An Unlikely Messenger

From BreakPoint Commentaries
By Chuck Colson

French President Nicholas Sarkozy is an unlikely scourge of European secularism: He is on his third marriage and has been called the “playboy president” by his critics.

But it is what Sarkozy has just said about the role of religion in French life that has really got his critics up-in-arms.

For more than a century, what the French call laïcité has been the defining characteristic of French politics and public life. The word, which has no English equivalent, goes beyond the separation of church and state. It is a kind of secularism that tends to see “any strong religious views as a direct threat to [France’s] freedom and way of life . . .”

Thus, discretion about one’s religious views, especially among leaders, is regarded as “a necessary part of being French.”

Sarkozy disagrees. In a book he wrote before becoming president, Sarkozy declared, “I am of Catholic culture, Catholic tradition, Catholic belief, even if my religious practice is episodic.”

He continued this theme after becoming president. He has criticized removing references to “Europe’s Christian roots” from the European constitution. In a speech in Rome last December, he emphasized France’s Christian roots. He invoked France’s ancient title of the “Eldest Daughter of the Church.”

He proposed a new version of laïcité, one that “does not consider religions a danger, but an asset.” That is because, according to Sarkozy, when it comes to teaching right and wrong, “the schoolteacher will never be able to replace the priest or the pastor.” Well said.

Sarkozy has also stood up for France’s often-beleaguered Jewish community. He recently announced that, starting next fall, French fifth-graders will have to learn the story of at least one of the 11,000 French children killed in the Holocaust.

He defended his plan by blaming the wars of the twentieth century on the “absence of God.” He further shocked French sensibilities by adding that Nazi racism was “radically incompatible with Judeo-Christian monotheism.”

This latter point is not hypothetical for the French president, whose maternal grandfather was Jewish.

Critics are appalled by Sarkozy’s invocations of religion. As one socialist leader put it, “a speech citing God not only on every page, but on every line, creates a fundamental problem for the republic.” Others chide him for disregarding the separation of church and state.

And, of course, they do not hesitate to point out the gap between his rhetoric and his lifestyle.

I wish that Sarkozy’s “religious practice” was less “episodic.” Nevertheless, I am gratified that he is taking on what has been called a “major taboo” in French public life. This may be the first time since the French revolution that a French leader has spoken seriously to the people about God.

A French-born writer, Hilaire Belloc, put it this way, “the faith is Europe.” Without Christianity, Europe would not exist. European secularism and the denial of its Christian roots have cut it off from its own heritage, leaving it vulnerable to the challenge of Islam.

After all, you can not fight something with nothing, which is what a “post-Christian” Europe is left with. That is why I welcome Sarkozy’s message—however unlikely the messenger.

“Sharia Creep” Around the World

From FrontPageMagazine.com

By Kathy Shaidle

In the blockbuster action movie Independence Day, alien spacecraft hover simultaneously above strategic spots around the globe, the better to maximize chaos and destruction when they finally attack all at once.

A more mundane version of that scenario played itself out in real life this week, when three new stories appeared within 24 hours, all documenting a worldwide phenomenon that has come to be known as “sharia creep.”

In Australia, Muslim students (mostly Saudi citizens) asked Melbourne universities to adjust class times to fit in with their daily prayers. They also requested female-only recreational areas on campus.

One institution rejected their demands outright. "That would seriously inconvenience other people at the college and it is not institutionally viable," La Trobe University’s Martin Van Run told The Australian. "We are a secular institution ... and we need to have a structured timetable."

In a surprise reaction, the Saudi Government unveiled a plan to curb radicalization among its students in Australia by ensuring they make up only one percent of the student body at any given campus.

The idea is to prevent radical students from reaching critical mass, and thereby encouraging all Saudi-born students to mingle with non-Muslims.

“The move is a marked turnaround from past initiatives by the Saudi Government,” reported The Australian, “including allegedly bankrolling hard line Muslim clerics, such as Canberra-based Mohammed Swaiti who openly praised jihadists; and pumping an estimated $120 million into the local Islamic community since the 1970s to influence its ideological bent.”

Meanwhile, on February 26, local officials in Zwolle, Holland decided to lift a ban on Muslim women wearing so-called “burkinis” in public swimming pools. The garment, also known as a hijood, leaves only the wearer’s face, hands and feet exposed.

But the next day, a different municipality pledged to retain the burkini ban, because the garment doesn’t meet regulations and “might scare off” other swimmers. However, the same Hanzebad public pool has already offered female Muslim swimmers separate hours for several years.

The Dutch TV newsmagazine Netwerk sent a reporter wearing a burkini to various public pools. According to one report, “the fiercest reaction shown was by a Muslim man, who said the burkini was an example of oppression of women and tolerating it an example of the influence that orthodox Islam is gaining in the Netherlands.”

Closer to home, Harvard University announced new women-only access times at the student gym, to “accommodate religious customs that make it difficult for some students to work out in the presence of men.”

This decision came one month after men were banned from the athletic center during certain times, following successful petitions from the Harvard Islamic Society as well as the Women’s Center.

Harvard Islamic Society's Islamic Knowledge Committee officer Ola Aljawhary said she does not consider the women-only gym hours discriminatory against male students or a “case of minority rights trumping majority preference.”

"We live together in one community, it only makes sense for everyone to compromise slightly in order for everyone to live happily," she said.

As one blogger observed, “I also like how minorities have ‘rights’ while the majority has a ‘preference.’ And here I was thinking we all had exactly the same rights. How silly of me.”

News stories like these have multiplied exponentially during the past few years. Hardly a day goes by without similar reports, such as Muslim nurses in the UK refusing to roll up their sleeves to scrub up before surgery, claiming that sharia modesty rules trump concerns about contamination.

“It’s all part of the campaign of soft jihad,” wrote Roger Kimball, editor of The New Criterion. “Traditional jihad is waged with scimitars and their contemporary equivalents, e.g., stolen Boeing 767s, which make handy instruments of mass homicide. Soft jihad is a quieter affair: it uses and abuses the language and the principles of democratic liberalism not to secure the institutions and attitudes that make freedom possible but, on the contrary, to undermine that freedom and pave the way for self-righteous, theocratic intolerance.”

Western countries do not always go along with the plan, however. Witness the public outcry back in 2003, when some Muslims in the province of Ontario, Canada demanded they be allowed to set up sharia courts, ostensibly to arbitrate domestic disputes in the manner of pre-existing Catholic and Jewish tribunals.

Public protests in Canada, as well as abroad, led Premier Dalton McGuinty, who’d initially voiced tentative support for the new courts, to rule against the move. Unfortunately, that meant that those long established Catholic and Jewish tribunals throughout the province had to be shut down too, in the interest of “equality.”

Author and expert on radical Islam Robert Spencer has been sounding the alarm about “sharia creep” for years at his website DhimmiWatch. In an exclusive interview with FrontPageMag.com, Spencer reflected on whether or not his efforts to warn the public were paying off:

I think we may be getting through to a very small number of people, but Muslim Brotherhood front organizations in the U.S. are still making tremendous headway by portraying these Sharia-creep initiatives as simple matters of civil rights, and playing on fears among public officials, and the public at large, of being seen as racist and bigoted.

It is getting worse, because there is a concerted effort by the MSA's on various campuses and other groups to push Muslim accommodation issues aggressively, but this effort is relatively new. We didn't see it on this scale ten or even five years ago. I think it is a natural outgrowth of the post-9/11 anxiety on the part of government and media not to appear ‘Islamophobic.’ As long as that continues to be a matter for concern, there will be continued accommodation of Muslim practices and Islamic distinctiveness, which only aids and abets the Islamic supremacist agenda.

At the same time, Spencer sees “an increasingly discussion of the creeping Sharia/stealth jihad issue by an increasing number of writers.” Writers like Daniel Pipes and Diana West have devoted recent columns to the domestic front on the War on Terror. But despite the work they and others do, the “level of awareness right now is so abysmal,” continued Robert Spencer, “that I think the main thing people can do is try to call attention, via letters to the editor, contacts to their elected officials, the blogsophere, etc., to the explicit campaign being undertaken here. The idea would be to awaken as many people as possible to what is going on here -- who the groups are that are pursuing this agenda, and what the agenda really is, behind all the talk of ‘hate speech’ and accommodation of cultural practices in the name of multiculturalism and diversity.”

And that agenda seems to be everywhere – from the big issues right down to British fish and chips. When it was revealed in late February that a popular British snack food contained traces of alcohol, a Muslim Council of Britain spokesman declared, “Certainly we would find it very offensive to have eaten food with alcohol.”

In turn, Richard Kimball voiced “a modest proposal, which I offer to British Food and Beverage industry free and for nothing: start putting a bit of alcohol in everything edible or potable.”

“It’s only a start, Kimball continued, “but from a tiny acorn the mighty oak does grow.”

A blogger since 2000, Kathy Shaidle runs FiveFeetOfFury.com. Her new e-book Acoustic Ladyland has been called a "must read" by Mark Steyn.

Pat Buchanan: The Second Battle of NAFTA

By Patrick J. Buchanan

If Canada and Mexico do not renegotiate NAFTA, said Hillary Clinton in the Cleveland debate, she would “opt out” of the trade treaty that was the legislative altarpiece of Bill Clinton’s presidency. Barack agreed. NAFTA is renegotiated, or NAFTA is gone.

Barack went further. He has denounced “open trucking,” the feature of NAFTA whereby Mexican trucks are to be free to roam the United States and compete with the Teamsters of Jim Hoffa’s union, which just endorsed him.

The trade issue is back, big-time. For to blue-collar workers in industrial states like Ohio, NAFTA is a code word for betrayal — a sellout of them and their families to CEOs panting to move production out of the United States to cheap-labor countries like Mexico and China.

Our workers’ instincts are backed up by stats. In 2007, the U.S. trade deficit with Mexico soared 16 percent to $73 billion, a record. Mexico now ships more cars to us now than we ship to the world. And where did Mexico get an auto industry?

The U.S. trade deficit with China shot up 10 percent to $256 billion, the largest trade deficit ever between any two countries.

Charles MacMillion of MBG Services has run the numbers.

In manufactures, the United States had a trade deficit of $499 billion in 2007, a slight improvement over the $526 billion record in 2006. Yet that trade deficit in manufactured goods with the world is more than twice as large as our $224 billion bill for OPEC’s oil.

Under Bush, the U.S. trade deficit has doubled. Three million manufacturing jobs have vanished. And America has begun to run a trade deficit in advanced technology goods of more than $50 billion.

Our trade deficit in advanced technology goods with China is $67 billion, eight times what it is with Japan.

“Free trade is essential to the creation of high-paying quality jobs,” said Bush on Thursday. But if exports create jobs (and they do), imports displace them. And if we import half a trillion dollars more in manufactures than we export, is not Bush trade policy literally slaughtering industrial jobs?

Is there not a correlation between $4.3 trillion in trade deficits under Bush, the 3 million manufacturing jobs lost under Bush, the fall of the dollar by 50 percent against the euro under Bush and the resurgence of inflation, signaled by a quadrupling of the price of gold, under Bush?

Neither Hillary nor Obama has laid out a new trade-and-tax policy to deal with the de-industrialization of America and our deepening dependency on foreign technology, manufactures and the loans to pay for them. But at least they are listening to the country.

John McCain seems blind and deaf to the crisis. In Michigan, he informed autoworkers their “jobs are not coming back” and explained his philosophy: “I’m a student of history. Every time the United States has become protectionist … we’ve paid a very heavy price.”

This is ahistorical nonsense. From 1860 to 1913, the United States was the most protectionist nation on earth and produced the most awesome growth of any nation in history. In 1860, the U.S. economy was half of Britain’s; in 1913, more than twice Britain’s.

In 1920, Warren Harding and Calvin Coolidge won a landslide, cut income taxes from Wilson’s 69 percent to 25 percent and doubled tariffs. America went on a tear. When Coolidge went home in 1929, the United States was producing 42 percent of the world’s manufactured goods.

Who were America’s protectionists?

Alexander Hamilton and James Madison moved the Tariff Act of 1789 through Congress. Aided by Henry Clay, John Calhoun, Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, President Madison enacted the Tariff of 1816 to protect U.S. infant industries from British dumping.

Abraham Lincoln used Morrill Tariff revenue to fight the Civil War. The 11 GOP presidents who followed, from 1865 to 1929, all protectionists, made America the greatest industrial power in history, with a standard of living never before seen. Mocking protectionism, McCain is repudiating Republican history and all its achievements up to the era of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon.

America rose to power behind a Republican tariff wall. What has free trade wrought? Lost sovereignty. A sinking dollar. A hollowing out of U.S. manufacturing. Stagnant wages. Wives forced into the labor market to maintain the family income. Mass indebtedness to foreign nations, and a deepening dependency on foreign goods and borrowings to pay for them. We have sacrificed our country on the altar of this Moloch, the mythical Global Economy.

It took Rip Van Republican 20 years to wake up to the disaster of open borders and five years to realize the folly of igniting wars in which no vital interest was at risk. How long before the GOP wakes up to the reality that globalism is not conservatism, never was, but is a pillar of Wilsonian liberalism, in whose vineyards our faux conservatives now daily labor.

Catholics Come Home

At about the time a Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life study reports that one out of every ten adult Americans is a lapsed Catholic, a new campaign has emerged to invite those Catholics home.

The Cause of Our Joy blog reports:

There’s a new advertising campaign originating out of Phoenix called Catholics Come Home. Using slick commercials and a high-tech web site, the campaign seeks to goad the conscience of lapsed Catholics to re-discover (or discover for the first time) why their Catholic faith is important to their lives, their families, and their eternity.

They have three commercials at the moment: “Epic 120”, which is a two-minute tour through the impact the Catholic Church has had on history and still does today; “Movie” which reminds us that after our lives end we will review our lives (like a movie) and will get to evaluate what we have done; and “Mix”, which shows individual Catholics explaining how they left the Church, why they came back, and what a difference it’s made.

These are high-quality productions, as good as anything out there. The local Phoenix Catholic newspaper, The Catholic Sun, did a story on the start of the campaign in that diocese recently. They say the average Phoenix household will see the commercials 13 times between now and Easter.

And if it’s successful—and they have the money for it—they’ll expand into other dioceses. Looks promising. I know where my Lenten almsgiving is going.

Dallas Morning News Endorses Huckabee

Even thought the Dallas Morning News is "on the wrong side" of social issues that Governor Huckabee and those of us who support him care deeply about, the newspaper has endorsed the Governor in Tuesday's Texas Republican Primary. It is particularly gratifying that they, like so many Americans, see Governor Huckabee as a man of destiny who will play a large role in the future of the Republican Party and our nation.

Whatever Texas Republican primary voters do Tuesday, John McCain is all but guaranteed to be the party's presidential nominee. It is mathematically impossible for Mike Huckabee, the last remaining major GOP contender, to capture the nomination. The former Arkansas governor even turned up on Saturday Night Live recently to poke fun at himself for not going away.

Let's be clear: Mr. Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor, remains our choice for the GOP nomination. But Mr. McCain has racked up by far the most delegates and leads among Texas Republicans by a wide margin in recent opinion polls. Though he can't clinch the nomination Tuesday, victory is undeniably close.

Aside from his long experience and personal courage, he has a solid record of fiscal responsibility and has been on the right side of campaign finance reform and environmental issues. And he was correct and principled to lead the fight for comprehensive immigration reform last summer. Still, his age – 71 – and his choleric temperament gave us pause, particularly when contrasted to Mr. Huckabee's sunny-side-up brand of conservatism.

Also Online

Voter Guide: Comparing Republican presidential candidates

Win or lose in November, the GOP is destined to spend the next few years redefining itself. For many reasons, Reaganism, which made the GOP the dominant political party of the last generation, no longer resonates as it once did with the American public. The world has changed since Ronald Reagan's election nearly 30 years ago, and the great man's political heirs will have to adjust the GOP's strategy and tactics to new realities.

To that end, Mr. Huckabee, 52, should be a top leader in tomorrow's Republican Party. His good-natured approach to politics – "I'm a conservative; I'm just not mad about it," as he likes to say – is quite appealing after years of scorched-earth tactics from both parties. He's a pragmatist more concerned with effective government than with bowing to ideological litmus tests. For example, he has proven himself willing to violate anti-tax dogma to undertake investment in infrastructure for the sake of long-term prosperity.

Mr. Huckabee also is good on the environment, contending that the future of the conservative movement depends on embracing conservation and stewardship of the natural world. And he's a compassionate conservative especially in tune with middle-class anxieties in a globalizing economy.

Though his social and religious conservatism puts him on the wrong side of abortion, gay rights and other key issues, that same deep-faith commitment inspires his dedication to helping the poor and to racial healing. He truly is representative of the next wave of evangelical chieftains and, if nothing else, will emerge from this primary season the leader of one of the most influential factions in the GOP coalition.

We look forward to having him around to help shape and lead the Republican Party beyond November. That's why we encourage Texas Republicans to mark their ballots for Mr. Huckabee in the GOP primary: to demonstrate to the party's elite that Mr. Huckabee and his vision have a solid constituency.

True, a Huckabee vote today won't do much to determine the 2008 GOP presidential candidate. But it's a good investment in the Republican Party's future.

Sweden Discovers School Choice Works

Sometimes revolutions occur in the most unlikely places. In this column in The Spectator, "Fraser Nelson reports on the radical Swedish system of independent state schools, financed by vouchers, that has transformed the country’s education performance and is now inspiring the Conservative party’s dramatic blueprint for British schools: to set them free."

McCain The Demublican

Interesting what slips out when one is tired.