"Hot Air"

Thanks to Margaret for calling our attention to this article at The American Thinker, today:

Back in the days of Jimmy Carter and killer rabbits, doomsayers were telling us that the Earth was slipping into new ice age, and that we were all going to die. Survivalists ran for the hills while stuffed-shirt academics ordered extra elbow patches for their sweaters and tut-tutted about the foolishness of the American people. This particular hysteria was fueled by a couple of cooler-than-normal winters, and the doomsday prophets gleefully told us to prepare for the end. By the beginning of the 1980`s the temperature trends had changed and global cooling went out of fashion, replaced by a trendier doomsday scenario: global warming.

Once again, the sky is falling and we are all going to die. We have heard this mantra repeatedly for the last twenty years, and from some of the same people who promised us igloos and a twelve-month skiing season. Those same academics are removing their sweaters, cranking down the AC, and tut-tutting about the foolishness of the American people. We have been treated to a smorgasbord of half-baked ideas; the oceans will overflow, the ice will all melt and we’ll have no more snow, tropical diseases will run rampant. Our only slim hope for survival lies in adopting the Kyoto Protocols. We simply must live poorer — cut back, sacrifice, use less. This sounds remarkably like what we heard in the 1970's from the Club of Rome study on the limits to growth, driven by the supposed imminent exhaustion of most major raw materials. The disease diagnosis changes, but the cure is always the same....

See also my Tale of Three Doctors: And What it Tells Us About the Environmental Movement.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/21/04 08:14:20 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

"Victims of Choice"

A press release today from Human Life International.

“We are grateful to The Washington Post for exposing what the pro-life community, and Human Life International in particular, has been stressing for years: namely, that pro-choice men are the number one perpetrators of violence against pregnant, pro-life mothers,” stated Rev. Thomas J. Euteneuer, president of HLI.

According to the Post’s yearlong investigation, at least 1,367 pregnant women and new mothers — not including women from 13 states that do not record such figures — have been murdered since 1990. Declared a Maryland study highlighted by the Post, “A pregnant or recently pregnant woman is more likely to be a victim of homicide than to die of any other cause.”

“Abortion proponents always use maternal mortality rates to promote abortion rights. Yet as the Post reports, by the mid-1990s maternal mortality rates in the United States had dropped a full 99 percent from the last century, with fewer than 500 women a year dying of medical problems related to child bearing,” noted Fr. Euteneuer. “Until now, no one outside of the pro-life movement has been talking about the real fear women face. HLI has spent years documenting violence against women on our abortion violence database found at www.abortionviolence.com,” said Euteneuer.

Continued Euteneuer: “While it is gruesome that Quinnisha Thomas’ ex-boyfriend shot her execution-style at eight month’s pregnant because fatherhood could get in the way of his music career, we Americans are not in a position to say his actions are incomprehensible. After all, our laws teach him that murder for convenience is permissible. If we’re honest, we must admit that all these unborn babies were murdered because their fathers wanted to kill them, but these same babies could have died legally if their mothers wanted to kill them by abortion.”

Concluded Euteneuer: “In an abortion culture, there is no justice for the baby; but now that women are shown to be the victims of choice, will the feminist fanatics change their song? We won’t hold our breath. Extreme feminists now face a choice of their own: Be honest and admit that abortion is the best thing to happen to irresponsible men — not women — or continue to allow women to be brutalized by men who choose not to be fathers.”

Here is WaPo's report.

• Many New or Expectant Mothers Die Violent Death
• Violence Intersects Lives of Promise
• Mending Shattered Childhoods

Also Researchers Stunned By Scope of Slayings.

P.S. But see The Muddled Maternal Murder Series.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/21/04 07:58:42 PM
Categorized as Social/Cultural.

Point Blank (Round 18): Good Question

Thanks to Times Against Humanity for the notice of Hollywood and The Passion of the Christ.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/21/04 07:46:00 PM
Categorized as Blogosphere Stuff.

"Why Only Catholicism Can Make Protestantism Work"

A great article at CERC by Mark Brumley, originally in Catholic Dossier, September-October 2001:

Interpreting the Reformation is complicated business. But like many complicated things, it can be simplified sufficiently well that even non-experts can get the gist of it. Here's what seems a fairly accurate but simplified summary of the issue: The break between Catholics and Protestants was either a tragic necessity (to use Jaroslav Pelikan's expression) or it was tragic because unnecessary.

Many Protestants see the Catholic/Protestant split as a tragic necessity, although the staunchly anti-Catholic kind of Protestant often sees nothing tragic about it. Or if he does, the tragedy is that there ever was such a thing as the Roman Catholic Church that the Reformers had to separate from. His motto is "Come out from among them" and five centuries of Christian disunity has done nothing to cool his anti-Roman fervor.

Yet for most Protestants, even for most conservative Protestants, this is not so. They believe God "raised up" Luther and the other Reformers to restore the Gospel in its purity. They regret that this required a break with Roman Catholics (hence the tragedy) but fidelity to Christ, on their view, demanded it (hence the necessity).

Catholics agree with their more agreeable Protestant brethren that the sixteenth century division among Christians was tragic. But most Catholics who think about it also see it as unnecessary. At least unnecessary in the sense that what Catholics might regard as genuine issues raised by the Reformers could, on the Catholic view, have been addressed without the tragedy of dividing Christendom.

Yet we can go further than decrying the Reformation as unnecessary. In his ground-breaking work, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, Louis Bouyer argued that the Catholic Church herself is necessary for the full flowering of the Reformation principles. In other words, you need Catholicism to make Protestantism work — for Protestantism's principles fully to develop. Thus, the Reformation was not only unnecessary; it was impossible. What the Reformers sought, argues Bouyer, could not be achieved without the Catholic Church....

(Thanks, Shawn.)

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/21/04 05:58:03 PM
Categorized as Religious.

Catholic Carnival IX

At A Penitent Blogger this week.

Your Humble, Faithful Blogster has an entry in this week's Carnival.

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/21/04 05:34:27 PM
Categorized as Catholic Carnival & Religious.

The United Nations: Trade Association of Government Power Brokers

Finally, a way to wrap your mind around that thing.

Carroll Andrew Morse writes at TCS today:

.... The United Nations is the pre-eminent trade association for people involved in the business of government power. Actually, it is more focused than that. The United Nations is the trade association for the world's executive branches — the place where executive branches come together to promote their individual interests to one another, and to promote the expansion of executive authority in general. This point is often missed by UN critics who dismiss the organization as nothing more than the world's greatest debating society. These critics confuse being voluntary with being powerless. Organizations like The American Bar Association, the American Medical Association, the International Tobacco Growers' Association are all voluntary — but certainly not powerless.

Once it is understood that the United Nations is a trade association for the promotion of executive authority, its behavior becomes almost rational. The trade association extends professional courtesy to its members — its cardinal rule is not to step on the toes of another executive. Saddam Hussein violated this rule by invading Kuwait and displacing another executive. Hussein paid for this mistake; the UN stepped in to enforce discipline amongst its members....

The most telling example is the Sudan. There is a well documented genocide underway in the Sudan. This past July, Congress passed a resolution calling the situation genocide, but a Congressional resolution is not a basis for UN action. The UN listens only to the actions of executive branches, and Congress is only the legislative authority, not the executive authority of the United States. Congress appealing to the UN is like a barber demanding changes in the rules of the American Medical Association. It doesn't matter how good his intentions are or how accurate his information is — he is not a member. The American Medical Association does not listen to barbers, it listens to its member doctors. And the United Nations doesn't listen to legislators — it listens only to its member executive branches....

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/21/04 07:45:50 AM
Categorized as International.

Congrats to the Power Liners

For gettting Time's Blog of the Year award.

This is a giant step towards the day when newspaper and magazine articles will no longer need to explain that "blog" is short for "web log", "a sort of on-line diary"........

Lane Core Jr. CIW P — Tue. 12/21/04 07:17:41 AM
Categorized as Blogosphere Stuff.