Religion and Geopolitics Review: Saturday, March 14

by David Pence and A. Joseph Lynch

SELMA REMEMBERED

Congressman John Lewis (a veteran of "Bloody Sunday," March 7, 1965) introduced President Obama in a remembrance of that pivotal event which achieved the Voting Rights Act in August 1965. Mr. Lewis was a true hero of that day. President and Mrs. Bush, as well as a few surviving veterans of the march, many civil rights activists and congressmen (almost all Democrats) attended. We will have an extended essay later this week questioning (as did these black pastors) the appropriation of this sacred memory by President Obama to lend emotional sustenance for the immorality of the sexual Left. That should not cause any of us, however, to forget the deep religious and political significance of this event in our nation's history.

MRS. CLINTON: THE QUEEN BEE WEAKENS

The use of a private email hooked to a private server guarded in her own home is being discovered at this late date because the House committee investigating the attack on the US Embassy in Benghazi, Libya, is trying to reconstruct the events and subsequent explanations of the evening. This is Mrs. Clinton's explanation. She classifies all discussions she has with her husband as private, though it seems the whole revolutionary idea of that power couple is a man and a woman who share deeply intertwined business interests and an election apparatus -- without pretensions of domestic intimacy. What is private and what is public: who's to know these days? We have always described Mrs. Clinton's rule of the Democratic Party to be akin to the sociobiology of a queen bee in the hive. Her rule was not won like the fight among males for control of the herd. Her dominance is presently a biological fact, and it is so complete as to eliminate serious competitors. But when the pheromones of the queen bee weaken, the collapse is complete. That is our prediction for her candidacy as commander-in-chief of the United States in this time of war.

IRAN: MAKE PEACE OR MAKE WAR?

Forty-seven senators sent a letter, not to our president, but to a foreign government reminding them of certain features of our constitutional government. They are absolutely correct that binding treaties and war-making is a duty of the Congress. A real debate must begin; and the first big speech was made, also, by a member of a foreign government. Another view with a reminder we are also at war with ISIS is Pat Buchanan's take on Iran and the Mideast.

LOOKING EAST: RUSSIA AND CHINA

Shall we make peace with Russia or are they our enemy? Peter Hitchens explains that the withdrawal of Russia from eastern Europe and NATO's expansion eastward points out who the real empire-builders are. While the Obama administration, including the new Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, rejects the idea of Russia having a sphere of influence, NATO seeks Ukrainian and Georgian membership and more military forces immediately on Russia's borders. Meanwhile, America pivots further east to China -- some offering a negative assessment of its leader, President Xi Jinping, while others look at the nation more positively.

THE POPE FRANCIS EFFECT

Reform of the Vatican begins under a strong hand in Rome: Pope Francis supports the authority of Cardinal Pell in making the Vatican more financially transparent. Francis has much to do in a brief time as he expects his pontificate to last a short 4-5 years. If this math adds up, what could be the final year of his pontificate may well begin this December 8th, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, in what Francis has declared the first day of the Jubilee Year of Mercy. The best biographer of the Argentinian pontiff, Austen Ivereigh, reports on a major theme of his book and the pope's episcopacy: Latin America as a source Church.