• Culture,  Politics

    Petitioning for Life: A Story of Survival

    In today’s Wall Street Journal, Julia Gorin declares “I was not aborted.” Why is she making this proclamation? She is responding to a petition being circulated by Ms. Magazine that invites women to declare publicly “I had an abortion.” It’s hard to believe that anyone (even readers of Ms. Magazine) would relish the opportunity to announce such a thing, but Ms. Gorin thinks that the antidote to such foolishness is for nearly-aborted people to tell their own stories.Ms. Gorin does tell her story in this piece, and it is a poignant and powerful narrative of her mother’s decision to buck the Soviet norm in order to have a second child.…

  • Politics

    Hezbollah Balks: Is Anyone Surprised?

    “Hezbollah refused to disarm and withdraw its fighters from the battle-scarred hills along the border with Israel on Tuesday, threatening to delay deployment of the Lebanese army and endangering a fragile cease-fire” (Washington Post).Is anyone surprised that Hezbollah is refusing to disarm and to pull out of South Lebanon? Is anyone one surprised that Hezbollah is jeopardizing the cease-fire brokered at the U.N.? Does anyone have any more doubts about who is gunning for a prolonged fight? I hope not. Read on: “Hezbollah Balks At Withdrawal From the South” – Washington Post

  • Politics

    Ned Lamont: Karl Rove’s Dream Come True

    In today’s Wall Street Journal, Martin Peretz boils down what’s at stake in the much ballyhooed senatorial contest in Conneticut between Joe Lieberman and Ned Lamont. The contest in Connecticut tomorrow is about two views of the world. Mr. Lamont’s view is that there are very few antagonists whom we cannot mollify or conciliate. Let’s call this process by its correct name: appeasement. The Greenwich entrepreneur might call it “incentivization.” Mr. Lieberman’s view is that there are actually enemies who, intoxicated by millennial delusions, are not open to rational and reciprocal arbitration. Why should they be? After all, they inhabit a universe of inevitability, rather like Nazis and communists, but…

  • Politics

    Too Wimpy To Win the War?

    John Podhoretz of the New York Post poses a set of questions that we would all do well to ponder: WHAT if liberal democracies have now evolved to a point where they can no longer wage war effectively because they have achieved a level of humanitarian concern for others that dwarfs any really cold-eyed pursuit of their own national interests? . . . Could World War II have been won by Britain and the United States if the two countries did not have it in them to firebomb Dresden and nuke Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Didn’t the willingness of their leaders to inflict mass casualties on civilians indicate a cold-eyed singleness…

  • Politics

    Moral Equivalence?

    I am watching world reaction to the tragedy that occurred in Qana, Lebanon, and I am stunned that world opinion continues to make a moral equivalence between the actions of the state of Israel and those of the Hezbollah. I am not speaking as a person who thinks Israel has a divine-right to the land that they occupy. Nevertheless, they are a democracy that is defending itself from the attacks of a vicious terrorist group. How can Israel acquiesce to a cease-fire while Hezbollah continues to fire rockets at their cities?Dan Gillerman, the Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, summed up the difference between Israel and Hezbollah on “Meet the…

  • Politics

    The U.N. Rebukes U.S. for Its Response to Katrina

    I cannot comment yet on this story just released from the Associated Press. This is one of those moments in which I need to just stop, take a deep breath, and count to ten.Here’s the lead from the story: The United States must better protect poor people and African-Americans in natural disasters to avoid problems like those after Hurricane Katrina, a U.N. human rights panel said Friday. The U.N. Human Rights Committee said poor and black Americans were “disadvantaged” after Katrina, and the U.S. should work harder to ensure that their rights “are fully taken into consideration in the reconstruction plans with regard to access to housing, education and health…

  • Culture,  Politics,  Theology/Bible

    Is Embryonic Stem-Cell Research Murder?

    Does the destruction of human embryos amount to murder? White House spokesman Tony Snow put this question on the front burner last week when he described President Bush’s position as follows: “The president believes strongly that for the purpose of research it’s inappropriate for the federal government to finance something that many people consider murder. He’s one of them. The simple answer is he thinks murder’s wrong” (source).

  • Culture,  Politics

    Bill Frist’s Incoherent Position on Embryonic Stem Cell Research

    Senator Bill Frist is a political conservative. He is a Republican. He claims to be pro-life. And he is dead wrong on embryonic stem cell research.Senator Frist contributed an opinion editorial to the Washington Post on Tuesday titled “Meeting Stem Cells’ Promise — Ethically.” In this piece he makes an absolutely morally incoherent argument in favor of federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. Why is his argument incoherent? Because he claims to hold the pro-life convction that from conception all life has value, yet at the same time he claims that some of those valuable lives can and should be killed. In the first paragraph, he asserts his pro-life…

  • Culture,  Politics

    Media Bias? Yeah, so what?

    E. J. Dionne’s Washington Post op-ed really surprised me in its candor about media bias. Dionne articulates a strategy for Democrats and the media as they try to undermine Republican foreign policy. But Democrats (and, yes, the media) risk playing into Republican hands if they fail to force a discussion of the administration’s larger failures or let the debate focus narrowly on exactly what date we should set for getting out of Iraq (source). So there you have it. According to Dionne, Democrats and the media are united in their opposition to Republican ideals. If that’s not a clear admission of media bias, I don’t know what is.

  • Culture,  Politics

    Ken Lay, R.I.P.

    In May, I wrote about what I thought was the political significance of the Enron convictions and of the Ken Lay saga. It turns out that the end of the story happened this morning when Ken Lay died of a massive heart attack. R.I.P.“Enron Founder Ken Lay Dead of Heart Attack” – Washington Post