Time Immortal

Anyone surprised?

Researchers at the University of New South Wales have found that Australians perceive Muslim-style headgear as a threat, even if they don’t realise they hold any prejudice.

Next question: apart from the possibility of prejudice, might there be…other…reasons why things that are recognizably connected with Islam might be regarded as a threat by Westerners, both male and female?

Just one other teensy little reason? Anyone?

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Sigmund, Carl, and Alfred link to an article from Quadrant that discusses the pressures that modern young women often find themselves facing. It’s a pretty terrifying read, and I also think it’s a rather damning indictment of feminism and the various social changes that have emerged out of, or parallel to, that movement. Oh, don’t get me wrong — early feminism achieved some good ends. But suffrage and wage equity were one thing; abortion and the “liberation” of sexuality were quite a different thing, and then not nearly so beneficial.

Trends in popular culture, the insidious creep of the cult of bodily perfection, the dominance of fad diets, billboards and magazines depicting flawless female forms, all play a part. Then there’s the commercial interests of companies marketing the promise of success in life through the bowling-ball breasts preferred by readers of Zoo.

Another significant factor is that the movement for women’s equality was overtaken by the movement for sexual licence — the sexual revolution. To be free has come to mean the freedom to wrap your legs around a pole, flash your breasts in public, girls-gone-wild style, or perform acts of the oral variety on school-boys at weekend parties in lieu of the (as traditionally understood) goodnight kiss.

IN AN AGE OF “Girl Power”, many girls are feeling powerless. They are facing unprecedented social pressure, their emotional and psychological well-being at risk in ways never before imagined.

I understand that the 1950s weren’t exactly all that and a bag of chips for women, and that’s unfortunate. But it has to be said: back then, things were a lot more…well…wholesome. “Sex sells” was hardly the norm in marketing, and the televisions and billboards were not plastered with nudity and just-shy-of-soft-core-pornographic imagery. One might have been able to thumb through a Life magazine and note the presence of a lingere add or two, but even these were reasonably tasteful when compared against even what one can sometimes find in the Sears catalogue.

Heck, even the pinup girls were normally proportioned, and had figures that any reasonably healthy women wouldn’t have to starve herself to emulate. For whatever scandals might have surrounded Betty Page or Marilyn Monroe, their figures were normal and healthily proportioned; they weren’t Photoshopped, nor were they expected to be. Nowadays, one can hardly see a woman (or a man) in a magazine or newspaper who hasn’t had their picture retouched in some fashion.

The body has become a project that a girl has to work on full-time. If she stops to even take a breath, she might gain weight. Too many girls are trying to imitate half-starved celebrities, and are obsessed with trying to conform to impossible-to-attain highly sexualised images. Some sobering statistics:

A Mission Australia national survey (2007) of 29,000 young people aged eleven to twenty-four found that body image was the most important problem for them — ahead of family conflict, stress, bullying, alcohol, drugs and suicide.

The Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health found that between 40 per cent and 82 per cent of young women were dissatisfied with their weight and/or shape.

Close to 20 per cent of adolescent girls use fasting for two or more days to lose weight. Another 13 per cent use vomiting. Others rely on slimming pills, chewing but not swallowing food, smoking and laxative abuse, as found in the 2006 National Youth Cultures of Eating Study.

One in 100 adolescent girls suffers anorexia.

An estimated one in five is bulimic.

One in four teenage girls wants to have plastic surgery, according to reports in August last year.

To say nothing of the hyper-sexualized images one sees constantly thrown at young women from every angle. Dove is maybe the one exception to this trend, what with their “Campaign for Real Beauty” and their use of normally-proportioned women in their marketing campaigns. Still, one notes that Dove does make and market products that ostensibly are to be used to “firm up” the skin and keep it “looking young”, thus stoking the fires of the dissatisfaction with body image that plagues many women today.

And much of this can be traced back, I think, to when feminism and other movements sought to “liberate” sexuality, especially female sexuality. The outcome of such a goal should have been predictable — once sex was no longer something “special”, titilation was fair game for marketers. And like the old maxim about Labour Day and white clothes, once sex was liberated it was only a matter of time before women who didn’t look and dress a certain way, and who didn’t “put out” when it was demanded of them, would be thought of as having committed some kind of faux pas.

Feminism, at its outset, did some great things for women. But in the wake of the sexual revolution and its disastrous results, it would seem that the drive to “liberate” women has only left them in heavier, more tightly fastened shackles.

Update: Welcome, Steynians!

So much so, in fact, that the Aussies gave him a kitten named Bella. To keep him company. While he plays Mozart on the grand piano in the retreat he is staying at.

Too cool.

Canada’s age of sexual consent is going to be bumped from 14 to 16. I realize that’s not much of a jump, but it does bring Canada in line with the laws of other nations around the world, which is good. If I understand it correctly, Canada had a bit of a reputation as a place where one could go if one’s…uhm…preferences tended toward the younger crowd.

The legislation was brought in by the Conservative government in part to deal with older internet predators who troll the web looking for younger victims.

Canada’s age of consent will now be in line with other countries, such as Britain and Australia, and most American states.

The intent of the new law is not to criminalize teenage sex, but to crackdown on adults who prey on youth, former justice minister Vic Toews said when the bill making the change was introduced.

I keep accumulating reasons to be a) happy with the government, and to b) be happy to be Canadian again. I count this as another entry in both categories.

Samuel Skinner writes in again to follow up on my previous reply to him. It seems that my prediction has come true; between Joel and Sam, it would appear that another atheist season is upon Time Immortal.

Perhaps it’s just my fuzzy memory, but I seem to recall another such season beginning at about this time last year. Weird.

I think I’m going to handle this one in an “interlinear” fashion as well, simply because it wanders between a bunch of topics and concepts; it will be easier to framework a response (and seem more coherent) to handle it paragraph by paragraph.

By “looking up on google”, I was refering to atheists basing Morality on some something other than theistic premises. I didn’t mean to show it was the only way with that comment, just that it occurs.

That’s true to a point, although most such premises are…wanting? Yes, wanting, O Reader. Or, alternatively, they are somewhat hypocritical, as they are little more than an attempt to invoke a very (or very nearly) Christian moral sensibility without invoking the Christian deity. Of course, some sense of telos is still used in secular moral reasoning; absent an appeal to some manner of higher ideal, it is more or less impossible to suggest that there is any sort of concrete moral ideal.

Again, that’s not to say that believers are inherently more moral than atheists, nor is it to say that atheists are inherently immoral; it is simply to remark that we really cannot begin to discuss the idea that morality exists and/or that it has concrete tenets of any sort without first invoking something that atheists, on the surface at least, deny exists: something that transcends the human condition and this empirical realm in which we live.

Most people can agree that it is wrong to rape someone, or that it is wrong to kill someone. Most people can agree that men and women are human persons possessed of equal rights and dignity on the basis of their humanity alone. Behind each such concept is a moral imperative that cannot be justified from within a purely empirical or falsifiable framework, especially the notion that there is an innate dignity and equality that exists between all human beings (since all the evidence suggests that steep inequalities exist in terms of things like physical strength, level of intelligence, pain and temperature tolerance, and so on).

Scratch an atheist’s moral reasoning, I have discovered, and one very quickly finds a very subtle attempt to sneak a transcendental concept into what is ostensibly an argument from cold, concrete empiricism or falsifiability in the best scientific tradition. Because one cannot compose a moral imperative without doing so at some level.

Um… it isn’t straw man or adhominum. You are saying that because of Christians we have all this wondeful things. Implied in that statement is that noone else would have been capable of doing such deeds.

Firstly, it was a straw-man argument that was previously made, O Reader; Sam responded to my suggestion of society’s reliance on Christian moral capital by dismantling the assertion that theists are more moral than atheists. Since I made no such claim in my original article, Sam’s invocation of that claim is an almost textbook example of a straw man argument — he regards my point as having been refuted when in fact all he has done is refuted a point I did not make in the first place.

Intellectual dishonesty? Perhaps. The charitable assumption would be carelessness, of course.

At any rate, Sam attempts to justify himself above, though not to great effect; my statement comes with no attached implication that “noone else would have been capable” of establishing Western society with the moral foundation and legal principles that it has. I’m fully willing to grant the possibility that another philosophical system, apart from Christianity, could have furnished a moral society. And indeed, there are other philosophies in the world.

Of course, in looking at different societies that have emerged around the world, I also tend to look on my above statement in the same light as Churchill looked upon democracy: Christianity may not have been the only system that could have given the West its moral and legal foundation, and it may not have been the best system upon which to base that moral and legal foundation; it is better than all the others that have been tried.

We can look at the Islamic world and observe that in Islam there is not a great lot of evidence that the Muslim religion would have furnished the West with the same concepts of equality and human dignity. Much the same can be said for Hinduism (the most salient example of which is India, which still struggles with the concept of a caste system). The failures of various flavours of animism are made evident in looking at Africa, and even atheism has not had a good go of things when it has been made the official state “religious” stance — the most morally depraved regimes in human history (i.e. Stalin’s Soviet Union and Mao’s China) were very ardently atheistic.

An argument could be made in favour of Buddhism, except that Buddhism doesn’t really proseltyize and so never reached the West during its founding. And even then, those nations which comprise Buddhist majorities have either not done well, or have done well in part thanks to Western intervention.

In other words, when one takes as an example the rest of the world and the societies that have sprung up around every other flavour of philosophical conjecture, one is left with the distinct impression that while it is certainly possible that Christianity is not the only religion which might have furnished the West with its moral foundation, it is rather improbable that another religion, or any kind of secularism, would have done the job.

And like as not, the way history unfolded was that it was Christianity which formed the moral and philosophical foundation of the West, and it is Christianity’s influence which can be detected still in bills of rights and codes of law in most Western nations. That is not to say these nations are inherently “Christian,” nor is it in any way an attempt to imply, again, that Christians are the more moral — it is simply an observation of an historical reality. Christian principles built up most Western nations, and Christian soldiers fought and died to preserve them against outside aggressors (such as the Moors) during those key, formative centuries.

People aren’t inherently moral- psychopaths are a good example of those without “morality written upon their heart. In addition people have “written upon their heart” deeply immoral instinctions like tribalism.

I make two observations about Sam’s argument here.

Firstly, if one wants to refute the idea that not all people are inherently moral, one could do better than basing one’s objection on persons with some manner of disorder. I could, for example, assert that people are inherently possessed of a working pair of lungs; arguing that some people have asthma does not actually disprove the statement, because asthma is a disorder, a deviation from the norm. And I am commenting on the norm. That psychopaths act immorally is regrettable and unfortunate, yes, but it does not mean that the in the normative sense, human beings do not have an innate moral sensibility etched into the fabric of their being. It just means that they are either a) ignoring it, or b) not perceiving it.

Secondly, I observe that if what Sam says is true, then Sam has just undermined the notion that any sort of humanistic morality can be composed; that is, he has argued that the best moral code that secularism could hope to promulgate is a sort of neutral amorality. This would seem to argue against his assertions, and mine, that theists are not the only ones who can be moral.

Now, the remark about tribalism is interesting, O Reader, and Sam posits that the instinct towards it is a) immoral and b) also written on the human heart. Tribalism certainly has its bad points, although to be fair it is like any other human instinct: the morality or immorality of it is dependent on what we do with it, as much as is the case with…say…the human sexual instinct.

Tribalism can lead to xenophobia and racism, it is true, just as the human sexual instinct can, if improperly exercised, result in things like rape. However, human beings are social creatures; we tend to fare poorly when we “go it alone.” The tribal instinct bonds us to other members of a “group” (whether of ethnic or other derivation) even when our relationships with other group members are strained.

Perhaps Sam does not believe in free will, and so does not make the connection between instinct and intentionality; I do not know. If, however, he does believe in free will, I am surprised that he has missed this key point. And if he does not believe in free will, then I am surprised that he feels the need to continue to argue the point with me, since the both of us are deterministically locked in to our respective philosophies, and it is thus a waste of oxygen to even engage in a debate about them.

Although I suppose it could be argued, in that case, that he can’t help himself.

You seem to forget that we didn’t have much of a moral progress until after the 17th century. Change was little- serfdom, monarchy and a persons value based on blood were the rule for the day.

Sam is clinging here to a rather antiquated view of history. And no, O Reader, your good Author is not denying that things like kings and peasants did not exist. But Sam’s covert invocation of the concept of the Dark Ages is rather suspect, since for the last 70 years or so most historians have disputed that such an era even existed.

And in plain point of fact, the statement is false: a very concrete moral progress can be observed as one follows the historical evolution of the doctrine of the Church, which is documented back to the very early days of the Christian community in Europe and the Mediterranean area — that same doctrine would not be without an application in daily life. Codes of law and other derivations of moral systems have existed throughout history, and have undergone gradual changes as the moral awareness of human beings has expanded and been tempered.

The “moral capital” that you term didn’t occur due to the Greeks or 2000 years of Christian history. The increase in caring about human rights and civil liberties- not to mention the inherent worth of human beings- had to wait until the 19th century. That is where Western Civilizations moral capital comes from. You can point to philosophers from centuries past, but they had NO EFFECT!

Sam’s assertion, while interesting, would probably come as news to the people who drafted the Magna Carta (Christians, for the most part), as well as to William Wilberforce, the British Christian who led the charge to disband slavery back in the 18th century.

Right and wrong aren’t entirely inherent in people. Feral children don’t have it for starters. You are forming observations of reality based on your philosophy, not the other way around.

Much as with Sam’s example of psychopaths, O Reader, feral children can be considered an exception apart from the rule; after all, humanity evolved in conditions not unlike those that feral children subsist in (indeed, early humans may even have had a rougher go of it, at least initially), and yet morality was able to flourish within each tribe (tribes often went to war with each other, of course). And at some point, that morality was able to expand to include other tribes as well (we know this because of the emergence of trade between groups).

in a couple of paragraphs, Sam will give examples of other early civilizations, some of them being “primitive” tribes, who likewise established moral imperatives. That he does not see this as further evidence of the intrinsic, nature of said imperatives is — to your good Author, at least — both tragic and amusing. But then, one is used to atheists abandoning logic and reason when the discussion turns to religion.

The reason people don’t practice “love everyone” is the reason the SHakers don’t exist. You are asking why people don’t attempt to live up to an impossible standard and them blaming them for failing. By impossible, I don’t mean people can’t achieve it- I mean it won’t work in the real world. Loving everyone leaves you open to those callus enough to us it against you.

Sam demonstrates his ignorance of history; the Shakers died out because they were one of the few Christian groups that did not believe in proselytism, and also practiced strict celibacy. When, as a group, you’re not out winning new converts and not giving birth to new members, you really can’t be expected to last forever, even if the initial response to your emergence is positive.

I find it hard to believe that Sam was unaware of Shaker doctrine regarding celibacy and conversion, however; it seems more likely that his statement above is a deliberate distortion of the truth in order to make a a point that is, unfortunately, only too easily disposed of.

Chesterton once observed that “the Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult, and left untried.” I do believe that Sam has given us a most poignant example of this phenomenon.

Sam very correctly bemoans the fact that the world we live in is, for the most part, an uncharitable place, and harsh. What is unfortunate is that Sam’s proposed method of dealing with this (that is, refusing to love everyone — i.e. actively hating enemies) only serves to perpetuate the lack of charity and incredible harshness at work in the world today. In essence, Sam is saying, in one breath, that the world has no love in it, and in the next breath he is arguing that we should go on not loving, for this is the best response to our loveless world.

Do try not to get whiplash, O Reader.

What is truly unfortunate is that the standard being proposed — “love your enemies” — while difficult, is not impossible. Its primary form is forgiveness, and to understand that even those who persecute and hurt us are, nonetheless, human beings with a dignity equal to our own. And we must respect that, even if they do not; to do otherwise is simply to sink to the depths they have let themselves sink to, and to perpetuate hatred.

“Our faith binds us to extend forgiveness to them. And the fact they are impenitent does not give us license to hold on to bitterness toward them. The command is absolute: forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those (everybody, not just the people who have satisfied us emotionally by a serious act of contrition) who trespass against us.

The reasons for this are twofold. First, we aren’t God. But second, because we aren’t God, our insistence on holding on to unforgiveness (which we call “righteous anger”) hurts nobody but ourselves and those around us and, as a general rule simply gives power to the person who hurts us.

Case in point: the various people we all know who imagine that somehow or other, suckling at the breast of fury constitutes “doing something” about priest abuse, or the war, or some other issue that arouses passion. The reality is it does nothing–nothing whatsoever–about getting rid of bad clerics, helping victims, or bringing a single person closer to God or to the communion of saints. The only actual, practical results are that people who refuse to forgive evils committed are filled with bitterness, feel an ever weaker grip on their faith, “encourage” one another in small (but growing) ways to consider the possibility of schism, hatred of their country or the enemy, and nurture an ever deeper cynicism. St. James is right: the anger of man does not bring about the righteousness of God (James 1:20).

The command of Jesus is to extend forgiveness to enemies. It is not to pretend the sin never happened. It is not to pretend the impenitent person is penitent. It is not to be non-confrontational, or bend over and take it, or see no evil. It is not to refuse to take practical action, up to and including jailing or (in a just war) even killing your enemy. But it is to forgive nonetheless. It is to wish their good, to refuse to let cynicism master faith, hope, and charity, to hope for the best while keeping a firm eye on reality.

Some people believe they can play the “I don’t have to forgive until my enemy says “sorry” game”. If we buy that, we have to realize that a) we are directly disobeying Jesus Christ and b) the punishment for that sin is found in the sin itself. For, nine times out of ten, our unforgiveness is going to punish ourselves, not our enemy. We are going to be handing our happiness over — for the rest of our lives, mind you — to people who may not even know we exist, much less care. We are going to sentence ourselves to be chained to misery forever and to be slaves of people long dead. It’s folly. And it’s why Jesus is right. Refusal to extend forgiveness (for “justice’ sake”, as we always tell ourselves) is, I believe, one of the most deadly manifestations of pride in the world. It achieves nothing of what it promises (”Someday that jerk will say he’s sorry and you’ll be vindicated for all the world to see!”) and it ruins not just our life, but typically, the lives of those around us who must suffer our descent into unrequited rage.

Indeed, refusal to forgive trains us for nothing but misery. We think we will find peace when They say they’re sorry. But if we’ve trained ourselves to be bitter and cynical, we will be stuck there no matter what They say (because who can ever believe Them anyway?) And besides, if one of Them says sorry, there are always going to be plenty more who don’t. So we hold on to our bitterness in any event.”

Yes, the idea of loving one’s enemy is difficult — that is why so few people, including Sam, have made an honest go of it. And yet other people have; one recalls the nun who was shot dead in the street a couple of years ago during the riotous protests in many Muslim nations over the Mumammed cartoons. As she fell dying, her last words were “I forgive, I forgive.” Living the ideal is not impossible, because the ideal is not impossible. But it is difficult and frightening, and many people are — for lack of a better term — cowards.

Sam certainly is. He laments the fact that loving everyone “leaves you open to those callus enough to us it against you” — and he is certainly correct in his analysis of the fact love is related to vulnerability. When we love someone, we must allow ourselves to become vulnerable to that person…and that’s hard enough to do in a relationship with a girlfriend or wife, let alone in relation to nameless people who may or may not be cruel to us, and whom we may or may not have even met.

But equally: so what? So what if it leaves us open? So what if it’s difficult? What are we saying when we observe such things? Fundamentally, we are admitting our own cowardice. We are admitting that we are scared out of our skins at the thought of seeming vulnerable for even one moment. We are admitting that it terrifies us that someone might take advantage of us. Funnily, and this especially applies in our culture of casual sex and serial monogamy (which is not really monogamy at all), we take advantage of others all the time, and think nothing of it…but we are terrified of someone doing it to us.

And really, since this is a conversation between two men, it serves to note that men are particularly succeptible to fear of seeming vulnerable, and fear of being taken advantage of (despite the fact that many men think nothing of taking advantage of women when it suits their desires).

Sam is scared shitless of seeming vulnerable, as are most men. As am I, to my shame, from time to time. And yet it is to being vulnerable that we are called, O Reader, because it is in being vulnerable through our love for others that we can effect change, in our own lives and in the lives of others. And no, that doesn’t mean being a punching bag or doormat for other people (”turn the other cheek” is as much an expression of defiance as it is a call to abandon “eye for an eye” conceptions of morality). But it does mean that whenever someone wrongs us, the first thing we must see is not the wrong, but the fact that the person who wronged us nevertheless possesses an innate human dignity that is inalienable and irrevocable, by us or by any other. And even if they do not treat us with dignity, we must respond with it, because to do otherwise will only perpetuate the injustice — we would, essentially, become the very thing we would decry.

You are also wrong about all these things coming only from Christianity, or being crystalized pagan ideas. The Iriquoi Federation had the idea of individual freedom long before the West did, the Quakers were the first to take the utopian ideas seriously, the Aztecs were big on social mobility, the Mossi practiced Church-State seperation. It also happens that morality does not wither in modern hands. You seem to not know that until recently basic rights like speech, freedom from torture, and voting were not guarenteed. The bill of rights didn’t apply to states until recently.

Of course, O Reader, I can’t speak to the errors of American politicians and the applicability/non-applicability of the bill of rights to individual states. Being a Canadian, I’m used to a government that has tended to adopt a less “regional” view of the appointment of rights — both British Common Law and the Canadian were applied to the country as a whole (although provinces do have a barely-used ability to opt out of specific rights issues).

Likewise, I’m well enough aware that other cultures brought into being many of the same concepts that our own culture values. Certainly, that is to their credit. And yet, the Western notion of individual freedom doesn’t really come to us via any particular Native American tradition. The utopian ideals of the Quakers failed as surely as have the various utopian ideals of Socialists and Communists elsewhere in the world. Our notions of social mobility would seem to owe nothing in particular to Aztec tradition (and, as a bonus, we also did not inherit the Aztec tradition of ritual human sacrifice). Likewise, the predominantly North American concept of separation of church and state owes nothing in particular to the Mossi — it owes everything to the fact that a lot of people didn’t like the close ties between the British government and the Anglican Church, and wanted to practice their Christian faith without fearing state intervention in it.

As to whether morality withers in modern hands, O Reader, that’s up in the air, isn’t it? Yes, we have solidified the right to freedom of speech, and yes we have solidified the right of people to vote (even if a majority of people choose not to exercise that right in many jurisdictions). Torture is an interesting example for Sam to bring up, since even in the United States the debate over torture and the right of the government to engage in it is still up in the air. One also observes, O Reader, that states which have made atheism an explicit policy of the state — such as North Korea and China — regularly engage in very violent and brutal forms of torture. One also observes that in many parts of the world, Christians are at the forefront of the debate on the anti-torture side.

Then you state that Christianity is responsible for countries developing smoothly. Not thinking clearly, are you? Here- I’ll give it a better shot. “The countries that develop smoothly do so because of white people. Exceptions are, of course to be expected”. Here is the funny thing — although blantantly racist, my statement is MORE accurate than yours. The Catholic countries in the world are the poorest and unstable relative to their neighbors. The ones that did well are Western and Northern Europe, the United States and Japan. Of them only one is very religious. It happens to be the one that is the most immoral. Yep — good old U S of A.

Sam’s last statement (about criminality) is a common atheist argument, although it has been demonstrated that it is not a particularly truthful claim. Indeed, overall, those of a secular bent (including those who formally declare their atheism) are (roughly) three times more likely to commit a crime than those of a theistic bent.

Sam is right, in part, that Catholicism is the religion of some of the poorer nations on Earth. However, if one considers the 50 poorest nations — Afghanistan, Angola, Bangladesh, Benin, Bhutan, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cape Verde, Central African Republic, Chad, Comoros, Democratic Republic of Congo, Djibouti, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Haiti, Kiribati, Laos, Lesotho, Liberia, Madagascar, Malawi, Maldives, Mali, Mauritania, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Niger, Rwanda, Samoa, São Tomé and Príncipe, Senegal, Sierra Leone, Solomon Islands, Somalia, Sudan, East Timor, Togo, Tuvalu, Uganda, Tanzania, Vanuatu, Yemen, and Zambia — one observes that Christianity, and in particular Catholicism, is not the only religion represented in the list. Islam is also well-represented in the list, for example.

But then, Catholicism and Islam are also the predominant religion in some of the wealthier nations on Earth, as are other flavours of Christianity. In other words, no one religion has a license on poverty, nor necessarily on prosperity. However, one observes that the Western paragidm of scientific advancement — which can be correlated to Western prosperity — is firmly grounded in the concept of the university and related academic institutions, and one further observes that it was the Church which opened the first universities in Europe, and which established the foundations of modern academic tradition therein.

In fact, the best way to find out way a society was able to progress would be to actually examine it. I recomend “Guns, Germs and Steel”- it explains the situation rather well.

But, if you need a short version:

• US - political stability, natural resources, large amounts of labor
• Canada - secure, resources, trade
• Australia - same as Canada
• England - waterways, steel production, early industrialization
• Germany - Steel, waterways

You get the idea. Japan and Scandanavia are the odd ones out. Claiming that these countries are better because of Christianity is false — they are better morally because they are rich. Wealth buys medical technology, food and enough resources to give to the poor and prevent secretarian infighting. The exception is oil wealth which leads to gold rush like situations.

As it happens, I’ve read Guns, Germs and Steel, actually. It was an interesting book, though I found it somewhat uncompelling.

An aside: I have broken up the text of Sam’s letter into paragraphs, but I have not deleted any portion of the text in Sam’s latest correspondence with me. I mention this, O Reader, simply as a disclaimer prior to noting that nowhere in the above listed nations do I see mention of Scandinavia (Germany is not a Scandinavian nation). Nor do I see mention of Japan. Sam gives us no data about these nations, which is a curious slip on his part given that both nations form the core of his attempt at yet another rebuttal in the paragraph that follows the list.

Still, we can pick apart Sam’s assertions in spite of the fact that he has neglected to include the two regions on the list.

Scandinavia, comprising Denmark, Norway, and Sweden (and sometimes considered to also include Finland and Iceland), emerged during a period of Christianization almost a millenium ago, and the politics of the region were strongly influenced by the various tidal shifts in European Christendom that followed (such as the Reformation). Most Scandinavian nations have a national church of some kind (i.e. the Church of Norway, a derivative of Lutheranism). One also observes that the flags of pretty much every Scandinavian nation incorporate a cross in their design — representative of Christianity.

And even though Scandinavian nations in the modern era are not as Christian as they once were, this fact does not refute the idea that they are still banking on, and living on, reserves of Christian moral capital (in that their laws and views of rights own much to the Christian philosophy that is a part of their heritage).

Japan is an interesting example, although one observes that Japan’s prosperity in the modern era is as much due to the reconstruction efforts of the United States as it is to the technical ingenuity of the Japanese people themselves, which is also true of Japan’s style of government (many aspects of which are borrowed from Western political traditions). Even in this tiny, not particularly religious island, the subtle suggestion of Christian moral capital can be discerned.

Of course, O Reader, the above is not the really interesting concept. What is the really interesting concept, as far as Sam’s assertions go, is the statement made that Japan and Scandinavia “are better morally” — presumably, Sam is meaning to say that these two regions are morally superior to any of the five nations which he listed. Which, of course, begs the question: are they morally superior?

Japan has a notoriously high rate of suicide, and the sexual…ah…oddities that nation has come up with in recent decades are well known. Indeed, Japan is noted for a high rate of sexual repression among its population, and pornographic content is much more easily come by — and available in a much wider variety of forms — than in North America. Also, the status of women in Japanese society is still somewhat…suspect.

Meanwhile, many Scandinavian nations have legalized prostitution (there have even been cases that have percolated into the media of women being told that they will be denied unemployment benefits because the “job” of “prostitute” is available to them; whether all of these are from Scandinavian nations is not data I have on hand), and in a few places incest is taking the first tentative steps toward “normalization.” Incest! In Norway, about a quarter of all convicted criminals simply do not remember to show up for their sentence, which itself is not illegal.

And in both Scandinavia and Japan, the birthrate has fallen to such a low point that only massive immigration can sustain the populations of those countries at their current level. Since Japan doesn’t allow all that much immigration, they are headed for a demographic collapse that they are currently scrambling to offset with research into robotics (so that robots can take over aspects of life that traditionally would have been filled by children and grandchildren). In most Scandinavian countries, the future holds the promise of demographic inversion, in which Scandinavians will become a minority in their own countries.

At minimum, a nation needs a birthrate of about 2.1 live births per woman in order to sustain its population at a constant level. If the country wants to grow, even grow economically, the birthrate obviously has to be higher in order to provide a steady increase in the population proportionate to the increased demand for workers in a more vibrant economy. The new generation also enables former generations to “age out” and ease in to the social programs for which so many Scandinavian nations are known; these social programs obviously require a large tax base in order to provide funding for them.

Of course, in the wake of secularism sweeping in to the nations, the priorities of individuals have shifted somewhat, and more and more Scandinavian women are electing to avoid having kids altogether, or are limiting themselves to one child had some time after the age of thirty. Obviously, it’s their right to do so, but those choices are causing a major demographic problem for the nations in which they live — in essence, these nations are imperiled by the collective selfishness of their populations. That’s not particularly moral, and the effects could be dire.

Most of the immigration to Scandinavian countries is from Muslim nations, incidentally, and in most cases Muslims are the fastest-growing demographic group in those countries. How ironic, then: the secularism of the Scandinavians is but a temporary thing between their Christian origins and their Islamic future.

Or more simply: you are wrong.

The Reader may disagree, but I do not feel that Sam has adequately demonstrated that I am incorrect. Moreover, he himself has been caught in several rather obvious errors.

Christian ideals do not inherently lead to the principle of individual worth.

And absent at least some concept of telos, O Reader, the ideal of individual worth is meaningless. According to purely secular categories, there is no innate dignity to a human being, and no inherent equality between human beings in general.

Facism is an excellent example — and only managed to seize control in Catholic countries.

Sam is fudging history, O Reader.

Fascism is a bit of a nebulous term, and could be applied to several different governments. Imperial Japan circa 1940 could be called a fascist state, for example, and Japan was not a particularly Catholic country at all. Germany, where Naziism (regarded as the ultimate example of fascism) emerged, was more a Lutheran state than anything else. Italy was a Catholic state, but Mussolini was an atheist who converted to Catholicism only in the final months of his life, well after being driven out of power.

It is a case of hindsight — of course they went towards individual freedom — look at all the strands for it. The same case could be made for totalitarianism — does not God rule over mankind unquestioned?

One thing that puzzles me is how atheists pronounce so confidently on the falsehood and delusional nature of religion, and yet utterly fail to demonstrate any comprehension of what the religion teaches. It often seems as if the whole philosophical conjecture we call “atheism” is pre-supposed on nothing more than a series of straw man arguments and deliberate distortions of readily-available facts.

Certainly, God “rules” over all…but to say that God is unquestioned even by His own is stunningly inaccurate. God is above all creation, and is the final arbiter and judge of right and wrong. But how each human being lives out the call to morality is not dictated by God; it is left up to each of us to decide. How each human being responds to the commandments of God and Christ is not dictated by God, nor do we follow those stipulations as though mere puppets on strings; again, we are left to choose whether or not we will abide by each tenet.

It seems at first a contradiction: God is at once transcendent and holds all authority, and yet is completely “hands off” where human conduct and morality is concerned. He is at once personal and present, and yet gives us space to work in, even if the works we do are immoral. And yet, that is the nature of God.

But then, as has been speculated, perhaps Sam does not believe in free will. Certainly, as an atheist, he would be consistent in his beliefs if he did not, in fact, believe in the idea that human beings can make their own choices; after all, all we are (in the atheist view) is a meaty outer shell encapsulating a bundle of opportunistic, deterministic chemical reactions that we have no control over.

Why should a human ruler not be given the same power?

Humans are not God, ergo humans should not wield similar power. God is incorruptible; humans are highly corruptible, ergo humans should not wield similar power. God does not sin; humans are tempted and do sin, ergo humans should not wield similar power. God is perfect; humans are imperfect, ergo humans should not wield similar power.

Don’t lives only have meaning in the service of God?

Note the tragic blindness of the secular, O Reader — the inability to understand that all human life has intrinsic meaning, regardless of the actions of the person doing the living.

To answer Sam directly, livs do not have meaning only in the service of God — lives find their ultimate meaning in carrying out God’s will, which is a very different concept indeed. All lives — whether the person doing the living believes in God or not — have an intrinsic, inalienable value that flows to them from God, for all human beings are a part of God’s creation, and are loved by Him.

Why not do the same for the state?

The state is not God, ergo the state should not wield similar power. God is incorruptible; the state is highly corruptible, ergo the state should not wield similar power. God does not sin; the state is tempted and does sin, ergo the state should not wield similar power. God is perfect; the state is imperfect, ergo the state should not wield similar power.

As always faith has no true shape — only what people put in. And garbage in, garbage out…

Perhaps it is fitting to end this missive with the Nicene Creed, which demonstrates rather easily that faith does have a very definite, concrete shape to it:

We believe (I believe) in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, and of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God, and born of the Father before all ages. (God of God) light of light, true God of true God. Begotten not made, consubstantial to the Father, by whom all things were made. Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven. And was incarnate of the Holy Ghost and of the Virgin Mary and was made man; was crucified also for us under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried; and the third day rose again according to the Scriptures. And ascended into heaven, sits at the right hand of the Father, and shall come again with glory to judge the living and the dead, of whose Kingdom there shall be no end. And (I believe) in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and Giver of life, who proceeds from the Father (and the Son), who together with the Father and the Son is to be adored and glorified, who spoke by the Prophets. And one holy, catholic, and apostolic Church. We confess (I confess) one baptism for the remission of sins. And we look for (I look for) the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. Amen.

That is a very solid definition of the “shape” of the Christian faith, and since the fourth century this creed has been a decisive and exceptionally handy “tool” in analyzing whether a particular belief, denomination, or theological theory is Christian or not. And it continues to be useful in that regard, which is why Christians everywhere continue to profess it.

As for the notion of “garbage in, garbage out,” Sam is describing many things with that closing remark — and even his own atheism is not immune.

Yet another triumph of our post-Christian sexual morality!

An Australian woman who had a child with her father pleaded for acceptance of their illicit love as the couple appeared on national television with their baby girl after being convicted of incest.

Jenny Deaves was 31 when she was reunited with her father John Deaves, who separated from her mother three decades before. Shortly afterwards, she had considered embarking on a sexual relationship with him, she told the Nine Network.

“John and I are in this relationship as consenting adults,” she told the “60 Minutes” programme on Sunday night.

“We are just asking for a little bit of respect and understanding.”

The couple’s nine-month-old daughter, Celeste, to whom John Deaves is both father and grandfather, was also shown on the programme and appeared to be in sound health.

She is a third child, but also a half-sister, for Jenny Deaves, now 39, who has two other children from another relationship.

If the bold-faced phrases didn’t make your stomach turn over in disgust, O Reader, there’s probably no helping you at this time. If, on the other hand, your stomach did turn over in disgust…congratulations, you’re still normal and sane (enough).

John Hawkins points out that, if one adopts a more liberal/progressive worldview, there is very little remaining in one’s thinking that can cry out against a father/daughter sexual relationship. In fact, there’s very little reason to condemn it, until and unless one is willing to make an argument from Morality that certain forms of sexual relationships are wrong. And most progressives don’t want to go there.

This is social deconstruction we are witnessing.

I presume this means that feminist lobby groups which had previously opposed the passage of Bill C-484 on the grounds that it would undermine the rights of women will now, in the face of evidence that the majority of Canadian women support the passage of the bill, shift their viewpoints and offer their ringing endorsement of the legislation?

women (74%) are slightly more in favour of the proposed legislation than men (66%). Female respondents (19%) are also less likely than male respondents (29%) to perceive the Unborn Victims of Crime Act as an attempt to recriminalize abortion in Canada

The alternative, it would seem, is for said feminist organizations to step up and admit that their views are, at least as pertains to this particular issue, in the minority — to the tune of no more than 26% of Canadian women.

Interesting additional tidbit: Abortion is legal in Australia, and yet it seems that hardly any women there are exercising their right to “choose”. Apparently, the rates of abortion procurement are so low that the article covering the story begins with this heady comment: “YOUNG Australian women are as unlikely to have an abortion today as their grandmothers were half a century ago, according to new national data that shows a dramatic decline in the procedure.”

That’s damn good news, methinks. Not only does it mean that Australia will actually have a better birthrate, and thus a larger young population to replace its aged one in due season — it just plain means that fewer unborn babies are being murdered Down Under, and that’s always a positive trend. It also means, I think, that Aussie women are taking a look at the various “choices” open to them during pregnancy and are realizing — in droves — that abortion is simply “off the table” as a legitimate choice for them.

Good on ya, mates!

Australia releases graphic pictures of Japanese whaling.

It’s a wonder, isn’t it, where our priorities are at in the West.

Tens of millions of internet users across the Middle East and Asia have been left without access to the web after a technical fault cut millions of connections.

The outage, which is being blamed on a fault in a single undersea cable, has severely restricted internet access in countries including India, Egypt and Saudi Arabia and left huge numbers of people struggling to get online.

Observers say that the digital blackout first struck yesterday morning, with the Egypt’s communications ministry suggesting it was caused by a cut in a major internet pipeline linking it to Europe.

The line in question runs under the Mediterranean, from Palermo in Italy to Alexandria in Egypt. It is not clear what caused the break. The cable is one of only a handful of connections, and part of the world’s longest undersea cable, 24,500 miles long, running from Germany, through the Middle East and India before terminating in Australia and Japan.

Oops.

On the plus side, though, I’m willing to bet that incidences of DDOS attacks launched against anti-jihad websites went down a point or two.

[image:319:l:s=1:l=x] I’ve been abstaining, in recent days, from commenting on the whole Muslim cartoon controversy, primarily because I’ve been busy getting the new site operative, and also because in a realistic sense I’ve just not been up to writing about it. But I feel moved to wade in with some commentary, some comparison/contrast if you will, because of the recent (rather predictable) turn of events that has come about.

For those who have only just heard of what’s going on with these cartoons, I can recap just briefly what has happened. It began with a Danish author writing a book about the life and death of the Prophet Muhammad. He had wanted illustrations done for it, but found that nobody wanted to touch the project, nor come within ten feet of it. Not surprising — according to Islam, graphical depictions of the Prophet are haram (forbidden), and in the region around Denmark, artists who have in the past flouted the tenets of Islam, or offered direct criticism of that religion, have met with death threats, and even murder in the case of Theo Van Gogh. Many European nations, faced with stagnant birthrates of their own, have opened their doors to millions of immigrants, and many such nations now have large Muslim communities that are almost nations within themselves. This has led to any number of problems in the past: rapes committed for sectarian reasons, violence against people who criticize Islam (see above), race riots in France and Cronulla, Australia, and so forth.

And it has contributed to a climate of fear in, among other places, Denmark. That is why the Danish author could not find illustrators for his book: the artists feared a backlash from the Danish Muslim community.

[thumb:299:l:s=1:l=d] As a result of this, one Danish newspaper — Jyllands-Posten — challenged artists to come up with pictures of Muhammed, and received twelve submissions. Some of them were rather lame, and others flirted with offensiveness, and one or two were kind of funny. Some of them — depicting fearful artists and violent Muslim rage at the cartoons — turned out to be rather prophetic in nature. Not that it was a hard call, I suppose. The composite image on the right is an assembled montage of all the cartoons that I cribbed off of Kathy. The pictures, clockwise from the upper right, depict the following:

• A man in a turban holding up a stick-figure sketch. I can’t remember which one is supposed to be Muhammed…but I think it’s the stick-figure. The orange ball in the turban reads “PR Stunt”.
• Muhammed, with the Islamic crescent forming the bottom of his face and the Islamic star as his right eye.
• Muhammed with a bomb for a turban.
• Muhammed with golden horns that look, from a distance, like a halo.
• A series of sketched balloons — actually the Islamic star and crescent. The words read: “Prophet! daft and dumb keeping woman under thumb”.
• A slightly frumpy Muhammed walking in the desert
• A fearful cartoonist looking over his shoulder as he draws a picture of the Prophet.
• A Muslim holding up his hand to stop two of his bretheren who are wielding swords. He is saying something in Dutch that roughly translates as “Relax folks, it is just a sketch made by a Dane from the south-west of Denmark”.
• A student named Mohammed Valloyskole standing at a blackboard. The Arabic text he has written reads “Jyllands-Posten’s journalists are a bunch of reactionary provocateurs”.
• Muhammed, with his eyes covered by a black box, flakned by two women in full burqas.
• Muhammed greeting a line of suicide bombers in Paradise with the words: “Stop! We have run out of virgins!”
• And the middle picture, which is a line-up different people (Muhammed is second from the right, I think) and a man viewing them saying “Hmmm…I don’t recognize him”.

If you’re really curious, you can view all of the cartoons in detail here, in another posting on the site.

Okay, so these cartoons were drawn. Now what, you might ask, was the result?

Well, I said that some of the cartoons, depicting fear and backlash, were rather prophetic, didn’t I? And you may have noticed the protest rally picture that began this posting. That’s right…outrage resulted from the printing and re-printing of these cartoons. Outrage would, I suppose, have been justified, much as Christian outrage over things like Piss Christ was justified…provided that the outrage over these cartoons also took the same form as Christian outrage over Piss Christ.

Which means that boycotting art shows and writing letters of complaint would be justified. Burning embassies, making death threats against the artists and the newspaper, attacking Danish social workers in other nations, and murdering Catholic priests would not be justified. And, as Lost Budgie points out in the article concerning that priest, the cartoons are not really the incident so much as they are the reason-du-jour for violence and rampage.

Christian communities in Lebanon have been torched, allegedly because of these cartoons. What connection a Christian enclave has with Dutch secularist artists is suspect, and indeed probably does not exist. But it is as Budgie says: the cartoons are not the reason, only the thin justification. Muslim mobs can use these cartoons as the “spark” that starts the fire, but once the blaze is lit, anyone who isn’t Muslim is a legitimate target for “revenge”. That is why a Catholic priest was shot dead in Turkey, allegedly in connection with riots over these cartoons. Father Santoro’s murderer didn’t say anything about cartoons: he simply shouted “God is Great” and fired his gun…his desire was not to avenge himself upon a Dane, but instead to please Allah by slaying the infidel.

It was irresponsible of Jyllands-Posten to provoke this response, I think, but it serves to note that they do have a freedom of the press, and freedom of speech, as we ostensibly have over here as well. And the exercise thereof cannot be trodden upon to accomodate the sensibilities of any particular group…and I apply that even to my fellow Catholics. I think Piss Christ was offensive and vulgar, but I accept that the artist, being made in the image and likeness of God and therefore possessed of free will, had a right to make that picture. And even though I find it offensive and vulgar, I don’t respond by uttering death threats, or by holding up signs like these that are pictured, calling for the extermination of the artist in question, and indeed all who oppose Catholicism.

Tarek Fatah, who I mentioned previously in connection with Khalid Usman, had this to say regarding the reaction of his Muslim bretheren world-wide to the cartoons:

---

“The protests in the Middle East have proven that the cartoonist was right,” said Tarek Fatah, a director of the Muslim Canadian Congress.

“It’s falling straight into that trap of being depicted as a violent people and proving the point that, yes, we are.”

---

And he is right. And indeed, in all of this violence, there is irony. For when cartoons were published that depicted Muslims as exciteable and murderous, how did Muslims the world over respond? With riots and murder.

It always amazes me, and often alarms me, what one can find when cruising this great big Web of ours in the late hours of the evening. Most of the Canadian bloggers seem to be in bed now, which is sensible — as an Albertan, I’m at least one (if not two or more) hours behind most of the really good bloggers, who are all central-east in location. And while the B.C. bloggers might still be awake and cruising, I don’t read many blogs out of B.C., so I couldn’t tell you if that was the case.

You know, I’ve struggled with whether I support the U.S. invasions in Afghanistan and Iraq, and even now I haven’t come to a clear determination as to what I believe. But every so often, even in these conflicts, a funny anecdote crops up.

Sometimes you have to dig for them. Tonight it was easy. From the website of Red Vs. Blue, the -based web cartoon series:

Any movie producer will tell you that foreign distribution is key to the success of any project these days. And Red vs Blue is no exception — but our markets are a little different than most. In terms of DVD shipments overseas, England is number one, Australia is second and running a very close third are Iraq & Afghanistan, thanks to all the men and women that are serving over there. That’s right. Apparently, nothing says “newfound democracy” better than a Red vs Blue Season 3 DVD.

Trackback Link: http://rvb.roosterteeth.com/viewEntry.php?id=133

This has had me in stitches on an otherwise rather sad evening. I suppose the next thing we’ll hear is of Strong Bad being used at Gitmo?

My thoughts and prayers go out this day to the victims of the terrorist attacks in London — I pray that God’s merciful salvation will see the many dead received into His arms, and that the Holy Spirit will guide and aid the healing of the wounded.

In the aftermath of these terrorist attacks, there will probably be a lot of commentary (again and again, flogging the dead horse again…) about the “root causes” of Terrorism, and I think that most of this commentary will eventually devolve into scathing condemnations of three things:

a) George Bush
b) The “Zionist” entity and Israel
c) the “quagmire” in Iraq

And none of it will even come close to the truth.

The root cause of terror, this terror, isn’t a desire to promote a political cause, nor is it a method of protest against oppression. Not in the case of al-Qaeda. Their “root cause” is much simpler than economic disenfranchisement or neo-Marxist “liberation”. They seek to kill the infidel…which would be us. Mark Steyn weighs in with a timely quote from a couple years back, when some French ships were the target of terror attacks. It appears the terrorists were hoping to take out an American ship, but the French boats worked too…they were all infidels. Here’s the relevant excerpt, for people too lazy to click on the link:

…

On which subject, the Independent’s Robert Fisk thinks the Aussies were targeted for a more specific reason—blowback for being too cosy with the Great Satan: “The French have already paid a price for their initial support for Mr Bush. The killing of 11 French submarine technicians in Karachi has been followed by the suicide attack on the French oil tanker Limburg off the coast of Yemen. Now, it seems, it is the turn of Australia….” And don’t worry, there are plenty of others who’ll be getting theirs any day now. Just in case al-Qa’eda had missed one or two, Fisk helpfully provides a useful list of legitimate targets: “Belgium, which hosts Nato HQ; Canada, whose special forces have also been operating in Afghanistan; Ireland, which allows US military aircraft to refuel at Shannon…”. Blessings be upon you, Mister Robert, we had entirely forgot to add “Kill the Irish” to our “To Do” list.

I wonder if it was a cautious editor who added “initial” to that French “support for Mr Bush”. The French were supportive for about ten minutes after 11 September, but for most of the last year have been famously and publicly non-supportive: throughout the spring, their foreign minister, M. Vedrine, was deploring American “simplisme” on a daily basis. The French veto is still Saddam’s best shot at torpedoing any meaningful UN action on Iraq. If you were to pick only one Western nation not to blow up the oil tankers of, the French would be it.

But they got blown up anyway. And afterwards a spokesman for the Islamic Army of Aden said, “We would have preferred to hit a US frigate, but no problem because they are all infidels.”

No problem. They are all infidels.

…

(c) Copyright Mark Steyn, 2005, all rights reserved.

And even as I see that there are some people already weighing in with “root cause” commentary that pretty much follows the above predictions (see here, here, here, here, and here for starters…and then here for some laughable CIA paranoia), I’d just like to say that I hope the British government will show itself to be above such hypocrisy and address the real causes — the terrorists themselves, and the war they have declared against the infidel.

Because really, this “root cause” bleeding-heart talk is all pretty hypocritical, if you get right down to it.

Think about it…if al-Qaida or Hamas is justified in blowing up a bus in England or a restaurant in Tel Aviv because they perceive that the western Zionist oppressors are killing innocent Iraqis or Palestinians without cause and are driving the Islamic faith to ruin, then why isn’t some anti-abortion activist justified in blowing up an abortion clinic because s/he perceives that the pro-abortion oppressors are killing innocent unborn children without cause and are driving the moral fabric of society to ruin? Whether it’s a bus or an abortion clinic, it’s terrorism and it’s murder to blow it to pieces and kill people in doing so, so if you’re going to legitimize one and not the other then you’re committing a hypocrisy.

And if now you’re thinking “hah, now at least you’re admitting that Christians commit acts of terror too when they blow up clinics”, then I think you should read one of the recent articles at relapsedcatholic, and then the article that the author, Kathy Shaidle, links to from there. That’s not to say, of course, that there isn’t blood on the hands of some of those who claim to be Christian…but it IS to say that in many cases, the amount of blood is probably far less than many of my more liberal-minded acquaintances would prefer to see on the hands of members of a faith system they hate with almost irrational passion.

It’s both funny and tragic to me, and Mark Steyn has again commented on this (although sadly it appears that the relevant article is no longer linked from his page), that many of the same people who speak out against violence against women, oppression of women, violence against homosexuals, and discrimination against minority religions (i.e. “non-Christian” religions in the West), and who speak out in support of corruption-free elections and a vague concept of “freedom”, do so only in the West, in their own nations. On the global stage, many of these self-same people would be willing to plant themselves in the camp of fanatical theocrats and dictators who force women to wear burqas, who believe that the removal of the clitoris is the rite of passage into womanhood, who behead homosexuals — or toss them off rooftops, as the Taliban were fond of doing — and whose electoral process makes a mockery of concepts like democracy and “freedom”, all in the name of opposition to the even greater world threat: America. Saddam Hussein can execute and gas his own people, the Sudanese government can slaughter and rape Christians willy-nilly for the crime of not converting to Islam, and the “socially liberal” champions of individual rights here in the West are often the first to criticize America, Austrailia, and even Britain when they decide to go toe-to-toe against a dictator like that…or, come to think of it, when a Christian tries to peacefully convert them by handing them a pamphlet. If the Sudanese government stopped at pamphlets, there’d be a few thousand more Christian human beings alive today, and a few less trees. As sad as it is, for some people, the trees are the more important item.

And us conservatives are the scary ones, eh?

Well, so be it…consider yourself officially chilled to the bone.