Dear ***,
Dear ***,
Dear ***,
Y'all,
Dear ***,OK, I'M FOURSQUARE for enforcing the United States' immigration laws and securing the southern border. I don't want to see this country overrun by illegal immigration from any country. I want America to be serious about being a sane, cohesive country -- and society.
But you're not going to see me at a protest involving some of the nativist-leaning wingnuts that such demonstrations already attract. And when the National Socialist Movement -- that's the Nazi Party, by the way -- gets involved, the only way you're ever going to see me anywhere near such a protest (for example, Sunday Saturday in midtown Omaha) will be behind the wheel of Elwood Blues' second-hand police special.
Here's some of the cover story from the most recent Omaha City Weekly:
“We just got one on our front door. It was pretty anti-immigration, not Nazi propaganda but my friend who is from South Omaha got a Nazi flyer,” said Sam Martin.
Sam is one of a number of Omaha residents who were recently inundated with flyers advertising a neo-Nazi anti-immigration rally to take place at the Mexican Consulate on Sept. 1.
Organized by the National Socialist Movement — the disarming moniker of the official Nazi party of the United States — the rally will also include local members of supremacist group White Revolution and is also certain to attract the Minutemen, who held their own anti-immigration rally at the consulate Aug. 17.
“The United States was founded exclusively by whites, and the founding fathers specifically say they were founding this place for the security and happiness of the themselves and their descendants – not that of Mexico,” said Billy Roper, Chairman of the White Revolution, a national organization that has been “leading America to a whiter future since 2002.”
Jeff Scoop, Commander for the National Socialist Movement (NSM), shared a similar sentiment, “When our forefathers came over here from Europe they were not saying, ‘Ok, everyone else has to learn our language.’ They said they had to assimilate. Now there are unprecedented numbers of illegal immigrants reaping the benefits of life in the United States and instead of being prosecuted for being here illegally, they are being rewarded. They aren’t coming here to make a better life or become good Americans or assimilate, they want us speaking Spanish.”
“This country was founded by immigrants,” said Cooper Moon, housemate and fellow Midtown leafletee of Sam Martin’s. “This country’s entire existence is based on immigrants. Why should it be any different now? The whole illegal issue? You wanna talk about our forefathers, the colonists? They were storm troopers of death coming over and obliterating the Native Americans, destroying an entire ecosystem. The Mexicans coming over, getting jobs and raising families? Not even in the same ballpark.”
(snip)The neo-Nazi groups in the last year and a half have organized hundreds of events. In Dayton, Ohio members of National Socialist Movement appeared in Nazi uniforms at a pro-immigration march to protest, in their words, “the illegal wetback scum and Shabbat goy mud lovers.” Most recently, NSM organized a march on the capitol building in Columbia, S.C. where, according to NSM commander Scoop, “dozens and dozens” of supporters turned out.
When they cannot organize in person, the supremacist groups plaster communities around the country with crude anti-Hispanic and anti-immigration fliers like the ones left in South Omaha.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, in Bakersfield, Calif., for example, one community was littered with National Vanguard fliers that read, “Civilization: One Job Mexicans Won’t Do.” Residents of Pasadena, Texas, discovered racist fliers that urged people to burn down the homes of people thought to be illegal immigrants.
“We intend to send a message to the U.S. government that is if they don’t do something about this illegal immigration problem we will replace all of them,” said NSM’s Scoop. “They are political whores to the Israelis, or special interest groups, whoever is paying them enough money to buy off their souls. Even Americans who don’t necessarily believe in our methods are coming to us. People are sick of being lied to. With us there is no lying. We are concerned about white interests and the way America used to be. If the founding fathers were with us today they would be behind us.”
The rhetoric is popular and it’s working. Recruitment numbers are up, money is rolling into the organizations and white power is getting multimedia diversified. It’s not just about rallies and cross burnings; the National Socialist Movement develops and distributes its own video games, podcasts and radio shows. They maintain a Web site, operate a record label and have recently started NewSaxon.com, a white only version of the social networking site, Myspace.
Scoop claims that NSM, the largest pro-white group in the country, has nearly 50 percent or more of their membership placed in the armed forces with others in law enforcement.
The National Socialist Movement can even boast its very own Nazi presidential candidate, John Taylor Bowles, whose first campaign promise is to provide “all White families in the USA, (husband, wife and minor children)” with zero interest mortgage loans “to buy homes fitted with all necessary household gadgets like fridge, TV, computers, etc.”
(snip)There is no disputing that the immigrant community in Nebraska is growing. According to census date, approximately 41.2 percent of the total population increase between 2000 and 2006 in Nebraska is attributable to immigrants. Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) – an organization that is very questionably fair or accurate – estimates the illegal alien population in 2005 at 39,000.
A report issued from the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Office of Latino and Latin American Studies earlier this year indicates that, between 1990 and 2000, Nebraska’s foreign-born population grew faster than that of any other Midwestern state. From 2000 to 2005, Nebraska experienced the eighth-largest proportional increase of foreign-born individuals of all U.S. states, accounting for more than 60 percent of overall population growth.
Many point to Nebraska’s abundance of jobs, a lack of labor force to fill those jobs, and a low level of competition for jobs within labor migrant populations as other major factors contributing to the growing foreign-born population in the state.
(snip)“Some people may argue that the people organizing and attending this rally are extreme,” said Lee, the Omaha leader of the White Revolution. “But given the projections given by the U.S. Census Bureau, that says non-Hispanic whites will be a minority in this Country by 2050. I think this calls for extreme measures if we are to remain a first world nation and secure the existence of our people and future for white children. I, nor any other average American wishes to see our Nation transformed into an extension of Mexico.
“Already we are a minority race in over 50 of America’s largest cities. By the time our children reach adulthood, we will have more Hispanics in the USA than in Mexico itself. What kind of future will that be for our children and grandchildren?”
“Stupid people make Third World countries,” said White Revolution’s Roper. “Third World countries don’t make stupid people. The more the United States allows these people in, the more we become like a Third World country. That is not something we want to hand down to our children. We don’t want the United States to become a Third World cesspool.”
Some pretty negative sentiments. But the swastika-wearing interviewees insist that their anti-immigrant stance isn’t about hate.
“I myself, nor anyone I know, ‘hate’ anyone,” said Lee. “This isn’t about ‘hate’ for me, it is about love of my country and my people. It is about securing a future for our children and our grandchildren.
“It’s about preserving our heritage, our culture and history. This isn’t immigration, as our grandparents knew it – no, this is an invasion. An invasion like the world has never before seen in all of recorded history.”
“Most Nebraskans and Americans want common sense immigration reform that treats people with dignity and provides a path to citizenship for people who are paying their taxes,” said Darcy Tromanhauser, Program Director for Nebraska Appleseed, an organization that promotes the integration and participation of immigrant communities. “I think there is a small but vocal minority who doesn’t want to see any immigration at all. They drive from views that are racist and what most people don’t believe. I think this rally and its sponsors betray the roots of some of the more vehement anti-immigrant voices. Many of those who first take an interest in these groups out of a concern over immigration quickly leave when they discover the ugly core of the perspective. Most Nebraskans don’t think this way and believe that if someone is working hard and paying taxes, they should have a path to citizenship and full participation in society, no matter the color of their skin.”
“We understand that they are entitled to say whatever they want. As long as they don’t do any damage to the building, that’s fine,” said Jose Cuevas, head of Omaha’s Mexican Consulate. “I believe that they are mistaken as to what we do. But the First Amendment gives them all the right in the world to demonstrate and say whatever they like.”
New Orleans is my hometown. And it's dying. Despite billions of dollars in aid, recovery programs with catchy names and an outpouring of volunteer effort, New Orleans is not recovering from Hurricane Katrina.NO, NO, NO, you don't understand. It's far more sinister than that.
Beyond the happy mayhem of the French Quarter, entire neighborhoods are in ruins and the business district sags from the shattered economy. Thousands of people are homeless and squatting in vacant and storm-damaged properties, some just a few blocks from City Hall.
More than 160,000 residents never returned. For those who did dare to come back home, little resembles normalcy.
For the people with the power to save it, New Orleans is a forgotten place.
It's a national disgrace. People should pay attention. The next time, it could be your town.
Douglas Brinkley, the well-known historian and professor, has an op-ed piece in Sunday's Washington Post, and he's wondering whether the federal government's relative inaction in rebuilding New Orleans isn't a deliberate policy action in itself.The stubborn inaction appears to fall under the paternalistic guise of helping the storm victims. Bush's general attitude -- a Catch-22 recipe if ever there was one -- appears to be that only rank fools would return when the first line of hurricane defense are the levees that this administration so far refuses to fix.
New Orleans appears to be largely abandoned by the Department of Homeland Security, except for its safeguarding of the Port Authority (port traffic is at 90 percent of pre-Katrina numbers) and tourist districts above sea level, such as the French Quarter and Uptown. These areas are kept alive largely by the wild success of Harrah's casino and a steady flow of undaunted conventioneers.
The brutal Galveston Hurricane of 1900 may be a historical guide to the administration's thinking. Most survivors of that deadly Texas storm moved to higher land. Administration policies seem to tacitly encourage those who live below sea level in New Orleans to relocate permanently, to leave the dangerous water's edge for more prosperous inland cities such as Shreveport or Baton Rouge.
After the 1900 hurricane, in fact, Galveston, which had been a large, thriving port, was essentially abandoned for Houston, transforming that then-sleepy backwater into the financial center for the entire Gulf South. Galveston devolved into a smallish port-tourist center, one easy to evacuate when hurricanes rear their ugly heads.
To be fair, Bush's apparent post-Katrina inaction policy makes some cold, pragmatic sense. If the U.S. government is not going to rebuild the levees to survive a Category 5 storm -- to be finished at the earliest in 2015 and at an estimated cost of $40 billion, far eclipsing the extravagant bill for the entire Interstate Highway System -- then options are limited.
But what makes the current inaction plan so infuriating is that it's deceptive, offering up this open-armed spin to storm victims: "Come back to New Orleans." Why can't Bush look his fellow citizens in the eye and tell them what seems to be the ugly truth? That as long as he's commander in chief, there won't be an entirely reconstructed levee system.
Shortly after Katrina hit, former House speaker J. Dennis Hastert declared that a lot of New Orleans could be "bulldozed." He was shot down by an outraged public and media, which deemed such remarks insensitive and callous. Two years have shown that Hastert may have articulated what appears to have become the White House's de facto policy. He may have retreated, but the inaction remains.
New Orleans is. Dozens of communities in South Louisiana are . . . in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, now two years past. Brinkley again:
Unfortunately, right now New Orleans is having a hard time lobbying on its own behalf. Minnesota's Twin Cities have about 20 Fortune 500 companies to draw in private-sector money to help rebuild the bridge that collapsed in Minneapolis. New Orleans has one, Entergy, which is verging on bankruptcy. So besides U.S. taxpayers and port fees, New Orleans must count on spiked-up tourist dollars to jumpstart the post-Katrina rebuild.
But this is where the bizarre paradox of living in a city of ruins comes into play. Out of one side of its mouth the New Orleans Chamber of Commerce says, "Come on down, folks! We're not underwater!" Yet these same civic boosters -- viscerally aware that the Bush administration is treating the desperate plight of New Orleans in an out-of-sight, out-of-mind fashion -- don't want to bite the hand that feeds them large chunks of reconstruction cash. New Orleans is both bragging about normalcy and poor-mouthing itself, confusing Americans about what the real state of the city is.
Recently Mayor C. Ray Nagin, born with the proverbial foot in his mouth, tried to explain why the homicide rate in New Orleans is so appallingly high. When a TV reporter asked, Nagin merely shrugged: "It's not good for us, but it also keeps the New Orleans brand out there." This absurd comment -- and dozens like it -- hurts New Orleans's recovery almost as much as Bush's policy of inaction.
Everywhere I travel in the United States, people ask, "Why did you guys reelect such a doofus?" There is a feeling that any community that reelected a "first responder" who stayed in a Hyatt Regency suite during Hurricane Katrina, never delivered a speech to the homeless at the Superdome or Convention Center in New Orleans, and played the "chocolate city" race card at a historic moment when black-white healing was needed probably deserves to get stiffed by the federal government.
And Nagin isn't the only bad ambassador New Orleans has. It also has City Council member Oliver Thomas, Sen. David Vitter and Rep. William J. Jefferson -- all currently in deep trouble for potentially breaking the law. Dismayed by such political buffoonery, Americans have simply turned a blind eye to New Orleans's reconstruction plight. There is a scolding sentiment around the country that Louisiana needs to get its own house in order before looking for fresh levee handouts.
IN THAT LIGHT, I keep coming back to the persistently sad state of my home state, and I am compelled to ask hard questions of the people there.
Why shouldn't we cut our losses, cut off the money and let the whole dysfunctional lot stew in their own juices until they're as cooked as a crawfish? Why?
Louisianians seemingly don't even love themselves or their children enough to pull themselves out of a cesspool largely of their own making. Why should the rest of America love them any more than they love themselves?
Come on, Louisiana, we're post-Christian and steely-eyed. Give us a reason why.
Please?
* * *
POSTSCRIPT: Douglas Brinkley, author of the WaPo op-ed and a tireless advocate for post-Katrina New Orleans was a history professor at Tulane University. Was. In May, he resigned from Tulane to take a post at Rice University.
In Houston.
Why are we still in Iraq?One after another, the men and women who have stepped forward to report corruption in the massive effort to rebuild Iraq have been vilified, fired and demoted.
Or worse.
For daring to report illegal arms sales, Navy veteran Donald Vance says he was imprisoned by the American military in a security compound outside Baghdad and subjected to harsh interrogation methods.
There were times, huddled on the floor in solitary confinement with that head-banging music blaring dawn to dusk and interrogators yelling the same questions over and over, that Vance began to wish he had just kept his mouth shut.
He had thought he was doing a good and noble thing when he started telling the FBI about the guns and the land mines and the rocket-launchers — all of them being sold for cash, no receipts necessary, he said. He told a federal agent the buyers were Iraqi insurgents, American soldiers, State Department workers, and Iraqi embassy and ministry employees.
The seller, he claimed, was the Iraqi-owned company he worked for, Shield Group Security Co.
“It was a Wal-Mart for guns,” he says. “It was all illegal and everyone knew it.”
So Vance says he blew the whistle, supplying photos and documents and other intelligence to an FBI agent in his hometown of Chicago because he didn’t know whom to trust in Iraq.
For his trouble, he says, he got 97 days in Camp Cropper, an American military prison outside Baghdad that once held Saddam Hussein, and he was classified a security detainee.
Also held was colleague Nathan Ertel, who helped Vance gather evidence documenting the sales, according to a federal lawsuit both have filed in Chicago, alleging they were illegally imprisoned and subjected to physical and mental interrogation tactics “reserved for terrorists and so-called enemy combatants.”
Corruption has long plagued Iraq reconstruction. Hundreds of projects may never be finished, including repairs to the country’s oil pipelines and electricity system. Congress gave more than $30 billion to rebuild Iraq, and at least $8.8 billion of it has disappeared, according to a government reconstruction audit.
Despite this staggering mess, there are no noble outcomes for those who have blown the whistle, according to a review of such cases by The Associated Press.
“If you do it, you will be destroyed,” said William Weaver, professor of political science at the University of Texas-El Paso and senior advisor to the National Security Whistleblowers Coalition.
“Reconstruction is so rife with corruption. Sometimes people ask me, ‘Should I do this?’ And my answer is no. If they’re married, they’ll lose their family. They will lose their jobs. They will lose everything,” Weaver said.
(snip)
Then there is Robert Isakson, who filed a whistleblower suit against contractor Custer Battles in 2004, alleging the company — with which he was briefly associated — bilked the U.S. government out of tens of millions of dollars by filing fake invoices and padding other bills for reconstruction work.
He and his co-plaintiff, William Baldwin, a former employee fired by the firm, doggedly pursued the suit for two years, gathering evidence on their own and flying overseas to obtain more information from witnesses. Eventually, a federal jury agreed with them and awarded a $10 million judgment against the now-defunct firm, which had denied all wrongdoing.
It was the first civil verdict for Iraq reconstruction fraud.But in 2006, U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III overturned the jury award. He said Isakson and Baldwin failed to prove that the Coalition Provisional Authority, the U.S.-backed occupier of Iraq for 14 months, was part of the U.S. government.
Not a single Iraq whistleblower suit has gone to trial since.
“It’s a sad, heartbreaking comment on the system,” said Isakson, a former FBI agent who owns an international contracting company based in Alabama. “I tried to help the government, and the government didn’t seem to care.”
(snip)
Julie McBride testified last year that as a “morale, welfare and recreation coordinator” at Camp Fallujah, she saw KBR exaggerate costs by double- and triple-counting the number of soldiers who used recreational facilities.
She also said the company took supplies destined for a Super Bowl party for U.S. troops and instead used them to stage a celebration for themselves.
“After I voiced my concerns about what I believed to be accounting fraud, Halliburton placed me under guard and kept me in seclusion,” she told the committee. “My property was searched, and I was specifically told that I was not allowed to speak to any member of the U.S. military. I remained under guard until I was flown out of the country.”
Halliburton and KBR denied her testimony.
She also has filed a whistleblower suit. The Justice Department has said it would not join the action. But last month, a federal judge refused a motion by KBR to dismiss the lawsuit.
EDITOR'S NOTE: Yet again -- and I'll probably do this every now and again -- we're rerunning this blog's opening post . . . just to make sure a few things that need to be said keep getting said. After all, Revolution 21 IS kind of, well, unique.
Oh, and while we're at it, let me introduce Revolution 21's first sponsor -- a new program debuting on Mid-Life Crisis, the new Boomer channel on XM-Sirius satellite radio. Your Mighty Favog has heard the new punk show, and he likes . . . thus, Mid-Life Crisis is the Big Show's first sponsor.
Check it out. Listen on the player at the top of the page, or listen here.
AND NOW . . . here's that blast from the past about Who We Are:
Greetings. The Mighty Favog here. Welcome to Revolution 21.
But Revolution 21 has a problem with our oversecularized, materialist and ultimately shallow culture. We figure schizo is the only thing you get out of putting faith waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in one corner of your life and "real life" waaaaaaaaaaaaaay over in another corner so the two never touch (probably out of fear of some Matter-Antimatter cataclysm).
I may well be the last New Deal Democrat in existence in these here United States. Never mind that I was born 15-and-a-half years after World War II ended.Carville is the Tucker Carlson of the Democratic Party
by Justina
Wed Aug 22, 2007 at 08:53:47 PM PDTI just received the a fund raising e-mail from James Carville, who is asking for donations to the re-election campaign of Lousiana’s Democratic Senator, Mary Landrieu. It reads in part:
I'm a Louisianian through-and-through. My hometown, Carville, population 1108, was named for my granddaddy. So when I write to you about our senior Senator from Louisiana, Mary Landrieu, I'm writing from my heart and soul.What a surprise, I didn't think James Carville had a soul; I know he doesn't have his heart in Democratic politics.
Carville, who modestly claims on his web site to be "The man who has devised the most dramatic political victories of our generation" holds no official position in the Democratic Party but who is continually put forward by the "main stream" media as "a leading Democratic political analyst", has been one of the most destructive voices in the Democratic Party since his vicious attacks on Howard Dean and the Democratic National Committee after their success in the 2006 election.HUGO CHAVEZ'S Bestest Friend Forever went on to excoriate Carville for his choice of spouse, being that Mary Matalin is a "Republican shill."
Carville, a professional campaign consultant who regularly seems to speak for Hillary Clinton, and his firm of political consultants, has been involved in supporting some pretty reactionary anti-democrats in Latin American, including Manuel Rosales, the Bush supported, anti-Chavez candidate in the 2006 Venezuelan presidential campaign.
Fortunately, President Chavez trounced Rosales by an overwhelming 68% majority. One only hopes that both Hillary Clinton and Mary Landrieu will face similar fates in the Louisiana Democratic primary.
If there is a good progressive candidate who is considering taking on Landrieu, please come forward so I can send you a donation. I’ll send a photocopy to Mr. Carville referencing that I have never before contributed to a Louisiana politician, but his fund raising letter for Mary Landrieu inspired me to support any of her progressive Democratic opponent in the primary.
Frankly, with Justina's fervent support for demagogic dictators like Chavez, I'm a bit surprised why she bothers with the democratic process at all. If she has a beef with the likes of Carville and Landrieu, why doesn't she raise a bien-pensant army of Venezuelans and expatriate American "progressives," come home and clean house? Maybe she can overthrow Bush-Cheney, end the war and establish the New Jerusalem while she's at it.
And then she can shut down any broadcast outlet that objects to her tactics.
You know, sometimes you just have to wonder about the Secular Puritan Left. Mainly, I wonder how it is these folks haven't been laughed into oblivion yet. That, or purged themselves into a million perfectly ideologically pure Democratic parties of one.
Or does stupidity make you racist? Chicken, egg . . . who knows?Two white men were arrested on counts of hate crimes Thursday, accused of firing a shotgun and yelling racial slurs at two black DPW workers, officials said.QUOTE OF THE DAY: “It was discriminatory.” Uhhhhhhhhhhhh . . . do 'ya THINK???
The two employees of the city-parish Department of Public Works were cutting grass along Hoo Shoo Too Road in East Baton Rouge Parish Thursday morning when Eric Arnaud, 22, and Christopher Roussell, 17, drove up.
The two swore and yelled racial slurs at the DPW workers, Sheriff’s Office spokesman Fred Raiford says in a statement.
“It was discriminatory,” Raiford said in a phone interview.
The two suspects went to a house at 11212 Amite River Road where they retrieved a 12-gauge shotgun, Raiford said.
They returned to the lawn workers at Hoo Shoo Too and Kendalwood roads, where Arnaud opened fire, Raiford said.
“They were firing directly at them,” Raiford said.
Both lawn workers escaped unscathed, and headed to the Kleinpeter Sheriff’s Substation to report the crime, said Pete Newkirk, director of the Department Public Works.
Deputies arrested Arnaud and Roussell on Thursday, booking Arnaud into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison on two counts of attempted second-degree murder and a count of hate crime. Roussell was booked on two counts of principal to attempted second-degree murder and a count of hate crime.
Newkirk said the two workers had been cutting grass around Hoo Shoo Too Road Thursday morning when their tractor got a flat. A supervisor was on the way with a replacement when the shooting started, he said.
Raiford said the suspects had a Confederate flag displayed outside their house on Amite River Road when sheriff’s deputies arrived.
“They can have that (a Confederate flag) in their prison cells for the next 30 years,” Newkirk said.
Click on photo for video.
Damn The Avett Brothers for making it difficult to put together this week's edition of the Revolution 21 podcast. I can't put the whole dadgum Emotionalism album on the show, and it's hard to decide what cut to use.15 What I do, I do not understand. For I do not do what I want, but I do what I hate.GO FIGURE. You know?
16 Now if I do what I do not want, I concur that the law is good.
17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
18 For I know that good does not dwell in me, that is, in my flesh. The willing is ready at hand, but doing the good is not.
19 For I do not do the good I want, but I do the evil I do not want.
20 Now if (I) do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells in me.
21 So, then, I discover the principle that when I want to do right, evil is at hand.
22 For I take delight in the law of God, in my inner self,
23 but I see in my members another principle at war with the law of my mind, taking me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members.
24 Miserable one that I am! Who will deliver me from this mortal body?
25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. Therefore, I myself, with my mind, serve the law of God but, with my flesh, the law of sin.
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So, while the Louisiana Democratic Party is busy trying to smear GOP gubernatorial candidate Bobby Jindal by taking his published words on religion several zip codes (at least) out of context -- that is, when not flat-out lying about what the man wrote -- what have Jindal's two biggest Democratic opponents been doing?The two leading Democratic candidates also refused to denounce the commercial, even as they moved to disassociate themselves from it.
"I have not seen the ad in question. However, if the quotes about various religions attributed to Mr. Jindal are in fact his writings, I firmly believe that he should retract his comments," state Sen. Walter Boasso, D-Arabi, said.
Public Service Commissioner Foster Campbell also said he hasn't seen the ads but said he has little sympathy for Jindal if the words used in the ads come from the candidate's own writings."If he said that and it's documented, then he's going to have to live with it or sue the Democratic Party and make them stop it," Campbell said.
He accused Jindal of putting out false commercials of his own, citing an ad that premiered this week accusing Boasso and Campbell of being soft on government ethics.
"He's put ads out on me that says I haven't done anything on ethics. I don't think that's fair because I have done something on ethics," Campbell said.
I trust I have provided enough evidence to indicate that the Catholic Church deserves a careful examination by non-Catholics. It is not intellectually honest to ignore an institution with such a long and distinguished history and with such an impressively global reach. I am not asking non-Catholics to investigate the claims of my neighborhood minister, but rather am presenting a 2,000-year-old tradition, encompassing giants like Aquinas and Newman, with almost a billion living members, including modern prophets like Mother Teresa and Pope John Paul II.
Nonetheless, the Catholic Church must live up to her name by incorporating the many Spirit-led movements found outside her walls. For example, the energy and fervor that animate the Baptist and Pentecostal denominations, the stirring biblical preaching of the Lutherans and Calvinists, and the liturgical solemnity of the Anglicans must find expression within Catholicism.
I am thrilled by the recent ecumenical discussions that have resulted in Catholics and Evangelicals discovering what they have in common, in terms of both theology and morality, and as exemplified by joining to oppose abortion and other fruits of an increasingly secular society, but I do not want our Evangelical friends to overlook those beliefs that make Catholicism unique. The challenge is for all Christians to follow Jesus wherever He leads; one significant part of that challenge is to consider seriously the claims of the Catholic Church.
