Posted on 04/27/2012 8:54:01 PM PDT by MDJohnPaul
If you plan to be the keynote speaker before a group of award-winning journalists, be ready for some challenging and unexpected questions.
That’s what Chris Cillizza discovered April 20 after giving a talk at the 2012 awards conference for the Maryland-Delaware-D.C. Press Association, held at the Four Point Sheraton BWI Hotel in Baltimore.
When the well-known Washington Post political blogger opened the floor to questions, one journalist asked how Cillizza’s personal faith influenced his reporting.
Cillizza, a Georgetown graduate, responded initially by speaking more broadly about how today's journalists cover those who take their faith seriously – noting that he didn’t think “liberals in the press” were trying to organize a secret plan hostile to believers.
“But I do think that there is a skepticism that exists about people of deep faith,” he said. “I think it comes out sometimes in the language we (use to) cover them. The thing that bugs me is the whole ‘animal-in-a-cage’ way we can sometimes cover people of faith – like, ‘Hey, look what he says over there! It’s the evangelical voter!’”
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicreview.org ...
People of faith are either right or wrong...but there is still no proof to say with certainty which is the case.
That’s an interesting situation, because it used to be non-believers who were the “odd men out” in society; but due to a very concerted and determined effort, the majority of religious people are made to feel like a minority, that their religiousness is odd, weird or unwholesome.
Just today I saw an example of this. Inadvertently, a Catholic high school invited an alumnus to speak at their graduation, shortly thereafter learning that he was both homosexual and entering into a gay marriage with his boyfriend. So they disinvited him from speaking, as this was in conflict with their values.
But he and the media feigned a great uproar of outrage at how horrible they were “for persecuting gay people and denying them the *right* to speak”. See how the situation was turned around on its head? It is not about religious people, their institutions, standards, beliefs and doctrines they wish to practice; but about how keeping such standards is *unfair* to those who wish to violate them.
How contrived and crude. Yet this happens all the time to religious people, blithely unaware they are under attack from those that despise them and wish to destroy them.
The only thing that keeps the Left from killing you is the Law.
I wish people of faith could argue for their ethics in secular terms. Quoting the Bible and using Biblical terms is great for other Christians in discussions. But outside the church the same concepts and understandings can be delivered in secular terms. They would win the day because they are true and just.
Well said.
killing an unborn child is murder. That never wins the day.
Homosexuality is contradictory to the theory of evolution. That would never win the day.
The climate of the earth has been cyclical since the beginning as shown in ice core samples.
That would never win the day.
divorce is bad for the family.
That would never win the day.
You really can’t outlaw morality or the 10 commandments would have worked.
Man will always legalize his sin.
Truth is never easy to accept; especially when the mind is predisposed to evil. That does NOT mean that we stop telling the truth; instead, we must redouble our efforts.
Abortion IS murder. “Child molester” can be as powerful as “racist”.
Homosexuality IS wrong. It is a lifestyle that ends in extinction.
And so forth.....
I agree. Christians should be able to defend the faith with logic. However, some people are anti-faith simply because they want to be. They feel, they don’t think. Reasoning won’t sway them.
Sort of Like Global warming and Climate Change
They’re working very hard to overcome that “petty” obstacle.
The left's subconscious motive is always envy. They despise that some of their neighbors apparently have a mysterious competitive advantage in life. The religious have bigger families, live in bigger houses, drive bigger cars. No fair! They must destroy religion else they will never be able achieve that elusive Utopian state of "total fairness".
“I wish people of faith could argue for their ethics in secular terms.”
C. S. Lewis was a master of this.
“The only thing that keeps the Left from killing you is the Law.”
For now.
> The left’s subconscious motive is always envy.
That’s not fair. They also lovingly endorse the other six cardinal sins and a whole assortment of venial sins.
Where would the left, or even the Democrat party be, without burning, unending hate, fear, racism & bigotry, perversion, anger, sloth, illicit lust, adultery, superstition, fanaticism, control issues, deep-seated neurosis and feelings of inadequacy masked with arrogant superiority complex and narcissism, etc.?
Envy, covetousness, and greed is just a piece of their foul whole.
You're absolutely correct and what we are seeing today is evidence of that.
This is a very good point. I particularly appreciate thinkers who who can explain their principles via Natural Law. That makes moral truths available to anybody who is willing and able to employ reason.
Yep, and it all comes from vanity. Thomas Aquinas noted that all sins originate from vanity. America needs a new self-esteem movement: to lower it. Humility is a virtue, vanity is a vice. But humility is really hard to achieve when even the left side of the bell curve has no awe of God. Instead of saying grace before dinner they now check their EBT balance online.
I agree about the perfidy of vanity, however I have an unusual definition of vanity, perhaps worthy of consideration.
At several times in the Bible, people did one thing that was pretty assured would get heaven’s attention, and not in a good way. It was in trying to take God’s place, individually and collective, in being “In Charge” of all things.
From the start, eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, “then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.”
But again and again, people keep trying to assert authority, perhaps the best example being Nimrod and his Tower to Heaven, with much the same idea. Being as gods.
Eventually, up on the mountain talking to Moses, YHVH came through with a whopper of a philosophical statement, with just the pronouncement of His name as “I AM, THAT I AM”. This really shut men and/or mankind out of the supremacy game.
Philosophers only felt they overcame it with Rene Descartes “I think, therefore I am”, you notice the similarity between the two statements. And since he “broke the ice”, philosophers have been going wild with vanity, proclaiming mankind to be the supreme being, defining everything.
As you pointed out, with vanity comes a flood of other vices.
I don't wish to argue with you, but I disagree profoundly with that position. I believe it is this practice that has helped create in the minds of most people the notion that secular rationales for morality are superior to the fact that such laws are Divinely decreed.
One need not just endlessly cite verses, since my belief is that there is an "official" interpretation of the Bible known as Halakhah. The point to make is that the decrees of the Creator and Master of the Universe are valid for that reason alone. They may or may not make sense to us, but they all have the same source.
Secularists have created an absolutely horrifying philosophy. While insisting that the beginning of the universe took place with absolutely no plan or meaning whatsoever, they now act as if current liberal truisms were something other than their own personal hang-ups . . . as if there were a gigantic pillar somewhere out side the universe with all their taboos carved onto it.
In the absence of G-d there is no law and there is no right or wrong. The fact that (theoretically) certain things would still bother us would not make them objectively evil. They would only be evil to certain people; even if they were regarded as evil by most people or by all people, they would still be based on subjective hang-ups and not on anything objective. The fact that most people/all people are repulsed by mass murder would not make mass murder objectively "wrong" or "evil" in a G-dless world.
But as I said, it's not that liberals insist the world is meaningless; they insist this only of origins. Once we get past that they are moral fanatics. Every ten minutes there's a public service ad on TV urging the me to "make a difference" or "impact the world" or dedicate myself to "service." Why? How can anyone possibly "serve" in a meaningless world? Why should human beings worry about "making a difference" any more than cows or mushrooms do?
Why?
I don't know how liberals would explain their insanity, but looking at it from the outside they seem to intuit (even if they don't yet consciously believe it) that some form of "meaning" is forming. It seems to be in a state of upward evolution, since "history" allegedly flows only to the Left and what was once a normal attitude is now a hateful prejudice.
No matter how often liberals proclaim themselves materialists, I find it difficult to believe that their totalitarian moral instincts are rooted in a world utterly devoid of meaning. Do they believe that G-d is actually evolving--that the universe, which began as a coincidence, is in the process of creating Him?
Perhaps this is tied in with the so-called "g*ia hypothesis" in which the earth is actually alive and is allegedly becoming self-aware. This sounds much more like sorcery than science, but both posit that nature is the ultimate reality, though one regards it as metaphysical and the other as merely physical.
G-d deliver us from oxymoronic scourge of secular morality!
Although I don't doubt that there is something to the so-called "natural law" theory (I doubt any human explanation is adequate to describe the reality), I have long believed that (at least at this moment in history) Theonomic positivism is the better approach--though I doubt if any of my fellow FReepers will agree with me. They will claim that to make a Theonomic positivist argument means that G-d is not really good. As I said above, no human explanation is sufficient to describe the whole reality, but the point I would like to make is that all of G-d's laws, whether esoteric or "commonsense," are rooted in G-d Himself. In other words, G-d is not subject to any authority outside Himself.
Jews and other Noachides will of course be able to object to my position that Abraham once argued with G-d in an attempt to save the people of Sodom by asking "shall the G-d of all the earth not do right?" Personally (and I realize that isn't worth a lot), I think the point here is that sometimes G-d wants us to argue with Him (you think I've never argued with Him?). I also realize some will invoke the principal that the Torah does not contain derekh 'eretz (the most basic commonsense rules of conduct) because these are actually prior to and are assumed by the Torah. However, in a (theoretical) universe with no meaning (and I am of the position that if there was no meaning at the beginning that none can possibly develop), even derekh 'eretz would simply be subjective hang-ups, even if shared by the entire human race.
The main problem with Americans adopting Theonomic positivism is rooted in the Protestant value of religious freedom, which is based on the position that the goal of religion is "salvation," and this is only offered and not required (Catholicism is in a bit of a quandary here as it seems to be a mixture of both statutory obligation and gracious salvation, with the uncomfortable result that one is statutorily obligated to be saved). But though elucidated to its greatest extent by Protestants (especially such Protestants as Baptists), this "separation of church and state" has its ultimate roots in the "new testament's" command to "render unto Caesar."
One reason Theonomic positivism appeals to me is that my religious beliefs are not salvational but statutory. G-d is not politely suggesting anything to anyone. Nothing is "up to you." As Pirqey-'Avot says, "against your will you were created, against your will you were formed, against your will you were born, against your will you live, against your will you will die, and against your will you will give an account to the Supreme King over All Kings, HaQadosh Barukh Hu'. There are no "offers" involved in this.
Realizing that my own beliefs are at odds with most FReepers (and even against Protestant-based traditional American beliefs), I offer these thoughts merely for my fellow FReepers' perusal. There are many religions that are more theocratic than Protestantism and if such people were written out of the conservative movement or Free Republic then only Protestants would be left and Protestantism would be a necessary requirement of being a FReeper, and conservative, and an American.
I'm just sharing my thoughts. Disagree or rebuke me all you like, but I hope I will still be welcome here.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.