Environmentally conscious vegetarians could soon be facing a dilemma. It just so happens that their curious culinary customs may be destroying the Amazon rainforest.

According to a recent report, entire sections of the rainforest are vanishing to make room for the vegetarian’s best friend:

In the past year, almost half of the total deforestation was in the state of Mato Grosso on the forest’s southern fringe, where huge areas have been flattened to grow soybeans. Last year Brazil earned about $10 billion from exporting soy products, exceeding its income from coffee and sugar, the country’s traditional export crops. Mato Grosso’s governor, Blairo Maggi, is also its soybean king-his family’s farms are the world’s largest single producer of the crop.

Is a meat-free diet really worth the cost to the ecosystem?

Think about that the next time you bite into a thick, juicy steak. That succulent slab of animal flesh on your plate is a sign that you’re doing your part to save the rainforest.

Several articles I’ve stumbled across recently have compelled me to think about the connection between “morality” and foreign policy.

In First Things, editor Joseph Bottum tries to get to the heart of the alliance between evangelical social conservatives and foreign-policy obsessed neoconservatives. Bottum says that there is little that unites the disparate elements of the conservative coalition, except for one very curious fact:

Those who believe the murderousness of abortion to be the fundamental moral issue of our times and those who see the forceful defeat of global, anti-Western Islamicism as the most pressing political concern we face. Pro-life social conservatives and the foreign-policy neoconservatives, in other words—seem to be increasingly voting together, meeting together, and thinking together. If you want to advance the pro-life cause, you will quickly find yourself seated beside those who support an activist, interventionist, and moralist foreign policy for the United States. And, conversely, if you are serious about the war on terror, you will soon discover that you are mingling with those fighting against abortion.

Bottum says that the religious right has “grown up” since the 1970’s when “they hardly knew what the words ‘foreign policy’ meant.” Now evangelicals are at the forefront of such battles as ending international sex trafficking and other human rights abuses.

Then, of course, there is Israel. Evangelical Christians are the most vocal and fervent defenders of the Israeli state, a phenomenon that has been building for some time. Bottum says, “Perhaps it began with believers’ interest in apocalyptic biblical prophecy about the Holy Land and the Second Coming of Jesus Christ. But to imagine it stops there is to ignore the Religious Right’s record in recent years on human rights and support for democratic reforms. The success of Israel—the Middle East’s only full democracy before the intervention of the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq—is seen by social conservatives as a model that deserves copying.”

Bottum further proceeds to connect opposition to abortion and the imperial project: “Even if they are utterly separate philosophically, this much is true: They both require reversing the failure of nerve that has lingered in America since at least the 1970s, and success in one may well feed success in the other…A nation that cannot summon the political will to ban even one particularly gruesome form of abortion is unlikely to persevere in the grueling work of building international democracy simply because it seems the moral thing to do. And a nation that cannot bring itself to believe its founding ideals are true for others will probably prove unable to hold those ideals for itself.”

So there you have it. If you think abortion is murder, you also must be willing to go to the mat for Israel and work to universally spread America’s “founding ideals” to the four corners of the world.

Fellow Christian, are you willing to engage in the “grueling work of building international democracy” in the name of Christian morality and the Prince of Peace? If not, why not? It’s all right there in Romans 13:1 (”Everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God for the purpose of spreading international democracy”). Forget about taking Bibles to Beijing, Darfur, and Damasus—let alone Jerusalem–because what they really need are copies of the Declaration of Independence, the Gettysburg Address, and the collected works of Martin Luther King.

More to come on Wolfowitz and Kennan. Stay tuned.

Just a 15 minute podcast on a controversial topic.

Hello everyone,

Yes its been some time but I thought I would bring something special. Its a podcast. An MP3 that you can download and listen to when you would like.

Lets take back the media, all of it.

What is it about certain movies that, through their use of symbolism and imagery, compel us to start digging below the surface to see what cryptic messages and hidden meanings can be unearthed? I’m not exactly sure, but Star Wars is a prime example of this phenomenon.

If you have spent any amount of time on the Internet at all in recent weeks, you have no doubt run across countless articles on the political implications of the latest installment in the most popular science fiction saga of all time. So, rather than focus on the movie, I would like to address what many “conservatives” believe is an attack by the creator of Star Wars on George W. Bush.

Spend some time on Republican websites like FreeRepublic.com or PABAAH.com (acronym for Patriotic Americans Boycotting Anti-American Hollywood) and you will discover that George Lucas is to the war in Iraq what Jane Fonda was to the war in Vietnam. A fair comparison? Sure, if you happen to think that anything even remotely resembling criticism of Bush is treasonous, anti-American rhetoric.

In all fairness to the neocon witch-hunters who have either blasted or boycotted Revenge of the Sith, Lucas hasn’t exactly been shy about his political leanings. He has spoken out on what he sees as the sacrifice of freedom in the name of national security. “It is just one of those re-occurring things,” he said, according to a recent article in the Winnipeg Sun. “I hope this doesn’t come true in our country. Maybe the film will awaken people to the situation of how dangerous it is … The parallels between what we did in Vietnam and what we are doing now in Iraq are unbelievable.”

There is no question that Lucas had politics on the brain in the 1970s when he began writing about that epic struggle in a galaxy far, far away. Our nation was engaged in a war of its own–complete with forced conscription–and was in the midst of a cultural revolution, and young people were taking a much greater interest in social issues. Naturally, if Star Wars was born during such a turbulent time, one would expect similar themes to appear in subsequent movies.

Lucas remarked that “one of the main features of the back story was to tell how the Republic became the Empire. At the time I did that, it was during the Vietnam War and the Nixon era. The issue was: How does a democracy turn itself over to a dictator? Not how does a dictator take over, but how does a democracy and Senate give it away?” These are simply the kinds of questions people have asked themselves throughout history, nothing that would indicate that Revenge of the Sith was written specifically as a slam against George W. Bush and his doctrine of waging pre-emptive war.

The first episode of the prequel trilogy, The Phantom Menace, was released in 1999 while Bill Clinton was still in office, and by then the entire plotline for the two remaining movies had already been established. Everyone knew that over the next few years we would witness the fall of the Republic, the rise of the Empire and the final transformation of Anakin Skywalker from noble Jedi Knight to evil Sith Lord. Just because the final film shows an irate Anakin saying, “If you’re not with me, you’re my enemy,” we’re supposed to think that this film is a scathing political critique of the president? I think people are giving George Lucas more credit than he deserves.

The “patriotic” backlash against the latest Star Wars flick is much ado about nothing. Yes, Hollywood has a distinctly leftist slant, but it’s only a movie, folks.

There is, however, one interesting point that’s worth noting. While some people may try to draw parallels between the Sith and the Bush administration, it is so-called “conservatives” who see this rather nonspecific tale of a rising police state as a direct attack against President Bush and his policies. What does that tell you?

In an article published today at a well known neo-conservative site Jeff Jacoby lashed out at the Muslim frenzy seen this past week at the Newsweek report that a copy of the Koran shared the same destination as Charmin Toilet paper in the Guantanamo prison where Al Quaeda detainees are imprisoned. Mr. Jacoby’s overall point was that Muslims are quite obviously uncivilized Cretans if the report of a flushed Koran can set them off on a riotous killing spree.

Of course this isn’t the first time that the Son’s of Allah have found the capacity to be outraged. When Salmon Rushdie published the ‘Satanic Verses’ he had to go into hiding for fear of Muslim reprisal against what they considered to be a blasphemous book. Most recently Theo Van Gogh in the Netherlands was killed by Islamic rage when he had allegedly gone beyond the pale of Muslim sensibilities by filming a scene where nearly naked women had verses from the Koran printed upon their exposed bodies. Nobody doubts for a second that Mr. Jacoby is correct in noting the Muslim penchant for religious outrage.

Another point that Mr. Jacoby makes is that clearly other religions are superior to Islam because they don’t implode when their faith system is mocked or their God blasphemed. I certainly agree with Mr. Jacoby that rape, pillage, and murder over religious insult is certainly uncouth and extreme and just about what you might expect from a faith system that is worthy only of demons. Still, while gladly conceding that, I find myself asking; ‘what exactly would it take for Christians to become outraged to the point of only polite ‘civil disobedience.’ Never mind riot and violence in the streets, would Christians politely refuse to pay their income taxes if they knew that their monies would be going to support abortion (planned parenthood)? Forget Tire Necklaces, what I want to know is whether or not Christians would politely refuse to pay their property taxes if they knew that those monies were being used to systematically shape minds that are hostile to the Christian faith? Perish the thought of burning down property, what I want to know is whether or not Christians would refuse to vote for political parties who stand by while a woman is starved to death or who are responsible for impeaching a Judge for supporting a public display of the Ten Commandments?

So, while Islamic sensitivities are ready to set the world on fire at the drop of a Burqa what I am wondering is what it will take for Christian sensitivities to say ‘pardon me’ when Christ is blasphemed and their faith mocked? I agree with Mr. Jacoby that Muslim emotions are on steroids when it comes to their religious passions but what I would like to also draw attention to is that Christian emotions seem to be on Xanac when it comes to their religious passions. Whereas the Muslim will slit your throat for perceived blasphemy of Allah, the Christian’s view of the God the Bible is apparently so low that Blasphemy doesn’t even twig their faith radar. In faulting the Islamic monster excess let us not forget to chide the Christian childish immaturity.

Jacoby ends his article explaining that Islam is disrespected internationally because of its proneness to rage. I would like to end my piece by observing that there is more than one way for a belief system to merit disrespect.

Pat Buchanan says that “the conservative movement has passed into history”. This isn’t really anything new, the movement has been falling apart for some time now. The Republican Party was associated with conservativism at one point, but between the rise of neoconservatives and the general backbonelessness, the party can no longer be considered conservative. (Not that there aren’t conservatives inside the party, I’m referring to the party as a whole.)

One of the more worrying aspects, at least from my point of view, is the “cult of personality” mindset that has gripped so many. It seems that Reagan’s eleventh commandment is taken quite seriously – “Thou shalt not speak ill of any fellow Republican”. If one criticizes a Republican policy, one is branded as a far-right nutcase.

All this being said, the death of the conservative movement doesn’t bother me that much. There’s a far larger movement afoot that is bound to win, that of Christ and His kingdom. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see the country turn conservative. (I’d also love to see some conservatives start acting conservative.) But this too shall pass, and I don’t expect to see the nation start embracing Christian ideals until the nation is Christian.