Jul 10

LeBron James and possibilities

Abortion, Culture, Media, Society No Comments »

I have tried to ignore this story, though it’s everywhere and from every angle imaginable. The rest of the media can continue to obssess on where he chose to play basketball and why, and all the ramifications. I just want to mention a few assorted things I noticed that got less attention.

That ESPN extravaganza and all the hype surrounding it was so over the top, I tuned out. But then heard that James arranged to have the proceeds from the commercial event go to benefit Boys and Girls Clubs of America. Which was considerable.

In a plan initiated and unveiled by James, all proceeds from ads sold for the broadcast – expected to be between $2 million and $2.5 million – will be donated to the Boys and Girls Clubs of America (BGCA). Several minutes later, one of the show’s sponsors, the University of Phoenix, announced it would make a separate donation – five full-tuition scholarships – to the organization.

About an hour before the broadcast began, the University of Phoenix also donated four of its scheduled ad spots to the Boys and Girls Clubs, so BGCA could air its own advertisements, says Frank Sanchez, vice president of sports, entertainment, and alumni relations for the nonprofit youth organization. BGCA would not have been able to air a commercial during the show otherwise, he says. The group does not pay for its own advertising; all ad spots are donated.

“We cannot be thankful enough for LeBron and the sponsors,” he said in a phone interview Friday. “As a fundraising opportunity, it was one of our most significant contributions, and it all happened within one hour.”

Nice. But something else happened in that hour, or the moment ‘The Decision’ was announced, besides all the collective groans and gripes in all the cities with contending teams and hopeful fans. And I noticed it way down in this story, as a passing sort of afterthought by the writer covering James’ big embrace of Miami.

Backlash lingered, not only from James’s choice of teams, but also from his delivery — on network television — after the Cavaliers fell to equal footing with five other franchises trying to woo James. At times, James referred to himself in the third person and was criticized for not having the courtesy of calling the Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert beforehand to alert him of his decision.

Now that’s not nice. Maybe the business decision was that to tell anyone outside his innermost circle would enable someone to pre-empt and upstage the dramatic ESPN show in prime time that did benefit all those children. But he left Cleveland, his hometown and longtime team, and even the Cavs owner had to watch ‘The Decision’ with the same suspense as anyone else to learn whether it would be his team? Ouch. James is a rich man and a generous man, but he made a poor decision there, I think…

The only reason I’m giving this any mention is that in the larger stories that dominate our popular culture, for better or worse, there’s always something to be learned about both.

Here’s another takeaway, for the better. LeBron is close to his mother, who is at every game.

And after all the hype and drama of ESPN’s televised extravaganza was over Thursday night, the last question the studio anchor asked him was…now that it’s out there and media hype will continue and reaction is pouring in from all over the country, what are you going to do next?

He thought for a moment, then said he wanted to call his Mom, check in on her. First things first.

Tagged with: • • •
Jul 09

Obama’s redistribution of health

Bioethics, Culture, Law, Politics, Society No Comments »

Let’s be honest. President Obama’s recess appointment of Donald Berwick as the Medicare and Medicaid director was a ploy to get a controversial character past any scrutiny by Congress and the citizens of the United States. He didn’t want a confirmation hearing because he didn’t want Berwick’s views to be heard. Surprise, surprise.

It shouldn’t be, notes the WSJ upfront, not for anybody following Obama’s handling of his social agenda.

White House respect for the public’s health-care views dropped another notch yesterday, if that’s possible, with its recess appointment of Donald Berwick. Circumventing Senate confirmation to appoint the new Medicare chief is part of the same political willfulness that inflicted ObamaCare on the country despite the objections of most voters.

Even [Democrat] Max Baucus, the Senate Finance Chairman, issued a statement critical of this end-around. President Obama claimed Republicans were stalling the appointment “for political purposes,” but Mr. Baucus hadn’t scheduled hearings and the nomination paperwork wasn’t even finished 11 weeks after he was named.

So the stall was in the Democratic controlled Senate, though even Baucus didn’t wind up having the control he thought.

Mr. Obama’s real calculation was to dodge a debate in election season over Dr. Berwick’s frequent praise for European health systems that ration care. The last thing most Democrats want now is to reprise the ObamaCare controversy.

Too late.

It raises serious concerns that never went dormant in the first place.

“As if shoving a trillion-dollar government takeover of healthcare down the throat of a disapproving American public wasn’t enough, apparently the Obama administration intends to arrogantly circumvent the American people yet again by recess-appointing one of the most prominent advocates of rationed healthcare to implement their national plan,” McConnell said.

McConnell criticized Democrats for not holding a confirmation hearing for Berwick and said they were avoiding the tough questions about the pro-abortion health care bill and its rationing components and Berwick’s views on them…

Also, pro-life Sen. John Barrasso of Wyoming called the move “an insult to the American people” that makes “a mockery of [Obama's] pledge to be accountable and transparent.”…

Michael Tanner, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, wrote about the problems with Berwick in an opinion column at the Daily Caller in May.

Recalling that opponents of the government-run health care bill were blasted for bringing up “death panels,” Tanner writes: “But if President Obama wanted to keep a lid on that particular controversy, he just selected about the worst possible nominee.”

In his comments lauding the British health care system, Tanner says “Berwick was referring to a British health care system where 750,000 patients are awaiting admission to NHS hospitals.”

“The government’s official target for diagnostic testing was a wait of no more than 18 weeks by 2008. The reality doesn’t come close. The latest estimates suggest that for most specialties, only 30 to 50 percent of patients are treated within 18 weeks. For trauma and orthopedics patients, the figure is only 20 percent,” he writes.

“Overall, more than half of British patients wait more than 18 weeks for care. Every year, 50,000 surgeries are canceled because patients become too sick on the waiting list to proceed,’ he continues.

“The one thing the NHS is good at is saving money. After all, it is far cheaper to let the sick die than to provide care,” Tanner adds.

Berwick has said as much, though in more nuanced and convoluted terms.

In an influential 1996 book “New Rules,” Dr. Berwick and a co-author argued that one of “the primary functions” of health regulation is “to constrain decentralized, individual decision making” and “to weigh public welfare against the choices of private consumers.”

Read this closely. And get this…

He then recommended “protocols, guidelines, and algorithms for care,” with the “common underlying notion that someone knows or can discover the ‘best way’ to carry out a task to reach a decision, and that improvement can come from standardizing processes and behaviors to conform to this ideal model.” And guess who will determine the “best way”?

Those who calibrate the algorithms for care, presumably.

However…

There isn’t a single “ideal model” in a world of treatments tailored to the genetic patterns of specific cancers, or for the artificial pancreas for individual diabetics, or other innovations that are increasingly common.

This is nonetheless where Dr. Berwick, in his bureaucratic wisdom, will look for his “savings.” It is also where his personal view of the “public welfare” will have the power to trump the mere “choices of private consumers.”

He has presented his personal views more starkly than in that book. He is candid and assertive, too.

Berwick specifically looks to the National Institute for Clinical Excellence in Britain as a model, with its measure of “quality adjusted life years.” In Britain, they estimate that a year of your life – adjusted for “quality,” (i.e., meaning how sick you are), is worth about $45,000. If you’re too old or too sick to justify the cost, you’re denied treatment.

Berwick said of this system: “Cynics beware, I am romantic about the National Health Service; I love it. All I need to do to rediscover the romance is to look at health care in my own country. The NHS is one of the astounding human endeavors of modern times. Because you use a nation as the scale and taxation as the funding, the NHS is highly political.”

Not only does he love rationing, but he rhapsodizes about politicizing health care decisions.

So this comes up in a White House press conference when

a reporter from CNS News wanted Gibbs to respond to a question about whether Obama was really confident about Berwick given some of his comments.

Berwick said in a speech delivered on July 1, 2008 that “Excellent health care is by definition redistributional.”

“Among the controversial comments that he’s made in the past that would have come out in a Senate confirmation hearing are that ‘excellent health care is’—‘excellent health care by definition is redistribution,” said CNSNews.com. “Some of the others were mentioned. Does the president actually agree with that comment?”

Gibbs evaded the question, saying, “Look, this is somebody who is uniquely and supremely qualified to run an agency that is important to our government, it’s important to seniors, it’s important to implementation of the new health care law.”

The reporter persisted.

“But does the President agree with the previous statement?” asked CNSNews.com in a followup, but Gibbs again avoided answering and accused the reporter of playing politics.

“I know that this is the exact type of political game that the American people have come to understand dominates Washington and doesn’t actually make their health care more affordable,” he said.

Diversionary tactic, that. Not a fine exchange for this administration and its spokesman.

“You just read comments,” said Gibbs. “Is there like a secret comment book that somehow you got that nobody else got, and you just read a couple of them to me–and somehow they wouldn’t have come out? Did he say things like, ‘rationing happens today; the question is who will do it’? Did he say that? Did he say that?”

In triumphal conclusion…

Gibbs then claimed the comment was made by pro-life Rep. Paul Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who is a leading critic of Obama’s health care scheme.

Hold the ‘ta-da’.

However, Ryan was asking a question in a Washington Post interview, saying he worried government would ration: “Rationing happens today! The question is who will do it? The government? Or you, your doctor and your family?”

But who’s fact-checking?

As the Journal noted, health care rationing is a given.

The White House doesn’t bother to disagree. According to a “topline message points” document on his nomination that we obtained, “The fact is, rationing is rampant in the system today, as insurers make arbitrary decisions about who can get the care they need. Don Berwick wants to see a system in which those decisions are transparent—and that the people who make them are held accountable.”

The people who can write such things with a straight face believe there is no difference between rationing through individual choices and price signals and rationing through politics and bureaucratic omniscience.

There’s a big and consequential difference.

We should be able to honor human dignity and provide access to health care for all, eliminating no one. But that’s the idea, that a moral society eliminates no one in order to provide health care to the rest.

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Jul 08

“A Mom Awakening”

Culture, Media, Politics, Society No Comments »

Sarah Palin drives ‘em crazy. They either hate her or love her. They’re either hurling flames at her, or holding her up and anchoring her base. That’s how all lightning rods work. They attract and draw the bursts of fiery energy, and channel it to a grounding network. She’s in her natural element, taking the heat and generating it among the masses that form her network. And she’s just tapped into a new power source….

See the rest here…

Tagged with: • •
Jul 07

The ‘S’ in NASA

Geopolitics, Media, Politics, Society No Comments »

It stands for space, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. This week, some people wonder whether it means sensitivity. Relatively few folks, actually…

Like those who are aware of President Obama’s commission to the new NASA director, and who maybe question what the space administration has to do with geopolitics.

But among major media….nada on NASA?

As for me, I intended to blog in mourning back when Obama defunded the program, because I’ve been a lifelong NASA follower, fascinated by space expeditions and eager to see it go further. When I was in grade school, I wrote in to ask politely for a photograph of an astronaut, if it were possible. What I received was breathtaking…..a large brown envelope that held a stack of 8×10 personally autographed color photos of each member of a team of astronauts, some already famous and some yet to be (but who would figure prominently in future missions). Wow.

Then when Tom Hanks did ‘Apollo 13′, the film rendering of the dramatic events astronaut Jim Lovell chronicled so well in his book Lost Moon….I was privileged to be invited to the premiere, met Lovell and got his autograph on my copy of the book, feeling very much the little girl I’d returned to in the moment.

So last February, I was crushed when news came out that Obama was drawing down the program.

The administration of U.S. President Barack Obama is canceling NASA’s current space shuttle replacement- and lunar exploration-plan and is prepared to fight any congressional effort to save it, the nation’s top budget official said Jan. 31. 

The president’s budget, officially sent to Congress Monday morning, confirms what officials had stated during a teleconference with reporters one day before: White House Office of Management and Budget Director Peter Orszag and White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer stated Obama’s plan to kill NASA’s Constellation program, a five-year-old effort to replace the aging space shuttle fleet with new rockets and spacecraft optimized to return astronauts to the Moon.

These links are from stories I saved at the time to use here, but never got to. (It pays for a journalist to be fastidious.)

Eclipsed in Monday’s news of President Obama’s proposed $3.8 trillion budget – with its $100 billion marked for jobs creation and increased taxes on the rich – is the grounding of NASA’s program to return to the moon.

The budget, if passed by Congress, would scuttle funding the Constellation program, with its goal of returning a manned mission by 2010 to the moon, the site of NASA’s greatest achievement, the Apollo missions of the late ’60s and ’70s.

“We are proposing canceling the program, not delaying it,” Peter Orszag, director of the Office of Management and Budget, said in a conference call with reporters.

The White House drafted a space advisory panel to review the beleaguered Constellation program, which deemed the project unable to get out of orbit without a hefty $3 billion annual increase to its operational budget. The budget also shot down the planned Ares I rocket, the planned successor to the space shuttle, Reuters reported.

It was all over the media at the time, and I stored link after link.

American astronauts will not return to the moon as planned if Congress passes President Obama’s proposed budget…

On its Web site, the White House Budget Office says the program to send astronauts to the moon is behind schedule, over budget and overall less important than other space investments.

“Using a broad range of criteria, an independent review panel determined that even if fully funded, NASA’s program to repeat many of the achievements of the Apollo era, 50 years later, was the least attractive approach to space exploration as compared to potential alternatives,” the site says.

So now we know what one of the primary alternatives was for President Obama.

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Jul 07

Women “must be prepared to kill”

Abortion, Culture, Media, Society 2 Comments »

The pro-life movement has long worked toward just laws for all human beings and for public debate about the truths of abortion, using clear and honest language. A staunch abortion supporter just came out with a candid article calling other abortion advocates to admit the truth, abortion does kill a unique human being. But then she insisted that’s just necessary to do sometimes…

The Times of London writer got it half right.

After contemplating the immense mysteries of human life and sacrificial love in comparison to a woman’s “right to fertility control,” a writer for the Times of London concludes that attempts by pro-aborts to dismiss the life of an unborn child are a “convenient lie” hiding the fact that, “Yes, abortion is killing.”

Good. Let’s be honest.

“But,” she concludes, “it’s the lesser evil.”

No, wait…

Face the truth. Don’t stand it on its head.

Columnist Antonia Senior in a June 30 column (available by subscription only) says that, despite the fact that the abortion debate hinges upon whether the unborn child is a unique life or not, women who wish to assert the cause of their freedom from male domination “must be prepared to kill for it.”

Chilling enough. But then it gets even more bizarre.

Senior begins by linking the cause of abortion to that of religious martyrs.

She’s stridently staking a bold and heady claim here. But she’s not intellectually honest.

“Cradle Tower at the Tower of London is an interactive display that asks visitors to vote on whether they would die for a cause,” she says. “Standing where religious martyrs were held and tortured in Britain’s turbulent reformation, I could think of one cause I would stake my life on: a woman’s right to be educated, to have a life beyond the home and to be allowed by law and custom to order her own life as she chooses.

But according to her own logic, a female human being doesn’t even have the right to life in the first place.

George Orwell was very concerned about the abuse of language to control thought. He said:

“We have now sunk to a depth at which the restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men.”

And, to state the obvious, women.

Tagged with: •
Jul 06

Fix the healthcare law

Bioethics, Law, Media, Politics, Society No Comments »

Besides all the other problems that have either been known or come to light about Obamacare that call for reforming this version of reform, (Heritage has been there from the beginning, has the experts and done the work…) two fundamental moral ones loom large. Heard anything about it lately?

Since you’re here, chances are you have. But those poor souls fed only by ‘mainstream media’ aren’t so informed.

Let’s review, starting with the issue of taxpayer funding of abortion that remains embedded in ‘healthcare reform’ in spite of verbal promises and claims to the contrary, by the people who brought us this law. Though virtually none of them read the 2,409 pages of it to know what’s actually in it.

So about abortion and the bill…

[U.S. House Minority Leader John] Boehner criticized the Executive Order that President Obama signed to assuage pro-life Democrats that the Hyde amendment would be upheld in the new legislation – but that analysts say only reiterated what was already stated in the bill.

The GOP leader expressed frustration that the Obama Administration had yet to “[lift] a finger to enforce the president’s executive order on abortion,” as reported by The Hill. He said that, when asked about the implementation of the order, Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the administration was “working on it.”

Boehner said that he would call on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to put legislation codifying Hyde amendment restrictions on abortion funding to an immediate vote.

We’ll keep an eye on that.

Now how does abortion funding fit into the current legislation?

When the health care reform debates were in full swing last November, Boehner decried the “monthly abortion premium” to be demanded of all customers of the government-run plan as dictated by the current version of the bill. Boehner also pointed out, as verified by NRLC analysts, that the bill forced at least one insurance plan offered in each regional insurance exchange to offer abortion and gave the Secretary of Health and Human Services the power to mandate that abortion be considered part of the essential benefits package of a government-run plan.

Later, Boehner excoriated the amended Senate version of the bill for maintaining the “monthly abortion fee,” and posted the NRLC’s detailed breakdown of the bill’s manifold abortion flaws.

Here’s NRLC’s detailed explanation, a rare and explicit analysis for everyone who asks ‘where is abortion in the bill…?’

The other big moral issue is conscience protection, and lack thereof in the law as passed.

Why is the conscience issue so neglected? One possible reason is that conscience violations are less tangible than the destruction of a living human being. Furthermore, the area of conscience protection has many moving parts, which can be hard to monitor. Conscience protection laws can shield both the religious and moral objector or just the former; they might cover many different forms of involvement (providing, referring, etc.) in one or more services (abortion, euthanasia, birth control, etc.); they could cover one or more sets of actors in the healthcare field (individual providers, hospitals, insurance companies, etc.) against discrimination by one or more authorities (government entities, employers, health plans, etc.). There are also various theological and philosophical grounds for different conscience claims…Finally, there is the seemingly insoluble dilemma posed when the demand for legal conscience protection is characterized as a contest between “your right to refuse” and “my right to have.”

The healthcare law known as Obamacare

…contains an extraordinary array of new mandates affecting every player in American healthcare—governments, insurance exchanges and insurance plans, hospitals and clinics, doctors and employers, and every single healthcare consumer. Some new mandates include language (“essential health benefits,” “preventive services”) which regulatory agencies and judges might easily construe to include medical services objectionable to a wide swath of individuals and institutions.

It’s a Pandora’s box, not to be cliche.

Many institutions in need of conscience exemptions provide a level of healthcare characterized by a commitment to treating the whole person, body, mind, and spirit. They take quite seriously their professions’ demands in the way of training, judgment and integrity…For these reasons, such institutions should be protected for what they are; our social world would be worse off without them.

For policy wonks, and everyone who sincerely wants resources and answers to respond to critics who claim this bill holds no moral threats (and I get plenty of questions from such good people seeking information)….read Helen Alvare’s article there on Public Discourse thoroughly, check out the links throughout the piece, and the ones linked above. We need to be informed about this, and remedies underway to resolve the moral threats that do exist in this legislation.

Currently, a bill cosponsored by Republican Joseph Pitts and Democrat Dan Lipinski (H.R. 5111) contains a variety of conscience protections which would repair many of [the healthcare law's] most serious flaws. It merits considerable attention in the public square…

Especially now, with a looming mid-term election that could significantly change the landscape of Washington and its designs on our health and care.

Tagged with: • • •
Jul 06

Congress in fantasyland

Culture, Law, Politics, Society No Comments »

Don’t know why that scene from the  Wizard of Oz comes to mind here, but telling Dorothy to click her heels three times and repeat her desire to make it happen isn’t too far-fetched an analogy to what the House did as it went into holiday recess…

They couldn’t pass a budget bill, so they just ‘deemed it as passed’ and, voila, they created themselves a new budget. A non-existent $1.12 trillion budget.

The execution of the “deeming” document allows Democrats to start spending money for Fiscal Year 2011 without the pesky constraints of a budget.

The procedural vote passed 215-210 with no Republicans voting in favor and 38 Democrats crossing the aisle to vote against deeming the faux budget resolution passed.

Never before — since the creation of the Congressional budget process — has the House failed to pass a budget, failed to propose a budget then deemed the non-existent budget as passed as a means to avoid a direct, recorded vote on a budget, but still allow Congress to spend taxpayer money.

House Budget Committee Ranking Member Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) warned this was the green light for Democrats to continue their out-of-control spending virtually unchecked.

“Facing a record deficit and a tidal wave of debt, House Democrats decided it was politically inconvenient to put forward a budget and account for their fiscal recklessness.  With no priorities and no restraints, the spending, taxing, and borrowing will continue unchecked for the coming fiscal year,” Ryan said.  “The so-called ‘budget enforcement resolution’ enforces no budget, but instead provides a green light for the Appropriators to continue spending, exacerbating our looming fiscal crisis.”

And punting it down the yellow-brick road past the mid-term elections. The White House budget director is getting out of Oz, and the munchkins are left with the bill.

Tagged with: • •
Jul 05

Kagan finessed the military issue

Culture, Law, Politics, Society No Comments »

By last week’s end, everyone knew Elena Kagan charmed most of our elected representatives involved in the Senate confirmation hearings and deftly maneuvered her way past any confrontations with her own assessment of those hearings as vapid and hollow, while she danced past any interrogations into her radical support for partial-birth abortion in the Clinton adminstration.

But she also finessed the issue of her handling of the US military in her tenure as Harvard law school dean, her putdown of military recruiters as a stand against the ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ policy offered as compromise legislation by President Bill Clinton himself during his administration.

So Kagan told the Senate Judiciary Committee last week, “We were trying to do two things, to make sure military recruiters had full access to students and protect our anti-discrimination policy.”

That is, Kagan spent the week arguing that the policy was utterly meaningless.

“Military recruiters had access to Harvard students every single day I was dean,” she boasted.

And: “I respect and indeed I revere the military.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions, the ranking Republican on the committee, wasn’t buying it. He told Kagan, “You keep referring in your e-mails and all to the military policy. Isn’t it a fact that the policy was not the military policy, but a law passed by the Congress of the United States?” He complained that recruiters who had served in Iraq or Afghanistan “were appearing to recruit on your campus … and you were taking steps to treat them in a second-class way.”

And: “Why wouldn’t you complain to Congress and not to the dutiful men and women who put their lives on the line for America every day?”

The answer is simple. To complain to Congress would entail standing up to Democrats, including her old boss, President Bill Clinton.

So instead, Kagan and company targeted U.S. troops acting under orders. When doing so became inconvenient, that is, when it impeded her ascension to the Supreme Court, she argued that the military ban didn’t really do anything.

And in the end, it worked wonders….to illustrate and finally prove how right she was in calling the confirmation hearings vapid and hollow. It was every bit the charade Kagan said it was, all along.

Tagged with: • •
Jul 04

Serious threat to religious freedom?

Church, Law, Society No Comments »

It’s being passed off as a matter of semantics. That’s what they all say, when ‘they’ have subversive motives. Like changing the way we think about things and eventually the way we behave by simply changing the langauge that describes and defines it.

This is not a conspiracy theory, though proponents of free speech restrictions for religiously informed voices are calling religiously informed people conspiracy theorists for sounding any alarm. It’s another way to control public opinion, as Walter Lippman pointed out so acutely in his book of that name.

So what’s this latest stir about? Signals coming from the Obama administration that freedom of religion is quietly morphing into freedom of worship. Heading into Independence Day weekend, the Chuck Colson Center for Christian Worldview sent out an alert about the redefinition of religious freedom that just may be happening in American government right now.

I’ve seen columns and blogs about this in other places, this one about a week earlier, which quotes Chritianity Today’s concerns:

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton echoed the shift in language. In a December speech at Georgetown University, she used “freedom of worship” three times but “freedom of religion” not at all. While addressing senators in January, she referred to “freedom of worship” four times and “freedom of religion” once when quoting an earlier Obama speech.

The State Department dismisses concerns about the semantics, saying the terms are interchangeable. That plausible deniability is a useful strategy. However…

Reporter Sarah Eekhoff Zylstra also interviewed Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom and a member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom. She sees something much more troubling about the “freedom of worship” language…

Freedom of worship means the right to pray within the confines of a place of worship or to privately believe, said Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom and member of the commission. “It excludes the right to raise your children in your faith; the right to have religious literature; the right to meet with co-religionists; the right to raise funds; the right to appoint or elect your religious leaders, and to carry out charitable activities, to evangelize, [and] to have religious education or seminary training.”

This is the realism behind the terms.

It’s a small thing, really—the shift of a word, the coining of a new phrase. But the consequences are going to be bad, and the signal it sends of American retreat on human rights comes at a terrible moment.

Think of it this way: If you have “freedom of religion,” you can bring up your children in your faith, hold public processions, and print books. If you have only “freedom of worship” you can pray quietly in your home, as long as it remains out of public sight.

“Freedom of religion” means you can stand on a street corner and proselytize everything from Catholicism to Mormonism to the cult of the sun god Ra. “Freedom of worship” means you can be executed for public conversion away from Islam. Worship is part of religion, but it is one of the least public parts—and thus one of the least involved in actual freedom.

And this transition of officially and legally recognized expressions goes back further than Sec. Clinton’s December remarks.

The first signs of national withdrawal from concern about religious liberty came in November, at a memorial service for those slain at Ft. Hood, when President Obama used the phrase “freedom of worship” where more common American political language has always used the phrase “freedom of religion.”

It seemed incidental at the time—certainly hardly anyone remarked on it—but he used the phrase again in Japan a few days later. And then again in China. It quickly became the administration’s favored formula for speaking about religious liberty.

Because it’s softening up public opinion while transitioning the public toward a new reality in which we really won’t enjoy religious liberty anymore.

In a recent op-ed in the Washington Post, Thomas Farr argued forcefully both that all this is a retreat and that pursuit of religious liberty is vital to the security interests of the United States.

If we give in on religious liberty, we will lose credibility with oppressed peoples around the world. We give a license to the states that violate human rights. We fail to assist totalitarian states in their movement toward freedom. And, most of all, we cease to be true to ourselves—cease to be a nation that, more than any other, testifies to the compatibility of modernity and religion.

And we were the ones who discovered that connection in the first place.

Tagged with: •
Jul 03

Everyone in the world has a Fourth of July

Society 1 Comment »

But many countries do not have an Independence Day to celebrate. As the USA takes it’s biggest annual holiday to celebrate its birthday as a nation newly declared as independent from a tyrant ruler and newly self-determining, let’s look at who helped secure it.

Like Paul Revere.

Paul Revere, as described by Fischer, was a successful artisan and businessman, connected to all the various revolutionary cells active in the Massachusetts of 1775. In fact, he belonged to more groups and knew more operatives and political leaders than almost anyone, certainly in Boston. Moreover, he developed a significant intelligence and communications network for which he was one of the central nodes.

Fischer observes that “Paul Revere’s primary mission was not to alarm the countryside. His specific purpose was to warn Samuel Adams and John Hancock, who were thought to be the objects of the expedition.” The military stores at Concord were of secondary concern. Still, by morning thousands of fully-armed militia had arrived on the field at both Lexington and Concord ready for closed formation fighting.

Americans should know this, though most probably don’t. I came across this gem and lingered with it a while, recalling the years when I took my sons to visit their Grandpa in a small town in the countryside outside Boston, and we always stayed in Concord and visited the scenes where American history played out some of the most vital and captivating dramas. And it never, ever got old.

We walked the green where the battle of Lexington and Concord was fought, crossed the Old North Bridge where the original minutemen rallied from their farmhouses to man the first battle of the Revolutionary War, the American War of Indpendence. Emerson’s poem ‘Concord Hymn’ commemorated “the shot heard round the world” fired from that spot, and a shrine-like reverence still pervades it. Same is true for spots all over and around the area, and you just know when walking there and reading the plaques and the guides the sense of import is real and profound.

So what about that ‘midnight ride of Paul Revere’ that has become legendary?

“Paul Revere and the other messengers did not spread the alarm merely by knocking on individual farmhouse doors,” says David Hackett Fischer. “They also awakened the institutions of New England. The midnight riders went systematically about the task of engaging town leaders and militia commanders of their region. They enlisted its churches and ministers, its physicians and lawyers, its family networks and voluntary associations.…They knew from long experience that successful efforts requires sustained planning and careful organization.”

In all sincerity, I must say this describes the original community organizing.

Mehan cites Longfellow’s famous poem throughout this inspiring piece:

A hurry of hoofs in a village street
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat.

Though, as Mehan notes, there are literary liberties taken in Longfellow’s tribute, the truth of Revere’s great acts of patriotism is at least as dramatic and noble.

So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,–
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beat of that steed,
And the midnight-message of Paul Revere.

Happy Fourth of July, Mehan wishes his readers.

Happy Independence Day. Cherish it.

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