The Anchoress

Posted my thoughts on the California ruling a little while ago at Inside Catholic - my concern is for the welfare of the churches, and by churches I don’t mean only Catholic churches but all religious affiliations that could possibly find themselves hounded by the government and lawyers on this issue.

…once again - as with Roe v Wade, an activist court (not the legislative body) has overturned what was essentially “the will of the people.” That never serves us well. And depending on who gets into the White House, we may see perhaps as many as three SCOTUS justices replaced by judges of an activist bent.

[…] I frankly think it might be a better thing if the religious sacrament of marriage were separated from the legal action of marriage, and vice versa. Perhaps it would be wise for us to adopt the practice in France, where the civil marriage takes place at City Hall, and the Sacramental marriage at the church.

A civil union is a mere legality. It can be defined any way the state wishes, but it leaves the church out of the question of who may “legally” be married and protects her ability to bestow sacraments and practice the faith free from “discrimination” lawsuits and the inevitable punitive damages that can materially destroy her.

Depending on how the courts go, we could conceivably see this issue coming up in a lot of states, and then there will be a press for federal recognition of gay marriage. If the church does not take steps to protect herself now, by advocating this sort of separation of duties and intents, she will be spending a lot of time and money (and losing tax-free status, of course) fighting for the right to practice the faith without government interference.

I actually wrote something touching on this possibility last summer.

I have no problem with civil unions (my line gets drawn whenever someone implies that a church must go against its own theology and sacramental understanding of marriage), so I can understand where Don Surber is coming from in his post, and I agree with him about the “zero-tolerance strain” of liberalism that too often shuts down an exchange of ideas - but didn’t the “faith based” group essentially show a similar tendency toward exclusion of non-conforming thought?

Seems to me that in the name of “tolerance,” - since everything is about the T word - the churches are due their fair of “tolerance” too, in the name of right to the free practice of religion.

While we debate that…some folks better think long and hard about how they’ll feel if the next president gets to name 3 new SCOTUS judges - for life.

Related: A friend points out that in Iran, the government interferes with the free practice of religion. We don’t like that about Iran, so we should probably not allow that to happen here.

More coverage:
B. Daniel Blatt at Pajamas Media - I’m surprised there is no round-up.
Glenn wonders, did CA just hand the state to McCain?. I doubt it.
Allahpundit looks at the decision.
STACLU

STACLU has coverage.

Q: Do you really patronize the people you advertise?

A: Those I have any control over (in the right-hand sidebar) yes, I do. I’m about to purchase the excellent-looking C.S. Lewis & Narnia for Dummies from the ad at the top. I have written ad nauseam about the incredibly smooth, rich and completely addictive coffee by the Mystic Monks. I try to take ads on things I am personally interested in or have used and liked, although that is not always, 100% possible. The good news is, I’ve never had someone write me that they were disappointed in anything they’ve purchased through the site, so that makes me happy.

Q: How’d the doctor’s visit go?

A: Heh. We talked more about the price of gasoline and heating oil than my bloodwork. Apparently marine gasoline is even more expensive than auto fuel, and he’s considering keeping the boat mostly in the slip this year. Both the doctor and his clinician were saying they’d be fine with drilling off our coasts, since other countries are, anyway. I concurred. But my numbers are better, thanks.

Q: Ummm…What the…what the hell is this?

A: Awful, isn’t it? It’s called “enlightened liturgy” in some Catholic circles and “Giant Puppet Liturgical Abuse” in others. I’m in the latter camp. Ever notice how all liturgical dance looks the same? Lunge left, lunge right, leap and spin - it’s always the same. Fortunately, it looks like in 10 or 15 years, the Entertain-Me Happy-Fun-Time Mass enthusiasts will have pretty much faded away. My son Buster and a pal watched this with their jaws dropped in abject horror. That’s heartening. And so is this.

Q: The puppets do seem a bit much, and undignified, don’t they?

A: Well…according to Stephen Pinker in The New Republic, Dignity is Stooooopit!. Yes, you read that right, “dignity is stupid.” It’s a long piece; I haven’t finished it myself, but I will. Meanwhile Fr. James Martin, S.J. is pretty unimpressed, and I think a little sad that leftist intellectualism has been reduced to people saying “dignity is stupid” in print and “shut up, shut up, shut up” on the air. Yes…it is very sad. “You’re stupid” and “lalalala I can’t hear you” is sandbox rhetoric, and it permeates discourse throughout the United States in 2008.

Q: Well you’ve got to admit there’s a lot to be angry about in the United States in 2008. 5% Unemployment and 3% inflation! We’re practically in a depression!

A: Uh-huh, take the iPod buds out of your ear or look up from your videogame or blackberry while I remind you that 5.6% Unemployment under Bill Clinton was called “essentially full employment” and while you let Don Surber remind you of the economic catastrophe that was Jimmy Obama Carter:

…in June 1980 when Jimmy Carter was president. Inflation was 14.38 percent that month and unemployment was 7.6%.

If you didn’t live through it, try imagining it. There was a point where mortgages were up to 15%. Meanwhile, as Gateway Pundit relates our April Tax Receipts were at an all-time high, (I blame Bush), the record-low unemployment rate is challenging military recruiters (except for the Marines who met their recruiting goal by 142%) and ummm, people are letting their horses die, because of the terrible economy. And oh, yeah, the Democrats blocked domestic oil development this week. They don’t want to become less dependent on foreign energy. They just want you to drive less, boat less, pay more for goods and basically live kind of a dreary life. But rock concerts, blow-em-up movies and private jets…those things will still be available for the ones who can afford them.

Q: Tsk, you sound bitter, Anchoress.

A: No, I’m not bitter; I’m just tired of the nonsense; I’m tired of elected officials hog-tying America’s potential and capabilities for an unproven climate scam, I’m tired of a house and senate incapable of doing anything beyond spiting each other and obstructing any sort of change or progress on issues from energy, to education to social security to illegal (and legal) immigration. I’m tired of watching the nation simply roll over and accept the argument that the solution to anything is “more government and more bureaucracy” instead of simply rejecting that notion outright. I’m tired of being told that America wants and needs the sort of socialized medicine that is bringing supplemental-insurance purchasing Canadians down to the lower 48, and bringing Britain to her knees, rather than even attempting real-market reform, and I’m tired of not liking any of these candidates for president. It’s been a very long campaign season - it began right after the November ‘06 elections - and it has been dreadfully uninspiring. I want a do-over and all-new candidates, preferably none of whom are professional, career politicians. I know I can’t have it. But it’s what I want. I’m not bitter, but damn, I gotta tell you…I’m not happy, either.

Q: What did you think of Bush’s speech in Israel?

A: Thought it was exactly what he has been saying for the last 7 years. He’s never deviated from his message - the press just hasn’t been letting you hear it. Now that it got out, today, unfiltered, it sure has infuriated the left and the press. What is very interesting to me is how quickly the headlines and stories have moved away from Bush and any full-text, contextual display of the speech to making it all about Obama. Yes…it really is all about the O!

Completely escaping the attention of both the Dems and the press is the fact that Bush mentioned appeasement and they all jumped up and said, “hey, Obama resembles that remark.” Badly, badly played, Dems. McCain, are you watching?

You can get video of the speech (that’s excerpted), and you can get press stories with quotes (again, excerpted), but you have to go to the White House site if you want to read the full text of his excellent speech. That’s subtext, I guess.

Filtering and framing…that’s all the press is about, these days. And it’s working. In a short-attention span Nation, a headline, a sound-bite, a screen crawl - hey, I’m informed!

Meanwhile David Warren asks, Will Israel Survive another 60 years?. That’s the question. Caught between the tensions of post-modern nihilism and religious extremism that is choking Europe and doing its damnedest to tip America, it may come down to this: either Israel and the West survive, or Israel falls and the rest of us tumble, too. Sobering, no?

Q: But, Israel can’t fall! The Jews are the chosen people!

A: I know. But Einstein didn’t think so, and a lot of other folks don’t seem to, either. But then Einstein didn’t know everything, any more than any of us know anything.

Q: But wasn’t Bush mean to talk about Obama that-a-way?

A: Near as I can tell, Bush never mentioned Obama, and he could just as easily have meant James Earl Carter or Nancy Pelosi. The fact that Obama heard “appeasement” and he and the whole Democrat party AND the press started weeping and gnashing their teeth over it speaks volumes - it tells you they know their weak point, and they know the chosen one needs protection. As Glenn Reynolds said, When somebody condemns appeasement, it doesn’t help things to jump up and yell “Hey, he’s talking about me!”

And that’s why Glenn is the best at this game. Sums it all up in 20 words or less.

Obama seems to have a very delicate chin; he falls apart even when the punch isn’t meant for him.

Q: What do you think, close Gitmo? Maybe the bad guys will like us then?

A: Didn’t some guy who was released from Gitmo blow something up last week? I dunno. Rick at Brutally Honest has a day in the life of a Gitmo guard and Patterico has a multi-part post about a psyche nurse who has spent hours and hours with the prisoners. They’d be better able to answer that question than any of us. But closing it won’t make anyone like us. Remember, they hated us way, way back when - long before George W. Bush ever thought of running for president, even though the filters and frames have given you a very different narrative.

Q: You mean (sniff) they won’t love us, even if Barack Obama talks to them nicely?

A: No. I’m sorry. As Tony Blair astutely said after 9/11; “they killed three thousand, had they been able to kill 30,000, they would have.” As they said themselves, around that time, “you love pepsi, we love death.” They didn’t love us when Jimmy Carter talked to them. They didn’t love us when Ronald Reagan did not answer their bombing of our barracks. They didn’t love us when Bush 41 left Iraq before finishing the job (remember, back then, abandoning Iraqi’s was rightly thought a bad thing!), they didn’t love us when Bill Clinton left every attack on our interests, holdings and naval vessels go unanswered throughout the 1990’s, and they won’t love us when the next president is sworn in…they’re just waiting to see if the next president is going to be another strong horse, or another weak one. The last time they perceived a weak horse, we mourned.

When your enemy does not care whether he or his family lives or dies as long as he can kill you…this is a substantial enemy. Nice words won’t do the trick. Unless your nice words are prayers both for your own good and the good of your enemy. Perhaps we should give that a faithful and patient try.

I tried, I really tried to watch this over-the-top rant by Keith Olbermann. I couldn’t do it. I kept thinking any second a fuse was going to pop out of the crown of his head and begin to sizzle and burn until his head exploded. Kaboom!

He opens his mouth and all I can hear is a guy completely owned by hate, and out of control with it.

I wonder if the irony is lost on Olbermann that this year he and his media co-horts (like Chris Matthews, David Schuster and others) have had to apologize (and in some cases face suspension) several times to the Clintons for their little slips of the tongue or thoughtless statements; Olbermann himself put out a floor-licking apology to the Clinton’s for Schuster’s “pimped out” remarks on Chelsea. Yet he offers these insipid rants with impunity almost every night, against the president, and he is still on the air. Nothing at all infringes upon his free speech - which is absolutely as it should be - but he would like the president to “shut up.”

I think Olbermann has misidentified who is out to either control him or shut him up, and who is trying to protect his foolish ass and his fundamental right to free speech.

People who have given free rein to their hatred are eventually consumed by it. Sometimes, once consumed, they become cathartic cartoons of that hate. The times are too serious for cartoons, cathartic or otherwise.

UPDATE: Had a further thought while waiting for a doc’s appt: I think Olbermann is going to miss Bush when he’s gone, for three reasons:

1) Once he starts kissing up to the Democrat president, people will cease to find him compelling or interesting.
2) He will have nowhere to direct all of his anger and hate
3) The next president - whoever that may be - may not be as respectful of Olbermann’s right to rant as this president has been.

But then again, I think they’ll be a lot of people missing Bush when he’s gone.

Related:Calling our troops “cold blooded killers” (American Thinker)
Fascist? You Keep Using That Word

Is it just me or does Pajamas Media seem to be firing on all cylinders, lately, and doing a bang-up job of providing excellent coverage on breaking stories like the situations in China and Burma, and the politics of the day?

From its very humble launch, which had many people betting it wouldn’t last six months, PJM has become a pretty impressive publication and I like that it links throughout the day to all sorts of blogs, not only those deemed “conservative” or “right-of-center.” I also like that it has brought together people from traditional print media, like the brilliant reporter, Claudia Rosett, and the historian Victor Davis Hanson, and some of the most tireless bloggers on the ‘net; it’s a nice energy over there. The site covers the gamut - you’ve got your economics page, your campaign analysis, book reviews, world politics, advice columns, internet stuff, showbiz/political stuff, film reviews, and even drunkblogging.

I missed mentioning earlier the news that Glenn Reynolds has brought his Instapundit site into the PJM home page with a feeder. Comments on that seem to be mixed, but this is what I like about PJM - a few years into the endeavor, they’re still trying new things, and seeing what works and does not; it is a static, not a stagnant site. I check it every day and don’t link to it enough. My own piece for PJM, on Einstein’s about-to-be-auctioned letter, in which he writes about faith and the notion of the Jews as a Chosen People, is featured here.

Dead tree newspapers, magazines and tired news programs are being given a run for their money by the internet, and I believe the internet - where people can seek out the information and insights they want from sources of their own choosing - is making a serious dent in traditional media. The danger, of course, is the echo chamber; it is too easy to click only on those sites and writers who reflect one’s own views and then lull oneself into thinking that - because that’s the only point of view one is reading - it is the only POV out there.

But then again, I guess you could argue that much of the mainstream press is also an echo chamber, only with less consumer control over what they read or hear.

Buster sent this my way and I share it with you. There is an urban legend about it, that the very good advice here was written by Kurt Vonnegut; it was actually written by Mary Schmich in the Chicago Tribute. I like the beat.

Don’t be reckless with other people’s hearts. Don’t put up with people who are reckless with yours.

Floss.

Don’t waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you’re ahead, sometimes you’re behind. The race is long and, in the end, it’s only with yourself.

Remember compliments you receive. Forget the insults. If you succeed in doing this, tell me how.

Keep your old love letters. Throw away your old bank statements.

Stretch.

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life. The most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do with their lives. Some of the most interesting 40-year-olds I know still don’t.

Get plenty of calcium. Be kind to your knees. You’ll miss them when they’re gone.

Complete text here.

I am so disgusted with this idiocy (goodbye ANWR, goodbye energy independence, hello pain) that I have turned my head from the news of the day to this Wife’s Chart, which - in 1939 - was put together by some poor deluded man who believed he could get away with writing this and remain happy. Or healthy. (Via Ace)

The article only presents the first portion of the wife test, but as I score a measly ten points…well…I do love and appreciate my tolerant husband. But I always did know I had a good ‘un in him.

Am I slow in coming to bed? Most nights I beat him to it, and quickly put my cold feet on his warm shins when he finally hits the sack. I am good at sewing buttons but darning socks does not happen. I wear red nail polish on my tootsies. If I ever wore stockings with seams they would always be crooked, but I rarely wear stockings at all, as I am a thick-ankled Hillarian Pantsuit sort of girl. You’ll never see me with a sweater draped over my suit jacket, though, because that’s just a damn weird thing she does. I am a backseat driver, I never flirt but I’m never suspicious or jealous. Mean, ornery and cynical, but never jealous. I am a tolerable hostess but not if you drop in unexpectedly; then I am really deplorable and I will have to answer, someday, for my lack of hospitality. I stopped making meals on time when my husband routinely showed up late for them. Now the good man feels fortunate if I’ve cooked at all. Dressing for breakfast is the funniest thing I’ve ever heard of - what a quaint notion! No, I’m not tidy; we both tend to pile up paper and books. Yes, I put the children to bed and read them stories and did Elmo impressions and sang lullabies…that will have to balance out the poor housekeeping. I am neither jolly nor gay; more of a wry chuckle’r than a laugher. I never let my husband sleep late because it’s not his way, and any merit to be found in my religiosity or example to my kids is purely thanks to his example. We try not to go to bed mad, but sometimes that happens.

Gosh…I guess both of us fail. I’m not a very subservient wife and my husband is not much of a demander. We’ll have to just stick together.

Part of me is tempted to write my own “Husband Chart” but we all know what the stereotypes are, so it would ultimately be a pathetic and boring endeavor that adds nothing to the conversation. So just take part I of the test, ladies, and rejoice that your red nail polish no longer makes you a damn stinking whore.

Buster is home from school and looking for heavy-lifting jobs that can pay him well for using his bigness, but he’s also putting together a repertoire of selections for a piano bar gig he’s looking at. I heard him tooling around with “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown” and realized he must be running out of ideas. Any requests?

Honestly, I see this sort of crap in my email all the time - I get an “is it the end-of-the-world” missive every day or two - but I just blew it off as fringe element stuff. Now, Novak is bringing it to mainstream attention:

An element of the Christian community is not reconciled to McCain’s candidacy but instead regards the prospective presidency of Barack Obama in the nature of a Biblical plague visited upon a sinful people. These militants look at former Baptist preacher Huckabee as “God’s candidate” running for president in 2012.
[…]
One experienced, credible activist in Christian politics who would not let his name be used told me Huckabee in personal conversation with him embraced the concept that an Obama presidency might be what the American people deserve. That fits what has largely been a fringe position among evangelicals that the pain of an Obama presidency is in keeping with the Bible’s prophecy.

Mike Huckabee is “God’s candidate?” Holy moley!

You know, any Christian who presumes to know that the American people “deserve” a bad president, who presumes to know the will of God, or who presumes to know who “God’s Candidate” is, is about two steps away from the Westboro Baptist Hate Cultists who give all Christians a bad name.

You can be concerned about a path America is taking, but you cannot decide America “deserves” bad things. You can shudder at a million babies being aborted a year, but you also must take heart that there is an energetic faith-based opposition to abortion and euthanasia that is making real inroads into the heart of society. You don’t like the way the country is going, you work to change it and you pray…you do not sit there deciding, “well, I’m upset with the way America’s going, so I think God wants me to sit this election out because the country deserves a few years of pain.”

It almost sounds like, “I don’t have the candidate I want, so I will spitefully sit it out, and use belief in a just and vengeful God as my excuse and my justification. And boy, after that, America will learn to take my concerns and my votes more seriously! Go get ‘em God!”

Ace writes:

That’s a Novak column, so it can’t be dismissed as a left-winger making up kooky stories about the hated Christian right.

Unfortunately you don’t have to make this stuff up. You can find some stragglers and fringe-ists declaring that “America needs to be taught a lesson,” on many right-wing political forums. They’re not the majority, but they’re definitely out there. Their emails usually contain a scripture verse and a rant about John McPain, Jorge Arbusto, Illegal Immigration, Obama-the-Muslim, Hillary-the-beast, the gold standard and how everything will be better after we let America go to hell from 2009-2012.

I think they’re optimistic, myself. Put Obama or Hillary in the White House with a Democrat House and Democrat Senate and perhaps as many as three SCOTUS judges ready to kick the bucket or retire…you got yourselves the making of a whole new world of pain, and God’s got nothing to do with it.

Speaking of Presidents - doesn’t it seem like talking directly to the American people instead of letting the press and the opposition define him, is something he should have been doing for - oh…the last 5 years?

Did we always go to handwriting analysts to determine the characters of our presidential candidates?

Looking at the handwriting samples of McCain, Clinton and Obama, I got the weird sense that none of them would be president, come November.

But then…maybe that’s just wishful thinking.

Q: First off, I have to ask, what is it with the Sarah Jessica Parker worship? What is it that fascinates?

A: You’re asking the wrong girl. I don’t get it. She’s moderately attractive, sometimes wears interesting things…I don’t know why week after week after week she is everywhere I look, and has been for several years, now. But then, I’ve never seen that show, Sex and the City. I don’t know who any of those women are. And I’m sure they’re all broken up about it, too.

Q: Yesterday we wondered if all the bad news, earthquakes, natural disasters (now there is a threat to wheat) volcanos going swoosh and boom were reminding anyone of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Now this idiot is threatening Israel again…doesn’t it all seem like scary end-times stuff, to you?

A: No, but I can understand why it is rattling some of us. Obviously something is going on below us that has plates shifting and magma moving (at least it can’t be blamed on “manmade global warming” or “climate change” although all that ash shooting skyward may help make it a milder summer) but as I said yesterday, none of this means that the “end times” are upon us. Those days will be signaled, I’m sure, by Al Gore getting back into the White House. Yes, I’m joking, but we should be praying everyday, anyway, because it’s good for us! The rest of it, the rumbling from China to Minnesota, the volcanos, while certainly frightening and tragic…it’s all actually a humbling reminder to us about everything we don’t know, and how at our very depths all things are so mysteriously connected, even humanity.

Q: Humanity has never seemed more at odds, how can you say we’re connected?

A: Well, we are; our synapses fire, our consciousness awakes and we blip along with each other almost the way information blips along on the internets. Fer instance, below I linked to this great find by Rick at Brutally Honest. In the comments section, someone discoursed on internal and external knowledge and then reinforced his point by linking to a prime example via another blogger. Which reminded me that once upon a time, I had actually offered to mother the inarticulato being roasted.

Q: So, like, Anchoress, are you saying, like, you know…bloggers are smarter than other people?

A: No, I’m saying there is a whole subterranean world of thoughts, arguments, theses, expositions and manifestos that we never begin to glean, because the internets are so vast, our time is limited and - most importantly - we spend a lot of time online just clicking away and admiring genius. Or at least I do. But we connect in small ways, all day long.

Q: So blogging is about finding genius elsewhere?

A: Well, not always, but in my case, yes. I’m always awestruck by what others can do, and how their minds trip from one issue to another. Here is Sissy Willis, jumping off of one of my pieces but then adding her own twist to it, and - in doing so - throwing into all of our paths this piece by Maggie’s Farm in which they discuss John Leo’s exposition of Robert D. Putnam’s fascinating study on immigration and ethnic diversity, and how Putnam moved to suppress his own study, rather than deal with it’s un-PC results. Fascinating. And the links just keep on coming.

Q: They move on to trust cues and tribalism?

A: Like I said, we’re all connected. And so is the whole world. Below us the plates are shifting, hot magma is flowing, moving, looking for release. Within humanity, things are shifting, politically things are shifting, spiritually things are shifting. Maybe it is as random as it seems, but maybe it’s not. It’s like I always say; nothing is static, things turn on a dime, and everything we think we know today can be wiped off the table tomorrow and there is a new reality and we’re all in it.

Q: Oh, brother, that’s reassuring.

A: Yes, in a way it is. “Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” The internets are wonderous, but they’re also full of fuss and botheration and it is easy to get all caught up in things. That’s where prayer is handy. Prayer helps you to take the long view of things and not get caught up in a moment - it reminds us that the moments are fleeting - but that there is One Eternity. Nothing teaches us that like the psalms, btw, which in prayer reveals the entire human condition and also the way of the Christ.

Q: So, you’re so holy and you pray everyday?

A: I’m not so holy, but yes I do pray everyday; if I did not, I would barely manage to be human - I would be some sort of feral creature rolling about in the teeming muck. All I can tell you is that prayer is a force; it has real power to transform, beginning with oneself, and then externally. Whether praying liturgically or devotionally, scripturally or privately, it moves and shifts our own psychological and spiritual plate tectonics. Deep below our consciousness, it turns our muck into magma and drives us toward constant change, constant growth and even renewal, even if things don’t always look hopeful or promising as it does so.

So, don’t fear the earthquakes or the volcanos, either external or internal. Yes, they’re destructive, yes, they’re alarmingly powerful and they change everything in their path. But they are mere moments in eternity, and after they rattle and scorch, things get quiet, and then life begins again - new growth, new structure, new maps.

Without the great, seemingly catastrophic events, the earth would stagnate, and so would we.

And then we’d have nothing but Sarah Jessica Parker movies in our lives.