Clipping blog

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• What European Christians Have Learned from Islam
• Clearing the Browser Tabs – Bleary-Eyed Hockey Fan Thursday Edition
• The Delivery Presents – Why Smart Girls Don’t Like Donald but Do Like Doofenshmirtz
• Think Progress Wants to Point Out the Rand in Ryan’s Eye While Ignoring the Sanger in Their Own

What European Christians Have Learned from Islam Posted: 21 Apr 2011 09:03 AM PDT REUTERS/Jean-Paul Pelissier Over the past few years, we’ve seen several incidents where violent Muslim protests over relatively minor slights earned big government and corporate concessions. Death threats over a few cartoons of Mohammed caused media outlets all over the world to censor themselves in ways that they would never have done otherwise. Muslims have murdered people because they felt insulted and the nations of the west have generally treated the killers as sympathetic victims, not brazen thugs. The message to everyone else could not be more clear: violence earns capitulations. I, and others such as Glenn Reynolds, have wondered how long it would be before adherents of other faiths would put the lesson into practice. Well, that day has arrived. When New York artist Andres Serrano plunged a plastic crucifix into a glass of his own urine and photographed it in 1987 under the title Piss Christ, he said he was making a statement on the misuse of religion. Controversy has followed the work ever since, but reached an unprecedented peak on Palm Sunday when it was attacked with hammers and destroyed after an “anti-blasphemy” campaign by French Catholic fundamentalists in the southern city of Avignon. The violent slashing of the picture, and another Serrano photograph of a meditating nun, has plunged secular France into soul-searching about Christian fundamentalism and Nicolas Sarkozy’s use of religious populism in his bid for re-election next year. That last paragraph interests me. Few news outlets would say that the dozens of violent Muslim incidents over the past few years have plunged any nation into “soul-searching” about Islamism. Indeed, I’d be hard-pressed to say that any nation has given much thought at all about how their weakness makes them a more appealing target to everyone willing to bring a little violence to the table. To the contrary, most of Europe, as well as the United States, have gone in the opposite direction. They’ve shielded Islam from any criticism and actively persecuted critics. So now members of another religion — this one a Christian religion —  have joined the Temper Tantrum League and we’re all just a little less safe and free because of it. I suppose I should be full of condemnation right now, but how can I criticize those French Catholics for emulating Islamic success? (via memeorandum)

Clearing the Browser Tabs – Bleary-Eyed Hockey Fan Thursday Edition Posted: 21 Apr 2011 03:10 AM PDT This is going to be a short post, because I was up late last night watching My Beloved Capitals show the New York Rangers that Madison Square Garden is, in fact, not their house. Hockey is a lovely, lovely game, especially when your team comes back from three goals down in the third period to win in double overtime. And now, links! Stephen Green is right; we will get smaller government. The only real question is on whose terms that will happen. I’ve said this before, but it’s wrong that only one holy book is actively protected by the United States government. Hey, why would Barack Obama care if we lose $11 billion when he sells our stake in GM. He got what he wanted — a huge payday for the auto workers’ union that lavishly funds his campaign. Michelle Malkin has more on the President’s money machine here. Will the dire S&P report on America’s economic situation stop the President from using the budget as a political weapon? Not bloody likely. James Pethokoukis has dug deep into the President’s budget and found a lot of smoke and mirrors. Weird Al Yankovic is a classy guy. Lady Gaga is a classless…whatever the heck she is.

The Delivery Presents – Why Smart Girls Don’t Like Donald but Do Like Doofenshmirtz Posted: 20 Apr 2011 02:30 PM PDT Let me give you the Executive Summary of Episode 90 in good/bad form. Bad: Donald Trump, Donald Trump’s hair, the British press, most modern cartoons. Good: Smart Girl Politics Action, Teri Christoph’s vacation spot, Molly Teichman’s birthday iPad, the live chat room, my fundraiser, Prince William and Kate Middleton, Phineas and Ferb. If that seems like a random assortment of topics, well, okay. You got me there. Still, The Delivery is nothing but a series of shows about the things that interest me, within politics and without. There is no telling where a conversation might go when I bring guests on the show — the topic I introduce are less fences around a corral than guideposts on a fast ski slope — but that’s one of the things that makes The Delivery as much fun as it is. Don’t forget the fundraising drive. I have high hopes for a good finish and I’d love some serious second-week momentum. Tell your friends and get them to drop a few bucks into the kitty as well. Remember, I’ll have some special audio goodies for everyone who takes part and they are good goodies. The Delivery - Episode 90 This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now

Think Progress Wants to Point Out the Rand in Ryan’s Eye While Ignoring the Sanger in Their Own Posted: 20 Apr 2011 11:40 AM PDT One of the most effective political attacks one can make is to chain an opponent to someone the general public doesn’t like, or wouldn’t like when they found out more about that person. Progressives cry to high heaven when conservatives note the mutual admiration society that existed between Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Benito Mussolini or that Planned Parenthood’s founder Margaret Sanger was not all that big a fan of babies that weren’t completely healthy, strong of mind, and born to well-off, white parents. However, that hasn’t stopped them from trying to do the same thing to Rep. Paul Ryan. The latest meme from the JournoListas is that Ryan has required all his staffers to read the works of Ayn Rand. This is complete hogwash, as are most of the attacks coming from progressives these days, but that hasn’t stopped the various attack poodles from pushing it anyhow. Think Progress, John Podesta’s progressive fiction-writers circle, decided to kick the attack up a bit today, with a video that purported to handcuff Ryan to every distasteful thing Rand ever said. I suppose the thinking here is that the more people think of Rand as an anti-social, run-against-the-grain crank, the more they’ll see Ryan as unserious as well. That, by the way, is their motive. They can’t actually discredit Ryan’s budget plan, which would all but end their dreams of a progressive Utopian America where they get to boss around the little people, so they’ll attack Ryan’s character. Here’s the thing, though. Unlike the references to Il Duce and Sanger I made in the beginning of my post, the coy little insinuations against Ryan are not true. There is no evidence that he admired Rand’s lifestyle or her opinions on anything but limited government and the relationship between capitalism and freedom — opinions certainly strong enough to inspire a young person to a life of politics in the same way that our President was inspired by the young Socialist radicals he encountered in his youth. On the other hand, there is plenty of evidence that the most repugnant aspects of the progressive movement still exist within it today. I really don’t think Think Progress wants to play that game with conservatives. There is no way in the world they will win.

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