Drink Upstream

The U.S. Doesn't "Torture" And Other Simple Rights and Wrongs

Warning: This is an obvious, long-day-of-traveling, everyone-else-has-already-said-it post. But I thought it an issue worth raising on our nearly defunct blog.

"In a world where some no longer believe that we can distinguish between simple right and wrong, we need your message to reject this dictatorship of relativism."

President Bush flattered Pope Benedict yesterday with these words during a joint public appearance. If you remember, the Pope's first message upon his election introduced us all to the "dictatorship of relativism", while he called the Roman Catholic Church to return to the doctrinal standards of the faith. The phrase was well-tuned towards Europe, Latin America, and Africa, where dictators have often used the Catholic Church for their own means or disposed of church leaders when they got in the way. Time and again, doctrinal standards become subservient to the Fatherland, los Descamisados, or whatever idealized national identity is at the time purported by an authoritarian regime; Marxism, Nazism and Jingoism sweep up churches, student groups, the disenfranchised, and great crowds of "people with guns" so that the core of doctrine is discarded for a more permissive interpretation.

Rev. John Buchanan on Rev. Jeremiah Wright

Thought I'd post this up there so that there about Jeremiah Wright.  This one is a bit less humorous.  While it is a Chicago perspective, it is also on old white male pastor of an afluent white church perspective.

Check it.

<apologies for not coming around here much... it's been a rough year>