Two sites that recently caught my eye and are well worth visiting. The first is by one Father Shawn O’Neal, a parish priest in North Carolina. He’s smart, he’s sincere, and not a knee-jerker in any direction. His perspective is particularly welcome during the current crisis in the American Catholic church. The second is a more fully-fledged news and opinion blog by one Pejman Yousefzadeh, a first-generation Iranian-American, who’s as pro-war as any other war-blogger, but again, from a unique vantage point. Yes, he defended me rather devastatingly against Eric Alterman, but this is not mere gratitude. His account of his own love for America, written a couple of weeks ago, is stirring and beautiful, and reminds me what we should be far more impatient with the excuse-makers for Iran’s corrupt elite than we have been. Here’s a passage worth reading (scroll down to the last part of his entries for March 21) from Pejman’s blog:
The day after they were married, in Tehran, Iran, my mother and father went to the American embassy to initiate and complete the paperwork necessary to let them emigrate to the United States. That was 31 years ago this May. Some newlyweds embark on a honeymoon. My parents embarked on a new life. And they forged that new life here. It never fails to amaze me that I won the greatest lottery in the history of the world; I was born and raised in America, as a lifelong American citizen. No Roman emperor, no Persian Shah, no Mongol Khan, no Russian Czar ever enjoyed the kind of freedom and good fortune that I have been privileged to enjoy all of my life, all thanks to my geographic location, and to the fact that I have for a lifetime been the proud owner of an American passport, and American citizenship. All of my life, and especially since September 11th, I have humbled and prostrated myself before my God in gratitude for the favor He has shown me in this regard.
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The Dish 