ABU vs. CBS

It occurred to me the other day that there was some kind of parallel echoing in my mind between the Rather situation and...something. I couldn't put my finger on it for a few days but this week, driving home late one night, I finally figured it out. You can use the Abu Ghraib (pronounced, "Ah-boo Grehb") prison "scandal" as the perfect comparison to the Rather scandal. (Strange, too, given that the same producer, Mary Mapes, broke both stories)
Think about it: in both instances, we have a scenario where there was wrongdoing by the few that seems to reflect on the whole. In the one instance it was a relative handful of prison guards whose notorious behavior reflected on the entire U.S. Army. In the CBS case, it was the behavior of Dan Rather and Mary Mapes that reflected on the entirety of the CBS organization. Or did it?

And that's the point. The Left hardly digested the first sentence of the Abu Ghraib story before screaming demands for the resignation of Donald Rumsfeld. "This goes all the way up the chain," Hillary Clinton said at one point, fully intending not only Rumsfeld, but possibly the President himself. Not just one person suggested that such a happening could not have occurred in Iraq without the full consent and knowledge of those all the way at the top. Memos were adduced to "prove" that Rumsfeld himself had authorized the use of extreme measures. Debate raged on both sides. At issue was the assertion by critics that because of the doing of those at the bottom, those at the top needed to go.

Fast-forward to Rathergate. Suddenly, the Left's new-found federalism fled. Dan Rather may have used the memos in his broadcast, but surely we couldn't hold him responsible for their authenticity? Fully vetting the authenticity of the documents was some other person way down the food chain. We certainly couldn't think of asking CBS head, Andrew Heyward, to step down. Mary Mapes may have called top Kerry campaign strategist Joe Lockhart advising him to call Bill Burkett and get the goods on Bush but you can't seriously think that the Kerry Campaign was involved? Indeed, even though it was uncovered today that Kerry himself was informed of the phone call and most likely the memos, one couldn't possibly make the connection from waaaaay down there with Lockhart/Mapes aaaaall the way up to John Kerry! You just can't get there from here!

So when others on the Right began screaming for the resignation of Rather it was no surprise that they found themselves quite alone. The Left, who were earlier proponents of the theory of the "chain of responsibility", suddenly became unable to see the chain, let alone follow it up to the top. I guess it would be asking too much to ask for Kerry's resignation from the campaign trail?

Isn't it funny?

One of the common criticisms leveled at George W. Bush is that he is too much of a "unilateralist." The prima facie evidence of this odious crime provided is usually the war in Iraq. Over and over we are told how the President doesn't work with the "world community" and rejects the sum-is-greater-than-the-collective-parts wisdom of the gathered globe. Over and over we are warned by those on the Left how the President's "go-it-alone" approach to diplomacy is uninformed, ignorant, and dangerous. After all, doesn't he understand that the world is a connected place? Hasn't he ever just wanted to give the world a coke and smile??
Underlying this charge is the assumption that the world is such a connected place that a movement out-of-hand by one member has drastic implications for the other members. Or, to put it another way, that the world has common interests, common goals and are bound by common constraints, moral and otherwise, that preclude acting solely in one's own interest.
So what to make of the same people who inconsistently and incoherently maintain that the war on terror is localized ONLY to the person of Osama Bin Laden and to the single locale of Afghanistan? Any suggestion that in the same interrelated way of the U.N., terrorists, specifically Islamic terrorists, and "rogue states" opposed to the West, might have common cause in their hatred towards the U.S., and might actually collude together to do us harm is immediately scorned and derided. You're laughed at as naive and unstable. What fellowship hath Baghdad and Kabul?
The truth of it is, those who say such things are themselves deluded. They are guilty of two egregious errors spring from their flawed worldview and its resulting anthropology: they overestimate the good will in the world among men when they tout the "world community" as a place of inherent love and brotherhood, and they underestimate the evil in the world by isolating acts of evil to one or two "oppressed" characters. Both failings stem from a lack of understanding that Man, although made in the image of God, is nonetheless a sinner at heart whose tendencies, apart from the intervening Grace of God, are always toward sin. Thank God George Bush, a confessed Bible-believer, unilaterally trusts the Word of God over "We are the World."

Right on cue...

He puts it well here. The long-expected October surprise effort is headed right for us. It will only confirm folks on the Left who are fond of the last refuge of the reluctant loser: “Well…BOTH sides have been doing a lot of this kind of thing,” which is nothing more than a sophisticated attempt at making two wrongs equal a right. Then they can vote for Kerry despite the very obvious personal, libelous and bitter nature of the attacks on Bush with the cover of, “Kerry’s just doing what was done to him.” Never mind that the Left started the bitter accusations against Bush from Day One. Never mind that Bush has never said the things of such a ridiculously personal nature about Kerry that Kerry has said about him. Never mind that anti-Bush rabble-rousers have been saying things for 4 years now that have been nearly unheard of in American politics of recent history. Even still, Bush somehow managed to come out on top so he feels vindicated in his approach that he’s taken all along, i.e., “new tone”, celebrating your bitterest enemies as great presidents (ala his Clinton comments), and letting the most vitriolic and vicious of your political enemies write key legislation that angers your base.

So here comes the “big media” to the rescue for Kerry. They’ve got to work overtime to try and kill the “bounce” and bring the polls down to parity so they have a chance to cheat and say they won. If they can’t cheat, it will be said that the GOP stole the election. Either way, they win. This is a cultural/spiritual/ideological fight to the death and I’m just not convinced that the Republicans have the will to fight it properly.

Is there any remaining doubt as to whether we are at warfare in the US? I don't mean with Al Quaeda--I mean internally between our own citizens. Check out this article today. An interesting thing here is that some group claims to speak on behalf of all New Yorkers, taking it upon themselves to let the convention-goers know that "they are not welcome in New York."


They communicated their displeasure by posting "several lists of Republican National Convention delegates posted on the Indymedia site, including one listing more than 2,000 of them. Included are names, home addresses, e-mail addresses and the New York-area hotels where many are staying" with the apparent purpose of...what? Providing a handy list for protesters so they can ring up convention attendees and call on them for a cup of tea? Funny thing is, last time I heard of a stunt like this, it was totally reversed and the media, accordingly, took a decidedly biased stance.

I'm talking about the abortion protesters who would post the names and contact information for various abortion providers on a website and who would cross the names out as they were slain. Wasn't their defense exactly that of the group that is now defended by the ACLU? "After all," they say, "We were just posting publicly accessible information. We aren't threatening them at all." But I thought that merely posting personal contact information itself was a threat?

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"'The Nuremberg Files' Web site lists about 200 abortion providers under the heading of "baby butchers." And the site invites readers to send in such personal details as the doctors' home addresses, license plate numbers and the names of their children.

The similar Wild West-style posters offered a $5,000 reward for information about the "Deadly Dozen" doctors branded "Guilty of Crimes Against Humanity."

Three times, doctors whose names appeared on the list were killed, most recently last October when Dr. Barnett Slepian was gunned down by sniper fire in his home outside Buffalo, New York. His name on the Web site was promptly crossed through.

Throughout the trial, held under tight security, doctors on the list testified that they lived in constant fear, used disguises, bodyguards and bulletproof vests, and instructed their children to crouch in the bathroom if they heard gunfire."
(full article here)

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I guess the definition of threat now contains a necessary element that can either confirm it or turn it completely upside down--your political affiliation.

About those ads, Mr. President...

No. Not the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth ads that you've been hearing about so much of late. No, this concerns an interesting development I heard by way of the Prager show this morning. It seems the U.S. Olympic Committee has decided that enough is enough--they're demanding that the Bush campaign stop airing certain ads that besmirch the trademark of the Olympics. What's at issue? Apparently the committee cares more about their supposed trademark infringement than about the millions of Iraqis and Afghanis freed from the thralldom of Muslim tyrannies.

The Bush ads mention that as of this current contest of Olympic athletes, there will be two new, free democratic countries joining the international community to engage in "The Games": Afghanistan and Iraq. That simple declaration of two of the greatest achievements to come out of the post-9/11 American show of resolve is just too much for the committee. They claim the the mention of the two liberated countries in relation to the Olympics amounts to an infringement of the Olympic trademark.

As Prager pointed out, the committee has a long history of amoral, upside-down judgment; they were more than happy to welcome Hitler in the famed games during his ascendancy into a world terror. They were also strangely silent at the murder of Jewish athletes at the Munich games of '72 and, in fact, insisted that the "games must go on," pausing neither to condemn the perpetrators or commemorate the slain Israelis even to this day. It wasn't too surprising then that they also remained sotto voce when the USSR rolled into Afghanistan.

But how dare President Bush invoke the good name of the Olympics to bolster his campaign efforts? This is, for the committee, one of those rare moments in history to stand up and be counted! THIS is an act for which the committee must break its time-honored silence and speak up! Hitler may have been a megalomaniac responsible for the deaths of millions, but this Bush fellow, well...we all have our limits...

The twisted reasoning and contorted ethos that the committee must put itself through to justify this unbelievable stance is a stretch that threatens to snap the sinews of conscience. This is no ordinary display of ethics. It's a feat of moral gymnastics worthy of an Olympic athlete.

(Let the committee know how you feel at media@usoc.org)

The World Is Too Much With Us Or, "I'm Not Bullish On A Bush Win"

I don't know. I hate to be a naysayer but I'm just not confident that Bush will win in November. As I read the leaves I see too strong a confluence of factors that favor Kerry over Bush. Don't get me wrong; it's not a question of desert. It simply is what it is.

Consider the following:

• Without question the majority of the electorate still receive their news from the "Big Media." This same group invests the talking heads with religious authority. As distressing as it is, I see the reality in my own circles as friends and family invoke Dan Rather or Andy Rooney when "proving" the case against Bush. This is their source of what is "true" in much the same way a Christian views the Bible
• Speaking of the "media", yet another reason is that the Big Media, by and large, have conspired together to mask negative Kerry information. Taken together with my first bullet and what you have is a skewed perspective where Kerry seems like he has no detractions (except for those nasty, hateful, lying 200+ veterans that made the 1 minute ad warning against a Kerry presidency) and Bush seems composed of nothing BUT wrongdoing. "Hey, where WAS Bush in '72? Did you know that John Kerry served in Vietnam? He has Purple Hearts and a Silver Star to prove it!"
• Let's face it, for some reason or another, Bush just does NOT like to come out swinging consistently or energetically. The "new tone" philosophy, if nothing else, has certainly realized a devoted follower in Bush. He seems to be comfortable (even righteously so) to let others frame the debate. This appears to some people that I know as evidence that he knows that he is wrong and has no way of refuting the plain truth
• Also, Bush seems unable to prosecute the rest of this war with the same vigor and purpose that he began the war with. Can SOMEBODY tell me...ANYBODY...tell me why Muqtada al-Sadr is still breathing? (good article on that point here). "Women and children...out of Fallujah! Sergeant, hand me a tactical nuke!" Sigh. But I digress...
• I hate to agree with Michael Moore on just about anything, but...I admit it: I share his opinion of many Americans that they are just plain uninformed, blind and, frankly, stupid. They are sheep. Of course, when I say it, I'm talking about the clowns flocking to Fahrenheit 9/11 and the proud bearers of "Re-defeat Bush in 2004" bumper stickers. There is just no reasoning with these "progressive" Americans
• And that brings me to my final point (and honestly the most important in my opinion)-- This election is a spiritual and hence cultural contest. They all are, in some way, but this one seems more obvious. Look at the hot button issues of the day: abortion, marriage, judges, role of government, welfare and even morality in the public square. If you take the vast majority of serious churchgoers and graph their positions on these issues, you will end up with a bloc of voters that look and think suspiciously much like Bush. The rest look like Kerry. In other words, Bush represents that swath of America composed of traditionally religious people, particularly CHRISTIAN religious people. That means, to the Kerry-ites, he smells like God and nothing sets the latent God-hatred in "Bush is Hitler" bunch ablaze faster than a serious Christian in a position of influence (remember the Ashcroft nomination war?) Like the ancient Hebrew church in the wilderness, I hear the "Bush Lied" crowd shouting, "We will not have this man rule over us!"

If we do have a Bush victory, it will be the Grace of God. The country seems to be in an inevitable slide downward since we cannot muster the will to submit to biblical truth. But even in a Kerry presidency, as bad as that will be for the country, I'm going to pray for faith to believe that "all things work together for the good." So should you.

How about a consistent "choice"?

Why is it that the invariable response from the abortionists when you press them on why abortion should be legal is always "a woman's right to choose"? Actually, the question is really, "why do the abortionists (who are almost always on the Left) use the 'woman's right to choose' argument so inconsistently?

If you doubt that they are inconsistent, apply this simple test. Do a Google search on "pornography women" and see what comes up. You'll be surprised at the number of feminists who suddenly change their "it's her body" mantra when it comes to pornography. Suddenly, the same women who were considered completely capable of making a literally life-or-death decision for another human being become mind-numbed, brainwashed fools, who have been "victimized" by the patriarchal society which views women as objects. Suddenly, the great champions of "a woman's right to choose" become the all-knowing, condescending elite who know better than Dallas-doin'-Debbie what she should do with her own body. While I'm in agreement that pornography is a scourge that I can personally attest to, I find the inconsistency among the Leftist feminist groups angering and hypocritical.

Ultimately, it appears that the Feminist/Leftist drivel about a woman's right has less to do with a woman's real rights and more to do with issuing camoflauge to hide the real agenda: remaking our culture in the image of the Left.

Hugh Hewitt and the Recall

I'm discouraged by Mr. Hewitt's "pragmatist" take on the recall election. At first I brushed off my favorite talk show host's infatuation with the Arnold camp as a one-time fluke, the momentary indulgence in wishful thinking brought on by living under the agony of a Davis governship. But now I'm beginning to wonder. After more reflection, it seems to me that Hewitt's attachment to The Terminator stems not from a sudden fit of the ague, but from a real, and consistently held view of politics that, coming from a Christian, seems dead wrong.

It must be stressed that Mr. Hewitt is a Christian. Ostensibly, this would mean that his engagement of the world around him is done on Christian terms. Whether the California recall, the War on Terror, or even, what party to belong to (if any) , everything should be informed by a Christian conscience. This is the unique burden of the Christian: to take dominion over the world that God sovereignly rules by bringing the Word of God to bear on all of life. What distresses me is that such a fine and good man as Mr. Hewitt appears to miss that point entirely.

He talks continually of the "center right" as a locale on the political spectrum where anybody who's anybody ought to aspire to be. He has described himself as "partisan" for the Republican party. What I find lacking in the best talk show on radio today is an unabashed appeal to biblical authority as the basis for his stance.

What is the "center right"? Is it that place from which Hewitt criticized Franklin Graham for calling Mohammed a false prophet and deceiver? (Dr. John MacArthur, whom Hugh invited to the show to discuss this very issue, sided unequivocally with Franklin Graham) Is it the place from which he derives the necessity and justification for putting "pragmatics" (his words) ahead of principle? Over and over again, during this recall election, Hewitt can be heard dismissing his alliance with the pro-gay marriage, pro-abortion, tax-hike-yes-no? equivocating Arnold as a somewhat grudging necessity in order to win the day for President Bush. All right reasoning, so far as it goes, I suppose, but is it Christian?

On what biblical basis does he conclude that God is more interested in winning than principle or, more theologically correct, that God is hampered in effecting His great purposes by a candidate's apparent lack of "electability"? Isn't He the God of Gideon, who led 300 to defeat thousands? The God of David who took down a giant? More tellingly, isn't He the God of the Lord Jesus Christ, who died in apparent weakness but through His death, defeated Death itself? And let's not neglect the witness of the apostles, all of whom "the world was not worthy" but yet who went about as the "off scouring of the world". Who would have thought that such a weak witness as these earthen vessels appeared to be could turn the world upside down?

This is the problem, as I see it, with aligning yourself strictly with a party, not principle. You become so wedded to the "team" that eventually, advancing the team becomes confused with advancing the principles that the team supposedly stood for. You become overly sensitive to the opinions of others, whose alliance you insist that you need in order to win. And that sensitivity breeds a willingness to concede ground (all too often in my opinion), and a hostility to those who ARE on your team, but who insist on an allegiance to principle. They become the "divisive" ones. The Ross Perot voters who "split" the vote and let the bad guys win.

I never hear much thought given to the larger impact of repeatedly putting nominal conservatives in power positions. Mr. Hewitt rarely, if ever, opines on what he thinks might be the long-term effect of continuously pushing those least committed to biblical principles in power positions. I have not heard a thoughtful engagement from him regarding how the strategy will work out over the long haul. The thinking is that if we can put someone in power who has an (R) next to his name, Mr. Bush is more likely to take California in the next election. Then, we're told, the President will be in a position to do something markedly courageous and conservative, like, appointing strict constructionist judges. What I don't hear addressed is what will happen when Bush appoints a conservative judge, and the nominally conservative congressmen and governors that we elected in order to support Mr. Bush, oppose those same judges (or just as bad, fail to support them when the expected Democrat filibusters begin).

I'm reminded of what a visiting preacher once said when I was a teenager: "What you win them with is what you've won them to." You can't use bait-and-switch as a tactical maneuver in the short term and not get bitten by it in the long term. Sooner or later, those pragmatically selected elected officials will show their true colors, as anyone eventually does in elected office, and the support that you expected will not be there. To believe differently is not only foolish, it's simply unbiblical.

Christians are called to advance the Truth by truthful men, without second-guessing the outcome. Old School Presbyterian theology (to which, I understand, Mr. Hewitt holds) teaches plainly a Post Millennial view of the certitude of the triumph of the Kingdom of God in this world of time. We don't need pragmatists to effect this, just faithful, principled truth speaking.