Month: February 2011

I Am In Awe of Such Faith

Christian Persecution in Afghanistanby Matthew Archbold –
An Afghanistan Christian and father of six, is imprisoned and scheduled to die. His crime? He believes Christ is his Savior. And he is scheduled to die because of it. No defense lawyer will take his case for fear of retribution. And he has been told that if he renounces Christ things would go easier. But he doesn’t. He won’t.

Said Musa, who lost his leg from a landmine in the 1990’s and has worked since then as a medical worker for the Red Cross fitting children with prosthetics, has been in jail for eight months. According to a public letter written by him and addressed to our President and the world community, he has been brutally tortured and abused in every way possible, both by guards and inmates.

As of yet the media and the world seem to have taken little notice of Said Musa. There are currently less than 100 mentions of Musa in the news and most of them are not considered part of the mainstream media, other than the Wall Street Journal. [Read more…]

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In Vietnam, Hating Communism Anew

Dennis Prager
Dennis Prager
by Dennis Prager –
Seeing the Communist North induces outrage at the senseless deaths and historical lies.

Here is the truth: Every Communist dictator in the world has been a megalomaniacal, cult-of-personality, power-hungry, bloodthirsty thug. Ho Chi Minh was no different. He murdered his opponents, tortured only-God-knows-how-many innocent Vietnamese, and threatened millions into fighting for him — yes, for him and his blood-soaked Vietnamese Communist party, backed by the greatest murderer of all time, Mao Tse-tung. But the moral idiots in America chanted “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh” at antiwar rallies and depicted America as the real murderers of Vietnamese — “Hey, Hey, LBJ, How many kids did you kill today?” …

It was difficult to control my emotions — specifically my anger — during my visit to Vietnam last week. The more I came to admire the Vietnamese people — their intelligence, love of life, dignity, and hard work — the more rage I felt for the Communists who brought them (and, of course, us Americans) so much suffering in the second half of the 20th century.

Unfortunately, Communists still rule the country. Yet Vietnam today has embraced the only way that exists to escape poverty, let alone to produce prosperity: capitalism and the free market. So what exactly did the 2 million Vietnamese who died in the Vietnam War die for? [Read more…]

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“Nobody Gets Married Any More, Mister”

Inner City Tragedy by Gerry Garibaldi –

Here’s my prediction: the money, the reforms, the gleaming porcelain, the hopeful rhetoric about saving our children—all of it will have a limited impact, at best, on most city schoolchildren. Urban teachers face an intractable problem, one that we cannot spend or even teach our way out of: teen pregnancy. This year, all of my favorite girls are pregnant, four in all, future unwed mothers every one. There will be no innovation in this quarter, no race to the top. Personal moral accountability is the electrified rail that no politician wants to touch.

My first encounter with teen pregnancy was a girl named Nicole, a pretty 15-year-old who had rings on every finger and great looped earrings and a red pen with fluffy pink feathers and a heart that lit up when she wrote with it. Hearts seemed to be on everything—in her signature, on her binder; there was often a little plastic heart barrette in her hair, which she had dyed in bright hues recalling a Siamese fighting fish. She was enrolled in two of my classes: English and journalism. [Read more…]

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The Weather Isn’t Getting Weirder

Weather is Normal, No Global Warming by Anne Jolis –

Some climate alarmists would have us believe that these storms are yet another baleful consequence of man-made CO2 emissions. In addition to the latest weather events, they also point to recent cyclones in Burma, last winter’s fatal chills in Nepal and Bangladesh, December’s blizzards in Britain, and every other drought, typhoon and unseasonable heat wave around the world.

But is it true? To answer that question, you need to understand whether recent weather trends are extreme by historical standards. The Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project is the latest attempt to find out, using super-computers to generate a dataset of global atmospheric circulation from 1871 to the present.

As it happens, the project’s initial findings, published last month, show no evidence of an intensifying weather trend. [Read more…]

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The Art of Living: Patience and Perseverance

Patience and Perseverance by Edward P. Sri –

How do you respond when “bad things” happen to you? When you experience disappointment or setbacks? When you are hurt by something someone said?

When experiencing sorrow, we might be tempted to close in on ourselves. We might allow negative emotions to gnaw at us. We might fail to be attentive to others’ needs because we are so preoccupied with our troubles. We might also become sluggish in our responsibilities, not giving the best of ourselves at work and with our family.

Some people simply are not pleasant to be around when they experience sorrow. They become gloomy and grumpy, and might even let their frustrations out on others.

Human beings cannot escape suffering in this world. However, the way we face life’s sorrows is a question of moral character. Do we allow sorrow to dominate our existence? [Read more…]

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Colson: The Desire for Freedom, It’s Written on Our Hearts

Chuck Colson
Chuck Colson

by Chuck Colson –

What’s happening in the Middle East is one of the most volatile international situations since 9/11. Will the government win? Will radical Islamists highjack what might be a nascent democratic movement? Nobody knows.

But one thing should be very clear to anybody who is paying close attention—especially to Christians: People everywhere, we see it in the streets, are yearning to be free. And they yearn to be free precisely because every man, woman, and child, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or otherwise, is made in the image of God.

We know, as Augustine taught, that God, who has a free will, bestowed upon us the gift of free will. The desire for freedom—the freedom to choose right from wrong, the freedom to order our lives—is imprinted in our very DNA.

This is what the biblical worldview teaches us. And that is why tyrannical governments can put a lid on freedom for only so long. Inevitably that human desire for freedom will boil over—just like it is doing in the streets of Cairo today. [Read more…]

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Religious Left Despised Ronald Reagan

Ronald Reaganby Mark Tooley –
Jim Wallis’ Evangelical Left Sojourners has helpfully reminded us, amid all the hagiography about Ronald Reagan on the centennial of his birth, that the Religious Left despised him. Some Religious Leftists doubtless still do.

Sojourners magazine editor Jim Rice recently recalled Sojourners’ 2004 observations about Reagan upon his death. “Reagan’s policies were disastrous and destructive.” After all, “poverty worsened at home and abroad, he spent hundreds of billions of dollars on the largest peacetime military buildup in history, including $80 billion (and counting) for the fantasy of Star Wars and tens of billions for first-strike-capable nuclear weapons.” Reagan also reputedly “ignored” the AIDS epidemic. He instigated “U.S. wars in Central America” that included right-wing “death squads” and killed tens of thousands, including Jesuit priests.

According to Sojourners lore, “Reagan’s policies worked against the interests of the poor and marginalized and further enriched the wealthy and powerful.” His “most destructive legacy could very well be the mania for ‘deregulation’ that he unleashed, starting with his declaration in his first Inaugural address that ‘Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.'” [Read more…]

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The Left and Their ‘Good Victims’

by Robin of Berkeley –
A number of years ago, I was the victim of a brutal street crime. Although I was left with a broken nose and two black eyes, I learned soon thereafter that I wasn’t a “good victim.”

A progressive friend, Fran, clued me in. When I told her what happened, she said, “What you went through wasn’t half as bad as what he has suffered.” Fran was referring to the fact that I am white and the assailant was black. In other words, my suffering didn’t matter.

Fran’s reaction is not at all unique in these parts; here, there are good and bad victims. [Read more…]

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