How Freedoms Die

Most of us have seen anti-Christianism in one form or another. Watch the morning news shows and you'll probably catch a whiff of it within an hour, but it's less likely now that Katie Couric is hosting the CBS Evening News. Still, Rabbi Daniel Lapin has written a startlingly vivid warning of the new anti-Christian rhertoric that is emerging post 9/11. In fact, he states,

What is truly alarming is that there are more of these books for sale at your local large book store warning against the perils of fervent Christianity than those warning against the perils of fervent Islam.

Lapin goes on to point out that if you were to change the titles of the books to reflect Judaism, you'd be appalled and shocked. I agree. It's because it's anti-Christian that people just shrug. They're used to it. And the frog continues to feel warm but not uncomfortable.

It's not just the Christian religion that's under fire. Consider a book I recently examined titled Religious Schools v. Children's Rights, written by James G. Dwyer and published by Cornell, a respectable university press. In it, Dwyer writes,

Relying on the well-established legal and moral principle that rights appropriately protect the only a rightholder’s own self-determination and personal integrity and that no one is entitled to control The life of another person, and finding no justification for departing from that principle in the case of parent-child relationships, I reach the conclusion that parental child-rearing rights are illegitimate. The law should grant parents only a legal privilege to care for and make decisions on behalf of their children in ways that are consistent with the children’s temporal interests. Children themselves should possess whatever rights are necessary to protect their interests, and these would include a right to protection from state interference that is not, on the whole, to their benefit. [emphasis mine] [p.100]

This is a book that is under the radar for the most part but somehow finds it's way to the marketplace. It finds its adherants and with soothing logic that is based on legal opinion, persuades them that parents should not have any rights but they are subject to the state's morality under what is a privelege, not a right. Might I remind the reader that a dictator's rise to power can be entirely legal and legitimate too. Rights become privileges. Priveleges become unaffordable in light of the needs of the state. Thus perishes parenthood, at least as we know it.

All is not lost. The temperature is hot and we may be approaching the boiling point, but we can still redeem and restore the beliefs and virtues we know are God-given and worthy of defending. We have a duty to speak out in the public arena about the truths our forefathers found to be self-evident. If we fail, our freedoms will die, one court decision at a time.