Adam Kredo write at the Washington Free Beacon:

In his new memoir, former Israeli Ambassador [to the United States] Michael Oren documents the rapid dissolution of the historically close U.S.-Israel alliance under President Barack Obama . . . . 

The memoir, Ally: My Journey Across the American-Israeli Divide, has already rushed to the top of Amazon’s bestseller list.

It provides a window into the daily stresses and strains Obama and his allies heaped upon the Jewish state -- from placing unprecedented demands on Israel regarding the peace process to fabricating crises in the U.S.-Israel alliance.

Oren's new book exposes Obama's "immense hosility, anger at Israel," the Free Beacon states.

Jim Fletcher writes at WND:

"Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton continues to tour the nation, promoting her new book, Hard Choices, and a possible 2016 candidacy," T. Becket Adams writes at the Washington Examiner.

"Her book tour, filled with gaffes and missteps, has lagged and perhaps failed to live up to expectations. But that's not all. Her book, when compared to former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's political memoir, Going Rogue, has woefully underperformed in sales," Adams observes.

"Palin's book, which was released the same year President Obama moved into the White House, sold approximately 496,000 copies in its first week of release, according to figures cited by the New York Times," Adams writes. "That’s almost half a million copies in one week."

In sharp contrast, says Adams, "Clinton, with all her softball interviews and a massive amount of free publicity from an excited press, sold only 100,000 copies from its Tuesday release through Saturday, Politico reported."

Related
Palin Celebrates "Duck Dynasty" at CPAC: "We Pushed Back and We Won" 
Hillary Clinton Wouldn't Label Islamist Kidnappers Terrorists 
The Hillary Clinton Rape Culture

Matt Barber writes at Barbwire:

WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group is planning to release, through its liberal imprint Convergent Books, a manuscript titled God and the Gay Christian: The Biblical Case in Support of Same-Sex Relationships.

Is the Christian world about to suffer through another World Vision moment?

The book’s author, Matthew Vines is a homosexual activist and Bible revisionist known for manipulating Christian terminology to advance the counter-Christian homosexualist agenda.

Despite his frequent use of a Christian-like lexicon, Vines surprisingly admits to running an apostate enterprise that he calls The Reformation Project.

"An unabashed denier of Biblical teaching on sexual morality, Vines has publicly acknowledged that his goal is to 'reform church teaching on sexual orientation and gender identity'," Barber writes. "The book is scheduled to be published on April 22, 2014."

If I may, here is another title Multnomah might consider publishing: God and Atheism: The Biblical Case in Support of the Non-Existence of Yahweh. 

There is no doubt a twenty-something author out there willing to assert that when the Bible says, "The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God'" (Psalm 14:1), what is being given is culturally conditioned by ancient thought-forms in a temporal milieu shaped by the struggle for human liberation and survival against a plethora of gods and goddesses evoked by privileged elites of wealth and power. 

Further study of the living text reveals what it actually means is: "The wise man says in his heart, 'There is no God.'" 

Thus is achieved a "third way" of church reformation that transcends old dichotomies of existence and non-existence. Thus, the Bible liberates human beings from all idolatry! How cool and affirming is that! I mean, how can there be idolatry is there are no gods whatsoever?

O the joy that "honors scripture" and "those who are different." And O the wonder of being released from the shadows of idolatry!

On the other hand, April 22, 2014, may go down in Multnomah history as the date marking the decline and fall of a once-trusted Christian publisher. Time, and the choices people make in the next days and weeks, will tell. Meanwhile, intelligence revolts.

Related
Alabama Democrat: OK With a Man Marrying a Mule 
Video: Compilation of Anti-Marriage Homofascist Violence 
Pink Is the New Brown: Mozilla, Homofascism, and the Pink Swastika
The Revolt of Intelligence Against "Marriage Equality"

Hebert E. Meyer writes at American Thinker: 

Do you miss President Reagan?  Do you smile every time you see a film clip of our 40th president on some television show? And do you lunge for the remote control and flip from Fox News to a movie channel every time one of the current Republican would-be presidents starts to say something so weird, so clumsy, so blindingly stupid you'd think he was actually trying to help Hillary get elected?

Treat yourself to a copy of 11 Principles of a Reagan Conservative, by Paul Kengor.  It's a brilliant, beautifully written summary of what Ronald Reagan believed and how he communicated his beliefs to those of us he cheerfully called "my fellow Americans."

Related
Ronald Reagan Speaks Out Against Socialized Medicine -- YouTube Sensation
Tea Party Leader: Tea Party the Result of Republican Failures Under Bush 
Pearcey on Tea Party and New Resistance in Whistleblower Magazine

FoxSports reports:

Athena Project could be huge for Rousey, according to Variety. The magazine speculates that it could become a franchise, giving the UFC champ "a chance to become the female action star Hollywood is lacking."

The book is about a top-secret, all-female Delta Force counter-terrorism team sent to hunt and kill a terrorist after a bombing in Rome that kills 20 Americans.

Rousey was introduced to Thor over the phone while she was filming The Expendables 3 in September. Rousey fell in love with The Athena Project book and developed a rapport with Thor, attaching herself to the movie before it even had a studio involved, sources told Variety.

Here is Brad Thor's website.

Related
In the Mail: "Hidden Order," by Brad Thor

Terry Jeffrey writes at CNSNews.com:

Mark Levin, the nationally syndicated radio host who served as chief of staff in the Justice Department during the Reagan Administration, argues in his new book -- The Liberty Amendments: Restoring the American Republic -- that state legislatures should use the authority granted them in the Constitution to call a convention to propose amendments to the Constitution.

"It is the only way out," Levin said in an interview on CNSNews.com’s Online With Terry Jeffrey. "The federal government, Congress, the Supreme Court, the president, the bureaucracy, they are not going to reform themselves, they are not going to limit their activities. Only we can -- through our state representatives from the bottom up."

Related
In the Mail: Mark Levin's "Ameritopia" 
Mark Levin: "Post-Constitutional" America Heading for "Utopian Tyranny"

"Democrats and Republicans largely heaped praise upon Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano after she announced she would resign her post later in the year, but a longtime constitutional attorney says there is not much to applaud -- especially for anyone concerned about preserving freedom and limiting government intrusion in their lives," reports WND.

"What the Department of Homeland Security became under Janet Napolitano is this monstrous surveillance and very intimidating group," said John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute, according to WND. Whitehead, who was appearing on Radio America, is the author of A Government of Wolves: The Emerging American Police State, which was published last month. Whitehead noted that he "criticized George Bush’s policies" but that "under President Obama, we’re zooming."

An example of this zooming, according to Whitehead, is a Homeland Security program called Operation Vigilant Eagle. Whitehead described Vigilant Eagle as a surveillance program conducted "on all returning veterans from overseas" and that it includes watching "Facebook posts, text messages," and "emails of returning veterans to see if they’re going to be disgruntled."

Whitehead said his group helped one such veteran file a "major lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security." According to Whitehead's description of the events leading up to the lawsuit, DHS agents showed up at the veteran's door, "arrested him," and "put him in a mental institution for his Facebook posts criticizing the government. We got him out, and then we sued the government."

WND also reports that "another outrage, according to Whitehead, is the harassment of Americans living on or somewhat near our national borders with Mexico and Canada. He said law-abiding citizens have been forced to hand over their laptops while the government officials download the information."

Also of great concern is the use of border drones against Americans. These drones "are flying inland, photographing, and watching what American citizens are doing" and providing "surveillance on American towns," Whitehead said. Drones coming in 2015 will have "scanning devices, rubber bullets, sound cannons," Whitehead reportedly said. "They can look through the walls of your home. They’re just going to bypass the Fourth Amendment, and they already are doing that."

Whitehead also "said that sort of activity will only get more common and more intrusive until the American people stand up and refuse to accept what he considers a major infringement on our constitutional liberties," WND reports.

Related
Fascism Is Back
Obama Orders Federal Workers to Spy on Each Other 
Is "Homeland" Ammo for Obama's "National Security Force"?

Nancy and I are about halfway through the new thriller Hidden Order, by bestselling author Brad Thor (I'm reading portions of it to her at night).

This book grabs you from the very first page of the excellently crafted "Prologue" (set in Sea Island, Georgia), the first sentence of which reads: "Clarie Marcourt should have gone to bed hours ago."

From the inside front flap:

The most secretive organization in America operates without any accountability to the American people. Hiding in the shadows, pretending to be part of the United States government, its power is beyond measure.

Control of this organization has just been lost and the future of the nation thrust into peril.

When the five candidates being considered to head this mysterious agency suddenly go missing, covert counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath is summoned to Washington and set loose on the most dangerous chase ever to playout on American soil.

But as the candidates begin turning up murdered, the chase becomes an all-too-public spectacle, with every indicator suggesting that the plot has its roots in a shadowy American cabal founded in the 1700s.

With the United States on the verge of collapse, Harvath must untangle a web of conspiracy centuries in the making and head off the greatest threat America has ever seen.

This is thriller writing at its absolute best, where the stakes have never been higher, nor the line between good and evil so hard to discern.

For more on the book and Thor, see "Chilling: Author Brad Thor Reveals the Extremely Powerful Agency Behind New Book Hidden Order" at The Blaze.

Here is a review by Joe Hartlaub at Bookreporter.

Included in this article is video of a "Testy TV Exchange" in Chicago, also published at The Blaze.

David Klinghoffer writes at Evolution News and Views:

Stephen Meyer's new book, Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design, will debut this coming Sunday in the #7 place on the New York Times hardback nonfiction list. . . .

The Times even has a remarkably accurate summary of what's in the book -- something to which we're not entirely accustomed when dealing with the media:

DARWIN'S DOUBT, by Stephen C. Meyer. (HarperOne.) The theory of intelligent design best explains the appearance of animals in the fossil record without apparent ancestors.

That is referring to the geologically sudden eruption of complex animal life in the Cambrian explosion, about 530 million years ago, a thread that Meyer pulls in the first third of the book and that results in the conclusive unraveling of Darwinian theory in the final two-thirds.

Stephen C. Meyer holds a Cambridge University Ph.D. in the history and philosophy of science and is director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute.

Nancy Pearcey, editor at large of The Pearcey Report and director of the Francis Schaeffer Center for Worldview and Culture at Houston Baptist University, is also a fellow at the Discovery Institute.

Congratulations to Stephen Meyer!

Related
Review of "Darwin's Doubt," New Book by Cambridge Ph.D. Stephen Meyer 
Intelligent Design on Dennis Miller Radio

David Snoke writes at The Christian Scientific Society: 

When I first saw that the new book by Steve Meyer, Darwin’s Doubt, centered on the Cambrian Explosion, I was loathe to read it. I had been led to believe over the years that everything that could be said about the Cambrian Explosion has already been said. I was quite happy to believe that the only real discontinuities in the story of life occurred at the origin of life and at the origin of human consciousness.

I should have known better; science marches onward, and old arguments get reexamined as new data arises. Steve Meyer’s book is a wonderful, comprehensive case that the origin of the major types of animals, namely the phyla, is just as strikingly discontinuous as the the origin of life. . . ."

Snoke's review includes a good discussion of the problem of information in living things. He writes:

After posing the problem, Meyer discusses some of the non-orthodox, semi-Darwinian proposals floated in the last few decades, such as Gould’s punctuated equilibrium and epigenetic neo-Lamarkianism. All of these are built on a surprising amount of hand-waving, invoking new terms but brushing over the actual physical mechanisms.

One section I was quite happy about was the section on “self-organization,” promoted by Kaufmann, Prigogene, and others. This area has had a strong following in the physics world for three decades, but I have always thought it was sterile, for the reasons that Meyer cites. Essentially, getting "order" from natural self-organizing process and getting "information" are two totally different things.

"Order" is easy -- all you need is a natural length scale to arise in a system and "spontaneous symmetry breaking" will lead to orderly patterns on this length scale. This is true of atomic crystals at low temperature and rows of clouds in the sky.

But the very nature of information, whether in DNA or human writing, precludes natural forces from generating it. DNA can hold information precisely because there is no natural force demanding the nucleic acids be in one location or another. All information requires this type of "contingency," that is, openness to many possible choices; a system which is driven to one required state holds no information.  

Stephen Meyer holds a Ph.D. in philosophy of science from Cambridge University. David Snoke, Ph.D., is professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Pittsburgh, as well as president of the Christian Scientific Society.

Related
Free Thought on Darwin at Union-Tribune
Dawkins: Nazi Eugenics "May Not Be Bad"?

National Public Radio aired an interview with best-selling novelist Stephen King last Wednesday (May 29), and during the interview King discusses "his belief in God and whether it has changed over time." King said:

"I choose to believe it. . . . I mean, there's no downside to that. If you say, 'Well, OK, I don't believe in God. There's no evidence of God,' then you're missing the stars in the sky and you're missing the sunrises and sunsets and you're missing the fact that bees pollinate all these crops and keep us alive and the way that everything seems to work together. Everything is sort of built in a way that to me suggests intelligent design.

"But, at the same time, there's a lot of things in life where you say to yourself, 'Well, if this is God's plan, it's very peculiar,' and you have to wonder about that guy's personality -- the big guy's personality. And the thing is -- I may have told you last time that I believe in God -- what I'm saying now is I choose to believe in God, but I have serious doubts and I refuse to be pinned down to something that I said 10 or 12 years ago. I'm totally inconsistent."

King might also have mentioned books as evidence of intelligent design. Certainly, a few of these would qualify!

In regard to "having to wonder" about God's "personality," in light of a "lot of things in life," this very reasonable question is discussed by former agnostic Francis Schaeffer is his lecture on "Basic Philosophical Questions," which you can download here.

King's new novel, Joyland, is set to be released June 4.

Hat Tip: David Klinghoffer

The website of Evangelicals Now, a monthly newspaper available in England, has published "What Is Killing the Western World?," which I was honored to write as the Foreword to Emancipating the World, by our friend Darrow Miller of Disciple Nations Alliance.

To see "What Is Killing the Western World?" at The Pearcey Report, please go here.

Tonight I begin editing Nancy's new book, on apologetics. In the not distant future, she'll be editing my book on themes related to the question of resistance in today's world.

In the Foreword to the new edition of Pro-Existence, Udo Middelmann writes:

Life in the circle of reality does not consist only of observing what happens, in holding people's hands and washing their faces to accompany them in their sad state. Human beings have a calling from God to be human, to gain dominion by figuring out how creation and the human being works in order to build with those insights, vary and embellish life, as well as to actively oppose the decline towards the permanment lure of evil.

Elijah was sent to a king to denounce his evil reign. Jesus came to do the Father's will, to heal the sick and argue with false teachers. Paul defended himself all the way to the court in Rome against mistreatment. Isaac dug a well to irrigate the fields for his sheep.

All such actions follow from the encouragement to Adam and Eve after the fall to stop accusing each other, to put the hand to the plow against an encroaching nature, and to have babies against the approaching death. Their work diminished the weight of a pitiless fallen nature. Their son Cain carried on to develop cities, metallurgy and music, as God encouraged and protected him.

To be human is to actively engage life and not simply to react to events, hide in prayer closets, or to blindly accept the status quo, whether it is thought to be set by media, politics, or by any group, religion, or orientation that erases a human being's God-given individuality.

Yesterday's press release announcing the formation of the Francis Schaeffer Center for Worldview and Culture states, "Courses created by FSC will give students a unique opportunity to work through
. . . foundational resources on worldview and cultural engagement."

Middelmann's book Pro-Existence is a "foundational resource," in my view, and I would recommend it to any person seeking to better understand what it means to stand as a human being living in community with God and man in today's world.

Congratulations to Udo Middelmann on the publication of the new edition of his book Pro-Existence, released by Wipf and Stock Publishers. Middelmann is president of the Francis A. Schaeffer Foundation, based in Gryon, Switzerland.

Pro-Existence: The Place of Man in the Circle of Reality includes the following:

Foreword (this is new)

Chapter 1: Creativity and the Value of Work

Chapter 2: Creativity and the Value of Property

Chapter 3: The Circumference of Reality

Chapter 4: The Limits of Selfishness

Chapter 5: Pro-Existence and the Return of the King

Afterword (This is new)

I highly recommend this book. You might pick up a copy for your own development, but also possibly as a gift to a student, parent, artist, journalist, pastor, or professor.

Pro-Existence is also a terrific resource for group discussions on the relationship of Christian worldview to issues of work and creativity, property, the objectivity of truth, the place of the individual, and one's relationship to the state in a broken world.

A review copy of The Joy of Hate came in the mail today. Well, I think it was today. 

The book is authored, they say, by the Wilt Chamberlainesque Greg Gutfeld, who is a colleague of mine from our days interning at the National Journalism Center. This glorious event occurred in a previous century.

You probably already knew that.

I plan on saying many, many nice things about The Joy of Hate so that Gutfeld will perceive the wonder of having me on his TV show or shows or showz when I publish my book on The Joy of Resistance.  

Please buy 1 million copies of Joy of Hate (a great book!) here. Check it out. Spread Joy!

Thank you, David Brown of Simon and Schuster, for this early look at Vince Flynn's soon-to-be-published book.

From the front flap of The Last Man:

An invaluable CIA asset has gone missing, and with him, secrets that in the wrong hands could prove disastrous. The only question is: Can Mitch Rapp find him first?

Joe Rickman, head of CIA clandestine operations in Afghanistan, has been kidnapped and his four bodyguards executed in cold blood.

But Mitch Rapp’s experience and nose for the truth make him wonder if something even more sinister isn’t afoot. Irene Kennedy, director of the CIA, has dispatched him to Afghanistan to find Rickman at all costs.

Rapp, however, isn’t the only one looking for Rickman. The FBI is too, and it quickly becomes apparent that they’re less concerned with finding Rickman than placing the blame on Rapp.

"In Flynn's newest thriller, Mitch Rapp must navigate an environment where allies are enemies and enemies are allies," says the publisher.

Mugged author Ann Coulter gets inside the mind of the formerly mainstream media.

Sowell writes:

If you are sick and tired of seeing politicians and others playing the race card, or if you are just disgusted with the grossly dishonest way racial issues in general are portrayed, then you should get a copy of Ann Coulter’s new book, Mugged. Its subtitle is: “Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama.” . . .

Mugged is more than an informative book. It is a whole education about the difference between rhetoric and reality when it comes to racial issues. It is a much-needed -- even urgently needed -- education, with a national election just weeks away.

Related
How to Have a Race War
Racism! Racism! And Oh by the Way: Racism!

Fox News Sunday Anchor Chris Wallace interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Robert Caro two days ago. As a self-described student of power, Caro has written extensively on President Lyndon Baines Johnson.

At the 42-second mark of this video, viewers can see a copy of Nancy's Saving Leonardo in the background behind Chris Wallace.

You can also see the book at the 51-second mark, the 2-minute mark, the 2:36 mark, the 2:46 mark, the 3:03 mark, and more. The entire interview runs 3:36.

Where the interview took place is not stated in the video. However, the room may be an office studio set. I don't know of any writer's office that looks as neat as what we see on air during this interview.

I bookmarked the video last night and decided to post on it this morning.

Hat tip to the eagle eye of David Rowe for making this catch.

Jeffrey Lord reviews Ann Coulter's new book at American Spectator: 

In writing her newest book, Mugged: Racial Demagoguery From the Seventies to Obama Ms. Coulter takes the time to carefully and in detail explode the self-made liberal myth of liberals and liberalism as heroes in the American civil rights movement. . . .

The idea of liberals as civil rights heroes is not only a tragedy and a myth but a seriously bad joke. . . . 

[A]ny group on record with enthusiastic support for slavery, segregation, lynching, the Ku Klux Klan and, in today's world, everything from racial quotas to illegal immigration is decidedly no kind of American hero. . . . 

[R]acism and the Left go together like ham and eggs or peanut butter and jelly. Without playing the race card the Left would die of political oxygen deprivation.

"Mugged isn't a book," Lord concludes. "It's a public service advertisement for a colorblind society. Martin Luther King would have loved Ann Coulter."

Related
Black Pastor Uses Lynching Photo to Get Out the Vote
How to Have a Race War
Racism! Racism! And Oh by the Way: Racism!

Today marks the passing of Eugene Genovese, scholar and historian.  I published in First Things the following review of one of his books, noting his move from Marxist hostility to religion to a genuine respect for Christianity:

Genovese took up southern history reluctantly, after a professor challenged him to test his Marxism by taking the slaveholders as a laboratory case in “how a ruling class really rules.” His initial forays, Genovese writes, were marked by “the biases of an atheist and a historical materialist” -- to whit, that religion was “no more than a corrosive ideology at the service of ruling classes.” If at the beginning, Genovese says ruefully, “someone had told me that religion would emerge as a positive force in my book -- indeed, as the centerpiece -- I would have laughed and referred him to a psychiatrist. In the end, the evidence proved overwhelming, and I had to eat my biases.”

What was the evidence, and which biases was Genovese forced to choke down? Fundamentally, he discovered that Marxism gravely underestimates the power of religion.

Among both black and white southerners, Genovese noted, “the overpowering evidence of religious faith aroused in me a skepticism about the reigning tendency in Academia to, as it were, sociologize faith out of religion -- to deny the reality of spirituality.”

Among the slaves, Christian faith “carried an extraordinarily powerful message of liberation in this world as well as the next,” Genovese wrote. That message empowered them to create a vibrant culture under extreme adversity -- a dynamic not explainable in Marxist or any other merely sociological terms. 

As Genovese put it, “No such theory or combination of theories could suffice to explain the power of the folk religion, as manifested, for example, in the spirituals.”

In the academy today it is fashionable to charge Western religion with complicity in a host of social evils: slavery, racism, sexism, imperialism.

But Genovese will have none of that. All civilizations have been disfigured by various evils, he argued. 

What sets the Christian West apart, he said, is that it alone raised “a profound theoretical opposition to those enormities, challenging their moral foundations and raising mass movements against them.”

Tom Bethell writes at American Specator:

We normally associate C.S. Lewis with Christian apologetics, English literature, and the Narnia stories; less so with science and questions about evolution. But as the Discovery Institute's John G. West points out in The Magician's Twin, throughout his life Lewis was concerned about the abject submission of culture and politics to the growing authority of science. Lewis respected science, but he rejected the idea that it is the only reliable method of knowledge about the world. He called that error scientism. As for evolution, his skepticism about it increased over the years.

At The Smoking Gun:

Federal prosecutors want Shepard Fairey, the artist who created the Barack Obama “Hope” poster, to serve time in prison following his misdemeanor conviction for destroying and fabricating documents in connection with a civil lawsuit over the iconic campaign image. . . .

Fairey . . . has admitted destroying electronic records and creating fake documents in an effort to thwart a copyright lawsuit brought by the Associated Press, which contended that Fairey had based the “Hope” image on a photo taken by an AP lensman.

Plagiarism is an "act or instance of using or closely imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and the representation of that author's work as one's own, as by not crediting the original author," states Dictionary.com. This would include "a piece of writing or other work reflecting such unauthorized use or imitation."

Note, however, one can plagiarize even if there is an under-the-table "authorization" to allow it (sometimes protected by a contract's "nondisclosure clause"). Ghostwriting, for example, is often preceded by a legal agreement in which a "big name" pretend author agrees to take credit for work in fact authored by the "ghost." 

The true authorship of the book is hidden from the reading public, for any number of rationalizations. Both the "author" and real writer (and their lawyers and organizations and publishers) have thereby agreed to deceive and manipulate to achieve some desired end (book sales, image enhancement, influence, etc.).

Being known as an "author," or having a list of 20 or 30 books he or she has "written," can do wonders for one's speaking fees, the status of one's organization, the rehabilitation of one's besmirched image, and the "legacy" you've carefully crafted for years so that all remains well when you're dead and gone.

It's all "nice and legal," but unethical. Two wrongs do not make a right. Even if "legal." Even if agreed to by consenting adults. This is true even if some big "Christian" celebrity's name (often PRed as a "spiritual giant") is stuck on the front of the book. Or on the front of 30 books.

Related
Francis Schaeffer -- "The Central Problem of Our Age"
Oxford, Cambridge, Plagiarism, and Christian Worldview
Francis Schaeffer: A Student's Appreciation of a Distinct Approach

Dr. Scott Lively writes at WND:

Now, I have a special interest in this article ["The Strange, Strange Story of Gay Fascists," at HuffPo] because I am the co-author, along with Orthodox Jewish researcher Kevin E. Abrams of The Pink Swastika: Homosexuality in the Nazi Party, which makes a nearly identical claim, but one backed with nearly 400 pages of documentation.

What I find most interesting about Hari’s article is that it has garnered virtually no opposition.

The few comments on the HuffPo page are mostly benign, and if you do a search on Hari’s name you find not a single suggestion that his article constitutes “Holocaust revisionism” or that he, himself, is a “homophobic bigot.”

That’s very strange, because I’ve been called both a revisionist and a bigot for writing The Pink Swastika.

Indeed, the Southern Poverty Law Center (that legendary beacon of fair-mindedness) has labeled me a “hate group” for writing it (though they refuse to publicly debate me on the issue). . . .

Related
"Gay" Totalitarianism
Fascism Is Back

Now that Hank the Cowdog is informally the honorary head of website security at The Pearcey Report, it's high time we gave this dog of dogs his day on the front page of our website (see the Groups section). 

We are honored by his ever-watchful presence. We expect Hank and our very own Copper the Wonder Dog (who handles website security on a daily basis) will work well together and bark from pretty much the same page.

To learn more about Hank and some of his human buddies, go here.

Tiffany Gabbay writes at The Blaze:

Last Friday, The Blaze provided you with a first look into Paul Kengor’s soon-to-be released, provocative book published by Mercury Ink, entitled, The Communist, which closely examines the life of President Obama’s longtime mentor, Frank Marshall Davis.

. . . . Kengor goes on to explain how this devout Marxist actually began his political path as a Republican, often stumping for GOP presidential contenders on their respective campaign trails. Of course, especially at the time, the GOP represented the party of Lincoln while Democrats comprised the Southern racists so reviled by black Americans.

Oddly, Davis took a turn for the hard-left after being duped into believing that the racism he experienced as a black youth growing up in Kansas, and, later on into adulthood, was the product of a diseased Capitalist system, and that only the Soviet Union had managed to crack the code of equality, thus creating a racism-free utopia for all.

Jeffrey Lord reviews Limbaugh's best-seller: 

While the kaleidoscope of daily headlines of the last three and a half years may confuse -- from Obamacare to immigration to the economy to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, free trade, the deficit and much more -- it is understandable that many Americans may have an uneasy feeling that they have taken their eye off the ball.

In The Great Destroyer: Barack Obama's War on the Republic, David Limbaugh brings the American eye back to America's ball.

The American ball? The Constitution, the free market, and the principles of limited government that undergird the American republic.

Jamie Weinstein writes at The Daily Caller: 

Conservative radio host and Fox News contributor Monica Crowley says that President Barack Obama supports policies that can most accurately be described as “economic fascism.”

“Obama doesn’t run around wearing a Carrie Bradshaw-esque nameplate necklace that says ‘Socialist,’” Crowley told The Daily Caller while defending her description of the president as a socialist in her new book, "What the (Bleep) Just Happened?: The Happy Warrior's Guide to the Great American Comeback," which was released Tuesday. “But his policies, actions, words, background and associations speak louder than any ID necklace ever could.”

From Jonathon M. Seidl at The Blaze:

Despite endorsing Obama in 2008, JFK’s daughter Caroline now considers Obama a “liar,” according to a family source in Edward Klein’s new book on Obama called The Amateur.

Author, speaker, teacher and activist for the poor and hungry Darrow Miller has written a much needed and timely book titled Emancipating the World: A Christian Response to Radical Islam and Fundamentalist Atheism. 

I was honored and delighted to write the Foreword, now appearing here in an exclusive at The Pearcey Report.

Emancipating the World has been endorsed by Nancy Pearcey, Marvin Olasky, and Wayne Grudem.

The book goes on sale officially tomorrow (May 1, 2012) and is available at Amazon and other stores. Congratulations to Darrow Miller on the publication of this fine book!

Richard P. Belcher, Jr., professor of Old Testament studies at Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, NC, reviews Did Adam and Eve Really Exist?, by C. John Collins of Covenant Theological Seminary.

Here is Belcher's first paragraph:

Dr. C. John Collins, professor of Old Testament at Covenant Seminary, has written a book that deals with a subject that may turn out to be a watershed issue for many within evangelical and reformed groups. Although Collins argues for the historicity of Adam and Eve, the way the argument is presented raises significant concerns not only for the interpretation of Scripture, but also for the character and authority of Scripture. The purpose of this review will be to try to lay out the argument of the book and then to show the problems and implications of the argument. 

Here is Belcher's conclusion:

The interpretation of Genesis 2:7 is a watershed issue because it brings into focus whether the clear statements of Scripture are going to be accepted, or whether they are going to be denied based on scientific concerns. Genesis 2:7 is clear that God took dust from the ground from which he formed the first man. To allow other interpretations that emphasize population size approaches rather than seeing Adam and Eve as the first couple created by God affects the authority of Scripture. The clear statements in Genesis 2 by which God created Adam and Eve must not only be denied or reinterpreted, but statements of the apostle Paul concerning Adam and Eve must also be adjusted to fit a different understanding of Genesis 2. The implications of such views are grave. [emphasis added] The line in the sand must be drawn in the affirmations of the full historicity of Genesis 1-11 and the acceptance of how God created Adam and Eve in Genesis 2.

Hat tip: Keith Plummer

From the front flap:

Levin asks, what is this utopian force that both allures a free people and destroys them? . . . .  

In the end, Levin’s message is clear: The American republic is in great peril. The people must now choose between utopianism or liberty. 

Terry Jeffrey writes:

"In an interview with CNSNews.com about his new book -- Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America -- Mark R. Levin said he believes America has already largely become 'a post-constitutional country.'"

Gently Mad says:

"I rank this book right up with anything C.S. Lewis wrote and as a sequel to Francis Schaeffer's book, How Should We Then Live?"

Jammie Wearing Fool writes at Human Events:

Coming on the heels of the Washington Post hit piece on Rick Perry, we're wondering whether the Post and the rest of the Washington press corps will be mentioning Barack Obama's association with the notorious racists from the New Black Panther Party.

You may remember some of these charming fellows from this video on Election Day in 2008.

Following that the Obama Justice Department squashed an investigation, leading to the resignation of J. Christian Adams . . . who now has a book coming out this week.

Quin Hillyer writes at American Spectator:

J. Christian Adams has outdone himself. As of today, his new Regnery Publishing book, Injustice: Exposing the Racial Agenda of the Obama Justice Department, is available at bookstores.

Even apart from some new photographs of Obama in close proximity to New Black Panthers, what I've read of the book already (I'm only halfway through) is explosive almost beyond belief.

Adams names names, and dates, and places. He describes events in vivid prose.

And he repeatedly makes an impassioned case that all of us should expect better justice than the law-trampling leftism of the Obamites that he describes in chilling detail.

Lloyd Marcus writes at American Thinker:

The Joe McGinniss Sarah Palin book The Rogue is the left's latest hate letter to God-fearing patriotic Americans. 

Make no mistake about it, folks. The McGinniss attack along with the other numerous attacks on Sarah Palin are really about attacking you -- mainstream Americans with traditional values.

Don't miss musician, composer, and writer Terry Yount's thoughtful review of Saving Leonardo, published on the website of Ligonier Ministries.

And not just Nancy because of her more than 100,000-copies selling book Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity ("Wonderful" book, says Bachmann), but also Francis Schaeffer because of his work, including the 10-part film series How Should We Then Live? and his book A Christian Manifesto.

Equally as dangerous as Total Truth, I would suggest, and perhaps even more so, is Nancy's new book Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning. I hope Michele and Marcus Bachmann put this new rascal on their reading and thinking list. But don't let the teenagers get ahold of it!

So who is Nancy? Not mentioned in the New Yorker is that Bachmann once told me, by phone, when Bachmann was a Minnesota state senator and considering a run for Congress, that she had two heroes: "Ann Coulter and Nancy Pearcey."

Nancy is a former agnostic, who, like me, embraces critical thinking as a way of life. This too is, perhaps to some, seen as dangerous and even subversive. To us, it's simply being human and taking responsibility for one's ideas and one's choices in life. I think Camus might have liked that. I like Camus; he played soccer, like me.

For some reason, the so-called elite establishments in politics and media seem frightfully worried about the resurgence of a people who can live and think for themselves.

We're not afraid of the big questions, and we're not bigoted toward possible rational answers to the big questions, even if, as the Founding Fathers noticed, the possible answers involve taking seriously the subversive and liberating influence of the Creator.

This divine subversion, as you may recall, upset the reactionary, non-critical-thinking establishment of its own day. Imagine, those extremist tea-partiers actually had the audacity to write it up in the Declaration of Independence (is that document still legal in New Yorker land?). By the way, here is the, sadly, all-too-predictable New Yorker hit piece on Bachmann. Enjoy!

The Valley Girl Apologist explains all, including what every pastor needs to do.

Instead of $26.99, Saving Leonardo is available via Kindle at Amazon for $3.99.

Richard Weikart is professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus. See his review of Saving Leonardo in Touchstone magazine. And here is his homepage.

Newsmax reports:

President Barack Obama won’t warn the American public about the dangers that Islamic extremism poses because he’s afraid of offending Muslims, former Reagan Cabinet member Bill Bennett tells Newsmax.TV.

Bennett, co-author of a new book on Muslim extremism entitled The Fight of Our Lives, contends that Obama’s strategy against radical Islam is confused and hesitant -- contrasted with President Ronald Reagan’s clear and firm strategy against communism.

In "Poured Concrete for the Soul," Dan Peterson at American Spectator says Saving Leonardo is an "ambitious, synoptic undertaking, but Pearcey traces cause and effect deftly and clearly, without any sacrifice of nuance or accuracy. The breadth of learning that she brings to bear is formidable."

Peterson shows an appreciation of the cultural and moral scope of Saving Leonardo: 

Although a great portion of the book discusses the arts, in one sense that is not her real subject at all. Her subject is the intellectual underpinnings of Western society over the past 250 years, how those underpinnings have radically shifted, and how those shifts affect -- well, everything, including not just the arts, but culture, morals, and even our concepts of truth and reality. Art mirrors underlying beliefs, and is a harbinger of where those beliefs are taking us. In recent times, the news has not been good.

I am glad Peterson notes that the scope of Saving Leonardo includes a concern for human freedom and dignity, two foundational elements of a free and civil society that secularism does not have the intellectual or spiritual resources to sustain. He writes:

The book is in no sense a dispassionate history of the rise of secularism in society or in the arts. In an age drenched in false ideas, Pearcey's avowed goal is to help her readers "recognize and resist secular ideas in science, philosophy, ethics, the arts and humanities." Thinkers and artists have in recent times created "worldviews that undermine human dignity and liberty," and the only hope, she argues, lies in a worldview that is "rationally defensible, life affirming, and rooted in creation itself."

Peterson's thoughtful review also appears in the hardcopy February 2011 issue of American Spectator. In other magazine news, an article in The Economist recently described Nancy Pearcey as "America's pre-eminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual."

Related
Secular "Values" No Defense Against Mosque 
How Secular Elites Disempower "Values Voter" America 
The Adversary President: Obama vs. America  
How Critical Thinking Saves Faith

According to his blog, Donald McConnell teaches "Legal Institutions and Values" at Trinity Law School. Here is his review of Saving Leonardo.

They're discussing Saving Leonardo at the Providence Presbyterian Church in Sugar Land, Texas.

"In January the class begins a new discussion on Secularism and Christian Worldview with Saving Leonardo:  A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning by Nancy Pearcey.  Copies are available from Pastor McCall," says the church website.

Widely read blogger and book reviewer Tim Challies writes:

I’ve made no secret of the fact that I enjoyed reading Eric Metaxas’ biography of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Actually, it’s one of my all-time favorite biographies; it’s readable, engaging and it deals with a fascinating part of history. But lately I’ve come across a few articles by experts in Bonhoeffer who say that it’s just plain wrong -- it’s a portrayal of the man that is geared toward evangelicals and, in seeking to make the reader happy, it succumbs to all sorts of errors.

Richard Weikart (California State University) and Clifford Green ("executive director of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works") are two of the scholars Challies cites. 

Challies and others might also want to take a look this review by Victoria Barnett. Barnett, identified as "general editor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, English edition," gets directly to the point in her opening sentence: "This is a badly flawed book."  

A cautious Challies says he "did not want to believe what those authors . . . are saying about Metaxas and his biography. But I am inclined to believe them as they bring the weight of scholarship and experience. They may well be right in suggesting that Metaxas got in over his head; and they may be right in suggesting that the true Bonhoeffer was simply too unorthodox to appeal to the likes of me -- the kind of person who read, enjoyed and enthusiastically recommended the book."

Challies concludes, "Sometimes the truth just doesn’t sell as well as a half-truth. And I’m afraid that we evangelicals may just prefer a safe and friendly character over an accurate one."

In a review titled, "Metaxas's Counterfeit Bonhoeffer: An Evangelical Critique," Richard Weikart, professor of modern European history at California State University, writes:

Eric Metaxas's Bonhoeffer biography has won many accolades from evangelicals, not only because Metaxas is an excellent writer, but also because he serves up a Bonhoeffer suited to the evangelical taste. Many evangelicals admire Bonhoeffer and consider him a fellow evangelical. Metaxas's book confirms this image. In an interview with Christianity Today Metaxas even made the astonishing statement that Bonhoeffer was as orthodox theologically as the apostle Paul.

As orthodox as Paul? Metaxas does not seem to know that in his Christology lectures in 1933 Bonhoeffer claimed, "The biblical witness is uncertain with regard to the virgin birth." Bonhoeffer also rejected the notion of the verbal inspiration of scripture, and in a footnote to Cost of Discipleship he warned against viewing statements about Christ's resurrection as ontological statements (i.e., statements about something that happened in real space and time). Bonhoeffer also rejected the entire enterprise of apologetics, which he thought was misguided. . . .

How did Metaxas get it so wrong? Part of the problem, perhaps, is that Metaxas simply got in over his head.

Bonhoeffer was a sophisticated thinker immersed in early twentieth-century German philosophy and theology. Even though I have a Ph.D. in modern European intellectual history and have read Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Barth, Bultmann, and many other philosophers and theologians who shaped Bonhoeffer's thought, I do not find Bonhoeffer's writings an easy read. For one thing, Bonhoeffer (like his mentor Barth) admitted that Kierkegaard was one of the most powerful influences on his theology, which means that Bonhoeffer was committed to an irrationalist, existentialist worldview that is quite different from the mindset of American evangelicals.

Though most evangelicals probably do not know it, most Bonhoeffer scholars dismissively reject the idea that Bonhoeffer's theology is compatible with American evangelical theology.

Weikart is author of The Myth of Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Is His Theology Evangelical? and says he is writing another book on the topic, with the working title Why Evangelicals Do Not Understand Bonhoeffer.

Julia Duin in The Economist:

Not long ago I was covering the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear, a wildly popular event hosted by Jon Stewart and Steve Colbert that drew well over 200,000 people to the Washington Mall. The gathering was decidedly odd -- two faux newscasters had organised a semi-faux rally. . . . 
 
In an effort to make intellectual sense of this, I turned to a new book by Nancy Pearcey, America's pre-eminent evangelical Protestant female intellectual.

Her new book, Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning, presents a case for Christianity as the best counterweight to the secular, anti-God views of Western culture. . . .

Always an independent thinker, Nancy is a former agnostic who grew to appreciate the intellectual honesty and personal integrity of another former agnostic, the great thinker Francis Schaeffer, who with his wife, Edith, founded L'Abri Fellowship in Switzerland in 1955.

"Reviewers in evangelical magazines who lionise Schaeffer," Duin concludes with a note of wonderment, "have ignored or downplayed Ms Pearcey's book. That's a shame."

Related
Press Release for "Saving Leonardo"

Jedediah Bila at Human Events says, Palin's "voice is warm and welcoming. The tone is optimistic and patriotic. And the writing style is uncluttered and forthright."

What seems especially crucial among Bila's observations is that Palin, whom I expect to run for president in 2012, "honors America’s Founders, our Declaration of Independence, and our Constitution."

Here is America by Heart at Amazon.

Nancy will join nationally syndicated radio talk show host Jim Bohannon on air tonight at 10 p.m. eastern.

Here is a station finder for local listening in your area. To listen live online, go here.

Nancy's new book is titled Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning.

Jeffrey Lord writes at American Spectator:

It isn't often that a book -- any book, even a popular, bestselling book like Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto -- can be said to have changed the course of American politics and history. The phenomenon is rare, extremely rare, usually taking both the country and even the author by surprise.

Yet Levin's book has done just that, saluted by Minnesota Republican Congresswoman Michele Bachmann in an exclusive talk with The American Spectator as "providing [the] intellectual balance and foundation" of the Tea Party movement. A movement that stands triumphant this week in the wake of the conservative landslide that Levin himself believes can revitalize the conservative cause that Ronald Reagan once led to the White House.

Comment: This is a terrific article. One caveat: America has not yet changed, and so we are jumping the gun to say this book, as incisive and timely as it is, has "changed America."

Last week an election was won. As I told our teenage son, that election was the most important of his life thus far. However, it was still merely an election. Followup is needed, and it will be followup against an inertia of institutionalized and enculturated statism that has been with us with growing force since the 1960s.

Already this week, we do not hear as much from victorious Republicans about the Constitution and the Declaration, even though especially at this moment in American history, we absolutely need to frame our politics and policies in terms of the Declaration and Constitution -- the only vision known to humanity to have the resources needed to give the balance and the basis for both form and freedom in society. There remains much electoral, political, intellectual, and cultural work to be done.

Last week's victory opened a window of opportunity to reestablish America upon her Constitutional and Declarational principles. Levin's Liberty and Tyranny has played -- and is playing -- a central role in returning our nation to the defining and enduring American mainstream, outside of which all else is extreme. Liberty and Tyranny is helping to change America and that, in and of itself, is a tremendous accomplishment. 

Related
Levin's Liberty and Tyranny No. 1 at Amazon 
How the New Resistance Can Win the Culture War

Secularism Rebuffed: Read Jim Fletcher's review of Nancy's Saving Leonardo at WorldNetDaily.

CNSNews Editor in Chief Terry Jeffrey interviews Saving Leonardo author Nancy Pearcey on "art, politics, and culture." Here's the interview.

Saving Leonardo, by Nancy Pearcey, "is stunning on several levels," writes Byron Borger of Hearts and Minds.

Nancy is scheduled to discuss Saving Leonardo on the Dennis Prager radio show this Thursday, October 7, at 1:00 pm, Eastern.

To listen live online, click here.

Nancy will discuss Saving Leonardo on the "Chris Fabry Live" radio show today 4:00 pm-5:00 pm, Eastern.

To find a Moody Radio station near you, go here. To listen live online, click here.

Join Nancy tonight at 9:07 pm, eastern, on "The Other Side With Charles Butler." This program airs on WVON, "The Talk of Chicago."

Want to call the show? In-state callers can dial: 773-591-1690. Out-of-state listeners only can call toll free 877-591-1690 or 866-591-1690.

To listen online, click here.

Nancy is scheduled to appear on "The Norm Jones Show" this morning at 10:35, eastern time. Please see additional details below:

Station: WTCM-AM, NewsTalk 580
Date: Monday, September 20
Time: 10:35 am, Eastern
Location: Traverse City, Northern Michigan
To Listen Online, Click Here

To catch Nancy on-air tomorrow to discuss her new book Saving Leonardo, please see the broadcast details for Thursday, September 16, below:

Coastal Daybreak with Ben Ball
Time: 8:45 am eastern
Date: Thurs., September 16
Station: WTKF-FM/WJNC-AM
Call the Show: 1-800-818-2255
To Listen Online, click here

Joy Cardin Show, Wisconsin Public Radio
Time: 9:00 am eastern
Date: Thurs., September 16
Call the Show: 1-800-642-1234
To Listen Online, click here and then click on any link under the "WPR's Ideas Network" that best fits your bandwidth and preferences

Update: If the above online link to listen does not work, this is.

ABQ Connect
Time: 3:00 pm eastern
Date: Thurs., September 16
Station: KNKT 107.1FM
To Listen Online, click here

"Hot Air" TV -- Ed Morrissey
Time: 3:30 pm eastern
Date: Thurs., September 16
To Listen and View Online, click here.
Note: "Hot Air" was launched in April 2009 by founder and CEO Michelle Malkin.

Pearcey Report editor at large Nancy Pearcey is writing a series of columns for Human Events based on her new book Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning.

"Secular Values No Defense Against Mosque" is the first of these columns, published today.

Nancy is scheduled to appear on the nationally syndicated Phil Valentine radio show today at 4:35 pm, eastern.

You can listen online here. To call the show, dial 1-800-618-7445 (here is the website).

Nancy will discuss Saving Leonardo on the "Rick Hamada Program," based in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Time: 12:10 pm
Date: September 13
Website: Rick Hamada Program, KHVH 830-AM  

To listen live, click here. To call the show toll free, dial 1-888-565-8388.

Today: Nancy is scheduled to discuss Saving Leonardo with talk show host Bob Dutko at 1:00 this afternoon.

Here is the website of the WMUZ 103.5 fm. Please click here to listen live online.

Radio talk show host and Fox News contributor Dennis Miller's interview with Nancy Pearcey on Saving Leonardo is set to begin today at 11:06 am, eastern.

Here is Miller's website.

To listen locally, here is a station finder. To listen live, click here.

Related
Look What's Featured at Dennis Miller's Double-Whammy Book Club 
Coming Attractions: Dennis Miller to Interview Nancy Pearcey

Michelle Malkin writes:

Shhhhhhh, we're told. Don't protest the Ground Zero mosque. Don't burn a Koran. It'll imperil the troops. It'll inflame tensions. The "Muslim world" will "explode" if it does not get its way, warns sharia-peddling imam Feisal Abdul Rauf. Pardon my national security-threatening impudence, but when is the "Muslim world" not ready to "explode"?

Comment: Violence, even if couched in appeals to tolerance, is the logical endgame of any "faith" (religious, political, scientific, or philosophical) that has carved out for itself an enclave that is untouchable by reason, evidence, and the need to correspond to life in the real world.

Such "faith" is the application of coercion, up to and including physical violence, by other means. Such "faith," as a mere "value statement," is anti-mind, anti-freedom, anti-Man, and anti-God.

It is either the self-inflicted violence of irrational commitment or the other-inflicted violence of hand-grenades and jets into skyscrapers. And politicians, including U.S. presidents, who buy into such a faith will find themselves setting up a machinery of oppression to protect their power from facts, questions, checks and balances, and other legitimate protections against abuse.

In contrast is the openness to verification, and therefore the humanity, of the Founding vision as expressed in the Declaration and safeguarded in the Constitution.  It is a vision of human beings as individuals called to think and act on the basis of that which is true to reality, not as a blind leap, but as a commitment of the whole person on the basis sufficient, verifiable information.

This provides an adequate philosophic basis for both intellectual and political freedom. Apart from it is the kind of personal, intellectual, and cultural fragmentation, and therefore, weakness, Nancy Pearcey has written about in the just-published Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning.

Consistent with the Declaration worldview, this humane vision is rooted ultimately not in "religious" "values," blind matter, impersonal nature, nor in an absolute eternal nothingness that burps alien human beings into existence by chance, but in a knowable Creator who thinks, acts, and feels, and who acts into verifiable history so that free-thinking individuals can evaluate competing truth-claims (in religion, politics, science, or philosophy) for their fidelity to reason and fact and for their ability to explain the phenomena under question.

Tolerance apart from truth is slavery.

Related
How the New Resistance Can Win the Culture War
Christmas Spirit in the Dirt

Yessiree, ladies and gentlemen, at "Dennis's Oprah's Book Club" both Total Truth and Amazon "mover and shaker" Saving Leonardo are featured at the top of the heap. Part of the runup to Nancy's interview with the Miller Man tomorrow morning (stay tune for further details).

And what does that make Sir Dennis? Clearly, a Patriot. Make that a double Patriot. Now go tell O'Reilly.

If you too want to be a Patriot, please contact Katie Morgan of the Pinkston Group to inquire about scheduling radio or TV interviews with Nancy Pearcey (Katie's phone: 703-260-1915; email: morgan@pinkstongroup.com).

Related
Amazon: Pearcey's Saving Leonard No. 3 on "Movers and Shakers"
Coming Attractions: Dennis Miller to Interview Nancy Pearcey

I didn't know Amazon ranked these things, but yesterday Saving Leonardo was ranked 1,457 on Amazon, and today (thus far) it has climbed to 355.

This is a rise of 310%, placing Saving Leonardo at the No. 3 spot on Amazon's list of "Movers and Shakers" in books. Nancy and I thank all of you for your interest in Saving Leonardo.

If you would like to book Nancy Pearcey for a radio or TV interview, please contact Katie Morgan of the Pinkston Group (phone: 703-260-1915; email: morgan@pinkstongroup.com).

Radio talk show host and Fox News contributor Dennis Miller (with a regular O'Reilly "Miller Time" gig) is set to interview best-selling author Nancy Pearcey of Saving Leonardo tomorrow morning, Friday, September 10, during the 11 o'clock hour, eastern time. Details to follow.

If you would like to book Nancy Pearcey for a radio or TV interview, please contact Katie Morgan of the Pinkston Group (phone: 703-260-1915; email: morgan@pinkstongroup.com).

Here's the link to listen online. Nancy is scheduled to discuss Saving Leonardo during the 10 am hour today.

Nancy is scheduled to discuss her new book Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning at 7:30-7:50 am (eastern) on Thursday, September 9. 

Here is the website for Bill Bennett's "Morning in America."

You can find a local station here. Or listen online here. You can call the show at 1-866-680-6464.

Update: Listen online here instead.

Nancy is scheduled to appear with Fox News Anchor Lauren Green at 10:45 am eastern tomorrow (September 3) on "God Talk," an online TV program broadcast on the Fox News website.

Topic: Saving Leonardo. Here is Lauren Green's Facebook page.

Nancy will discuss her new book Saving Leonardo today on Point of View radio, from 2-4 p.m. eastern time. Click here to listen online.

Today marks the beginning of "Launch Week" for Nancy's Saving Leonardo.

We look forward to seeing some of you at the U.S. Capitol Vistors Center at noon today. And we will do our best to keep you updated on interviews, media appearances, and other goings-on regarding this new book, which is a "call to resist the secular assault on mind, morals, and meaning." 

Thanks to all for the great interest and support we've already received for Saving Leonardo.

Nancy will be speaking at a "Faith and Law" event in the U.S. Capitol Visitors Center on September 1, the date of the release of her new book Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning.

In addition to discussing central themes from Saving Leonardo, Nancy will provide a sampling of the book's more than 100 images, from art and popular culture, specificially chosen to give readers a window into the impact of secular worldviews, for good or ill, in our individual lives, upon questions of human freedom and dignity, and thus across the whole of society. 

For more information about Saving Leonardo, please see this press release.

Here are event details:

Date: Wednesday, Sept. 1, 2010
Time: Noon
Location: U.S. Capitol Visitors Center, HVC 201
Phone: 703-425-2404

Mark Levin says Crimes Against Liberty, by David Limbaugh, is a "stunningly important book."

Here is audio of "The Great One's" tremendous radio interview with David on Tuesday night.

Florida State's coach (well, he's now retired after 55 years) was on "Fox and Friends" this morning talking about his new book, Called to Coach: Reflections on Life, Faith, and Football. Bowden is right that we are all here for a purpose, and the implication of his message -- that all of life is spiritual -- is also right.

This includes coaching. And I must say, those who think life lived in community with our Creator means cutting yourself off from his good gifts are sorely mistaken. A low view of the physicality of life has more to do with ancient Greek dualism that took a low view of matter than with holistic living based on verifiable and actionable information from the Creator.

Coaching -- as well as teaching, science, politics, nurturing a strong family life -- is just as much a calling before the Creator as is any other vocation in life, including preaching. Remember, Jesus of Nazareth was not wasting his time, nor was he being less spiritual, while he worked as a carpenter.

Assuming one has the necessary knowledge base, what makes a good coach at any level? Love the sport, love the person you are coaching, demand excellence -- and praise hard work and dedication even if the final product is not world-class.

It helps mightily if you live in community with God and man -- for sports is an expression of excellence, achievement, aesthetics, creativity, and physicality, all of them tremendously positive gifts from the hand of the Creator and expressive of his character.

That's why we might also say: There will be football (and soccer!) fields in Heaven. And the harps may well be electrified. The Creator, quite literally, is not a spoilsport.

First Interview: Author and attorney David Limbaugh appeared on the Hannity show on Fox last night to discuss his new book, Crimes Against Liberty. Here are a transcript and video of that interview.

Related
Books: Crimes Against Liberty, by David Limbaugh

We are pleased to release the following press statement for Nancy's new book, Saving Leonardo: 

SAVING LEONARDO

NEW BOOK SOUNDS THE ALARM THAT SECULAR IDEOLOGIES ARE DESTROYING HUMAN DIGNITY AND FREEDOM

Bestselling author Nancy Pearcey issues a call to resist
the secular assault on mind, morals, and meaning

In Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, and Meaning, best-selling author Nancy Pearcey, herself a former agnostic, offers an unflinching analysis of the profound personal and social devastation wreaked by secularism all across American life -- from the classroom to the courtroom, from the pulpit to the playground, from the boardroom to the White House.

“Because the word secular is the opposite of religious, many assume that the rise of secularism is a problem for religious groups only,” Pearcey says. “Not so. When politics loses its moral dimension, we all lose. When public discourse is debased, the entire society suffers.”  

In this riveting account, Pearcey exposes the stealth secularism that permeates society through education, media, politics, art, literature, and movies. Saving Leonardo reveals

• How the ruling elites use secular strategies to override the will of the American people;
• How art, literature, movies, and media channel secular worldviews deeply into people’s minds and emotions through stories and images;
• How cutting-edge moral issues like abortion, homosexuality, and the hook-up culture are shaped by secular worldviews that denigrate and disrespect the human body;
• How two major forces within secularism have created a pincer movement crushing human dignity and liberty.

With more than 100 colorful images from the classical Greeks to Van Gogh, from Camus to Scarlett Johansson, you will “see” secular ideas unfold in fresh and surprising ways.

Finally, Saving Leonardo argues that the best hope lies in a worldview that is rationally defensible, life affirming, and rooted in creation itself. As the Declaration of Independence puts it, human rights are secure only when a society respects them as unalienable givens endowed by the Creator.

In a culture where the center is deconstructed and character is disintegrating, Saving Leonardo offers an inspiring program to recover freedom and dignity -- one that no free-thinking person can afford to ignore.

Praise for Saving Leonardo

“A feast for the mind and the eye” -- Makoto Fujimura, artist, author

“Balanced, fair, impactful” -- Cal Thomas, syndicated columnist, author

“Intellectual prophet” -- J.P. Moreland, philosopher, author of The Question of God

“Astounding” -- James W. Sire, author of The Universe Next Door

“Brilliant” -- Gene Edward Veith, author, Provost, Patrick Henry College

“Unsurpassed” -- Leland Ryken, professor of English, Wheaton College

“May be Nancy’s best book yet, and that’s saying something” -- David Limbaugh, syndicated columnist, author

Praise for Nancy Pearcey

“One of the most profound writers today” -- Ted Baehr, founder, Movieguide

“A mind like a jewel” -- Lael Arrington, author, Worldproofing Your Kids

“An author of unusual ability” -- Phillip E. Johnson, author, professor emeritus, Berkeley

About the Author

A review copy of David Limbaugh's new book, Crimes Against Liberty: An Indictment of President Barack Obama, has arrived in the mail, and it looks tremendous.

To give you an idea of the timeliness of, and need for, this book, here is what's on the front and back inside flaps of the cover:

Was This the Hope and Change America Voted For?

* Socialized healthcare?

* A foreign policy of abasement to our enemies -- and hostility to our friends

* Bailouts upon bailouts?

* "Stimulus spending" that’s really pork-barrel spending on steroids?

American voters might have been naïve when they went to the polls in 2008, but New York Times bestselling author David Limbaugh wasn’t. He warned voters of what would be in store. Now he’s back with more than a warning. A practicing lawyer, he has compiled the most comprehensive and devastating indictment of what is turning out to be the most destructive presidency in American history.

Limbaugh charges that this presidency is ambitiously unraveling the Constitution, actively rooting out American traditions and values, and most of all, committing crimes against American liberty.

In Limbaugh’s brilliant new book, he documents:

* Obama’s offenses against the rule of law (including the administration’s blatant pursuit of race-based justice)

* Violations of the public trust (including Obama’s Chicago-style bully boy tactics to protect and advance the administration’s cronies)

* Abuses against the private sector (including how the Obama administration is removing any limits to federal power)

* Crimes against good governance (including Obama’s mania for secrecy after getting elected on promises of transparency)

* Betrayals of the national interest (including the administration’s gagging of honest discussion of the threat of radical Islam)

* And much, much more

If there was ever a must read -- this is it. Crimes Against Liberty is a stunning tour de force -- a detailed indictment against a president who is pursuing an agenda at odds with the Constitution and that is even more radical than most people realize.

Crimes Against Liberty officially goes on sale this Monday, August 23, and as part of the launching of the book, David is scheduled to appear with Sean Hannity on Fox Monday evening at 9 pm eastern.

Full disclosure: David Limbaugh is a friend of mine, and I was primary editor of his great book Persecution.

When it comes to Nancy's new book Saving Leonardo, you can literally "check it out" at the Kenton County Public Library in Kenton County, KY, located in the Greater Cincinnati area.

Kenton County is named after Simon Kenton, a longtime friend of frontiersman Daniel Boone.

It seems fitting to note the appearance of Saving Leonardo in Kenton County. Just as the county's namesake helped blaze a trail through the Kentucky wilderness, the new book blazes a trail through the secular wasteland. 

The Kentucky wilderness reminds us of pristine beauty, whereas the secular wasteland is a departure in so many ways from the wonder of the Creator's handiwork and from a nation Declared free under God. Two contrasting environments, but a similar call to courage and creativity in the face of a challenging situation. 

Contemporary trailblazers seeking more information on the Kenton County Public Library should turn in here. The official launch date of Saving Leonardo is September 1.

Saving Leonardo "may be Nancy's best book yet -- AND THAT'S SAYING SOMETHING," columnist and author David Limbaugh writes on Facebook. "More on this subject later," he says.

I just noticed that the "Search Inside" function for Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning is now available on its Amazon page.

Click here, for example, to get a close-up of the book's terrific cover.

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Michael Shermer, executive director of the Skeptics Society and publisher of Skeptic magazine, typically shoots from the hip. Which explains why he often misses the target. In a recent column, he blames Christianity for -- of all things -- the latest New Age craze.

The column is a critique of Deepak Chopra, the well-known New Age leader. Chopra used to be a top assistant to the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi (of Beatles fame). Time dubbed him the New Age Supersage. In spite of these facts, astonishingly, Shermer reinvents Chopra as a medieval theologian. In his words, Chopra’s theology is “essentially an updating” of medieval scholasticism. 

You would think that means Chopra appeals to medieval thinkers like Anselm and Aquinas. But you would be mistaken. Chopra’s goal is to forge a link between New Age thought and 20th-century quantum physics.

New Age interpretations of quantum theory were popularized a few years ago in the movie What the Bleep Do We Know? Before that, they circulated in books like Fritjof Capra’s The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism and Gary Zukav’sThe Dancing Wu Li Masters. These books claim that the view of reality suggested by quantum theory correlates with the teachings of Hinduism and Buddhism. The Dalai Lama, a recent visitor to the Obama White House, frequently makes similar claims.

What does any of this have to do with medieval theology? Answer: Nothing. 

So why doesn’t Shermer link New Age physics to its real source in Hindu and Buddhist theology? He ignores the obvious connection to Eastern mysticism and instead wants us to believe that Chopra’s New Age preaching is an “effort to update medieval theology.”

This is so utterly contrary to the facts, it suggests that the “skeptic” Shermer -- like so many secularized academics, reporters, entertainers, and politicians -- is determined to make Christianity the target for virtually everything he disagrees with. 

Chopra’s New Age physics is only one of many interpretations -- and misinterpretations -- that quantum theory has inspired, as I show in Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning. For example, it was also enormously influential in the rise of postmodernism because it appeared to undercut classical physics, along with the entire Enlightenment worldview. 

That’s why even non-scientists need to understand its impact -- if for no other reason than to answer those who misuse it to support their own favorite religious or philosophical views. 

And to debunk zealots who are determined to make Christianity a target, even in contradiction to the facts. Truly free thinkers need to be skeptical of those who call themselves “skeptics.”

Saving Leonardo can be pre-ordered here.

"Astounding," "Brilliant": As you might imagine, we're more than a little pleased to announce the following endorsements of Saving Leonardo from author James Sire (The Universe Next Door) and author/provost Gene Edward Veith (The State of the Arts):

"Nancy Pearcey has done it again and better than ever. She has taken the complex sophistication of the best cultural analysis and laid it out for any person to grasp, enjoy, and use to live out their daily lives honoring Christ. An astounding accomplishment!"

-- James Sire, author of The Universe Next Door

"Brilliant. . . . The book brings complex, abstract ideas down-to-earth -- or, rather, down-to-life. . . . Saving Leonardo bridges the gaps between the arts and the sciences, the theoretical and the practical. The book not only argues for the unity of Christian truth but exemplifies that unity and shows it in action."

-- Gene Edward Veith, Provost, Patrick Henry College

Nancy's latest book is set to publish September 1. For more information, or to pre-order, please go to the Saving Leonardo page at Amazon. 

Note: I have added these two endorsements to those already published here.

In his review of Lifework (authored by Darrow Miller), Robert Osburn states:   

Miller takes the time to unpack the economics of work, and not just the theology of it, [and this] makes the book well worth reading on that score alone.

He unfolds the "three plain rules" of John Wesley: gain, save, and give all you can.

Miller also does a good job of showing how "idealistic socialism" (are you listening Obama?) and "predatory capitalism" (are you listening Republicans?) are bastardizations of an economic system that I would call "compassionate capitalism."

"Compassionate capitalism" savors market mechanisms while embedding them in a moral framework where the ultimate end (love for God and neighbor) regulates the immediate end (profit).

"For over 25 years, Darrow has been a popular conference speaker on topics that include Christianity and culture, apologetics, worldview, poverty, and the dignity of women," states his bio at Discipling the Nations.

"From 1981 to 2007 Darrow served with Food for the Hungry International (now FH association), and from 1994 as Vice President. Before joining FH, Darrow spent three years on staff at L’Abri Fellowship in Switzerland where he was discipled by Francis Schaeffer."  

Read the rest of Osburn's "Hey Obama, Republicans, and Pastors -- Can Capitalism Be a Mission From God?"

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For information on, or to pre-order, Nancy's new book, Saving Leonardo: A Call to Resist the Secular Assault on Mind, Morals, & Meaning, please see the page at Amazon (see also Barnes & Noble, added Aug. 20, 2010).

The book officially launches just a few weeks from now on September 1.

Here are a few endorsements:

"A feast for the mind and for the eye. Nancy Pearcey not only is a trustworthy guide for a nuanced discussion on the relationship between culture and the gospel, but she is a gifted teacher as well . . . Saving Leonardo is a rare, precious gift to the churches and universities alike."

-- Makoto Fujimura, artist and author of Refractions: A Journey of Faith, Art, and Culture

"G. K. Chesterton said 'the danger when Men stop believing in God is not that they'll believe in nothing; but that they will believe in anything.' Nancy Pearcey understands where believing in anything leads and in this book she reveals where a secular philosophy is taking us. A balanced, fair, and impacting work!"

-- Cal Thomas, syndicated and USA Today columnist

"Nancy Pearcey helps a new generation of evangelicals to understand the worldview challenges we now face and to develop an intelligent and articulate Christian understanding . . . Saving Leonardo should be put in the hands of all those who should always be ready to give an answer -- and that means all of us."

-- R. Albert Mohler, Jr., president, The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary

"Nancy Pearcey has done it again and better than ever. She has taken the complex sophistication of the best cultural analysis and laid it out for any person to grasp, enjoy, and use to live out their daily lives honoring Christ. An astounding accomplishment!"

-- James Sire, author of The Universe Next Door

"Nancy Pearcey is an intellectual prophet in our day and one of Evangelicalism's foremost cultural observers. Saving Leonardo is a tour de force. In it, Pearcey provides a penetrating analysis of the nature of contemporary secularism, a helpful exposition of how we got to the present situation, and a well-crafted strategy for changing the situation. This is her best effort yet . . . a must read."

-- J. P. Moreland, distinguished professor of Philosophy, Biola University and author of The God Question

"Brilliant. . . . The book brings complex, abstract ideas down-to-earth  -- or, rather, down-to-life. . . . Saving Leonardo bridges the gaps between the arts and the sciences, the theoretical and the practical. The book not only argues for the unity of Christian truth but exemplifies that unity and shows it in action."

-- Gene Edward Veith, Provost, Patrick Henry College

"Nancy Pearcey is unsurpassed in the current generation of Christian thinkers . . . The magic continues with this book. Pearcey's virtues as a writer and thinker are once again fully evident in the range of material that she has mastered, the encyclopedic collection of data that she presents, and the analytic rigor with which she separates truth from error in worldviews. She is a prophetic voice for contemporary Christians."

-- Leland Ryken, Clyde S. Kilby professor of English, Wheaton College

Note: The statements from James Sire and Gene Edward Veith were added July 29, 2010.

Hot Indie News has posted an excerpt from The Obama Diaries, by Laura Ingraham (buy at Amazon).

Bill Redmond, formerly a U.S. representative from New Mexico, replies to "Sarah Palin 'Mama Grizzlies' Video Neglects Vital Point":

Great comments. I warn pastors and other Christians who want to get involved that "getting involved" or "supporting 'our' conservative values" is not enough.  

I press them to understand the "basis" for their involvement. If it is not grounded in the Creator, it will be short lived.  

I have been passing out Schaeffer's Christian Manifesto to pastors, political leaders and others for more than 10 years. Unless they ground themselves in the foundational perspective, if they "act," it will be mostly for naught. Pastors are not aware that churches can be co-opted by left or right.

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Wild at Heart, by John Eldredge, "has become central to La Familia's recruitment strategy and group mentality," writes Alfredo Garcia. "La Familia is known in Mexico, a nation plagued by drug-related bloodshed, for its extreme violence."

Aaron Klein will appear on the Fox Business Network at 5 p.m. Eastern to discuss The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists, and Other Anti-American Extremists.

Brenda J. Elliot and Aaron Klein are coauthors of the book, which is currently no. 16 at Amazon.

Human beings deserve books and other artforms (and government) that nourish them instead of merely shocking or amusing them.

This is one of many reasons to acquaint yourself and your family with Story Craft, John Erickson's great book on writing.  

Readers of The Pearcey Report might like to know that Nancy Pearcey wrote the book's Foreword and that I am honored to have been its editor. 

For more about Story Craft and the West Texas rancher-author who has sold more than 7.5 million books since his days at Harvard, see the book's website here. Here's a review. More at Amazon are here.

In his review of God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades, by agnostic professor Rodney Stark at Baylor University, Terry Scambray writes:

Speaking in Egypt last June, President Obama apologized for an imagined American imperialism on territory that itself was gained by Islamic conquest.  The New York Times in 1999 compared the Crusades to Hitler’s atrocities.  Even Pope John Paul II joined in by apologizing for the sacking of Constantinople by crusaders in 1204.

Rodney Stark, Distinguished Professor of Social Science at Baylor, shows that such statements are serious bunk.  For, as he writes, the Crusades were defensive wars to repel the Islamic conquest of Byzantium as well as to prevent the destruction of the Holy Land. . . .

Stark, though basing his work on the very best sources, may appear to be a Catholic apologist. Yet he was raised Lutheran and considers himself an agnostic though with a desire to become a religious believer.

Professor Stark’s works are an encouraging corrective to the anti-Western constructs, sometimes called “history,” which are taught in our schools. But restoring the West’s loss of confidence and eradicating its culture of masochism will take more than his prodigious output, as deeply impressive as it is.

"It surprised me to learn that David Remnick had dedicated three pages of his comprehensive new Obama biography, The Bridge, to my thesis that Bill Ayers helped Barack Obama write Obama's 1995 memoir, Dreams From My Father," Jack Cashill writes at American Thinker. "It will surprise Remnick even more to learn that he has unwittingly reinforced a thesis that he set out to discredit." 

As confidants, fundraisers, marketers, and people on the inside of publishing know, just because a "household name" can read a teleprompter, give a good speech, or read radio scripts heard by millions, that doesn't mean said household name can write a book, or 20 books.

Even if the name has a law degree.

Even if other people who know better say he did.

And even if his website constantly repeats the fraud over and over again. 

Be assured, as long as a political, religious, or otherwise celebrity has staff (or contractors) well-paid for their efforts and quietude, and as long as he has others who need his hyped name to sell their books and promote their agendas, all is well, so to speak.

Yes, all is well. If you don't mind deceiving others on a daily basis, that is. And if you don't mind lying and thieving your way to the top (or to the bottom, as it were).

Meanwhile, as you hard-charge to a better and brighter future for your trumped up "legacy," you might want to remember that little bit of wisdom from a fellow crucified for living and telling the truth: "The first will be last and the last first" (Mark 10:31). 

Dysfunctional systems of celebrity and publishing are well-defended. Then comes the judgment.

Cashill's article makes his point in relation to a political figure. Just as unfortunate, similar observations could be made in regard to "Big Christianity" or "Evangelianity."

This is one reason, in my view, the impact of Christianity out into the culture, including political culture, especially Washington, D.C., is so anemic. If you "ape the world" in its mentality and methods, the world sees you coming a mile away. And laughs.

God-talk thrown on top of worldliness may fool many, including the faithful. The world, and the prince of this world, laughs.

From AP:

Republican Party Chairman Michael S. Steele offers a simple explanation for why the GOP all too often lost touch with typical Americans after the Ronald Reagan era: "We screwed up," he claims in a new book offering a blueprint for the party's resurgence.

That "we" includes the last two Republican presidents and the most recent Republican candidate for president.

The name of the book is Right Now: A 12-Step Program for Defeating the Obama Agenda.

John R. Coyne, Jr., reviews We Still Hold These Truths: Recovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future, by Matthew Spalding of the Heritage Foundation.

"In this short, but powerful book, Dr. Baker captures the essence of the Tea Party movement," writes "Tea Party" mom Peg Maretta in a review at Amazon.

"He correctly identifies programs that were not authorized by Constitutional Amendment, as well as the deficit spending and debt resulting from the excesses of the Federal Government. He outlines that unconstitutional growth leads to bigger government, higher spending, higher taxes and less freedom. Using the Constitution as a benchmark, he does a fiscal analysis of past and present actions by the Federal government that has resulted in the current massive debt." 

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"Sarah Palin may be going 'rogue.' But she’s not going away," concludes Jacob Laskin in his review of Sarah Palin's memoir (co-authored with Lynn Vincent). "Critics count Palin out at their peril."

Click here for details of the second half of the Going Rogue book tour.

Note also that Palin will contribute part of the book's royalties to the "families of the victims whose lives have been forever changed by the tragic events of November 5th."

Palin's contribution is part of a larger effort called "Community Response to 11/5." Additional information is available at the website of the Central Texas-Fort Hood Chapter of the Association of the US Army (AUSA).

Comedian and talk show host Dennis Miller discusses intelligent design with Dr. Stephen Meyer, a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and author of Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design.

Here is audio of the interview. Meyer is scheduled for a full hour in-studio interview December 2 at 12 p.m. ET, 9 a.m. PT.

In an interview with Newsmax, "former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin on Tuesday sharply criticized President Obama's deep bow to the emperor of Japan and charged Democrats are 'purposefully' holding back details on their healthcare reform proposals from the American people to avoid an open debate."

In "Palin's Popularity vs. Media Mania," Robert Stacy McCain examines continuing outbreaks of Going Rogue Palin Derangement Syndrome among the reportorial establishment.

"For her supporters on the right," writes Melanie Kirkpatrick, "they won't find" in Going Rogue "much new ammunition with which to counter those who say that Mrs. Palin isn't ready for the rigors of the  White House."

"What's notable about Sarah's Palin's book tour, which starts midweek, is where she's not going," writes J. Robert Smith at American Thinker.

Here's the Going Rogue book tour schedule.

As Expected, says the former Alaska governor on her Facebook page: "AP and a number of subsequent media outlets are erroneously reporting the contents of the book." Which can be purchased here.

Palin and Going Rogue hit the ground November 18.

Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret World That's Conspiring to Islamize America is offically released tomorrow. Here's a heads-up from WorldNetDaily:

In the wake of the sensational ACORN video sting operation by two young investigators, an even more daring, dangerous and devastating undercover investigation -- this one infiltrating the nation's most aggressive Muslim "civil rights" organization for six months -- has resulted in stunning revelations about the supposedly "moderate" group, backed up by 12,000 pages of documents and 300 hours of covert video obtained during the secret op.

As revealed in a new book detailing the operation and its findings, the Washington, D.C.-based Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, is not the beneficent Muslim civil-rights group it claims to be. Rather, as indisputable evidence now shows, CAIR and other "mainstream" Islamic groups are acting as fronts for a well-funded conspiracy of the Muslim Brotherhood -- the parent of al-Qaida and Hamas -- to infiltrate and destroy the American system.

More . . .

I'm on page 206 of Vince Flynn's Pursuit of Honor, which goes on sale October 13.

Here's his website. Here's the Pursuit of Honor page at Amazon. Pursuit is ranked No. 31 in books and is available for pre-order.

I would be happy to hear from Flynn fans on your thoughts about his previous work -- and your expectations for this new book. Email here: pearcey@thepearceyreport.

American Thinker raises the issue:

Time magazine has blown the lid on a secret ghost writer for one of the most well known political figures of our day and that person is . . . Sarah Palin.

That's right!

Not President Obama but Sarah Palin whose book titled Going Rogue: An American Life is set for release soon. 

American Thinker faults Time for its politically slanted coverage, and writer Eric Tully makes several good points.

But let's move beyond the tactics of political coverage.

Ethical fairness would seem to require that whether one is talking about Barack Obama or Sarah Palin, the question is basically the same: Shouldn't readers, as a matter of simple honesty and truth in advertising, be able to tell who wrote a book by its cover? Of course they should.

Depending upon how much a writer "contributes," the cover of a book such as Going Rogue can state, for example:

* By Sarah Palin, or
* By Sarah Palin, as told to Lynn Vincent
* By Sarah Palin and Lynn Vincent
* By Sarah Palin With Lynn Vincent

And then the front matter of the book can give more details about how the book was written.

People's work should be respected, and it is biblically proper for their names to be attached to it, to receive proper and truthful credit and to alert others in the church and the culture to the presence of up-and-coming authors.

Individuality and creativity may be despised by the "machine" or by eastern religions, but there is nothing we have from our true Creator that hates or seeks to squash the individual per se. Sin, not the self, is the real challenge. The challenge is ethical, not ontological.

Along these lines, you may want to read, "Human Identity, Biblical Worldview, Creativity, and the Meaning of Work," by Udo Middelmann. Middelmann is president of the Francis A. Schaeffer Foundation in Switzerland. (More on Schaeffer here.)

Politics is downstream from culture, as former Capitol Hill staffer Bill Wichterman once said (and whom Nancy quotes in Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity).

A corrupt culture, including a corrupt publishing culture, may need to be uplifted and reformed -- to match the God-given dignity of the person, including nonfamous authors -- if we are to expect better results out of our political culture, whether that political culture is your local government or an all-too-un-Constitutionally rogue system entrenched and well-defended in Washington, D.C.

Capitol Hill is full of fake people doing pretend work, asking Americans to slavishly accept unread legislation imposed by a regime that prefers a dead Constitution (called "living") to the real written Constitution whose words continue to stoke the flames of freedom. 

Millions of Americans respect Sarah Palin, and I am one of them. But it is crucial to maintain a humane, ethical, and factual critical distance. This is part of living free and being responsible in one's choices and affirmations.  

Palin would serve herself and her cause well by insisting on truthfulness and transparency in publishing, including questions of authorship. The same calling holds true for any self-respecting collaborating author, under God and liberated by the Creator's high regard for the individual and the "work of our hands" (Ps. 90:17). 

Let's hope Sarah Palin does not allow Going Rogue to be domesticated and co-opted by a secular ghostwriting ethos that says -- after you get behind the PR niceties -- it is OK to deceive one's readership for a good cause. In this regard, it seems legitimate to wonder why, given reports of a co-author, no co-author is currently noted on the cover of Going Rogue, as pictured on Palin's Facebook page and at Amazon.

Sometimes we hear about contracts and confidentiality agreements that keep a co-author or ghostwriter quiet. But two wrongs don't make a right.

Not even with a signed contract. 

What? Because two or more people and a publisher agree to keep quiet, nuance, or otherwise deceive the reading public, it's OK? You think a holy God blesses that?  

Perhaps not. The ends do not justify the means, nor do the means justify the ends.

More and more in our corrupt secular culture, ethics transcends legality.

From WorldNetDaily:

Politico's Ben Smith found it newsworthy that former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin chose a "partisan evangelical" Christian to co-author her upcoming best-seller, but somehow he and the mainstream media have decided that serious evidence suggesting an unrepentant Marxist terrorist had a primary role in President Obama's highly acclaimed literary memoir is of no interest.

Not a single mainstream reviewer or political editor has so much as mentioned the controversy over authorship of Dreams from My Father that was resurrected last week when a major new book reported Obama sought the literary assistance of William Ayers, founder of the radical Weather Underground group, points out WND columnist Jack Cashill.

Read the entire story from WND.

Regulatory Czar Cass Sunstein's new book, titled Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, and What Can Be Done, "delivers a warning to those who would spread false rumors about Barack Obama," writes Lee Cary at American Thinker.

Cary quotes the czar, page 88:

Some kind of chilling effect on damaging rumors is exceedingly important -- not only to protect people against negligence, cruelty, and unjustified damage to their reputations, but also to ensure the proper functioning of democracy itself.

"Of course," Cary observes and as all czars and protectors of democracy have always known, "creating a 'chilling effect' isn't censorship."

Nor, one suspects we are to believe, is such a "chilling effect" a denial of the Constitution, the 1st Amendment, or an unalienable right endowed upon all people by our true Creator (which is not the federal state).

In fact, to suggest censorship, to imply such a thing, or to charge such a thing -- against a patriotic protector of Democracy, no less -- why, that may well be an evil rumor spread on the internet. About which something ought to be done.

In the world of czars, Sunsteins, and Obamas, a visit from the Ministry of Love and Community Organized for the Protection of Democracy and Decency might be in order.

It's 3 a.m. What's that knock on the door?

Oh. They're just here to collect the fine and ensure the retractions are all in order. For a minute there, I was worried.

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AP reports:

Just two days after HarperCollins announced that the release of Palin's memoir, Going Rogue, had been moved up from the spring to Nov. 17, preorders for the former Alaska governor's book have made it No. 1 on Barnes & Noble.com on Wednesday and at No. 2 on Amazon.com, trailing only Dan Brown's The Lost Symbol.

We are pleased to note that in the mail today arrived the Korean edition of Nancy's book The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy, published by SFC Publishing Company. 

The Soul of Science was first published by Crossway Books in 1994. At Nancy's invitation, Dr. Charles Thaxton joined the project and "provided scientific expertise and review" (for additional info, please see Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity, Crossway, p. 398). 

Here's the SFC website. If you read Korean and see this edition of Nancy's book, we'd love to hear from you. 

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Jack Cashill writes at American Thinker:

In his new book, Barack and Michelle: Portrait of an American Marriage, best-selling celebrity journalist Christopher Andersen has blown a huge hole in the Obama genius myth without intending to do so.

Relying on inside sources, quite possibly Michelle Obama herself, Andersen describes how Dreams came to be published -- just as I had envisioned in my articles on the authorship of Dreams. With the deadline pressing, Michelle recommended that Barack seek advice from "his friend and Hyde Park neighbor Bill Ayers." . . .

Andersen continues, "In the end, Ayers's contribution to Barack's Dreams From My Father would be significant -- so much so that the book's language, oddly specific references, literary devices, and themes would bear a jarring similarity to Ayers' own writing." 

One wonders how any self-respecting, truthful person can allow his or her reputation for smarts, much less genius, to be constructed upon the work of others (whether the others are willing or otherwise). And yet there are such people, known people -- here in the Washington area and beyond -- including, to be fair, both Christians and non-Christians.

It's all part of the deception that occurs all too routinely in "authorship," "worldview thinking," column-"writing," radio "commentary," and all the rest.

What, you think these folks so often marked by a culture that doesn't have time to read legislation before they vote somehow have time, energy, and space to write books, columns, etc., etc?

And yet, if these "gods" are to maintain the pretense of having the necessary smarts to save the world from their Washington offices or Washington "ministries," they must create and maintain an image of genius, compassion, humility, "spirituality," and so on.

Hence the necessity of the unseen people doing unseen work, often well-compensated, down in the basement or on contract out in the hinterlands somewhere. Hence ghosted work is parlayed into speeches, retreaded into devotionals, sublimated into training programs, and upgraded in the latest greatest book "written" by Mister Big. And it all goes on the website (bio: "author of 34 books!"), as a humble service for the readers (i.e., potential donors), of course.

If you wonder why secularists laugh at and scorn Christians in Washington, it's partly because the veterans know the score, know the pretense, and are more than happy for ammunition handed to them by which to ridicule, distract, and attack. This pretense, these phonies, and these pretenders hurt many people.

Fundraising machines fueled by Big Names created by PR teams, researchers, and ghostwriters are no way to redeem the culture, folks.

Especially if out of the other side of his mouth Mr. Worldview Expert is telling sinners they need to shape up and accept He who is the Truth. A corrupt political culture is downstream from many things, including a corrupt, secularized, Madison Avenue "Christian" culture.

Fortunately, we can do better and have models available in the likes of a C.S. Lewis and a Francis Schaeffer who demonstrate the authenticity, efficacy, and spirituality of real work by real people.

Until the pretender model of "ministry" is cast aside -- and truth is practiced and not just preached -- it is difficult to see how the God of Truth can bless those who dissemble even while proclaiming on street corners that they move forward under his banner. Claiming the blessing of God -- and having the blessing of God -- are, of course, two different things.

For more on this, you might consult chapter 13 ("Substantial Healing in the Church") of True Sprituality by Francis Schaeffer and chapter 13 ("True Spirituality and Christian Worldview") of Total Truth by Nancy Pearcey.

Related
Francis Schaeffer: "The Central Problem of Our Age"
Francis Schaeffer: A Student's Appreciation of a Distinct Approach
What Can We Learn From Francis Schaeffer?

From WorldNetDaily:

What is it about a California-based Christian evangelist from New Zealand that makes him irresistible to even the most sophisticated secularist?

"You sir, are a fool who could not lie straight in bed. It is beneath me to even address you," wrote an online respondent to Ray Comfort's weblog Friday, "but I was passing by and saw this tripe, I could not constrain myself."

The lively interaction on his Atheist Central blog with scores of atheists and agnostics of all kinds -- from young students to decorated scientists -- has given Comfort unusual insight into the skeptical mind and led him to conclude atheism rests on a remarkably illogical and unscientific premise that became the title of his latest book, "Nothing Created Everything."

"I found over the last year, when I said an atheist is someone who believes nothing created everything, they go berserk and say, 'We don't believe that,'" said Comfort, co-host of "The Way of the Master" television show with actor Kirk Cameron and the head of Bellflower, Calif.-based Living Waters ministry.

Read the entire article.

Related
Christianity Is a Science-Starter, Not a Science-Stopper
Evolution vs. Creation: What Our Children Need to Know
Nazi Eugenics "May Not Be Bad"?

On "The View" to discuss her new book Culture of Corruption, Michelle Malkin more than holds her own. Would love to see her on again.

Watch the video.

Hat tip: Human Events

"Matt Stewart, a San Franciso-based novelist, began 'tweeting' his first book, The French Revolution, on the micro-blogging service on Tuesday," reports Agence France-Presse. 

I'm writing a review of Liberty and Tyranny and saw today that Levin's book is ranked No. 2.

Wondering what is No. 1, I looked. Glenn Beck's Common Sense showed up. Here is the Amazon Bestsellers page.

Herbert E. Meyer writes in American Thinker on The Swastika Against the Cross, by Bruce Walker:

In The Swastika Against the Cross, Bruce Walker skillfully pulls together a huge amount of evidence to illuminate the great lesson of the twentieth century: Crazy, vicious people sometimes get political power, and when they tell you what they're going to do with that power -- believe them.  Today, as North Korea fuels that missile on its launch pad and as the lunatics in Iran build nuclear bombs, it's a lesson we need to learn -- fast.

Yes, the Nazis hated Christians and Christianity, perhaps just as much as do liberal statists today throwing stones from entrenched positions in Hollywood, academia, media, and Washington, D.C.

Thus the secularist war against the Creator, the smooth lip service given to the Declaration, and the audacious manipulation of the Constitution. Thus abortofascism, homofascism, and Washington-centric fascism, etc., etc. -- all tentacles of tyranny wrapping themselves around "the mind of man" and around the lives of a people endowed by our true Creator with unalienable rights, a free people in a land of slavery who even now are stirring up to reclaim their birthright under God. 

We resist, even if tyranny is cool again. 

From Randy Thomas:

I quit reading the latest book by Ann Coulter.  By the time I got to the second instance of her calling a group of people a name that rhymes with "wussies" I closed the book and never went back to it again.

I didn't get angry.  I didn't even really think about it beyond the roll of my eyes and exasperated sigh.  The world is too coarse and has been for a long time. I closed the book, put it down and literally didn't think about it again ... for weeks.  It's like a subconscious switch said, "alright that's enough ... move on."

So I have.  When Ann gets to the point and makes a true argument I will listen or read her column.  I doubt I will buy another book.

All that said, I would still go to lunch with her if given the opportunity.

A friend gave me a book by Nancy Pearcey called Total Truth.  She is an authentic Christian intellectual.  Of course I don't think I even rate as a pseudo intellectual so ... take my estimation with a grain of salt.  All I know is I have loved her work with Charles Colson and I was mesmerized by her intellect at a presentation I attended where she was speaking about this very book.

A couple of observations. First, full disclosure. Ann Coulter came onboard at Human Events while I was managing editor. I enjoyed working with her. I agree she is sometimes over the top, but I'd much rather have her in play than others who lack conviction, courage, or both.

Secondly, Nancy and I appreciate that many people have found How Now? to be of help. Please let the record show, however, that the book is actually tri-authored (not simply coauthored) by Nancy Pearcey, novelist Harold Fickett (the long story chapters), and Charles W. Colson. 

By the way, both Nancy and I have book projects in the works. Hers is under consideration by a publisher. Mine is being written.

A hard-copy prepublication version of Nancy's new book arrived in the mail today. This edition is also being sent to expert readers who have requested such a copy. More about this later, but comments already coming in are quite positive, for which we are thankful.

Remembering that politics follows culture -- especially during these days of an oppressive secularism, governmental and otherwise -- I can honestly say that this next volume offers a mighty blow against the forces of manipulation, fragmentation, and inhumanity at large in so many areas of contemporary life, thought, and society.  

Nancy and I are thrilled with how this project has developed, and we appreciate the vision and support of Philadelphia Biblical University in producing this hard copy and in supporting Nancy's writing and thinking. Great job all!

It is absolutely vital that Americans understand that Statists -- goosestepping under the freedom-implying-but-in-fact-denying flag of "liberalism" -- have competely and totally rejected the "Mission Statement" -- the "vision statement" -- that defines the American experiment in freedom.

As history and clarity of thought show, the Statist program is a disaster that, if unchecked, leads to the deaths of millions of individual human beings, each and every one of them with names, fingerprints, families, hopes, dreams -- each and every one of them created in the image of God, endowed by our Creator with "certain unalienable rights."

This is not a theory to talk about over tea at a picnic where everyone makes nice -- but a fact shaking the foundations of the body politic. Tyrants indeed tremble. Watch them bluster and manipulate before the camera, in print, on the Hollywood screen, and from the editorial chair.

As already we are seeing here in the United States, slavery and inhumanity are the natural and mathematically certain by-products of this unholy exchange of the "blessings of liberty" for the pathetically labelled "investments" of a Federal Empire already "loving" us to death. The Frankenstate is alive and well and kicking and imposing its not-so-soft tyranny upon the children of God and their birthright of liberty.    

A commitment to Freedom and Dignity under our true Creator -- as set forth in the Declaration and protected by the Constitution -- requires resistance at every level and with every fiber of our human being.

That's why, in addition to talking with friends, family members, speaking out on radio, writing here at Pro-Existence, and so on, I've posted "Levin Challenges Statist Tyranny, Reaffirms 'Mission/Vision Statement' of American Liberty" as an Amazon customer review of Liberty and Tyranny (adapted from here).

A lot more than posting reviews is needed, of course. We know that, and we are moving forward. "Change" -- Reformation -- on the basis of that remarkable Mission Statement courageously set forth at great price by the Founders -- is the only humane and free way to go. And that is where we are going. So Help Us God.

Just moments ago, Rush Limbaugh sang high the praises of Mark Levin's new book, Liberty and Tyranny.

Limbaugh said during his daily radio broadcast that people often ask him for a reading list of books that will help explain what conservatism is. He said you don't need a reading list. You need a book: Mark Levin's Liberty and Tyranny.

The American people do need a thorough reaquaintance with the singular worldview and "mission statement" that has elevated this nation and her people since 1776 to heights of freedom and prosperity and concern for our fellow man unrivaled in human history.

Perfection, no. Of course not (that, my friends, is part of the story). But "substantial healing" -- to borrow a phrase from the great Francis Schaeffer -- yes. It's amazing what a people can do when they read the directions, especially if those directions have something to do with "unalienable rights" vested in humanity by virtue of our Creator.

Mark Levin's book may be the spark to set off that necessary reacquaintance. Well, let the reaquaintance begin. Let the true American spirit of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, under God -- our true, living, and verifiable Creator -- rise up again from the ashes.  

By the way, Levin is discussing his book this week on his own radio show, and he will appear tomorrow on Rush's afternoon program. So pull up a chair. Let's get ready to rumble for freedom.

Oh, that banging you hear? Tyrants pounding down the back door, or trying to. Probably ACORN volunteers paid with our money, hoping to share their faith. Tyrants and bullies are worried any time a people great or small recovers their true identity under God. See Clint Eastwood's Pale Rider and you'll know what I mean.

Checking Amazon last night at 1:49 a.m., I saw that Mark Levin's new book, Liberty and Tyranny: A Conservative Manifesto, is No. 1. This is terrific news.

If America is to recover from the current secularist and statist attacks on the Declaration, the Constitution, the individual -- and on that way of life expressed in a civilization that takes seriously what the Creator has to say about all of life, including the life of politics and government -- then books such as Liberty and Tyranny are indispensable reading.

Add A Christian Manifesto (by Francis Schaeffer) and Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity (by Nancy Pearcey) and we see a growing body of a literature of resistance to a dehumanizing and un-American status quo.

There is more help on the way. The argument can be refined. But now is the time to act to defend our very civilization.

Let the work of freedom and dignity under God regain renewed energy and let it not rest until Americans the brave again emerge from under the ugliness and rubble of statism and secularism.  

We reject the darkness and inhumanity preached, imposed, and spewed forth by the Washington-Hollywood-Academia Axis and its propaganda organs otherwise known as the evening news.

We throw off these chains, this slavery. We hear the Founders' call to resist. The statist hatred of, and rejection of, the defining "vision statement" of the United States of America cannot, and will not, stand. 

Congratulations, Mark Levin, on the success of your new book and on your part in helping Americans -- and the world -- see something of the fresh air of Freedom over the horizon, always beyond the reach and smog of a Federal Empire that hates America the free and Americans the brave. Let Freedom Ring!

Thomas Lifson writes at American Thinker: 

Mark Levin's new book, published today, is essential reading. It is a remarkable work on several different levels. It takes no degree of clairvoyance to predict that it will become an enormous best seller and very soon begin to influence the national political debate.

Liberty and Tyranny artfully presents a harmonious marriage of the timeless with the timely. One the one hand, the book is a thorough yet compact briefing on the major political issues of this era. On the other hand, the author brings to bear the principles of the American Founders and Framers of the Constitution (and the great thinkers who guided them), illustrating, dissecting, and explaining our current political arguments, while enlightening the reader with the genuine wisdom bequeathed to all of us -- the sacred trust of the Founders, embodied in the Declaration of Independence, The Constitution, and Federalist Papers, all of which are quoted and applied with insight and precision.

Great news!

As of today, Nancy's next best-selling book is in the hands of our great agents (Yates & Yates). Pre-publication readers are already taking a look.

It's not yet time to release details. But let me just say: If you liked Total Truth: Liberating Christianity From Its Cultural Captivity, well, get ready to celebrate again. We'll keep you informed with further updates.

We appreciate the way pastors and churches continue to find Total Truth a helpful book. Here's a recent recommendation.

Backstage at the political circus, socialism:

Only a month into Barack Obama's presidency, an acclaimed psychiatrist is warning that Americans are being slowly corrupted by socialism as Obama's policies intrude into their economic, social and political lives -- a tactic he believes will secure future votes for the Democratic Party.

"We have a desperate population, and it's feeling even more desperate than usual," Dr. Lyle Rossiter told WND. "People are really quite frightened. They're looking for magic, and they think they are going to find it in this man."

Rossiter is a forensic psychiatrist and author of The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness. In his book, he explains how the kind of liberalism being displayed by both Barack Obama and the Democratic Party can only be understood as a psychological disorder. He examines how modern liberal collectivism undermines the legal and moral foundations of ordered liberty. . . .

"It was bad enough under Bush, who expanded government beyond all bounds, federalized education and further socialized health care with a drug bill for seniors. It will get worse under Obama."

Official brochures for our summer 2009 worldview tour of Rome, Florence, and Paris -- titled From Plato to Picasso to You -- are now yours for the viewing.

Included is information on the following: A tour overview, your tour directors, the itinerary, plus details about accommodations, meals, transport (including a night train to Paris), registration, whom to contact for follow-up, and so on.

"We expect this to be a tremendous time of fellowship, on-site examination of significant venues in Western cultural history, and discussion of the relationship of humane and Biblical living across the whole of thought and life."

In the mail this week arrived Rules for Radicals, a "pragmatic primer for realistic radicals," written by Saul Alinsky and published in 1971.

What's striking, immediately, about this book is that Alinsky at the outset acknowledges his debt to the "very first radical," who turns out to be none other than: "Lucifer." This appears on the page preceding the table of contents.

The problem for Obama, who famously asserts that he is a "Christian," is that he appears to be in significant debt to the thinking and tactics of this man Saul Alinsky (as is noted here by an Obama opponent and here by a supporter).

The challenge for Obama -- if he wants to be understood as an authentic Christian -- is that the Lordship of Christ applies to the whole of life, including the tactics of political and social change one employs.

Methods matter far more than some people appear to realize (this challenge applies with equal force to the so-called religious right, let us say in fairness). "Thy will be done on earth as it is done in Heaven" is not a relativistic option up for vote on Capitol Hill. To be tossed aside if electoral results or fundraising pressures require.

How can an Obama, or any public figure claiming to be an authentic follower of Jesus of Nazareth, also embrace the spirit of one who is the intellectual, moral, and worldview antithesis of this same Jesus, this true Messiah verified in history?

So what's going on? Is Obama a hypocrite, a manipulator? Deeply confused? Or was Alinsky simply hyping his book for street cred and publishing attention?

 From Cal Thomas:

Though like many in his and our time, [Lincoln] wrestled with his inner demons. As [Harvard professor Henry Lewis Gates, Jr.,] writes, ". . . He seems to have wrestled with his own use of the 'n-word,' which he used publicly until at least 1862, and which most Lincoln scholars today find so surprising and embarrassing that they consistently avoid discussing it . . . "

The point?

"Far from diminishing Lincoln," writes Thomas, the new book Lincoln on Race and Slavery and PBS TV film Looking for Lincoln "deliver the real Lincoln as a man who struggled, along with his country and culture, over the inherent worth of black people. In short, he becomes fully human, not a mythical figure above the temptations and frailties of average mortals."

Recently spotted in Facebook.

Udo Middelmann and gang have updated the website of the Francis A. Schaeffer Foundation. 

Below is an announcement (on their website) for Udo's latest book, titled Christianity versus Fatalistic Religions in the War Against Poverty:

Most literature and many aid efforts concerned with poverty relief and development function on mathematical assumptions. Those who have more should share with those who have less, thus creating equality. Some would add a moral component saying that those having more are morally wrong and must have gained their surplus from outright theft or unfair trade. But on the side of the needy, religious and secular efforts see only a material problem. Both neglect the devastating power of bad ideas based in religion and social customs. Yet what anyone believes about the building blocks of life will have results; their ideas are like eye glasses that either distort or bring into focus an objective reality. Development work must focus on developing people's ideas. Cultural change must precede material changes.  

If this book is anything like the lectures Middelmann has been delivering on this topic, this volume is a must read for anyone concerned about people triumphing over poverty.

That includes the current President of the United States.

The bio page of the website features Edith Schaeffer, for those of you who have asked where she is.

When I first met Nancy, she was living with Debby and Udo in their chalet at Swiss L'Abri.

Anyone who cares about an authentic expression of Christian worldview living and thinking should take a very close look at Middelmann's work.

It continues to be a refreshing and Biblical alternative to various religious marketing machines and utilitarian Big Nameism we witness here Stateside.

The Flag of Victimhood is one of the most powerful -- and manipulative -- propaganda tools waved today to win friends, influence people, and destroy opposition.

Ann Coulter refuses to salute.

Is a Sarah Palin a fascist? That might fit the template in certain political circles today, but additional information may require second thoughts among nuanced observers.

For one thing, it is progressive champion H.G. Wells who had more than a little to do with letting the phrase liberal fascism out of its cage, writes Prof. Angus Menuge in a just-published review of Liberal Fascism by Jonah Goldberg.

Here are a few points from the Menuge review, which appears in The Pearcey Report. Among others, fans of Obama, Hillary, Gore, and big government conservatism may want to take note.

* For Obama fans: Something at work in mainstream culture “makes it easy for Barack Obama to champion a new New Deal (mentioned 9 times in his book The Audacity of Hope) as the solution to our economic woes, without anyone recalling the connections between Roosevelt’s and Hitler’s ‘new deal’ (122, 130-131) and the more sinister sides of Roosevelt’s authoritarian statism.”

* For Hillary fans suspicious of the traditional family: “While being pro-family often elicits the ‘fascist’ label today, the Nazis were opposed to the family –- and not merely because unregulated unions led to unfit offspring. The larger issue was that the ‘traditional family is the enemy of all political totalitarianisms because it is a bastion of loyalties separate from and prior to the state,’ the same reason statist progressives like Hillary Clinton ‘are constantly trying to crack its outer shell’ (377).”

* For disciples of Al Gore: "While today’s progressives are frequently pacifist, they continue the tradition of 'crises,' such as Al Gore’s global warming or European disdain for American foreign policies, which cannot be debated because the time for government action is now."

* For religious and political manipulators: “Both fascists and progressives find it expedient to be disingenuous in the propagation of their ideas. There is an outer core of ideas for popular consumption, surrounding an inner core circulated among the elect.

“For example, fascists and progressives encounter resistance when they express their true contempt for revealed religion. So the attempt is made to accommodate broadly religious themes to the agenda of the state (216-217), emasculating any specific teachings of the religion (e.g., on the sanctity of human life) that are inconvenient. This creates the external impression that progressive ideas are the outworking of faith, while in reality, religion is being co-opted by a divinized state (219).”

* For votaries of big government conservatism: “Many self-styled conservatives have also boarded the statist juggernaut, promoting an ever larger role for government as a surrogate parent.”

Read the review . . .

* Cross-posted at Examiner.com.

White House aide Timothy Goeglein has resigned over admitted plagiarism.

The links below contain facts and may suggest a few whys and wherefores:

• White House Aide Resigns Over Plagiarism
• Blogger Spots "Copycat" Goeglein
• Goeglein Column: "... Honesty of Reflective Thought"
• Goeglein: "I Am Entirely at Fault"
• WPost: 20 Out of 38 Columns Tainted
• NYT: "Familiar Figure" to "Evangelical Christians"

Meanwhile, a passage from this February 28 tribute to William F. Buckley seems apropos. Regarding Buckley:

In several respects one is reminded of Francis Schaeffer and C.S. Lewis -- deep, quick, sharp, but also humane in their brilliance, also caring for the human being next door, also real people doing real work. The contrast with the opportunistic 'mover and shaker' of Big Government, Big Celebrity, or, sadly, Big Christianity, encourages us to push forward to a higher calling,a nobler practice, a loving dream awalk in the world.

Here are two dreams -- doable, humane, inspired by God: 1) Real work by real people, 2) Market the truth truthfully.

Trot them out at the next big meeting of marketers, publishers, ghosters, blurbers, fundraisers, and other affiliates of Big Name, Inc.

Then duck.

Fascism is back," Gene Edward Veith tell us in Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview.

But the daily news makes this clear as well, with among other items, reports of a Holocaust-denying conference held under the auspices of an anti-Semitic government that says Israel should cease to exist.

Fascism "refuses to go away," says Veith. "Fifty years after World War II, it keeps intruding upon our attention in odd facts and disturbing news. . . .

"The lunatic fringe, of course, is always with us, but we are also being confronted by signs of fascism as a larger social movement. . . .

"The implosion of communism was a great victory for democracy, but the vacuum has been filled by an intense, violent ethnic nationalism and the revival of overt fascist movements that had been suppressed since World War II but are still very much alive. . . .

"Unsettling cultural trends are intensifying throughout the West: cynicism about democracy; a yearning for charismatic leadership; economic disaffection; moral skepticism; a cultural irrationalism that breaks out in acts of inexplicable violence."

Fascism Back in . . .
* Academic Circles: "Fascism is back in academia. A recent biography of the existentialist sage Martin Heidegger has uncovered his extensive involvement in the Nazi party. . .

"Far more disturbing . . . is the ideology that is coalescing . . . in today's intellectual establishment. Cultural determinism; the reduction of all social relationships to issues of sheer power; the idea the one's identity is centered in one's ethnicity or race; the rejection of the concept of the individual -- such ideas have become academic commonplaces.

"The project in contemporary thought of dismantling Western civilization and critiquing 'humanistic values' (such as liberty, reason, and objective moral principles) is not new. All of the ideas are direct echoes of the fascist theories of the 1930s."

* Pop Culture: "The popular culture is the most fertile breeding ground for fascism."

* Mass Politics: "Instead of rational analysis of issues and reasoned debate, our political discourse turns on image manipulation through or mass media. . . . This was Goebbels' dream."

* Morality: "Moral issues are today almost impossible to discuss in objective terms. . . . Morality is reduced to social utility or the assertion of the will. This was precisely the Nazi ethic."

What Is Fascism?
"Only five decades ago, the world was in the nightmare of war and Holocaust. We seem to have forgotten everything. Putting aside images of goose-stepping villains from the movies, does anyone remember exactly what the fascists believed?"

"We must know what fascism is so that we can recognize it when we see it. . . . Racism alone cannot explain the virulence of Nazi anti-Semitism. . . .

"The fascists aligned themselves not only against the Jews but against what the Jews contributed to Western civilization. A transcendent God, who reveals a transcendent moral law, was anathema to fascists. . . .

"Fascism was essentially a spiritual movement. It was a revolt against the Judeo-Christian tradition, that is to say, against the Bible.

"Some fascists believe that Christianity could be purged of its Jewish elements; other believed it should be completely replaced. Some advocated a syncretistic Christianity, revising the faith to make it accord with the new culture. . . .

"The fascist rebellion against transcendence restored the ancient pagan consciousness. With it came barbarism, a barbarism armed with modern technology and intellectual sophistication.

"The liquidation of the transcendent moral law and 'Jewish' conscience allowed the resurgence of the most primitive and destructive emotions."

Veith's book is as relevant today as when it was first published, in 1993.

-- Gene Edward Veith, Preface, Modern Fascism: Liquidating the Judeo-Christian Worldview