Gooney birds of the intellectual elite

By Dave Petteys (dpetteys@comcast.net) The self-styled intellectual elite are like tropical birds. They sit on their perches in the newsrooms, universities, and magazine editorial offices. They squawk and groom their plumage, believing they are the cutting edge center of the world. But are they?

What I see is an intellectual aviary, confined by almost invisible nets of political correctness. The birds fancy themselves free as they screech and flutter from branch to branch. But they subconsciously know the nets forbid many branches, nets to which they have grown so accustomed, they no longer even see them.

These birds caw, flap their wings and land in unison and excrete on the branches of what they call American empire, the President, and Christianity.

Or they chirp continually about the new Global Warming faith.

Though they say they champion “Freedom”, they refuse to look at the freedom of the Venezuelan people as it is destroyed before their very eyes. Nor can they bring themselves to admit that Castro’s Cuba is the ruthless dictatorship that it is.

The malfeasance and hypocrisy of minority Civil Rights leaders are completely ignored.

Nor will they face up to Radical Islam, since it has fraudulently positioned itself as a persecuted non-Christian minority.

The American people are patient: and wise. But as these brightly colored birds continually bite their keepers, they only hasten the day they are turned out. Outside their Manhattan, University and Left Coast zoos, could they even feed themselves?

Memo to Merrifield on heaven & hell

By Dave Crater (crater@wilberforcecenter.org)

“But the cowardly, unbelieving, abominable, murderers, sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars shall have their part in the lake which burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death.” - Revelation 21:8

“And I say to you, My friends, do not be afraid of those who kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will show you whom you should fear: Fear Him who, after He has killed, has power to cast into hell.” - Christ, Luke 12:4-5

“Meantime, down here it looks as if our so-called board will vote to turn over Hunt Elem[entary] to C. Chavez for a charter before the evil twins are forced out by recall!! There must be a special place in Hell for these Privatizers, Char[t]erizers, and Voucherizers! They deserve it!” - Former Colorado House Education Committee Chairman Mike Merrifield (D-Manitou Springs), email to Sen. Sue Windels 12/8/06

Rep. Merrifield is in august company: the Apostle John, exiled on the island of Patmos toward the end of the late-first century reign of the Roman emperor Domitian, and Jesus Christ. Talk of hell flows so naturally from the lips of all three.

So does the specific naming of those who stand to be so consigned. Merrifield even capitalizes the surrogate names of his condemned to emphasize their lostness.

The Apostle John, earlier in the Book of Revelation, foreshadows the writings of the Prophet Merrifield by himself forecasting the appearance of a pair who would be thought evil by their generation, but who are righteous ambassadors of God Himself (Rev. 11:10).

The implication is that the appearance of evil to their generation is a result not of the pair’s own evil, but of the evil in the hearts of the generation around them, who as a result view the uprightness of the pair with a jaundiced, unjust eye.

Why would hell occupy such a prominent place in Mr. Merrifield’s thought? The public education establishment to which he is, er, religiously committed, certainly does not teach the existence of such a place. Neither does it teach the existence of heaven.

Both, according to the secular ideology prevailing among Mr. Merrifield’s heroes and allies, are figments of the human imagination – vestiges of folklore from a less enlightened age. Human beings are, we now know, descendants via Darwin’s natural selection of a primordial single-cell organism, but they can go to hell? If so, it is incumbent on Mr. Merrifield to support the addition of robust teaching on hell to our public school curricula – the future of our children demands it. After all, they could very well grow up to be Privatizers, Charterizers, and Voucherizers, guilty of filthiness beyond any hope of forgiveness, their priceless souls lost to the sinister rebellion of those opposing the very Kingdom of God on the earth and her Faithful Stewards in the Public School System.

A particular curiosity on this score is that at least one of the “evil twins” Mr. Merrifield condemns, Mr. Eric Christen of Colorado Springs, also believes in hell. In fact, much of Mr. Christen’s energy while a member of the District 11 School Board in Colorado Springs was devoted to restoring at least a vestige of spiritual context to a public education district that costs residents of the city upward of $300 million a year and delivers test scores among the lowest in the state. Mr. Christen suggested that a little less attention to secular fads and power politics in education and a little more attention to the ancient idea that we humans and our children are spirits, living life on a short and precarious precipice between good and evil, time and eternity, heaven and hell, might better inform and deepen the whole project.

Oh, and the idea that we humans and our children are spirits also means that the state and its public schools are not the only legitimate stewards of education.

Mr. Merrifield opposes this agenda with, er, religious zeal, even consigning Mr. Christen to hell for supporting it. One can imagine the weeping and gnashing of teeth that would have arisen in Mr. Merrifield’s circle of acquaintances, and in the larger political and media class, had Mr. Christen suggested that Mr. Merrifield and Co. have helped turn the latest generation of public school children into unbelieving murderers (Columbine) who are more and more sexually immoral with each passing year (teen pregnancy, abortion, and STDs), dabble not uncommonly in occult spirituality (sorcery), and who easily become accomplished in lying to parents, teachers, and anyone else in legitimate authority over them. Had he said this, we can be certain Mr. Christen would have cemented his already-advanced condemnation beyond even the faintest hope of salvation.

Mr. Merrifield is the worst kind of hypocrite. He uses secular theory and secular language in public to advocate a thoroughly secular education for children under the stewardship of a thoroughly secular education establishment, but uses the most severe religious language in private and when caught, contends in his own defense that he never meant that language to become public.

The episode ought to be instructive for all those who authentically entertain deep convictions about heaven and hell, and who have read the Apocalypse with real understanding. When Christ said elsewhere, “Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned,” He was not, as we are so often told by the political left today, contradicting His own teaching on hell and who would end up there, or contending that just judgment between good and evil, wisdom and folly, is not the prerogative of humankind. On the contrary, He was warning us to be on the alert for, and to avoid being like, those who condemn while they themselves do things worthy of condemnation.

Dave Crater is President and Chairman of the Wilberforce Center for Colorado Statesmanship

A day for fools and Christians

Note: This was also the first column on Townhall.com, Sunday 4/1/07 (Andrews in Denver Post, April 1) As a staunch conservative, I’ve never had much use for Hillary and Bill. But after their recent civil rights pilgrimage to Selma, Alabama, a change of heart overtook me. I have signed on as national chairman of Republicans for Clinton 2008, and you read it here first.

Actually, you read it here on April First, which means I’m fooling. You weren’t really taken in, were you? It was just too far out of character. Of course, people thought the same thing when such bad actors as Saul of Tarsus, slave trader John Newton, and Nixon hatchet man Chuck Colson signed on as born-again Christians. They were dismissed as frauds, fools, or both. But each man’s turnabout made him a benefactor to society thereafter.

Since the nonsense of April Fool’s and the solemnity of Holy Week coincide this year, it’s worth asking what it might be, besides foolish superstition, that makes the churches overflow on Palm Sunday and Easter every spring. After two millennia of continued human suffering, following the arrival of a Prince of Peace who was supposed to change all that, why do believers still believe?

Paul, the former Saul, cheerfully confessed himself a fool for Christ, take it or leave it. He conceded that the cross, in which the faithful see salvation, may appear as just so much foolishness to nonbelievers. In other words, reasonable people can differ about these things – and God talk comes off poorly in newsprint anyway.

Sticking then to what is, shall we say, historically and sociologically verifiable, it’s a fact that the reason Christians take Holy Week so seriously is their individual and collective experience of finding that forgiveness and love are in the world more fully in our day because -- as they are convinced -- Jesus died and rose in Caesar’s day. The bunnies and colored eggs next Sunday are all very well, so is the foolery this Sunday, but the bottom line is this love thing.

Granted, those of us who claim to be Christ’s followers have a woefully uneven record of living this out. We profess to worship a good man, executed unjustly, who used his dying breaths to redeem a fellow convict, give his grieving mother a new son, and even forgive his murderers. Why do we often dishonor his example by bashing each other with Bibles?

And that’s among ourselves. Christians’ too-common coldness to those outside the fold is another embarrassment. The hardest thing about Jesus for me to imitate is the unconditional love that he’s said to give absolutely everyone. Ouch. The political opponents my column sometimes harshly condemns? He’s fine with them. Marxists and Islamofascists? He cherishes each one personally, err as they may. I am shamed by his gentle patience with each atheist, his tender heart toward each illegal alien.

The Founder of my faith is so far ahead of me in the forgiveness department that I blush to write this. He was harder on religious hypocrites than government hacks, tougher on temple profiteers than drunken prostitutes. Who knew? If we who claim to be his church don’t find ourselves startled and chastened by him every single day, we’d best wake up.

Two good friends of mine (good Christians also, as it happens) share an April 1 birthday. Imagine turning a year older with your high school sweetheart on each Day of Fools, and making a marriage work all the way to grandparenthood. Maybe it's helped them keep the sense of humility – and absurdity – that gets a couple through the rough spots. Personally, on those mornings when I see a dunce in the mirror, I’m a bit kinder to others all day. Christianity at its best does that on the world scale. No fooling.

Unfazed by the gloom-mongers

By Krista Kafer (krista555@msn.com) A big home improvement project monopolized my time for weeks. As I tiled, painted, sawed and plumbed, emails and phone messages piled up. Newspapers and magazines went unread. Today I’m catching up and regretting it.

Thanks to the Denver Post I’ve learned that teens have been charged in the brutal slaying of one teen’s mother, conflict has erupted over the use of water, Democrats in the state’s General Assembly are pushing for gay adoption and voter rights for convicts on parole, and Iraqi terrorists have killed more civilians.

Not to be outdone, the Rocky Mountain News, features on-line pictures of tornado-wrought destruction, an article about another school shooting, and a tale about a counterfeiter who bought Girl Scout cookies with bogus bills (not a bad use in my estimation).

Captain America is dead according to CNN and a bunch of disgruntled Vermonters want to impeach the president says Time Magazine. Now that’s newsworthy.

In U.S. News and World Report I can read articles about the high cost of college, hard feelings in Chechnya, a new faux-documentary disproving Christianity, and an article lauding Hillary Clinton (usually it’s Barack Obama). Last week’s edition, as of yet unread, features “America’s Worst Presidents.” Maybe I’ll skip straight to the articles about nuclear war.

On Newsweek online I can be preached at by John Edwards chastising America who thinks Jesus would be disappointed with the US for not helping the world’s poor. When exploiting religion, don’t let the facts get in the way, John. Americans give away more money per person than any other country.

I’m four editions behind in the Economist. Which one should I start with, the edition with the stealth bomber “Next Stop Iran” or the one about global warming “The Greening of America”? The unread World Magazine is about modern slavery. That looks more promising.

It’s a good thing I started off today with National Geographic, my favorite magazine. I’m only two behind there. According to short article (sadly not available online) called “By the Numbers” Americans are substantially better off today than in 1915 and 1967, the two comparison years.

We live longer. The life expectancy in 1915 was 54.5 years. It was 70.5 in 1967. Today it is 77.8. We earn more. In 1915, Americans earned on average $687 ($13,284 adjusted for inflation) compared to today – $34,926. On top of that, we have more earning power. An American in 1915 paid an equivalent of $5.01 in today’s dollars for a gallon of gasoline and the equivalent of $7.22 for a gallon of milk.

Reading this was like discovering a tiny rose in a sea of thorns.

Are Americans so addicted to bad news that news outlets can’t afford to headline good news? It’s depressing. Moreover, bad news fuels duplicitous political dialogue as politicians capitalize on fears.

Al Gore preaches catastrophic global warming from his mansion, an energy black hole, to listeners apparently eager to hear it. Edwards evokes religion to pan American selfishness. Even though the economy is booming, politicians paint a dire picture to support more income redistribution, pork projects, tax and spend proposals, and regulatory command and control policies.

I’m done. The magazines are going back in the rack. I’m going to make a latte from my $3.25 gallon of milk.

Ritter's pro-life pose unmasked

By Krista Kafer (krista555@msn.com) Governor Ritter announced in his state-of-the-state speech that he intends to return funding to Planned Parenthood for “pregnancy prevention and family planning programs.” Nationwide, Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion providers, receives some $272 million in tax payer funds annual under Title X of the Public Health Service Act for “family planning and reproductive health.” The program, enacted in 1970, funnels state and federal taxpayer funds to public and private agencies for birth control, STD testing and other activities. Such entities can even provide “neutral” information on abortion which seems like an opportunity for some to expand business.

In 1999, the Owens administration blocked funding for Planned Parenthood when an audit revealed that the organization was subsidizing abortion with tax payer funds, a clear violation of the Colorado Constitution. This year, Ritter intends to return the subsidies. While taxpayer funding for abortion is the big issue, no one seems to be asking why tax payers are paying for contraception. I’m more than willing to buy someone food or emergency housing, but if a guy can’t afford the $5 for a box of condoms maybe he shouldn’t be having sex. Maybe he should be out looking for a job instead. If I have to pay for somebody to have sex, maybe others should pay for my hobbies. I could use a new pair of skis. But I digress…

Ritter’s support for Planned Parenthood casts doubt on his commitment to the sanctity of human life. He isn’t the only Democrat to fail the first test of authenticity. Several self-identified pro-life Democrat congressmen fresh from election victories failed to vote pro-life when the first opportunity arose earlier this year.

Talking pro-life isn’t the same as actually standing up for the civil rights of unborn children. Regardless of moderate talk, both top Democrat presidential contenders – Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama – support the taxpayer funding for abortion and the barbaric partial-birth abortion procedure. Each received a 100% rating from NARAL, the powerful abortion lobby. Warm smiles and conciliatory language won’t change that.

As the American public grows increasingly squeamish about abortion-on-demand, harsh feminist rhetoric doesn’t resonate as well. Even the most ardent abortion supporter wants to seem a little sensitive. In the end, though, actions speak louder than words.