“He wants them to learn to walk and must therefore take away His hand; and if only the will to walk is really there He is pleased even with their stumbles. Do not be deceived, Wormwood. Our cause is never more in danger than when a human, no longer desiring, but still intending, to do our Enemy’s will, looks round upon a universe from which every trace of Him seems to have vanished, and asks why he has been forsaken, and still obeys.” - C. S. Lewis, _The Screwtape Letters_

The term has been used in a couple of UN documents, and the Europe for Christ! network has launched a .eu website to deal with it.¹ Would such a term be useful in dealing with the liberals here? I suspect not.

I learned today that Congressman Henry Hyde has died, and gone to meet his Maker.¹ Congressman Hyde once either said or wrote (I do not know which)

When the time comes, as it surely will, when we face that awesome moment, the final judgment, I’ve often thought, as Fulton Sheen wrote, that it is a terrible moment of loneliness. You have no advocates, you are there alone standing before God — and a terror will rip your soul like nothing you can imagine. But I really think that those in the pro-life movement will not be alone. I think there’ll be a chorus of voices that have never been heard in this world but are heard beautifully and clearly in the next world — and they will plead for everyone who has been in this movement. They will say to God, ‘Spare him, because he loved us!’²

I know that, if his thought be at all accurate, then surely the unborn spoke for him. I pray God that Congressman Hyde finds his rest in Heaven.

“This does not mean that we should never take action to prevent evil, or should sit back and wait for God to do something. It does mean that we should not panic, or become needlessly anxious, or jump to rash conclusions, which may cause more harm than good.” - Melinda Selmys¹

The “This” above refers to Christ’s command that we be not afraid.

Mr. Robert D. Novak believes that the only “true” conservatives are those who are for a small, limited government with a low tax burden.¹ He calls the “moral” or “social” conservatives “Republican acolytes,” and states that we are a “danger” if we support one of our own instead of a “conventional conservative.”²

I do not know if it is true or not to say that the commitment of the Republican party to the pro-family and pro-life is newer than its commitment to small, limited government. Nor do I think it really matters.

Mr. Novak is concerned the ex-Governor Mike Huckabee is not a “real” conservative because as governor of Arkansas he embraced the tax-and-spend policies that liberals are renowned for. This is, indeed, a very real concern.

But an even bigger concern is the way Mr. Novak dismisses the anti-family and pro-death stance of the more “conventional” Republican candidates. If they represent what it “really” means to be Republican, then I will have to take my vote elsewhere, and the split between “moral” and “economic” conservatives will only grow wider, for all that the family does in fact truly benefit from limited government and a low tax burden.

It is a real shame when we do not have a candidate that unambiguously supports both “planks” of the platform all conservatives should share. But until we do, I will have to work against the greatest evils, those that cost lives every day, even if progress on that front makes my finances more difficult.

Is that they effectively have no power. That is why even if former governor Mike Huckabee is chosen as the vice-presidential candidate for one of the pro-death candidates, which the Associated Press thinks likely,¹ the quandary I expressed yesterday² will remain in full force. I doubt picking Mr. Huckabee as his vice president will represent a true and substantial shift away from the pro-death, anti-family stance that Giliani represents, nor that Mitt Romney is really pro-life.

Former Tennessee Senator Fred Thompson has joined the list of candidates that I would have a hard time justifying voting for.¹ I am not sure that I can vote for a pro-choice republican, even as a vote against the democratic candidate who would be worse. I suspect it might be better, in the long run, if I were to vote instead for some 3rd party to help remind the republicans that they need “values voters” if they want to win elections.

UN agencies constantly use the number 500,000+ as the number of women worldwide who die each year from complications from pregnancy. They go on to use that number as a reason for abortion to be legalized. The problem is the number cannot be substantiated since most countries do not report data on deaths at all let alone deaths from maternal causes. Even these UN agencies admit that mortality figures are almost universally unavailable yet they insist on using this phony number.¹

“freedom of religion is much more than the freedom to worship; it is the freedom to act according to that belief in the service of others.” - Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor¹

“Which religion, whose adherents accept the tenets of that religion as the truth about God, does not regard adherents of other faiths as holding imperfect theological notions? If religious belief is important, then to accept more perfect beliefs is to be more perfect.” - David Klinghoffer¹