Sierra Faith

Read this and weep.

The Kagan thesis is bleak but not fatalistic. The fight to shape free citizens in schools, through the media and in the public square goes on. “There is no hope for anything if you don’t have a population that buys into” a strong and free society, he says. “That can only be taught. It doesn’t come in nature.”

Who is Donald Kagan?

Excellent piece by Ed Morrissey.

He references a piece by Jonah Goldberg:

Many prominent Democratic politicians oppose any meaningful restrictions on late-term abortions. President Obama, as a state senator, fought a law that would have protected live infants accidentally delivered during an abortion. Sen. Barbara Boxer once said that constitutional rights begin when you bring the baby home from the hospital. Prosecutors almost never try to enforce violations of late-term abortion laws, in part because the Supreme Court says any abortion is constitutional if the mother’s psychological health would be endangered by continuing the pregnancy.

Regardless, Gosnell isn’t only being charged with performing illegal late-term abortions. He’s being charged with delivering viable babies and killing them. The really profound question here is what is the moral difference between killing a living baby that is outside the mother for a few seconds and killing one that’s still inside. It’s no wonder the media would rather talk about itself.

Does Boxer really hear what she is saying? Really?

And, this excellent piece by Sherman Frederick:

If people focused on Dr. Gosnell, they would see the crazy horror of American abortion policy as codified by the 1973 Roe v. Wade Supreme Court ruling. That ruling figuratively and literally splits babies in a vain attempt to avoid the obvious — abortion kills, whether it is in the last week or the first week of pregnancy. You can call it a fetus or, as the court said, “potential life.” But no matter what euphemisms we might use to soothe our conscience, simple science and staggering medical advances over the past 40 years render it all vanity. …

The grand jury report also notes that Dr. Gosnell kept in his office 20 to 30 jars filled with the feet of the aborted. That Mengele-esque detail aside, Dr. Gosnell’s story should spark questions about the difference between a 25-week-old “baby” and a 24-week-old “fetus.”

Medically, the answer is nothing, and the intellectually honest know it.

The argument for abortion in the new millennium has become the argument for politically correct infanticide. Not the “bad” kind of infanticide that selects for gender or against ethnicity, but the “good” kind of American infanticide that selects against the young for the sole convenience of the old.

That’s the inconvenient truth. Pay no attention to those jars filled with baby feet.

And, Ed Morrissey concludes:

McMahon will spend the next several weeks trying to sell utilitarianism to the jury. Let’s see if the media spends the next several weeks trying to sell utilitarianism to the nation.

Will we buy it?

I do know that God is Holy, and He is watching.

This reading of Ephesians 6:10-18 brings tears to the eyes in its force and Truth:

Who is Amanda Thatcher?

Setting aside the inability of the Antique Media to discern the difference between the Eternal and politics, the answer:

After being carried through the streets of London in a flag-draped coffin aboard a gun carriage, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was laid to rest this morning in St. Paul’s Cathedral. But the big story of the day wasn’t Maggie. No, it was a 19-year-old Texan who stole the show from the deceased Iron Lady.

With a poise reminiscent of the elder Thatcher, Amanda Thatcher, Margaret’s granddaughter, delivered a reading from Ephesians that has the British media agog. Amanda, who lives with her mother in Texas, chose a rather militant passage that calls on believers to “put on the whole armour of God.” But the reading was a good one, delivered with remarkable grace by a young woman suddenly thrust into the international spotlight. In a tweet that nicely summarized the breathless British media reaction, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland couldn’t help but speculate “whether somewhere a Texas Republican operative is watching Amanda Thatcher thinking ‘Wonder if she has political ambitions…’”

So who is Amanda Thatcher, and how did Maggie Thatcher’s granddaughter end up in Texas of all places? Amanda is the daughter of Mark Thatcher and the Texas heiress Diane Burgdorf, who underwent an ugly, highly public divorce from Mark (Diane went so far as to detail her ex-husband’s history of infidelity in a broadside published in a British paper). When Amanda’s father became embroiled in an acrimonious business dispute, Diane agreed to move her family to South Africa. But after Mark was arrested in 2004 over his alleged involvement in a coup in Equatorial Guinea, the marriage finally dissolved. Amanda now lives in Texas with her mother, stepfather, and brother Michael. She is reportedly deeply religious, has carried out missionary work in China, and attends the University of Richmond in Virginia.

Voted “most likely to change the world” by her high school classmates, Amanda was a favorite of the Iron Lady. The former British prime minister reportedly kept a portrait of her two grandchildren on a mantle alongside a picture of Sir Denis, her beloved late husband. Maggie, the daughter of a fervent lay Methodist preacher, approved of Amanda’s turn toward evangelical Christianity, and she cherished her relationship with her granddaughter during her ailing later years. As the Guardian notes in its excellent profile of the young Thatchers, Amanda’s religiosity lined up nicely with Maggie’s hard-nosed political and social conservatism.

Poised, eloquent, the descendant of conservative royalty, evangelical Christian, and Texas-bred: It all seems to add up to a promising political future. She certainly hit it out of the park in her introduction to the world, and isn’t it pretty easy to picture a clip of Amanda’s speech at her grandmother’s funeral playing a role in a future campaign commercial?

The Republican Party could certainly do worse.

We should pay attention to the outcome.

Europeans are fond of telling Israelis that Israel must choose between being a Jewish state (by ending the occupation) or being a democracy; some are beginning to realize that Europe faces an even more wrenching choice. Europe can have monetary union or it can have democracy; it cannot have both.

Those who succumb to “the temptation to whisper against Jesus.”

Cruz terrifies Democrats.

How do I know?

Because they have gone off the cliff and have compared him to Joe McCarthy.

And, he ain’t no Marco Rubio.

Praying for Boston — and America.

HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT — IF TRUE. Boston bombers: FBI hunting 12-strong terrorist “sleeper cell” linked to brothers Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

UPDATE:

Hoax?

Higher education is simply too expensive and out of control — a political cesspool.

I can’t tell you how many applications I saw that were just dripping with white male privelege[sic]. Any of those that I saw basically went straight to the garbage can regardless of how good their qualifactions [sic] were. If I saw an application from a white male that basically was just good test scores, and activities like chess club or math club or what not then it shows me this person is not interested in a diverse environment. Obviously he made no effort in integrating with minorities or to sympathize with them and is counting on male privilege to get in. So that kind of application should get ignored. In their place I admitted a female student. This goes double especially for math/science majors.

Excellent read: Then v Now.

More on Now.

Many things, but also this:

Get over yourselves. For one day, get over yourselves. For one day realize the purpose you claim to serve and distribute what the authorities are confirming as fact. Practice actual news gathering. A public is fearful. Cities are securing their public centers and people are hugging their loved ones extra tight tonight. If you’re an anchor or reporter your professional designation is a publicly-declared obligation to provide unfiltered information to this very public. The public doesn’t give a damn about your political leanings or what you think. Give them the facts.