Aaron D. Wolf

Pharmaceutical Holiday

Can you imagine the FDA approving a drug that, say, increased the risk of blood clots, hypertension, stroke, heart attacks, breast cancer, and migraines for women? And fathom, if you will, the absurd notion that such a drug could be approved for the treatment of something that isn’t even a disease, a genetic abnormality, or a mental disorder but the very way that God designed women’s bodies to work.

Let’s Cheat on Our Taxes

As I write, April 15 is still fresh in the mind, and the sting of death remains, combining the current pangs of tax extraction with the promise of a greater burden to come, thanks to the Barack­i­fi­cation of heathcare.

So imagine my delight when I read in a back issue of a leading Christian magazine (call it Evangelicalism Now) that, come next April 15, I should just flip off Uncle Sam and cheat on my taxes.

Down With Islamists

Ali Mir of the USC Muslim Student Union is upset about the media’s usage of such terms as Islamist and extremist. (They are “blah, blah, blah.”) This bothers him because these words “play to readers assumptions” and fail to “challeng[e] their prejudices.” And that’s unfair, considering he is “unable to find examples of similar stock-phrases referring to Christianity . . . that carry the implications of something inherently negative or dangerous . . . ” (I’m sure you’ve never read anything negative about “fundamentalist Christians” in the aforementioned media.)

He then goes on to rely on Princeton’s “WordNet” for a definition of Islamist, which, by his standards, is pretty innocuous—the term only refers to someone who is knowledgable about Islam and probably believes that stuff! (Ali Mir is an Islamist!)

This is disingenuous at best. Islamism and Islamist have a long history. Islamism used to be a synonym for Mohammedanism, before both gave way to Islam. Then the term resurfaced in connection with modern political movements that had a basis in Islam.

But more to the point, the mainstream media now uses such terms while falling all over itself in an effort to keep from identifying the followers of Muhammad (in word and deed) as vanilla “Muslims.” So perhaps what Ali Mir wants is for the media to stop identifying killers who cry “Allahu Akbar!” with Islam in any way, shape, or form.

If I Could Turn Back Time

Here’s the bottom line of today’s SCOTUS decision regarding the incorporation of the Second Amendment, which amounts to an explicit rejection of traditional federalism on the part of the conservative majority. (Full disclosure: I’m of the Hestonian “cold, dead hands” persuasion.) Writing for the majority, Justice Alito admits the original intent of the Bill of Rights: “The Bill of Rights, including the Second Amendment, originally applied only to the Federal Government.” The Marshall Court “firmly rejected the proposition that the first eight Amendments operate as limitations on the States, holding that they apply only to the Federal Government.” Then comes the “big but” of American history: “The constitutional Amendments adopted in the aftermath of the Civil War fundamentally altered our country’s federal system.”

So the nut of the opinion is, in essence, what’s done is done. To those who would insist that original intent (of the authors of the Bill of Rights, or the legislators who voted on it, or especially the states who ratified it) matters, Justice Alito offers what might be called the DeLorean Defense or the Flux Capacitor Exception:

There is nothing new in the argument that, in order to respect federalism and allow useful state experimentation, a federal constitutional right should not be fully binding on the States. This argument was made repeatedly and eloquently by Members of this Court who rejected the concept of incorporation and urged retention of the two- track approach to incorporation. . . . Time and again, however, those pleas failed. Unless we turn back the clock or adopt a special incorporation test applicable only to the Second Amendment, municipal respondents’ argument must be rejected. Under our precedents, if a Bill of Rights guarantee is fundamental from an American perspective, then, unless stare decisis counsels otherwise, that guarantee is fully binding on the States . . .

You and I may appreciate the practical outcomes of today’s ruling, but the whole affair calls to mind something the late Mark Winchell wrote for Chronicles in November 2005 (“Reattacking Leviathan: Starving the Beast”):

Unfortunately, hoping for the appointment of “conservative” judges is not enough. By their very nature, judicial conservatives show an exaggerated deference for settled law (the principle of stare decisis). What is needed to restore the original federalist balance is the sort of counterrevolutionary judicial activism that we are not likely to see. At a more fundamental level, it is ludicrous for the states to allow their sovereignty to be defined by lifetime appointees of the central government.

Healthcare Reformer

The empire was beset by foreign invaders and war in the Middle East. Far-flung wars meant more taxes for the provinces and an increase in poverty. Some men had to choose between feeding their families and paying for medical care. Some couldn’t afford either.

In the large urban centers, the poor were getting poorer, while the rich were getting richer. The wealthy—even in the churches—were given to elaborate and expensive entertainments.

Too Good To Be Untrue

The amoeba. You remember it from biology class; it’s your long-lost relative. Don’t believe it? Well, you’re probably one of those pro-life Christian homeschooling losers. You don’t play nice with others. You are socially maladjusted.

“Amoeba are essentially everywhere and have probably existed . . . long before the appearance of macroscopic animals,” says the science department at the University of Edinburgh. “Throughout our entire existence therefore, we have lived in intimate association with amoebae. It is consequently no surprise that some amoeba have adapted to take advantage of us.”

The Art of Spanking

So, thanks again
for the love in the cradle
and all of the changes that kept me dry.
And thanks again
for the love at our table
and tannin’ my bottom when I told you a lie . . .

It’s a tear-jerker of a song, and the only thing that rescues Ricky Skaggs’ “Thanks Again” from excessive sentimentality is the fact that every word of it is true. But then again, it was a tear-jerker of a story that I was reading when that song started playing in my head.

Christmas With the Devil

“The true meaning of Christmas gets lost when we believe contrary worldviews,” the prisoner writes.  “Our beliefs determine our views in a world where absolutes are fading away.”  The prisoner is dictating this for his newsletter.
Come-to-Jesus (or -Allah) experiences abound in prisons, so it’s always wise to take conversion stories with a grain of salt.  Most of us will look for certain signs: Is the guilty man able to articulate his repentance in something other than self-serving terms?  With God’s help I have been able to forgive myself just doesn’t cut it.  Also, has the guilty man embraced the justice meted out by the court system?  Or does his conversion conveniently coincide with an appeal?  Furthermore, is the guilty man faithful, both in his confession and his conduct, and for how long?
This will be the prisoner’s 38th Christmas behind bars.  In 1975 he became a Christian, and in 1980 he founded Abounding Love Ministries, preaching the Gospel on the inside and sharing his faith through books and his monthly newsletter.
“If justice would’ve been served, I would’ve gotten the death penalty,” says the prisoner.  “I hope that in no way have I ever given the impression that I blame anything on my parents or drugs . . . I take full responsibility.”
Over the years, the prisoner has received stacks of mail from women—some curious, some bizarre, some out of Christian love.  Some 20 years ago, he began corresponding with a woman named Susan LaBerge.  She identified herself as a new Christian who was reaching out to him with the love and forgiveness of Christ.  He began sending her his newsletter and personal letters of thanks for her encouragement.  Susan said that as she read his letters her chest pounded, and she “cried and cried, realizing he’d come to the Lord, and I’ve come to the Lord.”
After a year of correspondence, the prisoner was surprised to read that Susan wanted to visit him in person.  Letters are one thing, but you just never know what sort of person you’re going to find in the visiting room.  Anyone can fake the lingo of Christianity in a letter.  What was she up to?
When Susan arrived at the Mule Creek State Prison in Ione, California, she seemed pleasant, peaceful.  They talked for some time, sharing with each other about their faith, how it was that they had become Christians.  As it turned out, Susan had grown up in the area where the prisoner had committed his crimes at age 23.  She had been 21 years old at the time.
There was more.  She hadn’t been sure whether she would say it, but his faith seemed genuine.  “There’s something I want to tell you,” she said, and he braced himself.  Was this the moment he’d dreaded?  Or worse, was she a member of the Family, come to try to work some sort of spell on him?
“My mother was Rosemary LaBianca,” she said.
“You’re kidding,” he said, stunned.
“I’m not kidding.”
They sat and wept.  In fact, he weeps again, retelling the story.
On August 10, 1969, Charles “Tex” Watson, Leslie Van Houten, and Patricia Krenwinkel stabbed Susan’s mother 41 times in her bedroom.  They killed her stepfather, Leno, in the living room in a similarly gruesome manner and, on the orders of Charles Manson, “left something witchy” behind: the words “Death to pigs” and “Rise” written in Leno’s blood on the wall, and “War” carved into his abdomen.  The night before, the man who claimed to be Jesus Christ had told Tex to round up the girls and begin “Helter Skelter,” an apocalyptic black uprising against whites.  Manson thought “blackie was too ignorant” to get the ball rolling, so he sent out his drug-addled apostles.  Before butchering a pregnant Sharon Tate and her friends, Watson told them, “I am the devil, and I’m here to do the devil’s business.”
Charles Watson was, in fact, given the death penalty, along with Manson and all of the women who participated in those crimes, but the state of California outlawed the death penalty in 1972, which commuted all of their sentences to life in prison.
On the evening of August 10, 1969, Susan, her boyfriend, and her 15-year-old brother entered the kitchen of the LaBianca residence and were greeted by the words “Healter [sic] Skelter” written in blood on the refrigerator.
“All I felt from Susan,” said the prisoner, “was love.”  He calls it a miracle.
Susan LaBerge testified at a parole hearing that Charles Watson had changed.  This enraged Sharon Tate’s mother, nerves still raw, and she called Susan a “stupid sh-t.”  Prosecutor Vincent Bugliosi commented that, when it comes to parole, it doesn’t matter whether Watson has changed.  To let him out would be a miscarriage of justice.  Indeed, as Bugliosi and Watson have both said, justice requires the death penalty.  Watson knows he’ll never be a free man, not in this life.
Another Manson Family member will spend this Christmas free for the first time in 34 years.  Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, convicted in 1975 of attempting to assassinate President Ford, was released from prison in August.  In interviews over the years, she maintained her love for the Jesus-of-Death-Valley, who “gave me everything.”
Back in Mule Creek, the prisoner will be celebrating the birth of the Child Who gave him everything, including forgiveness undeserved.

“The true meaning of Christmas gets lost when we believe contrary worldviews,” the prisoner writes.  “Our beliefs determine our views in a world where absolutes are fading away.”  The prisoner is dictating this for his newsletter.

A Tender Unitarian Christmas II: Yankees and Jews Slapping Norwegians

A Tender Unitarian Christmas II: Yankees and Jews Slapping Norwegians
This [insert preference] Season, the message from the Chicago Tribune to Garrison Keillor is clear: Feel free to slap around Unitarians all you want, but leave the Jews alone.
I like Garrison Keillor.  There, I said it.  (We fellow-ex-fundamentalists-turned-Lutherans must stick together.)  Not everyone on the Chronicles staff agrees.  But that is not the point of this yuletide tale.
A fellow editor who shall remain nameless (for job-security reasons) sent me a link to GK the Lesser’s latest editorial, “Nonbelievers, please leave Christmas alone.”  (Apparently, the title-writer did not get the memo from Bill Hybels about “Seekers.”)  The link was to the Baltimore Sun, and I enjoyed the article very much.
Intent on sharing the editorial with some friends, I sought the uniform resource locator from the Chicago Tribune, where I normally read GK.  And what do you know?  Some of the piece is missing.
Some of it is not missing, of course, because there is a there there.  The there that is there is stunning enough for the Trib:
If you don’t believe Jesus was God, OK, go write your own damn “Silent Night” and leave ours alone. This is spiritual piracy and cultural elitism and we Christians have stood for it long enough.
But here’s the part that apparently works in Baltimore but not in the City of Broad Shoulders:
And all those lousy holiday songs by Jewish guys that trash up the malls every year, Rudolph and the chestnuts and the rest of that dreck. Did one of our guys write “Grab your loafers, come along if you wanna, and we’ll blow that shofar for Rosh Hashanah”? No, we didn’t.
And just to make matters worse, the Baltimore Sun allowed GK to get all Aristotelian with his A and non-A, which clearly doesn’t belong in the Windy City:
Christmas is a Christian holiday – if you’re not in the club, then buzz off. Celebrate Yule instead or dance around in druid robes for the solstice. Go light a big log, go wassailing and falalaing until you fall down, eat figgy pudding until you puke, but don’t mess with the Messiah.
Naturally, Jeffery “IDF” Goldberg of the Atlantic let out a Geschrei upon reading GK: “I was pretty sure I didn’t enjoy listening to Garrison Keillor even before I read what he had to say about Christmas music.”
Across the pond, the Independent’s Dominic Lawson pooh-poohed Keillor the “curmudgeon” and (ignoring GK’s slights on nerds and Unitarians) naughty-naughty’d him, “don’t blame all of that on the Jews.  Irving Berlin is not the Anti-Christ.”  In the process, he scolded Christians for trying over the centuries to “de-Jew Jesus” and blamed THAT on . . . ready? . . . “the Roman Emperor Theodosius.”  Graciously, Lawson left “aside the murky matter of anti-Semitism.”  I mean, you weren’t even thinking about anti-Semitism, were you?  You weren’t?  Not till I brought it up?  I didn’t bring it up.  I clearly said I was “leaving it aside.”
Yes, that Babe was both a Jew and God.  And no, Christians won’t leave that aside.
I suddenly have the urge for a powder-milk biscuit.

I like Garrison Keillor.  There, I said it.  Not everyone on the Chronicles staff agrees.  But that is not the point of this yuletide tale.

Tiller, Roeder, Richert, and Luther

. . . We interrupt this broadcast to celebrate(!) a Lutheran-Catholic lovefest . . .

Recently, there has been a blogosphere brouhaha over questions pertaining to the murder of late-term abortionist scoundrel George Tiller. Our executive editor Scott P. Richert has made compelling arguments against Tiller’s murder at his Catholicism GuideSite on About.com. And yet Scott, who is rightly described by his friendly debate opponents at Takimag.com as a “devout Catholic,” has not made arguments that are what one (I speak as a Lutheran) would call “uniquely Catholic”—except for his citation of Aquinas and the Catechism of the Catholic Church, which of course are wildly papist. (And imagine that, at Catholicism.About.com!)

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