I watched a DVD of a PBS one-hour special called “The Road to 9/11” a few weeks ago. (This is a film by Kunhardt Productions). This documentary is not the more controversial story of 9/11 that the Clintons opposed so strongly, which aired several months ago. (That one was produced by the Disney Company, so I believe.) This “Road to 9/11” film was produced in 2005 for PBS Home Video. It is a documentary that features the sane and clear voices of Bernard Lewis, Fareed Zakaria, and Thomas Friedman. Quite frankly Bernard Lewis is worth the whole hour I invested. This man is balanced, fair-minded, and in no way anti-Muslim. He was a professor at Princeton University for many years and is the author of a dozen or more books on the Middle East and Islam. Anyone who purports to seriously deal with Islam in the modern world must read Lewis!

Whenever I am pulled toward strong feelings against Islam it is Bernard Lewis who helps me to remain calm and reasoned. He clearly underscores the very real dangers of radical Islam, dangers […]

Denver Bishop Charles Chaput, whom I had the personal joy of meeting and hearing speak a few years ago, gave an address at a mass for Catholic public officials in Harrisburg, Pensylvania, just before the November elections. Chaput , who is one of my favorite bishops, makes profound and clear moral sense of chaotic sub-Christian thinking on a regular basis.

“The world does need to change, and in your vocation as public leaders, God is calling you to pursue that task with justice and charity with a love for the common good and a reverence for human life. The world needs committed Catholic laypeople like you to lead with humility, courage and love," said Bishop Chaput.

Chaput further argued that we often treat important things as a “gloss” so as to soften the meaning of the offensive passage thus making it much easier for us to live. St. Francis wanted to live sine glossa, said Chaput, that is without alibis or excuses.

Chaput right argues that modern liberalism has created a kingdom of “the imperial autonomous self” and calls […]

Some people simply do not do nuance. Everything is black and white, plain and simple, clear cut. There is nothing to be read between the lines, the substance of an argument or the context of an answer. They seem to hear what they want to hear, or what they don’t want to hear, regardless of the varying shades in expression.

I was reminded of this today by the senate committee’s meeting with Secretary of Defense designate Robert Gates. When Sen. Carl Levin asked Gates if we were winning the war in Iraq he answered, “No, sir.” When this answer was spun out by the critics of the president by 5 p.m. today it sounded as if Gates was an avowed enemy of Bush’s recent policies and positive comments on Iraq. If you think about this it is pretty stupid to make such an assumption since Bush put Gates forward for confirmation and clearly trusts him. What followed Levin’s question, and Gates’ response, was a whole series of other issues and comments that quite clearly reflected more deeply upon the way to rightly […]

A noted person is quoted in today’s news saying he “considers it extremely unlikely that the American people consent to the billions of dollars of annual expenditure from [their] treasury for this [Iraq] military misadventure.” The same man added: “You are witnessing daily that under the pretext of ‘the war on terror,’ civil liberties in the United States are being increasingly curtailed. Even the privacy of individuals is fast losing its meaning.” Sounds to me like someone from the liberal opinion makers from within the U.S. who sees Bush as evil and this Iraq war as ridiculous and immoral. These quotes seem pretty mainstream to me. The same leader further warned the new Democratic majority that “they control an important branch of the U. S. Government . . . [so you] will be held to account by the people and by history.” Yes, this does sound exactly like some of the solutions now on daily offer within the U.S.

There is one problem with such a conclusion. These words are not from the American far left, or even from our most liberal expressions […]