Politics

Marvin Olasky writes: Who’s the major figure behind the election and re-election of George W. Bush? On one level, the visionary Karl Rove. At a deeper level, a theologian most Americans have never heard of: Francis Schaeffer, who 50 years ago this month founded an evangelistic haven in Switzerland, L’Abri.

Francis Schaeffer spoke at a pro-life seminar that me and a friend held while students at the University of Minnesota when I was a student there. He was hospitalized at the Mayo Clinic for cancer at the time but still made the trip. May his memory be eternal.

Myron Magnet argues in the Wall Street Journal that Bush’s theory of domestic policy is more profound than “compassionate conservatism.”

Thursday, January 6, 2005 12:01 a.m. EST

The 109th Congress has been sworn in and convened, and now the new post-election reality begins. If I were a Democrat right now I would think big and get serious. Second terms are tough for incumbents; history has not handed George W. Bush an easy ride, and there’s no reason to think that will change now; and Mr. Bush is a gambler who’s not afraid to throw the dice, which means he will likely have not only stunning gains but stunning losses ahead…

There is much to build on. You hold 44 Senate seats, 202 House seats and 22 governorships. You have been on a losing strain for a while, but you can turn that into opportunity. Now, in the depths–or what you frankly hope are the depths–you can move for change within the party. Nothing sobers like defeat. Use the new sobriety to shake off the mad left…

The Groups–all the left-wing outfits from the abortion people to the enviros–didn’t deliver in the last election, and not because they didn’t try. They worked their hearts out. But they had no one to deliver. They had only money. The secret: Nobody likes them. Nobody! No matter how you feel about abortion, no one likes pro-abortion fanatics; no one likes mad scientists who cook environmental data. Or rather only rich and creepy people like them…

Read the entire article on the Wall Street Journal website.

Free registration required.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A38001-2004Nov9.html?referrer%3Demailarticle&sub=AR
Alan Cooperman, Washington Post Staff Writer, Wednesday, November 10, 2004; Page A07

Liberal Christian leaders argued yesterday that the moral values held by most Americans are much broader than the handful of issues emphasized by religious conservatives in the 2004 presidential campaign.

Battling the notion that “values voters” swept President Bush to victory because of opposition to gay marriage and abortion, three liberal groups released a post-election poll in which 33 percent of voters said the nation’s most urgent moral problem was “greed and materialism” and 31 percent said it was “poverty and economic justice.” Sixteen percent cited abortion, and 12 percent named same-sex marriage.
[Read more…]

I shamelessly lifted this from This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis.

Important Rules for Writing Good

1. Avoid alliteration. Always.
2. Prepositions are not words to end sentences with.
3. Avoid cliches like the plague. (They’re old hat.)
4. Employ the vernacular.
5. Eschew ampersands & abbreviations, etc.
6. Parenthetical remarks (however relevant) are unnecessary.
7. It is wrong to ever split an infinitive.
8. Contractions aren’t necessary.
9. Foreign words and phrases are not apropos.
10. One should never generalize.
11. Eliminate quotations. As Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: “I hate quotations. Tell me what you know.”
12. Comparisons are as bad as clichés.
13. Don’t be redundant; don’t use more words than necessary; it’s highly superfluous.
14. Be more or less specific.
15. Understatement is always best.
16. Exaggeration is a billion times worse than understatement.
17. One-word sentences? Eliminate.
19. Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
19. The passive voice is to be avoided.
20. Go around the barn at high noon to avoid colloquialisms.
21. Even if a mixed metaphor sings, it should be derailed.
22. Who needs rhetorical questions?

GENEVA, November 9, 2004 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The United Nations Human Rights Committee (UNHRC) concluded a review on Poland’s compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), demanding that the mostly-Catholic nation “liberalize” its abortion laws. The UN committee composed of 18 UN human rights “experts” from various countries met with Polish officials on October 27 and 28, making its observations and recommendations on November 4.

A readers sends a quote by Bishop Tikhon of the OCA:

One might very well agree with Noam Chomsky that terrorism is nothing new, and that what made 9/11 particularly painful was the realization that for the first time we were the victims, rather than the perpetrators of it. Having terrorized Kossovo and Serbia, before that Grenada, Panama, El Salvador, the Phillipines, etc., etc., one would think that “with-it” Americans would have admitted, “What goes around comes around,” no?
I wonder what the citizens of Falloujah think when it is explained to them that they are now being subjected to an attack against terrorism?
Love,
+B.T.

Let me direct the good Bishop to some articles examining Chomsky’s ideas in a brighter light: What Noam Chomski Really Wants, or the antichomsky website.

This ties into a theme I’ve been working on: secular leftists are moral absolutists. I’ve been trying to sharpen this into an essay but haven’t found the nub yet. I mentioned this idea in several comments upstream.

The Weekly Standard

Winning the “I Don’t Know” Crowd

Maybe the Americans who voted for Bush have questions about when life really begins and don’t want to support a party that refuses to acknowledge those concerns.

Maybe the Americans who voted for Bush wonder just how much involvement between church and state constitutes an infringement on First Amendment proscriptions against state-sponsored religion. Maybe they are troubled by absolutists who want to wipe faith out of every aspect of public life.
[Read more…]

George Neumayr American Spectator

Normally Democrats urge their candidates to expunge God and morality from politics. Even the word morality grates on them. It is a far too judgment-laden term for their taste. How about the insipid term “ethics”? Okay, if you must — goes the attitude — but don’t use the loaded term “morality.” Yet what are we now hearing from the Mike Barnicles and Nancy Pelosis? That Kerry didn’t talk about God enough. That he failed to satisfy the public’s hunger for spirituality and morality. Like children who recently learned a new phrase, liberals are giving Kerry a post-mortem drubbing for not speaking to the “moral values” of America.
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Robert Novak (archive) November 4, 2004

WASHINGTON — No wonder that John Kerry, after conferring at his Boston mansion with Ted Kennedy in the wee hours Wednesday morning, did not immediately concede the election to George W. Bush before giving up nine hours later. Remote though his chance was of turning around the crucial outcome in Ohio, it seemed to provide a frail final chance of averting total disaster for the Democratic Party.
[Read more…]