Family Research Council

Whose War on Women?

by Robert Morrison

June 18, 2013

Gosnell never happened. There never was a trial inPhiladelphia. Testimony was never received in a public courtroom that “this one is big enough to walk me to the bus.” We never heard that it was “raining blood” in that human abattoir, that late-term abortion facility.

There were never babies born alive, screaming as they were thrown into a toilet. There were never children who survived and who were stabbed in the neck and whose spinal cords were snip-snipped by Kermit Gosnell. None of this ever occurred. Those rows of “reserved” seats—so denoted for the national media—remained empty for weeks. Don’t look. Don’t report. If you ignore it, it all goes away.

Thank goodness, there was J.D. Mullane. He was a pro-choice reporter for a local newspaper. But he reported what he saw in that courtroom honestly. And then, Kirsten Powers. This liberal journalist deserves our gratitude for her powerful column in USA Today.

Infant beheadings. Severed baby feet in jars. A child screaming after it was delivered alive during an abortion procedure. Haven’t heard about these sickening accusations?

It’s not your fault. Since the murder trial of Pennsylvania abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell began March 18, there has been precious little coverage of the case that should be on every news show and front page. The revolting revelations of Gosnell’s former staff, who have been testifying to what they witnessed and did during late-term abortions, should shock anyone with a heart.

Women died in Gosnell’s house of horrors. And yet speaker after speaker in the floor debate in the House of Representatives charge that it is the pro-life members who are engaged in a war on women. These pro-abortion members of the House are not shocked. They act as if they never heard of Kermit Gosnell.

Does the fact that most of those aborted in America, over 50 million unborn children whose lives have been brutally cut short are female not register with these supposed defenders of women?

In China, there have been an estimated 338,000,000 forced abortions since the beginning of the heinous One-Child policy. That is more than the entire population of the United States. And the vast majority of those killed are female. Hundreds of millions of these forced abortions left women injured and devastated.

And still, none of those who charge pro-life members and supporters with making “War on Women” have raised their voices against China’s horrific policies.

The ban on abortions post-20 weeks will protect unborn children and women. This bill respects the opinions of 64% of women in America who, as Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.) points out, strongly believe such late-term abortions—where the unborn child feels excruciating pain—ought to be banned.

One of the worst aspects of this debate is the sneering assumption that this vital question is of no import, of trivial importance. Why, one pro-abortion member complained that it costs $24 million a week to run the U.S. House of Representatives. Why, she asked, were we wasting money and time on such a frivolous measure?

Well, economists who specialize in human capital, have shown us that each human life in America can be expected to earn, on average, $1 million in his or her lifetime. So, each of the 21,700 human lives taken weekly in this country by abortion might have contributed immeasurably to our national life and economic well-being.

Surely, this protective pro-life measure is a modest step toward restoring the right to life so cruelly and unjustly denied to millions in this land of the free.

Dürer Redux

by Robert Morrison

June 13, 2013

If ever a subject deserved two blogposts in quick succession, it is Albrecht Dürer’s recent exhibit at the National Gallery of Art. How can we not marvel at a man of God who can give us this remarkable likeness of a rhinoceros when he had never laid eyes on one?

“Dürer can paint anything,” wrote the great Renaissance scholar, Erasmus. To prove it, we have only to see his “Great Piece of Turf.” When you see this amazing work up close the detail staggers the mind. My first thought, perhaps a somewhat irreverent one, is that if we had had any more Dürers, we might never have had photography. He is just that good. View Dürer’s cricket view of this clump of earth and ask yourself if it’s so improbable that His eye is on the sparrow.

My good friend and FRC colleague, Stephan Hilbelink, read my earlier blog post and sent me some excellent comments about Dürer that he had learned studying art. I must share them.

One of eighteen children, Albrecht early in his life knew he was talented.

“Why has God given me such magnificent talent? It is a curse as well as a great blessing.”

So many great artists seem to share that sentiment. They do not want to waste a minute. The collection of works at exhibited at the National Gallery of Art recently is so vast, and each one so detailed, that it challenges us to imagine how Dürer could have accomplished so much in his fifty-seven years.

My college students, I recall, were amazed that William Pitt the Younger was Prime Minister of England at age twenty-one. I assured them that you could accomplish a lot in those days because they hadn’t yet invented “teenagers.”

Stephan shares this Albrecht quote: “Help us to recognize your voice, help us not to be allured by the madness of the world, so that we may never fall away from you, O Lord Jesus Christ.”

What? They had “madness of this world” even back in 1500? Who knew? And Dürer’s Knight, Death and the Devil is so grimly realistic it might have been taken from this morning’s world news on CNN. And his signature block “AD” 1513 on this work is surmounted by a death’s head. The vision of death-in-life is ever before him.

Stephan informs me that the “AD” on Albrecht’s work is not only a badge of honor, but it also was prized by those who had the judgment and the means to commission a work by the great Dürer. Think of it as Northern Renaissance Bling.

Stephan Hilbelink adds:

Albrecht, I believe, made his religious stance in his final work, the Four Apostles, given to Reformation-friendly Nuremberg as a present. Dürer deviated from the [artistic canons of his day] by painting John, Peter, Mark and Paul. All four are the central writers in Luther’s reforms with John being Luther’s favorite (“The one fine, true and chief Gospel”). Dürer also added Revelation 22:18, 2 Peter 2:1-2, 1 John 4:1-3, Mark 12:38-40 and Timothy 3:1-7, the Luther’s 1522 Bible versions, along with the following:

“All worldly rulers in this threatening time, beware not to take human delusion for the Word of God. For God wishes nothing added to his Words, nor taken from it. Take heed of the admonition of these four excellent men, Peter, John, Paul, and Mark.”

In turn, at hearing about Dürer’s death, Luther response was:

“It is natural and right to weep for so excellent a man…still you should rather think him blessed, as one whom Christ has taken in the fullness of his wisdom and by a happy death from these most troublous times, and perhaps from times even more troublous which are to come, lest one who was worthy to look on nothing but excellence, should be forced to behold things most vile. May he rest in peace. Amen.”

Does anyone wonder why we are so passionately committed to the sanctity of human life? Here is Dürer, son of a goldsmith, one of eighteen children. He is praised by Erasmus of Rotterdam, one of the great geniuses of the age, and himself born out of wedlock.

Most of all, these great men and women of faith of past ages give us the inspiration to face the knights, deaths, and devils of our time. Rulers then and now were foolish and sometimes dangerous. We see our own worldly rulers in these threatening times who “evolve” on fundamental questions of our existence and survival. They daily show themselves to be foolish through their ever-changing words. It all depends on what the definition of “is” is. And we are required to suffer them gladly.

C.S. Lewis famously wrote that his faith was like the sun. It was not just that he saw it, but by it he saw everything. So may it be with us.

We are daily told that this or that wrenching and ungodly change in our country and our world is “inevitable.” We can look to Dürer and know that One Thing is unchanging. As he would have said it: Gottes Wort Bleibt in Ewigkeit (“God’s Word Stands Forever.”) Our opponents in this great cultural clash claim to be the party of what’s happening now. And perhaps they are. But we are the party of forever.

Albrecht Dürer Unsequestered

by Robert Morrison

June 10, 2013

I must applaud The New York Times’ review of the Albrecht Dürer exhibit recently offered at Washington’s National Gallery of Art. It is heartening to know that the great Sequestration—about which there has been so much hype and hubbub—did not shut down this amazing exhibit.

Exhibit organizers refer to Dürer’s famed Praying Hands as the most famous painting in the world. Can it be? Can we really say that of this devout artist’s most beloved work?

There is nothing idealized in these hands. They are rough, veined, wrinkled, hard-worked hands. They tell a story in themselves.

The Martyrdom of St. John the Evangelist is a work of the young Dürer (1496-98). It shows the death by boiling oil, supervised by a ruler dressed as a Turkish sultan. No political correctness here. (Or, historical accuracy, either, since these martyrs died centuries before the Ottomans came on the scene.)

Adam and Eve are depicted as ideal human forms, part of Dürer’s lifelong effort to get the human body right. (My theologian friend notes the strategic placement of the leaves, saying that this was chronologically incorrect since Adam and Eve had not yet fallen. Or, Fallen. And thus they had no need to feel shame. But I’m not sure those are fig leaves.)

I especially like the great German artist’s rendering of lions. He drew some of them from the stone lions of Venice, which he had seen on a youthful trek to that fabled republic. But then, in 1521, the mature Dürer sees a real lion for the first time in a Netherlands zoo.

The contrast is startling. One wonders whether we will react the same way when we see the real savior for the first time. Is he safe? Certainly not, but he is good.

I come upon Dürer’s “Head of an African.” The Museum text tells us he probably encountered this young black man during his Venetian sojourn. It’s a powerful portrait, rich in empathy.

You have to think: If all Europeans had seen this drawing could the African Slave Trade ever have existed? Well, all Europeans (and Americans) today have seen incredible pictures of unborn children and yet the abortion traffic still exists.

Albrecht Dürer depicted himself as Jesus in a work titled “Man of Sorrows.” We might think this egotistic, but it was no less a Reformation figure than Martin Luther who said we should each strive to be “little Christs.” Albrecht and Agnes Dürer were childless and they doubtless knew what sorrow was. Dürer announced his sympathy with Luther and grieved when he thought the Bible scholar had been kidnapped and might face the flames of martyrdom.

It is interesting to see Albrecht Dürer as a Medieval figure in his religious sensibilities and also as a bridging figure in his commercial striving and obvious yearning for fame.

By comparison, the great artisans of the High Middle Ages often left us no record of their names. They who carved the statues at the magnificent Chartres Cathedral in France pointedly did not sign their work. It was all done for God, in devotion to the Blessed Virgin Mary, so why would you need to sign it?

Dürer, faithful as he is, wants the credit. He signs everything. He even makes a signature block print of his initials “AD” and places them where lesser artists might have placed anno domini (in the Year of our Lord).

One Dürer work not included in this exhibit is one I had hoped to see—The Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand. The painting is a vast tableau, an incredibly complex and vivid visual representation of a mass killing dating from the earliest days of Christendom. Dürer has portrayed himself and his friend, Konrad Celtis, in the center of the painting. They are clad in funereal black, as if in mourning, as if they are mere witnesses to the massacre of innocents.

The story of this martyrdom is a part of what is called the Golden Legend, a work familiar to Christians in Dürer’s day, filled with stories of the true cost of discipleship. Ten thousands Roman soldiers converted to Christ are killed in one act of vengeance and persecution. The killers are Persians and local forces aligned with the pagan emperors of Rome and acting upon their direction, just as the Roman procurator Pontius Pilate felt he was remembering Caesar when he sentenced blameless Jesus to death.

Dürer depicts those ordering the killings as Oriental despots, arrayed in Turkish attire. We know from the legend itself they are not Muslim Turks. Still, it makes one wonder if a public display now of Muslim Ottomans killing Christians would be considered too inflammatory to show.

Will future painters dare to depict the martyrdom of the ten thousand Copts? Will artists memorialize the murder of Christians in Pakistan? Or Northern Nigeria? Maybe Drummer Lee Rigby’s beheading in broad daylight on a London street will be the subject of an artist’s heart’s desire to witness to the truth.

We are living in the times of the Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand. We need to witness to these truths, as our ancestors in the Faith did unhesitatingly. Or will these truths be sequestered?

Albrecht Dürer is at once quintessentially German and a wholly universal figure. Like Johann Sebastian Bach, he exemplifies that broad Christian humanism, that caritas that embraces all mankind.

D-Day then and now

by Robert Morrison

June 6, 2013

President Franklin Roosevelt addressed the nation on this day in 1944. He spoke of the invasion of Normandy that had been proceeding since the pre-dawn hours. FDR also offered a prayer to the nation, and to the world. “Thy will be done,” the president intoned in his rich baritone. He spoke of re-dedicating ourselves to “faith in Thee…faith in our united crusade.”

His language was informed by the biblical cadences of the King James Version and echoed the uplifting style of The Book of Common Prayer. Columnist George Will has said of the BCP that is gives us our very idea of stateliness. And President Roosevelt, who had heard those lines since childhood, gave to his address a stately quality that inspired millions.

Compare Roosevelt’s speech with the dull, flat statements of leading figures of both parties today and we realize what we have lost. There is much in FDR’s Prayer. But this day should remind us of the kind of leaders we had then.

In those long-ago years, politicking for the White House did not begin in Iowa and New Hampshire years before the quadrennial election. Still, it was 1944, and even though he was very ill, President Roosevelt believed he had to carry the war through to victory.

If the D-Day invasion had failed, so in all likelihood would the presidential prospects of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Then, his remarkable and unprecedented three-term tenure in the White House would have ended in defeat—in the hedgerow country of France and at the November ballot box. Roosevelt had staked his political life and his place in history on this invasion.

So had General Dwight D. Eisenhower. He was just a colonel when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor in a sneak attack just two and a half years earlier. Through the war, however, when the U.S. armed forces expanded from a few hundred thousand to twelve million—one in 11 Americans then being in uniform—”Ike” rose in rank like a rocket.

On this D-Day, Ike was Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe—SCAEF. He would wear five stars on the trim “Eisenhower jacket” he had designed.

We can surmise what would have been FDR’s political fate had the D-Day invasion failed. But what about Ike? He could well have expected to be replaced. Possibly by General of the Army George C. Marshall. Maybe even by “Old Blood and Guts,” Gen. George Patton.

Knowing this, Ike drafted a communique for release in the event of a failed invasion. Eisenhower biographer Carlo D’Este provides this insight into the character of our SCAEF.

“Our landings have failed and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt it is mine alone.”

This is what American leadership once produced. In the past months, we have seen scandal pile upon scandal in our government. High ranking officials tell Congress “What difference does it make?” Others take the Fifth Amendment or seek to place the blame on their subordinates. It’s Cincinnati’s fault, they tell us.

We cannot think of D-Day without thinking of victory, for sure. But we remember the losses, not only of the brave soldiers who gave their all that day, but also of the lost leadership we once had.

Paying Off Egypt’s Persecutors

by Robert Morrison

May 30, 2013

Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that Secretary of State John Kerry had signed off on $250 million of a projected $1 billion aid package for the new Muslim Brotherhood regime in Egypt. As the late Sen. Everett Dirksen said, “a billion here, a billion there. Pretty soon, you’re talking real money.” So perhaps it’s time to take a look at what American taxpayers are getting for their money.

Raymond Ibrahim is a Coptic Christian, originally from Egypt. He reports on a world too often overlooked by our increasingly secular media—the world of Christian persecution. In Egypt, it is a world of hurt. Ibrahim documents this and much more in his new book, Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians. Here are some of his findings:

In November 2012, an Egyptian court decreed that eight Christians living in America—seven native Egyptians, and one American, Pastor Terry Jones—be sent to Egypt and executed in connection with the 16-minute YouTube Muhammad video. The prosecution offered no real evidence against the Christians, most of whom deny any involvement, and instead relied on inciting Muslims against the accused by replaying the video in the courtroom.

In September 2012, 27-year-old Copt Albert Saber was accused of posting clips of the Muhammad movie—which he had actually downloaded from a Muslim site, not YouTube. Muslims attacked and evicted him and his mother from their home; he was arrested and is currently awaiting a multi-year sentence.

In March 2012, Makram Diab, a 49-year-old Christian, was sentenced in a 10-minute show trial to six years in prison for “insulting Muhammad.” He had gotten into a religious argument with a Muslim colleague, who went on to protest that Diab had offended the prophet. The judge doubled the sentence to appease an angry mob, 2,500 strong, which had surrounded the courtroom demanding Diab’s death.

In August 2012, Bishoy Kamil, a Copt in his 20s who worked as a teacher, was arrested and given six years in prison for posting cartoons deemed insulting to Islam and its prophet on Facebook. Like Diab, he was given more than double the maximum penalty to appease mob calls for his death.

In April 2012, Gamal Abdu Massud, a teenage Christian student, was sentenced to three years on accusations that he had posted a Muhammad cartoon on his Facebook account, which had only some 135 friends.  Apparently the wrong “friend” saw it, for it was not long before local Muslims rioted, burning the Coptic teenager’s house as well as the homes of five other Christians.

In June 2011, another Christian woman, Naima Wahib Habil, newly hired as director of a junior high school for girls, was sentenced to two years imprisonment on the accusation that she had torn a copy of the Koran in front of her students. The rumor inspired mob riots and calls for her death.

Note the dates of the legal persecutions and prosecutions of Christians in Egypt. Every one of them has occurred since the much-hailed “Arab Spring.”

President Obama’s own role in this pattern of persecution is by no means that of an innocent bystander. He went to Egypt’s Cairo University in June 2009, to deliver his “New Beginning” speech to what he then called “the Muslim world.” Right from the start, we knew there could be no place for Christians in that world he so designated.

President Obama referred to the Muslim scriptures as “the Holy Koran,” something no previous U.S. President had done there.  He also said that the Mideast was “the region where Islam was first revealed.” That was a theological term freighted with meaning. It must mean, at minimum, that Islam has superseded Christianity and Judaism.

In that seat of Muslim learning, in that hotbed of Muslim Brotherhood underground activity, the forces of upheaval took Mr. Obama’s words at face value: They would find a new friend in the White House.

They soon did. Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak, who had at least maintained a thirty-year “cold peace” with Israel and who had not given official sanction to the persecution of Egypt’s ten percent Christian minority, was soon swept away.

The “Arab Spring” would bring democracy and human rights to Egypt. The Obama administration welcomed the rise of the Muslim Brotherhood. And paid them generously out of money we must borrow from China.   John Brennan, the current Director of the CIA, referred to the Muslim Brotherhood as “largely secular.” That is true only if you discount its origins, its teachings, its history, and its practices.

The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt began almost at the same time as Germany’s National Socialists and shared with that “Nazi” movement a strong commitment to dominate all of society. They also shared with the Nazis a fanatical judenhass—hatred of the Jews. Like the Nazis, they use electoral politics to achieve their ends because they couple open appeals for votes with the threat of violence if they don’t get what they want.

Not all the reactions to Islamist persecution have been those of outraged Western critics, however. Even in the midst of violence and hatred by the jihadists, some Christians are speaking truth to power.

Abraham Kuruvilla is an American of Indian descent. He brings his gentle manner to bear in this thoughtful essay. Abraham is a graduate of University of Virginia and recently returned from a two-year course of study in Defence and National Security at the University of Madras. Abraham’s column—“Amidst Jihadist Hatred, Something New”— is well worth reading.

Still, we as American citizens and taxpayers can use our rights just as Paul did with the Roman rulers. We can speak out and protest our tax monies being used to fund such murderous mistreatment of our fellow Christians in Egypt. 

France’s Pro-Marriage “Manif pour Tous”: A growing force

by Robert Morrison

May 28, 2013

With two more American states legalizing unmarriage, with the Boy Scouts organization adopting a wholly unworkable compromise, with media and political figures in America throwing up their hands and throwing in the towel, it would be easy to get discouraged over marriage.

But look to France. There, the amazing “Manif pour Tous” (Demonstration for All) is growing, not diminishing, in intensity. It is a movement largely composed of young people.

For the fourth time in a year, pro-marriage demonstrators hit the streets of Paris in the hundreds of thousands. They brought together Catholics and Evangelicals, Jews, Muslims, and some atheists for marriage. They even recruited gay Frenchmen who understand that “everyone needs a mother and father.”

One of the strongest arguments made by this Manif is that for the rights of children. Not only do they have a right to a mother and father, but they have a natural right not to be treated as commodities. Because of our “Anglo-Saxon” single-minded focus on rights, we in English-speaking countries have too often focused on contending rights of adults and only of adults.

The French are boldly speaking for children. They are audacious, even. They call the practice of paying poor women to bear the babies of rich men what it truly is—womb prostitution. They regard what we call “surrogacy” as a form of human trafficking. The French have outlawed it.

The year-old government of President Francois Hollande is in deep political trouble. He and his Socialists came in a wave of hope and change. They would address the limping French economy. They would fix France’s persistent unemployment problems.

Well, the French economy is still stricken. And President Hollande’s pushing through the National Assembly a radical new law to eliminate mothers and fathers, and to permit persons of the same sex to marry is seen by millions as a cruel betrayal of his campaign promises to get the country’s economy moving again.

The President of the Republic has seen his approval ratings sliding dangerously. But he has re-doubled his efforts to abolish marriage. He understands that it is by undermining the French family that the French people will become more dependent on the State. This is the goal of all Socialists.

In America, the Obama administration seeks to replace Mother and Father with Parent 1 and Parent 2. And Mr. Obama’s appointees in the Justice Department are providing a catechism for federal workers in how to think and how to speak about marriage. These workers cannot even remain silent. They must chorus their approval of same-sex couplings. Like crickets, they must chirp.

The great Russian writer, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, defied the tyranny of the old Soviet Union. He did not call on the Russian people to overthrow their Communist dictators with force, but he did say they cannot survive unless you “chirp.” They must think that the people actually approve of their despotism and thus, you must chirp like a cricket. Well, don’t CHIRP! That was the Nobel Prize-winning author’s advice to his Russian countrymen.

And when Solzhenitsyn wanted to tell the world the truth about Soviet tyranny, he wrote the Gulag Archipelago. In three massive volumes, he exposed Communism as “atheism with a knife at your child’s throat.” Solzhenitsyn recognized Paris as the intellectual center of the world. That’s why he launched the Gulag Archipelago in Paris.

Those books landed in the City of Light like missiles of truth. They had a massive impact in helping to demoralize the claims of the left.

And so, we, too, should look to Paris for inspiration in our fight. Our opponents here don’t use dogs and barbed wire. They don’t send us to prison, yet. (Although we at Family Research Council have been the targets of a terrorist bent on mass murder.) But they do use the Department of Justice to go after journalists and they do use the IRS to oppress conservatives.

We can speak up. We don’t have to CHIRP. And we can take inspiration from those young Frenchmen and women who are standing for the laws of Nature and of Nature’s God. They are demonstrating for the future of all—truly a Manif pour Tous.

The Manif pour Tous is happy to use revolutionary imagery. Our own TEA Party raises up “Dont Tread on Me” flags. The French raise up the tricolor and march wearing Liberty caps. They’re not talking violence, don’t worry. But they are speaking of removing weak-kneed politicians from office. They are planning to challenge those on the right who fail to stand for the deepest values of their own constituents. God bless them!

Throughout the French provinces—what is called La France Profonde—we see a movement arising. It is a gathering storm, not a spent force. The rulers in Paris may have to take note.

When the news first came to King Louis XVI of the storming of the Bastille, he asked: “It is a revolt?” His attendant answered: “No, Sire, it is a revolution.”

For too long in America, in Britain, in France, the elites have ignored the people. Now, we are seeing in this Manif pour Tous a peaceful revolution—a youthful and faithful revolution. It cannot come too soon. In all our countries, the movement to end marriage is an elite movement. But the people are being heard.

In France, the young people have taken to the streets. They are well-educated and articulate. They remind us that Alexis de Tocqueville, the French genius who wrote Democracy in America, was only twenty-five when he wrote his classic work.

Like Tocqueville, most of these young French are Christian. Their uprising can inspire the world to resist the Culture of Death. They are the future of hope.

The Nidal Hasan Case: Justice Delayed

by Robert Morrison

May 23, 2013

It could hardly be more of what we used to call an “open and shut” case. Nidal Hasan, an active duty Army major and psychiatrist, walked into a room at Fort Hood, Texas, shouting “Allahu Akbar!” and shot thirty people, killing fourteen. One of his victims, Francheska Velez, was pregnant at the time.

She cried out “My baby! My baby!” but Hasan killed her and her unborn child anyway. The Obama administration has elected not to charge Hasan with violation of the Unborn Victims of Violence Act, even though the law was passed explicitly to cover such instances.

The Fort Hood shootings occurred in November 2009. Hasan is only now slated to be brought before a court martial. The proceedings are scheduled to begin by July 1^st, three and a half years after the killings. The old maxim is: “Justice delayed is justice denied.” The foot-dragging on the part of the Obama administration in this case is unconscionable.

Because of these interminable delays, Hasan has been allowed to accumulate some $278,000 in pay and benefits as he awaits his court martial. Army spokesmen say Hasan has “earned” that much because he has not yet been convicted of anything and we must presume his innocence.

Must we presume it for three and a half years? It’s useful to compare the Obama administration’s treatment of Nidal Hasan with the Roosevelt administration’s actions toward captured Nazi saboteurs in World War II.

Eight German and German-American fighters in two squads were landed in June 1942, by U-boats on the beaches of Florida and Long Island. The Long Island group was spotted by a young U.S. Coast Guardsman. Seaman John C. Cullen refused a bribe from the Nazis and alerted his superiors back at his station. Because they had changed into civilian clothes, the saboteurs would be regarded as spies if apprehended.

Apprehended they soon were, as one of their number, George Dash, ratted out his cohorts. They had orders from their Nazi superiors to blow up war industries and military installations. By order of President Roosevelt, they were tried before a secret military tribunal on July 2, 1942.

The National Archives tells the story:

Matters moved quickly for [Army Judge Advocate General Myron C.] Cramer since he and [U.S. Attorney General Francis] Biddle began presenting evidence to the tribunal on July 8. Preliminary arguments and the taking of testimony took 16 days—an average of two days for each accused. The military commission completed its work on August 1, when it found all eight defendants guilty of “attempting to commit sabotage, espionage, and other hostile acts” and “conspiracy” to commit these same offenses. Cramer and Biddle argued that the Germans must be sentenced to death, and the commission agreed. Roosevelt approved the death sentence for six of the eight men, and those six were electrocuted on August 8, 1942. The other two were imprisoned and later deported to Germany after the war. The U.S. Supreme Court later upheld the jurisdiction of the military commission, and the lawfulness of its proceedings, in the case of Ex parte Quirin, which continues to be cited with approval by today’s Supreme Court.

Cramer’s work as co-prosecutor was praised by his superior as “historic evidence of his legal ability and sound judgment.” He and Biddle had successfully completed the first military commission convened by a President and had achieved the best possible results for the government.

I am not necessarily endorsing capital punishment in this column. FRC has not taken a position on that question. But clearly this was no drumhead court martial. Instead, it was a serious and expeditious judicial proceeding. Our government was then able to act with speed and justice in prosecuting our enemies in wartime “to the full extent of the law.”

Nidal Hasan was known to federal investigators. He had been under surveillance for some time. As a medical graduate student, he had openly advocated jihad and justified killing “infidels.” And still he was allowed to continue in uniform as a major in the Army.

Even after his murderous spree in 2009, political correctness was not furloughed. The Army’s Chief of Staff, General George Casey, rushed to the Sunday TV talk shows and said: “As great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.” What the general seems not to have understood is that it is only by enforcing the Oath of Office that all service members voluntarily take that we can have the level of trust for all our troops that a vigorous national defense requires.

While Nidal Hasan continues to accrue pay and benefits, this administration has classified his killings as “workplace violence.” Thus, his injured victims have been denied Purple Hearts and the status of combat-wounded veterans. A bi-partisan group of congressmen, including Reps. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), Frank Wolf (R-Va.) and Chaka Fattah (D-Penn.) have written to Defense Sec. Chuck Hagel urging him to re-classify theFortHood killings as “combat-related.”

This would seem to be the bare minimum this administration could do to show it is serious about the defense of theUnited States. And it could also benefit from reading how their great liberal Democratic model, Franklin D. Roosevelt, acted in time of war.

“Try to Discourage Her From Seeing the Baby”

by Robert Morrison

May 14, 2013

Pro-abortion groups are reacting to the Gosnell verdict with predictable spin. It’s all the fault of those anti-choice people, they say. If more women had greater access to free abortion, things like Gosnell’s abattoir would never have happened, they claim.

Brenda Pratt Shafer is a nurse who once worked in a facility that does late-term abortions. In 1996, she testified under oath before Congress about what a day is like in one of those well-appointed, well-lighted, clean, approved centers, the kind that are being offered to Americans today as the answer to Kermit Gosnell’s filthy house of horrors.

The abortionist in Nurse Shafer’s story did not want his patient to see what he had done to her unborn child. “Try to discourage her from seeing the baby,” he said.

The what? Didn’t he let his mask slip here? Isn’t he supposed to maintain the fiction that it is just a fetus? A mass of cells? A clump of tissue? Or is it alright to call it a baby after the unborn child’s dead body has been removed from the womb and thrown in a cold metal pan?

The late ABC News Anchor Peter Jennings once reminded us of how you are supposed to talk about such stories. In one of his evening broadcasts, Jenningsdescribed a new advance in pre-natal surgery. Through ultra-sound, it was determined that an unborn child had a condition known as hydrocephaly, water on the brain. Mr. Jennings said the fetus was surgically removed from the mother’s womb. A shunt was placed in the skull of the unborn child, relieving the pressure on that child’s developing brain. The unborn child was replaced in its mother’s womb. And the woman carried the fetus to term.

Fetus—Unborn child—Fetus, it all depends on where this baby is at the specific moment we are talking about him. In the following testimony, Nurse Brenda Shafer takes us inside a late-term abortion center, just like one of those facilities operated and approved by Planned Barrenhood and blessed by President Obama.

Nurse Shafer’s sworn testimony:

…This one particular lady didn’t want the abortion. She had this Downs Syndrome baby, she was unmarried, her boyfriend didn’t want the baby, and her parents didn’t want the baby. She cried the whole three days she was in there. So we did her first to get her over with. We brought her in, prepped her, started an I.V. of Valium to calm her down. We did not use a general anesthesia and knock her out. …We brought the ultrasound machine in and hooked it up to her stomach.
  

I could see the baby…

I could see the baby. I could see the heartbeat. And the doctor wanted me to stand right beside him, because he wanted me to see everything there was about partial-birth abortion. So I stood there. He went in, guided by ultrasound. He took a pair of forceps and went in and turned the baby because it wasn’t in this position at the time. He found a foot and he pulled the baby’s foot down through the birth canal, bringing it down and grabbed another foot, and literally started pulling the baby out, breech position, feet first. And he kept pulling it down, and I’m seeing this baby come pulled out of the mommy, his butt, his chest, and then, he delivered both these arms. And the lady’s in stirrups, just like you have a baby or just like you’re having an ob/gyn examination. And the baby, the only thing that was supporting the baby was the doctor was holding it in with his two fingers, holding the neck so the head was just inside the mommy.

And the baby was kicking his feet, hanging there, moving his little fingers and his little arms. I couldn’t believe — I don’t know what I thought killed it in three days, but he was moving and I kept watching that baby move. And I kept thinking to myself, this isn’t happening and I thought I was going to pass out. And I kept telling myself, I’m a professional, I can handle this, you know, this is right, this is supposed to be, and I supposed to handle this, I’m a nurse. He then took a pair of scissors and jammed them into the back of the baby’s head. And the baby jerked out, like a startle reflex, like a baby does if you throw him up a little bit and he jumps. And then the baby was real rigid. The doctor then opened up the scissors to make a hole. He took a high powered suction machine with a catheter and stuck it in that hole and suctioned the baby’s brains out. And the baby went completely limp.

I’ve seen that in my mind a thousand or more times…

And I have seen that in my mind a thousand or more times, of that baby, watching the life just drain out of it. And like I said before, I’ve seen babies die in my hands, I had people die in my hands. But it wasn’t anything like seeing that vision of watching this abortion. And I almost threw up all over the floor. I was literally just breathing and saying, “Don’t throw up, don’t throw up, you’re gonna be embarrassed if you do this.” So I tried not to.

He pulled the head out, he cut the umbilical cord and threw it in a pan, and delivered the placenta and threw it in the same pan, he covered it up and took it out. Well, this mommy wanted to see her baby. And the doctor told us ahead of time, he said, “Try to discourage her from seeing the baby.” He doesn’t like that. But she had the right to see it. So they cleaned it up and we cleaned her up, and we walked her out of the operating room, and took her to a room and handed her the baby.

The mother held her dead baby in her arms…

…She held that baby in her arms and she screamed and prayed to God…to forgive her, and for that baby to forgive her, and she held it and rocked it, and told him that she loved him. And I looked in that baby’s face, and he had the most angelic perfect face I’ve ever seen, and I just kept thinking, he’s an angel now, he’s in heaven. And I couldn’t take it. In all the years I’ve been a nurse, [for the first time] I lost it. And I pardoned myself and excused myself and I ran to the bathroom and I cried and prayed.

…I saw two more that day, about 25 weeks. But I was in shock. I stood there and I knew what was happening but I didn’t want to be there. I was walking on a beach in Hawaii somewhere, trying to get myself out of that room. …The other ones were perfectly healthy mothers with perfectly healthy babies. One was a 40 year old woman who had a 19 year old son and she was getting a divorce so she didn’t want the baby. The other was a teenage mom who hid the pregnancy from her parents…

The abortion technique described by Nurse Shafer in the above passages was outlawed by the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act passed by Congress in 2003 and signed by President George W. Bush. That law was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2007 on a 5-4 vote.

That law was strongly supported by Family Research Council and the vast majority of Americans. Now, the law relies for its enforcement on the administration of President Barack Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. The president is required by the Constitution to “take care that the laws be faithfully executed.” We will see if there are any prosecutions under that law.

When he spoke to Planned Parenthood recently, President Obama did not see the baby. Or any of the 334,000 unborn children these traffickers tell us they killed in 2011. They went unmentioned and unseen in his lavish praise for the group.

Even now—especially now—the abortion forces and their liberal cohorts are trying to discourage all Americans from seeing the baby. What the Gosnell verdict does is to lift the bloody curtain and let us see.

May 10, 1940: Walking with Destiny

by Robert Morrison

May 10, 2013

Dateline: Niagara Falls, Ontario, Canada.

Yes, Sir Winston Churchill was here, too. He actually came to see the Falls at least twice, in 1900 as a rising journalist, and again in 1943, when he was Britain’s wartime Prime Minister. On that latter occasion, he was prodded by pesky reporters who wanted to know if he’d ever seen the Falls before and what he thought of them.

“I have seen them before, before you were born,” he ribbed the self-important young journos, “and I see the principle remains the same.”

The reason everyone wanted to know what Churchill thought is because of what happened on this day – May 10, 1940. It was on that day when, despite all odds, Churchill became Prime Minister of an embattled Great Britain.

On this day, too, Adolph Hitler ended the phony war in the West that many had taken to calling a “Sitzkrieg.” Hitler had left Berlin in the early hours of May 10th. He rode over velvet-smooth tracks in his private train, oddly named “Amerika.” He wanted to be there for the jumping off of his powerful army, his Wehrmacht.

Within weeks of this date, France would collapse. The French army, which had borne the brunt of German wrath for four long years in World War I, losing 1.2 million young men, was undermined by a deadly combination of pro-Communist and pro-Nazi extremists in the French polity.

Churchill was widely distrusted at home and abroad, even when he finally became Prime Minister. His constant calls for preparedness in the House of Commons had led many in Britain, in Europe, and even in the U.S. to call him a bloody old war-monger.

Don’t you realize, he pleaded with his countrymen, that being armed, being prepared for war is the best way to avoid war. They would not listen. Instead, men like Joe Kennedy, were far more popular. Kennedy, who would live to see one son become president and two more sons elected to the Senate, cheerfully pleaded guilty to being an appeaser of Adolf Hitler.

Old Churchill certainly was on this date in 1940. He was 65. He had not expected to live past 40. And he had held virtually every important office in British politics. But the top spot – the premiership – had long eluded him.

Still, when he entered the Prime Minister’s office at Number 10 Downing Street, it was as if “a jolt of electricity” had gone through the old edifice. Senior civil servants were seen running down the corridors of Whitehall, where Britain’s government offices are housed. They were scrambling to meet Winston’s demands for Action this Day.

He would memorably write of this day and hour. It seemed to millions around the world that Britain was doomed, that she was being led by an old used-up man.

He proved them all wrong. As President Kennedy would say in making Churchill an honorary American citizen, “he mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”

“I felt as if I were walking with destiny and that all my previous life had been but a preparation for this hour and for this trial.” To his ever-faithful bodyguard, Inspector “Tommy” Thompson, he confessed, “I only pray it’s not too late.”

It wasn’t. Churchill would live to walk over the ruins of the Fuhrerbunker in Berlin, where the man who promised a Thousand-year Reich shot himself after only 12.

When he turned 80, a grateful Parliament voted him 50,000 pounds. He and his family had a wonderful time planning what to do with the money.

The man hated as a bloody warmonger decided to endow a Butterfly Conservancy. My wife and I visited one of these near Niagara Falls today. You cannot imagine a more peaceful place. These beautiful creatures light on your shoulders. They rest on the warm stones beneath your feet. I must take care with my Size 12 boots to avoid harming one of God’s loveliest creations.

Winston eventually turned down the 50,000 pounds. It was enough for him that England remembered him. And that Americans do, too.

He said to the British people: “We are fighting by ourselves alone, but we are not fighting for ourselves alone.” And he was the first to recognize the heroic contributions of the Canadians and other Commonwealth nations to the fight against Nazi tyranny. But they also fought for Americans’ Freedom. And every May 10th, it’s good to remember.

Tredegar Iron Works

by Robert Morrison

May 6, 2013

I had a chance last week, for just a morning, to get away from Washington. For the first time, I saw the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia. Tredegar was the major foundry of the Confederacy. For four long years, this installation supplied the Army of Northern Virginia with artillery, cannonballs, and rifles. As we learned there, the location of the Tredegar Iron Works was a major factor in the Confederates choosing Richmond as their capital.

The events of April 2-4, 1865 are well documented and memorialized at the restored Tredegar Iron Works. There is a statue there—dedicated there in 2003—that features President Lincoln seated on a bench with his son, Tad. It commemorates the wartime visit of just one day of Lincoln to Richmond after the Confederate capital fell to Union forces. (The seated Lincoln is wearing not a bowtie, but a standard necktie. I’ve never seen Lincoln so attired. I’m sure that’s why there were scattered protests when the statue was unveiled.)

The original Mayo Bridge had burned on the night Richmond fell. Today, you can walk out over the James River on a partially restored structure that has an amazing series of quotes from people who were in Richmond during the terrible fire and drunken looting that accompanied the Confederate evacuation of the city.

Today, you can read what Mary Custis Lee, Mary Chesnut, and even Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee had to say on that historic occasion. You can read the exclamations of joy and thanksgiving from ex-slaves as they blessed the Lord and thanked Father Abraham for their liberation.

I was struck by one quote in particular: Written on the planks of the river walkway were these words of Abraham Lincoln to a jubilant crowd of freedmen:

‘My poor friends,’ he said, ‘you are free - free as air. You can cast off the name of slave and trample upon it; it will come to you no more. Liberty is your birthright. God gave it to you as he gave it to others, and it is a sin that you have been deprived of it for so many years…

This past week was the one hundred fiftieth anniversary not of Lincoln’s victorious one day visit to Richmond, but of his deepest dejection. The Sesquicentennial of the Battle of Chancellorsville (May 1-3, 1863) should not pass without notice from us. It was Robert E. Lee’s greatest victory.

Lincoln had issued a preliminary Emancipation Proclamation the previous September because he was advised to wait until he had a Union victory. Antietam had given him that opportunity. When the time came actually to sign the historic document, however, the Union had just suffered a grievous loss in December under commanding Gen. Ambrose Burnside at Fredericksburg. Wave after wave of bluecoats were mown down on December 13, 1862 by Gen. Lee’s troops secure behind stone defenses on Marye’s Heights. Lee memorably said then: “It is well that war is so terrible lest we grow too fond of it.”

After yet another futile effort—the infamous “Mud March” where his Union Army of the Potomac was bogged down in freezing rains, Burnside withdrew and Lincoln replaced him with Gen. Joseph “Fighting Joe” Hooker. Hooker had rashly called for a military dictatorship to remove the civilian leadership of the country. When he chose Hooker to lead the demoralized army, President Lincoln sternly told Hooker it was “in spite of this and not because of it that I have given you command.” Lincoln sagely told Hooker that only successful generals get to set up dictatorships. He asked of Hooker only one thing—victory—“and I will risk the dictatorship.”

Lincoln didn’t have to risk it long. Gen. Hooker was leaning on a column outside his Chancellorsville headquarters when a rebel artillery shot hit the column—stunning Hooker. He failed to relinquish command and led the Union to its second straight catastrophe.

Lee’s brilliant victory at Chancellorsville is still studied in military colleges around the world. He put the federals to flight. Gen. Stonewall Jackson’s corps formed the spear point that sowed panic amid the breakfasting Union soldiers, bursting out of the woodsand giving the rebel yell as many of the Yankees were still drinking their coffee.

But Lee’s greatest victory came with his most terrible loss. Stonewall Jackson was hit by friendly fire on the night of May 2, 1863 as he went out to inspect his lines. Jackson’s brother-in-law, Lt. Joseph Morrison, tried to stop the North Carolina troops from firing on their own men, to no avail. When Gen. Lee first heard that Stonewall Jackson was wounded, he knew only that the dour Presbyterian’s left arm was amputated. Even so, he said, “he has lost his left arm, but I have lost my right arm.”

At the Battle of Chancellorsville, one of the Union chaplains, Thomas L. Ambrose, stayed behind with the wounded and dying men of his regiment. In his book While God is Marching On, author Steven E. Woodworth tells us how Ambrose allowed himself to be taken prisoner by Gen. Lee’s forces so that he could pray for his men.

Chaplain Ambrose walked two and a half miles to the headquarters tent of the famous cavalry Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, begging for cornmeal for his wounded. Stuart sent him on to Gen. Lee’s tent.  Lee promised Chaplain Ambrose a wagonload of cornmeal. Knowing some of his boys wouldn’t last that long, the Union chaplain hefted a fifty-pound bag of meal on his back and walked back to his camp. Another Union prisoner of war wrote of him: “He was one of God’s Saints and I regard him as one of the heroes of Chancellorsville.”

The Obama administration recently welcomed a group of atheizers who want to court martial officers and enlisted personnel who share the Gospel with others. We can only imagine the reaction of these brave, faithful Civil War soldiers on both sides to such anti-American notions. This is certainly not the freedom that Abraham Lincoln defended and for which he laid down his life.