Stromata Blog

Fr. Daniil Sysoyev, New Martyr, R.I.P.

Last Thursday, at about an hour before midnight, Fr. Daniil Sysoyev, priest of the Church of St. Thomas in Moscow, and the church choir master were conferring in the sanctuary. A masked man entered, demanded to know the priest’s name, and upon hearing it pulled out a revolver, fired a round of shots, and fled. Both men were wounded. Fr. Sysoyev later died in the hospital. Today he was buried.

Fr. Sysoyev was well known for his missionary work among Moslems, had engaged in public debates with Moslem spokesmen, and had written books putting the case for Christianity against Islam. For his efforts, he had received a stream of death threats.

The murderer having escaped, we don’t know with certainty that he was an Islamic extremist. Fr. Sysoyev had also preached to Jehovah’s Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists, so I suppose that one shouldn’t rule out the possibility that an adherent of one of those sects – or perhaps a Presbyterian – took offense. We all know, however, where the odds lie.

The chief mufti of Russia quite properly sent condolences to Fr. Sysoyev’s family and declared that his murder was “an awful sin”. It’s obvious, unfortunately, that more than a few of his co-religionists hold a different opinion. At some point, men like the mufti must fight terrorism with more than expressions of regret. For whatever reason, many Moslems believe that killing infidels – and also Moslems who are not sufficiently fierce in their jihad – is virtuous.

Fr. Sysoyev is not a lone martyr. Moslems have in recent years killed Christians, Jews and other “infidels” around the world – in Iraq, the Philippines, Indonesia, Nigeria and many other lands. There are only three ways to bring these slaughters to an end.

One is for the West to wage a long war against the Islamofascists until so many have been killed or disheartened that their death cult will lose its potency.

A second is for peaceful Moslems to cleanse their ranks of the mufsidun by decisively expelling them from the Islamic community and, to the extent necessary, taking up arms in conjunction with the West.

The third is for Christians to lead Moslems to Christ, showing them that the God who gave His son to die “for us men and our salvation” is the true God, as against the one who supposedly demands that men give their sons to die for him.

Fr. Sysoyev, who followed the third way, was not a man of war. His path was one of peace and truth. For leading others along that path, he was martyred. May his memory be eternal.

News reports: Daily Telegraph, Reuters, ABC News, New York Times, ITAR-Tass News Agency

Purgatory on Earth

In 1983 Rom Houben, a 20-year-old Belgian, was left unconscious by an automobile accident. Doctors concluded, after extensive testing, that, like Terri Schiavo, he was as good as dead. For undisclosed reasons, though, nobody made the “rational, humane” decision to terminate his intravenous feeding and let him die.

Yet he was, year after year, fully conscious, according to this report from the Daily Mail:

Rom Houben, trapped in his paralysed body after a car crash, described his real-life nightmare as he screamed to doctors that he could hear them – but could make no sound.

‘I screamed, but there was nothing to hear,’ said Mr Houben, now 46, who doctors thought was in a persistent vegetative state.

‘I dreamed myself away,’ he added, tapping his tale out with the aid of a computer. . . .

‘All that time I just literally dreamed of a better life. Frustration is too small a word to describe what I felt.’

Three years ago, a brain scans conducted at the University of Liege –

showed his brain was still functioning almost completely normally. Mr Houben described the moment as ‘my second birth’. Therapy has since allowed him to tap out messages on a computer screen. . . . He is never likely to leave hospital, but as well as his computer he now has a special device above his bed which lets him read books while lying down.

Steven Laureys, the doctor who saved Mr. Houben, believes that his condition is far from rare. A recent study that he co-authored found that 40 percent of a group of coma patients diagnosed as “vegetative” in fact were conscious to a greater or lesser degree.

A frequent argument against capital punishment is the risk of executing an innocent man. Shouldn’t we also think about that risk before starving and dehydrating the allegedly vegetative? The Daily Mail’s article concludes with a chilling anecdote:

Twenty years ago, Carrie Coons, an 86-year-old from New York, regained consciousness after a year, took small amounts of food by mouth and engaged in conversation.

Only days before her recovery, a judge had granted her family’s request for the removal of the feeding tube which had been keeping her alive.

I hope that Mrs. Coons had the opportunity after regaining consciousness to rewrite her will.

A Commander Beyond Criticism

You remember, don’t you, the time during the Bush Presidency when Barack Obama had a book signing stop at a military base? And how the military first barred all reporters from the event, then allowed in a limited number on the condition that they interview no one? And how the rationale for these restrictions was, in the words of the Associated Press,

Officials said they worried that media coverage would turn the appearance into a chance for people to express political opinions “directed against the commander in chief.”

Oh, you don’t remember any of that? Sorry, wrong author, wrong President.

Protecting the commander-in-chief from criticism is, no doubt all good liberals will concur, among the highest duties of the Armed Forces. At last, they are carrying it out instead of keeping tabs on critics of America like Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

Sarah Palin Can Thank AP for a Sale

I hadn’t intended to buy Sarah Palin’s campaign memoir. The genre isn’t one that I very often enjoy, and I expected – perhaps influenced by the drumbeat of nattering negativism from sophisticated conservatives – that the book would be a fluffy production ridden with embarrassing mistakes.

Then I read the Associated Press’s “fact check”. No fewer than eleven reporters collaborated on this effort, declaring that, “Sarah Palin’s new book reprises familiar claims from the 2008 presidential campaign that haven’t become any truer over time.” And what horrendous untruths did they uncover? A full dozen (not just six, as readers of a truncated version of the story might think).

Well, let’s start with the twelfth and last:

PALIN: “Was it ambition? I didn't think so. Ambition drives; purpose beckons.” Throughout the book, Palin cites altruistic reasons for running for office, and for leaving early as Alaska governor.

THE FACTS: Few politicians own up to wanting high office for the power and prestige of it, and in this respect, Palin fits the conventional mold. But “Going Rogue” has all the characteristics of a pre-campaign manifesto, the requisite autobiography of the future candidate.

The rest of the series are equally non-damning. Some are differences of opinion:

PALIN: Says Obama has admitted that the climate change policy he seeks will cause people’s electricity bills to “skyrocket.”

THE FACTS: She correctly quotes a comment attributed to Obama in January 2008, when he told San Francisco Chronicle editors that under his cap-and-trade climate proposal, “electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket” as utilities are forced to retrofit coal burning power plants to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Obama has argued since then that climate legislation can blunt the cost to consumers. Democratic legislation now before Congress calls for a variety of measures aimed at mitigating consumer costs. Several studies predict average household costs probably would be $100 to $145 a year.

And several other studies back the “skyrocket” view. Apparently, the AP thinks that it’s a factual error not to accept Obami talking points.

There’s also quibbling about whether, as mayor and governor, Mrs. Palin stayed utterly clear of conflicts of interest. Most of the examples are penny ante, but I was struck by a certain lack of nuance in this one:

PALIN: Criticizes an aide to her predecessor, Gov. Frank Murkowski, for a conflict of interest because the aide represented the state in negotiations over a gas pipeline and then left to work as a handsomely paid lobbyist for ExxonMobil. Palin asserts her administration ended all such arrangements, shoving a wedge in the revolving door between special interests and the state capital.

THE FACTS: Palin ignores her own “revolving door” issue in office; the leader of her own pipeline team was a former lobbyist for a subsidiary of TransCanada, the company that ended up winning the rights to build the pipeline.

Aren’t these revolving doors swinging in opposite and not really comparable directions? A state employee might well have an interest in giving a sweetheart deal to a prospective employer. A former employee might think well of a former employee but usually has no economic incentive to favor it. We all know people who are thoroughly prejudiced against companies for which they once worked.

All in all, AP’s quasi-review suggests to me that Going Rogue is a carefully written, thoughtful book that is largely free from obvious foolishness. At least, a dozen hostile readers couldn’t find anything significant to criticize. That’s more than one can say about most writings of most politicians. And Amazon is offering it for just a bit more than the price of a mass market paperback. So I ordered a copy. I hope that the author is grateful to Calvin Woodward, Matt Apuzzo, Sharon Theimer, Tom Raum, Rita Beamish, Beth Fouhy, H. Josef Hebert, Justin D. Pritchard, Garance Burke, Dan Joling and Lewis Shaine for my contribution to her royalties.

Unmysterious Dithering

Sixty-five days elapsed between 9/11 and the capture of Kabul by American-assisted Afghan forces. President Obama has had roughly six times as long since his election to formulate a strategy for preventing a reversal of that victory. The latest word is that he may decide something within a month or two.

Wars being dynamic, this procrastination can only aid the enemy, which is being afforded leisure to expand its region of effectiveness and harden itself against eventual American counteraction.

Many commentators seem surprised that the President has tossed and turned in this manner, yet his (in)action is easy to understand. For the first time in his life, Barack Obama must make a decision whose consequences will be huge and impossible to obfuscate. Within a relatively short period, the military situation in Afghanistan will get better or worse, and the world will lay the praise or blame at the President’s feet. The failure of the spending spree stimulus to decrease unemployment can be obscured by fuzzy statistics; the Iranian mullarchy’s drive for hegemony in the Middle East will take years to reach fruition; nobody in this hemisphere cares much about the expanding Russian Empire. But there will be no way to ignore the disaster if Kabul falls to the Taliban.

Faced with need to avert that prospect, the President is acting just like an ill-prepared man ignorant of history and military affairs would be expected to react: He puts off committing himself. He studies and ponders and hopes in his heart that the challenge will evaporate before he must tackle it.

The evidence is piling up – not just Afghanistan but also Iran, Israel, North Korea, Russia, China, Burma, Honduras – that the Obama Administration is incapable of carrying out a coherent foreign policy that defends our country’s interests. Not even Jimmy Carter failed so universally and dramatically.

Nonetheless, however badly he mishandles foreign relations, Mr. Obama will be in charge of them for another 38 months. If present trends continue, his successor will face a hostile and difficult world, one in which Islamofascism will be advancing confidently, backed physically by at least one, perhaps several, nuclear-armed jihadist states, and morally by the consensus of bien pensant left-wing opinion.

America will, I am sure, come through the ensuing Time of Troubles. Much as we mope about failings of our contemporary national character, the country has a vast capacity for recovery. We also should not overestimate our adversaries, most of whom are decadent, anti-rational and backward. Still and all, the world would be better off if the President were to follow the path of Pope Celestine V.

Election Spin

Almost everything that can be said about last Tuesday’s elections has already been published somewhere, so my reflections are unlikely to win a prize for originality. Still, for what they’re worth:

The most obvious cautionary note is that the world won’t remain static between today and November 2, 2010, much less November 6, 2012. While an optimist will recall that in 1993 and 2005 New Jersey and Virginia foreshadowed triumphs by the out-of-power party, one must not forget the counter-example of 2001, when Democratic wins in both states foreshadowed nothing at all.

One interesting way to view the election results is as a continuation of trends that were interrupted by the Republican collapses in 2006 and 2008. If we “gray out” those years, we see Virginia moving steadily into the GOP camp, New Jersey as a place where Republicans can be competitive under favorable circumstances, New York as increasingly hopeless, California as frozen by Congressional gerrymandering. Maybe all that is happening is that our political universe is regressing to its pre-2006 mean.

And why shouldn’t it? Undisturbed by recent perturbations is the fact that 40 percent of the adult population (and presumably a larger percentage of likely voters) are self-identified conservatives, outnumbering soi disant liberals by almost two-to-one. So long as that remains the case – and there’s no sign that the current liberal ascendancy is altering it – the right-of-center party has immense resilience, no matter how badly it goes off the tracks now and then. With hardly any special effort on the GOP’s part, suburban voters seem to be returning to it, while Barack Obama’s ability to spur voters to the polls has waned. It may be that all the theorizing about how to revive the Republican Party is beside the point; revival may take care of itself, and the real question will be how to prolong it.

Leaving that thought aside for the moment, let’s look at a couple of the prescriptions for revival. One is ostentatious moderation. Its advocates attribute the New Jersey and Virginia outcomes to Chris Christie’s and Bob McDonnell’s embrace of the center (so what if McDonnell was denounced during the campaign as a troglodyte who yearned to repeal the 20th Century?), the loss in NY-23 to Doug Hoffman’s refusal to let Dede Scozzafava do the same.

There is, however, no need to speculate about how well the “me too” strategy would work. Since the mid-1990’s, New York has furnished a natural experiment. George Pataki tried to govern as a conservative reformer; the state Republican hierarchy stultified his efforts; GOP fortunes have steadily declined, sinking both when the national party was successful and when it wasn’t. Failure in New York seems to me a poor recommendation for the “moderate” direction.

On the other end of the spectrum are the more enthusiastic tea partiers, who imagine that an upstart libertarian-populist movement can engender a viable third party. One may hope that NY-23 has sobered them up a bit. I rooted for Doug Hoffman, gave money to his campaign and am disappointed that he lost. His defeat shows, alas, how hard it is for a right-of-center minor party candidate to prevail in a three-way race. Even the long-established Conservative Party couldn’t provide a major party’s “ground game” and financial resources. As the Republican nominee, Hoffman would probably have won comfortably. As an out-of-party insurgent, he only came close. A “Tea Party” starting from an organizational zero would be an asterisk.

Finally, there are those who think that the only way to “save” the Republican Party is by trotting out shiny new gimmicks to entice the middle class back to our side. For their benefit, I note that Messrs. McDonnell and Christie didn’t beguile the electorate with innovative ideas. They didn’t affirmatively reject creative thinking; it just wasn’t essential to victory. The trouble with believing that one has to come up with something new and brilliant is that the former is a lot easier than the latter.

Jihad at Fort Hood

Bearing in mind the possibility that almost everything reported so far about the Fort Hood murderer is wrong or misleading, it seems no less rational to “jump to conclusions” than it was when President Obama concluded that a Cambridge police officer had mistreated a Harvard professor or when practically everybody blamed Tea Party histrionics for the bizarre death of a census worker in Kentucky. It may turn out that Nidal Malik Hasan (not being a newspaper, I’m not going to bother with the “alleged” murderer nonsense) was little more than a nominal Moslem, did not believe that killing American soldiers was mandated by his religion and acted from motives that have nothing to do with his view of Islam. If so, I’ll concede that he is a poor illustration of the point that I’m about to make; the point, nonetheless, is based on much more than this singular occurrence.

Most Moslems, like most human beings, are not terrorists. Yet more than a trivial number do kill, or try to kill, Christians, Jews and other non-Moslems, and trumpet that their atrocities stem from devotion to Allah, the Koran and Mohammed. Morever, these evildoers appear to have a considerable following among the Islamic faithful. In other contexts, an ideology invoked to justify persecution and massacre isn’t excused just because only a minority of its adherents do anything especially hideous. Most Nazis killed no Jews; most communists have never thrown anybody into the Gulag.

There’s a stock response to exasperation about the frequency of terrorist acts carried out by savages who just happen to be Moslems: Christians have done terrible things, too, often ostensibly in the name of Christ. Assuming, though, that the facts were comparable, that would simply be an argument against Christianity, not a justification of Islam.

The most charitable view available is that the name “Islam” covers two sharply opposed philosophies, one of them peaceful and benign, the other a death cult that seeks to rule the world by force. Unfortunately, both cite the same scripture and traditions, stem from the same history and display the same outward signs. Outsiders have no way to distinguish one from the other. Isn’t it up to peace loving Moslems to clarify the situation, and couldn’t they do that most readily by purging from the ranks of Islam those who defile their name?

Nobody wants to be unfair to Moslems who are horrified by some of their co-religionists’ addiction to terror, but, until Moslems themselves draw bright lines, the pretense the Islam is “just like any other religion” – and that the Hasans of the world are entitled to the benefit of doubt after doubt – isn’t fair to the rest of us. It certainly wasn’t fair to the dozen dead and three dozen wounded at Fort Hood.

Addendum: It had never occurred to me that American military bases might be “gun-free zones”! When the shooting started, all that the threatened soldiers could do was duck and call the civilian police. The police response was swift and heroic, but deadly minutes passed before Sgt. Kimberly Munley reached the scene, charged the shooter and ended his rampage. Maybe it made sense back in the 50’s to keep soldiers’ arms under lock and key. That the policy wasn’t revised the day after 9/11 is a tragedy and a disgrace.

Further reading: Raymond Ibrahim, “Are Judaism and Christianity as Violent as Islam?”

NY-23

If you get your news and opinion from the standard left-wing gaggle, you “know” that the special election in New York State’s 23rd Congressional District proves that the Republican Party has become a narrow, reactionary clique. The proof is that a liberal Republican running in a three-way race fell to 20% in the polls and backed out. That showing was despite a furious effort on her behalf by the national GOP, which put something like four times as much money into the race as she had been able to raise herself.

Now, I can think of scenarios that would amount to a right-wing purge. Suppose, for instance, that a candidate were a mainstream member of the party except for a single issue, that the party’s ideological zealots funded a campaign against him centered on that issue, and the national party showed complete indifference. In other words, if Dede Scozzafava were the Republican counterpart to Joe Lieberman, it would make sense to say that her opponents were trying to purify the party and punish anyone who strayed from the approved line.

Unlike Senator Lieberman, though, candidate Scozzafava wasn’t a one-dogma heretic. The senator disagreed with the majority of his party only on the war in Iraq; he had, after all, been an orthodox enough Democrat to be awarded the Vice Presidential nomination. Dede Scozzafava, by contrast, is well to the left of the most liberal Republicans in Congress. Left-wing commentators have focused on her pro-abortion, pro-same-sex marriage positions, but she also supported the Obama pseudo-stimulus and card check legislation and had worked with ACORN fronts, while displaying no enthusiasm for any part of the conservative economic program.

The proof that Doug Hoffman’s campaign wasn’t orchestrated by narrow-minded social conservatives is that libertarians like Instapundit and Gay Patriot endorsed him. And what sank the Scozzafava effort wasn’t cliquish machinations but her inability to win over rank-and-file voters in the district. In the last pre-withdrawal poll, she was running 15 points behind the other two candidates. How did that happen if she was a “moderate who fits the district” and Hoffman a “right-wing extremist”?

Most of the high-profile conservative Republicans backing Hoffman stressed how unusual the NY-23 situation is. Not only was the official candidate an unambiguous liberal, but she had gained the nomination without a primary and had been involved in a highly embarrassing run-in with the press (when her husband sicced the police on an overly inquisitive reporter). There are no visible signs of a concerted effort to rid the party of genuine moderates. For instance, if Rep. Mark Kirk, one of the least conservative House Republicans, draws any challenge from the Right to his Illinois Senate bid, it’s a 99% certainty that his opponent won’t get nods from Fred Thompson or Sarah Palin or Tom Pawlenty or Rush Limbaugh.

Liberal talk of a “Republican civil war” is no more than a projection of their own dogmatism onto their opponents. Under Howard Dean, the Democratic Party was well on its way to scraping off its blue dog barnacles and becoming a fundamentalist Left faction. Rahm Emanuel was clever enough to halt that drift and recruit relative moderates for a large number of House seats in 2006 and 2008. Speaker Pelosi’s hard Left course, ignoring both the ideas and the electoral needs of the blue dogs, suggests that Mr. Emanuel’s tactical finesse didn’t survive his departure from the House. The real “ideological war” is and remains the drive by the leftmost fringe of the Democratic Party to impose and entrench undiluted liberalism, the philosophy of less than a quarter of the electorate, before the rest of the country wakes up and throws them out.