THE DAILY BLADE: Speaking Truth To Power
In a private meeting in the papal palace at the Vatican, Pope Benedict XVI told President Bush that he was concerned Christians in Iraq were being "mistreated by the Muslim majority."
The New York Times reports that after the meeting, the president told reporters:
"He did express deep concerns about the Christians inside Iraq, that he was concerned that the society that was evolving would not tolerate the Christian religion. And I assured him we’re working hard to make sure that people lived up to the Constitution, the modern Constitution voted on by the people that would honor people from different walks of life and different attitudes."
According to The Washington Post, Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who also met Bush, "expressed special concern about Iraqi Catholics, whose population in the country has dwindled since the invasion."
This is not the first time the pontiff has raised the issue of the safety of Christians in predominantly Muslim countries.
In his November 2006 trip to Turkey, Pope Benedict XVI insisted that Turkey more vigorously safeguard religious freedoms and minority rights of its miniscule Christian population (0.2 percent), and issued a joint declaration with Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I, stating that respect for religious freedom must be a criterion for Turkey’s membership in the EU.
The Holy Father had the conviction and the courage to make these statements on Turkish soil, in the wake of calls for his arrest by Turkey's Directorate General for Religious Affairs, massive demonstrations protesting his visit and death threats against him that preceded his visit.
But the pope’s concern over the safety of Christians in Turkey may be exaggerated, or even misplaced, argues Bush 43 speechwriter and WaPo columnist Michael Gerson in a column last week:
The shining achievement of modern Turkey is declared by the darkness around it. In Saudi Arabia or northern Sudan, conversion from Islam is considered apostasy, a crime punishable by death. … In Turkey, a legal change of religion on your identity card merely requires a notarized letter, and several hundred Christian converts have made the switch.
And then Gerson undercuts his own assertions of religious tolerance in Turkey by detailing how nationalists incite violence with "conspiracy theories" about Christian missionaries bribing Muslims into converting" and noting that the "rise of a more publicly assertive Islam in Turkey" will only worsen the situation of Christians - and Christian converts - in Turkey:
The secular establishment, fearful of accumulated sectarian power, has traditionally denied minority religious groups the right to own property, to provide religious education beyond high school or to train their own clergy. As a result, the Armenian and Greek Orthodox churches are slowly being asphyxiated for lack of priests - and the government has sometimes hastened the process by expropriating church property without compensation. …
[R]ising Islamist influence has caused sudden storms of violence. Seven weeks ago, two Turkish Christian converts and a German citizen were ritually murdered in the southern city of Malatya by killers spouting nationalist and Islamist slogans. Pastors around the country have begun hiring professional security. The Armenian patriarch is followed by a bodyguard even during his procession to the altar -- an unsettling liturgy of fear. …
Nice euphemism, "ritually murdered." Their hands and feet were bound and their throats were slit. And there are rumors floating around the Christian community that they had also been stabbed numerous times, disemboweled and castrated.
Why should nationalists and Islamists be incensed enough to "ritually murder" these converts? As Gerson notes, Turks refer to converts to Christianity as "’foreigners’ who have repudiated Turkishness itself." And while a notarized letter is all it takes to change one’s religion, getting that letter is tantamount to a signed confession to "insulting Turkishness" or "insulting Islam," which are criminal acts punishable by imprisonment.
One of the Malatya victims, Necati Aydin, 26, had previously been charged with insulting Islam and was imprisoned for one month after he was caught distributing bibles in Izmir. And in the days before the papal visit to Turkey, two Christian converts, Hakan Tastan, 37, and Turan Topal, 46, were put on trial on charges of insulting Turkishness, inciting religious hatred against Islam and trying to convert other Turks to Christianity.
Quoting Ali Bardakoglu, who heads the Turkish Religious Affairs Directorate, on whether missionary work was a danger to Turkey - "No, it is their natural right. We must learn to respect even the personal choice of an atheist, let alone other religions." - Gerson ends his exercise in seeing only what he wants to see with the extraordinary statement, "That kind of clarity from a Muslim leader is the reason that Turkey, if it did not exist, would need to be invented."After the Armenian Genocide of 1915-1917, the 60,000 remaining Armenians in "secular" Turkey who are forced to hide their identities as Armenians and Christians (video link), no doubt think this invention needs to go back to the drawing board.
How Resilient Is Rudy?: Part II
In an op-ed published by The Boston Herald, radio talk show host Michael Graham (WTKK 96.9 FM) argues that Rudy is bulletproof because national security trumps all other issues in 2008:
Set aside Rudy’s two wins in liberal New York City. Set aside his inspiring performance as mayor on and after 9/11. Set aside the fact that he’s literally on a first-name basis with every voter in America.
Set all that aside, and still this fact remains: If there is another serious, successful terrorist attack between now and the national conventions, the only question about 2008 will be whether the Democrats nominate Giuliani, too. …
Is he pro-choice? Is he pro-gay? Who cares? He’s pro-kick-terrorist-butt, and he’s tough enough to do it. [Emphasis, The Stiletto’s.]
About a month ago, Newsday columnist and Fox News pundit Jim Pinkerton made the same point, albeit a bit more soberly:
It's hard to imagine that a President Giuliani, for instance, would have let Osama bin Laden slip away back in 2001, or let the Iraq war drag out for all these years, with our military so ill equipped. Giuliani is that rare political combination: moderate ideologically, but not mushy personally. He has the hard edge of an ideologue, but not the rigidity or extremism.
Rudy is "the most unlikely Republican presidential front-runner we've seen in a long time … seem[ing] to represent everything Republicans deplore," says Chicago Sun-Times columnist Steve Huntley. And he notes that it’s not just social conservatives who are baffled by Rudy’s staying power:
Giuliani's continued prominence in the polls particularly confounds liberal pundits and their cartoonish stereotypes of conservatives. Just wait, they keep saying, social conservatives and evangelicals will see the light when they learn about Giuliani's libertarian views on social issues. …
The liberal pontificating class, like Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, harbors deep doubts about the war on terror, so they are handicapped in seeing how it trumps abortion as a priority issue with so many Red Staters. The latest polling from the Pew Research Center shows that 43 percent of GOP voters consider abortion very important, vs. 77 percent who think terrorism is. …
Which is why many social conservatives – The Stiletto amongst them – are cutting Rudy some slack.
John McCain no doubt has agita over Rudy catching a break with a significant percentage of the conservative base on abortion, guns and gays, while he is getting whacked over illegal immigration, campaign finance reform and high-pressure interrogation of terrorists (which he terms "torture"). For her part, Hillary must be losing sleep over Rudy getting a pass on three contentious issues, while the hard left base of her party is giving her all kinds of grief on just one.
New York Times columnist Bob Herbert sees the world in black and white. Because he looks at just about every issue through the narrow lens of race relations, his columns are tiresome and predictable. Worse, he often misses the bigger picture. His op-ed, "School to Prison Pipeline," is a case in point. Herbert writes:
The latest news-as-entertainment spectacular is the Paris Hilton criminal justice fiasco. She’s in! She’s out! She’s - whatever.
Far more disturbing (and much less entertaining) is the way school officials and the criminal justice system are criminalizing children and teenagers all over the country, arresting them and throwing them in jail for behavior that in years past would never have led to the intervention of law enforcement. …
[A] 6-year-old girl in Florida who was handcuffed by the police and taken off to the county jail after she threw a tantrum in her kindergarten class.
Police in Brooklyn recently arrested more than 30 young people, ages 13 to 22, as they walked toward a subway station, on their way to a wake for a teenage friend who had been murdered. …
[P]olice in Baltimore handcuffed a 7-year-old boy and took him into custody for riding a dirt bike on the sidewalk. …
The Racial Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union has been studying this issue. "What we see routinely," said Dennis Parker, the program’s director, "is that behavior that in my time would have resulted in a trip to the principal’s office is now resulting in a trip to the police station."
He added that the evidence seems to show that white kids are significantly less likely to be arrested for minor infractions than black or Latino kids. The 6-year-old arrested in Florida was black. The 7-year-old arrested in Baltimore was black.
While The Stiletto agrees that in each of the cases Herbert cites, school officials and police overreacted, white racism is not the only – or even the correct - explanation.
Well before normal childhood activities and acting out became criminalized, Western societies have steadily been moving toward criminalizing spanking (physical abuse), sending kids to bed without their supper (child maltreatment or neglect), a stern talking to at a decibel level that exceeds conversational speech (verbal abuse) and other forms of discipline that earlier generations of parents used to raise children who respected their elders, obeyed the law, and knew right from wrong.
Should a doctor, teacher or "concerned neighbor" anonymously call Child Protective Services, such putatively abusive acts can get a child removed from the parents’ home and placed into foster care, or even lead to criminal prosecution of the parents. So rather than risk accusations of abuse, today’s parents spare the rod – and leave it to school officials and law enforcement to deal with their out-of-control children.
And that’s how Paris Hilton fits into all this. This spoiled, rich girl has obviously never heard the word "no" from either parent: "No, you cannot drop out of high school."; "No, you cannot drink or take drugs, and drive (at high speed, and without headlights no less)."; "No, you cannot ignore a judge’s orders to report to an alcohol rehab program."; "No, you cannot buy your way out of complying with the laws that apply to everyone else." (Paris’ mother apparently has trouble with this last one herself.)
When he ordered Paris back to prison, Superior Court Judge Michael T. Sauer probably wanted to wipe that "your rules don’t apply to me" smirk right off her face – as did just about everyone else in America. And the trembling, screaming and "I-want-my-mommy" crying jag that Paris treated courtroom spectators to wasn’t a nervous breakdown – it was a temper tantrum. At the age of 26, someone finally did the job her parents should have a long time ago, and punished her for her bad behavior.
Last week, Paris was quoted as saying that she hopes that "others have learned from my mistakes." The Stiletto hopes that this time Paris stays in the slammer long enough for her to learn from her mistakes.
Editorial Note: A proposed CA bill to ban spanking introduced by Assemblywoman Sally Lieber (D-San Jose) has died in committee.
On Turkey: Why are only the Catholics talking about this? Ah yes, you can't use your free-speech rights to defend CHRISTIANS; defending atheists etc. is just fine!
On Paris Hilton: YES! Someone finally got it right. I'm also quite heartened to learn that (at least in CA) parents can still spank their children. Let me tell you, it works!
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The arrest of the 7 year old in Baltimore was a complete farce. The mother, who is a complete piece of work, marched to city hall to complain at which point the mayor could not act fast enough to get on her knees. This incident reminds me of an old joke my grandfather told me years ago about an American, an Englishman and a lady with a barking dog on a train. The punch line was that the American threw the wrong bitch out the window. The police arrested the wrong person. The sad part of whole event was that many people in Baltimore thought that it was acceptable for a 7 year old to ride a minibike on the city streets. The concept of child endangerment here is as foriegn as Christmas in Turkey.
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