No

Got a questionnaire in the mail from the RNC yesterday. The questions are supposed to make me think they care about my opinion, but what they really wanted was my "most generous contribution." Here's what I sent them instead.



Not that it will make any difference, but it's worth a try.

Update: Emailed the photo to Michelle Malkin and she liked it.

Degradation of Civility in the Passing Scene

I watched an old movie recently with a throw-away moment that showed how much civil behavior has degraded in this country. (I can't remember the title, but I think it had Fred MacMurray in it.) The scene: A woman reporter is about to enter an area where construction men are working, a tunnel or something, and MacMurray instructs the foreman to warn the men about her arrival "and tell them, for God's sake, to watch their language." Do men do that anymore? Why bother, when women don't watch their language anymore, either.

My high school research intern mentioned that yesterday was "hip-hop day" at her school. Students dressed up as "gangstas and hos." Mainstreaming a degenerate subculture at any school is bad enough, but this was at a highly-regarded Christian school. Are Christians so desperate to appeal to kids that they go for the lowest common denominator? In this economic climate, it's understandable that institutions are desperate to hold on to revenue, but compromising your beliefs for $20,000 tuition per student makes you an ecclesiastical prostitute.

Our realtor and his brother helped us move into our new house a few months ago. When I entered the spare bedroom to drop off a box, I saw the brother admiring a large mirror on the wall next to the bed. He quipped that it should come in handy when my husband and I want to "have some fun." I don't understand why any man thinks it's okay to talk to a woman that way, let alone a married woman he hardly knows.

T-shirt seen on a patron at Wal-Mart last month: f*ck all y'all. In front of kids, old ladies, everyone. Growing up in the 1970s, I remember a time when even the toughest scruff would've been ashamed to have kids or old ladies overhear bad language, let alone see it displayed all over his chest.

Have you heard of Gao Zhisheng? He was considered one of China's top lawyers, but went missing over a year ago when he was arrested by police. His crime (besides being a practicing Christian) was writing to the U.S. Congress, just before the Beijing Olympics, protesting his country's human rights record. He had been arrested and physically tortured for his outspokenness in the past, so he knew the risk and did it anyway. I thought of Gao as I looked at a pair of dangly, plastic testicles hanging from the back of a truck in traffic last week. People are tortured in gulags and die fighting for the right to criticize their governments while some guy halfway around the world uses the right to free speech to display plastic genitals on his truck. Or to tell everyone within view "f*ck you" on a t-shirt.

Sigh.

I linked to an article a few days ago about pastors who avoid the culture war. Like Giles' waffling pastors, I, too, am tempted to permanently retreat into the cloistered environment of church and Christian fellowship. This is item #4 on Giles' list: "Last Days Madness." Giles is right that, irrespective of whether this depressing incivility heralds the apocalypse to come, we have a duty to engage the culture.

If the [Christians] within the good old US of A would crucify their fear of man, get solidly briefed regarding the chief political issues, not sweat necessary division, not get caught up in last days madness, maintain their hope for tomorrow, understand their liberties under God and our Constitution, not become so heavenly minded that they’re no earthly good, focus on the majors and blow off bowing to cash instead of convictions, then maybe . . . just maybe . . . we will see their righteous influence cause our nation to take the needed sharp turn away from the secularist progressives’ speedily approaching putrid pit.

Amen.

Atheism vs. Christian Theology 101

Some fascinating back and forth at Common Sense Atheism and Vox Popoli over the verity of Christianity and the nature of evil:

Common Sense Atheism letters 1, 2, 3

Vox Popoli responses 1, 2, 3

"10 Reasons Why Pastors Avoid the Culture War"

Big Hollywood blogger Doug Giles takes waffling pastors to task

Given that the culture-dividing issues, thanks to Obama, are more obvious than Joan Rivers’ last lip implants, it is mind-boggling to me that many ministers are mute or side with parties, policies and principles that are antithetical to the Judeo-Christian worldview. I don’t know if you got this memo in seminary but pastors are not only supposed to salvage souls but also build the good society.

RTWT.

Sounds like a real page-turner

Ralph Nader has written a novel, called Only the Super-Rich Can Save Us, that appears to be Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged materialized from a parallel universe.

Consider. It's long (700 pages), it's an ideological fantasy, and it centers around the world's elite and super-wealthy. But instead of society's most productive members withdrawing on principle and letting the world fall into chaos, we get society's most earnest members withdrawing to come up with a plan for mega-regulation. Instead of John Galt and his famous radio speech, we get Patriotic Polly the parrot who squawks platitudes over the airwaves. Instead of powerful industrialists like Francisco D'Anconia, Hank Rearden, and Dagny Taggart, we get Warren Buffett, Phil Donahue, and Yoko Ono.

One of the joys of Rand's novels was the aptness with which she named her characters, especially the villains: Mort Liddy, Cuffy Meigs, Chick Morrison. What does Nader come up with? Lancelot Lobo. As this WSJ reviewer quips, it's a good thing Nader chose so many well-known people for his characters.