Posted on 04/07/2005 6:58:12 AM PDT by StoneGiant
THE PURPOSE-DRIVEN LEFT
by Ann Coulter
April 6, 2005
It's been a tough year for the secularist crowd. There was Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ," the moral values election, the Christian hostage subduing her kidnapper by reading from "The Purpose Driven Life," and the Christian effort to save Terri Schiavo. Not only that, but earlier this year the Rev. James Dobson insulted the Democrats' mascot, SpongeBob SquarePants, with impunity.
And now, for all the hullabaloo in the media, you'd think the Pope had died.
The liberal take on Catholicism is that it's a controversial religion because of its positions on abortion, sodomy and various other crucial planks of the Democratic platform (curiously, positions that are shared by all three of the world's major religions).
In defense of the Catholic Church's most "controversial" position (meaning "contrary to the clearly stated opinion of CNN"), I wanted to return to a story from a few weeks ago that passed from the headlines far too quickly. The "controversial" Catholic position is the ban on girl priests.
I'll leave it to the Catholics to explain the theological details, but we have a beautiful pair of bookmarks to the exact same incident illustrating women's special skills and deficits. The escape and capture of Brian Nichols shows women playing roles they should not (escorting dangerous criminals) and women playing roles they do best (making men better people).
Nichols' murderous rampage began when he took the gun from a 5-foot-tall grandmother who was his sole guard at the Fulton County Courthouse. It ended when an otherwise unremarkable 26-year-old woman appealed to the Christian conscience of this same violent killer holding her hostage.
At 2 a.m. one Saturday night, Ashley Smith went out for cigarettes while unpacking her new apartment, yet another victory for tobacco pleasure. Returning from the store, Smith was grabbed by a man at her front door, who put a gun in her side and told her not to scream. He asked if she knew who he was. When he removed his baseball cap, she saw it was Nichols, the dangerous fugitive all over TV who had escaped custody during his rape trial and had killed four people in the previous 48 hours. (Although he also looked a lot like of one the guys on "American Idol.")
In Smith's apartment, Nichols bound Smith's feet and hands and put her in the bathtub. Later, at Smith's request, Nichols allowed her to hop from the bathroom into the bedroom, where she began talking to him.
In short order, Smith was reading aloud to Nichols from the Christian book "The Purpose Driven Life" — in direct violation of his constitutional right to never hear any reference to God, in public or private, for any purpose, ever, ever, ever! For more on this right, go to the "People for the American Way" Web site.
After reading the first paragraph of Chapter 33 aloud, about serving God by serving others, Nichols — the man pundits were calling an "animal" — asked her to read it again.
Nichols listened to the passage again and responded by telling Smith he was already dead, saying, "Look at my eyes." But Smith looked and told him God had a purpose for him, perhaps to minister to other lost souls in prison. Smith read to Nichols some more, both from the "Purpose" book and from another popular book that's been dropped from all news accounts of this incident: the New Testament. (In the Hollywood version, Smith will be reading from the Quran.)
Smith knew all about Nichols' violent depredations from TV. Yet she saw him not as a monster, but as one of God's creatures. Most Christians — most people — have trouble seeing the humanity of people who take our parking spots. Smith could see God's hand in a multiple murderer holding her hostage. By showing him genuine Christian love, Smith turned Nichols from a beast to a brother in Christ. This phenomenon, utterly unknown to liberals, is what's known as a "miracle." Top that, Paul Krugman!
Nichols told Smith she was "an angel sent from God," calling her "his sister" and himself her "brother in Christ." Nichols said he had come to Smith's home for a reason, in Smith's words, that "he was lost and God led him right to me to tell him that he had hurt a lot of people."
This trampling of our Constitution — I mean this conversation — lasted long into the night. They watched Nichols' shooting people on TV. Nichols said he couldn't believe he was that man. In the morning, Smith made Nichols eggs and pancakes for breakfast. Then she walked out of the apartment to pick up her daughter and to call 911. The last thing Nichols said as Smith was leaving was to say hello to her daughter for him. When the police arrived, Nichols surrendered without incident, an utterly transformed human being.
Heaven help the average liberal if this ever happens to him! What would an urban secularist do? Come sit down and let me read to you from Michael Moore's "Stupid White Men." Or maybe he could put a SpongeBob video in the VCR. WE ARE FAM-I-LEEEEE! At least before he killed again, the dangerous fugitive would have warm feelings toward homosexuals.
It's also another example of how our universities are failing students. Today's college coeds would be dead: They know nothing about Jesus Christ and can't cook a good meal.
Smith saved the soul of a man on a killing spree by talking to him about Christianity. But liberals think this won't work with the Muslims? We ought to fly this Ashley Smith to Saudi Arabia. We could just make her a box lunch every day and send her on her way.
Liberals would approve of a nice Christian girl like Smith going to the Middle East only if she went as a Marine or — better! — if she were getting herself run over by a tank while defending a PLO tunnel into the Gaza Strip used by suicide bombers. Sadly for liberals, feminist lunacy doesn't convert and transform, it browbeats and harangues. The only miracle it has ever performed is getting people to listen to Nancy Pelosi.
Thanks for the link- I'll check it out.
Thanks. Brilliant blonde lady. Definitely not a blonde joke.
Spongebob and Fairly Oddparents...Two of the most clever cartoons around, even for grownups! (Especially for grownups?) Actually, most of the humor on Fairly Oddparents wouldn't even be understood by the teeny-boppers.
Absolutely LOL! Actually, Squidward reminds me of a bitter ol' Gore Democrat.
She shoots...SHE SCORES!
Everyone, male and female, should also read George Gilder's "Men and Marriage."
Getting me to listen to Plastic-Face. That, truly, would take a miracle!
This is truly a miracle because so often it doesn't work out this way in life. Secularists would put it down to chance, like someone winning the lottery. There would be a chance of something like this happening, but for a lot of people this is not the norm, this does not happen for them if they are conforted with a murderer -- their number is up.
I see that this story gives people tremedous hope, perhaps in the same way that people who win lotteries give people hope -- the hope that there is a happy ending. We need stories that give hope. Christianity is great in that it provides people with hope for something better, something to shot for with God's love in mind -- a happy ending!
But, oh so true!
Don't you agree?
Not really.
I've never been some brutish lout just waiting to be "reformed" by a woman. How about you?
That strikes me as a bit Victorian.
This scene is right out of what Hollywood would call a "sucker movie".
I don't think we're talking about reforming or "changing who you are" so much as exerting a calming influence. Getting a man to think twice, slow down just a bit, etc.
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