Echoes in Eternity

Dr. Dalrymple gave a good speech in Turkey recently. He speaks to the problem of government interference in the everyday choices and freedoms of individuals. For example, the British are in the process of banning smoking in all vehicles (an idea that will unfortunately likely find its way across the pond; though perhaps it will not take root because we have this thing called the Constitution). This is being done under the pretense that some unknown number of children will have their health adversely affected by the secondhand smoke from their parents' cigarettes. Dalrymple rightly points out that according to the tyrannical logic involved, soon smoking in homes will be illegal. He closes with a great plea (albeit with tongue firmly planted in cheek): if public health is really the concern, one should consider the millions of dollars (much of it public money in those countries, like Britain, where taxes pay most health care costs) spent caring for injuries resulting from athletic activities. By the numbers, sports are much more dangerous and injurious than secondhand smoke. So why not criminalize it?

A fun and thought-provoking piece by Dalrymple on the topic of the World Cup.

Only a few more days and the 2010 World Cup begins! If you're one of those people blessed by God with a childhood which endowed you with an appreciation and understanding of soccer, then you understand how big this is. If you aren't a soccer fan, let me give you a little perspective.

* This star represents how many people watched the last Super Bowl.
******************** These 20 stars represent how many people watched the 2006 World Cup final.

For those bandwagon fans out there, this is for you.

32 teams, 1 champ. Are you ready? First match begins 9 AM this Friday...

As most people by now know, Tim Tebow, the Heisman trophy-winning quarterback from Florida, is part of a pro-life ad during the Super Bowl. Not surprisingly, the ad, sponsored by Focus on the Family, has taken some flak from the pro-abortion nutjobs on the Left. So it was refreshing to read in this morning's Washington Post a pro-choice sports columnist defend the ad.

Tebow: I'll spit this out quick, before the armies of feminism try to gag me and strap electrodes to my forehead: Tim Tebow is one of the better things to happen to young women in some time. I realize this stance won't endear me to the "Dwindling Organizations of Ladies in Lockstep," otherwise known as DOLL, but I'll try to pick up the shards of my shattered feminist credentials and go on.
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Tebow's 30-second ad hasn't even run yet, but it already has provoked "The National Organization for Women Who Only Think Like Us" to reveal something important about themselves: They aren't actually "pro-choice" so much as they are pro-abortion. Pam Tebow has a genuine pro-choice story to tell. She got pregnant in 1987, post-Roe v. Wade, and while on a Christian mission in the Philippines, she contracted a tropical ailment. Doctors advised her the pregnancy could be dangerous, but she exercised her freedom of choice and now, 20-some years later, the outcome of that choice is her beauteous Heisman Trophy winner son, a chaste, proselytizing evangelical.

Pam Tebow and her son feel good enough about that choice to want to tell people about it. Only, NOW says they shouldn't be allowed to. Apparently NOW feels this commercial is an inappropriate message for America to see for 30 seconds, but women in bikini selling beer is the right one. I would like to meet the genius at NOW who made that decision. On second thought, no, I wouldn't.
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Here's what we do need a lot more of: Tebows. Collegians who are selfless enough to choose not to spend summers poolside, but travel to impoverished countries to dispense medical care to children, as Tebow has every summer of his career. Athletes who believe in something other than themselves, and are willing to put their backbone where their mouth is. Celebrities who are self-possessed and self-controlled enough to use their wattage to advertise commitment over decadence.

You know what we really need more of? Famous guys who aren't embarrassed to practice sexual restraint, and to say it out loud. If we had more of those, women might have fewer abortions. See, the best way to deal with unwanted pregnancy is to not get the sperm in the egg and the egg implanted to begin with, and that is an issue for men, too -- and they should step up to that.
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Tebow's ad, by the way, never mentions abortion; like the player himself, it's apparently soft-spoken. It simply has the theme "Celebrate Family, Celebrate Life." This is what NOW has labeled "extraordinarily offensive and demeaning." But if there is any demeaning here, it's coming from NOW, via the suggestion that these aren't real questions, and that we as a Super Bowl audience are too stupid or too disinterested to handle them on game day.

For any soccer fans out there... some of these are amazing!