Let’s pretend, for a moment, that academic freedom really did reign on America’s college campuses. I know, it’s difficult to envision, but just for the sake of argument let’s pretend it exists.

So into our little fantasy, let’s introduce a character. Let’s make him one of the most influential young conservative Christians in America, who is also a teaching assistant and Ph.D. candidate at Yale. (Ha ha ha! A well-known conservative Christian teaching at Yale! This is one crazy fantasy!)

And let’s say that in a lecture one day, he says the following things:

1. The Bible teaches that Islam is evil. Evil, repugnant, futile and useless.

2. Muslims, therefore, are evil.

3. God says that Muslims are spiritually filthy.

4. The life and property of Muslims hold no value when we are battling them. Here in America, this is not the place and time where we can take their lives and property, but in other places, we can, and at another time, we may do it here, as well. But not here now. Not yet.

Let’s further pretend that we have audio of this teaching, widely available on the internet.

Care to speculate on the reaction from the Left? The mainstream media? Obama?

Well, their heads would probably implode.

However, last I looked, their heads are all still intact. Which means that we have one serious double standard working here. Because leaving behind our pretend scenario and turning to cold hard reality, our young influential conservative cleric at Yale is not a Christian (of course) but a Muslim. And here’s what he has to say:

1. The Koran teaches that Christianity is evil. Evil, repugnant, futile and useless. (He calls it “shirk” or polytheism, because he misunderstands the nature of the Trinity)

2. Christians are evil. It’s important to study their teachings to understand evil.

3. Allah calls Christians filthy. People who practice “shirk” (known as “mushrikoun”) are “nejjis” – filthy.

4. The life and property of Christians (mushrikoun) hold no value in the state of jihad. Not here right now, in this country. This is not the time or place. This will be the case when we are in a state of jihad, in an Islamic state, when there is a caliphate.

The teacher in question, one Yasir Qadhi, emphasizes that he doesn’t mean in America – at least not now. Qadhi is described by the New York Times as:

“…a fixture on the New Haven campus. He wore a trim beard and preppy polo shirts, blending in with other graduate students as he lugged an overstuffed backpack into Blue State Coffee for his daily cappuccino. A popular teaching assistant, he exuded a sprightly intensity in class, addressing the undergraduates as ‘dudes.’”

Dude! You’re filthy, repugnant and evil, and a day is soon coming when your iPod and skateboard – and head – are mine. But for now… let’s grab a cappuccino.

Of course, my analogy breaks down with #4, because Jesus Christ certainly does not teach that we are to take the lives or property of non-Christians. Even if we lived in a “Christian” state. Even if our leader was a pope or pastor or Billy Graham. It wouldn’t happen – that’s not what following Jesus is all about. That’s why we can live side by side with lots of other people who reject and even demonize the Bible and our teachings. Our Muslim friends, not so much. Islamists cannot live side by side with lots of other people who reject and even demonize their Koran and teachings. In fact, they’re not happy even if someone on the other side of the world burns one copy of their book. They’re so unhappy, in fact, that innocent people have to die because of it.

Now, which faith tradition are we calling evil, again?

Most of the nation is still celebrating the elimination of Osama bin Laden, the monster behind one of the worst days in American history. Some are relieved bin Laden can no longer aid the jihadist cause; others take pleasure in knowing the suffering he caused us has been partially repaid.

But at least one voice is having none of it. At the Huffington Post, “specialist in transformational change” (whatever that means) Dr. Pamela Gerloff writes that celebrating bin Laden’s death is mentally unhealthy and geopolitically dangerous:

“Celebrating” the killing of any member of our species–for example, by chanting USA! USA! and singing The Star Spangled Banner outside the White House or jubilantly demonstrating in the streets–is a violation of human dignity. Regardless of the perceived degree of “good” or “evil” in any of us, we are all, each of us, human. To celebrate the killing of a life, any life, is a failure to honor life’s inherent sanctity.

Plenty of people will argue that Osama Bin Laden did not respect the sanctity of others’ lives. To that I would ask, “What relevance does that have to our own actions?” One aspect of being human is our ability to choose our own behavior; more specifically, our capacity to return good for evil, love for hate, dignity for indignity. While Osama Bin Laden was widely considered to be the personification of evil, he was nonetheless a human being. A more peaceable response to his killing would be to mourn the many tragedies that led up to his violent death and the thousands of violent deaths that occurred in the attempt to eliminate him from the face of the Earth; and to feel compassion for anyone who, because of their role in the military or government, American or otherwise, has had to play a role in killing another. This kind of compassion can be cultivated, as practitioners of many different spiritual traditions will attest […]

It is hard not to think that some of the impulse to celebrate “justice being done” may also contain a certain pleasure in revenge–not just “closure” but “getting even.” The world is not safer with Osama Bin Laden’s violent demise (threat levels are going up, not down); evil has not been finally removed from the Earth; the War on Terror goes on–so any celebration must be tempered with the sobering fact that much work still needs to be done to establish peace.

There’s a lot to unpack here, most of it awful. But first, for the sake of fairness and decency one fair point must be acknowledged: If we truly recognize the intrinsic worth of all human life, we have to recognize that even the worst among us have souls, warped and polluted though they may be, and be careful not to think casually of any killing—even just and necessary killing, as bin Laden’s death clearly was. Now, I’d be lying if I told you I haven’t found some satisfaction in the confidence that Osama now knows the afterlife isn’t quite what he expected, but I also have to admit those thoughts don’t live up to the standard my Savior has set for me.

So we shouldn’t take pleasure in exacting bloody vengeance, but there is another aspect to the celebration that is entirely appropriate. As I survey the reactions of friends, acquaintances, and pundits, it seems to me bloodlust is not the primary animating force of their celebration. Justice is. People are celebrating the fact that an act of tremendous evil has been punished, ensuring that bin Laden will never again threaten the United States and sending a clear message to our surviving enemies: hurt us, and we’ll find you, no matter where on earth you go, no matter how long it takes. And when we do, you won’t like what comes next.

Celebrating the destruction and punishment of evil is not only a proper impulse in a free society it’s a necessary one. Quite simply, a society that does not strongly embrace and venerate the punishment of evil is a society that is incapable of survival.

Gerloff’s failure to understand this is bad, but it’s not what makes her piece one of the most disgustingly immoral things I’ve read in recent memory. No, that would be the moral equivalence between America and the jihadists who want us dead. “Good” and “evil” are placed in scare quotes. We’re told a better response would be to “feel compassion” for anyone involved in any military or government who “has had to play a role in killing another,” as if a drone strike on a terrorist hideout and detonating yourself in a crowded subway are equally tragic. And then there’s this:

The truth is that “celebrating justice” when one person is killed–as happens regularly in the gang wars of American cities–only incites further desire for revenge, which, from “the other side’s” viewpoint, is usually called “justice.”

Consider this: If a leader in our country were killed in the manner in which Osama Bin Laden was killed, as “justice” for his acts of aggression in the War on Terror–and supporters of that act were shown proudly chanting their country’s name, singing their national anthem, and demonstrating in the streets–Americans would likely feel more sickened than joyful, wouldn’t you think? The impulse to celebrate a death depends on what side you’re on.

It doesn’t matter how little you think of Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, or any American leader. It doesn’t matter how much you disagree with US military operations in Libya, Pakistan, Iraq, or Afghanistan. There is no comparison between any of our leaders or actions and those of al Qaeda, Hamas, or Hezbollah. “The other side” might say their cause is justice and ours is revenge, and some might even believe it. But reality is what it is regardless of “viewpoints.” Those who seek to kill and dominate infidels are the bad guys, and the ones trying to stop them are the good guys.

Period.

If the rest of the country were so foolish as to believe that the key to peace with monsters is quashing the celebration of monsters’ deaths, the ensuing suffering would be staggering. However unhealthy the “psychology of revenge” may be, it pales in comparison to the poison that is the neurosis of moral equivalency.

The Left’s sinister love affair with Islam includes a shared  “hatred for … the Judeo-Christian heritage of the United States,” as Dr. Jamie Glazov skillfully exposes in United in Hate. MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell fans the flames of this romance with his assault on Glenn Beck’s Christian beliefs. The bleeding-hearted leftist completely ignores Islamic brutality while trashing the real religion of peace, Christianity.

I dare O’Donnell to criticize Koran-believing Muslims the way he does Glenn Beck. 

O’Donnell insists Glenn Beck’s belief in the scriptures is insincere:

Beck…[lies] about being a literal follower of the Bible, which of course calls for death to children who disobey their parents and death to people who do not observe the Sabbath, and, death to adulterers.  No one believes the Bible was right about that anymore, not even Beck.  People like Beck hide from you the passages in the Bible that are clearly wrong, for the most part they get away with that.

“No one believes the Bible was right”?  Would O’Donnell have the guts (or even the desire) to tell a Muslim guest “C’mon, you Muslims don’t still believe in the Koran.”

Mr. Moody Bible Institute deliberately discounts significant facts: although Christians follow the Ten Commandments, guidelines even Hindus and Buddhists agree are morally right, Christians no longer follow Old Testament laws because Christ came to save, not condemn. That’s the reason Christians follow the Gospels of Jesus—they’re not bound to the laws of Moses anymore. Christ died to redeem mankind, not condemn the world, and ushered in an entirely new set of rules, which includes “love your neighbor as yourself.”  If you love your neighbor, you’re not going to stone him to death, even if he happens to work for MSNBC.

Those following Christ’s moral teachings realize Islamic teachings are the opposite of love and life–hate and murder. Leftists want Americans to embrace Islam as the religion of peace despite Koranic evidence proving otherwise:

Koran verse 9:5, the “Verse of the Sword,” demands Muslims:

…kill the Mushrikun {unbelievers} wherever you find them, and capture them and besiege them, and prepare for them each and every ambush.

Verse 8:39 commands:

And fight them until there is no more Fitnah (disbelief and polytheism: i.e. worshipping others besides Allah) and the religion (worship) will all be for Allah Alone [in the whole of the world].

Verse 9:29 calls Muslims to

Fight against those who believe not in Allah.

Religion of peace?  According to the Koran, O’Donnell must be executed because he is an “unbeliever.” Yet his moral outrage is about Glenn Beck?

This popular post was originally published April 4, 2011.

Editor’s Note: Diane Schrader attended the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s West Coast retreat this past weekend and will be filing several reports on the various speakers and panels. This is the first.

I’ve got a few weighty things on my mind that I’m about to unpack on you. But let’s ease into it gently, courtesy of Rush Limbaugh:

Q: What do God and Barack Obama have in common?

A: Neither has a birth certificate!

Q: What is one difference between Obama and God?

A: Leftists love Obama!

Q: What’s another difference between Obama and God?

A: God doesn’t think he’s Obama!

Heh heh. El Rushbo tells a good joke. And that’s a lighthearted introduction into a heavy topic – a topic that talk show host and nationally-syndicated columnist Dennis Prager opted to take on as the final keynote speaker at this weekend’s David Horowitz Freedom Center retreat in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

God, according to Prager, is in trouble.

Of course, God is not really in trouble. We’re the ones who are really in trouble, because of what we as a society are doing to God. For the purposes of this discussion, it really doesn’t matter if you’re an atheist – the ramifications apply to us all. But Prager thinks he knows why atheism might be more attractive to a lot of people right now, and he outlined a number of reasons.

The first is the evil that people are doing in God’s name. And no, he’s not talking about the Westboro crazies (although they’re definitely in the running for consideration). He’s talking about Islam. Every time someone yells Allahu Akbar as they blow something up, or slit someone’s throat – they’re claiming to act for God. This, no doubt, is a turnoff to many.

What’s perhaps an even greater turnoff is what Prager calls the “pathetic response” to this evil from (mainstream) Judaism and Christianity. The fact that only Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians are consistently speaking out against Islam’s crimes (a good deed for which they are roundly condemned as “Islamophobic”) is indeed a sad commentary on the state of those who claim religious faith in this country.

It’s not enough, as Prager indicated, to condemn religious violence in general – because nobody is slitting anyone’s throat in the name of Jesus Christ, and nobody is yelling “Yay Torah” before blowing themselves up. Evil should be identified and denounced – and most Jews and Christians are doing a terrible job of that. It appears that their God has no teeth.

What passes for faith in most mainstream (liberal) Christian denominations and most of Judaism (outside Orthodox) has become a mushy pablum of warm fuzzy feelings instead of concrete moral standards. One can’t even discuss concepts like sin and hell (which are necessary prerequisites, by the way, for mercy and grace) without being accused of “extremism” and, in a torturous logical twist, of being just like “radical Muslims.”

The lack of critical thinking skills from which these illogical flights of fancy emerge is of course the fault, in part, of our current educational vacuum, but Prager frames it in an interesting way. If a student was homeschooled in a strict Christian home his or her entire life, never allowed to watch television, listen to popular music, read anything other than the Bible, get on the internet, or even leave the house – would you consider them somewhat brainwashed? You might – although of course, I defy you to actually find anyone who has experienced this (despite the fevered imaginations of teacher unions that oppose homeschooling or any type of Christian education).

Now Prager turns this on its head. Keeping in mind the virtually lockstep leftist leanings of popular culture, the media and our educational institutions – if a student went to a secular K-12 school system his or her entire life, absorbed countless hours of secular TV programming, listened to nothing but popular music, read nothing about teen-oriented magazines and books, and went to movies, concerts etc. that were all completely non-religious and non-conservative in nature, would you consider them to be somewhat brainwashed? Because you should – and I guarantee that you can find thousands and probably millions of kids whose lives mirror this set of experiences.

What does this have to do with God? Well, an entire generation has been inoculated against thinking about Him in any kind of serious way. And without an understanding of God, as Prager says, our concepts of good and evil grow blurry indeed, and we get all mixed up, just like the leftists who confuse hating people who fight evil with hating evil.

What’s more, as Prager points out, “When you don’t fight great evil, you fight little evils.” If you can’t be bothered to denounce the decapitation of an Israeli infant by murderous Palestinians, but you get all agitated about someone burning a book (I’m looking at you, Joe Klein, Harry Reid, and Lindsey Graham) – you’re part of this problem. If you’re an animal rights activist who is okay with PETA’s “Holocaust on Your Plate” program, which compares a barbecued hamburger with the gassing and incineration of 6 million humans – well, frankly, words fail me on that one.

But this is the kind of world we humans create when we shut out God. Our country was founded by men who, regardless of their personal relationship to any particular religion, recognized both the existence of a Deity and the moral imperative of aligning oneself with Him. They were not all Christians (although most of them were), but they all believed that the best government would be that system that understood man’s true nature (we are eminently corruptible) and crafted a system of checks and balances in full recognition of that nature.

Today, we still enjoy (some of) the fruit of those wise decisions. When we insist on denying the importance of God in our societal life, as Dennis Prager so eloquently reminded us, we do so at our own peril.

Editor’s Note: Diane Schrader attended the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s West Coast retreat this past weekend and will be filing several reports on the various speakers and panels. This is the second; read the first here.

I have to give props to David Horowitz – his recent Freedom Center weekend featured a significant diversity of thought. A particularly fascinating element was a debate between Jihad Watch director Robert Spencer, author of Stealth Jihad, and Dr. Zuhdi Jasser, a former U.S. Navy Lieutenant Commander who advocates the “separation of mosque and state.”

The crux of the debate is the million dollar question – are jihad, terrorism and sharia law inextricably linked to Islam itself, or can so-called moderate Muslims embrace American concepts of liberty and justice, independent of the political aspects of Islam?

Jasser, of course, believes that type of separation can indeed happen – that Islam on its own is not inherently violent or hateful. Part and parcel of this perspective is the whole concept of “radical Islam” being some type of extremist outworking of an overall less malevolent Islamic worldview.

Spencer, who unlike Jasser is not a Muslim, argued that anyone who studies the scriptures of Islam must come to the conclusion that so-called radical Islamists are merely acting on the actual tenets of their faith – in other words, that the Islamic worldview is indeed malevolent. And Spencer’s got me convinced that he’s a lot closer to the truth than Jasser.

History teaches that Islam has not always been aggressive, as Jasser pointed out, but Spencer noted that just because Muslims were not powerful enough to wage violent jihad at certain historical moments does not mean that their goal had ever changed.

Jasser also argued that how Muslims perceive Koranic teaching is somewhat affected by their particular imam (or teacher,) the implication being that radical imams produce radical followers. He drew a parallel between that and a Jew or Christian deferring to their rabbi’s or minister’s view of scripture. But the Bible urges followers to test any teacher’s interpretation against the scripture itself – effectively minimizing the danger of a teacher leading people astray. Not to say it hasn’t happened – virtually every cult is birthed by someone twisting the words of scripture – but therein lies the point. Jasser’s analogy falls apart because any “radical minister,” for example, is soon exposed as a teacher of anti-biblical thought. In comparison, the so-called radical imams are teaching a doctrine that is in fact what the Koran says.

Another implication of the argument that Muslims can separate some of the Koran’s teachings from their everyday lives is the idea that Islam simply needs to “grow up” – that it needs to evolve into something more compatible with modern values. An unspoken assumption behind this idea is that Judaism and Christianity have already gone through such an evolution, which is why those belief systems are compatible with Western thought.

This is nonsense. Judaism and Christianity are compatible with Western thought, all right, because Western thought owes much of its lineage – the concepts of individual responsibility, private property, and fallen human nature, among other valuable lessons – in part to Judeo-Christian thinking. But Jasser misunderstands the fundamental nature of both Judaism and Christianity. They have both maintained the same teachings for thousands of years. They have not “evolved” (although they have been bastardized, by some – but that’s a discussion for another day).

So quite frankly it seems kind of insulting to Muslims to imply that, if we just give Islam some more time, it will “grow up” and become a faith we can all learn to love. The only change that can happen and is compatible with our American system of government is when individual Muslims decide that living in liberty and freedom is of higher value to them than fully embracing Islam (which, although he might not characterize it exactly so, is indeed what Jasser has chosen to do).

Regarding sharia law in particular, Jasser says that any system of law that may be said to be “of God” becomes manmade law when humans implement it – but this is a very weak argument that somehow sharia itself can be separated from Islam. In another discussion during the Horowitz event, Jasser indicated that he thought a person could embrace sharia “just for themselves” – but this is illogical. No one can embrace any system of law all by themselves, because systems of law include such things as judgment and punishments. More than one person is required for a legal system.

In defending attacks against the prophet Mohammed, Jasser implied that other faiths look up to men who were flawed, like Abraham. Jasser of course entirely misses the point that neither Judaism nor Christianity hold Abraham to be equivalent to deity, or in any way impervious to criticism. (Nobody gets killed if you draw a picture of him, either.) And the Bible is fairly clear about Abraham’s personal failings. Spencer agreed, however, that calling Mohammed out for his pedophilia does not win over most Muslims.

Dr. Jasser, somewhat poignantly, asked what he was to teach his children if Islam could not be separated from its violent, anti-Western tendencies and political visions of conquering the world. I would argue, with great respect for Dr. Jasser and his noble but misguided mission of trying to fuse his faith with American values – that in fact Islam is not a faith that he wants to pass along to his children.

Other presentations throughout the weekend underscored that reality, as speakers like Andrew McCarthy and Karen Lugo brought home, again and again, the sobering reality of fatwas, terrorism and jihad. Watch the NewsReal Blog site for video of the Enemies Within panel, in particular.

Editor’s Note: Diane Schrader attended the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s West Coast retreat this past weekend and will be filing several reports on the various speakers and panels. This is the first.

I’ve got a few weighty things on my mind that I’m about to unpack on you. But let’s ease into it gently, courtesy of Rush Limbaugh:

Q: What do God and Barack Obama have in common?

A: Neither has a birth certificate!

Q: What is one difference between Obama and God?

A: Leftists love Obama!

Q: What’s another difference between Obama and God?

A: God doesn’t think he’s Obama!

Heh heh. El Rushbo tells a good joke. And that’s a lighthearted introduction into a heavy topic – a topic that talk show host and nationally-syndicated columnist Dennis Prager opted to take on as the final keynote speaker at this weekend’s David Horowitz Freedom Center retreat in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.

God, according to Prager, is in trouble.

Of course, God is not really in trouble. We’re the ones who are really in trouble, because of what we as a society are doing to God. For the purposes of this discussion, it really doesn’t matter if you’re an atheist – the ramifications apply to us all. But Prager thinks he knows why atheism might be more attractive to a lot of people right now, and he outlined a number of reasons.

The first is the evil that people are doing in God’s name. And no, he’s not talking about the Westboro crazies (although they’re definitely in the running for consideration). He’s talking about Islam. Every time someone yells Allahu Akbar as they blow something up, or slit someone’s throat – they’re claiming to act for God. This, no doubt, is a turnoff to many.

What’s perhaps an even greater turnoff is what Prager calls the “pathetic response” to this evil from (mainstream) Judaism and Christianity. The fact that only Orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians are consistently speaking out against Islam’s crimes (a good deed for which they are roundly condemned as “Islamophobic”) is indeed a sad commentary on the state of those who claim religious faith in this country.

It’s not enough, as Prager indicated, to condemn religious violence in general – because nobody is slitting anyone’s throat in the name of Jesus Christ, and nobody is yelling “Yay Torah” before blowing themselves up. Evil should be identified and denounced – and most Jews and Christians are doing a terrible job of that. It appears that their God has no teeth.

What passes for faith in most mainstream (liberal) Christian denominations and most of Judaism (outside Orthodox) has become a mushy pablum of warm fuzzy feelings instead of concrete moral standards. One can’t even discuss concepts like sin and hell (which are necessary prerequisites, by the way, for mercy and grace) without being accused of “extremism” and, in a torturous logical twist, of being just like “radical Muslims.”

The lack of critical thinking skills from which these illogical flights of fancy emerge is of course the fault, in part, of our current educational vacuum, but Prager frames it in an interesting way. If a student was homeschooled in a strict Christian home his or her entire life, never allowed to watch television, listen to popular music, read anything other than the Bible, get on the internet, or even leave the house – would you consider them somewhat brainwashed? You might – although of course, I defy you to actually find anyone who has experienced this (despite the fevered imaginations of teacher unions that oppose homeschooling or any type of Christian education).

Now Prager turns this on its head. Keeping in mind the virtually lockstep leftist leanings of popular culture, the media and our educational institutions – if a student went to a secular K-12 school system his or her entire life, absorbed countless hours of secular TV programming, listened to nothing but popular music, read nothing about teen-oriented magazines and books, and went to movies, concerts etc. that were all completely non-religious and non-conservative in nature, would you consider them to be somewhat brainwashed? Because you should – and I guarantee that you can find thousands and probably millions of kids whose lives mirror this set of experiences.

What does this have to do with God? Well, an entire generation has been inoculated against thinking about Him in any kind of serious way. And without an understanding of God, as Prager says, our concepts of good and evil grow blurry indeed, and we get all mixed up, just like the leftists who confuse hating people who fight evil with hating evil.

What’s more, as Prager points out, “When you don’t fight great evil, you fight little evils.” If you can’t be bothered to denounce the decapitation of an Israeli infant by murderous Palestinians, but you get all agitated about someone burning a book (I’m looking at you, Joe Klein, Harry Reid, and Lindsey Graham) – you’re part of this problem. If you’re an animal rights activist who is okay with PETA’s “Holocaust on Your Plate” program, which compares a barbecued hamburger with the gassing and incineration of 6 million humans – well, frankly, words fail me on that one.

But this is the kind of world we humans create when we shut out God. Our country was founded by men who, regardless of their personal relationship to any particular religion, recognized both the existence of a Deity and the moral imperative of aligning oneself with Him. They were not all Christians (although most of them were), but they all believed that the best government would be that system that understood man’s true nature (we are eminently corruptible) and crafted a system of checks and balances in full recognition of that nature.

Today, we still enjoy (some of) the fruit of those wise decisions. When we insist on denying the importance of God in our societal life, as Dennis Prager so eloquently reminded us, we do so at our own peril.

As a college student I started studying the Bible and got prideful about my Bible knowledge.  I once told a friend who had a Bible with commentary in it that I disagreed with that he should just throw his Bible in the trash.  That was a horrible thing to say, but now MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell thinks Glenn Beck and really all Christians should throw away their Bibles.  To O’Donnell, only a fool would take Glenn Beck and the Good Book seriously.

O’Donnell, the broke screenwriter turned hack Democrat political adviser, turned Olbermann low-rating replacement, now thinks he is a master theologian and knows what Scripture should be rejected. O’Donnell has picked a fight with Glenn Beck in order to get some attention for himself. Sadly for him, his hubris has taken him too far.

While Beck is part of the Mormon church, he will often talk about general biblical terms that won’t turn off his evangelical viewers.  One of the areas Beck focuses on is the Christian belief in the end times where things on earth move toward more destruction and natural disasters before Christ returns.  O’Donnell believes this is an area he can attack Beck on.  In an attempt to embarrass the popular Fox News host for talking about end time destruction, O’Donnell ends up trying to destroy the Bible.

This past week O’Donnell shifted from taking shots at Beck and his Mormonism to a full-on assault on core beliefs of orthodox Christianity.  The leftist pundit prides himself in being anti-capitalist, but this past Wednesday he looked more anti-Christian than anything else.

O’Donnell claims twelve years of formal education gives him the right to attack Christianity.  What formal education does he have?  He went to an elementary and secondary school that happened to be Catholic. That’s right, the man thinks going to a Catholic school makes you a theologian. Somehow a liberal arts education in math, English, and science makes you a religious expert if a nun happened to teach the class.  However, the MSNBC host has no scholarly theological or seminary training.

The pundit uses his weak qualifications to attack Christian beliefs and the Bible. You would think he would have limited his attack to Mormon theology (since Beck is a Mormon), but instead of focusing on the views of Joseph Smith, he turns to the traditional teachings of Christianity.

Good and thoughtful Christians do not believe the book of Revelation just as no good and thoughtful Christian literally believes everything in the Bible…Christianity has matured into a selective process where Christians take what makes sense to them in the Old and New Testament and ignore the rest.

O’Donnell argues that the Bible is not trustworthy since the Old Testament is filled with laws (like adultery or breaking the sabbath) that if broken could be punishable by death. And since no one thinks some of those laws should be punishable by death today, that means the Bible is a book that simply has some good advice.  Christians can pick their own truths to follow out of the mess of lies in Scripture.

If O’Donnell had biblical training he would know that the Old Testament has 3 types of laws listed by scholars as: Moral, civil, and ceremonial.  Moral laws are biblical statutes that are for all people for all time.  Ceremonial laws were specifically for Old Testament Jews in keeping certain ancient religious ceremonies.  And civil laws were only for Israel in the Old Testament where they had a theocratic government.  The only kind of Bible laws that applies to Christians are moral laws.

Christians don’t reject those civil and ceremonial laws because they don’t believe them or have matured (as O’Donnell claims), they simply understand their context.  The Bible is not false simply because certain laws were only meant for certain times and certain situations.

Father Lawrence closes his argument claiming that real and good Christianity had to reject most of the Bible in order for it to survive. Of course, O’Donnell must not have studied the last 100 years of church history or he would know that a small and dying breed of Christianity agrees with him, while the Bible-believers Beck is trying to reach are filling rapidly growing churches.

O’Donnell may have gotten himself some temporary attention with picking this fight, but it’s one he can’t win.  Beck has a theology different than many of his viewers, but he is smart enough to focus on the areas on which most can agree.  O’Donnell’s attack on faith is empty and it won’t hurt Beck. No, all it will do is offend the average American. And that’s precisely what MSNBC excels at these days.  In trying to trash Beck and the Bible, MSNBC has shown themselves to be the ones full of garbage.

Last month the Los Angeles City Council passed a resolution supporting “any legislation that would oppose Islamophobia and random acts of violence against Muslims.” This is at a time when there are over 35,000 gang members on the streets of Los Angeles, when the school system is in distress and when there is a budget deficit of over $200 million. Rahm Emanuel once famously said that a crisis should never be allowed to go to waste, but the Los Angeles City Council is wasting its time addressing a crisis that does not exist. An epidemic of anti-Muslim sentiment might well have been expected in America shortly after 9/11. It didn’t happen then and it’s not happening now.

The FBI statistics for 2009 and the LA County Hate Crime Report published by the Anti-Defamation League both show that 4% of religious hate crimes in Los Angeles County are committed against Muslims as opposed to 3% against Protestants, 9% against other Christians, 13% against Scientologists and, wait for it, 65% against Jews. The ADL’s report is compiled using official crime statistics as well as information provided to and evaluated by ADL’s professional staff, by law enforcement officers, by community leaders and by victims.

The term “Islamophobia” implies that Americans and, in the specific case of this resolution, Angelenos have an irrational fear of Islam. Considering the attacks against us on 9/11 and the ones in Bali, Madrid, London, Glasgow’s airport and Mumbai were all carried out by Muslim terrorists there is nothing in the least phobic about the public’s attitude toward radical Islam. The shoe-bomber, the underwear-bomber, the Times Square bomber and Major Hasan at Fort Hood in Texas were all devotees of Islam. However, it is resolutions of this sort along with the insistence on the part of our president that Islam has played a vital and important role in American life, when the facts prove the opposite, that lead to an increased feeling of Islamonausea.

In America, when Muslim taxi drivers are excused from carrying blind passengers with seeing-eye dogs because the animal is an abomination to them, when Muslim check-out operators in supermarkets are excused from handling liquor or ham, when a Muslim father kills his daughter for becoming too westernized, when a Muslim husband almost decapitates his wife for seeking a divorce and when an American judge refuses to prosecute a Muslim husband for beating his wife because the beating falls within the rubric of Sharia law, our distaste for and suspicion of this retrograde ideology increases by leaps and bounds.

We already have laws that would punish “random acts of violence” as well as hate-crimes. When one considers this unnecessary and pandering resolution one starts to question the source of election funds. Add to this concern the real possibility of the United Nations actually thinking about a resolution to ban any criticism of Islam and our sense that there is an enormous effort underway to institutionalize Islamic totalitarianism, together with the violence and terror it always engenders, becomes even more acute. It is highly discouraging that the Los Angeles City Council would sink to the level of this enterprise. By this anxious act of political correctness the City Council have aligned themselves with a sickening ideology that subjugates women, gleefully hangs homosexuals, and persecutes non-Muslim minorities throughout the world. Thus they become hypocrites to their own values. Their resolution is so nonsensical that it slanders nonsense.

Passing this resolution reinforces the entirely false impression that we are involved in a clash between civilizations when, in fact, we are involved in a clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s best not to get the two confused.

The resolution text:

WHEREAS, any official position of the City of Los Angeles with respect to legislation, rules, regulations or policies proposed to or pending before a local, state or federal governmental body or agency must have first been adopted in the form of a Resolution by the City Council with the concurrence of the Mayor; and

WHEREAS, the City of Los Angeles Human Relations Commission, Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office, Los Angeles Unified School District, Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission and various civic and religious stakeholders have worked to resolve various levels of conflict impacting residents of our City; and

WHEREAS, the City of Los Angeles facilitates access to local government by empowering communities with the knowledge and skills to participate effectively. Los Angeles is comprised of diverse populations that are easily overlooked without proper attention: 47% of the City is foreign-born, speaks 224 languages, and affiliates with 600 religious sects; and
WHEREAS, the City of Los Angeles has historically opposed hate crimes and random acts of violence in previous actions of the council such as the Jewish Federation Alliance in 2008 (CF:08-0100-S1), The Beith David Educational Center Temple in Tarzana (CF:06-0010-S23) in 2006, The Hate Crimes Report (CF:03-2746) of 2002, Shadow Hills Burning Cross Incident (CF:99-0010-S39) in 1999; Hate Crime Destruction at the Go For Broke Monument in Little Tokyo (CF:04-001-S17) in 2004 ,the LAUSD Racial and Ethnic strife in the San Fernando Valley and South Los Angeles (CF:05-0731) in 2005; and

WHEREAS, the concept of religious pluralism is used to describe the significance of interfaith dialogue between members of different religious groups with the goal of minimizing conflicts between the different groups; and

WHEREAS, the City of Los Angeles’ commitment to pluralism and to the free exercise of religion are the cornerstone of American values that have helped produce one of the most ethnically and religiously diverse and vibrant cities in the world; and

WHEREAS, there has been a marked nationwide increase in acts of violence, discrimination and hostility directed at Muslim Americans on the basis of their religious identity including here in Southern California; and

WHEREAS, this rise in anti-Muslim sentiment, commonly called Islamophobia, has contributed to opposition to the lawful construction and expansion of religious centers across the United States, including in Tennessee, Wisconsin, Illinois, Connecticut and California; and

WHEREAS, more than two dozen mosques across America have been the targets of vandalism, arson and other hateful acts in the past two years. In addition, hate crimes and incidents have increased tremendously in recent months and have led to hostile environments for many Muslim Americans; and

WHEREAS, The City of Los Angeles has a history of opposing various degrees of discrimination and supporting the rights to religious liberty and equal protection and recognizing that when those rights are threatened for some they are weakened for all; and

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED, with the concurrence of the Mayor, that by the adoption of this Resolution, the City of Los Angeles hereby includes in its 2011-2012 State and Federal Legislative Program, support and sponsorship of any legislation which would OPPOSE Islamophobia and repudiate random acts of violence against Muslim Americans.

There is a storm brewing over a recently surfaced segment of The Glenn Beck Show from June of 2010. In the video, while he is talking about impeding people with strong convictions, Beck says, “you are going to have to shoot them in the head.” The clip was quickly posted on DailyKos.com along with a description of Beck’s statement. Jed Lewison, the author of the post, provides a long list of names that Beck has put up on his chalkboard, and then goes on to claim that Beck has called for their death:

“The only way to stop their plot, Beck says, is to “shoot them in head” before they “shoot you. It’s worth noting that this wasn’t the first time Beck told his audience that the only way to stop their political opponents was through violence.”

Although the leftist media elites fancy themselves to be so much smarter than the hoi polloi, they seem to be unable to glean meaning from context. Below Lewison’s post is a full transcript of the Beck segment. A quick read of the transcript reveals that Beck does not call for his audience to shoot anyone in the head. Instead, the “you” Beck is addressing happens to be opportunistic politicians, not his audience, and the “them” Beck is talking about are the radical revolutionaries that the politicians are using to empower themselves.

This kind of willful unawareness is a staple tactic of the Left. They feign ignorance, twist meaning, and make radical assertions. By the time their marks (conservatives) have caught on to the sleight-of-hand, the media memes have run their course. Conservatives often issue a response, but by then, the narrative has already been established, and those that have a peripheral interest in politics have moved on to other news.

For example, when Dutch politician, writer, and feminist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, appeared on PBS’s The Tavis Smiley Show last May, Tavis Smiley performed such an overt display of syllogistic sleight-of-hand that the term for such an act should carry his name. Smiley and Ali were discussing Islamic terror. Ali begins:

“These guys are acting on a conviction. Somehow they have gotten it into their minds that killing people is a great thing to do, and they will be rewarded in the afterlife . . .”

At which point, Smiley interrupts:

“But… but Christians do that every single day in this country. Christians, people walk into post offices, they walk into schools, that’s what Columbine was. There’s so many more examples of Christians who do that than you can ever give me of Muslims who have inside this country where you live and work.”

The deception is obvious. Ali is referring to acts of terror perpetrated in the name of Islam. Smiley changes the premise to violence committed by Christians. The Christians that he claims are committing acts of violence are not doing these acts in the name of Christianity; they are psychopaths that happen to have been raised in a Christian environment. Radical Muslims are committing acts of violence for the cause of Islam; they claim that their religion commands them to commit murder. When one compares the argument on an apples-to-apples basis Smiley’s assertion is shown to be pure fraudulence. Ali is caught of guard by Smiley’s logic to such an extent that the only response she can muster is “I think you and I disagree.” Smiley has never issued a correction.

Next: The “Daily” Slight of Hand…

Even by the Left’s usual standards, the shamelessness and dishonesty of their reaction to psychopath Jared Loughner’s shooting spree in Tucson, Arizona—blaming his actions on the allegedly violent and inflammatory rhetoric of conservatives—is almost without peer. It became clear fairly early on that Loughner had serious mental issues and bizarre, apolitical reasons for hating Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. That did not prevent leftist politicians, journalists, commentators, and celebrities from smearing their political foes as accomplices to murder, however. To date, only one notable left-of-center figure—Kirsten Powers—has had the integrity to condemn this smear campaign.

This isn’t new—leftists have a history of blaming conservatives for apolitical crimes (sometimes they even blame conservatives for leftist crimes). In reality, the Left doesn’t care in the slightest about elevating our political discourse. The clearest indicator of their insincerity is that they never hold their own to these standards. The Left’s record of hate and vitriol is the stuff of legend, and while the media likes to forget about it, leftists commit acts of violence, too. Let’s remind them.

Next: A Texan is arrested because he took some molotov cocktails with them while protesting at the Republican National Convention…

Even by the Left’s usual standards, the shamelessness and dishonesty of their reaction to psychopath Jared Loughner’s shooting spree in Tucson, Arizona—blaming his actions on the allegedly violent and inflammatory rhetoric of conservatives—is almost without peer. It became clear fairly early on that Loughner had serious mental issues and bizarre, apolitical reasons for hating Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. That did not prevent leftist politicians, journalists, commentators, and celebrities from smearing their political foes as accomplices to murder, however. To date, only one notable left-of-center figure—Kirsten Powers—has had the integrity to condemn this smear campaign.

This isn’t new—leftists have a history of blaming conservatives for apolitical crimes (sometimes they even blame conservatives for leftist crimes). In reality, the Left doesn’t care in the slightest about elevating our political discourse. The clearest indicator of their insincerity is that they never hold their own to these standards. The Left’s record of hate and vitriol is the stuff of legend, and while the media likes to forget about it, leftists commit acts of violence, too. Let’s remind them.

Next: A Texan is arrested because he took some molotov cocktails with them while protesting at the Republican National Convention…

Left-wing satirist Bill Maher is taking his hatred of the Tea Party movement to the next level. Evidently epithets like crazy, stupid, and racist no longer satisfy him, and he’s decided it’s time to hit “teabaggers” where it really hurts: by mocking their reverence for America’s Founding Fathers, suggesting the Founders’ values aren’t their own:

“[T]he Founding Fathers would have hated your guts…and what’s more, you would have hated them. They were everything you despise. They studied science, read Plato, hung out in Paris, and thought the Bible was mostly bullshit.”

Maher got a crack in at the Founders as well, saying they had a moral code, but it didn’t come from the Bible…”except for the part about, ‘it’s cool to own slaves.’”

Here, Maher is repackaging the ridiculous straw man that conservatism is not only incompatible with reason and science, but that right-wingers actually pride themselves on disregarding the insights of modern intellectuals in favor of gut instinct and unchanging tradition. But this is a complete distortion of conservative arguments.

We have no problem with true intellectualism or reevaluating our positions in light of new evidence; what we object to is the arrogance of societal elites who look down upon the decision-making abilities of the average American, especially in decisions concerning the individual’s personal affairs. We object to “expertise” being taken as a license to make policy outside of the democratic process. We object to corruption and pseudoscience being forced upon us in the guise of the scientific method, as the Left has done with climate change. We object to secularists drawing hasty theological conclusions from scientific theories and then proselytizing about them to our children. And we object to leftists claiming a monopoly on science even as they willfully disregard its findings when it suits them to do so.

To make this false antagonism between the Founders and the Tea Party seem plausible, Maher tries to cast the former as enemies of religion. But the historical record shows that this is really Maher projecting his own anti-religious prejudice onto them. True, the Founders had wildly-varying views on the particulars of theology, but on the biggest, most politically-relevant aspects of religion, they were largely unanimous. Whatever God’s precise nature might be, they all agreed that there was one, that He demanded that human beings treat one another justly, and that religion was an essential ingredient to the survival of a self-governing society.

George Washington:

Of all the dispositions and habits, which lead to political prosperity, Religion and Morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connexions with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked, Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths, which are the instruments of investigation in Courts of Justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

Benjamin Franklin:

In the beginning of the contest with G. Britain, when we were sensible of danger we had daily prayer in this room for the Divine Protection. — Our prayers, Sir, were heard, and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a Superintending providence in our favor. To that kind providence we owe this happy opportunity of consulting in peace on the means of establishing our future national felicity. And have we now forgotten that powerful friend? or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance.

I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth — that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without his notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?