"The worst thing we could do is to go back to the very same policies that created this mess in the first place," Obama said at a fundraiser in Wisconsin. "In November, you're going to have that choice."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100816/ap_on_re_us/us_obama
I quite agree. The worst thing we could do is to go back to the very same policies that cause stagflation in the 70's, exacerbated the Depression in the 30's and has stifled the recovery following the real estate bubble burst in 2007. Keynesianism has failed everytime it has been tried. Statism has failed every time it has been tried, collectivism has failed everytime it has been tried. Let's think of all of the prosperous states and comfortable citizens enjoying the fruits of a strong, dictatorial central government directing the economy and distributing the fruits of prosperity: Burma, Cuba, China, Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Saudi Arabia...
Nah, let's try something new that has had some small level of success occassionally in the past: Let individuals pursue their goals unfettered by central government micro-management, enforce the rule of law impartially, support ethical and moral behavior among the citizens and discourage (in accordance with ordered liberty) anti-social behavior.
In November we will have a choice between "up or down. Up to man's age-old dream--the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism."
http://reagan2020.us/speeches/A_Time_for_Choosing.asp
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Man cannot love mortal things. He can only love immortal things for an instant." - GKC
Heretics, Ch VII. Omar and the Sacred Vine:
Great joy does, not gather the rosebuds while it may;
its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw.
Great joy has in it the sense of immortality; the very splendour
of youth is the sense that it has all space to stretch its legs in.
In all great comic literature, in "Tristram Shandy"
or "Pickwick", there is this sense of space and incorruptibility;
we feel the characters are deathless people in an endless tale.
It is true enough, of course, that a pungent happiness comes chiefly
in certain passing moments; but it is not true that we should think
of them as passing, or enjoy them simply "for those moments' sake."
To do this is to rationalize the happiness, and therefore to destroy it.
Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized.
Suppose a man experiences a really splendid moment of pleasure.
I do not mean something connected with a bit of enamel, I mean
something with a violent happiness in it--an almost painful happiness.
A man may have, for instance, a moment of ecstasy in first love,
or a moment of victory in battle. The lover enjoys the moment,
but precisely not for the moment's sake. He enjoys it for the
woman's sake, or his own sake. The warrior enjoys the moment, but not
for the sake of the moment; he enjoys it for the sake of the flag.
The cause which the flag stands for may be foolish and fleeting;
the love may be calf-love, and last a week. But the patriot thinks
of the flag as eternal; the lover thinks of his love as something
that cannot end. These moments are filled with eternity;
these moments are joyful because they do not seem momentary.
Once look at them as moments after Pater's manner, and they become
as cold as Pater and his style. Man cannot love mortal things.
He can only love immortal things for an instant.
Great joy does, not gather the rosebuds while it may;
its eyes are fixed on the immortal rose which Dante saw.
Great joy has in it the sense of immortality; the very splendour
of youth is the sense that it has all space to stretch its legs in.
In all great comic literature, in "Tristram Shandy"
or "Pickwick", there is this sense of space and incorruptibility;
we feel the characters are deathless people in an endless tale.
It is true enough, of course, that a pungent happiness comes chiefly
in certain passing moments; but it is not true that we should think
of them as passing, or enjoy them simply "for those moments' sake."
To do this is to rationalize the happiness, and therefore to destroy it.
Happiness is a mystery like religion, and should never be rationalized.
Suppose a man experiences a really splendid moment of pleasure.
I do not mean something connected with a bit of enamel, I mean
something with a violent happiness in it--an almost painful happiness.
A man may have, for instance, a moment of ecstasy in first love,
or a moment of victory in battle. The lover enjoys the moment,
but precisely not for the moment's sake. He enjoys it for the
woman's sake, or his own sake. The warrior enjoys the moment, but not
for the sake of the moment; he enjoys it for the sake of the flag.
The cause which the flag stands for may be foolish and fleeting;
the love may be calf-love, and last a week. But the patriot thinks
of the flag as eternal; the lover thinks of his love as something
that cannot end. These moments are filled with eternity;
these moments are joyful because they do not seem momentary.
Once look at them as moments after Pater's manner, and they become
as cold as Pater and his style. Man cannot love mortal things.
He can only love immortal things for an instant.
Friday, July 16, 2010
DESIGNERS AGAINST OBAMAMANIA
Came across a great, creative web site while surfing: Brad the Designer posted some wonderful counter-cultural, transgressive (to those who recognize the reactionary Left's penchant for clinging to old, failed beliefs) graphics and intelligent comment.
Among the gems, this may be the best:
Abortionists for Obama
"When I made the satirical "Abortionists For Obama" logo, I thought I was pushing the envelope...but I guess I was wrong. There's actually a fundraising group on the Obama website called "Abortion Providers for Obama".The fundraising page is here."
Thursday, July 15, 2010
Today's Leftist Lie: "No one is 'pro-abortion'"
The New Abortion Providers
The MiniTru at the NYT never fails to disappoint with the blatantness of its Progressive cant. In this case, an article in the NYT Magazine by Emily Bazelon celebrating the "heroic" efforts of people committed to making abortions 'mainstream' parts of medical practice. It is difficult to square Dear Leader's statement that 'no one is pro-abortion' with this paean to abortionists and their enablers. Clearly the Left understands that the NYT is an internal organ that no right thinking person wastes time reading, so they can openly discuss things they must obfuscate with euphemism and sophistry otherwise.
"This abortion-rights campaign, ...is trying to recast doctors, changing them from a weak link of abortion to a strong one. Its leaders ...hope that, eventually, more and more doctors will use their training to bring abortion into their practices. The bold idea at the heart of this effort is to integrate abortion so that it’s ...embraced rather than shunned."
The NYT celebrates efforts to have abortion 'integrated' and 'embraced.' Hmmm.
"“Some people like to live on the edge — I don’t,” said Emily Godfrey, a 40-year-old doctor who practices at a primary-care clinic at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she also does abortions. “I’m a Catholic girl from the suburbs."
She doesn't recognize the razor's edge she is treading... God help her.
"IN 1999, UTA LANDY, a former director of the National Abortion Federation, and Philip Darney, her husband and an OB-GYN professor at U.C.S.F., created the Kenneth J. Ryan Residency Training Program. The program gives medical schools two or three years of seed money for abortion training for OB-GYN residents. Through it, 58 campuses in the U.S. and Canada have received financing."
I think it is accurate to say that the Landys, who made their fortune from the abortion industry, led its lobbying association and have donated their wealth to facilitate the training of more abortionists are 'pro-abortion.'
"The money for the Ryan and the Family Planning Fellowship comes from one foundation and from one family. The donor has chosen to remain anonymous, which helps to explain why there’s been so little publicity about the pro-choice strategy of bringing abortion into academic medicine. It has been covered by a veil of semisecrecy."
John 3:20 For every one that does evil hates the light and comes not to the light, that his works may not be reproved. 21 But he that does truth comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest: because they are done in God.
"In the course of my reporting, two doctors who had not done the fellowship themselves, but who work in universities, volunteered to me that the money for the programs comes from the Buffett Foundation. They meant the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation.
Susan Thompson Buffett was married to Warren Buffett and served as president of the foundation that bears her name. She died in 2004. Two years later, Warren Buffett gave the foundation about $3 billion. He said that he expected the gift to increase the foundation’s annual expenditures by $150 million. And in fact, total giving by the foundation, where two of the Buffetts’ children sit on the board, increased from $202 million in 2007 to $347 million in 2008, according to tax returns.
The tax records also show that most of the foundation’s spending goes to abortion and contraception advocacy and research. According to Access Philanthropy, a research institute that focuses on the giving preferences of foundations and corporate donors, family planning is one of the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation’s main purposes. The foundation’s nonprofit 990 tax form shows that in 2008, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates in the U.S. received about $45 million; the international arm of the organization got about $8 million. There is no line item for the Ryan program or the Family Planning Fellowship. But the foundation paid out around $50 million to universities with one or both of the programs. "
and
"July 14 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama met today with Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Warren Buffett "
Coincidence? Maybe...
"It has long been an abortion-rights selling point that almost 90 percent of the abortions in the U.S. are performed before 12 weeks"
The euphamistic sophistry of the abortion industry is galling. This statistic is an abortion selling point. Period. And who looks for selling points for what they don't promote?
"The abortion providers I talked to ... see the moral complexities up close. Two years ago, a young professor at the University of Michigan named Lisa Harris wrote an academic article about performing an 18-week abortion while she was 18 weeks pregnant. Harris described grasping the fetus’s leg with her forceps, feeling a kick in her own uterus and starting to cry. “It was an overwhelming feeling — a brutally visceral response — heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics,” she wrote. “It was one of the more raw moments in my life.”"
There are no moral complexities here. One life is instrumentalized and held without value relative to the convenience of another in a felicific calculus of subjective moral relativism in an attempt to justify an objectively evil act. The moral clarity cannot be starker than in Prof Harris' story. The amazing thing is that Prof Harris persists in aborting children even after the revelation afforded to her. (More commentary on her article at Abortion and the Malleable Conscience on the Stand to Reason blog.
The MiniTru at the NYT never fails to disappoint with the blatantness of its Progressive cant. In this case, an article in the NYT Magazine by Emily Bazelon celebrating the "heroic" efforts of people committed to making abortions 'mainstream' parts of medical practice. It is difficult to square Dear Leader's statement that 'no one is pro-abortion' with this paean to abortionists and their enablers. Clearly the Left understands that the NYT is an internal organ that no right thinking person wastes time reading, so they can openly discuss things they must obfuscate with euphemism and sophistry otherwise.
"This abortion-rights campaign, ...is trying to recast doctors, changing them from a weak link of abortion to a strong one. Its leaders ...hope that, eventually, more and more doctors will use their training to bring abortion into their practices. The bold idea at the heart of this effort is to integrate abortion so that it’s ...embraced rather than shunned."
The NYT celebrates efforts to have abortion 'integrated' and 'embraced.' Hmmm.
"“Some people like to live on the edge — I don’t,” said Emily Godfrey, a 40-year-old doctor who practices at a primary-care clinic at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she also does abortions. “I’m a Catholic girl from the suburbs."
She doesn't recognize the razor's edge she is treading... God help her.
"IN 1999, UTA LANDY, a former director of the National Abortion Federation, and Philip Darney, her husband and an OB-GYN professor at U.C.S.F., created the Kenneth J. Ryan Residency Training Program. The program gives medical schools two or three years of seed money for abortion training for OB-GYN residents. Through it, 58 campuses in the U.S. and Canada have received financing."
I think it is accurate to say that the Landys, who made their fortune from the abortion industry, led its lobbying association and have donated their wealth to facilitate the training of more abortionists are 'pro-abortion.'
"The money for the Ryan and the Family Planning Fellowship comes from one foundation and from one family. The donor has chosen to remain anonymous, which helps to explain why there’s been so little publicity about the pro-choice strategy of bringing abortion into academic medicine. It has been covered by a veil of semisecrecy."
John 3:20 For every one that does evil hates the light and comes not to the light, that his works may not be reproved. 21 But he that does truth comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest: because they are done in God.
"In the course of my reporting, two doctors who had not done the fellowship themselves, but who work in universities, volunteered to me that the money for the programs comes from the Buffett Foundation. They meant the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation.
Susan Thompson Buffett was married to Warren Buffett and served as president of the foundation that bears her name. She died in 2004. Two years later, Warren Buffett gave the foundation about $3 billion. He said that he expected the gift to increase the foundation’s annual expenditures by $150 million. And in fact, total giving by the foundation, where two of the Buffetts’ children sit on the board, increased from $202 million in 2007 to $347 million in 2008, according to tax returns.
The tax records also show that most of the foundation’s spending goes to abortion and contraception advocacy and research. According to Access Philanthropy, a research institute that focuses on the giving preferences of foundations and corporate donors, family planning is one of the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation’s main purposes. The foundation’s nonprofit 990 tax form shows that in 2008, Planned Parenthood and its affiliates in the U.S. received about $45 million; the international arm of the organization got about $8 million. There is no line item for the Ryan program or the Family Planning Fellowship. But the foundation paid out around $50 million to universities with one or both of the programs. "
and
"July 14 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama met today with Berkshire Hathaway Inc.'s Warren Buffett "
Coincidence? Maybe...
"It has long been an abortion-rights selling point that almost 90 percent of the abortions in the U.S. are performed before 12 weeks"
The euphamistic sophistry of the abortion industry is galling. This statistic is an abortion selling point. Period. And who looks for selling points for what they don't promote?
"The abortion providers I talked to ... see the moral complexities up close. Two years ago, a young professor at the University of Michigan named Lisa Harris wrote an academic article about performing an 18-week abortion while she was 18 weeks pregnant. Harris described grasping the fetus’s leg with her forceps, feeling a kick in her own uterus and starting to cry. “It was an overwhelming feeling — a brutally visceral response — heartfelt and unmediated by my training or my feminist pro-choice politics,” she wrote. “It was one of the more raw moments in my life.”"
There are no moral complexities here. One life is instrumentalized and held without value relative to the convenience of another in a felicific calculus of subjective moral relativism in an attempt to justify an objectively evil act. The moral clarity cannot be starker than in Prof Harris' story. The amazing thing is that Prof Harris persists in aborting children even after the revelation afforded to her. (More commentary on her article at Abortion and the Malleable Conscience on the Stand to Reason blog.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
Homeland chief warns against anti-Muslim backlash
(AP) – 15 hours ago
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The U.S. Homeland Security secretary says she is working to prevent a possible wave of anti-Muslim sentiment after the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas.
Janet Napolitano says her agency is working with groups across the United States to try to deflect any backlash against American Muslims following Thursday's rampage by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim who reportedly expressed growing dismay over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The shootings left 13 people dead and 29 wounded.
Napolitano was in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday for talks with security officials and a meeting with women university students in Abu Dhabi.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j8GOiUlCCnhCsRp1Xvs94KDJh8owD9BR9GPG0
I dunno, maybe after a Muslim extremist kills 13 Soldiers while disguised as an Army officer, Secretary Napolitano might start trying to prevent anti-American sentiment...
Upon reflection, I wonder how the secretary intends to prevent sentiments? Perhaps the thinkpol will be on the lookout for crimethink at the next Tea Party where the dangerous gun-owning, government doubting, Bible-reading Veterans assemble.
(AP) – 15 hours ago
ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates — The U.S. Homeland Security secretary says she is working to prevent a possible wave of anti-Muslim sentiment after the shootings at Fort Hood in Texas.
Janet Napolitano says her agency is working with groups across the United States to try to deflect any backlash against American Muslims following Thursday's rampage by Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, a Muslim who reportedly expressed growing dismay over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The shootings left 13 people dead and 29 wounded.
Napolitano was in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday for talks with security officials and a meeting with women university students in Abu Dhabi.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5j8GOiUlCCnhCsRp1Xvs94KDJh8owD9BR9GPG0
I dunno, maybe after a Muslim extremist kills 13 Soldiers while disguised as an Army officer, Secretary Napolitano might start trying to prevent anti-American sentiment...
Upon reflection, I wonder how the secretary intends to prevent sentiments? Perhaps the thinkpol will be on the lookout for crimethink at the next Tea Party where the dangerous gun-owning, government doubting, Bible-reading Veterans assemble.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Human Rights?
Point 1: "WASHINGTON: The loud sucking noise you hear? That's President Barack Obama kissing up to the Chinese.
The Dalai Lama in Washington, as Barack Obama's administration insisted it still respected the Tibetan leader. Fellow Tibetan exiles welcomed the globetrotting 74-year-old monk as he arrived at his Washington hotel.
More Pictures
At least that's what supporters of Dalai Lama would have you believe after the U.S President passed up a meeting with the Tibetan leader in Washington DC this week – ostensibly to not offend Beijing ahead of his (Obama’s) visit to China next month.
It’s the first time in ten visits to the US in 18 years that the Dalai Lama has failed to meet with the American president. The political and diplomatic slight to the man widely admired in the US as brought forth a volley of criticism against Obama, hitherto hailed a champion of human rights.
Republicans are pillorying Obama for being a pussycat before the Chinese, and there have been murmurs of disapproval from the Democrats too..
"We regret that despite escalating human rights violations in Tibet, the White House has chosen not to meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama...preferring a time that will be less irritating to the Chinese government and after the president’s own trip to China. We are concerned that this time may never come," says Katrina Lantos Swett, whose late father Tom Lantos led the move to present the Tibetan leader with a Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, awarded by then President Bush at a bipartisan ceremony.
The Dalai Lama is scheduled to receive a human rights award in the US Capitol on Tuesday given by the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is a long time admirer of the Tibetan leader. President Obama is also very much in the capital. But there will be no meeting.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Obama-pilloried-over-ducking-Dalai-Lama-to-appease-China/articleshow/5092820.cms
Point 2: (Washington) The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, announced today that President Barack Obama will deliver the keynote address at the 13th Annual National Dinner on Saturday, October 10th, in Washington, D.C.
Point 3:
Conclusion: Freedom from violent political and religious oppression isn't worth his time. They are not the sort of human rights the president concerns himself with.
License for sexual and financial self-gratification IS a concern of his. And the support of a homosexual lobbying and special interest group with deep pockets IS worth his time.
Talk about skewed priorities... and less than a week after committing more time to trying to secure a windfall for his Chicago cronies than to securing a winnable strategy for the people of Afghanistan and the American Soldiers fighting for them.
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." ...Ronald Reagan
The Dalai Lama in Washington, as Barack Obama's administration insisted it still respected the Tibetan leader. Fellow Tibetan exiles welcomed the globetrotting 74-year-old monk as he arrived at his Washington hotel.
More Pictures
At least that's what supporters of Dalai Lama would have you believe after the U.S President passed up a meeting with the Tibetan leader in Washington DC this week – ostensibly to not offend Beijing ahead of his (Obama’s) visit to China next month.
It’s the first time in ten visits to the US in 18 years that the Dalai Lama has failed to meet with the American president. The political and diplomatic slight to the man widely admired in the US as brought forth a volley of criticism against Obama, hitherto hailed a champion of human rights.
Republicans are pillorying Obama for being a pussycat before the Chinese, and there have been murmurs of disapproval from the Democrats too..
"We regret that despite escalating human rights violations in Tibet, the White House has chosen not to meet with His Holiness the Dalai Lama...preferring a time that will be less irritating to the Chinese government and after the president’s own trip to China. We are concerned that this time may never come," says Katrina Lantos Swett, whose late father Tom Lantos led the move to present the Tibetan leader with a Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, awarded by then President Bush at a bipartisan ceremony.
The Dalai Lama is scheduled to receive a human rights award in the US Capitol on Tuesday given by the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights and Justice from Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who is a long time admirer of the Tibetan leader. President Obama is also very much in the capital. But there will be no meeting.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/world/us/Obama-pilloried-over-ducking-Dalai-Lama-to-appease-China/articleshow/5092820.cms
Point 2: (Washington) The Human Rights Campaign, the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender civil rights organization, announced today that President Barack Obama will deliver the keynote address at the 13th Annual National Dinner on Saturday, October 10th, in Washington, D.C.
Point 3:
Conclusion: Freedom from violent political and religious oppression isn't worth his time. They are not the sort of human rights the president concerns himself with.
License for sexual and financial self-gratification IS a concern of his. And the support of a homosexual lobbying and special interest group with deep pockets IS worth his time.
Talk about skewed priorities... and less than a week after committing more time to trying to secure a windfall for his Chicago cronies than to securing a winnable strategy for the people of Afghanistan and the American Soldiers fighting for them.
"Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." ...Ronald Reagan
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Next week, blasphemy gets its own holiday
A friend brought this to my attention. As I read, I had difficulty getting too upset. I certainly wasn't amused but perhaps bemused. The folks quoted give me the impression of being petulant children begging for attention by making a scene about something the adults around them are doing.
Next week, blasphemy gets its own holiday
"The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees the Medicare program for the elderly and disabled as well as privately run Medicare alternatives, on Monday said it was investigating a letter Humana Inc sent enrollees about efforts to overhaul the nation's healthcare system.
"CMS warned Humana it would take necessary enforcement action, and agency spokesman Peter Ashkenaz said Tuesday it is unclear when the investigation will conclude. The company has said it is cooperating with the probe."
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009/09/22/afx6916781.html
http://www.nhpr.org/node/26912
Seems like some speech is more equal than other. And there is one thing I'll bet all these rational blasphemers believe in:
Obey, by Dana Ellyn
Next week, blasphemy gets its own holiday
By Leanne Larmondin
TORONTO—You’ve never seen Jesus like this before: dripping red nail polish around the nails in his feet and hands, an irreverent riff on the crucifixion wounds. The provocative title of the painting: “Jesus Does His Nails.”
Blasphemous? Absolutely. Deliberately provocative? You bet.
But childish and even amateurish in comparison to the famous bit of blasphemous art perpetrated by Andres Serrano. Somehow seems kinda high school to me.
It is part of an upcoming art exhibit in Washington that will mark the first-ever International Blasphemy Day next Wednesday (Sept. 30) at the Center for Inquiry DC near Capitol Hill.
Hmm. I suppose 'international' because someone is coming down from Toronto. I doubt the contingent from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan will be very large... Like "Tom's Famous Steaks and Hoagies" I'm also impressed by their presumption that they are the first group to publicly blaspheme. Still seems like that grade-school boy who says, 'poopie' and giggles at his own trangressivity.
Artist Dana Ellyn says her “Blasphemy” paintings are a tongue-in-cheek expression of her lack of belief in God and religion. The self-described “agnostic atheist”—she doesn’t believe in the existence of any deity but can’t say for sure one doesn’t exist—says her introduction to religion was in college when she studied art history. Stories from the Bible, she says, are just that: stories.
So, Ms Ellyn isn't serious about her blasphemy, but she is organizing an art show around it. I smell an opportunist. Oh, and is it just me or is there something irrational about someone who doesn't believe in God whether He exists or not. Seems like the sort of anti-intellectualism and lack of rationalism that the Center for Inquiry would eschew. But, at least Ms Ellyn bases her opinion on a sound intellectual background of a college art history class. Certainly, that is enough for her to justify gainsaying 2000 years of theological, philosophical and intellectual history.
“My point is not to offend, but I realize it can offend, because religion is such a polarizing topic,” Ellyn said of the exhibit.
Any bets on where Ms Ellyn comes down on the 'polarizing topic' of children rescued from Abortion?
This from the Facebook page for Blasphemy Day: "The purpose of Blasphemy Day is not to promote hate or violence; it is to support free speech, support the right to criticize and satirize religion..."
So, they would probably be all in favor of this picture:
Atheists, skeptics, freethinkers and free-speech advocates around the world will mark Blasphemy Day by mounting their soapboxes—figuratively and literally—and uttering words and displaying images that may cause offense.
And they’re making no apologies.
“We’re not seeking to offend, but if in the course of dialogue and debate, people become offended, that’s not an issue for us,” said Justin Trottier, a Toronto coordinator of Blasphemy Day and executive director of the Ontario chapter of the Center for Inquiry. “There is no human right not to be offended.”
Mark Steyn has found out differently from the Canadian Human Rights Commissions. Various campus 'speech codes' also give the lie to this bit of silliness. Perhaps Mr Trottier should be asked why he isn't having his show in Toronto. And does he really expect rational people to believe him when 'Jesus Does His Nails' is one of the exhibits? Sophmoric in word and deed.
St. Thomas Aquinas described blasphemy—deliberately showing contempt or irreverence for something considered sacred—as a sin “committed directly against God ... more grave than murder.” In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus said, “Whoever blasphemes against the Holy Spirit can never have forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin.”
While it may sound as anachronistic as a witchcraft trial, blasphemy remains punishable by death in countries like Pakistan and Afghanistan. In addition, Ireland recently introduced a defamation law making blasphemy punishable by fines up to 25,000 euros ($37,000 US). What’s more, six U.S. states (Massachusetts, Michigan, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania and Wyoming) have laws that, in some way, prohibit or regulate blasphemy, noted Ron Lindsay, a lawyer and president of the CFI International in Amherst, N.Y.
CFI also cites efforts by the United Nations to introduce anti-blasphemy resolutions that many say would curtail free speech about religion.
These grown-up babies with more time and money than sense are really giving blasphemy a bad name. Grown-ups know that the UN resolutions are being pushed by Islamic states to protect their Islamic theocracies and to add cover for their persecution of Christians and converts from Islam. That is a serious subject. This nonsense is really nothing more than a stunt by the emotionally impoverished that is nevertheless dangerous in that it may lead an impressionable person astray. Again, I have little doubt that the organizers would be aghast at truly radical public utterances; like those of St. Francis of Assisi:
"My little sisters, the birds, much bounden are ye unto God, your Creator, and always in every place ought ye to praise Him, for that He hath given you liberty to fly about everywhere, and hath also given you double and triple rainment; moreover He preserved your seed in the ark of Noah, that your race might not perish out of the world; still more are ye beholden to Him for the element of the air which He hath appointed for you; beyond all this, ye sow not, neither do you reap; and God feedeth you, and giveth you the streams and fountains for your drink; the mountains and valleys for your refuge and the high trees whereon to make your nests; and because ye know not how to spin or sow, God clotheth you, you and your children; wherefore your Creator loveth you much, seeing that He hath bestowed on you so many benefits; and therefore, my little sisters, beware of the sin of ingratitude, and study always to give praises unto God."
Sept. 30 was chosen for the inaugural Blasphemy Day because it is the anniversary of the 2005 publication of the controversial Muhammad cartoons in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. The cartoons resulted in worldwide riots by outraged Muslims and widespread self-censorship by media.
Strange thing is, all of the religiously- oriented paintings on Ms Ellyn's web site are explicitly anti-Christian. If the impetus to this theater really is the cowardly response of the Danish government and newspapers to the violent Muslim reaction to the Danish cartoons (which they should be protecting as incidents of free speech), why has Ms Ellyn refrained from her own satire of Islam and Mohammad?
Lindsay said the Blasphemy Day events are part of his group’s larger Campaign for Free Expression, which encompasses more than protection of speech about religion. CFI, he said, aims to expose all religious beliefs to the same level of inquiry, discussion and criticism to which other areas of intellectual interest are subjected.
Judging from the subject matter I reviewed while composing my replies, I cannot fathom why CFI and the rest of the organizers would propose subjecting religious beliefs to a less rigorous level of inquiry, discussion and criticism than they have already been subject to by their adherents and their devout opponents. These witlings cannot hold a scented candle to even the most mediocre theology student.
Besides the Washington art exhibit, Blasphemy Day events include:
-- a Blasphemy-Fest! at CFI Los Angeles that will feature a talk about free speech followed by three provocative films;
-- supporters worldwide have been encouraged to take up The Blasphemy Challenge (http://www.blasphemychallenge.com) by uploading their denials of faith to YouTube. A typical recording: “Hi, my name is Ray and I deny the Holy Spirit. (pause) No lightning. Maybe next time.”
-- a Speaker’s Corner, modeled after the famed soapbox in London’s Hyde Park, and a Blasphemy Challenge at CFI Toronto;
-- a blasphemy contest held by CFI International, in conjunction with its Campaign for Free Expression, in which participants are invited to submit phrases, poems, or statements that would be, or have been, considered blasphemous. Winners will receive T-shirts and mugs printed with their winning phrases.
I have one: "There are no dead atheist!" Think about it...
Will the public events and demonstrations disturb some people? Without a doubt, said Lindsay, but causing offense is not the intention. Participants are encouraged to avoid vulgarity and profanity.
“We’re stressing that we want something that is insightful and thoughtful,” Lindsay said. “The point we’re trying to make is that we’re against restrictions on speech based purely on the possibility that some people might be offended, because if you go down that path there’s no end to it.”
"The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), which oversees the Medicare program for the elderly and disabled as well as privately run Medicare alternatives, on Monday said it was investigating a letter Humana Inc sent enrollees about efforts to overhaul the nation's healthcare system.
"CMS warned Humana it would take necessary enforcement action, and agency spokesman Peter Ashkenaz said Tuesday it is unclear when the investigation will conclude. The company has said it is cooperating with the probe."
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/afx/2009/09/22/afx6916781.html
"Ten-year-old Amanda Kurowski is used to being taught at home by her mother, Brenda Voydatch. Bible study was part of her curriculum until this year, when a judge ordered Voydatch to enroll Amanda in public school.
“The court has stepped in and said that this child and the mother are too religious and the child needs to be taken out of that environment and exposed to other worldviews, and that is a constitutional problem for all of us,” says John Anthony Simmons, Voydatch’s attorney.
"The judge’s order goes on to say, “Amanda’s vigorous defense of her religious beliefs… suggests strongly that she has not had the opportunity to seriously consider any other point of view.”"http://www.nhpr.org/node/26912
Seems like some speech is more equal than other. And there is one thing I'll bet all these rational blasphemers believe in:
Obey, by Dana Ellyn
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