SAY WHAT?

Molly Ivins proves why the left still doesn’t get it:

Since my name is Molly Ivins and I speak for myself, I’ll tell you exactly why I opposed invading Iraq: because I thought it would be bad for this country, our country, my country. I opposed the invasion out of patriotism, and that is the reason I continue to oppose it today–I think it is bad for us. I think we have created more terrorists than we faced to start with and that our good name has been sullied all over the world. I think we have alienated our allies and have killed more Iraqis than Saddam Hussein ever did.

My italics. Look, Ivins is perfectly within her rights to have opposed the war and to maintain her opposition. I don’t doubt her patriotism for a second in this. But the last phrase is so jarring, so flagrantly, empirically wrong, so lacking in any understanding of the reality of Saddam’s decades of war and butchery that it beggars belief. She has to run a correction.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: “Symbols like the ones the Supreme Court haggled about give the impression that Christianity and the government are somehow in cahoots with each other. That’s a dangerous impression, and a false one. It’s a small step from the idea that the government endorses Christianity to an idea that is much worse: that Christianity endorses the government. Christians are the big losers in that transaction. Western Europe is filled with Christian symbols — Christian Democrats are a leading political party in several countries — but almost entirely devoid of Christians. Christianity does not thrive when political parties take its name and capitol lawns showcase its precepts. On the contrary, it thrives when it stays as far from those things as possible.
The government thrives, too. Religious conservatives and secular liberals should be able to agree on this much: teaching good morals is not a job for the Texas legislature or the Kentucky courts — or any legislature or court. Making just laws is hard enough, and our government isn’t so good at that. Teaching virtue is incomparably harder. Personally, I’d rather they stuck to the laws.” – William J. Stuntz, in TCS. I feel like cheering from the rafters. I’ve long believed that the most committed Christians are secularists as well. They know that government-engineered faith is fatal to real religion; and that faith that needs government is a pale image of what it should be. All this panic about the “naked public square” is a sign of fear among evangelicals, not faith.

TELLING THE TRUTH: Chris Crain tackles those stuck in the past and unreality on HIV prevention among gay men.