I went to theological seminary in Portland, Oregon.  That might sound rather ensconced and safe, but I worked at a large commercial bakery in a run-down industrial section of the city.  This exposed me to some things I would rather have not seen, as when, driving along a side-street one evening, I found myself running a narrow gauntlet of hectoring prostitutes; I drove away as fast as I could.

Portland has a justified reputation for urban renewal and natural beauty.  Bisected by the Willamette River and set among lush, fir-laden hills, Portland’s charm is hard to forget.

Yet now, as Katelyn Beaty documents in her moving article about the sex trafficking trade in the City of Roses (that would be Portland; I proposed to my wife in the city’s massive rose-test garden, albeit in the winter when none were in bloom), Portland has become perhaps the single most dominant city in one of the ugliest “industries” ever devised – the trafficking of persons for sexual purposes.  Veteran journalist Dan Rather has called Portland “Pornland,” and according to Joslyn Baker of the Multnomah County (Portland area) unit that specializes in child prostitution,  “most Portlanders accepted the ubiquitous strip clubs as part of their premium on individual freedom—until February 2009, when the FBI swept the Portland-Vancouver area and found seven underage girls, the most in any FBI raid at the time. With the ensuing national media coverage, Portlanders began realizing that their lucrative sex industry is the main ‘gateway’ for pimping children.”

Christians are fighting back, with love and tenacity.  They have now started the Oregon Center for Christian Voices (OCCV), which over the past four years “has … become Oregon’s flagship nonprofit for passing laws that make it harder to sexually exploit children. In the same four years, two Christians in Portland’s leading assault advocacy group and police department have created a unique model for assisting underage victims. Their model earned their county a $500,000 federal grant that created a special committee on CSEC (‘commercial sexual exploitation of children’).”  Additionally, Oregon State Legislator Andy Olson (R-Albany) “has worked with OCCV to try to amend Oregon’s Constitution (whose free speech provisions open the door for prostitution and illicit sexuality among youth). A Christian, he calls trafficking a ‘family values issue.’”

Rep. Olson is dead right, and the noble efforts of committed Christians to change Portland’s culture of prostitution and sex trafficking are animated by the same spirit of sacrifice and compassion that led the early believers to rescue unwanted babies from the Roman ash-heaps.  As Shoshan Tama-Sweet, executive director of the Oregon Center for Christian Voices, told journalist Beaty: “The church has something special: We have the Good News.  We have a vision of the way the world is supposed to be. And it doesn’t include the rape of children on our streets.  When you realize that God loved every victim when they were born, that he’s with them every day they’re traumatized—it’s incumbent on believers to protect them, to help them become whole, and to insist that, in our society, we are not going to tolerate the antithesis of God’s beloved community.”

I believe Mr. Tama-Sweet is among those Jesus is unashamed to call brothers (Hebrews 2:11).  May God bless him and his colleagues in their efforts.

Earlier this year, FRC held two events focusing on human trafficking and what Christians can do to fight it.  You can view them here and here.

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: October 31, 2011
CONTACT: J.P. Duffy or Darin Miller, (866) FRC-NEWS or (866) 372-6397

FRC Blasts Supreme Court for Allowing Decision to Stand that Removes Roadside Crosses in Six States
October 31, 2011

SCOTUS Lets Stand One of Worst Religious Liberty Assaults in American History

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Family Research Council (FRC) strongly criticized the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision today to let stand one of the worst religious assaults in all of American history. The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear Davenport vs. American Atheists will now result in the removal of 14 crosses bearing the names of fallen Utah state troopers that have been placed at roadside locations. In addition to Utah, the cross removal order will affect five other states including Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Wyoming.

The Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the case could have significant implications for national memorials and monuments across the nation, including, but not limited to, the crosses on headstones in Arlington Cemetery.

Family Research Council President Tony Perkins responded with these comments:

“The Supreme Court has failed to recognize that religious liberty is a fundamental right given to us by God and protected in the Constitution. I find it tragic that our freedoms are now at greater risk from our own courts than from the foreign or domestic enemies we’ve faced,” concluded Perkins.

Director of the Center for Religious Liberty at the Family Research Council Ken Klukowski co-authored FRC’s brief in the case with Professor Nelson Lund. Of the case, Klukowski said:

“The U.S. Supreme Court decided today to let stand one of the worst court decisions on religious liberty in American history. The Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ordered removal of roadside crosses in six states is the worst example yet of the Establishment Clause being turned on its head to sterilize the public square of references to faith.

“Freedom of religion means, in part, that no government should discriminate against those who, using their own funds, wish to erect a non-invasive religious display on public property,” concluded Klukowski.

To read FRC’s amicus brief, click here: http://www.frc.org/davenport

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I confess it’s been awhile since I read the feisty conservative publication, Human Events.

I picked up a copy from a stack at the Capitol Hill Club yesterday and instantly remembered why I loved this journal so when I was a young conservative coming up.

There is a bright blue banner above the Masthead of Human Events that proclaims a celebration of Ronald Reagan’s Centennial. Well should this grassroots conservative hold high that banner. Ronald Reagan was their most famous reader in the 1950s and 1960s.

He continued reading Human Events in the White House. There’s a famous story that White House Chief of Staff James A. Baker III tried to keep Human Events out of the president’s pile of reading because this spirited journal fearlessly criticized any backsliding or and named the backsliders. (The powerful and efficient Mr. Baker was forever leading the backslider lobby.)

Picking up my copy of Human Events, I showed it to Attorney General and Mrs. Ed Meese. With a wink, I said: Sir, the statute of limitations has run out by now. Am I correct in thinking there may have been someone “with Reagan” who made sure the president got his weekly copy of Human Events? The ever-gracious Mr. Meese smiled as he signed a copy of his book, With Reagan.

How fully modest he is. Most Washington Bigs write their memoirs focusing on themselves and their own self-importance. Dean Acheson, the very important Secretary of State in Harry Truman’s administration, set the pattern with his memoirs, Present at the Creation. Well, Acheson was there when much of the shape of the modern world was formed in those tumultuous years after World War II. Still, many of us think of something even more awe-inspiring when we see “Creation” with a capital C.

Ed Meese was with Reagan throughout those years. And he continues to serve the conservative cause with distinction, warmth, and good humor.

Human Events has lost none of its brio. “STUPID COMES TO WALL STREET” reads one headline. You won’t doubt where they stand.

Editor Jason Mattera is taking Human Events into a new era. He confronted Vice President Biden last week on Capitol Hill. Jason wanted to question the outspoken v.p. about his claims that rapes and murders would increase if we didn’t pass President Obama’s phony jobs bill. The ever-ungracious veep rounded on Jason: “Don’t ____ with me!”

Of course, it’s not just plucky Human Events reporters who think the Vice President may have stepped in it again. The Washington Post’s Glenn Kessler awarded Joe B*Den four “pinocchios” for his outlandish claims. Kessler’s “Fact Checker” column is a rare gem in fair and balanced journalism.

I confess I have missed most my friend John Gizzi’s stellar reporting. And what would we do without Gizzi’s weekly “How’s Your Political I.Q.?” John Gizzi has forgotten more about American politics than most of us will ever know. Who was the last president to carry Michigan? George H.W. Bush in 1988. Which three candidates lost the New Hampshire primary but went on to win the White House? They were Bill Clinton (1992),

George W. Bush (2000) and Barack Obama (2008). I knew those, but I missed two others. Will it be time to retire when I can get a 100 on the Gizzi political IQ test?

Does your public library carry Human Events? Chances are they carry a host of liberal publications. If they don’t subscribe to Human Events, maybe they should. Liberalism is parasitic. In government it moves and breathes and has its being. Deprived of government subsidies, would it survive at all? Human Events is one way to fight back against liberal Big Government dominance. But do not, I repeat, do not Occupy the Public Library. I wouldn’t want stupid to come to the stacks.

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I thought of President Theodore Roosevelt as I attended a wreath-laying ceremony in Annapolis recently. We were observing the 100^th anniversary of the Tomb of the Unknowns at St. John’s College. Those unknowns are not American soldiers and sailors but those of France who died fighting for our freedom in the War of Independence. Theodore Roosevelt cared deeply about such things. As president, he presided over the return of the remains of John Paul Jones from France.

And he was more than willing to have his own body buried in France. Yes. Former President Roosevelt went hat-in-hand to the White House in 1917. There, he almost begged President Woodrow Wilson to let him go to France to fight against Germany.

Wilson demurred, saying it would be too dangerous to let a former President of the United States be captured or killed in combat. I would be more than willing, T.R. told his long-time adversary, to have my epitaph read:  Roosevelt to France.

Wilson didn’t turn T.R. down then. He said to his faithful aide Joe Tumulty after his rival left the presidential office: “Theodore is like a big boy.” Hopeful, T.R. said he thought the professorial Wilson might relent.

Today is Theodore Roosevelt’s birthday. T.R. is getting beaten up a good bit among conservatives these days. His embrace of national health care when he ran as the “Bull Moose” (Progressive Party) candidate for president in 1912 is seen, with some justification, by President Obama as an early endorsement of his own takeover of one-sixth of the nation’s economy.

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Yesterday here at FRC headquarters, a sobering panel of religious freedom & foreign policy experts looked at the past, current, and potential impact of U.S. foreign policy upon religious freedom around the world.

Watch the panel below, or visit the event page for audio and embed code.

Participants included:

• Elyse Anderson, Foreign Policy Director for Congressman Frank Wolf (R-Va.)
• Ann Buwalda, Executive Director, Jubilee Campaign
• Dr. Thomas Farr, first Director of the State Department’s office of international religious freedom and Director of the Religious Freedom Project at the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs and Visiting Associate Professor of Religion and International Affairs at Georgetown’s Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service
• Emmanuel Ogebe, Nigerian attorney and human rights leader
• Tina Ramirez, Director of International and Government Relations, The Becket Fund

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Two acts of vandalism were committed in recent days against facilities associated with the debates over homosexuality—one on each side of the issue.

In Arlington Heights, Illinois, bricks were thrown through the glass doors and windows of the Christian Liberty Academy. That night, the Christian school was to host a banquet put on by Americans for Truth about Homosexuality (AFTAH), a pro-family organization led by Peter LaBarbera. The banquet was to feature presentation of an award to Scott Lively, another pro-family activist who heads Abiding Truth Ministries.

In the other incident, an office door and two display cases of the GLBT Center at North Carolina State University in Raleigh were defaced with spray paint, including an anti-gay epithet.

Both acts of vandalism were contemptible, and Family Research Council (FRC) condemns them both equally. The debates over homosexuality, however emotional they may become, should be carried on peacefully by those on both sides. Physical attacks on people or property are never justified. (Will liberal groups join us in equally denouncing both acts? The Southern Poverty Law Center, which is quick to accuse conservatives of “hate,” chose to blame the victims, criticizing the attackers in Illinois primarily for “[a]dding fuel to a fire started and stoked by anti-gay activists.”)

So are there any differences between these two incidents? Yes. There is not the slightest evidence that the spray paint attack at NC State had any connection with any religious or political organization or public policy issue, or that it was perpetrated by anyone other than a lone thug.

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Tulip Time is an all-American festival that’s also all-Dutch. It’s an annual celebration in Holland, Michigan. And it shouldn’t be missed. But it’s a spring event, an occasion to rejoice in the blooms of new life.

I never associated tulips with the fall. In front of our house in Maryland today, my wife has placed chrysanthemums—yellow, burgundy, and purples ones. They’re there along with pumpkins and gourds and harvest-themed garden banners. It’s all very nice and welcoming. But they’re not tulips.

So what about tulips in the fall? My own introduction to tulip time in the fall was a bit unusual, I’ll admit. In 1980, my new wife pleaded with me to help her plant tulip bulbs. It was October. Sorry, my love, but I’m busy this weekend, I told her. I’m campaigning for Ronald Reagan. I’ll help you plant your tulips in the spring, I promised.

“If we don’t plant tulip bulbs in the fall, we’ll have nothing in our garden come spring,” she protested. It was the first house we had owned as a married couple, so I tried to sympathize with her nesting instinct. But I was heaven-bent on the coming elections.

“If we don’t get Jimmy Carter out of there,” I sternly remonstrated, “you’ll have Soviet tanks in your garden come spring!”

I didn’t help her at all. Instead, I went doorbelling for Reagan. You really learn about American politics when you go to a third floor walk-up and try to persuade a young mother to listen to you. I’ll always remember the wife of a shipyard worker who answered my knock. She had one baby on her hip and another on the floor who seemed to need a change of diapers. All the while, she was stirring soup on the stove.

She said: “You’ve got just one minute, mister.” “Okay,” I said, “Ronald Reagan will get the economy going again. He’ll build up our Navy, which will be good for your husband’s work; he’ll make America respected again, and, of course, he’ll stand up for the right to life.” That was enough for her. She said she would vote for Reagan and ask her husband to do so, too. I kept my promise and was out of there in less than one minute.

Politics! Why do I always think of politics? In 1980, my young wife must have been shocked. She had married me between presidential election years. She didn’t know that every four years I go more than a little crazy.

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On September 30th, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) received thousands of negative comments related to the interim final rule published on August 3rd where all insurance plans were informed that they must cover the full range of FDA-approved contraceptives with no co-pay. A very narrowly defined conscience exemption for religious organizations was included which, in essence, covers only places of worship and was originally drafted by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) for a bill in California. For more information on the rule, see FRC’s fact sheet on this topic.

Curious to read some of the comments and get a sense of volume, this week I perused the official regulatory website of the government, regulations.gov. Recall that the language from the rule indicated that comments would be posted publicly: “All comments are posted on the Internet exactly as received, and can be retrieved by most Internet search engines.”

Much to my surprise, my search led me to only a very small number of comments — under 100. Knowing that FRC constituents alone submitted close to 12000 comments, and that USCCB constituents filed close to 60,000 comments, I was surprised and assumed I was searching incorrectly. So, I called the regulations.gov helpline and had a knowledgeable customer service representative walk me through the process to assure I was doing everything correctly. At the end of that conversation together we located only 58 comments! I then asked the customer service representative if HHS may withhold certain comments. The representative ironically began by telling me that the “Obama Administration is committed to transparency” but then told me that HHS has control over what they post.

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Click here to subscribe to The Social Conservative Review.

Dear Friends,

Conservatism, it has been said, is not an ideology but a way of viewing the world. This is partially true: conservatives seek to impose no utopian vision upon an imperfectible humanity.

At the same time, conservatism presupposes both human dignity and fallenness, and argues that personal virtue must be the foundation of political self-governance. Conservatism is suspicious of schemes to change humanity through external constraints, or reshape human nature through insistent indoctrination.

At Independence Hall in 1861, Abraham Lincoln said, “The Declaration of Independence gave liberty not alone to the people of this country, but hope to all the world for all future time. It was that which gave promise that in due time the weights would be lifted from the shoulders of all men, and that all should have an equal chance.”

An equal chance because, as the Declaration says, all men are of equal merit in the sight of their Creator. This was not only Lincoln’s claim; it has been the principle claim of our Republic since its founding.

Despite its protestations to the contrary, the Left argues that most men are not, in fact, created equal: The “masses” are too reactionary to know what’s good for them, too benighted to recognize the obvious truths of political liberalism, too fearful of the bracing, brave new world that Godless men can create.

Most people understand, intuitively, that grand plans for social engineering and cultural transformation will collapse under the weight of human arrogance, incompetence, and elitism. They grasp that there are limits to human commitments and even love, which is why one man and one woman marry each other, and do not have multiple partners. It’s why each of us cares for his own children more than those of our neighbors. It’s why one can have only so many close friends: People are finite, and there’s only so much of each of us to go around.

This is not a cynical perspective, but it is not naïve either. It is conservative, taking and enjoying reality as it is. “Conservatism advocates that the wisdom of the past be used to create a promising future,” writes constitutional scholar Patrick Garry. “It does not seek to simply confer a basket of benefits in the present, without regard to whether those benefits will build a foundation for a more lasting and promising future” (Conservatism Redefined, pp. 153-154).

“A more lasting and promising future.” That’s the vision of Family Research Council for all Americans. Thank you for sharing in it with us.

Sincerely,

Rob Schwarzwalder
Senior Vice President
Family Research Council

P.S. FRC has just released five new publications, which can be downloaded at no charge by clicking on the links below:

• “Back on the Right Road: Policy Goals for 2012 & Beyond,” by FRC Policy staff
• “Debating Homosexuality: Understanding Two Views,” by Peter Sprigg
• “The Bible’s Teaching on Marriage and the Family,” by Andreas Kostenberger, Ph.D.
• “The Best Pro-Life Arguments for Secular Audiences,” by Cathy Cleaver Ruse , Esq., and Rob Schwarzwalder
• “I See You: Telling the ICU Mobile Story,” by Bob Morrison

Educational Freedom and Reform
Homeschooling

• “Ending Discrimination against Homeschoolers,” Home School Legal Defense Association
• “Homeschoolers emerge as Republican foot soldiers,” Andy Sullivan, Reuters
• “Social services threaten homeschooling parents,” Bob Unruh, World Net Daily
• “Homeschool Parents to Lose Children Permanently,” Christian NewsWire

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President Reagan’s excellent sense of American history was demonstrated again in 1981.

He hosted French president Francois Mitterrand in Virginia to celebrate the 200^th anniversary of the Battle of Yorktown. Relations withFrance were not the best in 1981, but Reagan was determined to remind Americans of our historic debt to the country that provided the necessary aid to theUnited States in our fight forIndependence from Britain.

Reagan used many such occasions—including his own Inaugural Address—to revive the civic spirit of the country. We had been so beaten down over the previous 15 years that many feared for the survival of our nation. Some had taken to calling the depressed public mood a “malaise.” Reagan knew and proceeded to demonstrate that there was nothing wrong withAmerica that some strong leadership could not cure.

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Doug Schoen, the former pollster for President Bill Clinton, has written an interesting article for the Wall Street Journal on the world view of the “Occupy Wall Street” protesters now sitting in Manhattan’s Zucotti Park.  A senior researcher at his polling firm, Arielle Alter Confino, interviewed nearly 200 of the OWS occupiers on October 10^th and 11^th.   She found that they “have a distinct ideology and are bound by a deep commitment to radical left-wing policies.”

Schoen describes their thinking in more detail:

Our research shows clearly that the movement doesn’t represent unemployed America and is not ideologically diverse. Rather, it comprises an unrepresentative segment of the electorate that believes in radical redistribution of wealth, civil disobedience and, in some instances, violence. Half (52%) have participated in a political movement before, virtually all (98%) say they would support civil disobedience to achieve their goals, and nearly one-third (31%) would support violence to advance their agenda.

He adds that the OWS is bound by a “a deep commitment to left-wing policies: opposition to free-market capitalism and support for radical redistribution of wealth, intense regulation of the private sector, and protectionist policies to keep American jobs from going overseas.”  Schoen goes on to express his opinion that alignment with those who hold such opinions would be electorally destructive.

That said, Repair_Man_Jack on RedState has a nice blog post discussing the skyrocketing cost of college tuition and its impact on young adults.  Stories had run indicating that some of the OWSers were protesting about the burden of student loans.  Given Schoen’s interview results this might have been a story line intended to make the protesters more sympathetic.  On the other hand, a bunch of Marxists might just want their debts repudiated.

Whatever they believe the RedState article recognizes this dissatisfaction.  The underlying problem is real and FRChas expressed its concern with the existence of the higher education racket.  (Paul Peterson of Harvard accurately called it the “Education Industrial Complex“ in 2008.)  American education is defective at the primary and secondary levels, but higher education is also deeply in need of reform.  Price competition and alternative forms of professional credentialing are needed badly.  An astute politician could garner great support from young voters merely by recognizing that a problem exists.

(Stephanie Guttman also discusses the OWS/education link on October 7 in a post on NRO’s Corner.  However, she attributes “E-I-C” to Michael Medved and raises the desirability of a return to vocational schools.)

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In a characteristically perceptive op-ed titled “Downward Mobility,” Washington Post economics writer Robert Samuelson notes that “for young Americans, the future could be dimmer.”  As he summarizes:

In 1990, there were 32 million Americans 65 and over; by 2040, that’s reckoned at 80 million. Rising costs for Social Security and Medicare have created a new political dynamic: If benefits for the elderly aren’t cut, burdens on the young will go up. Decaying infrastructure poses similar choices. Either pay for repairs or tolerate substandard roads and schools. If today’s weak recovery persists, the outlook darkens. Unemployment will remain high, say 7 percent to 9 percent. Wage increases will remain depressed. Young workers will have trouble finding jobs to develop the skills and contacts that lead to better jobs. Productivity growth might falter.

This is not a scenario anyone wants to contemplate, but contemplate it we must if we want our country to remain the economic engine and beacon of prosperity it for decades has been.

One thing Samuelson did not note, however, is that our economic crisis is significantly augmented by a lack of future employees.  As my colleagues Drs. Pat Fagan and Henry Potrykus have demonstrated in their important study, “Decline of Economic Growth: Human Capital and Population Change,” ”The slowdown of GDP growth is explained by the concentration of both population and human capital in the baby boom, which is now being replaced by lower human capital cohorts.”  In sum, they argue, “the historical balance of population growth, human capital development, and physical capital investment is the optimum national path to economic growth. Growing our human capital is critical to our future economic growth.”

We cannot have a growing economy with a shrinking labor pool.  Yet that is the grim demographic reality we are facing.  Even the most extraordinary gains in productivity cannot compensate for a lack of one indispensable resource: people.  Given that we are losing roughly 3,000 unborn children through abortion every day, is it any wonder that our economic future looks bleaker than ever?

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Peggy Noonan’s most recent column in the Wall Street Journal (Friday, October 14), “It’s No Time for Moderation,” had some keen insights on recent developments in public opinion.  She is thinking about the coming of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement and other manifestations of discontent and asks:

Why is this happening now, and not two years ago? Because at some point in the past year or six months, people started to realize: The economy really isn’t going to get better for a long time. Everyone seems to know in their gut that unemployment is going to stay bad or get worse. Everyone knows the jobless rate is higher than the government says, because they look around and see that more than 9% of their friends and family are un- or underemployed. People put on the news and hear aboutEuropeand bankruptcy, and worry that it’s going to spread here. Eighteen months ago smart people could talk on TV about how we’re on a growth path and recovery will begin by fall of 2010. Nobody talks like that now.

And people have a sense that nothing’s going to get better unless something big is done, some fundamental change is made in our financial structures. It won’t be small-time rejiggering—a 5% cut in this tax, a 3% reduction in that program—that will get us out of this.

She also comments perceptively on the demise of President Obama’s job’s proposal and why it lacked any momentum:

President Obama’s jobs bill failed in the Senate this week, and the headline is not that it lost, it’s that it lost and nobody noticed. Polls actually showed support for various parts of it. You know why it failed? Because he was for it. Because he said, “Pass this bill.” So weak is public faith in his economic leadership that people figure if he’s behind it, it must be a bad idea.

In conclusion, it appears that the political energy that characterized 2010 lies ready to be tapped by candidates with good, BIG ideas in 2012.

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The rest of American is watching this fall as thousands of demonstrators flood into Manhattan, blocking traffic on the Brooklyn Bridge, and calling on their brethren to “Occupy Wall Street.” As columnist George Will wryly notes: these OWS folks think Washington,D.C.is (a) hopelessly corrupt and (b) ought to be given a lot more power over our lives. Some fun.

A number of conservative activists charged into the crowd of aging hippies with signs that said “Unions Destroy Jobs” and “Capitalism is Great.” Hopefully, they didn’t get stoned. And hopefully, too, they didn’t inhale.

In my placid hometown, nobody is talking about making this an American Fall. Nor are they yet planning to occupy anything except the usual orange formica booths at Chick ‘n’ Ruth’s Delly. There, on Main Street just down from the historic Maryland State House, you can take part every morning in the Pledge of Allegiance (8:30weekdays,9:30Saturdays). There, too, along with your ketchup and eggs, you might brush elbows with a former governor. Yes, governors and state legislative bigwigs regularly hold court at Chick ‘n’ Ruth’s.

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Can reflection, meditation, and “moral leisure” survive the Twitter age? Our contemporary American connectedness and busy-ness certainly make it harder to focus on timeless things like wisdom and virtue.

Some of our religious leaders are nudging our churches (i.e. institutions meant to guard and foster virtue) to catch up with the social media times. But, then, some of our most tech-savvy millennials are ditching their personal iPhones in favor of uninterrupted dinner conversations and real books.

Gerson Moreno-Riano, Ph.D. will explore these themes at the Family Research Council’s upcoming 2011 Witherspoon Lecture, at 12:00 noon on October 20th. Dr. Moreno-Riano is the dean of undergraduate studies and associate professor of government at Regent University. He suggests that our misuse of time and leisure threatens both public and private morality. But Dr. Moreno-Riano also offers hopeful remedies to recover and reverse the effects of this crisis.

Click here to register for next Thursday’s event. The lecture will be webcast at www.frc.org. Light refreshments will be provided.

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When Austin and I learned we were pregnant for the fourth time, we rushed to the radiology lab – not the usual response to such happy news, but this pregnancy followed three miscarriages and so we had a routine:  positive home pregnancy test followed quickly by a blood test to check for hormone levels and then an ultrasound to try to see what was happening.  In prior ultrasounds we had seen a yolk sac but not much growth and, most important, no measurable heartbeat.  Each of these pregnancies miscarried between 4 and 9 weeks.

This time was different.  There on the ultrasound, at just 4 weeks, was the rapid flutter of a tiny rudimentary heart!  What a sight!   And then, what a sound!   I had always held pro-life views.  Always known that a tiny growing child in the womb was a living human being.  But seeing and hearing Lucy’s heart beat brought me to a deeper knowledge of the truth of her humanity.   It was my sweetest encounter with Thomistic epistemology.

A coalition of pro-life groups is embarking on a new effort to promote state laws nationwide that would do one simple thing:  require abortion practitioners to make the fetal heartbeat audible and visible to pregnant women before an abortion.   It does not ban abortion or restrict it in any other way.  It does not require abortion practitioners to make pro-life statements.  It simply requires the use of medical technology to impart medical facts.  Genius.

An Associated Press report yesterday quoted Ohio Right to Life director Mike Gonidakis, whose group is part of the coalition, as touting the measure as both legally sound and effective:  “This is it,” he said.  “This is the one that’s going to continue to save lives in the current court environment we have.”  The approach is supported by Family Research Council Action, the National Right to Life, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, Americans United for Life, and Susan B. Anthony List.

The pro-abortion crowd is sounding the alarm, of course, and falsely claiming this approach takes away women’s rights.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Knowledge is power.  Let those little hearts beat!

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Caroline Glick of the Jerusalem Post has written a powerful article  (“The Forgotten Christians of the East”) describing the growing danger to Christians living in Muslim countries – and most recently in Egypt:

On Sunday night, Egyptian Copts staged what was supposed to be a peaceful vigil at Egypt’s state television headquarters in Cairo. The 1,000 Christians represented the ancient Christian community of some 8 million whose presence in Egypt predates the establishment of Islam by several centuries. They gathered in Cairo to protest the recent burning of two churches by Islamic mobs and the rapid escalation of state-supported violent attacks on Christians by Muslim groups since the overthrow of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak in February.

According to Coptic sources, the protesters Sunday night were beset by Islamic attackers who were rapidly backed up by military forces. Between 19 and 40 Copts were killed by soldiers and Muslim attackers. They were run over by military vehicles, beaten, shot and dragged through the streets of Cairo.

Maggie Michael of Associated Press wrote an analysis piece from Cairo that was carried in the Washington Times.  Michael noted that Mubarak’s fall and the subsequent “fading of authoritarian rule [in Egypt] empowered Islamist fundamentalists, known here as Salafis, who have special resentment for Christians.”  This appears to be the general pattern in the countries that have experienced the “Arab Spring.”  As old power structures toppled, the political replacement in contemporary Arab politics tends toward Islamist extremism.  It is a dangerous trend for religious minorities that needs to be opposed by the United States government.

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Forbes magazine has issued its listing of the best colleges in America.  Some of the magazine’s data were compiled by the ”Rate My Professors” website.  Of interest to FRC Blog readers is the following: of the 25 colleges with the best professors, 10 are either overtly Christian or affiliated with a Christian denomination (the distinction being that some religiously-oriented colleges have a more faith-integrated mission and curriculum than others).  Two others are military academies (West Point, Air Force) with strong pro-faith traditions.

Of further note is that “(n)one of the Ivy league schools … crack the list of the top 25 schools with the best professors. Princeton came the closest at 57th best. According to the teacher quality rankings, Cornell fared the worst among the Ivies — it came in 445th out of 650 schools.”

Does this mean that those who teach in faith-based institutions of higher education are more caring, more diligent, or more competent than those who teach at in state or otherwise secular institutions?  Not necessarily.  But perhaps faith-friendliness encourages the kind of personal interest and focused teaching that is so often lacking in larger and/or secular schools.

“A thorough knowledge of the Bible is worth more than a college education,” said Theodore Roosevelt, a Harvard grad.  When the Bible and university training are combined, students benefit greatly.

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NIH Director Francis Collins has approved another human embryonic stem cell line for federal taxpayer funding. The line, HUES PGD 14, was added to the NIH registry today, bringing the total number of approved hESC lines to 136. The line was created by Harvard University from a female embryo, and according to the information provided on the NIH website: “The embryo from which this hESC line was derived was determined through preimplantation genetic diagnosis to be affected with Spinal Muscular Atrophy.” This highlights the point made by Dr. James Sherley and Dr. Theresa Deisher in the ongoing Sherley et al. v. Sebelius et al. case, that there is a continued demand for more embryo destruction and more hESC lines, and the current NIH guidelines continue to provide an incentive for more human embryo destruction.

Meanwhile, adult stem cells remain the gold standard for patient treatments. You can see some examples at Stem Cell Research Facts.

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David Gushee, a self-professed “progressive” Evangelical who supported Barack Obama in 2008, yesterday published an elegant piece on the sacredness of human life, in which he previews his forthcoming book on this topic.  Conservative Evangelicals can applaud Gushee’s argument, as summarized in the following:

The moral witness of the early church gives us stark evidence of what our forebears understood life’s sacredness to mean. Theirs was a comprehensive sacredness of life ethic that recoiled at the shedding of blood and opposed Christian participation in practices ranging from abortion to infanticide to murder to gladiator games to torture to war.

As to war, the record of the early church is much more mixed; over time, there were many Christian soldiers in the Roman legions, and the text of the New Testament indicates that military service is consistent with God’s plan for both government and His redeemed people.  But Gushee, a professor of Christian ethics at Georgia’s Mercer University, should be given his due: He is a political liberal whose commitment to Scripture is such that he cannot deny the witness of God’s Word - that personhood begins at conception.

In a 2009 op-ed in USA Today, Gushee described his disillusionment with the then-nascent Obama Administration:

“Mexico City, conscience clause, Sebelius, embryonic stem cells. In each case, I have been asked by friends at Democratic or progressive-leaning think tanks not just to refrain from opposing these moves, but instead to support them in the name of a broader understanding of what it means to be pro-life. I mainly refused … a society that legally permits abortion on demand is deeply corrupt. It pays for adult sexual liberties with the lives of defenseless developing children. That practice, in turn, desensitizes society to the implications of paying for prospective medical cures with defenseless frozen embryos, which themselves are available because our society pays for medically assisted reproductive technology by producing hundreds of thousands of these embryos as spares.”

As he puts it in yesterday’s Associated Baptist Press op-ed, “My biblical explorations find building blocks for this belief (that human life is sacred) in the Old Testament and New Testament. These include the creation narratives (including the imago dei concept), Old Testament laws and prophetic writings. It also includes New Testament narratives about Jesus and the early church as well as the theological significance of God becoming human in Jesus Christ and dying for sinners such as us.”

Amen, brother.  Amen.

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