SOBRAN'S --
The Real News of the Month
April 2007
Volume 14, Number 4
Editor: Joe Sobran
Publisher: Fran Griffin (Griffin Communications)
Subscription Rates.
Print version: $44.95 per year. For special discounted
subscription offers and e-mail subscriptions see
www.sobran.com, or call the publisher's office.
Address: SOBRAN'S, P.O. Box 1383, Vienna, VA 22183-1383
Fax: 703-281-6617 Website: www.sobran.com
Publisher's Office: 703-255-2211 or www.griffnews.com
Foreign Subscriptions (print version only): Add $1.25 per
issue for Canada and Mexico; all other foreign
countries, add $1.75 per issue.
Credit Card Orders: Call 1-800-513-5053. Allow
4-6 weeks for delivery of your first issue.
CONTENTS
Features
-> What Obama Can Do
The Sobran Forum
-> Religious Human-Rights Discrimination?
Cartoons (Baloo)
"Reactionary Utopian" Columns Reprinted in This Issue
FEATURES
What Obama Can Do
(pages 1-2)
So Barack Obama has Big Momma on the canvas. When it
comes to fundraising, he has essentially beaten La
Hillary at her own game, nearly matching her $26 million
but with far more donors.
And since we're all a wee bit tired of her, he's the
sentimental favorite. It's the young underdog versus the
aging Ueberfrau.
When you're the brawny Goliath, you can't play for a
tie. A draw with skinny little David can't be spun as a
"moral victory." If the bookies are picking you to squash
him like a bug, you'd better not let him embarrass you.
Obama has already beaten the point spread. This can
only sap the Clinton team's morale and give prospective
donors grave doubts.
Obama is on his best behavior. He's running as Bill
Cosby, not Richard Pryor, as if he's afraid of seeming
uppity and would rather be safely solemn. Too bad. Think
of the fun he could have by abandoning strict propriety
and tweaking Hillary a bit:
"Mrs. Clinton, if elected president, would you
return at least some of the White House furniture you and
your husband made off with?"
"Mrs. Clinton, you are known as a feminist leader.
What steps would you as president take to protect female
White House interns from harassment in the workplace?"
"Mrs. Clinton, it has been said that if you win the
presidency, we will have a known sexual predator back in
the White House. Care to comment?"
These are the sort of questions the public would
remember long after her answers, supposing she could
answer at all. But such playfulness just isn't Obama's
style. In a more serious vein, however, there is
something else he can do, something unexpected that would
enhance his stature.
He can call on President Bush to resign from office.
Many Democrats would like to impeach Bush but don't
dare to try. For one thing, they think it's too late, and
they have a point. Bush has less than two years to go,
and impeachment is now a long, slow process, almost as
protracted as a presidential race.
This is regrettable; it should be no harder than
overriding a veto -- a short debate and a vote, followed
by summary dismissal, if warranted. In essence, it's the
firing of a servant, a public servant, for abuse of his
office, compounded, in this case, by gross incompetence.
But he could still have his pension and other lavish
perks usually denied to a disgruntled former employee of
the U.S. Government.
In other societies, honor has imposed much sterner
penalties on disgraced rulers: suicide, beheading,
hara-kiri. Obama wouldn't be asking Bush to fall on his
sword; he'd merely be urging him to behave honorably for
the sake of the country. Is a single act of honor too
great a sacrifice to demand of a man who has sent so many
others to die?
Nor could Obama be easily accused of partisan
motives. At this point Bush has become a burden to the
Republicans and an asset to the Democrats. If he stepped
down, it would help his own party more than their
opponents. And most patriots would be relieved.
Last fall's elections amounted to a national
no-confidence vote on this president. If he were a prime
minister under a parliamentary system, he would already
be gone.
We can assume that Bush, being Bush, would not
resign. In today's politics, the very idea of honor is,
as they say, outside the box. But by asking for his
resignation in the name of honor, Obama would set a new
standard for politics, in the sense that everything old
is new again.
Such a gesture would have deep resonance and inspire
serious discussion. Bush could hardly ignore it. And it
would earn Obama great respect. Honest Republicans might
join him, agreeing that Bush's presidency can no longer
be salvaged.
The shadow of dishonor would fall across the
remainder of Bush's term. As it should.
But the decks would be cleared for a new Republican
presidential candidate in 2008, one who had kept his
distance from Bush. The big loser would be John McCain,
who not only supports the Iraq war but, as 60 MINUTES has
just shown, lies about it even more brazenly and
preposterously than Bush does.
Obama has the chance to win the gratitude even of
Americans who have given up on voting.
THE SOBRAN FORUM
Religious Human-Rights Discrimination?
by Lawrence A. Uzzell
(pages 5-6)
[Author's Note: Among the secular human-rights watchdogs,
Human Rights Watch (HRW) has a far better record than
Amnesty International at taking religious freedom
seriously. An essay in HRW's world report
(http://hrw.org/wr2k5/religion/index.htm) grapples
seriously with some of the fundamental principles at
stake and shows a refreshing openness to self-scrutiny.
The following article from THE PUBLIC JUSTICE REPORT
includes my commentary on the pluses and the minuses of
HRW's thinking. THE PUBLIC JUSTICE REPORT is published by
the Annapolis-based Center for Public Justice
(www.cpjustice.org), which in its own words is "committed
to public service that responds to God's call to do
justice in local, national, and international affairs. We
believe Christians should contribute to the renewal of
political life."]
In 1997, when Russia enacted a law restoring state
control over religious life, Human Rights Watch worked
harder than any other secular human-rights organization
to warn the world. The leaders of the New York-based
organization, unlike their counterparts in Amnesty
International, showed by both word and deed that they
took religious freedom seriously as one of the
fundamental human rights protected by international law.
But Human Rights Watch, like many other groups, still
wants the state to favor certain secular belief systems
over religious ones. If governments follow its standards,
they will treat religious believers as second-class
citizens by comparison with preferred minorities such as
feminists and homosexuals.
The latest annual WORLD REPORT of Human Rights Watch
includes an important essay by staffers Jean-Paul Marthoz
and Joseph Saunders titled "Religion and the Human Rights
Movement." The two suggest that there may be a "schism
between the human-rights movement and religious
communities." That formulation is problematic, implying
that there is a single "human-rights movement" with a
uniform creed rather than a range of pro-freedom
ideologies with serious disagreements among themselves.
But the authors deserve credit for being open to
self-scrutiny. They ask, "Is the 'liberal' human-rights
movement in fact implicitly imperialistic?" They rightly
warn, "The secular human-rights movement sometimes sees
conservative religious movements as an artifact of
history and itself as contemporary, ahead on the
'infinite road of human progress and modernity.' ...
Rather than trying to enshrine the human-rights project
into different faiths and cultures, of trying to
legitimize human-rights norms within religions and not
alongside or against them, human-rights activists might
be tempted to dismiss such faiths and cultures as
obstacles to economic or human-rights modernity."
On issues such as the French and Turkish
governments' bans on Muslim head scarves, Marthoz and
Saunders clearly come down on the side of individual
religious conscience against state-imposed conformity.
They also acknowledge the role of religious believers as
allies of secular activists on issues such as ethnic
cleansing in Sudan. However, they see the "high points of
this convergence" as already a decade behind in the past.
They observe, "Essential disagreements appear
increasingly to pit secular human-rights activists
against individuals and groups acting from religious
motives ... on issues such as reproductive rights, gay
marriage, the fight against HIV/AIDS, and blasphemy
laws."
Marthoz and Saunders are undoubtedly right that "the
list of contentious issues is growing." But they need to
reflect more about why this is so. After all, it is not
the traditional Christians, Jews, or Muslims who have
changed their positions about the issues mentioned. On
most of these questions the views that Human Rights Watch
sees as "fundamentalist" have been shared by nearly all
cultures in nearly all periods of history until the very
recent past. By taking for granted that the latest
avant-garde trends on these issues are unquestionably and
universally superior, Human Rights Watch commits its own
form of "fundamentalism": the complacent assumption that
the present is always wiser than the past. Such
chronological provincialism is as irrational as
geographical provincialism; a truly cosmopolitan
human-rights movement should transcend both. Indeed,
closer study of why the "contentious issues" are growing
would suggest that it is the secular left that has
changed -- by becoming less pluralistic. The left wing of
the human-rights movement used to call for government
neutrality on issues such as homosexuality, but now it
seeks to harness government power to suppress Christian
and other critics of avant-garde lifestyles.
Marthoz and Saunders commendably declare that "the
human-rights movement should do more to defend religious
freedom," and that this defense should embrace even
"those who would threaten liberal conceptions of rights
if they were in power, so long as they do not physically
attack or otherwise impinge on the rights of
nonbelievers." But unfortunately, their organization does
not consistently observe that standard. Like so many on
the secular left (unlike secular libertarians on the
right), Human Rights Watch fails to make the crucial
distinction between banning an activity and declining to
subsidize it. It seems uninterested in the rights of
citizens who as a matter of conscience do not want their
tax payments used to finance the distribution of
contraceptives or the performance of abortions.
Especially striking is the failure of Human Rights
Watch to discuss the institution of secularized, monopoly
government schools -- by far the most powerful
institution in the western world for indoctrination of
captive children into beliefs that their families do not
share, at those families' own expense through compulsory
tax payments. It is difficult to believe that secular
human-rights advocates would be silent if it were a
matter of traditionalists coercively indoctrinating the
children of modernists rather than vice versa.
Marthoz and Saunders rightly acknowledge that "it
would be inappropriate for the human-rights community to
advocate for or against any system of religious belief or
ideology." But at the same time they praise the
interreligious dialogues sponsored by UNESCO, such as its
1994 Barcelona conference with its ambiguous call for
individuals and communities to stop teaching "that they
are inherently superior to others." Human Rights Watch is
far too knowledgeable about today's repressive
governments not to realize that such governments often
accuse groups such as the Jehovah's Witnesses of
illegally "inciting hatred" simply because they teach
that their own religion is true and others false. Secular
activists should be more explicit in affirming a
religious entity's rights to speak out robustly against
beliefs that it considers heretical and to define its own
membership requirements. To deny a religion the right to
enforce its own internal discipline on those who
voluntarily affiliate with it is in effect to deny it the
right to exist.
Religious believers should also have the right to
denounce activities that they consider immoral. That
right, which the English-speaking world used to consider
self-evident, is now under attack in places such as
Canada, where Christians have been brought to court
simply for reaffirming the teachings of their sacred
texts about sexual morality. A Saskatchewan newspaper
publisher was fined for publishing a paid advertisement
that quoted Bible passages condemning homosexual
behavior. Activist judges are turning Canada into a place
where a citizen cannot publicly state his disagreement
with the homosexualist agenda; only one side of the
debate enjoys full freedom of speech. To the best of my
knowledge the leaders of Human Rights Watch have neither
specifically endorsed nor specifically opposed this
ominous development.
The concept of freedom, like that of equality,
unfortunately lends itself to utopian abstractions. At
times the human-rights activists of the secular left
sound like the disciples of Ayn Rand on the right: both
tend to see freedom in flat, one-dimensional terms. They
underappreciate the role that traditional communities
such as churches and families play not as threats to
freedom but as guardians of it. Without such
"intermediate bodies," the individual is left naked and
defenseless against the state; moreover, neither the
individual nor the state can effectively replace those
bodies as producers of certain public goods. As the
ATLANTIC MONTHLY famously admitted in 1993, "Dan Quayle
was right" in proclaiming the superiority of traditional,
two-parent families for securing the long-term well-being
of children. Five decades earlier Aldous Huxley, who in
BRAVE NEW WORLD saw even more deeply into the future than
his contemporary George Orwell, suggested that "as
political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom
tends compensatingly to increase." If today's governments
agree to give newly invented sexual rights priority over
rights tested by centuries of historical experience, we
will end up with not more freedom but less.
Reprinted with permission from THE PUBLIC JUSTICE REPORT,
Third Quarter 2005; www.cpjustice.org.
Lawrence A. Uzzell has been president of International
Religious Freedom Watch
(www.internationalreligiousfreedomwatch.org) since 1998
and has authored numerous articles on religious freedom
in the Soviet Union in the WALL STREET JOURNAL,
WASHINGTON POST, CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR, and
elsewhere.
Mr. Uzzell worked for the U.S. House Education and Labor
Committee, and the Senate Education Subcommittee, the
National Institute of Education, and the Heritage
Foundation. He was a visiting fellow at the Hoover
Institution specializing in freedom of conscience in the
Soviet Union and was vice president of the Jamestown
Foundation from 1991 to 1995 studying the political and
economic developments in the former Soviet Union.
Mr. Uzzell was Moscow Representative for the Keston
Institute from 1995 to 1999 during which time he was
nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for articles on Russia's
1997 law restoring state control over religious life.
In February 2006, a stroke impaired his language skills
somewhat, but he has resumed writing and research
projects on religious and historical subjects. He can be
contacted at Lauzzell@aol.com or at 73 Patchwork Lane,
Fishersville, Virginia 22939.
CARTOONS (Baloo)
http://www.sobran.com/issue_cartoons/2007-04/2007-04-
cartoons.shtml
REPRINTED COLUMNS ("The Reactionary Utopian")
(pages 2-4, 7-12)
* A Coriolanus in Our Future? (March 8, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070308.shtml
* Family Values, Roman and Republican (March 5, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070305.shtml
* The Shakespeare Bigots (March 22, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070322.shtml
* I Remember Sandy (March 23, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070323.shtml
* My Other Sandy (March 29, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070329.shtml
* An Enemy of the People (March 26, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070326.shtml
* Happy Easter! (April 5, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070405.shtml
* The Science of Expertology (April 12, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070412.shtml
* The Arab Solution (April 16, 2007)
http://www.sobran.com/columns/2007/070416.shtml
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
All articles are written by Joe Sobran, except where
noted.
You may forward this newsletter if you include the
following subscription and copyright information:
Subscribe to the Sobran E-Package.
See http://www.sobran.com/e-mail.shtml
or http://www.griffnews.com for details and samples
or call 800-513-5053.
Copyright (c) 2007 by The Vere Company -- www.sobran.com.
All rights reserved.
Distributed by the Griffin Internet Syndicate
www.griffnews.com with permission.
[ENDS]