I don’t think that all of the signers are pathological liars. Many have simply been beguiled by the “tinkling bells and cymbals” resulting from the destruction of language in modern discourse, so that their thinking has the patina of fine furniture that a vandal has scraped with coarse sandpaper. It is a moral lobotomy that has taken place.

Conversely, many of the antis are not praiseworthy. In fact, some of them (like Horton) show deeper degradation of thought in the reasons they give than the double-speak of the MD itself.

Everyone should study the trial scene at the end of Out of the Silent Planet. The way Ransom translates the diabolo-speak of Weston into plain English is masterful, and is the medicine we need now.

Instead of writing nuanced, subtle manifestos, these guys would do well to START with writing what they are trying to say in plain English. Then the absurdity would be so obvious.

“We can’t agree on much, except we’re all baptized, and we think that stomping on babies with jack boots is not good.”

I’m not saying it’s easy, until the dues have been paid. They need to start paying their dues. But most are in cushy positions that they will by no means give up to do the kind of self-examination that is needed. I suppose their outfits would need to give them an all-expense-paid sabbatical.

Excellent comments on the wimpy, Enlightenment-thinking laced Manhattan Declaration. The signers of the document read like a Who’s Who list of Pietistic Churchmen who enjoy wielding their paper swords against the giant fiery dragon of the Secular tyrannical State. These “Leaders” are the same people who tell their Congregations to retreat into their Christian reservations because we “can’t legislate morality”. These are the same “Leaders” who exhort Christians to shadow box against the Devil by perpetually attending a mind-numbing “spiritual warfare” conference. These are the same “Leaders” who like the heretic Marcion shove down antinomianism down our throats because we do no live “under Law, but under grace”.

I am sick and tired of the words and actions of our cowardly Christian “Leaders”.

The ineffectuality of the Manhattan Declaration will be shared by all such manifestos the “Christian Right” shall draw up, so long as they praise democracy, egalitarianism, and the deadly “Judeo-Christian tradition.”

Michael Hoffman II observed that in a healthy age, the peasants would have burned down the stem cell clinics by now. There would not need to be long-faced symposia on “difficult ethical issues.”

Instead of honest peasants, we have become a nation of effete faux-aristocrats with arched eyebrows and impishly pursed lips — like a church of Wm F. Buckley, Jr.s, pretending to stand by the juggernaut yelling “halt” but actually enjoying the good life right well.

A carefully worded, subtle argument bringing many lines of evidence into display with erudition and savvy ON THESE MATTERS (as opposed to say, raising or lowering the tax rate a couple points) is not what is needed, is futile, and is laughable in terms of the political reality. Add to that the “natural law” compromise and you have a statement that is actually quite despicable. Let me explain.

If they had put out a statement,

“killing babies is wrong, and if good men ever come back into power, the men that are doing this, and paving the way for it legally, are going to be publicly hung as worse than war criminals — far worse”

that would say everything that needs to be said. It would make the point that it is good and evil that is being talked about, not a common search for how the “dignity of man” is best expressed. It would have the great advantage of brevity, and say it in the one and only way that communists understand: a just threat to their own sorry skins. That would get the rulers’ attention, and resonate. It would be a shot heard around the world.

What we are dealing with is a communist takeover of our media and government proclaiming with force of arms that no magistrate may doing anything to prevent a “doctor” from stopping a baby halfway down the birth canal, sticking a needle into its brains, and sucking it out. They also say it is okay for two men that want to play with each other’s wee-wee to GET MARRIED.

The proper response to such “rulers” is not “reason.” It is to arrest them, put them on trial, and execute them; failing that, the peasants should rise up and burn the Supreme Court and Capital Building down, and kill them with pitchforks.

In other words, when things have reached this point, it is no longer a matter of polite exchange of clever rhetorical points. It is not as though our communist rulers just made a subtle mistake in their “natural law” reasoning. They know exactly what they are doing, or Romans 1 is false. They laugh at polite position papers, especially ones like this that are windy, diffuse, and which bend over backwards to make it clear that the first concern is to defend liberal causes past and present. Our rulers have absolutely nothing to fear from such accommodating gas.

This should be clear right from the outset, when they appeal to natural law and such nonsense in addition to Scripture. To which their opponent is simply going to point out, that males in the animal kingdom do occasionally mount other males, therefore it is “natural.” Oops, so much for that argument. The effect however is to reassure our rulers that we will never ever take a stand on the Word of God alone; only if we think we can appeal to them on their “neutral turf” will we ever raise even a peep of protest to their march to perdition. And they will ALWAYS win on “neutral turf.”

(The fact that a few Scripture verses are thrown in does not change anything. You could quote great literature, throw in a juicy quote from Cicero while you’re at it. The principle of “reasoning our way to a better consensus” has been conceded.)

Of course, Scripture would not be effective here either, because LANGUAGE ITSELF is being destroyed, intentionally so, by our rulers. “Marriage” is a basic concept. Once homosexual marriage is even being debated — much less passed into law — the battle of words is over. You can’t win that debate with words, because words are no longer functioning honestly.

The third point of the “declaration” is irrelevant and dishonest. What “right of conscience and religious liberty”? To perform human sacrifice? Someone has that religious liberty? Where does the Bible advocate religious liberty? On the other hand, no one is going to make these guys perform an abortion or marry a fag, so the point is largely posturing. But people are being thrown in prison, extradited, or black-listed from employment for a variety of political incorrectnesses, such as holocaust revisionism. If these men really believe in the right of conscience, let me hear EVEN ONE OF THEM publicly decry that. If they refuse, they are just liars, posturers.

I am suggesting that DOING NOTHING is actually better than publishing gaseous, compromised screeds like this. At least while we are doing nothing, the communists might worry what we are up to. With announcements like this, they know they are safe in the foreseeable future, their only potential enemy safely side-tracked by double-minded prevaricators.

Now if a declaration were meant to be an opening salvo, invoking natural law, not to persuade, but to “show the world” as it were how far beyond good and evil our situation has become, to set the stage for a later revolution if necessary, then that would be something. It would be structured and worded quite differently. Compare Calvin to King Francis in the preface to the Institutes. Let this set the tone.

Suppose, however, the whisperings of the malevolent so fill your ears that the accused have no chance to speak for themselves, but those savage furies, while you connive at them, ever rage against us with imprisonings, scourgings, rackings, maimings, and burnings. Then we will be reduced to the last extremity even as sheep destined for the slaughter… and may await the strong hand of the Lord, which will surely appear in due season, coming forth armed to deliver the poor from their affliction and also to punish their despisers, who now exult with such great assurance.