facts know how far removed her sulking straw men are from conservative-male reality. If
this new series proves a hit, it will prove that many Americans prefer self-deception over easily available truth. But then, we already knew that; just look at
the way members of both parties are desperately deceiving themselves that Palestinian thugs don't mean what they say about continuing to attack Israel
regardless of how many concessions are offered. Or look at the way members of both
parties have ignored the totally predictable damage being done by millions of illegal immigrants feeding at the trough of America's welfare system without giving
America any loyalty in return.

Given the speed with which ignored realities can return to bite us, I think that the great American self-deception program, of which ABC's feminist dead-horse-beating exercise is only a small part, will not be able to stay on the air much longer. And
if America falls under totalitarianism, Nielsen ratings will be the very least of Geena Davis' worries.

Another Prior-Blog Salvage

My second blog, "Anti-Nonsense Alerts," was begun in early January of 2006, because I saw that hardly anyone was taking me up on the gentle-dialogue invitation anyway. The second blog was an extension of a writing ministry that my departed Mary had actually initiated, which we called (and I still call) "Empowered For Freedom." An actual website by that name, which Mary and I had operated since 1997, sank into oblivion with the collapse of the fly-by-night web server Global Aloha.

My first post on the second blog (after explaining there why I was starting another blog) was this article which had originated in e-mail format, after our old website had begun faltering...

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Some years ago, a group of Wicca practicioners raised a great
stink against the film "The Wizard of Oz." They were outraged
that a witch was depicted as evil--even though another, equally
prominent witch was depicted as good. It wasn't good enough
for them for a film to say that some witches were good; ALL
witches must be above criticism. If a movie showed some
Christian clergymen as bad but others as good, any Christian
who complained about this would be dismissed as a thin-
skinned whiner; but for witches, whose very worldview entails
wanting to bend reality to their personal will, it's only
natural to demand favoritism and call it fairness.

Hold that thought...and turn your thoughts much farther
back in the history of cinema, to the silent era.
Douglas Fairbanks Senior, first of the great swashbucklers,
made a movie called "The Thief of Baghdad," one of the first
great fantasy adventures on film. It was set in a Muslim
civilization, and it portrayed Muslim civilization in a favorable
light. It was not the only American silent movie to do so. (How
did Rudolf Valentino become a sex symbol, if not by starring
in "The Sheik"?)

In 1935, Cecil B. DeMille released "The Crusades," which
(not without factual justification) depicted Saladin as a more
civilized and reasonable man than Richard the Lion-Hearted.
This was in an era when racism still was a very serious
problem in America, yet even racism did nothing to prevent
Muslim culture from being given a fairly friendly portrayal.
Not many years later, Asian actor Sabu starred in
Michael Korda's remake of "The Thief of Baghdad," and in
the new screenplay a very explicitly Islamic spirituality was
clearly shown as the supreme height of merit achieved by
Sabu's character. At least two more adaptations of the story
were to follow in subsequent years; and interspersed with
them would be seven or more films about the Arabian Nights
heroes Ali Baba and Sinbad--all putting Muslim culture in
a positive light.

One of Charlton Heston's earliest leading roles was in
"El Cid." This epic had a Muslim villain, but took pains to
indicate to the audience that this villain was NOT part of
the Islamic mainstream. The Christian hero is made at one
point to suggest that his converting to Islam is conceivable,
but none of the Muslim good guys _ever_ hints at becoming
a Christian. (Making Christianity "exactly equal" to other
faiths always leads to considering it LESS equal--not because
any flaws are discovered in Christianity, but because fallen
human nature has a bias against the gospel.)

Live theater in the English-speaking world has also been
generous to Muslims. Sigmund Romberg's operetta "The
Desert Song" romanticized Arabs; though the hero was really
a European, he sympathized strongly with the Arabs. The
later musical "Kismet" had an all-Muslim cast of characters,
including the historical figure Omar Khayyam. Both shows
also became films eventually.

"Lawrence of Arabia," "The Wind and the Lion," and
Brendan Fraser's more recent Mummy movies have all
made Muslims look good. Topping them all, however, was
Kevin Costner's revisionist Robin Hood film. "Robin Hood,
Prince of Thieves" not only practically made its Muslim
character the star instead of Robin Hood, but in addition
it promoted one medium falsehood and two whopping
falsehoods. Medium falsehood: suggesting that Muslims
invented the telescope. (It was a European who invented
it, after the period when Robin Hood would have lived.)
First whopping falsehood: claiming that male-female
relationships in Muslim societies, _more_ than in Christian
societies, are developed by open communication between
the sexes (when Azim says, "We talk to our women").
Second whopper: when Robin says that the land of Israel
is rightfully Muslim territory.

Add up all these productions, and can you seriously
say that Western media and entertainment have always
portrayed Muslims in a derogatory manner? Not if you
have any honesty, you can't.

But now it's time to remember those Wiccans fussing
about "The Wizard of Oz."

Radical Islam, the system that approved putting out a
murder contract on Salmon Rushdie because he wrote a
book Islamists didn't like, doesn't care how many movies
you make that show Muslim culture as good. If you let
even ONE movie be made that says _anything_ critical of
Islam, you're an Islamophobic bigot. Muslims are allowed
to arrest you in _their_ countries just for talking about the
Lordship of Jesus; but if in a Western country you say
that something's wrong with Islam, you're the intolerant
one. If you're Dutch, you may get knifed for it.

Muslim activists in America, taking advantage of the
level of freedom here which NO Muslim country grants to
Christians, have the gall to claim that our entertainment
media are full of unfairly negative images of Muslims. Of
course, they also claim that there have been many anti-
Muslim hate crimes in America since the 9-11 attacks;
but many if not most of those crimes have turned out to
be fictions, made up by Muslims who knew that Americans
are vulnerable to manipulation by false guilt.

In a time when virtually ALL terrorist threats in the
world _are_ in fact of Muslim origin, American TV and
movies have bent over backwards to pretend that it's
really the old standard white-supremacist neo-Nazis who
are behind everything. Yet when the series "24" actually
got around to having Muslim terrorists in the plotline, the
Council on American-Islamic Relations went ballistic. Didn't
we bigoted Judeo-Christian Americans know that Osama
bin-Laden is really a white South African fascist or something?

But in case too many people figure out that the typical
modern terrorist IS a Muslim and is NOT a white South
African, they have a backup plan. If movie reviews are
accurate, the backup plan can be found in the new movie
"Syriana." Okay, the terrorists are Muslims...but it's not really
their fault. It's the fault of the evil American oil corporations!

Yes, now it all makes sense. Muhammad plundered the ancient
Jewish merchant colonies of Arabia because of evil American
oil corporations. The medieval Turkish empire kidnapped the
sons of Christians to make them janissaries because of evil
American oil corporations. Arabs were taking black Africans
as slaves before slavery got underway in America, but it was
the fault of those oil corporations. American oil tycoons gave
Egypt the idea of refusing to hear testimony from Coptic
Christians against Muslims. And Chechen terrorists wantonly
murdered schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia because of evil
American oil corporations.

Maybe I shouldn't be saying this; George Clooney might make
a movie claiming with a straight face that all the sarcastic
statements above are literal truth. But even if he does make
such a movie, it still won't be enough to make the C.A.I.R.
types drop their fraudulent complaints. (In case you think
I'm too hard on Clooney--did he not make an action movie in
which the big threat was a Serbian terrorist? Come on, now,
how many Serbian terrorist attacks have you heard of? It's
the Albanian Muslims who have ties to bin-Ladin, and who in
addition are deeply into forced-prostitution trafficking.)

I myself have Muslim neighbors. Not only do I get along
just fine with them, but I personally cook food for them at
Ramadan time. They could tell me if they were suffering
from hateful harassment just for being Muslims, and they
know that I would side with them against any such injustice;
but they have no such trouble to report, because THERE IS
NOT any widespread persecution of Muslims in America.
The C.A.I.R. types know that American Muslims are not
oppressed; but it suits them to pretend that they believe there
is oppression, so that false guilt over supposed prejudice will
weaken our will to fight real terrorism. We cannot afford to
let them succeed in this cynical deception.

How about this as a cure for the induced false guilt: let
Americans read English translations of the lying propaganda
which Iranian mullahs and Palestinian thugs broadcast against
Israel--even reviving the long-discredited "Protocols of the
Elders of Zion"--and then compare this for hatefulness with
the American media's average treatment of Muslims. Next,
have people see how long it takes to watch all the pro-Muslim
films I described above. If, after doing this research, you still
think that Muslims have a valid complaint about how they are
portrayed in the West, I have a tropical beach condo in Finland
I'd like to sell you.

Yours for Jesus and America,
Joseph Richard Ravitts

What I've done so far was new blog material, but--

Now, since this blog is partly a salvage operation, I will try here to preserve what was the first post of my first blog, "Faithful In Adversity," from 22 June 2005:

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The Widower Greets You

UT FIDEM PRAESTEM IN DIFFICULTATE!

This is my Latin motto, which translates as: "May I be faithful in adversity!"
It was my private rallying-cry as I stood by my dear wife, Mary Scudellari
Ravitts, during her truly heroic struggle against the Damned Thief--which
is my name for the rare cancer which took her away from me and (no thanks
to it) sent her sailing through The Door Into Summer. I am creating this blog
on the first anniversary of her crossing over to the other side.

We who remain down here in the mortal world find ourselves in a time when
more and more people _don't_ feel like being faithful in adversity; when more
and more people are willing, if things grow difficult, to abandon someone whom
they had promised to love...even, for their own convenience, to "help" that
person go away permanently. This being the case, I hope to encourage the
promotion of LOYALTY in human relationships. I hope that readers of this
blog will share their feelings about what is entailed in staying true, in keeping
promises, in being there for people who depend on us to be there.

This blog is intended to cut right across the categories of all sorts of political
and spiritual persuasions. In the interests of honest disclosure, I will state up
front that I am a Christian heterosexual who usually votes Republican; but I
intend to try to respect the views of everyone who may post here. I do not
want to be involved in any disputes, certainly not angry disputes, if it can
possibly be avoided. Those who know me, know that I often do find myself
in debates; but I don't really _enjoy_ arguing with people--it's just that
sometimes conscience compels me. Here, though, it is precisely in line with
conscience that I want to be as positive and inclusive as I can be. I want to
see common ground between myself and persons who may be dramatically
different from me. So please come with your insights, EVERYBODY.

I won't say that there will NEVER be any political or theological discussion
here; but I ask everyone posting (1) to try to stick mostly to the theme of
loyalty in our individual relationships, and (2) to try to see the good in all
other persons who post here, avoiding direct contradiction as far as possible.
I have other outlets for partisan position-holding. This blog is meant to be
a home for "the better angels of our natures."

Best wishes to future acquaintances,
Joseph Richard Ravitts (pronounced RAY-vitts)
Columbia, Maryland

"Though lovers be lost, love shall not,
And death shall have no dominion." -- Dylan Thomas

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(I never did get the wealth of diverse dialogue I was hoping for. Maybe this new blog will work out better for that, though I am NOT avoiding politics.)