Freedom of Speech on Trial
More from Archbishop Cranmer.
Drawing Christ Crucified
Cranach, Velázquez, Gauguin, Delacroix, Eyck, Rubens, Rembrandt, Caravaggio, the list of artists who chose to depict Christ’s crucifixion goes on and on.
Add one 8-year-old boy who gets suspended from school and is required to undergo psychological evaluation.
Is the boy’s work more horrific than that of Cranach? Does he exult in the details of suffering more than Rembrandt or Kriss? Should he have softened his image by adding cherubs in attendance, or did he intend some dark message by employing Xs for eyes and apparently omitting one leg. Picasso, your couch is waiting.
If our public schools get any sillier than this, it might be a welcome change because all indications are that the schools are deadly serious about stamping out Christianity.
Meanwhile, the boy has learned Paul’s lesson concerning the folly of proclaiming Christ crucified.
Image: Hinterglasbild Kreuzigung, Rudolf Kriss
Taking on Heterophobia
Archbishop Cranmer (a British blog that has graced our blogroll from the outset) has three posts in succession on the topic of legislation favoring homosexuals.
First comes news of a heterosexual couple denied the right to enter into a civil partnership. The law establishing civil unions requires that the couple be of the same gender.
The Conservative Party attempted to add an amendment to the Civil Partnership Bill; one which would have granted siblings the same rights as homosexuals. Cheryl Gillan was concerned with such instances as two spinster sisters who have lived together all of their lives, or a bachelor brother and spinster sister who care for elderly relatives. The amendment was defeated, since the sole purpose of the legislation was to grant a state-recognised union to homosexuals alone.
Second, the EU is taking measures to punish Lithuania for passing a law that “prohibits promotion of ‘homosexual, bisexual, polygamous relations’ among children under the age of 18.”
Astonishingly (or perhaps not), the European Parliament has considered ‘Article 7’ action against Lithuania, which could have resulted in Lithuania’s suspension from the European Union. And all because they have dared to confront what they deem to be insidious homosexual propaganda. . . .
[T]he European Parliament voted 349-218 to condemn the new law because they say it contravenes the European Convention on Human Rights. They insist that the law should therefore be repealed: it is inconsistent with EU membership.
Finally, Cranmer has a video clip of Lord Waddington. It is tempting for Americans to presume that some equivalent of the First Amendment protects free-speech rights in other Western countries. Yet the Waddington Amendment has been unpopular and controversial because it puts limits on the proposed “hate speech” law and permits people to criticize the homosexual lifestyle. The amendment states:
In this Part, for the avoidance of doubt, the discussion or criticism of sexual conduct or practices or the urging of persons to refrain from or modify such conduct or practices shall not be taken of itself to be threatening or intended to stir up hatred.
Of course, the amendment and those who support it are criticized in the vilest terms. The criticism is frequently accompanied by the argument that those who fail to acknowledge homosexuality as equally good to heterosexuality are merely ignorant religious bigots who should be drummed out of polite society.
As with other issues dear to the left, the debate is being declared over, and the last murmurings of opposition will be made criminal.
PTSD: Not Just for Combatants Anymore
Post-traumatic stress disorder is real. Men in combat experience things that the rest of us can’t really imagine, and it affects them profoundly. Some are made stronger, braver, wiser – others more cynical, vengeful, or fearful. We used to extol the former. Now we diagnose the latter.
For those who have lost sight of the unique value and accomplishments of Western Civilization, there is no true cause to defend. They can only count the cost. For them, PTSD makes a nice narrative. It can be applied universally. Even the most courageous combatant suffers emotionally, so naturally he suffers from some form of PTSD whether he knows it or not. In fact, his apparent mental health can be written off as further evidence of his illness: a cloak of denial that must be stripped away in order to find the PTSD lurking below.
In this way, the left has refined its loathing of the military, choosing to paint individuals within the military as victims – nice people turned into murderous brutes by a sick society.
So instead of having John Kerry slandering his brothers in arms to a Senate committee as murderous brutes, we now have Dr. Phil and other chattering heads painting a murderous brute as misunderstood and driven by external forces to extreme violence. Those external forces are immediately presumed to be military ones. Dr. Phil paints this as entirely rational speculation. At the same time, he calls any speculation that Islam may have played a role as dangerous and irresponsible.
Under the new therapeutic approach, the ultimate evil is the same – the military – but the argument is couched with the false elegance and sensitivity that so enthralls leftists and characterizes their sophistry.
The square peg of Major Hasan, a physician, a mental health professional, who has never seen a day of combat, must be driven into the round hole of PTSD.
Let’s call it pre-traumatic stress syndrome.
I don’t profess to know what really drove Hasan’s rampage. But I do know that it is foolish (nay, calculated) to immediately blame the military for creating this monster while reflexively ruling out any connection to Islam.
Free Speech for Thee
The U.N. Human Rights Council is doing its best to stifle human rights, and we helped. Jonathan Turley writes:
While attracting surprisingly little attention, the Obama administration supported the effort of largely Muslim nations in the U.N. Human Rights Council to recognize exceptions to free speech for any “negative racial and religious stereotyping.” The exception was made as part of a resolution supporting free speech that passed this month, but it is the exception, not the rule that worries civil libertarians.
This comes shortly after the Obama Administration reversed the decision of the Bush Administration not to participate on the council.
Susan Rice, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said: “Those who suffer from abuse and oppression around the world, as well as those who dedicate their lives to advancing human rights, need the council to be balanced and credible.” She said the United States seeks election to the body “because we believe that working from within, we can make the council a more effective forum to promote and protect human rights.”
Nice work, Susan. What’s the next step? Perhaps the starry-eyed advocates of “international law” (a group that includes certain members of the Supreme Court) will argue that this resolution should be honored in our courts, notwithstanding our parochial and outmoded First Amendment.
Turley concludes:
The public and private curtailment on religious criticism threatens religious and secular speakers alike. However, the fear is that, when speech becomes sacrilegious, only the religious will have true free speech. It is a danger that has become all the more real after the decision of the Obama administration to join in the effort to craft a new faith-based speech standard. It is now up to Congress and the public to be heard before the world leaves free speech with little more than a hope and a prayer.
The Obama Administration is convinced we can solve all problems if we just sit down and talk. Only watch what you say.
One Talent or None
The Archbishop of Canterbury is not satisfied with presiding over the disintegration of the Anglican Communion. Last year, he famously endorsed the notion of Sharia law in Britain as inevitable. Now he has called for an end to economic growth.
‘We cannot grow indefinitely in economic terms without moving towards the death of what is most distinctively human, the death of the habits that make sense in a shared world where life has to be sustained by co-operation not only between humans but between humans and their material world,’ he said. . . .
He has attacked belief in market forces as ‘idolatry’; praised the contempt of Marxists for ‘unbridled capitalism’, and, last month, condemned the City because no-one has said sorry for the excesses that ended in recession.
How ironic. Economic growth stops and the Archbishop complains? One has to conclude that it is the excesses that have Dr. Williams’ chasuble in a twist, not the recession that he would hope to achieve by other means.
Like the servant to whom only one talent was given, Dr. Williams advocates merely preserving the status quo. But Williams won’t even do that. Praising anti-capitalist Marxists, endorsing the demise of democracy, dithering as the Anglican Communion unravels, it seems the Archbishop is preserving nothing he was entrusted with.
God the Separator
Haydn, call your office. That creation oratorio needs some updating. It is, according to Prof. Ellen van Wolde, “untenable now.”
You see, the good professor has done a fresh textual analysis of the Hebrew text of Genesis and concludes that it merely credits God with “separating” the Heavens and the Earth. First Things has the story.
A spokesman for the Radboud University said: “The new interpretation is a complete shake up of the story of the Creation as we know it.” Prof. Van Wolde added: “The traditional view of God the Creator is untenable now.”
So Jewish history and scholarship is based on a misunderstanding of a single verb? Christianity and Islam foolishly forgot to do some fact-checking at the outset before sweeping across the world?
Where was Professor van Wolde when we needed her, and why did God (still a very clever fellow to have separated the Heavens and the Earth) wait so long to send a new a prophet to issue this retraction? I nominate van Wolde to chair the inquiry into this massive fraud. What did God know, and when did He know it?
First Things, however, has doubts about the professor’s textual analysis of English:
For instance, she seems to think the word “untenable” means “can’t be defended since I settled the issue” and that “fresh textual analysis” is synonymous with “stuff I just made up.”
Exactly. But take comfort. The traditional view of academic arrogance remains as tenable as ever.
Lord, Have Mercy
The liturgical tradition has many advantages, but only if people actually follow the liturgy. I can appreciate many forms of non-liturgical worship. Bending the liturgy to a narrow political purpose, however, is not one of them, and trotting out children to lead this call and response is exploitative. Are there no priests in the Catholic Church to offer firm counsel against this?
Modern-Day Heresy
Via Melanie Phillips:
In his devastating study Heaven and Earth. Global Warming: The Missing Science (Quartet) Ian Plimer, Professor of Mining Geology at the University of Adelaide and previously Professor of Earth Sciences at the Universities of Melbourne and Newcastle systematically shreds the theory [of anthropormorphic global warming] and the hallucinatory propaganda industry it has spawned.
Quoting Plimer:
When science was born, the consensus at that time was driven by religion, politics, prejudice, mysticism and self-interested power. From Galileo to Newton and through the centuries, science debunked the consensus by experiment, calculation, observation, measurement, repeated validation, falsification and reason… Scientific fact now no longer seems to be necessary. Human-induced global warming is one such example, where one camp attempts to demolish the basic principles of science and install a new order based on political and sociological collectivism…There has been an uncritical, unthinking acceptance by the community of the media barrage about catastrophic climate change. For many, critical thinking is an anathema.
The Bosom of the Beast
Miss California’s views on same-sex marriage were first dismissed simply as the ramblings of a religious fanatic. What could be worse than having your head filled with religious mumbo-jumbo? Why, having your breasts filled with silicone, of course.
There you have it. It’s a double whammy proving that she’s just ignorant trailer trash in a designer dress.
Add to that the shocker that the Miss USA Pageant actually paid for the implants.
Is there a scandal here? Do you feel cheated and abused learning that the entertainment industry dangled a scantily clad woman before your eyes after refitting her with some artificial enhancements?
On the other hand, if we discover next week that some other contestant in the pageant is transgendered and had undergone a more radical surgical procedure, we could anticipate that the gender-irrelevance crowd would rush to his/her defense. We would see sympathetic press coverage with reporters dutifully reading the LGBT talking points:
Transgendered persons include pre-operative and post-operative transsexuals, transgenderists (persons living full-time in a gender other than their birth sex with no desire to pursue surgery); transvestites (preferred term: crossdressers, those whose gender expression occasionally differs from their birth sex); “mannish” or “passing” women, whose gender expression is masculine and who are often assumed to be lesbians, although this is not necessarily the case; “feminine” men who are often assumed to be homosexual, although they are just as often heterosexual; and intersexed persons, whose sex was arbitrarily assigned after birth and who often manifest physical characteristics, expression or identity that differs from the sex assigned without their consent.
And the sympathetic coverage would continue right up to the moment when the transgendered winner fails to support the latest political cause du jour or confesses the faith of Christ crucified.
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