Recruits - Spring 2012

Maps are very important. Not only can epic stories can be told by pointing to a map, but sometimes data can be conveyed better through a map than through many, many explanatory paragraphs in a research paper. Maps show us national and civilizational boundaries, where natural resources are can be found, and the location of opposing forces seeking control of those resources.

So getting a group of men together to look at a map and reenact historical events is an excellent tool for learning, thinking, and training.

And at Lee's Summit High School in Lee's Summit, Missouri, Midwesterners gather every six months for a tabletop wargaming convention called Recruits. The proceeds of the convention go to the high school's Organization for Strategic Gaming, an extracurricular club in which students can letter for wargaming history. In addition to funding the OSG, Recruits also helps introduce wargaming to those curious about tabletop wargaming.

Yesterday I had the opportunity to present the game Tide of Iron, a combat simulation of tactical fighting during World War II. Below are some pictures from the event:

In this Tide of Iron scenario, the Germans are trying their best to overrun the Allied defenses and secure their objectives.

World War II is not the only World War to replay. In this image, players better understand the difficulties of assaulting the trenches of World War I.

Some games required a much larger table space. This recreation of Napoleonic battles required a table at least eight feet long and five feet wide.

Of course, wars are going on even today. This recreation introduces players to the much more recent Battle of Fallujah which took place in Iraq.

Barack’s Deborah and Jael?

As the healthcare battle moves to the Supreme Court, the Book of Judges (no pun intended) offers us a look back at the Obama presidency.

When Barack Obama defeated Hilary Clinton for the Democratic nomination, he ran against the Republican John McCain in the general election. Standing side by side, the seventy-one year old “Maverick” and the far younger father of two seemed polar opposites. Only one, however, directly catered to the feminist cause: John McCain. He did so by placing Sarah Palin on the ticket with him, not because she was fit to be second in line to the Presidency but because he was attempting to draw more women to his own cause.

Now it’s not that Obama did not espouse a feminist-supporting viewpoint, but as a convert to Christianity from Islam and a successful family man of the African American community, Barack Obama had an opportunity to continue national efforts with Islamic nations and be a strong voice to the young and struggling African American male population. Sometimes the Presidency forces greatness upon men, challenging them to rise up the task and doing what is best for the nation. In other words, while John McCain’s damaged policy positions were sacramentally reflected in his broken and aging body, Barack’s vigor and refusal to run an Obama-Clinton ticket gave the nation hope for an Obama presidency.

Like Barak in the Book of Judges, however, Barack’s presidency has been to win battles through his female protectors.

First he chose Hilary Clinton to be his Secretary of State and he not only sent her as his representative to the very masculine Islamic nations, but he also used her to defend abortion, contraception, and gay rights across the globe. Then during the healthcare debate in the White House he listened to Nancy Pelosi over Joe Biden concerning the contraceptive mandate. To defend this position, he hid behind Sandra Fluke who testified that every American woman should have thousands of dollars of free condoms and birth control pills. And as of this week, his new hope has been placed in the two justices he sent to the Supreme Court: Elena Kagan and Sandra Sotomeyer, both women. Today, Zogby released a poll showing Barack leading Romney among women by 14 points.

All this seems eerily similar to the actions of Barak in Judges 4.

In Judges, the Israelites found themselves at war with the Canaanite king, Jabin. When God choose Barak to defeat Jabin’s army in battle, he refused to go without the presence of the prophet Debra in his midst, saying: “‘If you come with me, I will go; if you do not come with me, I will not go’” (Judges 4:8). Deborah responded by telling Barak that because he would not lead the battle alone, his victory would not come through his efforts but through woman. Indeed, after Deborah and Barak routed Jabin’s army, the general of the army fled to an ally’s tent. Jael, the wife of the ally, led the general to her bed where she hid him and allowed him to sleep. But once he was in a deep sleep, Jael “got a tent peg and took a mallet in her hand… and drove the peg through his temple and down into the ground, and he died” (Judges 4:21). Barak won the battle, but the victory was not his.

Like Barak, Barack Obama has fought his battles through women - but Barack's women, however, are the defenders and propagators of feminism. They have given him counsel and he has appointed them to high and influential places. And with the Sandra Fluke debacle and the Supreme Court case, his feminist defenders await within the tent-bedroom.

Just make sure to keep watch for the peg on the table.

Twelve Succinct Facts on Angels

In the opening of Dr. Peter Kreeft’s book on Angels (and Demons), Dr. Kreeft begins by offering us these twelve facts about angels which should interest us enough to read the rest of the book.

Angels: The Twelve Most Important Things to Know About Them

1. They really exist. Not just in our minds, or our myths, or our symbols, or our culture. They are as real as your dog, or your sister, or electricity.

2. They’re present, right here, right now, right next to you, reading these words with you.

3. They’re not cute, cuddly, comfortable, chummy, or “cool”. They are fearsome and formidable. They are huge. They are warriors.

4. They are the real “extra-terrestrials”, the real “Super-men”, the ultimate aliens. Their powers are far beyond those of all fictional creatures.

5. They are more brilliant minds than Einstein.

6. They can literally move the heavens and the earth if God permits them.

7. There are also evil angels, fallen angels, demons, or devils. These too are not myths. Demon possessions, and exorcisms, are real.

8. Angels are aware of you, even though you can’t usually see or hear them. But you can communicate with them. You can talk to them without even speaking.

9. You really do have your very own “guardian angel”. Everybody does.

10. Angels often come disguised. “Do not neglect hospitality, for some have entertained angels unawares”—that’s a warning from life’s oldest and best instruction manual.

11. We are on a protected part of a great battlefield between angels and devils, extending to eternity.

12. Angels are sentinels standing at the crossroads where life meets death. They work especially at moments of crisis, at the brink of disaster—for bodies, for souls, and for nations.

If you found these twelve facts interesting, you should run down to your nearest Catholic bookstore and get yourself a copy of Kreeft's book!

The Patron Saint of Feminism?

Morality is carried by personalities. As the contraceptive mandate debate rages, we as Catholics must take this as an opportunity to examine our own understanding of femininity and look at the personalities which shape our moral conduct.

In short, the current debate is not merely a church-state debate, nor a healthcare debate; rather, it is a battle between feminism and Marian femininity – and there can be no peace between the two. It is a battle between “I am woman, hear me roar” and the Virgin Mother of God who says “Let it be done to me according to your word.” It is a battle between women’s “right to choose” on one hand and the Woman’s submission to the will of God on the other. It is a battle between those hungry for power and the Spouse of the Holy Ghost.

Many Catholic women no longer see Mary as the model for their femininity. Perhaps she’s inspiring or appealing in some way or another, but very few women would name her as the woman to whom they aspire to imitate. Today’s patron saints are Nancy Pelosi, Kathleen Sebelius, Hilary Clinton, Margaret Sanger – and now Sandra Fluke. Women of power, not purity. Indeed, the polar opposites of Mary and Marian femininity.

Tolkien tells us in the Lord of the Rings that evil “can only mock, it cannot make”. To mock here means to mimic in a twisted and distorted way. Today Sandra Fluke has become the newest patron saint of the feminist cause, and a standard bearer of the twisted mockery of Marian femininity. For example, unlike Mary, the woman who bears the titles Virgin and Mother, Fluke fights for those who detest their virginity and say “no” to motherhood while saying “yes” to the abortionist's scalpel. And unlike Mary, who intercedes before the King on behalf of her children at war with the Evil One, Fluke intercedes on behalf of the President in order to win his battle while preventing the creation of children.

In the Passion of the Christ, Satan appears as a woman carrying a demonic infant in mockery of Mary and her Son. The new mockery comes from those who despise virginity and motherhood. Let us raise up the person and personality of Mary, Virgin and Mother. Let us excise the feminist cataract from our eyes and see clearly. Only then can we succeed at being a lumen gentium – a light to the nations!

An Authoritative Bishop

We all know that words have meaning. Some words even effect what they signify. Take the words “I love you” or “I hate you” when spoken between two people. Our words in the liturgy do this at a supernatural level. Indeed, the power of the Church is wielded par excellence during the liturgy. Another important aspect of the liturgy is that the Roman Missal’s precise words take the priest’s personality out of the sacred act. In fact, those who go to a particular church because they like the personality of one priest over another is evidence that the priest’s personality has entered too much into the liturgy. The great thing about the liturgy is that any priest can step in and read the words!

Since Vatican II, however, there has been a good deal of adlibbing the text of the Mass. Some have done this because they didn’t like the text, while others were awaiting a new translation. Thankfully this translation is here and the bishops are uniting their priests around it. No more adlibbing.

But in the name of making the Mass “more understandable and more meaningful to parishioners,” Fr. William Rowe of the Belleville Diocese in Illinois has continued to improvise the words of the Roman Missal. His ordinary, Bishop Edward Braxton, instructed Fr. Rowe to be a faithful and obedient priest and use the correct words. “I told him I couldn't do that,” Rowe said. “That's how I pray.” This emphasis of his own personal preferences rather than praying the most powerful words of the Church led Bishop Braxton to remove Fr. Rowe from his parish. In an age where authority and leadership has been reduced to mere service, Bishop Braxton shows us that being a bishop means having a backbone in the face of recalcitrant priests who entrench themselves in parishes by making themselves the center of attention.

To End All Wars

It's been a while since I last viewed this movie, but despite the pacifist-sounding title, I remember it being a profound movie concerning survival and faith amidst a Japanese labor camp during World War II. Definintely worth checking out.

The Magis Center of Reason and Faith

The intellectually gifted Fr. Robert Spitzer has made it known that his book New Proofs for the Existence of God is his magnum opus which he intends to spend the rest of his life re-explaining and clarifying for those who, unlike him, do not possess twin doctorates in philosophy as well as physics. In a lecture he gave at Benedictine College a year ago, Fr. Spitzer announced that he was hard at work doing just that: making the “new proofs” more intellectually accessible to high school youth as well as adults.

Thus Fr. Spitzer founded the Magis Center of Reason and Faith.

Over at the Magis Center’s website you can be found a wealth of information regarding Fr. Spitzer’s work. By examining discoveries made by modern physics, Fr. Spitzer is able to demonstrate the need for a Creator and thus refute the atheist worldview being propagated in our culture and in many institutions for higher education. Of the many resources to be found on the website, Fr. Spitzer’s twelve-part video series was thought provoking, educational, and readily enjoyable.

It should be made clear, however, that Fr. Spitzer’s focus on physics and cosmology. He does not tend to examine chemistry or biology in any great detail, nor does he attempt to tell the story of the sciences as an elemental aspect of the broader account of salvation history. His emphasis is on the complementarity of faith and reason, not on how God is acting to accomplish something bigger and more eschatological by creating matter to begin with. There is no discussion of angels, the Devil, or why God created a universe capable of sustaining life. It is, however, a wonderful resource if one simply wants to poke massive holes in the atheist account of universal origins.

Here’s a great sample from Fr. Spitzer’s video series:

Anti-Nationalism: Medieval and Modern

After the fall of Rome and the limitation of Byzantine power to merely the old eastern Roman Empire, the Papacy found itself able to establish a new Holy Roman Empire in western Europe with the Pope reigning above the emperor himself. While the Pope saw himself as the universal ruler over a dawning universal Europe, the Holy Roman Emperor believed himself to be the true universal ruler with the Pope and Church as his royal subjects. This caused a tension between Church and State which was only exacerbated by the rise of new European nations, each seeking to rule its own lands apart from Imperial or Church control.

Thus in the rise of nations, both the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church fought for their own forms of universalism, and by doing so both Empire and Church stood against the nations. The Church sought a borderless, universal realm governed by the Pope and bishops with a king or emperor under their leadership, while the Emperor sought an unending Imperial rule across the lands. Neither understood their roles in the world of the nations. Indeed, no mere political force has what it takes to unite the nations with their distinctive customs and cultures. This, however, is also true of the Church if it sees itself acting primarily as a political entity.

This is the danger of today’s Church-State situation in Europe and the Americas. While the Secular West is attempting to create a borderless Europe, a godless single-state of atheists, socialist movements in the United States seek to bring European “progress” to our lands. The old imperial universalism has been replaced by an atheist universalism. As the Church confronts this crisis, it would be well if we recall that Christ sent the Apostles to make disciples of all the nations, not exert political authority over a single, united Catholic nation. Christ loved the nations, and God has ordained their existence. Let us not compete with the Secular West – or the Islamic caliphate – in seeking to deny the nations by rekindling the old anti-national, politically universalist dreams of medieval Christendom.

The Character of a Men's Group

Check out this article from the Art of Manliness blog (a site well worth your reading time) regarding several men’s groups in recent history and how their discussions, activities, and practical experience helped them shape the worlds of literature, politics, industry, and even the nations. While the writer’s introduction on “Master Minds” can be skimmed, this idea is sound:

...two brains are better than one and iron sharpens iron. When we gather together with others to throw around ideas, discuss and debate, and receive both criticism and inspiration, we grow and develop as men and foster new ideas while refining our old ones.

But more than mere discussion, we see in Roosevelt’s Tennis Cabinet a group of men who not only spoke but also engaged in “vigorous play” – a vital component often overlooked in men’s groups today. Nevertheless, discussions like those of the Inklings should always carry on in an enjoyable “cut and parry of prolonged, fierce, masculine argument,” as C.S. Lewis put it.

Whether it was the Inklings, the Tennis Cabinet, the Junto, or the Vagabonds, the men of these groups were marvelous thinkers, movers and shakers of their fields. Be sure to read the article and learn more about what our men’s groups should look like.

Orate Fratres?

No, the question does not refer to the lack of posts recently. The author of this blog is just getting a very busy month of work – and illness – behind him. What ‘Pray Brethren?’ really refers to is the diminishing masculine form of the common, local liturgy. Now Christ has ensured this will remain to some degree because he has given us an all-male priesthood, but this does not mean that the laity understand the masculine character of the liturgy when they are at Mass each Sunday.

In the book Why Catholics Can’t Sing, Thomas Day writes that the tone set by a congregation often lets a visitor know who’s welcome and who’s not. A casual look around a Catholic weekend Mass will tell you a lot about this – the Mass is a family affair, pure and simple. Maybe this is because the Church has bled out so many members over the last forty years that the family is the last bastion of the Faith in our society. More still, the Church teaches that the family is the basic building block of society, so it makes sense to keep families coming to Mass together.

At the same time, the tone of the liturgy – especially the music, but also the priests – reinforces the old belief that religion is for women and children. What’s more, in our age of shunning male authority, our own clergy are often too afraid to play their fatherly role in leading the worship of God as men. The net effect of this is to leave the fathers of our families board to tears during Mass or not present at all. In our liturgy, the best way we can strengthen our families is by raising up strong men of faith, dedicated to the sacrifice of the Mass and ready to live it out in building up the city, state, and nation. But this will mean putting a little manly muscle back into the liturgy. The new translation is an excellent first step, but more is needed.

It’s high time we put Orate Fratres to work and begin to pray as brethren!

AOTM on the Vortex

Michael Voris over at the Vortex is launching a series of videos on masculinity and he launches the series from my old men's group in Minnesota, the Argument of the Month (AOTM). The AOTM regularly draws hundreds of men a month in St. Paul, MN for food, faith, fellowship - and a great debate!

Check out Michael Voris's video below and be sure to check back for updates.

South Sudan

Samuel Huntington’s civilizational fault line dividing Africa's Islamic north from the sub-Saharan south ran through one nation in particular: Sudan. But as of 2011, the region south of the fault line has become the nation of South Sudan. Although it is not a majority Christian nation, South Sudan has a Catholic president and boasts 80% of the untapped oil supply once owned by the Muslim north – an export which pays for 98% of South Sudan’s national budget and is the reason why Islamic Sudan’s currency is dropping in worth while inflation increases.

The departure of South Sudan, however, has given Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir the go-ahead to declare Sudan an Islamic state. With a new constitution in the works, Sudan’s laws will be rooted in Sharia law and enforced throughout the nation. This has left the Christians remaining in Sudan worried about a coming persecution and religious discrimination. Many Christians – and some Muslims – are now currently waging a rebellion in the boarding states of Blue Nile and South Kordofan (see map). Both South Kordofan and Blue Nile boarder South Sudan.

Writer Aymenn Jawad Al-Tamimi says this could lead to war:

In any event, it is clear that the events in the two border-states could well provoke a war between Sudan and its southern neighbor, with the former accusing the latter of orchestrating the rebels' activities. South Sudan denies this allegation, but may feel compelled to support the [rebels] in the near future should Khartoum's forces overwhelm the rebels and carry out mass killings on a similar scale to what happened in Darfur.

Given the demise of Gadhafi, Darfur itself may profit from arms coming across its boarder with Libya, and if a new rebellion breaks out there Sudan may be torn apart by economic and military woes in addition to ethnic divisions and the culture conflict of imposing Sharia law as the law of the land.

Understanding Patriarchy through Mary

Mary boasts the greatest status among all creatures for she is truly the Mother of God. But to this status, Mary says: Ecce, Fiat, and Magnificat. Rather than saying, “Behold, I am woman, hear me roar,” she says “Behold, I am the handmaid of the Lord. Let it be done to me according to His word... My soul proclaims the greatness of the Lord…” As the Ark of the New Covenant and Queen Mother of the Kingdom of God, Mary wields more power than any other woman ever created – yet power is not her pursuit. Mary seeks to follow the will of the Father, the rule of the Father. In other words, Mary supports patriarchy, a word which literally means the rule of the father.

This is why Mary must be hated by Satan and feminists.

But Mary also helps us better understand who God is and our part in salvation history. She did this in 431 when her Motherhood helped Christians recognize the singularity of Christ’s personhood. Today, however, there are many who mistakenly place Jesus and the Devil on an equal, if opposite, playing field as if Jesus and the Devil are two opposing forces of equal strength and power. But Jesus is the infinite and eternal Son of God while Satan is a mere creature whom Jesus could eliminate with the snap of His divine finger. It is really Mary who is the opposite of Satan. While Mary says, “I am the handmaid of the Lord,” Satan says, “I will not serve!” While Satan is the most powerful creature by nature, Mary is the most powerful creature by supernature (i.e. by being full of grace).

Sadly, the Hilary Clinton’s of today’s feminism would find themselves much more in agreement with the individualism and the will to power found in Satan rather than in the humility and submission of Mary to the will of the Father.

We must also not forget the unique relationship Mary has with each person of the Trinity, for in addition to being the Mother of the Son, she is also the daughter of the Father and the spouse of the Holy Spirit. Most importantly, we remember that these relations are gendered. Mary is mother, daughter, and spouse – and for those who like to think of the Holy Spirit as woman or neutered, we recall that Jesus declared the Holy Spirit a “he” and that the Holy Spirit’s work of bringing about the incarnation is very much a masculine act. Understanding this also helps us understand what theologians mean when they talk about Mary as the Icon of the Holy Spirit. The closeness of identity between Mary and the Spirit is only in the way that a wife and a husband share a close identity through their marital union.

There is a knee-jerk reaction to the word “patriarchy” today. But as we pray the “Our Father” and use “Father” when we address our priests this weekend, let us also recall Mary and remember that she is the most patriarchal of all Christians. Our society would crucify any who believed in patriarchy, but like Mary let us be bold enough to go to that cross where life is paradoxically found in doing the will of the Father amidst a culture of death.

Debunking Crusade Myths

Dr. Brendan McGuire gave a wonderful free series of lectures on the Crusades over at the Institute of Catholic Culture. In one part of his lecture, Dr. McGuire examines the reasons why crusaders went to war. The secularizing, anti-Catholic historians of the 19th century focused on the second son theory and the estates theory – both of which are still emphasized in pop-history literature, movies, and television documentaries. Dr. Jonathan Riley-Smith, the most prolific living historian on the crusades, and a Knight of Malta, debunked both theories through use of a historical method called prosopography (i.e. the study of history based on the creating of databases on individuals who participated in an event).

According to the second son theory, titles and wealth went down to the firstborn son and thus the poorer knights of Europe would leave for the riches of foreign lands. In actuality, this theory is simply 17th-18th century European colonialism anachronistically projected into the medieval past. Riley-Smith, using a computer-driven database of medieval charters, discovered that the vast majority of crusaders in the First Crusade were wealthy land owners who had to expend 4-5 years’ worth of annual income up front in order to fund their part of the crusade. Now for an economy with reduced monetary system, liquid assets had to come through selling off titles or land. A surviving crusader who returned home would thus have very little to return to.

The estates theory seemed to correct the problem of the second son theory by stating that crusaders never intended to return home. They would instead carve out large, new kingdoms for themselves in the Holy Land. But this theory suffers from an even greater problem: 99% of surviving crusaders returned home. In fact, the true day-to-day defense of the Holy Land would turn more and more to the military orders of the Hospitaller Knights and the Knights Templar. But if crusaders did not fight for wealth or land, what did they fight for? They fought not merely for the personal spiritual benefits of indulgences, but also because their German blood boiled at the thought of the humiliation imposed on Christianity in the Holy Land and across formerly Christian lands. It was the same German warrior spirit, tempered and directed by faith, that forged both the nations as well as the great crusades.

Traditional versus Secular Culture

Until the sexual revolution of the 1960s, America was a traditional culture and its character expressed the natural outgrowth of Greek thought, Roman law, Christian faith, and the German warrior. The secularization which has engulfed our nation since the sexual revolution has replaced Greek thought with sophistry, Roman law with the enthronement of self, the Christian faith with atheism, and the German warrior with the pacifist.

Cultural assimilation of immigrants may have been a difficult process in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but the American culture which immigrants discovered was light years closer to theirs than American culture today – and this is because immigrants of a hundred years ago left one traditional culture and came to another. Here, marriage was protected, divorce shunned, men worked, fought, and sacrificed, and children obeyed their parents. Secular culture, with its focus on radical individualism, fails to be a culture – for a culture is something that unites a people. If a civilization is a “culture writ large,” how can a secular pseudo-culture ever be a civilization?

This is the problem of “the West” – a title which is as geographically disoriented as the spiritually disoriented people it claims to represent. We have an identity crisis, a loss of soul. Perhaps America needs immigrants now more than ever; not to work in our factories but rather to remind us of what culture really is. As the European nations peer over the edge of debt ruin and depopulation, they stand to become the new bastions of immigrants who say “yes” to children and “no” to credit cards: the Muslims. If America allows secularists on the Right and the Left to continue to steer our path and tell our story, we shall awake to find that our diseased civilization has become a corpse.

Dr. Pence's Marian Femininity Series

Below you will find a six-part video series on Marian Femininity presented by Dr. David Pence:

Red Tails

It's been nearly a decade since Mel Gibson's We Were Soldiers - which means it's been nearly a decade since a good war movie has hit the screens. But while we're waiting for Mel's next epic, a movie chronicling a pious Jewish man and his sons' war of independence from Hellenizing Greeks, Lucasfilm of Star Wars fame is bringing us an inspiring new film that looks to stand side-by-side with Glory.

The movie is called Red Tails.

Set during the Second World War, Red Tails tells the story of the Tuskeegee Airman, an all-black fighter wing which has been sent in to defend American bombers over the skies of Europe. While Red Tails is a story of men fighting for their nation, it is also an icon of masculine protective groups. For these pilots, victory is not tallied by the number downed enemy fighters but rather by the number of protected bombers and allied airmen.

Red Tails hits theaters on January 20th, but in the meantime you can watch a preview here:

The Dioceses of Emperor Diocletian

Diocletian, the Roman Emperor to end Rome’s third century crisis in imperial succession, is known best by Catholics for the launching last great persecution of Christians before Constantine’s so-called Edict of Milan in 313 AD. His administrative reforms, however, would have far reaching impact. For example, the tetrarchy (rule of four), which Diocletian instituted for smoother imperial succession, introduced a new east-west dichotomy which persists to this day.

Another good example is his introduction of the diocese.

The dioceses were established as part of Emperor Diocletian’s broader provincial reforms. In order to keep provincial governors from gaining too much power, which could once again plunge the Empire into another civil war, Diocletian doubled the number of Roman provinces from 50 to 100. But in order administer all 100 provinces efficiently, Diocletian grouped the provinces into twelve dioceses (see map). Unbeknownst to Diocletian, the term diocese would one day be used to describe the territory of a local church under a bishop, who is himself a successor to one of the twelve Apostles.

As imperial power began to collapse in “the West” after 476, the Church began to step in to fill the vacuum of stability – and it was natural for her to continue using the term diocese, even if the seven westernmost dioceses established by Diocletian would be broken up into smaller and smaller units. Nevertheless, with a bishop at the head of each diocese, the Church in the middle ages began to see herself as the rightful leader of both ecclesial and secular affairs rather than an interim caretaker during years of political and economic instability.

Perhaps it was providential that the anti-Christian Diocletian would establish the first twelve dioceses, but we must also remember that it was providential that many God-fearing men would establish the nations.

The heavens are telling the glory of God

"The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork."

-Psalm 19:1, King David

Review: The Enemy At Home

The Essays of Orate Fratres now includes my new review of Dinesh D'Souza's book The Enemy at Home. In the book he offers a much broader understanding of Islam and the events before and after 9/11. D'Souza's thesis is that radical Islam seeks to destroy us because of our decadance, not our democracy.

From the Review:

While Dinesh D’Souza is best known for going head-to-head with atheists in public debates, this Catholic scholar from India, also has a knack for connecting faith to global affairs, foreign policy, and cultural reform on the domestic front. Indeed D’Souza’s book, The Enemy at Home, struck a cord among liberals and conservatives alike, calling out the secularists and making the case that our own moral depravity, sponsored by the secular Left, was the root cause of 9/11. D’Souza argues that conservatives have missed a perfect opportunity to link the culture war with the war on terror – that radical Muslims do not hate democracy, free markets, or new technology, but rather our permissive culture. Contrary to the Left, no Middle Easterner believes America is seeking a new hegemonic, territory-based imperialism. What struck fear into bin Laden was the new “cultural imperialism” of the radical Left which poses an existential threat to Islam.

You can click here for more.