Posse Incitatus

Anglican fissues widen

The big breakup of the Anglican Communion continues.

Over at The Corner, Jack Fowler offers a slew of links to the latest clashes within the troubled church’s leadership, this time involving the investiture of female bishops.  Apparently, quite a few traditionalists find no scriptural basis for this move.  Rather than accommodating them, the synod voted to steam roller them.

It’s a fascinating contradiction.  On the one hand, the Anglicans are showing brutal determination in enforcing their new dogma regarding female bishops, yet at the same time, they are utterly spineless in dealing with the far greater threat of radical Islam.

This begs the question:  Which is more offensive to the dignity of women, male-only bishops or sharia law with honor killings, female circumcision and arranged marriages?

Of course, the post-modern left has a long and ignoble history of picking the easy fight and shying away from the dangerous ones.  Disaffected Anglicans aren’t likely to hack off anyone’s head or self-detonate on a bus.  It’s fun to take a bellicose and unbending attitude on something when you know the opposition can’t stop you.  I wager quite a few Anglican leaders are working out their frustrations over the drastic decline of the church on these hapless traditionalists who want nothing more than to keep the faith they inherited intact.

The wild card in all this is His Holiness Benedict XVI.  With leading Anglican bishops already negotiating the conversions of entire parishes, Benedict has an historic opportunity bring a huge numbers of Anglicans back into the fold.

Moreover, the fragmentation of the Church of England may well cause a domino affect, as outraged African and American congregations debate breaking with Canterbury over the question of homosexual unions.

A day at the beach

Over the holiday weekend, the Posse ventured to the local swimming hole.  It being hot, most folks were wearing an entirely inadequate amount of clothing.  This made the group of women in body-length bathing suits and headscarves rather conspicuous.

At first glance, it was a Mark Steyn moment: a small group of people consciously separating themselves from the rest.  Surely in the interests of "tolerance" and "multiculturalism" they would demand a secluded space to bathe.  Nope.

The girls, who were teenagers, removed the headgear and dove right in.  Their suits, while covering them from ankle to neck, were form fitting - probably designed for surfing.  So they were modest, but in a good way.  Certainly preferable to all the pre-teen girls wearing string bikinis.

In short, they seemed pretty well assimilated.  I imagined that in a few years, they would probably raise quite a ruckus when Dad or someone tried to tell them what to do.  In the great scheme of things, not all that significant, I know, but I found it encouraging nonetheless.

Another hurdle for reforming Islam

This article in the Wall Street Journal offers more proof that it is easier to leave Islam than reform it.

On Thursday, Islamic radicals sealed off more than 10 Ahmadiyah mosques in Indonesia. This was the predictable outcome of a June 9 government ruling barring the Ahmadiyah from "dissemination activities," whatever that means. Their crime? Peacefully worshipping a liberal form of Islam.

The article goes on to question what is next if the radicals get their way.  Could churches be targeted? Very possibly. 

The difference is that world opinion may well react to an anti-Christian pogrom.  At the very least, the Vatican could lodge diplomatic protests and, if the situation warranted it, Catholics around the world might demonstrate in solidarity.  This being an election year, US politicians – particularly those in districts with big Catholic constituencies - would then huff and puff.  In short, something might actually get done.

Moderate Islam, by contrast, has no friends.

Note that I am not overrating popular outrage – it is a passing thing (see Darfur, Tibet, Zimbabwe) – but at least there are advocates on the world stage for Christians. They may be faint-hearted, militarily feeble and easily distracted, but they are there.

So if you are non-violent Muslim, someone trying to life a moral life, someone who believes in equality for women, who values education, science and commerce, what options do you really have?  If you try to argue for changes in your mosque, you – and your family – could very well end up dead.

If you convert, the danger is there, but at least you know someone out there is on your side.  If nothing else, you will have their prayers.

A demographic thought experiment

Mark Steyn is on vacation, but between Jonah Goldberg’s latest excerpt on NRO and my earlier post on the Pope, demography is back on my mind.

I’ve written before that I do not believe that Steyn is right about Western Europe succumbing to radical Islam.  Here I would like to explore a little more of my thinking.

Steyn focuses a lot on birth rates. That’s understandable, and they are a useful statistic, but they don’t tell the whole story.

Consider that here in the US the average woman has about 2.0 kids.  That’s pretty close to the replacement rate of 2.1 and it is in fact rising.  We are actually at the highest birth rate since the end of the Baby Boom in the early 1970s.

Now what does this mean?  It does not mean that every woman has a kid, it means that some have four, some have one and some have none.  No one can have a fraction of a child.

I bring this up because Steyn likes to point out that other countries, particularly in Europe and Japan, are at 1.5 or 1.3 births per woman.  Steyn then goes on to point out that these are not equally distributed and that many of the ones having the kids are Muslim immigrants in the ghettos – people who are very receptive to radicalized Islam and terrorism.

All well and good, and sorry to bore a bunch of you with this, but I need to get it out of the way.  Anyhow, my point is that Steyn’s assertion about birth rates being unequally distributed between Muslim and non-Muslim is arguably true that it is not equally distributed – in Europe in particular – between what I will call “culturally confident” and “culturally ashamed.”

To put it another way, the non-immigrant Europeans who are having kids, who in fact tend to have larger families, are probably not likely to be nihilistic Bohemian types, but rather old-guard traditionalists who still believe in the greatness of their ancient land.

Here in the US we use the terms “liberal” and “conservative” but I don’t think they fit. For one thing, “liberal” in Europe (and Australia) actually means “conservative” in the American sense (that is, a focus on small government, individual rights and support for free markets).

Okay, so the notion here is that Europe is not in a “death spiral,” but rather it is undergoing a transformation.  Those who have no confidence in their civilization are having no children, but that fragment that does is still reproducing.

How big that fragment is I have no idea, but I’ve read enough posts from Europeans to know that is still out there.

Europe, far more so than the US, is divided by social class.  Despite the prevalence of republics (or at least constitutional monarchies), birth matters a lot more over there than over here.

One of the best demonstrations of this I’ve seen is the contrast between the movies “La Femme Nikita” and the American version “Point of No Return.”  Same story, different countries.

In both versions, our criminal-turned-assassin meets a guy while in deep cover and falls in love.  Yet the differences are telling.

In the French version, it is her reluctance to discuss her family that causes the love affair to falter; in the American one, she is easily able to dismiss family as something she doesn’t talk about – it is her feelings that matter more.

Friends of mine who visit Europe often note that in Europe, people as you where you are from, while Americans ask you what you do.  Again, class still matters.

Why bring this up?  Because Europe’s emaciated militaries still retain a cadre, a “hard core” of professionals who have been there for generations.  Two world wars didn’t wipe them out, and these folks are still serving.  They know their craft and are good at what they do, and I guarantee you they have plans to rapidly mobilize the country for war if it comes to that.  All professional militaries do.

So the thought experiment is this: What if the bulk of the births in Europe among the “natives” are concentrated within this subset?  Mark likes to trot out the example of the Spanish and Italian weddings between two only children.  Okay, but where does the .5 come from?  Some have none, others have many, and not all of them are Muslim.

What this would mean is that Europe’s native population may be dwindling, but it may also be getting more culturally assertive.

The multi-culti, global warmingists have no kids, or at most one, whilst the nth generation Prussian professional has four.  In absolute terms, Muslims will make up a higher percentage, but the remainder could well be the grimly determined heirs of Charles Martel.

Anyhow, I’ve got nothing solid to back it up.  The closest I can come is the fact that the US is having a similar pattern: “red states” have higher birth rates than “blue states,” and even in my local area, religious/cultural conservatives tend to have bigger families than the liberal/progressives.

The Year of St. Paul

I was out of town last week and the nice weather has made me strangely reluctant to sit down inside and bang away on the computer.

However, during my absence, the wide world kept right on turning.

Apparently Obama came up with a seal and discarded it.  Ah for the days when lese majeste was a capital offense.

Meanwhile, the inimitable Spengler has another piece on Pope Benedict XVI and his bold strategy to confront the rising tide of radical Islam – through conversion.

Spengler cites several key developments we’ve already discussed here – such as the conversion of Magdi Christian Allam – as well as something we missed: a Note reminding the faithful of the importance of evangelism.  Something that may have escaped Spengler is that His Holiness has declared June 28, 2008 to June 29, 2009 to be the Year of St. Paul the Apostle, a.k.a the “Apostle to the Gentiles.”

On the one hand, it is an innocuous celebration, marking the 2,000^th birthday of a seminal figure in the Church.  At the same time, it is a pointed reminder that even today, there are nations where the Gospel cannot be legally spoken, where possession of the Good News is a criminal offense, and where conversion to the True Faith brings a sentence of death.

Spengler’s writings capture the curious contradictions of Pope Benedict’s actions: conciliatory yet confrontational, passive yet aggressive.

He is sending a message that there are limits to even Christian tolerance and forgiveness; that the wholesale persecution of his flock is no longer acceptable. 

Benedict may also be one of the few Westerners who is not daunted by the Islamic tide; to put it another way, he is the “Anti-Steyn.”  Whereas Mark Steyn sees Western decline as almost certain the face of a reinvigorated and confident Islam, Pope Benedict sees the indiscriminate violence of the Islamists as a sign of their own weakness – both political and spiritual.

Under this interpretation, the increasingly elaborate and hard-line doctrines of the Islamists are a death spasm, not a growth spurt.

It is a curious question, and one that is rarely asked:  why would a Muslim attempt to “reform” his faith so that it can coexist with modernity when Christianity is already there?

Current efforts to reform Islam have been met with often brutal violence.  By now it is clear that “moderate Muslims” have no champions on the world stage.  The “human rights” community will not lift a finger for them and no nation – not even the United States – will ride to their rescue when co-religionists torture and execute them.

But Christianity still has its champions. 

Consider the two scenarios:

1. A moderate Muslim scholar is reviled by his home country and threatened with death for teaching his humanist doctrines. 

2. A Muslim converts to Christianity and is threatened with death for “apostasy.”

In both cases, a religious court could try the man and find him guilty, with a sentence of death – perhaps reduced to torture in a show of “clemency.”

In the first example, world criticism will be muted; after all, who are we to judge the “true Islam?” Leading opinion makers may well conclude that it is better to let Muslims “work this out themselves” and that for “unbelievers” to intrude would only “incite additional violence.”  Indeed, this Western reticence to interfere in Islam’s “internal conversations” has resulted in creeping Sharia throughout Europe and Canada.

But for the convert, very different rules apply. 

Thus is it an inescapable fact that it is far easier to leave Islam than to reform it.  Benedict knows this, and, one suspects, to do the imams with whom he is going to meet.

I am reminded of the old story about how when Joseph Stalin was asked to change Soviet policy because it was angering the Vatican, he replied:  “And how many divisions has the Pope?”

At the time, people held it up as a witty reminder of how feeble the Church was compared with the raw coercive power of the Red Army and the Soviet Union.

But sixty years later, the Church is still here, and the Soviet Union and its vaunted Red Army are consigned to the history books.  Benedict is clearly hoping for a similar outcome against radical Islam.

Obama's second apostasy

The weather this weekend was wonderful – one of the two dozen or so days a year that Lansing gets direct sunlight – so I’ve been away from the computer and missed the latest news from the increasingly surreal Democratic primary race.

Is there any greater proof needed for the wisdom of the winner-take-all system?  The GOP has had its nominee for what, three months?  Sure, the ideologues still grumble into their copies of National Review and show up to vote in primaries that don’t matter, but most of the squabbling has disappeared – and the worst venom’s basically been forgotten.

Meanwhile, on the progressive side of the spectrum, Michigan and Florida are in fact going to get seated delegates at the convention, but at a discount rate of ½ per person.  Nice.

Now one could argue that this is a pretty good deal since both states violated the sanction against early primaries. However, it doesn’t wash.

For one thing, the rule was stupid. The DNC was on a power trip and waved its mighty club and two critical states called its bluff.  And it was a bluff, since the delegates are getting seated.

But the punishment is pathetic, just enough to sting, but not enough to cripple.  In fact, nothing the DNC could do other than withhold money for campaigns and such would really “punish” the states in question, which is why the whole notion of discipline is pointless.  If Michigan and Florida flip decisively into the GOP ranks, the DNC suffers more than the state party does.  The old cut-off-nose-to-spite-face problem.

Meanwhile, Obama has now proven that his faith is really, really solid – and quit his church.

Do we need any further proof that this guy is a rank novice with terrible judgment?  He goes to the Temple of Hate for two decades, and then, when the mainstream notices, bails.  Brilliant.  So what church will he attend now?  Are they going to focus-group it?

Pathetic.

When this whole thing blew up, I said that if Wright and Co. were a problem, he should have left at once. But he didn’t.  Well, it’s too late for do-overs.

I’m a Catholic, which means that Church positions are fair game if you want to argue with me about my beliefs.  For example, I see that the Church is calling for a ban on cluster bombs.  I’m not surprised – indeed I suspect it will be just as successful as the Church’s earlier effort to ban the crossbow. 

Still, arms control isn’t a bad thing.  We don’t use dum-dum bullets, or triangular bayonets any more, and Church teaching underpins the modern notion of “civilized warfare” – silly things like that non-combatants should be protected, that hospitals and houses of worship are not military targets.  You know, all the rules that the terrorists violate at every opportunity.

If there is an issue between me and the Church, it is that Father Pfleger hasn’t been packed off to a monastery for his most decidedly un-Christian tirades.  Wasn’t Father Coughlin enough of a black eye?

Anyhow, I think this episode offers additional proof that Barak Obama is essentially a hollow man with no real guiding principles other than that of personal expediency.  I can’t think of a more dangerous personality type to entrust with the presidency.

Debate of the century

Via Pajamas Media, I found this fascinating tv debate between Mark Steyn and some of his antagonists.

Having not really paid attention to the "sock puppets" before, I am amazed at how immature they are.  The two women sound like valley girls - they don't know their facts, don't really care to, and assume that everyone will just let them have their way.  They have the victim tone of voice down pat.

The fellow is painfully earnest, yet his reading of Ayatollah Khomeini's remarks were one of the best examples of unintentional self-parody I've ever seen. 

These three have learned the liberal debating method well: misquote and distort whenever possible and when challenged, change the subject.  The moderator gamely tries to pin them down, but they won't have any of it.

I give them credit for staying on message - but it is a pretty weak message.  I also enjoy the kids insisting that they feared to debate Mark because he might shout at them or call them names.  Nice.

I have to wonder what the rules will be in the Brave New Canada they wish to make.  Will you have to get government permission to quote well-known public figures, or will a permission slip from these guys suffice?

And if, say, Khadaffi or someone of his ilk goes on about the inevitable defeat of the West, will that also be a hate crime?

There is a real danger in this case.  The kids are very earnest in their objective, which sounds okay on the face of it: we just want to publish a rebuttal.

But if they (and their hidden compatriots) win, they will destroy the free speech of Canada.  Publishers will effectively lose editorial control of their papers; any controversy will be answered with a complaint and the resulting chill to free speech will mean that even vital news of the day may go unreported.

Hopefully, Canada's legislators will pull them back from the brink.

One final observation:  It is highly amusing to see that even as Mark is making his (understandably) passionate rebuttals, he can't resist throwing references in to musicals ("South Pacific") and his copious knowledge of celebrity gossip (Zsa Zsa Gabor).

A true renaissance man.

Benedict comes to America

When Sithkitten heard Pope Benedict XVI was visiting the US, her immediate response was “Where will he be? Can we see him?”

Alas, he will be quite a ways from Michigan (it’s a bit of a commute to New York City or D.C.) so we had to let the opportunity go.  Still, if His Holiness visits any neighboring state, we’ll make the trip.

I want to see this remarkable man.  At 81, his best years are behind him, or so one would think.  Yet he is arguably the most influential pope in a century – and I say that not to denigrate John Paul II, but to point to just how important it is that Christianity have a strong and intellectually sophisticated leader.

Though the Protestants hate to admit it, the Pope is the voice of Christianity.  When he speaks, the world listens.

I happened to be by the radio and heard that he concluded his White House remarks with “God bless America.” How wonderful!

Does it not show the stark contrast between “Black Liberation Theology” which curses this great country, and the Holy Catholic Church, which praises it?   I’m sure some enterprising pundit will edit those clips back to back to make the point clear: Jeremiah Wright’s “God damn America” vs Pope Benedict’s blessing.

There have been some rumblings in the blogosphere that Mark Steyn might be wrong after all, that the “rising tide” of Islamofascism may in fact be its last desperate throes in the face of rising Christian evangelization.  The new Catholic church in Qatar – opened this Easter – is the first in the Persian Gulf, and drew 10,000 worshippers. 

There are also rumblings that the Pope is going to make the persecution of Christians in Arabia a larger issue, and press the Saudis to change their ban on bibles.  This would be huge.

He is a man of peace, but also of courage.  His very public conversion of Magdi Christian Allam is an excellent example of this.  His critics (particularly among Muslims) called it “provocative,” and they were right – but it was provocative only because the West is so used to surrender that any attempt to assert the Truth of Christianity now seems like a declaration of war.

But it wasn’t.  People should be free to choose their own faiths without coercion. 

What Benedict is doing is speaking the Truth and that is what makes his critics so uncomfortable.

Let’s face it: God set a high standard.  High standards are hard to meet – it takes a lot of work and sacrifice.  It’s like taking any other test – you get out of it what you put into it.

If you don’t ever study, if you skip class, you probably will flunk the final exam. 

People like Andrew Sullivan want to rules changed to accommodate their moral laziness.  A friend of mine calls them “cafeteria Catholics” because they pick and choose the parts of the doctrine they are going to follow, like going through a buffet line.

A lot of Protestants have embraced this concept.  Their goal is to make worship as easy as possible.  Thus we have the Muslim Anglican.  Basically they are so eager to make people happy that, as a practical matter, being Christian involves giving up nothing.  Everything’s peachy with them.

Benedict is basically calling them out. He has openly said he’d rather have a smaller church than a large one that stands for nothing.  Amen. 

Picking up the gauntlet

Having thrown down the gauntlet to Mark Steyn, it is only fair that I offer my own course of action.

Before beginning, it is important that we are realistic in our appraisal of the situation.  To paraphrase Don Rumsfeld, we go to war with the society we have.  Thus, notions about creating a Colonial Office or hoping to rebuild the civilizational confidence that existed prior to 1913 art not viable options.  The president is after all only one man and can only do so much.  One of the strangest delusions of the left in modern times is their treatment of the presidency as a quasi-religious office – essentially an elected Dalai Lama who can magically change reality with a speech or proclamation (and if that president is Barak Obama, watch for oceans to part on command).

That was partly why I hammered Mark in the first place.  We need to be realistic.  A president has lots of things to keep himself busy.  There are budgets, elections, appointments and so on.  All of this requires a give and take that even the greatest leaders found grueling.

That being said, there are things the president could do to reinforce the West’s self-confidence and improve our struggle against radical Islam.

A good starting place is to reenergize the US war effort, to better explain what has happened and why.  This would require an energetic media campaign which would require more than just photo ops and set-piece speeches.  Those have their place, but I am also talking about formal ceremonies to honor returning units – ceremonies with the president in attendance – not exactly victory parades, but something much like them.

In addition, I would urge the enlargement of the US military and – this is important – make a major speech urging America’s youth to join.  McCain is superbly placed to do this given his biography.  Something along these lines:

“Years from now, when the war is won – what will you have done?  Vietnam was a tragedy- not the least because we abandoned our allies - yet I have never been ashamed to have worn my country’s uniform in wartime.  Today, we have the best-trained, best-equipped and most-effective military in our nation’s history.  Now is the time to step up and show what you are made of.”

I’ve said before that failure to make a speech like this was a huge blunder for Bush.  Instead he told people it was patriotic to shop.  Pathetic.

Okay, so having done that, what else can be done? 

On the foreign policy front, I would demand religious freedom around the globe, to the point of sanctions (diplomatic at first) for those regimes that refuse.  Saudi Arabia would be target number one in this, and it would be a very easy case to make – and hard for liberals to object.  Americans love moral causes and what cause is more moral that demanding the freedom – for Americans no less – to worship abroad.

Finally, the president could talk about the importance of free speech at home and how our values are worth defending.  Call this a “slam Hollywood” strategy, but with a twist.  Instead of taking on Hollywood for peddling smut or being unpatriotic, the president would talk about their silence in the face of oppression – whether women in this country forced to live under sharia or threats to free speech.

Part of this strategy might be to call on the Justice Department to investigate “honor killings,” maybe even establishing a task force to determine how often they happen in the US.  This would really put the feminists in a bind, because on the one hand, it plays right into their “silent rape epidemic” spiel, but on the other it forces them to actually abandon their multicultural bromides.  Congressional hearings could host a variety of women’s advocates like Ayaan Hirsi Ali and talk about female genital mutilation.

It’s not a huge list and wouldn’t result in victory in four years or less, but it would help.  And I understand that part of the give and take of politics would require holding actions or retreats on other legislation.  The point is that I think the costs of these initiatives would be fairly low vs the return.

A more belligerent stance like the one I think Mark favors simply wouldn’t be possible.  It may down the road (particularly if this ground work is laid) but not right now.

He is Risen

The Posse wishes you a Happy Easter.  The five inches of snow that fell on Good Friday are melting steadily away.  The sun is shining and brunch was quite tasty, thank you.

Our readers may be interested to know that Sithkitten had surgery Friday - there's a fancy term for it but basically they used a robot to remove her uterus.  She's home and doing fine.  This should help some long-term issues she's been having, and thanks to the wonder of robots, she should be up and around in no time.

There is a lot to be thankful this spring.  MSU keeps winning, Duke lost, and the Pope - God Bless Him - is standing tall for the Church.

Given the cowardly crouch so much of Western civilization has assumed these days, it is refreshing and encouraging to see the Pontiff not afraid to accept Islamic conversions to Christianity.  It is also worth noting that the individual has been forced to seek police protection - something without precedent for those who choose to convert the other way.  Indeed, as the Posse has noted, you can convert to Islam and still keep your day job as an Anglican Priest!

I suppose it is only a matter of time before the Anglicans announce they won't accept Muslim converts (in the name of tolerance, of course) but at least His Holiness still takes his mission seriously. 

The deeper point here is that at some point, the constant appeasement of the most radical Islamists has to end.  When the last Mohammed cartoon is burned, when the last "insensitive" film is banned, they will start claiming the churches - and enforcing death on apostates.  Those hip "Coexist" bumperstickers are nothing but whistling past the graveyard - when the radicalized Imam shows up and demands that your congregation embrace the Prophet, you can't buy him off with good feelings.  It'll be Islam, tribute or the sword.

Pope Benedict understands this.  He is walking a fine line, trying to remain conciliatory, but also true to his calling as the Vicar of Christ.  If that is "hard-line," we need more of it.