Don’t miss Dr. James Dobson’s Opinion piece in today’s New York Times: “The Values Test.” He writes about the decision that was reached by a subgroup within the Council for National Policy. He writes: “If neither of the two major political parties nominates an individual who pledges himself or herself to the sanctity of human life, we will join others in voting for a minor-party candidate. . .
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Religious Right To Bolt If Republicans Choose Rudy
James Dobson, Tony Perkins, and some others within the Council for National Policy are threatening to leave the Republican Party if Rudy Giuliani wins the Republican nomination, according to The New York Times. This is big news. I for one am happy to see these leaders standing on principle, and I intend to stand with them. I don’t care if Giuliani believes in lower taxes and smaller government. If he’s wrong on the greatest human rights crisis of our time (abortion on demand), then he’s not qualified to be President. “Giuliani Inspires Threat of a Third-Party Run” – by David Kirkpatrick (New York Times)
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Doug Wilson on the Politics of N. T. Wright
This is likely the first and last time you will see the word “turd” in one of my blog posts. But this is the metaphor that the inimitable Doug Wilson chooses to describe the current polarities of the American political landscape. In his commentary “The Fox News Jesus or the CNN Jesus?,” Wilson responds to Joseph Laconte’s critique of N. T. Wright that appeared last week in the web version of The Weekly Standard (see my “More Wrong from Wright“). Wilson’s basic point is that choosing between the “Fox News Jesus” and the “CNN Jesus” is like choosing between cat turds and dog turds. They’re certainly different, but neither one…
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More Wrong from Wright
I have given my assessment of N. T. Wright’s politics in previous posts on this blog (here, here). Readers may remember that Wright is pretty unrealistic in his appraisal of how the West should respond to Islamo-fascism. Not only does Wright excoriate the American-led war in Iraq, he also dismisses America’s toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan as an “immature lashing out.” Wright has said that “the only way to fight terror is by working for mutual understanding and respect” (He’s serious!). For Wright, the American “empire’s” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan amount to fighting “one kind of terror with another.” One would expect this kind of moral equivalence from…
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Bollinger Blasts Ahmadinejad
Columbia University received a fair share of criticism for hosting an event featuring Iran’s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Columbia President Lee C. Bollinger, nevertheless, made good on his promise to pull no punches with Ahmadinejad. Here’s how President ended his opening remarks: “I am only a professor, who is also a university president, and today I feel all the weight of the modern civilized world yearning to express the revulsion at what you stand for. I only wish I could do better.” Good for President Bollinger. Here’s the AP coverage: “Ahmadinejad Questions 9/11, Holocaust.”
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General Betray Us?
Politics reached a new low in the run-up to General Petreaus’ testimony before Congress yesterday. The editors at The Wall Street Journal excoriated the slanderous tactics used against Petreaus and have called for congressional Democrats to repudiate MoveOn.org’s full-page ad in The New York Times which renamed the general “General Betray Us.” Norman Podhoretz gives a good account of the “Vietnam syndrome” that has given birth to the cynicism that seems to be the order of the day in politics. In “America the Ugly,” he writes: “It is impossible at this point to predict how and when the battle of Iraq will end. But from the vitriolic debates it has…
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A Publicity Coup for Noam Chomsky . . . Not!
You’ve gotta feel for the guy a little bit. Everyone’s favorite linguist has put his best foot forward to write about politics and other areas outside his technical expertise (We know a little bit about that on this blog!). Nevertheless, Noam Chomsky seems to be the man of the hour among all the wrong people. Last Fall, Chomsky got endorsed by the world’s most notorious dictator, Hugo Chávez. And now this Fall, he has just been endorsed by the world’s most notorious terrorist, Osama Bin Laden. All in all, I’d say that’s a pretty bad 12 months worth of publicity. Talk about your unintended consequences!
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A Good Word from Tony Snow
I’m thankful for public servants like Tony Snow—so much so that I have written about him more than once on this blog (see here). Last week, he announced that he would resign as President Bush’s press secretary. Many people will remember that he is a cancer survivor. Unfortunately his cancer has returned. Snow wrote a short piece for Christianity Today describing his decision to step down, and he also shared some of his reflections on having cancer. You should read the whole essay, but one line stuck out to me: “We want lives of simple, predictable ease—smooth, even trails as far as the eye can see—but God likes to go…
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Attorney General Alberto Gonzales Resigns
This is big news, but not because it remarkably effects the fortunes of the current administration. It’s big news because it does affect the political rhetoric leading into the ’08 election cycle. One of the key strategies of Democratic presidential hopefuls thus far has been castigating the misfires of the Bush administration. Gonzalez’s exit will justify for them adding one more item to their growing list of reasons not to vote for a Republican in ’08. If you vote Republican, you’ll get more of what you got with Bush. Their list of Bush bungles goes something like this:
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The Security Evangelicals?
Wayne Slater of the Dallas Morning News argues that Rudy Giuliani’s strength on national security may override concerns that evangelicals have about his liberal social views: “The Republican Party’s staunchest supporters of the war on terrorism . . . may be motivated by a candidate they believe will protect them against terrorism. In particular, that could help Mr. Giuliani overcome the conventional wisdom that a GOP dominated by Christian conservatives won’t nominate a social liberal for president. “‘The national security issues appeal to a number of evangelicals,’ said John Green, senior fellow at the Pew Forum for Religion and Public Life, who has long studied how religion motivates voters. ‘They…