Israel v. Gaza

It seems like the Israel v. Middle East conflict occurs every few years. Rockets are fired, tanks inevitably roll in and civilian casualties are left in their wake. Lather, rinse, repeat. In this particular instance,Hamas picked a fight with Israel and Israel was more than able to unleash its superior forces in the Gaza strip. Quite honestly, Israel will probably never have their version of peace until they impose a post-WWII style occupation and completely dismantle the territory like in Japan or Germany. The Palestinians, on the other hand, will never have peace until Israel is either destroyed (check the translations of Arabic media at these websites for more http://www.memri.org/ or http://www.memritv.org/ ) or effectively handcuffed. Frankly, both of these realities are neither feasible nor just. I do not know if anybody can bring peace between the two sides., even President-Elect Obama. I do believe that there needs to be a significant moral and cultural change within the camps. As Salon.com's Glenn Greenwald pointed out, Israel must ask itself whether military incursions create more enemies than they destroy. Hamas and other groups must turn towards coexistence with the State of Israel and the reality that there must be a two state solution. I have witnessed Middle Eastern opinion firsthand and it is rather startling.

Hamas caused the invasion by firing rockets from civilian areas and Israel has killed many civilians by returning fire. While there is fault on both sides, in my opinion, one side is more guilty than the other. In order for peace to happen there must be a seismic cultural shift. Mark Steyn wittingly outlines this concept in his recent column below.

Gaza has its version of rocket scientists
Westerners seem to expect more civilized behavior from Israel than from its adversaries.

So how was your holiday season? Over in Gaza, whether or not they're putting the Christ back in Christmas, they're certainly putting the crucifixion back in Easter. According to the London-based Arabic newspaperal Hayat, on Dec. 23 Hamas legislators voted to introduce Sharia – Islamic law – to the Palestinian territories, including crucifixion. So next time you're visiting what my childhood books still quaintly called "the Holy Land" the re-enactments might be especially lifelike.

The following day, Christmas Eve, Samuel Huntington died at his home at Martha's Vineyard. A decade and a half ago, in his most famous book "The Clash Of Civilizations," professor Huntington argued that Western elites' view of man as homo economicus was reductive and misleading – that cultural identity is a more profound behavioral indicator than lazy assumptions about the universal appeal of Western-style economic liberty and the benefits it brings.

Very few of us want to believe this thesis.

"The great majority of Palestinian people," Condi Rice, the secretary of state, said to commentator Cal Thomas a couple of years back, "they just want a better life. This is an educated population. I mean, they have a kind of culture of education and a culture of civil society. I just don't believe mothers want their children to grow up to be suicide bombers. I think the mothers want their children to grow up to go to university. And if you can create the right conditions, that's what people are going to do."

Thomas asked a sharp follow-up: "Do you think this or do you know this?"

"Well, I think I know it," said Secretary Rice.

"You think you know it?"

"I think I know it."

I think she knows she doesn't know it. But in the modern world there is no diplomatic vocabulary for the kind of cultural fault line represented by the Israeli/Palestinian dispute, so even a smart thinker like Dr. Rice can only frame it as an issue of economic and educational opportunity. Of course, there are plenty of Palestinians like the ones the secretary of state described: You meet them living as doctors and lawyers in Los Angeles and Montreal and Geneva … but not, on the whole, in Gaza.

In Gaza, they don't vote for Hamas because they want access to university education. Or, if they do, it's to get Junior into the Saudi-funded, Hamas-run Islamic University of Gaza, where majoring in rocket science involves making one and firing it at the Zionist Entity. In 2007, as part of their attempt to recover Gaza fromHamas, Fatah seized 1,000 Qassam rockets at the university, as well as seven Iranian military trainers.

At a certain unspoken level, we understand that the Huntington thesis is right, and the Rice view is wishful thinking. After all, when French PresidentSarkozy and other European critics bemoan Israel's "disproportionate" response, what really are they saying? That they expect better from the despised Jews than fromHamas . That they regard Israel as a Western society bound by civilized norms, whereas any old barbarism issuing forth from Gaza is to be excused on grounds of "desperation."

Hence, this slightly surreal headline from The New York Times: "Israel Rejects Cease-Fire, But Offers Gaza Aid." For whatever that's worth.Wafa Samir Ibrahim al-Biss, a young Palestinian woman who received considerate and exemplary treatment at an Israeli hospital in Beersheba , returned to that same hospital packed with explosives in order to blow herself up and kill the doctors and nurses who restored her to health. Well, what do you expect? It's "desperation" born of "poverty" and "occupation."

If it was, it would be easy to fix. But what if it's not? What if it's about something more primal than land borders and economic aid?

A couple of days after Hamas voted to restore crucifixion to the Holy Land, their patron in Tehran (and their primary source of "aid") put in an appearance on British TV. As multicultural "balance" to Her Majesty The Queen's traditional Christmas message, the TV network Channel 4 invited PresidentAhmadinejad to give an alternative Yuletide address on the grounds that it was a valuable public service to let viewers hear him "speak for himself, which people in the West don't often get the chance to see."

In fact, as Caroline Glick pointed out in The Jerusalem Post, the great man "speaks for himself" all the time – when he's at the United Nations, calling on all countries to submit to Islam; when he's presiding over his international conference of Holocaust deniers; when he's calling for Israel to be "wiped off the map" – or (in his more "moderate" moments) relocated to a couple of provinces of Germany and Austria. CarolineGlick forbore to mention that, according to President Ahmadinejad's chief adviser, Hassan Abbassi , his geopolitical strategy is based on the premise that "Britain is the mother of all evils" – the evils being America, Australia, Israel, the Gulf states, Canada and New Zealand, all the malign progeny of the British Empire. "We have established a department that will take care of England," Mr.Abbassi said in 2005. "England's demise is on our agenda."

So when Britain's Channel 4 says that we don't get the chance to see these fellows speak for themselves, it would be more accurate to say that they speak for themselves incessantly but the louder they speak the more we put our hands over our ears and go "Nya nya, can't hear you." We do this in part because, if you're as invested as most Western elites are in the idea that all anyone wants is to go to university, get a steady job and settle down in a nice house in the suburbs, a statement such as "England's demise is on our agenda" becomes almost literally untranslatable. When PresidentAhmadinejad threatens to wipe Israel off the face of the map, we deplore him as a genocidal fantasist. But maybe he's a genocidal realist, and we're the fantasists.

The civilizational clashes of professor Huntington's book are not inevitable. Culture is not immutable. But changing culture is tough and thankless and something the West no longer has the stomach for. Unfortunately, the Saudis do, and so do the Iranians. And not just in Gaza but elsewhere the trend is away from "moderation" and toward something fiercer and ever more implacable.

To be fair to President Ahmadinejad's hosts at Channel 4, the "department that will take care of England" probably doesn't get the lion's share of the funding in Tehran. On the other hand, whenHashemi Rafsanjani describes the Zionist Entity as "the most hideous occurrence in history," which the Muslim world "will vomit out from its midst" with "a single atomic bomb," that sounds rather more specific, if not teetering alarmingly on the "disproportionate." Unlike its international critics in North America and Europe, Israel has no margin for error.

©MARK STEYN

Why Proposition 8 Matters

Proposition 8 has provoked extreme emotions on both sides of the issue. It is generally shaped as being about tolerance and equality on one side or about morality and tradition on the other. While they are polar opposites, it is important to realize that both sides have boasted faulty arguments. There are agents of intolerance within both camps, whether intolerant of free speech or hateful of a different lifestyle. The most important thing within a pluralistic society is the ability to construct sound arguments and not get caught up in overwhelming emotions. Please hear me out and let me explain why I endorse Proposition 8.

It is very important to outline what is marriage and what is the role that it plays in society. Marriage is typically outlined by society and it is shaped by the culture, whether through religious or legal customs. Historically, cultures have outlined that marriage is between people of the opposite sex- regardless of an Eastern or Western philosophy. However now, this is seen as both hateful and bigoted. The archaic understanding of marriage should be modified, after all racial matters were decided through government intervention. Although the racial legacy of the USA has been tainted with slavery and hostile welcoming of immigrant groups, the California court's decision in the beginning of this year cannot be equated with the rejection of interracial marriage. The racial tension and restrictions were morally deplorable and were against legitimate moral teachings. The current debate cannot be honestly tied to the past struggles on moral grounds for clarity's sake. Although marriage between two people of different faiths have been banned periodically throughout history, that ban has not been on racial grounds. Since people of different ethnic groups could convert, interracial marriage was not condemned within religious texts. Certainly the question of American bans on interracial dating and marriage within ultra-conservative groups is often raised as a parallel. In order to rebut this erroneous claim I will turn to a quote from columnist and thinker Dennis Prager,

"American bans on interracial marriages were not supported by any major religious or moral system; those bans were immoral aberrations, no matter how many religious individuals may have supported them. Justices who overthrew bans on interracial marriages, therefore, had virtually every moral and religious value system since ancient times on their side. But justices who overthrow the ban on same-sex marriage have nothing other their hubris and their notions of compassion on their side."

Certainly my libertarian friends will object with the limited concept of imposing morality on other people. I want to be perfectly clear that it is really impossible to not impose your worldview on other people. Even the belief that all beliefs should be tolerated and debated is imposing one's belief on someone else. In other words, there is no such thing as objectivity or universal acceptance. Some compassionate people might say that the rejection of this proposition would be a reinstatement of human rights. After all, Thomas Jefferson once penned, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed..." Human rights are applicable to all people, and through the vigilance of the state, people should be protected. Although perfect equality will not happen due to the natural condition of humanity, it does not mean that we should not strive for legal equality. Homosexual and heterosexual couples should receive and continue to receive equal legal rights. The legal benefits between my wife and I should be granted for two partners through civil unions. There are rights that can be given but do not call it marriage. Prejudice should be fought against and tolerance of other lifestyles should be sought, but an abandonment of all societal ties for the sake of 'progress' must not be attempted.

One of the classic arguments in support of same-sex marriage that must be addressed is that we must support same-sex marriage because a heterosexual marriage will not be impacted by a homosexual marriage. Congratulations on making a non sequitur. It is completely irrelevant to the debate, no one ever said that it would. Even in my conversations with the most conservative of Evangelicals this topic does not come up. We are not discussing individual marriages, instead we are talking about foundations of society. The elimination of the mores that bind us to our foundation is precarious and that is what this debate is about. Of course, advocating for marriage between a man and a woman is now the equivalent of being a sexist or racist. And soon, I am certain, it will be a hate crime. Even though one might have all the love and respect for someone of a different sexual orientation, the sentiments that only a man and a woman should marry is hateful. The playing of the hate card is intellectually dishonest and blackmail. If everyone else is labeled hateful by you if they oppose a measure, than you are promulgating hate.

Marriage is at the very foundation of civilization. Society lives and dies through the ability to sustain its culture and grow as a people by reproducing. Three traditional views on marriage is that marriage a social contract, sacrament and/or a legal binding. According to my Protestant worldview (with a bit of Catholic influences), the issue leans more towards all of the above. Marriage redeems society and should be a blessing unto it, through the dynamic of two different people coming together-- building society through stability and furthering society in childbearing. This (potential) ability is what sets marriage apart from other relationships. If it is a purely legal matter, than allow the society to legitimately decide the definition. Please correct me if I am wrong, but marriage has never been regarded as a universal human or civil right. Marriage has been chosen from within society and is bestowed on whom it chooses.

Words are incredibly important. The description of a piece of legislation as either a bailout or an economic stabilization plan could cause significantly different public reaction. With this constitutional amendment the phrasing could make all the difference. The proposition originally read: "Amends the California Constitution to provide that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." Attorney General Jerry Brown changed the wording to: "Eliminates Right of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment." The changed wording should melt even the hardest of hearts. Attorney General Brown changed the phrasing to manipulate popular sentiment, framing those who oppose gay marriage (even those who have no animosity towards gays) as bigots. Just as O'Brien would famously ask Winston in George Orwell's 1984, many now ask "How many fingers am I holding up, Winston?" Even if you reply four they will force you to say five. Why? Because up is down and down is up. There is no Truth, morality is dead. After all, we are simply a nation of sheep.


Marriage has always been defined by society, secular or sacred. If society chooses to allow same-sex marriage, then so be it. It should be defined through the ballot box, not through judicial and dishonest actions.


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For more, please see:

Opposition to California Proposition 8: Hate in the Name of Love

by Dennis Prager

California's Decision will radically change society
by Dennis Prager

The Meaning of Marriage
by John Witte, Jr. in First Things

Natural Law, the Two Kingdoms, and Homosexual Marriage

by R. Scott Clark

Freedom and Responsibility

Freedom is a very dangerous thing. Freedom grants the ability for anyone to follow their own desires and motives. However, is complete freedom ever truly free? I wrote in a previous post that,

Mankind can never be truly free. Even as a Lockean Liberal, I am bound to the philosophy of personal freedom. This belief drives me to follow those ideals, for better or for worse. We are all ensnared in our ideologies, and only change into some other concept that drives us to walk in that newfound belief.

In other words, our beliefs are never fully free. My personal political philosophy is chained to the notion of liberty. Anarchy is not true freedom and relativism is false liberty.

The greatest historical example I can give comes from the pivotal era of the Protestant Reformation. Among other things, Martin Luther believed that every person should be able to read the Bible for themselves. This understanding allowed the untrained person to read and think for themselves. Yet, with this freedom came the option for incredible abuse. The Bible could be interpreted erroneously and abused by every reader. The various Protestant denominations splintered more and more, Biblical passages could be interpreted in a variety of ways. With this freedom, came a significant risk of unorthodoxy and incorrect thinking. Nevertheless, this freedom was worth it.

As the below video from the Acton Institute explains, freedom is more than just doing whatever one wants. Freedom is not choosing things arbitrarily, but choosing what makes us better as human beings. Freedom is much more than merely hurling a dart randomly at the wall. Freedom requires us to make correct decisions. A player has the ability and right to press piano keys haphazardly, but is that really the best thing to do? True liberty is doing what is right.

Politics, Polarization and the Digital Age

My generation is cutting themselves off from the outside world, focusing more and more on a new artificial arena. Children focus more on computer gaming and television in ways that alienates themselves from the known natural wonders of previous generations. Although information technologies can truly do open up a world of storytelling and hand-thumb coordination. Information is everywhere and the ability to cultivate true wisdom is possible. Sadly, many do not take advantage of that chance. Some even become addicted to surfing the web.

The Internet is a wonderful tool for communication, but it can be used to balkanize opinion. Liberals live in a left leaning ghetto and conservatives frequent right leaning shantytowns. It is incredibly sad that a middle consensus cannot emerge. The polarization, I believe, will only get worse in the future. True knowledge is not pursued. The Right and Left must read books within their own ideologies. As a political person myself, I find it exceedingly easy to slip into the rut of blatant partisanship. But for the good of the Republic, we must learn to disagree without being disagreeable and debate ideas.

Second Life, World of Warcraft (WOW) and other Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) have sucked in a good deal of people. People connect with others across the face of planet earth, yet neglect those next door. I have known people who communicate with their significant others through cyber space in WOW. Relationships arise through AIM, email and Facebook. We check in with our dear closest friends with "Hey, haven't heard from you in awhile. What's new?" Is that all we can afford? Creating a false sense of networking and reality is not the best course for relationships. It is time for "we the people" to reconnect with others. It is time for us to reestablish our roots in a community. It is time to think deep about critical issues and have awareness for the world around us, understanding that we are all interconnected.

Even though there are many people within my generation who revel in the fact that remaining ever a child is in vogue, there are a remnant that will not stand. Many participated in World Youth Day in Australia, as Catholic youth stood up as one. I certainly hope this begins to spread. It is okay to be countercultural and fight against the stereotypes of do nothing youth. My generation has a historic opportunity for dialogue and revolutionizing the way our society operates. I hope we seize the moment!

Faith and Reason

Christianity doesn't necessarily warrant the dissolution of religion and science. Faith and reason can move hand in hand, choosing to focus on specific areas and merging together in unison. Ultimately, it is God, the Creator of all things, that has endowed us with the ability to think, laugh and create. Purpose and human rights have evolved through the fact that there are absolutes in the world. Without a Divine Being, morality is merely cultural. Morality is something that is socially constructed and can conversely be deconstructed.

Christianity does not necessarily hamper logic or reason. Instead, it built the fundamental basis for Western thought and liberty. Christian theology and allowance of reason and free thought helped cultivate the Greco-Roman philosophies. As Kevin Schmiesing, PH.D. would state in an article:

Christianity’s impact on civilization has occupied some of history’s greatest minds, who have both reflected and influenced their respective zeitgeists. Augustine defended the followers of Christ against the accusation that they were to blame for the decline of the Roman Empire; fourteen centuries later British historian Edward Gibbon revived the charge, giving voice to his age’s skepticism toward revealed religion.

Another and better informed English historian, Lord Acton, addressed the problem in the late nineteenth century. The result, The History of Freedom in Christianity, was a masterpiece of historical summary, distilling almost two thousand years into a single story of the gradual unfolding of human liberty. Acton reversed the Enlightenment narrative that he had inherited. The rise of Christianity did not smother the flame of liberty burning brightly in Greece and Rome only to be rekindled as medieval superstition gave way to the benevolent reason of Voltaire, Hume, and Kant. Instead, Christianity took the embers of freedom, flickering dimly in an ancient world characterized by the domination of the weak by the strong, and—slowly and haltingly—fanned it into a blaze that emancipated humanity from its bonds, internal and external.

Christianity did not stifle ideas, it gave them context and allowed them to flourish. Traditional Liberalism ought to give all points of views the freedom to be debated. Although there have been awful points in the history of the faith that bigotry rears its ugly head- freedom of thought and growth have been a hallmark of Christian lands. Inquisitions and Crusades have not been the overwhelming norm. Let us not forget that Renaissance and Enlightenment Europe came about through Catholic and Protestant lands.

Faith and reason can coexist. It is reason that cannot exist apart from faith. Without an absolute anything that someone says can be disputed and nullified. Men and women are not created equal, because we are all descendants of luck and chance. Moral relativism is inherently contradictory.

(Rodney Stark's Victory of Reason furthers this point.)

Swearing

I have long been a proponent of refraining from using curse words in common speech. The English language is incredibly descriptive, given the influence of the Norman conquest and French culture. English has wonderful words to describe human existence. Why then do swear words come up in common everyday occurrences? Swear words are no longer reserved to intense moments of passion, anger or surprise, they are free to roam throughout conversations about American Idol or chewing gum. Men no longer reserve foul language for sailing, instead it is peppered emails. This phenomenon is not reserved only for the male population but also has leaked over into the 'fairer sex.' Dennis Prager had a column on the piece and it really helped convey the spreading of this cultural denigration.

Feminism was more often the celebration of masculine virtues (for women only, alas) than the celebration of feminine virtues. The latter were usually dismissed as weak, passive, underachieving or even oppressive. There are scores of examples. One is the rejection of feminine dress -- a girl who attends class at almost any high school or college wearing a skirt or dress is an anomaly. Another is coarse speech. A generation ago, men refrained from using curse words in front of women. Today many young women curse as readily as men (I have probably seen more women than men drivers make an obscene gesture at other drivers). Such behaviors were inconceivable when women were expected to act feminine. And, of course, the "liberated" female's celebration of casual sex, throughout history associated with male nature, is the antithesis of femininity.

I believe that cursing should only be used with rarity, used to emphasis extreme emotion. Everything that we do in life has a tremendous impact on who we are, leaving a heavy footprint on our souls. All that we do has profound impacts on our being. The books we read, the movies we watch, the pictures we see and the language we use all can help sustain or deteriorate ourselves. Language is incredibly important.

Marriage as Cultural Identity

I am fundamentally opposed to same-sex marriage for the following reasons:

• My personal evangelical faith

• Western Civilization has been build upon the foundations of family and procreation. Marriage has historically and philosophically defined society.

I will not address the first aspect in this posting. Although theology is immensely important to me and underlies my worldview but, it is not the sole thing that informs my opinion. If we move backwards in the makeup of society we go from nation-states, to regions/counties, cities, neighborhoods and then families. Families are at the heart of societies. The ability to reproduce and further a culture is the fundamental base for all of the West.


Marriage is meant to be the bringing together of two people with the purpose of procreation. Bringing up children and molding them in their culture was very important for the people who philosophically shaped the Western identity. Even the ancient Greeks (who had significant homosexual relationships) realized that marriage between a man and a woman was the foundation of society. One would only need to look to Aristotle to realize this.

I am not opposed to civil unions, where same-sex couples receive legal rights that married couples receive. However, there should not be a recognition or equality of institutions. The two definitions must remain separate. Is this discriminatory? No, it is not. The same rights are given to the couples while Westerners remain true to the moral and cultural underpinnings of society.

I will close with an argument from an ethicist and academic, Margaret Somerville .

The reason for excluding same-sex couples from marriage matters: If the
reason for denying same-sex marriage is that we have no respect for homosexuals
and their relationships, or want to give the message that homosexuality is
wrong, then, the exclusion of same-sex couples from marriage is not ethically
acceptable from the perspective of respect for homosexuals and their
relationships. It is also discrimination.

On the other hand, if the reason is to keep the very nature, essence
and substance of marriage intact, and that essence is to protect the inherently
procreative relationship, then excluding same-sex couples from marriage is
ethically acceptable from the perspective of respect for them and their
relationships. And such a refusal is not discrimination.

It is not discrimination. It is cultural identity.

Blindness of Faith

There was a letter to the editor in today's OC Register that really caught my eye. To put it in more direct and descriptive terms, it blinded me with sheer locical idiosy. "Human free will and an all-powerful God are mutually exclusive... Religion is blindness because the harsh realities of life and death are just too much for many human beings to face." These two statements wounded my thought process and challenged my recent discoveries of faith. Quite frankly, the letter writer did not shake the foundation of my faith.

Mr. Miller believes that there is a contradiction in the belief that God has sovereign power and will yet allows his creation to be fully independent in their decision making. I would say that that is not the full story. God is both soveriegn and allows for freedom. Mr. Miller thinks that a being must be comprehendable in order to worship and trust. If we completely comprehended the all-powerful, why would we feel compelled to trust that same being? How could someone who created this wonderfully intricate universe be so plain that mortal men should fully understand Him?

We in the Western Modern World tend to view ourselves as the pinnacle of thought; whatever we do not discover does not exist. Typical scientific circles believed that there were no large ape creatures in the central Africa. They were proven wrong in the beginning of the Twentieth Century. Many people do not believe in Big Foot because of a lack of photographs, despite widespread testimony. Despite the precise of nature of the human heart, insect eyes and perfect planetary position, people believe that we arrived upon this planet through mere chance. Nevermind the connundrum with the origin of the matter that started the Big Bang.

He brings up the harsh realities of life as a defense against the plausibility of a just God. If freewill exists, then evil must be allowed for a time, until evil is rooted up (after people have decided on the existence of a higher being). Mr. Miller's argument is still incredibly weak. I would rebut and ask him about the problem of joy. If this world is [purely] Darwinistic in its form, then why is there beauty for the sake of beauty? Cultures are all relative, from pluralistic democracies to oppressive military juntas. Both forms of governments are the same! We are all beasts in the end, why even attempt to change society? Society can never be changed, because there are no absolutes. You shouldn't reform society or help the weak, because there is no reward. In fact, you could be hurting them, because who are you to decide what is best for other people?

Relativism is a cancer that can rot a society. Rejecting the necessity of an Architect has a potential to plague the moral courage and aptitude for taking on injustices. Evil philisophies based in Nietzche and hopeless Modern thought have showed what "realism" can do. One only has to look at a text book to see how fascism, Communism and despotism affected vast regions. That is why Mr. Miller is wrong.