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The Weblog at The View from the Core - Monday, May 24, 2004
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"A Marine Sees What Defeatists Don't" A fine column by Maj. Ben Connable at (of all places) USA Today, May 18: .... In May of last year, I was sitting with some fellow officers back in Diwaniyah, Iraq, the offensive successful and the country liberated from Saddam. I received a copy of a March 30 U.S. newspaper on Iraq in an old package that had finally made its way to the front. The stories: horror in Nasariyah, faltering supply lines and demonstrations in Cairo. The mood of the paper was impenetrably gloomy, and predictions of disaster abounded. The offensive was stalled; everyone was running out of supplies; we would be forced to withdraw. The Arab world was about to ignite into a fireball of rage, and the Middle East was on the verge of collapse. If I had read those stories on March 30, I would have had a tough time either restraining my laughter or, conversely, falling into a funk. I was concerned about the bizarre kaleidoscope image of Iraq presented to the American people by writers viewing the world through a soda straw.... Lane Core Jr. CIW P Mon. 05/24/04 05:30:47 PM |
"Conservative Group Amplifies Voice of Protestant Orthodoxy" Hoaky smokes, Bullwinkle! A New York Times article that actually labels both conservatives and liberals. A remarkable article at NYT, Saturday remarkable for being rather well balanced. Though it tries to make orthodox / conservative / traditional movements in mainstream Protestant circles out to be but manifestations of the VRWC, it fails because... well, because the article is rather well balanced: As Presbyterians prepare to gather for their General Assembly in Richmond, Va., next month, a band of determined conservatives is advancing a plan to split the church along liberal and orthodox lines. Another divorce proposal shook the United Methodist convention in Pittsburgh earlier this month, while conservative Episcopalians have already broken away to form a dissident network of their own. In each denomination, the flashpoint is homosexuality, but there is another common denominator as well. In each case, the Institute on Religion and Democracy, a small organization based in Washington, has helped incubate traditionalist insurrections against the liberal politics of the denomination's leaders. With financing from a handful of conservative donors, including the Scaife family foundations, the Bradley and Olin Foundations and Howard and Roberta Ahmanson's Fieldstead & Company, the 23-year-old institute is now playing a pivotal role in the biggest battle over the future of American Protestantism since churches split over slavery at the time of the Civil War.... This paragraph brought a guffaw: More liberal Protestants argue that the institute's financial backers are interfering with the theological disputes mainly for broader, secular political reasons. "The mainline denominations are a strategic piece on the chess board that the right wing is trying to dominate," said Alfred F. Ross, president and founder of the Institute for Democracy Studies, a liberal New York-based think tank which produced a research report in 2000 on the Institute's influence in the Presbyterian Church. As if the leadership of the mainline Protestant churches hasn't been taken over by liberal-heterodox-secularist-leftist elements over the past several generations. But later well, read it for yourself in amazement: Bill Schambra, director of the Bradley Center at the Hudson Institute and a former director of the Bradley Foundation, one of the biggest conservative donors, said the foundations' supported the institute as part of a broader effort to build a conservative infrastructure after decades of liberal ascendancy had shut out the right. All I know to say is this: the editorial staff must have left early for a long weekend. And, you may want to print that article. And laminate it. See also ut unum sint for another aspect. P.S. And see also Mere Comments. Lane Core Jr. CIW P Mon. 05/24/04 06:49:41 AM |
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