When I read that Americans had responded to the earthquake in Haiti by donating over a billion dollars to relief efforts, I was amazed once again at the generosity of my fellow citizens.  Even though they, themselves, are suffering through an economic meltdown, they once again opened their purses, their wallets and their hearts, in order to help out suffering strangers.  Even though at least half of the donors were conservatives, those very folks that left-wingers deride as bigots, the recipients were black men, women and children.

Speaking of bigotry, I have no idea if I’ll be supporting Mitt Romney in 2012, but I do wish that everyone could get past his religion.  Those people who have a different faith should understand that the tenets, symbols and traditions, of every religion appear odd, to say the least, to outsiders.  In some cases, they can seem absolutely daffy.  But this is America; we’re entitled to be odd or at least appear that way to others.  But unless someone is an Islamic fundamentalist or a Satanist — or do I repeat myself? — one’s religion shouldn’t preclude a decent person’s being elected president.

            That brings me to the current resident of the White House.  I am still somewhat mystified as to how someone who climbed out of the sewer of Chicago politics by standing on the shoulders of Bill Ayers, Tony Rezko and Jeremiah Wright, ever made it to the Oval Office.  Granted, Hillary Clinton was caught flat-footed and John McCain ran such a terrible race that if he’d been a racehorse, they would have had him undergo a urine test.

            Still, in what parallel universe would a guy who boasted that the high point of his career was that he’d been a community organizer be elected the leader of the free world?  After stating that the trouble with the U.S. Constitution and the Civil Rights movement was that they didn’t deal with the redistribution of the nation’s wealth, I wonder how is it that he got a thousand votes, let alone 62 million.  He was also the chowder-head who, after saying that America was the greatest nation on earth, insisted that it was his mission to radically transform it! 

            Frankly, I think it was a classic case of Pygmalionism.  Americans, thanks in great part to the most rancid media this side of China, were mesmerized by the mantra of Hope and Change.  Voters were encouraged to think of politics in terms of a fairy tale, as if Obama was Prince Charming and that empty slogan was code for “And they all lived happily ever after.”

            The more Obama talked, the more, it seemed, poor, ugly men were lulled into thinking they’d become rich and handsome, while homely women came away believing they’d become beautiful and be pursued by rich, handsome men.

            Pygmalionism, as you probably guessed, is the state of being in love with an object of one’s own making.  These days, it’s also known as Obamaism.

            The confounding aspect of all this is how so many people who regard religion as a sham, and who have nothing but contempt for Christianity and Judaism, continue to believe that Obama is the messiah.

            That brings us to Rev. Franklin Graham, who was first invited to address the Pentagon on the National Day of Prayer, and then was uninvited after a couple of Muslims complained.

            I am not a Christian and I have never met Rev. Graham, but I was outraged after hearing about this.  Since when does the intolerance of a few nullify the wishes of the many?  This is not to suggest that a minority should be deprived of their say, but nowhere is it written that they are entitled to the final say.

            From my vantage point, it appears that even after the Pentagon’s cowardly policy of political correctness led directly to the murders of 13 innocent Americans at Fort Hood, the military still hasn’t learned its lesson.

            Under Bill Clinton, homosexuals in the service were advised not to tell and the brass was ordered not to ask.

            Under Barack Obama, it seems that the policy is still in place, except now it’s being directed at Christians.

A new study by the Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life reveals some startling differences between Republicans and Democrats on issues of spirituality and supernatural phenomenon.

The study, “Many Americans Mix Multiple Faiths,” reports that a significant number of Americans practice a mixture of religious beliefs, and “many also blend Christianity with Eastern or New Age beliefs such as reincarnation, astrology and the presence of spiritual energy in physical objects.” The report is not specifically about partisan differences, but the results of the study are broken down by party affiliation, among many other categories. And the news on that front is that Democrats are far more likely to believe in supernatural phenomenon than Republicans.

“Conservatives and Republicans report fewer experiences than liberals or Democrats communicating with the dead, seeing ghosts and consulting fortunetellers or psychics,” the Pew study says. For example, 21 percent of Republicans report that they have been in touch with someone who is dead, while 36 percent of Democrats say they have done so. Eleven percent of Republicans say they have seen a ghost, while 21 percent of Democrats say so. And nine percent of Republicans say they have consulted a fortuneteller, while 22 percent of Democrats have.

From the Pew study:

Sometimes it seems liberal Euroweenies are deliberately testing to see just how much totalitarian moonbattery they can ram down people’s throats before encountering significant resistance. In the latest outrage against liberty and national sovereignty, bureaucrats of the European Court of Human Rights have ruled that Italians cannot have crucifixes on the walls of their classrooms.

The ruling by the court in Strasbourg, which Italy said it would appeal, said crucifixes on school walls — a common sight that is part of every Italian’s life — could disturb children who were not Christians.

That is, Muslim colonists might not like that Italy has been a Christian country since Constantine converted to Christianity in the 4th century.

Even some commies are aghast:

Paola Binetti, a Catholic in the opposition Democratic Party, the successor of what was once the West’s largest communist party, said: “In Italy, the crucifix is a specific sign of our tradition.”

Education Minister Mariastella Gelmini concurs:

The history of Italy is marked by symbols and if we erase symbols we erase part of ourselves.

This of course is exactly why progressive Eurocrats want crucifixes banned. The objective is not just to suppress Christianity, which is hardly even defended anymore; it is to eradicate Western civilization. That’s why no effective measures are taken to save Europe from the ongoing Muslim demographic conquest — and why amnesty will soon open the door to massive Third World colonization of the USA.

Because so many in the “arts community” think that Roman Polanski should be allowed to rape children without consequence because he’s a great artist, it only follows that greater artists deserve even greater felony freedom.

So, based on box office results, here is our list:

• Steven Spielberg, with $3.4 billion in ticket sales, can destroy a small village including its inhabitants and go free. If he does so while filming, all the better.
• Robert Zemeckis, with $1.8 billion, can commit one murder with special circumstances.
• George Lucas, with $1.7 billion, can commit one vanilla homicide. (Some consider his later Star Wars films a crime, but no matter.)
• Ron Howard, at $1.6 billion, can fleece thousands of people in a Ponzi scheme without fear of prosecution
• And let’s not forget writers: J.K. Rowling is certainly entitled to at least one freebie felony as are Stephen King, James Patterson, Tom Clancy and Danielle Steele.

If you are a pedophile priest, then regardless of how long ago you abused a child, the law will pursue you to the end, and don’t expect Woody Allen or Harvey Weinstein to justify your sins.

In fact, Hollywood will use your crime to tarnish religion in general, so both you and your institution will feel the sting of righteous justice.

Which just goes to show that some Christians have a death cult, too.

This time of year, newspapers and magazines swell with retrospectives on the year that was, predictions for the year to come, and cogitations on meaningless trends and contrived fads.

Against this backdrop, there’s an added poignancy to the death of Samuel P. Huntington, who died Christmas Eve at the age of 81. A decent, profound, and profoundly consequential man, the Harvard professor was one of the lions of 20th century social science. He spotted trends and made predictions, too. But he did so not with a wet finger to the air but with his nose in the books, his hands on the facts, and his eyes fixated on the Big Picture.

His 1993 essay “The Clash of Civilizations” (and subsequent book) argued that the hoopla over a New World Order was deeply misguided. Indeed, he spotted one of the most consequential trends of the post-Cold War world: Most societies were intensifying, often radically, their cultural identities, not shedding them. Disharmony, not some U.N.-led Parliament of Man, lay in our future.

The book was deeply, and often willfully, misunderstood and mischaracterized by those who didn’t want it to be true. But after 9/11, it largely set the terms for how we look at the world. In it, he argued that culture, religion, and tradition are not background noise, as materialists of the left and the right often argue. Rather, they constitute the drumbeat to which whole civilizations march.

This view ran counter to important constituencies. The idea that man can be reduced to homo economicus has adherents among some free-market economists, most Marxists, and others. But it’s nonsense on stilts. Most of the globe’s intractable conflicts are more clearly viewed through the prisms of culture and history than that of the green eyeshade. Tensions between India and Pakistan or Israel and the Arab world have little to do with GDP.

Even in America, the notion that economics drives our politics cannot stand scrutiny. For instance, gay-marriage advocates might decry the tax code’s unfairness to same-sex couples, but if all they wanted was to file joint returns, they’d settle for domestic partnerships. Gays desire respect and acceptance more than tax deductions. Meanwhile, opponents of same-sex marriage don’t even bother with economic arguments, nor should they. Abortion, race, drugs, gun control, political correctness, public-school curricula: The list of cultural issues driving our political conflicts is endless.

And yet for Marx and his modern heirs, class interests are all that matter. And for a certain breed of capitalist rationalist, financial self-interest is all that motivates.

Barack Obama articulated a watered-down version of this nonsense when he lamented that western Pennsylvanians cling to religion and guns out of unrecognized economic frustration. If they’d only seen how their financial interests were bound up with his candidacy, they would’ve discarded such concerns. This isn’t to say Obama is a crass materialist; he’s not, as his memoirs make clear. Rather, it’s to note that the role of culture is not only powerful but often powerfully confusing.

Woman finds Jesus in bag of Cheetos.

Plumber spots Virgin Mary in sink.

Crowd spots Jesus in palm tree.

HT: Museum of Hoaxes

To ascribe a special grace to America is outrageous, as outrageous as the idea of special grace itself. Why shouldn’t everyone be saved? Why aren’t all individuals, nations, peoples and cultures equally deserving? History seems awfully unfair: half or more of the world’s 7,000 or so languages will be lost by 2100, linguists warn, and at present fertility rates Italian, German, Ukrainian, Hungarian and a dozen other major languages will die a century or so later. The agony of dying nations rises in reproach to America’s unheeding prosperity.

An old joke divides the world into two kinds of people: those who divide the world into two kinds of people, and those who don’t. America is one of the things that sorts the world into polar opposites. To much of the world, America is the Great Satan, the source of the plague of globalization, the bane of the environment, the Grim Reaper of indigenous cultures, the carrier of soulless industrialism, and the perpetrator of imperial adventures. To hundreds of millions of others it is an object of special grace. Whether one subscribes to the concept or not, America’s grace defines one of the world’s great dividing lines, perhaps its most important.

Violent antipathy to America measures the triumph of the American principle, and the ascendance of America’s influence in the world. America’s enemies make more noise than her friends, but her friends are increasing faster than her enemies.

America’s influence in the world leapt as result of her victory in three world wars, including the fall of communism in 1989. Arguably, America is ascending even faster today, despite the reverses in its economic position and the strains on its military resources.

There are nearly a billion more Christians in the world today than in 1970, including a hundred million Chinese, most of whom adhere to the House Church movement on the American evangelical model. Denominations of American origin, notably Pentecostals, led the evangelization of a quarter of a billion Africans in the past generation. There are nearly 100 million additional Latin American Christians, of whom perhaps 40 million belong to Pentecostal or other Protestant denominations centered in the United States.

Daniel Pipes talks the odds. The chance that immigrant Muslims and indigenous Europeans find a way to live in harmony? Five percent, says Pipes. The chance that Europe becomes Eurabian, part of the Muslim world? Forty-seven-and-a-half percent. The chance that Europeans reassert control over the continent? Forty-seven-and-a-half percent, once more — and Pipes says it won’t be pretty.

That describes Chapter 5 of this interview.

To see the video from the beginning, start here.