Friday Round-Up

Items of interest from various sources (note: linking does not necessarily imply agreement!)

Georgie Anne Geyer: Four More Years of War?

If the United States is to have another four years of this kind of foreign policy, it will come to be considered an outlaw in the world, most of its historical standards and principles in tatters and its future unknown.

In a first John Kerry administration, on the other hand, there would, at least at first, be few miracles. His would be the hard business of extricating us from Iraq without leaving behind a shameful period of history. His would be the formidable job of building up American stature and values in the current absence of them in the world.

But at least we’d have a chance.

From Nina Shea at Freedom House: The Plight of Iraqi Christians

An estimated 800,000 ChaldoAssyrians remain in Iraq and constitute the country’s largest non-Muslim minority. They have found the last two months especially traumatic. On Tuesday, according to the Catholic press outlet, Fides, Islamic fanatics broke into a Chaldean Catholic home near Mosul and killed a ten-year-old boy while shouting, “We’ve come to exterminate you. This is the end for you Christians!” In prior weeks, ChaldoAssyrian workers were murdered for “collaborating” with the United States. Three others were kidnapped and beheaded. Christian girls were assaulted with acid for not wearing the veil. A Chaldean Catholic priest was forced at gunpoint in his church to convert to Islam. Christian homes were targeted by mortar attacks that killed and injured children sleeping in their beds.

Jeff Jacoby: “Cranky Libertarian Conservative”

Call me a cranky libertarian conservative, but just once I would like to hear a candidate for president answer a question by saying, “Sorry, the Constitution limits the role of the federal government — the issue you’re asking about is one for the states or the private sector, not Washington.”

And:

I do wish Kerry would explain sometime why it is OK for his faith to shape his stands on social welfare programs and the environment when he vows never to let his stands on abortion and embryonic stem cells be shaped by that same faith.

Christianity Today: The Vanishing Church in Turkey

Many Greek and Armenian Christians in Turkey suffer the double ignominy of religious and ethnic marginalization. Though the government is officially secular and many Turks are only nominally Muslim, conversion to Christianity is considered a betrayal of heritage and homeland. Persecution stemming from this perspective has stunted church growth and crippled the small Christian community.

Godspy: ADD and the Multi-Tasker

When I found myself constantly desiring to multi-task at the office, it startled me.

When I sat back and started watching myself, discovering that I had an urge to fill every moment of the day with two or more functions, it disgusted me.

Then during those days when I was watching myself, I discovered that I was scarcely able to read a book for more than five minutes without looking up and checking my e-mail or favorite websites and message boards, or without calling to my children to see how they are doing, or without doing something to break up my reading. A favorite pastime had stealthily become arduous.

It scared me.

My power of attention had suffered a serious blow and I didn’t even see it coming. Looking back, I know my multi-tasking obsession with my Internet connection caused it (or at least contributed mightily to it). McLuhan would knowingly chuckle to hear my story.

But I wasn’t chuckling. The crippling of my power of attention was frightening. In addition, I recalled Simone Weil’s observation that, “In the intellectual order, the virtue of humility is nothing more nor less than the power of attention.” If multi-tasking cripples the power of attention, does it also cripple humility, the first of the virtues, and its close sibling, concern for the other?

Mark Gauvreau Judge on “Neutral Angels”

[P]erhaps the most tragic part of the Inferno is not any of the nine rings of hell, but the Vestibule that stands outside of hell’s entrance. It is here where the apathetic and undecided are. They are the humans and “neutral angels” who never took a side. Virgil tells Dante:

This wretched state of being

is the fate of those sad souls who lived a life

but lived it with no blame and with no praise.

They are mixed with that repulsive choir of angels

Neither faithful nor unfaithful to their God,

Who undecided stood but for themselves.

Heaven, to keep its beauty, cast them out,

But even Hell itself would not receive them,

for fear the damned might glory over them.

Dante translator Mark Musa observers, “In a sense they are the most loathsome sinners of all because in life they performed neither meritorious nor reprehensible acts… Appropriately, these souls are nameless, for their lack of any kinds of action had left them unworthy of mention.” None of these shades are identified, but there is speculation that one of them, a man whom Dante calls “the coward who made the great refusal,” is Pontius Pilate. Pilate was the king of irresolution; comparatively, Dante says the sinners going into hell are “eager.” They at least made a choice.

In my view, this pre-limbo limbo should be the fate of every journalist, politician, “undecided” voter and dinner table philosopher who complains that half the American population doesn’t vote because the politicians are all the same. We live in a country that is at war. It is also a country that allows partial-birth abortion, assault weapons and pornography. According to the National Geographic, the earth is frying due to the pollution we create, and it could destroy all life. If you can’t find a stance, a passionate stance, on one of those issues, check your pulse.