Christmas In An Anti-Christian Age

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photo credit: nhvictory

For two millennia, the birth of Christ has been seen as the greatest event in world history. The moment Jesus was born in a stable in Bethlehem, God became man, and eternal salvation became possible.

This date has been the separation point of mankind’s time on earth, with B.C. designating the era before Christ, and A.D., Anno Domini, in the Year of the Lord, the years after. And how stands Christianity today?

“Christianity is in danger of being wiped out in its biblical heartlands,” says the British think tank Civitas.

In Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Ethiopia and Nigeria, Christians face persecution and pogroms. In Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan, conversion is a capital offense. In a century, two-thirds of all the Christians have vanished from the Islamic world.

In China, Christianity is seen as a subversive ideology of the West to undermine the regime.

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A Yeshiva Boy and Christmas

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photo credit: lon r fong

When I was 20, I spent my junior year in college in England. When classes let out for the last two weeks of December, I traveled to Morocco, where something life-changing occurred.

What happened was that I felt a longing, even an emptiness, I had never before experienced. Something was missing from my life, but I could not at first identify it. I knew it was not about being without friends or family — after all, I hadn’t been with family or friends for the previous three months. And it wasn’t about being alone — I had gotten used to traveling alone.

This sense of missing something kept gnawing at me, until one day I realized what it was: I missed the Christmas season. I missed that time of year in America.

At first I denied it. Growing up in an Orthodox Jewish home and in yeshivas (Orthodox religious schools where half the day was devoted to religious, and half the day to secular, studies), I had, of course, never celebrated Christmas. How, then, could I miss something that I never had? How could I, raised in an Orthodox Jewish world, miss the quintessential Christian holiday?

But I could not conjure up any other explanation: I was in a non-Christian country, and therefore I heard no Christmas songs, saw no Christmas decorations, and Dec. 25 was just another day.

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The Christmas Conspiracy

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photo credit: patsw

Sometimes Christmas can seem a long way off, even when it’s close. So it was for me when I went to a funeral last Saturday at St. Thomas Episcopal Church on Fifth Avenue. The music was beautiful—a requiem setting by Gabriel Fauré. And the church was warmly populated. That happens when you die in your fifties, a season of life when the living still outnumber the dead.

Midway through the service I felt an interior ache grow. Susan had suffered a long illness. News of her death had not surprised me, or anyone else who knew her. But death is death: vacancy, emptiness, negation. The exquisite singing of the boys’ choir doesn’t sweep away the ugly cancer of death. The youthful purity of their voices seemed to draw attention to it by way of contrast.

Death. I think of the twenty children killed in Newtown, Connecticut. In my mind’s eye their caskets are processing down Fifth Avenue to join us. I remember the final days of my mother’s life before she put on the mask of death. “O Rust,” she said to me, “it’s so hard.” Gaping, hungry mouths of freshly dug graves open up in my imagination.

Underneath, or perhaps overtop or within this collage of dark thoughts I’m returning to a summer afternoon in rural Iowa when, at the turning point of an eight-day silent retreat, I walked down a hot, dusty gravel road beside sun-beaten corn fields contemplating the crucifixion of Christ. I saw him hanging on the cross. I heard Christ say in despair, “It is finished.” Then I saw him being swallowed by Satan, and felt Satan’s hot, foul breath.

Death. It’s hateful. It’s fearful. And in that moment at Susan’s funeral, as the floor collapses underneath my feet and I feel as though I was about to be dropped into a dark abyss, death seems all-powerful, the final word. Christmas is just ahead, but the promise of good tidings and joy appears empty, impossible, false.

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The NRA vs. the Second Amendment

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photo credit: muffett

As a civil libertarian and a gun owner, I understand all too well that tragedies like the Newtown mass murder invariably mean a new wave of assaults on our most fundamental rights as human beings. 9/11 brought us the TSA, the Patriot Act, and the War on Terror, and every mass shooting brings out the same authoritarian coalition calling for an end to video games, movies, secular education, and, of course, guns. I have written in the past about why we should cling most dearly to our rights in times of crisis, but have only recently caught on to a much more deceptive (perhaps unwitting) foe of our right to bear arms: the National Rifle Association.

I admit, the suggestion seems ludicrous on its face. After all, the NRA ostensibly represents millions of gun owners and wields immense pro-gun lobbying power in Washington. But it is precisely this perception of the NRA as the end-all, be-all of Second Amendment advocacy, when combined with a perpetuated misunderstanding about the primary functions of both the NRA and the Second Amendment, that makes the organization a threat to gun liberty.

In fact, the NRA has quite a history of supporting restrictions on our fundamental right to bear arms. The NRA supported the National Firearms Act of 1934 and the Federal Firearms Act of 1938 (the first comprehensive federal restrictions on the right to bear arms). The NRA supported gun-control measures throughout the 1960s and continues to do so to this day. It even supported Mitt Romney’s candidacy despite Gov. Romney’s horrid record on gun rights (support which Gov. Romney was always quick to point out in defense of his record). Wayne LaPierre, the current CEO and executive VP of the NRA, testified in 1999 in support of the Federal Gun Free School Zones Act and many other federal violations of the Second Amendment. In short, the NRA’s history is the history of a group more concerned with protecting the commercial viability of the gun industry than protecting the principle of the Second Amendment.

So when Mr. LaPierre took to his massive national platform last week to respond to the horror in Newtown and the subsequent attacks on gun rights, his speech left little doubt what the NRA is worried about. Mr. LaPierre blamed the weather, he blamed the media, he blamed video games, he lashed out at every target he could think of in a transparent effort to deflect, rather than engage, the anti-gun argument. He then insisted that the government should arm hundreds of thousands of government agents and put them in every school in America.

This was not the reasoned, principled argument of a scrupulous believer in the Second Amendment; it was the nonsensical, desperate plea of a charlatan trying to defend his product at the expense of any principle at stake.

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The Massacre of the Innocents

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Lullay, Thou little tiny Child, by by, lully, lullay . . . ”

The 16th-century Coventry Carol, a mother’s lament for her lost son, is the only song of the season about the other children of Christmas — the first-born of Bethlehem, slaughtered on Herod’s orders after the Magi brought him the not-so-glad tidings that an infant of that city would grow up to be King of the Jews. As Matthew tells it, even in a story of miraculous birth, in the midst of life is death. The Massacre of the Innocents loomed large over the Christian imagination: In Rubens’s two renderings, he fills the canvas with spear-wielding killers, wailing mothers, and dead babies, a snapshot, one assumes, of the vaster, bloodier body count beyond the frame. Then a century ago the Catholic Encyclopedia started digging into the numbers. The estimated population of Bethlehem at that time was around a thousand, which would put the toll of first-born sons under the age of two murdered by King Herod at approximately 20 — or about the same number of dead children as one school shooting on a December morning in Connecticut. “Every man a king,” promised Huey Long. And, if it doesn’t quite work out like that, well, every man his own Herod.

Had my child been among the dead of December 14, I don’t know that I would ever again trust the contours of the world. The years go by, and you’re sitting in a coffee shop with a neighbor, and out of the corner of your eye a guy walks in who looks a little goofy and is maybe muttering to himself: Is he just a harmless oddball — or the prelude to horror? The bedrock of life has been shattered, and ever after you’re walking on a wobbling carpet with nothing underneath. For a parent to bury a child offends against the natural order — at least in an age that has conquered childhood mortality. For a parent to bury a child at Christmas taints the day forever, and mocks its meaning.

For those untouched by death this Christmas, someone else’s bewildering, shattering turn of fate ought to occasion a little modesty and circumspection. Instead, even by its usual execrable standards, the public discourse post-Newtown has been stupid and contemptible. The Left now seizes on every atrocity as a cudgel to beat whatever happens to be the Right’s current hottest brand: Tucson, Ariz., was something to do with Sarah Palin’s use of metaphor and other common literary devices — or “toxic rhetoric,” as Paul Krugman put it; Aurora, Colo., was something to do with the Tea Party, according to Brian Ross of ABC News. Since the humiliations of November, the Right no longer has any hot brands, so this time round the biens pensants have fallen back on “gun culture.” Dimwit hacks bandy terms like “assault weapon,” “assault rifle,” “semiautomatic,” and “automatic weapon” in endlessly interchangeable but ever more terrifying accumulations of high-tech state-of-the-art killing power. As the comedian Andy Borowitz tweeted, “When the 2nd Amendment was written the most lethal gun available was the musket.”

Actually, the semiautomatic is a 19th-century technology, first produced in 1885. That’s just under half a century after the death of Madison, the Second Amendment’s author, and rather nearer to the Founding Fathers’ time than our own. And the Founders were under fewer illusions about the fragility of society than Hollywood funnymen: On July 25,1764, four Lenape Indians walked into a one-room schoolhouse in colonial Pennsylvania and killed Enoch Brown and ten of his pupils. One child survived, scalped and demented to the end of his days.

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Don’t Place Scientists on a Moral Pedestal, They’re People Too

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In our culture, we idolize scientists. Often John Q. Public fails to question what scientists are doing or the money they ask for because there is the assumption that scientists are altruistic. Even more often, anyone who does question the ethics of the research or the public policy that provides money to ethically-suspect research is labeled “anti-science.”

We have no problem believing that CEOs or bankers would commit fraud, but put on a white coat and that becomes a difficult sell. Venerating scientists like they are rock stars, doesn’t help.

And yet fraud in the scientific community is a problem. The Scientist outlines the “Top Science Scandals of 2012.” A fascinating read filled with made-up data and fictional patients. One Japanese scientist fabricated data in 172 papers over his career. A particularly clever fraud perpetrated by scientists, was to refer journal editors back to themselves for reviews of their papers:

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Predicting the Biggest Stories of 2013, Part 1

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Each December I gaze into my crystal ball and predict what I believe will be the top 10 stories of the coming year. I almost never get these right but they’re fun to speculate about nevertheless. A year from now we’ll take a look back and see how well I did, unless I didn’t do well at all. In that case we will pretend this never happened for the sake of preserving my fragile self esteem.

10. The highest grossing movie of 2013 will be Iron Man 3.
The year is shaping up to be one of the biggest in cinema history with several proven pop culture franchises re-emerging like Star Trek Into Darkness, Oz The Great and Powerful (prequel to the Wizard of Oz), Thor: The Dark World, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Despicable Me 2, Monsters University (prequel to the beloved Monsters, Inc.) and – my most anticipated movie of the year – Man of Steel. Then there are epic-scale newcomers like Pacific Rim, World War Z, and Elysium. However, when you combine the power of the brand and the timing of its release, I predict Iron Man 3 will be the top grossing film of 2013. The previous two finished as the second and third highest-grossing films of the year when they came out, and as the first major summer movie it gets a coveted spot on the release calendar like The Avengers had this year.

9. No substantive federal “gun control” legislation.
After the coming cave on the so-called fiscal cliff before the end of this year, the Republican Party leadership in Washington, D.C. will be on the thinnest of thin ice with its base. If there’s one group you don’t mess with its defenders of the Second Amendment. So regardless of all the attempts to politicize the recent tragedy in Connecticut (and too many other places), Republicans in Congress will hold the line on more federal restrictions on the God-given right to self-defense—in the interest of their own self defense.

8. A chain reaction on Right-to-Work
The danger of losing business to Indiana after it enacted Right-to-Work certainly helped apply pressure on the political class in Michigan to follow suit. Look for a similar sentiment to start a domino effect in places like Wisconsin and Ohio, competing rust belt states with Republican governors and legislatures. And don’t be surprised if the unions push to bring this issue to the forefront as well to find out where their GOP opposition truly stands heading into the 2014 election cycle.

7. Rubio and Ryan Polish Their Establishment Credentials
The Republican Party establishment was pinning its 2016 hopes on New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, but he’s toast after his gushing over President Obama during Hurricane Sandy right before the election. Jeb Bush is a non-starter for everyone not named Bush, and they know that, too. They need to sink their claws into someone younger and more palatable to the base after consecutive defeats. Sensing an opportunity, two men liked by many grassroots conservatives, but who have also shown at times they are willing to do business with the party establishment, will vie to fill that void with an eye toward 2016—Marco Rubio and Paul Ryan. Both will look to cash in on their conservative street cred by campaigning for solutions (see that as moderation) on key issues like taxes and spending and immigration, in an effort to appease the beltway culture and insiders. Case in point: Rubio’s already hired a senior adviser whose previous employers were establishmentarian moderates/RINOs John McCain, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Jeb Bush.

6. Syria Goes the Way of Egypt
With his allies in Russia conceding he’s doomed, it’s obvious Bashar al-Assad’s days as Syria’s dictator are numbered. Look for the two-year civil war he has waged with rebels to finally topple him in 2013, but look for something even worse to take his place. With al-Qaeda operatives infiltrating the ranks of the Syrian “freedom fighters,” and with the American people suffering from Middle East nation building fatigue, another Muslim Brotherhood-type regime will emerge in Syria just as we saw in Egypt.

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You can friend “Steve Deace” on Facebook or follow him on Twitter @SteveDeaceShow.

Why Won’t the Press Ask, ‘Where’s Hillary Clinton’s Medical Report?’

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Clinton claims she can’t testify for Congress on Thursday because she fell down over the weekend and got a concussion. Maybe so, but thus far no one’s seen a medical report. What’s more, it’s the second time Clinton has put off crucial congressional testimony about the murder of a U.S. ambassador and three other U.S. officials by Islamist terrorists in Benghazi, Libya, last Sept. 11. The previous time, she had more pressing business, tasting wine in Australia and checking up on East Timor.

It looks like avoidance of responsibility to preserve her own political viability. Clinton is believed to harbor political ambitions for 2016, but the fact that the State Department failed to provide enough security to embassy personnel, failed to come to their aid after their calls during the attack, and had live video showing just how bad the attacks were, were all her responsibility.

Worse still, her State Department took part in the Obama administration’s effort to convince Americans that the deaths were not from terrorist attacks, but were merely a side effect of a spontaneous anti-American demonstration that got out of hand after a U.S.-made anti-Islamic video incited the mobs.

With Clinton avoiding testimony a second time, what is she hiding? And why are the media so incurious?

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Left Believes Drug Controls Don’t Work, So Why Do They Think Gun Controls Will?

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photo credit: dr. gbb

From the moment Americans learned of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre last Friday, the entire left — editorialists, columnists, broadcasters, politicians — used the occasion to promote one idea: gun control.

For the left, the primary reason for just about all American gun murders is the availability of guns.

I have no interest in debating gun control here. I only wish to ask the left one question: We have a massive system of drug-control laws. Yet, the left is the first to argue that the war on drugs has been a failure. And whether or not one deems it a failure, the war on drugs surely hasn’t prevented tens of millions of Americans, including teenagers, from obtaining drugs illegally.

Why, then, does the left believe that a war on guns would be any more effective than the war on drugs?

That question aside, what matters most here is the left’s preoccupation with guns as the root of the murder problem in America.

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Conservative Populism

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The conservative failure in 2012 was not an inability to appeal to hyphenated groups on the basis of ethnic, gender, and age identification. Instead, there was a general cluelessness about how to reach the middle and working classes of all races and ethnicities by explaining how conservative principles are not just for the rich.

Consider what messages candidates send by the issues they choose to address. Rather than write off the 47 percent of Americans who receive entitlements and do not pay income taxes, conservative candidates needed to wade into those groups to talk with them and debate them rather than merely lecture them. Why not a symbolic minimum $500 income tax on everyone who is working, if only to remind all of us what April 15 portends? Getting booed for supporting school vouchers is a lot better than not talking about them at all to those who would most benefit. The Michigan episode reminds us that when the message is democracy and freedom to choose rather than union-busting, liberals lose. Hundreds of millions of dollars given to Washington and New York PACs and consultants is not a good bargain, at least in comparison with funding grass-roots registration and get-out-the-vote efforts in key states.

Vocabulary should change as well. It would be wiser to rail against “wasteful” or “callous,” rather than just “big,” government. “Borrowing” is preferable to the drier “deficits.” Republicans always lose when “taxes” become “revenues,” “borrowing” becomes “investments,” and mega-borrowing becomes “stimulus.” “A trillion” means nothing to most people; “a thousand billion” might still shock a little. The “campus” (Latin: “field”) is much better referred to as a “country club.” If you wish to cut PBS funding, then focus not on Big Bird but on the insiders who expect six-figure salaries for providing public-television entertainment in a largely uncompetitive environment of crony capitalism. Can’t expensive and government-subsidized wind and solar power be seen as the obsessions of the affluent, while cheap, free-market natural gas is a lifeline to the poor and the middle class?

Conservatives might rethink the tactical approach to key issues. Why get trapped in the Obama notion that $250,000 qualifies one as “rich”? Most Americans aspire to make a six-figure income, but few hope to make a seven-figure one. Eight out of the ten wealthiest counties in the nation went for Obama; so did Hollywood millionaires and Silicon Valley grandees. When a George Soros, Steven Spielberg, or Michael Moore is a beneficiary of the very tax policies he despises, it is time to become creative and take a hard look at tax breaks, incentives, and federally backed loans. Should municipalities be allowed to issue blank-check tax-free bonds, often for social-engineering purposes far beyond street or sewer maintenance?

Barack Obama keeps begging us to raise taxes on those like himself. But most of his affluent supporters in Greenwich or La Jolla do not receive the free housing, travel, food, and entertainment the Obamas do, and might resent the president’s professed magnanimity at their expense. If Republicans cannot stop tax hikes, then perhaps they might draw the line at the $1 million income level and spare the dentist and auto-repair-shop owner below that line. The Republicans are more the party, anyway, of those who aspire to be rich than of those who are so rich that they can afford to donate to and vote for Obama — an act for those in Carmel and Cambridge increasingly analogous to a tasteful indulgence like granite counter tops and wood floors.

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