Ross Douthat compares Eunice and Ted Kennedy

From his column (emphasis added):

What the siblings shared — in addition to the grace, rare among Kennedys, of a ripe old age and a peaceful death — was a passionate liberalism and an abiding Roman Catholic faith. These two commitments were intertwined: Ted Kennedy’s tireless efforts on issues like health care, education and immigration were explicitly rooted in Catholic social teaching, and so was his sister’s lifelong labor on behalf of the physically and mentally impaired.

What separated them was abortion.

Along with her husband, Sargent Shriver, Eunice belonged to America’s dwindling population of outspoken pro-life liberals. Like her church, she saw a continuity, rather than a contradiction, between championing the poor, the marginalized and the oppressed and protecting unborn human life.

Her brother took a different path. Not at first: In 1971, in a letter to a voter that abortion opponents would have many opportunities to quote, he declared that “wanted or unwanted, I believe that human life, even at its earliest stages, has certain rights which must be recognized — the right to be born, the right to love, the right to grow old.” But like many other Catholic liberals, from Joseph Biden to Dennis Kucinich, he moved leftward with his party, becoming a down-the-line supporter of abortion rights, with a voting record that brooked no compromise on the issue.

For abortion opponents, cruel ironies abounded in this sibling disagreement. Because of Eunice Shriver’s work with the developmentally disabled, a group of Americans who had once been marginalized and hidden away — or lobotomized, like her sister Rosemary — was ushered closer to full participation in ordinary human life. But because of laws that her brother unstintingly supported, that same group was ushered out again: the abortion rate for fetuses diagnosed with Down syndrome, for instance, is estimated to be as high as 90 percent.

Hat tip: Christianity Today Politics blog

A different view of the conservative resurgence

Reading about Sargent and Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s pro-life work yesterday reminded me of this book review by Michael Novak from a few years back.  It contained this memory from Novak, who worked on George McGovern’s campaign in his days as a Democrat:

In his late-starting 1972 race for the vice presidency, the cause was hopeless. But Mickey Kantor, Mark Shields, Jeanie Mains, Doris Kearns, and a host of talented volunteers poured out to join him. McGovern assigned us the task of winning back the Catholic ethnic vote that Nixon had so knowingly cut into in 1968. We saw a lot of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Youngstown, Cleveland, Toledo, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, occasionally St. Louis, and then around and back again. Toward the end, when the crowds were huge and enthusiastic, we began to feel–unbelievable as it now seems–that the press must be wrong, and the campaign might have a chance of winning. What the crowds were actually saying is that they weren’t going to vote for us, but we shouldn’t take it personally, because they really did like Shriver.

At a factory gate, on one occasion, I watched one of the advance team hand out flyers in a see-through blouse, a miniskirt, high boots, and a big red “Abortion” button. Turning away from her in disgust, the older workers weren’t meeting Shriver’s eyes, and I saw two spit on the ground in anger–this in a factory in Joliet, Illinois, from which the Democrats should have gotten, maybe, 114 percent of the vote. It wasn’t Sarge’s fault. But such experiences of the Democratic party that year, not respecting its own base, were enough to make a neoconservative out of me.

The inroads that Nixon and the Republicans made by talking about the “Silent Majority” and engaging in the “Southern Strategy” have been talked about quite a bit.  But there also seems to be another part of the story, that of the Democrats doing quite a bit to lose those who became Reagan Democrats.

A different type of “natural aristocracy”

I’ve read that Thomas Jefferson believed that a meritocratic society would allow for a “natural aristocracy” to emerge; those with merit would rise to the top.  As I understand Jefferson’s view, the aristocrats of Europe held their positions only by artificial traditions that didn’t conform with reason and nature.

On the other hand, aristocrats themselves saw their position as quite natural.  Here are a couple of excerpts from Peter Leithart’s blog post on the subject.  (Is it okay to for me to blog about another blog post that comments on a review of a book?  Well, it’s my blog, and Leithart’s involved, so you know he’ll have something interesting to say.)  On to the excerpts:

For the French, [Armitage] points out, nobility was not just a class, but a race question: “Many French nobles, supported by their ideological allies among historians, had long argued that they were literally a race apart from other Frenchmen, decendants of the conquering Franks, not of defeated Gauls.  To strip them of fiscal privileges was one thing; to extinguish heredity in the name of equality was, ‘in noble eyes . . . nothing less than an attempt to change biology.’”

Thus, the story of the “end” of aristocracy is not just about aristocracy:

“On the eve of the French Revolution, most of the Western world recognized three major biologically transmissible relations of power: aristocracy, monarchy and slavery.  In the French case, they fell and rose together,” falling in a brief period from 1790-1794, and rising again between 1802 and 1814.  Few historians have treated these issues as manifestations of the same thing, but the “most thoroughgoing egalitarians of the Age of Revolution, like Lafayette and Thomas Paine” did: “nobles, kings and slaves [were] equal affronts to human dignity because their existence derived from the same irrational exclusionary princple: heredity.”…

Different as France and America were, the example of America was key for French revolutionaries, since the US (in Doyle’s words) “showed the European world beyond America that a society without nobles was possible, and could work.”   American opposition to nobility is enshrined in the Constitution (Article 1, sections 9-10).  For all the “conservatism” of the American revolutionaries, Armitage’s review neatly captures just how radical the American experiment was.  To European conservatives, the US – with its rejection of throne, throne and altar, and nobility – must have appeared to be an effort to change the operating system of human society.

Totalitarianism in Libya

I knew that Qaddafi was a dictator, but had no idea that Libyan society was this repressive.  Michael Totten writes:

I’m one of the very few Americans who has visited Libya since Qaddafi seized power. (Setting foot there was illegal until recently.) And I can attest that it is, indeed, one of the most thoroughly totalitarian countries on the face of the earth.

The place stinks of oppression. You can’t escape the state without leaving the country or going off-road and into the desert. Informers and secret police are omnipresent and all but omniscient. Hotel rooms are bugged. No one can travel from one city to another without a thick stack of permits and papers. I saw propaganda posters and billboards literally everywhere, even alongside roads in the wilderness where nobody lived. State propaganda is even carved into the sides of the mountains. Pictures of Qaddafi hang inside every building, and an entire floor of the museum in the capital is dedicated to glorifying him personally. Libya even looks like a communist country, with its Stalinist tower blocks outside Tripoli’s old city center and its socialist-realist paintings depicting happy proletarians in their Workers’ Paradise.

No one I met would talk about politics if there was the slightest chance anyone might overhear us. Those who did open up when we were safely in private were unanimous in their hatred, fear, and loathing of the regime. And they made sure to tell me that their entire families would be thrown in prison if I repeated what they said to anyone.

I visited several bookstores and found only four types of books in two genres: the Koran, commentaries on the Koran, Qaddafi’s Green Book and other works supposedly authored by him, and state-approved commentaries on his manifestos. If other genres were in circulation—fiction, poetry, economics, history—I couldn’t find them. And I quickly gave up trying to locate an international newspaper or any other source of information that didn’t belong to Qaddafi.

I’m not even convinced that the large number of Libyans who welcomed the Lockerbie bomber at the airport last week weren’t ordered by government agents to go down there, or else. It’s possible that they showed up voluntarily, but Libya is the kind of place where public demonstrations are routinely state-managed, just as they are in North Korea and just as they were in Iraq when Saddam Hussein was in charge.

If the people in the crowd did greet Megrahi because they wanted to hail him as a hero, I’m not convinced they even knew what they were doing. They don’t have access to international media, and it’s highly unlikely that Qaddafi TV told them he murdered 270 innocent people.

Babies have memories, even before they’re born

Check out this fascinating commentary from BreakPoint.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver’s work for the pro-life cause

Christianity Today’s politics blog had a post on Ted Kennedy, who died this morning.  In the post, it linked to a post on another CT blog that discussed his recently-deceased sister Eunice Kennedy Shriver.  It contained this description of her work:

A prominent Democrat who disagreed with her party’s increasingly pro-choice stance, she stood up for the unborn and protested the abortion-rights agenda. The Susan B. Anthony List:

“Eunice Kennedy Shriver was an early supporter of the Susan B. Anthony List and its mission to advance, mobilize and represent pro-life women in the political process. She and her husband, Sargent Shriver, also lent their time and talents to the efforts and activities of Democrats for Life of America and Feminists for Life.”

You can read more about her activism here.  I pray that there will be more Democrats like her who are willing to stand up for the unborn.

Whom do we love?

Doug Wilson argues that ambiguous questions about proper Christian behavior should be answered by thinking about the motivation behind the behaviors: do they reflect love for God or for the world?  Furthermore, he argues that mature Christians should be sources of wisdom on these matters.  In Wilson’s words:

The apostle John tells us that root of sin is an attitude, that of loving the world. If we are wise, we don’t work from a list of prohibited items to the attitude, but rather we deal with the attitude, knowing that it will necessarily entail a list. He breaks out what this love of the world looks like–the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life. These three things, as it happens, were part of the temptation in the Garden. The forbidden fruit was good for food, delightful to the eyes, and able to make one wise (Gen. 3:6). None of this is of the Father, but is rather of the world. And the problem with the world is that it is transient, while the one who lives out the will of God lives forever.

As these are difficult issues, they should not be sorted out by those who have been Christians for a year. These are not problems to be handed over to the nineteen-year-olds. Those not yet weaned are unskilful in the Word. But those who are mature understand the Word, and through long practice in sorting out these kinds of issues, know how to distinguish good from evil when a judgment call is needed. All Christians know some things, but not all are mature.

While he starts by focusing on Christians, he concludes by thinking about those outside of Christ:

But as we are interacting with the world (which we must do), we have to make a distinction between refugees and apostles. The twin businessees of the church are birth and growth. Evangelism must not exclude discipleship, and discipleship must not be allowed to exclude evangelism. So in this culture, robust evangelism means welcoming refugees from the world. That means, in the current culture, that we should want our churches filling up with tattooed people, those with memorials of who and where they used to be. But this should not be used as cover for receiving apostles of the world. We must not receive them, or give them the time of day.

God takes us all where we are, and not from where we should have been. If He only took those who were where they should have been, we would all of us be lost. Evangelism means that nonbelievers will be brought into the church. And they will track things in. So? Didn’t you track things in? Did God kick you to the curb?

More discussion of evangelism and social action

My friend Rick Hogaboam reflects on Matt Harmon’s theses that I commented on here.  Rick explores James 1:27 : “Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world” (ESV).  Rick concludes  with a strong and wise message:

If you don’t care for those who are “afflicted”, then your orthodoxy means nothing…your religion is worthless.

If you don’t care for Scripture and personal piety, then your social engagement, though noble, proceeds from moral and epistemological bankruptcy. It is deficient.

Let us tend to both (caring for the afflicted and personal piety), knowing that each is at stake in the other!!!

The tricky balance between evangelism and social justice

Matt Harmon of Grace Theological Seminary posted “ten theses for further discussion” from his talk about the relationship between the kingdom of God and social justice.  You can find them here and here.  This is something that I’m quite interested in.   Here are some that I thought were particularly well-said:

2. We must allow biblical and theological convictions to shape our engagement in social action. There are simply too many individuals and churches that jump into these issues out of compassion devoid of biblical and theological foundations. The responsibility for this rests primarily with the church to provide solid teaching on this area, but also for individual believers to ground themselves in Scripture. Compassion that is not rooted in the gospel will ultimately and inevitably lead to assuming and eventually even denying the gospel in the name of caring for people in this life.

3. We must not collapse the already/not-yet tension. However one puts this together, we need to be sure to recognize both. Emphasizing the already to the neglect of the not-yet results in people thinking that our efforts usher in the kingdom, or worse yet that the ultimate goal of God is to improve conditions in the [sic, I think think he means "this"] life. Emphasizing the not-yet to the neglect of the already results in people thinking that any engagement in social issues is a waste of time because it is all going to burn. Holding the two together holds the promise of engagement in social action while prioritizing eternal issues of heaven and hell….

5. We must prioritize proclamation of the gospel without neglecting social action. This is the point where our theology really surfaces. If we are convinced that heaven and hell are ultimate realities that each human being must face, then we will prioritize the communication of the gospel message. This does not mean that every kind deed must be accompanied by a gospel tract, but it does mean an intentional effort to share the gospel in the context of meeting physical needs or addressing social structures. Actions are not self-interpreting; there are plenty of nice moral people who do good things for the community and have no interest in Jesus Christ. If we are to distinguish our efforts from them (and at some level we MUST if we are to be faithful to Christ) there must be communication of the gospel. Faith comes by hearing (Rom 10:17), not by simple observation of good works.

6. We must realize that our actions are not self-interpreting. There is absolutely a place for being salt and light in a community through good deeds. But unless those deeds are given an interpretation, people will simply not know why we are doing them. There are plenty of groups who do good deeds in the community. Our actions will not truly adorn the gospel unless people are made aware that the actions flow out of our commitment to Jesus Christ. Again, faith comes by hearing, not simply doing good things before people and hoping they make the connection to Christ.

7. We must recognize the trend towards increasing social action and decreasing evangelism within the church. In many (if not most) evangelical churches today it is easier to recruit people to go do a neighborhood service project than it is to do evangelism. My concern is that a growing number of evangelicals assuage their guilt (if it even exists!) for not sharing the gospel by doing good deeds in the community. While I am not arguing a strict causation, it seems more than coincidental that at a time when evangelical participation in social action is rising rapidly active participation in evangelism falling rapidly.

8. We must think through and articulate the connection between specific social action and the gospel. One of the reasons that social and action and evangelism are hard to marry is that we have often failed to think through the relationship between specific physical needs and the gospel. When ministering to the hungry we can point them to the bread that truly satisfies. When ministering to those who are poor we can help them to see that their physical poverty is a window into the spiritual condition before God, and their need for spiritual riches that cannot be destroyed. When we think through these kinds of connections the relationship between social action and the verbal communication of the gospel seems much more natural.

Hat Tip: Justin Taylor

Michael Totten on Lebanon

Michael Totten interviews the vice president of the Kateb (Phalangist) party, Salim al-Sayegh, looking at the region from the perspective of a Lebanese Christian (at least culturally Christian) politician.  Here’s how Totten introduced the interview, showing why Lebanon is so volatile:

The Middle East is riven with fault lines. Conflicts between Israelis and Arabs, Persians and Israelis, Arabs and Persians, Sunnis and Shias, Islamists and liberals, and democrats and Khomeinists are all stuck in a holding pattern that isn’t sustainable. The region is in a deadlock and will likely remain so until something big and probably violent unjams it.

Because of its extraordinary diversity, almost every major political current in the Middle East echoes in Lebanon. In the past, Arab Nationalism and Palestinian “resistance” blew through the place and left swaths of wreckage before passions cooled. Thanks to Hezbollah, the country is still a front line in the Arab-Israeli conflict — and that’s because the Iranian-backed militia is the tip of the spear in the Persian-Israeli conflict. Lebanon is also where mutually antagonistic Sunnis and Shias are more or less numerically matched and where the Syrian-Iranian axis directly confronts its resilient political opposites. Beirut, like Tehran, is where some of the Middle East’s most liberal modernizers face off against committed radicals in thrall to Ayatollah Khomeini’s totalitarian vision of Velayat-e Faqih.

A divided country with a weak central government can’t indefinitely withstand this kind of pressure any more than geological faults can forever keep still while continental plates slowly but relentlessly collide with each other. And so Lebanon is a place where the Middle East fights itself. It is also where the East meets the West and, at times, where the East fights the West. Everyone with a dog in a Middle East fight has a dog in Lebanon’s fights.

Beirut may be the best place of all to observe that part of the world. It has its own local problems, of course, but its most serious local problems are regional problems. The Syrians are there, the Iranians are there, and the Saudis are there. France and the United States sent soldiers there more than once. United Nations peacekeepers have been there since the 1970s. The Israelis barge in and out. Yasser Arafat and the PLO used the country as a terrorist base and set up their own parallel state after their violent eviction from Jordan. When Ariel Sharon drove Arafat and his gang to Tunisia, Hezbollah set up an Iranian-sponsored parallel state in the PLO‘s place.