Steve Skojec

In Jerusalem, a terrorist entered the library of a Yeshiva and opened fire, firing off over 500 rounds of ammunition before he was stopped. Who stopped him?

Yitzhak Dadon, a student, said he was armed with a rifle and waited on the roof of a nearby building. “He came out of the library spraying automatic fire … the terrorist came to the entrance and I shot him twice in the head,” he said.

I literally wanted to get up and cheer when I read this. Could you imagine if a student like this had been at Northern Illinois University or Virginia Tech? According to reports, at least seven people were killed in this attack, but if the attacker had been allowed to continue, how many more would have died?

Yitzhak Dadon is a hero. Americans need to take back the freedom to follow his lead.

There’s a bit of drama this morning at Inside Catholic over the supposed lack of charity both in Fr. Euteneur’s comments about Coach Majerus and in the blogosphere as it has covered the story.

I think it’s all a bit overwraught, and my latest blog at IC explains why.

The Wall Street Journal’s Business Technoloy Blog posted yesterday on this very question:

If you don’t have a super-fast, super-small computer in a few years, blame the moral majority. It turns out that most Americans find nanotechnology, the scientific field most likely to produce such a breakthrough, morally unacceptable.

That’s according to researchers at the University of Wisconsin who are studying people’s attitudes towards nanotechnology, an emerging scientific field that involves manipulating molecules and atoms. They found that just 29.5% of the 1,000-plus Americans surveyed said they thought nanotechnology research was morally acceptable.

The Journal says that the study’s leader, U of W professor Dietram Scheufele, believes that people don’t understand nanotech and so lump it in with “other new technologies like stem cell research and genetically modified foods…”

The CEO of my firm asked a bunch of his younger staff members over a lunch a few months ago which technologies they thought would have the most impact in their lifetimes. Without hesitation, I responded, “Nanotech.” Why? It will effect everything from the materials we use to the buildings we build to the medicines we take to the robotics that will become an ever more integrated part of our lives.

For more info on nanotech, check out the entry at HowStuffWorks.

Update: What I meant to mention, but somehow forgot in my Friday-evening haze, is that I can’t imagine this technology being opposed on moral grounds. The real fears that people have about nanotech being potentially dangerous if it somehow was able to accomplish unlimited self-replication (a common sci-fi theme on the topic) is one thing; questions about ethics, however, are entirely unrelated. Nanotech does not, in my limited understanding, pose a moral dilemma whatsoever.

If I’m missing something, by all means, let me know.

…to anyone who has ever attended a “Life Teen Mass”, that the founder of the group - still under indictment for sexual abuse charges - has begun a new non-denominational “Praise and Worship Center”.

Life Teen was, in my limited experience, essentially a not-rigidly denominational praise and worship group that simply maintained a thin veneer of Catholicism (much like my alma matter Franciscan University’s dominant spirituality, which took its charismatic character in part from the parish where Msgr. Fushek started the group). Many Catholics, including some of my friends, think groups like Life Teen serve a real purpose in the Church. Using the oft-repeated (and grammatically incorrect) cliché, “It’s important to meet people where they’re at”, these individuals believe that the bongo-drum beating, sanctuary violating, rock and roll concert emulating “masses” engage the youth culture and make them feel comfortable about becoming a Catholic.

Anyone with an ounce of sense in their head should know that one can’t make something they hold sacred appear “cool” in order to penetrate pop culture and the follies of youth without subverting the very transcendence of what they are trying to draw people to.  Worship is supposed to bring the faithful “up”, to elevate them above the mundane, daily realities they face. Reverence is found in silence, in music that is ordered in such a way that it both humbles and lifts the spirit, in a non-vernacular language, in incense and ceremony, in prayers of supplication, etc. Sublimation, not simplification, is the key.

Someone who feels the need to try to dumb Catholicism down and dress it in the trappings of modernity to make it attractive is like a person who goes onto a dating website and posts a picture of an attractive model rather than their own image. If it is a sign of immaturity and insecurity to pretend to be someone you are not because you don’t think people will like the real you, what does it say about your faith when you feel the need to disguise its true form in order to make it appealing? Not really a vote of confidence for the One True Faith, is it?

Msgr. Fushek, in my opinion, must never have had much regard for the faith as it is; he must simply have tried to make it look like what he wanted it to be. And what he wanted it to be was a non-denominational charismatic praise and worship group. Now that his public faculties have been suspended because of other alleged indiscretions, he finds no impediment in showing his true colors without the Catholic veneer.

It’s sad. A logical result of the flawed logic behind Life Teen’s creation, but sad, nonetheless.

UPDATE: It has been pointed out to me by a reader that the charismatic aspect of Franciscan University - which appears likely to have emerged there upon the arrival of Fr. Michael Scanlan in 1974 - pre-dates the founding of life teen in 1985. The history on this seems a bit murky to me, though I believe this is correct. I have always been under the impression, however, that St. Timothy’s parish in Mesa, AZ, where Life Teen was founded, has played a substantial role in providing students and a certain charismatic and youth-mass orientation to FUS.

If anyone knows more about the connection (or lack thereof, please leave a comment.)

This is a message to the politically correct elites out there in la-la land:

KEEPING TABS ON MUSLIMS DOES NOT EQUAL RACIAL PROFILING!!!

Get it through your heads - Islam is a religion that bridges cultures, colors and countries. There are dozens of countries with Muslim majorities across Africa, the Middle East and Asia. There are countless other nations with Islamic citizens that range the gamut in features from blonde hair and blue eyes to the deepest ebony.

Islam is a religion, not a race. It is a religion with a particular set of ideologies, many of which are antithetical to Western beliefs, customs and laws. To study and track members of an ideology that poses a potential danger to a society is not evil or wrong - it is common sense applied in the service of the best interests of the communities where it is happening and for the welfare of the populace.

It is precisely the sort of thing that is aimed at keeping this from happening.

What part of this don’t you understand?

Robert Novak took Fred Thompson to task yesterday in a piece in The Washington Post over his comments on the abortion issue on Meet the Press.

Fred Thompson was well into a prolonged dialogue about abortion on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday when he said something that stunned social conservatives: “I do not think it is a wise thing to criminalize young girls and perhaps their parents as aiders and abettors.” He then went further: “You can’t have a [federal] law” that “would take young, young girls . . . and say, basically, we’re going to put them in jail.”

Those comments sent e-mails flying across the country, reflecting astonishment and rage from pro-life Republicans who had turned to Thompson as their best presidential bet for 2008. No serious antiabortion legislation ever has included criminal penalties against women who have abortions, much less their parents. Jailing women is a spurious issue raised by abortion rights activists. Interviewer Tim Russert did not bring it up in his questioning. What Thompson said could be expected from NARAL Pro-Choice America…

…Thompson’s comments revealed an astounding lack of sensitivity about abortion. He surely anticipated that Russert would cite his record favoring states’ rights on abortion. Whether the candidate just blurted out his statement or had planned it, it suggested a failure to realize how much his chances for the Republican nomination depend on social conservatives.

In my opinion, this is a good thing. While I fail to see the trouble with the statement Novak cited above about the criminalization of abortion (after all, isn’t it a logical consequence of a federal law that needs to be addressed?) Thompson’s interview as a whole belies the fact that this is an issue that isn’t a natural priority for him. He still seems to struggle too much in defining his position, and in reconciling what he believes now with what he believed in the past.

That said, I think he brings up an important point, namely, the question of whether there should be a Constitutional amendment to outlaw abortion. Thompson says “no.” Despite my lack of confidence in Thompson as a serious candidate, this highlights something that pro-lifers need to honestly consider. The debate over how to achieve pro-life legislation has grown increasingly rancorous, and there is quite a lot of division within the ranks of those dedicated to defending the unborn.

I find that my position on how best to proceed politically on the abortion issue has changed from one prompted by unthinking urgency to something I hope is more pragmatic and possible. My position as it stands can be defined as follows:

1.) A Constitutional amendment on abortion is:

     a.) Not achieveable in the current socio-political climate. 

     b.) Not strictly necessary.

On the first point, while I understand and appreciate the desire to pass a Constitutional amendment and in fact do not oppose one - properly constructed - the reality is that this issue cannot survive the amendment process. I do not believe that this is mere opinion, or an overstatement of any kind. In order for a an amendment to be ratified, it must pass both houses of Congress by a two-thirds majority and then go on to be approved by a three-quarters majority of the states, through either state legislature passage or state conventions. The passage at the state level need only be a simple majority, but as this is not so at the federal Congressional level or at the national level of aggregating the votes of states, it will NOT happen in a country as divided as ours is over abortion.

I say this assuming that the only amendment true pro-lifers would want passed would be one that does not have exception clauses. Anything less would de facto grant some abortion rights (ie., rape, incest, life of the mother) within the context of the Constitution itself, thereby setting a dangerous precedent that at this time does not exist. The SCOTUS has falsely determined that the Fourteenth Amendment of the Constitution protects the right to abortion under the Due Process Clause’s right to privacy; it does not, however, claim any explicit Consitutional guarantee that abortion should be legal (though some will argue that the Ninth Amendment comes into play here, despite the fact that even the Roe decision declined to support this). Passage of an amendment with exception clauses would, I think, deepen the danger in the long-term, not alleviate it.

On my second point, it could more effectively be argued that the Fourteenth Amendment in fact protects the rights of the unborn under the very Due Process Clause that Roe supposedly found justification for abortion in. The difficulty is that the Fourteenth Amendment does not speak to the question, and logically defines citizenship (and the subsequent jurisdiction of the contents of the amendment) to apply to those “born or naturalized in the United States…”. It would be odd, one must admit, for citizenship to be granted prior to birth, as place of birth is an essential and sensible component in the legal recognition of citizenship.

There is, however, no reason to deduce that those who are not yet born are excluded from the protections of the Constitution. The silence of the law on this matter is where the Devil has found his advantage.

On the tenuousness of the justification for Roe, Justice Renquist’s opinion stated:

To reach its result, the Court necessarily has had to find within the scope of the Fourteenth Amendment a right that was apparently completely unknown to the drafters of the Amendment. As early as 1821, the first state law dealing directly with abortion was enacted by the Connecticut Legislature. By the time of the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868, there were at least 36 laws enacted by state or territorial legislatures limiting abortion. While many States have amended or updated their laws, 21 of the laws on the books in 1868 remain in effect today.

This debate will continue until a conversion of this country takes place, or until our own barbarity leads to the destruction of our nation by some other, more coherent force. At the federal level, the abortion issue seems to be at an ideological impasse.

Which leads to the second part of my position:

2.) Due to the silence of the Constitution on this matter and the lack of popular will to change this, it is clearly, according to the Tenth Amendment, a states issue. As the Tenth Amendment states:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Many in the pro-life movement find the movement of jurisdiction on this matter from the federal level to the state level to be unacceptable. They wish for what amounts to be an imperial edict from the federal government without understanding that the United States has provisions that disallow such edicts from occurring. As I mentioned above, the amendment process requires a ratification by the states, meaning that any attempt to pass a Constitutional amendment remains at heart a states’ rights issue.

Considering the fact that the obstacles to passing a Constitutional amendment have become so strong (ie., Democratic Congress; erosion of true pro-life positions from GOP members; issues with exception clauses being introduced into an amendment; the needs for a three-quarters majority of the states for ratification, etc.) it seems only sensible that we should support a movement toward this issue being decided at the individual state level.

The reasons for this become immediately clear when we look at a breakout map of the country on the issue. From this USA Today analysis done last year, we can see the advantage to a state-by-state approach:

On an immediate basis, we have 49.6% of the population willing to support legislation that restricts abortion access. An additional 15.6% are on the fence, which means that a least some legislation is not out of the question. While it’s quite obvious that this is a far cry from the 75% of states that would need to have a simple majority of citizens convicted about the need for a Constitutional amendment in order for one to pass, we could at least see progress in between 50-65% of the country in a short time.

Isn’t this better than bashing our heads against the wall every four years trying to find a Presidential candidate whom we hope will be sufficiently pro-life, and then wondering what he will actually do about it when and if he achieves office?

By the time the next President is sworn in, we will have lived 20 out of the last 28 years under Republican Presidential leadership, and yet Roe still stands.

What we are doing is not working. We elect Presidents who say they will work toward a Constitutional Amendment on abortion, when they have no formal role in the process of proposing an amendment. When there is a sitting Republican President and a Republican majority in Congress, have we seen any attempt to have such an amendment sponsored?

The reality is clear - either these leaders know that such an amendment will never be ratified and so they do not make the attempt to have one passed, or they simply do not care enough about it to do anything other than campaign on a platform that pays lip service to the idea.

Either way, the consequences are disastrous, and 1.5 million children in the U.S. are murdered annually in the womb. We are a nation steeped in the blood of the innocent, and yet we continue to allow ourselves to be deceived by politicians who promise solutions and deliver little, if anything at all.

If the pro-life movement would wise up and push for this issue to go back to the states, we could start to gain traction. The more local the issue, the more the people are involved, and the higher the likelihood that things would begin to change.

In addition, the other pressing issues this nation faces - the looming economic crisis, the devaluation of our currency, the devastating effects of globalism and open borders, the questionable legality (and subsequently morality) of our war in Iraq, the failure of our foreign policy to work toward the good of our nation, the increasing bloat and spending at the federal level, etc. - could all become deciding issues during Presidential elections.

We could stop throwing our votes away on “viable” candidates who are doing nothing for the long-term good of this nation simply because they play the pro-life card, and start looking for candidates who have real answers.

Wouldn’t this, after all, be the better way?

This one, at least, takes a critical look at the trend toward sexy costumes for young girls. Sadly, it’s indicative of the ignorance many parents have about the culture their children are growing up in: 

For Cheryl Cirenza, that’s what Halloween is still all about. But for her daughter, she’s not so sure. “I really don’t know why these kinds of costumes appeal so much to her,” she said. Cirenza knows that prepubescent sex appeal is rampant. But the family doesn’t have cable, and she limits Gabby’s TV time. There are no trashy teen or celebrity magazines in her home. And they keep an eye on her Web surfing. “I don’t know if it’s just in the air.”

Umm, try public school, Cheryl, if you’re looking for a culprit.

Paul Krugman of the New York Times has a piece on “fearmongering” and the war posturing regarding Iran.

I’m not a Krugman reader. Don’t really know who he is. I looked him up, and it appears that he’s an economist. Clearly his specialization doesn’t help him in this article, because he appears to have no natural defense against the liberal errors in assessing the dangers arising out of militant (ie., orthodox) Islam. Were he grounded in history, or perhaps an unbiased view of religion, he might have had better luck.

It’s a shame, too, because not everything he brings up is incorrect. It’s simply poorly supported by his arguments. I will parse some of the more important bits below:

Today, many of the men who hope to be the next president — including all of the candidates with a significant chance of receiving the Republican nomination — have made unreasoning, unjustified terror the centerpiece of their campaigns.

Consider, for a moment, the implications of the fact that Rudy Giuliani is taking foreign policy advice from Norman Podhoretz, who wants us to start bombing Iran “as soon as it is logistically possible.”

I’m OK with this so far. When I read about anyone wanting to bomb Iran ASAP, I begin to get my hackles up. It’s bad policy, plain and simple.

Mr. Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary and a founding neoconservative, tells us that Iran is the “main center of the Islamofascist ideology against which we have been fighting since 9/11.” The Islamofascists, he tells us, are well on their way toward creating a world “shaped by their will and tailored to their wishes.” Indeed, “Already, some observers are warning that by the end of the 21st century the whole of Europe will be transformed into a place to which they give the name Eurabia.”

Do I have to point out that none of this makes a bit of sense?

Stop right there. (more…)

Catholics are embracing this photo of a totally non-descript flame as an apparition of JPII-We-Luv-U.

In the words of Jack Nicholson in As Good as it Gets, “Go sell crazy somewhere else. We’re all stocked up here.”

In an attempt to make me feel smarter, Pat Buchanan used his column space on Tuesday to ask the same questions and make essentially the same argument (with a bit more substance to it) that I made the other day:

Bush’s shifting rationale for war on Iran is consistent with what The New Yorker’s Sy Hersh reports. The case for war and the initial target list have been changed — from Iran’s nuclear program to Iran’s Quds Force.

If Iran is supplying enhanced IEDs to Iraqis to kill Americans, that is an act of war. And President Bush has the same right to go after the nests of terror as did President Nixon in ordering the 1970 invasion of the Viet Cong sanctuaries in Cambodia.

But while Nixon and LBJ bombed North Vietnam, we did not strike China or Russia, which were providing far more weaponry to the NVA and VC than Iran has provided Iraqi insurgents. And President Truman fired Gen. MacArthur, who wanted to go to the source, in China, of the men and weapons killing Americans in Korea.

The point here is this: If the United States has a case for war, why has Congress not held hearings to give us answers to the crucial questions, before Bush plunges us into that war?

How solid is the evidence Iran is providing roadside bombs to kill Americans? How solid is the evidence Tehran has approved of or assisted in these attacks?

I’m gratified to know that Pat is reading my blog and using it as a launching point for his own material. (I’ll do whatever I can to help.)

In all seriousness though, these are pressing questions, and while the point that Dale has brought up about the religious motivation of Iran remains relevant, I think that we can’t entirely abandon looking at the country as a quasi-rational state with a populace not as hell-bent on self-destruction as some of the power brokers there are.

There’s still that chance that they don’t want to invite a rain of fire down upon them, and if we can look at it that way while we’re planning our strategy, Buchanan is right: Congress need to be asking these questions before CONGRESS authorizes war.

Anything less is a complete dereliction of duty. Either we have a case for war or we don’t, and that needs to be established (and fast) unless we want another Iraq, times 10.