The Anchoress

Just throwing out these links (lots of good ones here) before signing off for the day - the heroes and villains are for you to determine on your own.

From the We’re Tolerant, But Not Toward Filthy Non-Secularist Jews Dept: Gateway Pundit links to a deplorable show of anti-semitism from the folks who I cannot bring myself to call “liberal” over at the biggest and most influential weblog of the left.

From the This is What Real Tolerance, Compassion & Heroic Action Really Mean Dept: Siggy brings us one Irena Sendler, a Polish woman who saved 2500 Jewish children - 2500! - from Nazi extermination. At a time when being identified as a Jew meant nothing good, she would willingly put on a yellow Star of David and go through the Warsaw ghetto, looking for ways to help. Given the crap we’re seeing directed toward Jews, lately, we may have to remember her name and story for near-future reference:

For most Jewish children imprisoned behind the walls of the Warsaw ghetto, the only exit led to concentration camps and the gas chambers.

Yesterday Ms Sendler, now 97, was honoured as a national heroine by the Polish parliament for saving 2,500 Jewish children during the Second World War.
[...]
“Every child saved with my help is the justification of my existence on this Earth, and not a title to glory,” Ms Sendler said in the letter, read out by Elzbieta Ficowska, who was just six months old when she was saved from the ghetto by Sendler’s resistance group. “Over a half-century has passed since the hell of the Holocaust, but its spectre still hangs over the world and doesn’t allow us to forget.”

Life is better, and more desirable than death. Imagine some people not knowing that. Sisu has thoughts on the day and the weekend.

From the No Politics Today, Please, Just Give Me Some Religion Dept: Ed Morrissey does a very good job of jumping off from a thoughtful piece by EJ Dionne and explaining why the neo-atheists are indeed indulging in religion and why he (and Dionne) are content to muddle through issues of faith and belief. Protein Wisdom looks at the ascending religion of the secularists and their lists of virtues. Also, Australian Agnostic Andrew Bolt writes a surprising piece:

So when I see a Western artist mock Christ, I see an artist advertising not his courage but his cowardice – by not daring to mock what would threaten him more. I am most certainly not saying that moderate Islam should now be treated with the childish disrespect so often shown to Christianity. Nor am I saying most Muslims endorse violence, or that there aren’t a few Christians who might turn violent, too.
[...]
But I am saying that more people now know there is a double standard here illustrated perfectly by the Melbourne International Comedy Festival, which banned acts that told jokes against Muslims but promoted ones that lampooned Christians. It’s this blatant double standard that may finally have shamed some of the usual jeerers into showing Christianity a little respect.

And perhaps – just perhaps – more of us might be wakening to a truth we too long took for granted. It’s no accident that we feel safer insulting Christians than trashing almost anyone else.

I know secularists who are perfectly respectful towards believers of all stripes (as most believers are respectful toward them) and so I want to say I think the nastiness we’re seeing by some of them (accelerated in 2007, for some reason) is still the stuff of minorities given more press and notice than they is either representative or deserved. I don’t think they represent most secularists. Still, given some of my hate mail, I’m happy to read Bolt’s essay! All of these are good reads.

From the Good News Doesn’t Matter if Bush is President Dept: The rnemployment rate is 4.4% (remember when the Clintons said 5.6% was “essentially full employment?” Jayson at Wizbang compares the bread lines and soup kitchens numbers from this year and ten years ago. They’re what you’d expect if you’ve been paying attention. Also, our troops are taking on a Shiite stronghold.

From the Maybe I Just Don’t Understand That There is a War Going On Dept: I was distracted. I thought the war was between the US and terrorists. I was wrong. The war is between Pelosi and her Democrats and the President and we’re all in the crossfires. Is this the painless coup I predicted a while back?

The ending, of course, is the coup d’état. Believing that the rest of us, now disillusioned, are no longer clinging to romantic ideals of honor, or truth or nobility, these always-restless First Children, devoted to deconstruction, believe they are about to take down the presidency, the churches, the “old” government and even the “old” media. They expect to put into place something “brand new.” But believe me when I tell you what they are building is older than dirt. And up from it. Which is why they will need their fortresses. Castro lives in one, too.

From the They Can’t Help Themselves and Always Overreach Dept: Nancy Pelosi’s traveling shadow presidency tour is so inept and inappropriate that even the press knows it and is telling her to knock it off. The Wall Street Journal is even going so far as to wonder if she has violated the Logan Act. Oh, and Assad blew her off, for a soccer game.

Meanwhile, I don’t know if Joe Klein is actually calling for a coup, here, but his way-harsh (and on some points simply inaccurate) assessment of the Bush presidency is going to feel like “piling on” to a lot of people who may not like Bush but realize that after what we saw go down in Iran this week, they’d rather have a president who won’t yield to thuggery, than one who will. And…Harry Reid is telling vets the troops will get “everything they need” even as he works to do the opposite. Are the Republicans falling apart? Probably. But let’s not pretend the Dems aren’t, as well. We have a leadership crisis in America.

Wizbang has a caption contest that illustrates the point.

From the This Election is Already Making Me Nuts Dept: Don Surber talks about what it takes to get yourself elected president these days. Goodness, as Mae West once said, has nothing to do with it. Don should maybe join my protest for a few weeks!

Meanwhile, Ed Driscoll catches Andrea Mitchell being absurd, and A Navy SEAL memorial runs into trouble because - gasp - there are weapons on that soldier!. For crying out loud.

While you’re praying this weekend, don’t forget to pray for this country - under threat of siege from within and materially threatened from outside - and pray for our leadership, all of our leadership, as they seem to be quite, quite out of sorts. Or something.