Free Republic

Schizophrenia is no less schizophrenia if one of the voices happens to be talking sense. Hard schizophrenia is no less difficult if murderous insanity is linked up tight with weird, pathetic, and arbitary scruples. In fact, if such an arbitary pattern is applied long enough, one may detect a method in the madness. I am talking about our erratic public policy when it comes to protecting human life. Gosnell is a disgrace because he killed babies in this spot instead of the officially-approved that spot. As one observer noted, he is apparently being charged with murder because he enjoyed himself...

No one should be surprised at the announcement that women are now going to be serving in combat roles in the U.S. military. This has been heading toward us for a long time, and the only thing surprising about it is that so many people are surprised. Now the only thing that stands between your daughter and involuntary combat service is a determination by some president (or other) that we need to return to conscription, followed by one court decision. There are three points to be made about this in response. First, opposition to this monstrosity is a function of...

Our office has been asked for a statement from Douglas Wilson on the news that he has been formally uninvited from delivering the prayer at President Obama's Second Inauguration. This controversy, as many know, revolves around the fact that Pastor Wilson made a joke a number of years ago in a sermon about how Brian McLaren's theology was gay enough to be made conga queen at the Fire Island Fruit Festival. When the AP asked Pastor Wilson about the joke, he had forgotten about it completely. When the tape was played, Pastor Wilson laughed all over again, and said he...

Lee Habeeb recently wrote a piece here for National Review Online, in which he was encouraging Christians to engage winsomely with our surrounding culture, and to make our peace with the way some things were going. He used the example of gay marriage in the civil sphere. David French wrote a very fine response here, but the money quote is below. "It took me a long time to realize the following truth: No matter how compassionate, charitable, winsome, and kind you are, if you oppose the sexual revolution you are the enemy." And this is precisely why Christians need to...

We, of all people, ought to know better. "Progress" gave us modern medicine, liberal democracy, the internet. It also gave us the guillotine, the Gulag and the gas chambers. Western intelligentsia assumed in the 1920s that "history" was moving away from the muddle and mess of democracy towards the brave new world of Russian communism. Many in 1930s Germany regarded Dietrich Bonhoeffer and his friends as on the wrong side of history. The strong point of postmodernity is that the big stories have let us down. And the biggest of all was the modernist myth of "progress". What is more,...

The Church of England just recently said no to women bishops. There were howls of outrage from all the predictable quarters, for whom such a troglodyte move is just smack-the-forehead baffling. Now I can understand a vote against women bishops as a preliminary move to try to undo the ordination of women priests. And I can understand a vote for women bishops as the next logical step after having established the practice of ordaining women priests. What I don't get is the affirming the ordination of women priests and opposing them as bishops. The pig, once swallowed by the python,...

Indonesian publisher Gramedia Pustaka Utama burned hundreds of copies of a book that called the Prophet Muhammad a pirate and a murderer on Wednesday following protests by the hard-line Islamic Defenders Front. The books were burned outside the Bentara Budaya cultural hall in the Kompas Gramedia complex in Palmerah, West Jakarta. Company president director Wandi S. Brata oversaw the book burning, along with several Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) officials, including deputy chairman Ma’ruf Amin. The book, “Lima Kota Paling Berpengaruh di Dunia” (“Five Cities that Ruled the World”), was pulled from Indonesian book stores on June 9. The text, written...

"On one level, Americans, together with all sinners, are not nearly as generous with their resources as God is with us. The triune God overflows throughout the created order, and abundance is the name of the game. So, in learning the disciplines of giving, we are not trying to reach a certain specified amount, but are rather trying to learn how to imitate the divine heart. And in this regard, Americans certainly have a long way to go. But there is another way of asking this question, and that is on the horizontal level. How does American generosity stack up...

Democrat from 5th District runs to represent the 7th By DEE-ANN DURBIN The Associated Press 7/8/2004, 12:38 p.m. ET WASHINGTON (AP) — Douglas Wilson wants to represent Michigan's 7th District in Congress, but when he looks out the windows of his Oakland County home, he doesn't see the 7th district. That's because it's 70 miles away. Wilson, a 40-year-old paramedic, is one of three Democrats running for the party's nomination in the Aug. 3 primary and the only one who lives outside the district. Wilson lives in Oxford, Mich., which is part of U.S. Rep. Dale Kildee's 5th District. But...