Category Archives: Religion

A Weird Weekly Address: Trump’s New Religious Inclusiveness

Christianity, Donald Trump, Judaism & Jews, Religion, Terrorism

Thanks for the transcript of the Weekly Address, Mr. President. Transcripts make America read, save me time (watching YouTube wastes it) and, altogether, MAGA.

Now that I’ve said something nice, let’s get to the weird Weekly Address President Trump has just given. Perhaps this Address is of a piece with the pivot away from Brannon-type nationalism?

Why start the address with an ode to Jews and our Passover? Was this simply because Passover precedes Easter? Still, Easter should have preceded Passover in the president’s address. Must we anticipate hearing about the joys of Ramadan, when it comes up? In that case, I prefer that Passover gets a pass.

However, after 45 Egyptian Coptic Christians were martyred by Muslims on Palm Sunday—to say nothing about candidate Trump’s pro-Christianity talk during the campaign—I’d have expected sometime less wishy-washy than this:

… one of the gravest threats to religious freedom remains the threat of terror.
On Palm Sunday, as Christians around the world celebrate the beginning of Holy Week, ISIS murdered at least 45 people and injured over 100 others at two Christian churches in Egypt.
We condemn this barbaric attack. We mourn for those who lost loved ones. And we pray for the strength and wisdom to achieve a better tomorrow—one where good people of all faiths, Christians and Muslims and Jewish and Hindu, can follow their hearts and worship according to their conscience.

“Terror”? What ever happened to Islamic terror?

Forty five people murdered and over 100 injured? Those “people” were Coptic Christians. They’ve been targeted for centuries, persecuted in that region by Muslims for their religion.

READ THE REST.

Travel Ban II Overturn: When Legal Reasoning Is Lost

Justice, Law, Reason, Religion, The Courts, The West

Alan Dershowitz doesn’t grasp the extent to which traditional western legal reasoning has broken down, or is being dismantled, in American courts. Likewise, conservatives rabbit on about liberal judges. Replace them and respect for the Constitution will be restored.

But there’s much more to the fact that, “A federal district judge in Hawaii has just issued a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) blocking the key provisions of the President’s revised Executive order that pauses the refugee program and admittance of foreign nationals from 6 terrorist hotbeds (Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen) until thorough vetting can be put in place.” (Via ACLJ. RELATED: “ACLJ Goes to Court, Files 2 More Briefs Defending Revised National Security Executive Order.”)

You have a court that is seeking to establish a precedent, whereby taking “statements made during a political campaign” are used to “strike down a faithfully constitutional executive order,” as Dershowitz put it. (“Dershowitz: Why the Supreme Court will uphold Trump’s travel ban.”)

To CNN, Dershowitz said this:

… here you have a judge who is finding statements made during a campaign, if you can take the statements into account, Trump loses if the statements are devastating. But if the court rules that you can’t take those statements in account and you have to look only at the text of the order, then Trump wins because the court is dead wrong when it says it’s unconstitutional if it includes six countries all of which are 90 percent Muslim. That’s perfectly constitutional because that’s what Obama did. So, what the court rules if Obama does it, it’s constitutional, but if Trump does it, it’s unconstitutional because of what Trump said during the campaign. That is a fascinating constitutional issue.

WRONG. This legal brain storm is not fascinating; it’s frightening, because absent from it are certain fundamental givens of Western legal reasoning.

As Hawaii’s Trump travel ban ruling (full text) stands, the American Bill of Rights belongs to THE WORLD, and was written to enrich the American immigration-law industry and its clients the world-over.

A Christmas Snuff Story

Christianity, Family, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, Religion

“A Christmas Snuff Story” is the current column, now on The Daily Caller. An excerpt:

“We’re going to be saying Merry Christmas a lot more. And we’re going to have fewer criminal aliens to contend with,” promised President-elect Donald Trump on separate occasions.

Alas, Christmas and a criminal alien coalesced tragically, when Bob Clark, director of “A Christmas Story,” was killed by a drunk illegal alien in 2007. Clark’s son, age 22, also died on that day in April.

Like the director of that enchanting film, the family depicted in “A Christmas Story” is all but dead and buried, too—killed by Uncle Sam, the patron saint of social disorder.

Described by a critic as “one of those rare movies you can say is perfect in every way,” “A Christmas Story” debuted in 1983. Set in the 1940s, the film depicts a series of family vignettes through the eyes of 9-year-old Ralphie Parker, who yearns for that gift of all gifts: the Daisy Red Ryder BB gun.

This was boyhood before “bang-bang you’re dead” was banned; family life prior to “One Dad Two Dads Brown Dad Blue Dads,” and Christmas before Saint Nicholas was denounced for his whiteness and “Merry Christmas” condemned for its exclusivity.

If children could choose the family into which they were born, most would opt for the kind depicted in “A Christmas Story,” where mom is a happy homemaker, dad a devoted working stiff, and between them, they have no repertoire of psychobabble to rub together.

Although clearly adored, Ralphie is not encouraged to share his feelings at every turn. Nor is he, in the spirit of gender-neutral parenting, circa 2016, urged to act out like a girl if he’s feeling … girlie. Instead, Ralphie is taught restraint and self-control. And horrors: The little boy even has his mouth washed out with soap and water for uttering the “F” expletive. “My personal preference was for Lux,” reveals Ralphie, “but I found Palmolive had a nice piquant after-dinner flavor—heady but with just a touch of mellow smoothness.” Ralphie is, of course, guilt-tripped with stories about starving Biafrans when he refuses to finish his food.

The parenting practiced so successfully by Mr. and Mrs. Parker fails every progressive commandment. By today’s standards, the delightful, un-precocious protagonist of “A Christmas Story” would be doomed to a lifetime on the therapist’s chaise lounge—and certainly to daily doses of Ritalin, as punishment for unbridled boyishness and daydreaming in class …

… Read the rest and share. “A Christmas Snuff Story” is now on The Daily Caller.

Merry Christmas and happy Hanukkah to all.

ilana

Mosque Call To Prayer A Form Of Noise Pollution, Trespass

Christianity, Islam, Israel, libertarianism, Paleolibertarianism, Private Property, Religion

In Muslim countries, the remaining Christians and Jews worship under duress. Witness the latest massacre of Coptic Christians in Egypt, where a “bomb blast has killed at least 25 people during Sunday mass inside a Cairo church near the main Coptic Christian cathedral,” reports Egyptian state TV.

All Israel wants is for mosques to turn the volume way down. What a difference. I would ask that the muezzin stop screaming from the spire, or minaret of the mosque. Surely Muslims know what time service begins? Get the mosque to text you, if you forget.

A libertarian case can be made that penetrating, amplified yelps that travel far are a form of noise pollution. Citizens can seek redress in a libertarian universe for such trespass.