Prevailing Winds "For the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is freedom . . ." 2 Cor. 3:17, TNIV

Please read the previous post before you read this one, or else not much will make sense . . .

Cathy is concerned primarily with my July 29 post on the Tea Party; if you haven’t read it, you might want to scroll down, have a look, and then refer to her objections. I’ll try to respond to them in order, and probably in two or three separate posts. I’m told I’m a bit wordy at times.

First, an answer to a “by the way, how DO you feel about . . .?” question that has nothing, really, to do with the Tea Party but is important for me to answer. Cathy wants to know what I think about abortion.

As I’ve written before, I unequivocally believe that surgical abortion is the taking of a human life, while spontaneous abortion — miscarriage — is as well the loss of a human life. The life begun at conception is precious to God; if left undisturbed, the fetus will emerge from the womb as a human being made in the Divine image. However, surgical abortion, while ending a human life, is NOT something I consider, or countenance describing as, “murder.” Even the Scriptures differentiate between the degree of severity in the ending of human life, and motive and circumstances in the life of a woman seeking or needing an abortion are as significant in describing her choice and its result as they are in the Old Testament.

Further, no woman I know who’s had an abortion came to her decision lightly, with some sort of evil, cavalier plan to “kill” anything. I stand with our Christian feminist foremothers in diagnosing patriarchy as the primary cause of women’s choice to abort, and I absolutely will not stand with those who condemn them. As I’ve said before, I have not had an abortion, although I miscarried in 1990, but the women I know who have were caught in a dilemma, a crisis, wherein ending their pregnancy seemed to make sense. I do not condemn them. The personhood of the fetus is something that, while scientifically obvious, — insofar as the DNA is that of a human and not a catfish or a wolverine — is not at all obvious to those thinking not “scientifically” but personally, and generally under considerable stress. Were it not for my faith, I, too, would have a hard time considering this DNA-bearing, three-inch long, relatively featureless entity “a baby,” and I believe that’s crucial for understanding a woman’s true motivation in seeking abortion.

I am opposed to legislative bans on abortion because I believe that it invites the possibility of State-investigated miscarriages, for example, and assures State-mandated interference into what, in later months, has to be a medical decision made between a woman and her doctor. The ugliness of so-called “partial-birth” abortion argues for its blessedly rare necessity, unless one believes that there’s a small contingent of doctors champing at the bit to stab a fetus’ brain with scissors and suck out the contents while leaving it hanging out of the vaginal canal. Sorry to be graphic, but rationality dictates that the horror of the procedure ensures that, barring a wickedly psychotic cabal of baby-stabbers in the American Medical Association, it is a procedure that must be performed some times to save the life of the mother.

If we believe in the eternality of the soul, surely we believe that aborted fetuses live with Christ — although Christian theologians in past centuries haven’t attributed soul-presence to a fetus until “quickening.” The life of the mother, then, must be the priority, as we don’t know the state of her soul, and we assume she lives in this world with others of her children, her spouse, and family and friends who love and need her.

Those men and women who would legislate against abortion even in cases of rape and incest use legal arguments like “why punish (kill) the victim?” in defending the obligation of a woman who’s conceived by rape. I frankly do not want to hear from men — those who will never have to face a crisis or medically-dangerous pregnancy — in the abortion debate, but I object, as a rape victim myself, to any man’s legislative power to force a violated woman to carry a baby to term. Life is messy; it’s lived sometimes in the margins, not in the neat and tidy annals of legislative logic. I praise God my rape in 1980 didn’t result in pregnancy, but I also praise God that if it had, the Savior I would soon come to trust would gently hold me as the resulting pregnancy, with all of the horror, degradation, and filth it would remind me of, was swept from my body had I been unable to bear it. God bless those raped women who DO carry to term, but may God prevent any man from insisting that a woman suffering a horror he will never experience mandate that she must.

So, Cathy, that’s my take on the abortion debate. I’m rolling up my sleeves now to tackle the criticisms you make of my analysis of the Tea Party …

From reader Cathy, referenced in my previous post, from August 6, in its entirety. Yes, I’ve been taken to the woodshed, and I appreciate her guts in doing so with the integrity of using a real name:

I stumbled on your blog this morning, and after reading some of your posts, decided to write. I am not a member of the Tea Party, and have never attended anything political, Tea Party, or otherwise. I disagree, though, with much of this post.

In point #1, if I was a Martian reading your description of those who “stupidly voted” Tea Party candidates into office, I might deduce that they’re hillbillies, toothless hicks. Why…because they don’t subscribe to your idea of smart? Are you the arbiter of all things “stupid?” What I know of the Tea Party is that they object to big gov’t. What is wrong with that? The idea that the Tea Party is a Christian organization is nonsense. Political parties are not a vehicle for the Gospel of Christ. They don’t teach the Gospel, or promote the salvation of souls.

Further, if you insist that the Tea Party should be called out for their “ignorance and duplicity,” then, please, explain how the Democratic or the Republican parties shouldn’t be called out for the same? You have arbitrarily assigned your own set of values and applied them. You are certainly free to have opinions, but you go beyond those opinions and make them judgments, applying your own interpretation of Scripture. There is nothing biblical about political parties, and believers aren’t called to invest time in them. I would certainly draw the line @ issues like abortion which is contrary to Scriptural teaching. I’ve not read your blog enough to know your take on abortion. What is it, BTW? You also write …”Washington — government — has great power to aid the people and to strengthen the society around them…” HOW does Washington have that power and those resources? The gov’t doesn’t generate any income. Their only way or producing “income” is through our tax dollars. Why do you advocate a dependency on gov’t to “aid the people and to strengthen the society around them?” What is the role of gov’t?

As to point #5, why aren’t you calling out President Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Charlie Rangel for “co-opting Jesus Christ?” How ’bout when the president talks about having “a righteous wind at our backs?” Whose righteousness? How ’bout when he refers to “the least of these,” a clear reference to Scripture, out of context. The biblical context is that Jesus uses that phrase to refer to What about President Obama’s speech about Gabrielle Giffords, where he inserts Psalm 46. What does the context of Psalm 46 have to do with the shooting in AZ? What about calling out Pelosi for invoking Scripture to further her agenda? She actually invoked “The Word,” as answer to why she crafts policies–“…in keeping with the values of Jesus Christ, The Word made Flesh.” So, voting to ban the partial-birth abortion ban is a Scriptural mandate? Would Jesus have voted for the debt ceiling, as Charlie Rangel implied? I submit that Jesus came to die a cruel death on a cross so that men and women might know Him. I don’t know for certain, but I don’t think that Jesus would have been involved in a vote to either raise, lower or leave the debt ceiling.

Point #7—I believe that your “strongholds thing” use is to misuse II Corinthians 10:4 it in light of the context.

Finally, I voted for Bush twice. He was a disaster. I like him personally (as much as you can know someone personally with/out knowing him personally!)…I like his appreciation for the troops, and his involvement with/the Wounded Warriors, but think that he handled a lot of foreign policy horribly, the monetary system horribly, etc. Yet, you, on the other hand, see President Obama as a success, so much so that you’re “unabashedly praying for an Obama victory in 2012.” I would love to hear your reasoning for your fervor. HOW has he been successful? And, please, no platitudes, or straw men.

I’ve included this in the comments area of my post a few days ago regarding the Tea Party sign, but I’d like to make note of this reader’s comment. Cathy — I don’t know her — said she’d written me “an epistle” on August 6 and was waiting for my response. I certainly owe her an apology, and I sincerely offer it and hope she’ll forgive me for my not getting back to her.

The problem is that I never check my Blogger email address — the keelyemerinemix2008@hotmail.com one that she used, and so I haven’t seen it. That will be remedied later today, with a response forthcoming. When I began my blog three years ago, I had to sign up for another account, the one linked on my profile page. But I’m not accustomed to using it; I always use the email address I’ve had since we first got email, kjajmix1@msn.com (that’s a “one,” not an “l,” after “mix”), which I would invite you all to use. Obviously I wasn’t on the ball here, and I presume my readers know that I don’t shy away from controversy or correction.

So, Cathy — we have houseguests, but I’ll have an answer for you by Sunday evening, OK? Blessings to you and thanks for writing. I’ll make it a habit to check that email at least weekly.

So it occurs to me that some of you, in reading yesterday’s post about brides promising to obey their grooms, might think I don’t get the whole “rightful authority thing.”

The problem, though, is that I think I really do, based on Scripture. I absolutely believe that I have to obey those in rightful authority over me, lest I risk God’s disapproval. If a cop tells me to pull over, I’ll pull over. If my professor asks me to hand in a 10-page paper, I’ll hand in a 10-page paper (although you all know that it’d probably be 12 or 14 pages). And if the National Guard orders me to evacuate my house, I’ll start packing up.

They’re all in rightful authority over me based on their roles in my life, roles that are not theirs by ontology — their essential being — but by experience, qualifications, and the endorsement to command my obedience by their superiors, who also are not in their positions by reasons of ontology. Further, my obedience to them is situational — when I encounter their orders — and only when they’re operating in their official, authoritative roles. So the cop might “order” me to pass the half-and-half when she’s off-duty at Starbucks, and my assent is based not on her professional authority over me, but because I believe in submitting to others whenever possible and whenever positive.

Nevertheless, there is no circumstance at all, Biblically, that suggests that you or I need to obey another person simply because of their sex. Which, of course, is “his sex” from the pastors and teachers who ought to know better. Sex, along with economic or social class and race, are distinctions that are acknowledged in the Church — celebrated, even, in the Church — but are never reasons for hierarchical distinctions among Christ’s people. Galatians 3:28 here is not a prooftext but an announcement echoed throughout the New Testament and tantalizingly revealed in the Old that the victory of Christ over sin is the overturning of the curse and the ushering in of the new Kingdom.

In that Kingdom, people lovingly submit to one another. They aren’t taught by masculinist pastors that ontological differences equal permanent subordination, and my prayer is that as the Kingdom grows throughout the world, Christ’s Body would listen to the Spirit and reject such a fouling of the Gospel.

Remember when we all first came to Christ?

Remember the urgency with which we shared our faith by assuring people that “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a relationship!”? We were quick to describe our new faith as one of connection with God through Jesus, not a bunch of rules, and even the more legalistic among us went out of our way to remind others that we were just trying to please God when we turned down a beer or wouldn’t go see an R-rated movie, not earn out way into the Divine heart.

Do you wish you had a dollar for every time you said — probably too smugly — “I’m not religious. I just love the Lord!”? I do.

But something came to my heart this morning as I was praying, and that’s that it might be time, for all of us and for me especially, to rethink some things. Without ever considering denying Jesus, I and a lot of my brothers and sisters struggle with how we refer to ourselves in describing our faith. “Christian,” to me, always seemed vague, given the “I must be Christian, I’m an American and not Jewish or anything” culture of our nation. “Evangelical,” which correctly describes me when used in its historical socio-religious context, is a huge and unnecessary turn-off to people who’ve been sickened by TV evangelists and bullying pastors and politicians. “Jesus follower” doesn’t tend to make conversation flow real easily, and neither does “Disciple of Jesus.” And while I subscribe to the generally-considered seven historic, orthodox fundamentals of the Christian faith, I don’t think too many folks would use “Keely” and “Fundamentalist” in the same sentence.

I’ll let you pick yourself up from the floor before I continue . . .

But as I was praying this morning, I remembered a comment I heard on TV last night about the recently deceased Oregon Senator Mark O. Hatfield, whom the commentator described as “deeply religious.” That struck me, and it stayed with me through the night. Could it be that in our young-Christian attempts to distance true intimacy with Christ from the constraints of rote religious faith, we strayed from the legitimate value of practicing, deeply and with private and public discipline, our religion? Is it possible that between the hep and relevant extremes of “my best bud, Jesus” and cold, Spirit-quenching ritual there’s a place for the personal relationship with Christ the Gospel promises AND a profound devotion to the disciplines and practice of our faith?

And doesn’t that seem just too obvious?

Of course it does. But the most public Christians in America today seem to be utterly convinced that Jesus is on their side and much less concerned with whether or not they’re on His side. The rhetoric and posturing, the manipulation and lust for power, can hardly be seen as “religious” from a watching world unaware of our Evangelical discomfort with “seeming religious.” Yet it’s that kind of humble seeking of God’s will, individually and corporately, that attracts unbelievers. It seems that in ditching the piety of our forebears and forcing our “Jesus Politics” into the political and social arena, we’ve lost our way. Mark Hatfield demonstrated that Christ’s will for the public servant is manifest in the heart of a humble servant granted power by integrity and intelligence, not by disciples grabbing the microphone and screeching nasty things louder than the next one.

The difference between the two public approaches to “Christian Politics” seems to be not between Republicans and Democrats but between those who keep Jesus tenderly in their hearts and those who plaster Him on the flag and shove Him on stage. And if my life’s testimony is reminiscent of the former, I wouldn’t mind at all being described after I die as “deeply religious.”

Longtime Oregon Senator Mark O. Hatfield died this week, as much as statesman and example for Christians in public service as John Stott, who died last month, was for Christians in both academia and everyday life.

Let me go back a few years, back to the 1970s, when Watergate fouled the nation’s political consciousness. My father, furious at the warmongering and later criminality of the Nixon White House, answered the phone during those days with, “Hello, impeach the bastard!” I’d like to think that’s why I didn’t date much then; surely Brett in Chemistry would’ve been put off by that, although I suspect there were myriad other reasons I was a romantic only in heart as a teen.

I was also an activist, starting from pre-adolescence when we would picket the Air Base during the Vietnam War, collect petitions for the United Farm Workers (I didn’t eat grapes or lettuce, and my parents didn’t drink Gallo wine, for years), hold get-out-the-vote drives in our house, and host meetings with NAACP members, anti-war activists, and, once, a couple of members of La Raza Unida. You likely have concluded we were Democrats, and while our religious views were way off — Jesus is NOT the embodiment of The Consummate Liberal Democrat — our politics were straight down the line.

But there was one Republican my parents admired, and that was Mark Hatfield.

Hatfield, a deeply committed Baptist, made his own way in public life, guided not by polls and party allegiances but by his Spirit-guided understanding of how best to serve Christ by serving his country. He was a World War II veteran who became vehemently opposed to the Vietnam War. While other Republicans and far too many Christians were cheering on the horrors of the war, Hatfield stood opposed, calling it an evil that “must be condemned by all mankind.” He was, predictably, a staunch pro-lifer, but unlike the “pro-life” movement today, he hated both abortion and capital punishment — a consistent life-affirming ethic virtually absent from today’s pro-life ideology. An avowed opponent of racism, he sponsored legislation to ban racial segregation in Oregon public facilities and modeled a spirit of civic republicanism — which, unlike the Republicanism of today — has at its core a community-building belief in both people and process. Hatfield dared to anger his religious constituents and Congressional peers with is early backing of civil rights for gays and lesbians. He was more conservative than my parents were in fiscal issues, and more Libertarian than I would have liked, but Mark Hatfield was a good man who stood out while in the Senate for his humility, his conscience, his intelligence, and his integrity.

Look at the GOP field today. We’ve got serial adulterer Newt Gingrich, who’s seemingly written a book on virtually every subject under the sun, including one on character. Herman Cain, who’s entire platform involves hating Barack Obama — a platform he shares with all the others except John Huntsman. We’ve endured Tim Pawlenty, who apparently has to check his driver’s license every morning to remind himself who he really is, and the vapid, vacuous Beauty King Mitt Romney, conspicuously silent during the debt ceiling debate — perhaps frantically hiding during the distraction to finally figure out a way to describe his Massachusetts healthcare plan as somehow radically different from Obama’s. Then there’s Ron Paul, a very nice man who’s made a career of increasing his irrelevance. Individually, I’m sure these are all the sort of fellow who would make great neighbors, but my prayer and hope is that they stay in their respective neighborhoods and not have cause to move into the White House.

It’s early in the morning, and so it pains me to discuss Michelle Bachmann, whose entrance into the race has garnered a comedy CD’s worth of gaffes, groaners, and garbled responses to the most basic political questions. Texas Governor Rick Perry already has a foot and a half in the ring; he’ll remind us often, as he did earlier this month, that he “believes in this country because he believes in America,” or, alternately, he “believes in America because he believes in this country.” This razor-sharp grasp of the issues makes the inimitable and irredeemingly dense, pandering, shrieking, and grasping Sarah Palin look like a reasonable adult — until she opens her mouth.

Why am I so hard on the Bachmann, Perry, and Palin?

It’s because they share the essentials of Hatfield’s Christian faith — Jesus as the Way of salvation, the Bible as God’s Word, and the Gospel as a message to be taken to the world. But Palin, Bachmann, and Perry have both constricted the Gospel and artificially inflated it with what the Word can never countenance. Their opposition to social programs, peace, justice, and a foreign policy based on honest humility, moral strength, and mutual respect indicates that they’ve distilled the Gospel message down to the Four Spiritual Laws of salvation, and that only. On the other hand, they deny Jesus by ignoring both His model of true servanthood and His message of reconciliation, and instead call “Christianity” their power-seeking, hierarchical, and damaging Dominionism — a philosophy that adopts the very things hated by Christ and attempts to shove Him into its gaseous message and toxic methodology. As the most public proclaimers of Christian faith, they ought to be rebuked because they have traded their Christianity for a vile ChristiAmericanism whose power-hungry Dominionism will ultimately be shown impotent, absent as it is from the Power and Presence of the Holy Spirit of God.

Hatfield’s soul is rejoicing with his Savior. I pray he sees no more what Christians have done to both the GOP and to this country.

Here’s Moscow’s Emperor of Epistemology Douglas Wilson today on Blog and Mablog, referring to a question from last night’s televised Faux News debate before an Iowa presidential straw poll:

“At the Republican debate last night, (Michelle) Bachmann was asked if she was a submissive wife. She deflected the question, and answered in terms of respect, which is part of the right answer, but it is not the full answer. The traditional marriage vow — which traditionalists are supposed to agree with, remember — includes the vow to obey. This goes well beyond “think highly of in mutually affirming ways.” All obedience should be respectful, of course, and true respect will result in obedience, but they are still not the same thing.” (Blog and Mablog, August 12, 2011)

True respect for the Word will result in obedience to it, and Wilson’s words here, yet again, are still not the same thing — evincing, as they do, a greater respect for marital hierarchy than for coherent Scriptural exegesis.

Yes, the young ladies of Christ Church, Trinity Reformed, and NSA, when married by Wilson, promise to obey their husbands — just because women have, however wrongly, promised to do that for years. “Traditional marriage vows” may extract only from the bride a promise to obey her husband, although my September 1984 traditional wedding vows, being based on Scripture, didn’t.

And that’s the point: Traditionalists — complementarians, hierarchialists, patriarchs — have elevated their traditional views on strongly-defined, separate gender roles and functions to the status of Scripture, a practice I’m quite sure they’d decry if done elsewhere by “liberals,” “feminists,” and “ecumenicalists.” There is no Biblical precedent, but very many cultural precedents, for wives to obey their husbands. Included in marriage vows, the admonition to “obey” is an immediate, incontrovertible and public announcement that Ephesians 5:22 (“wives should be subordinate to their husbands as to the Lord”) and not the preceding verse 21 (“Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ),” nor the entire message of the New Testament Gospel, will be the framework for the marriage. That’s simply wrong, no matter how stunning the table decorations.

Even a non-seminarian can grasp that in Ephesians 5:21-28, mutual submission (“subordination” in the New American Bible, which makes the point in stronger language) sets the stage for emphasis on a husband’s love and a wife’s submission — according to the areas in which culture or circumstance might make each charge particularly difficult for one spouse or the other. (The cult of Artemis, for example, elevated women at the expense of the denigration of men, which likely explains Paul’s emphasis here on wifely submission; certainly, the first-century Jewish or pagan man wasn’t surrounded by examples of profoundly intimate love for his wife). Here, Paul sets the stage — mutual submission, everybody! — and then emphasizes specific difficulties, without doing away with the virtue not specifically mentioned.

Ignoring the context-setting verse 21 and skipping to vv. 22 and 25 allows Wilson, et al, to cling to his hierarchical view of marriage. He is, of course, a Biblical literalist, and so I’m assuming that men who don’t submit to their wives, yet love them, have his approval, as do — follow the logic here — the wives who submit with nary a trace of love to motivate it. Either v. 21 — “Be subordinate to one another out of reverence for Christ” — is true and not controverted by the following text, or, if it’s jettisoned, vv. 22 and 25 then command wives only to submit, not love, and men only to love, not submit. I imagine that a teacher of logic and rhetoric would see my argument, and I trust that any pastor, witnessing such a farcical marriage, would hike up his khakis and run back to v. 21. But then, I’m a trusting gal, and I’ve been disappointed a lot.

Mutual submission is not top-down authority. It’s not “submission” from a status of expected, permanent subjugation, nor is it limited to marriage. Submission is, from a position of strength and security, a voluntary decision to put another first — period. It’s every bit as much a command for husbands as it is for wives, for men as it is for women, for clergy as it is for laypeople. If the New Testament is replete with examples of cultural mores that limit and even degrade women being shattered by the Word and example of Christ Jesus — and, Rob, it is — the true “Biblical literalist” will take the verse that introduces an argument and consider the following verses in its light. That’s basic hermeneutics, however much it makes male supremacists in the Church squirm.

The fact is that the Bible nowhere commands women to “obey” their husbands; the Pauline letters do not use the Greek word for “obey as unto one in authority over” when discussing submission. The only example of God telling a spouse to “obey” the other partner involves Abraham’s charge to obey Sarah. None of us would develop a once-and-for-all doctrine from that account, and the thoughtful among us — and I assume there still are the “thoughtful” among us in Moscow — would not glean from Scripture the necessity of a Godly wife “obeying” her husband. That’s eisegesis — reading into the Word what you’d like. In performing weddings, Wilson is, sadly, free to monkey with Scripture to his and his audience’s liking, but that doesn’t make his admonition to wives Biblical. It does, however, make it pretty damned convenient in keeping questioning, unhappy, victimized and ecclesiastically-dissatisfied women quiet, and the unrelenting influence Wilson exercises over his flock is easier to sustain if half of them believe they have no real voice.

“Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey . . . ” (Romans 6:16)

Mature, Godly Christian marriages are a triangle of mutuality — two points, equally positioned lower than the point wherein is pictured the One they obey and drawing closer to each other as they draw closer to the Almighty. There is no room for top-down power arrangements and gender-restricted “roles and function,” only for robust and plentiful submission, one to the other, in marriage and in every single other relationship in which the Christian lives. Submission? I’m all for it — I’d like to see more of it! But I don’t want to see, and I believe our God doesn’t, either, a worldy form of power and control pushed off on the Church by those who cling to the privileges they garner from it.

That, I won’t submit to. And neither should you.

“Everyone is entitled to their own opinion, but not to their own facts.”

Former New York senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who, thankfully, was spared the advent of the Tea Party.

Perhaps we can glean some agreement from this week’s Time magazine, which, in quoting Moynihan, says “…it is clear that Moynihan’s adage is no longer true.”

“The Tea Party movement has proved not only that people can have their own facts but also that they can use them to vast tactical advantage, crashing through the taboos of political convention and changing the game along the way. It has also proved that in a democracy, a minority can rule quite effectively, thank you.” (Michael Crowley, Time, August 15, 2011)

From a late-1800s advertisement in the Idaho Free Press

“A Pleasure Shared By Women Only”

“Malherbe, the gifted French author, declared that of all things that man possesses, women alone take pleasure in being possessed. This seems generally true of the sweeter sex. Like the ivy plant, she longs for an object to cling to and love — to look to for protection…”

And from “Recovering Biblical Manhood & Womanhood — A Response To Evangelical Feminism,” 1991, in an article written by Pastor Ray Ortlund, Jr., analyzing what it means in Genesis 3:16, “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you.” (p. 109) Ortlund says it’s either of these points God is making:

“…God is requiring the man to act as the head God made him to be, rather than knuckle under to ungodly pressure from his wife…”

Or is it:

“…in giving the woman up to her insubordinate desire, God is penalizing her with domination by her husband … as the woman competes with the man, the man, for his part, always holds the trump card of male domination to ‘put her in her place.'”

Now, I’m not sure I see the difference, and I’m frankly not sure Ortlund and his RBMW co-authors think too differently from dear ol’ Malherbe. The Frenchman says the sweeter sex enjoys male domination; Ortlund, et al, say they darned well had better.

I can’t help it. I find that really unfortunate, and yet fortunately un-Biblical.

Read this one carefully. Being a Tea Party activist means to me that you’re likely somewhat less than fully informed. Being a Tea Party activist who calls Obama an idiot might want to check his grammar:

A VILLAGE IN KENYA IS MISSING IT’S IDIOT

(as seen in Time Magazine, August 15, 2011)

Note to the protest guy: It’s “it’s” when you mean “it is,” and “its” when you refer to something another thing possesses, like the possession of an idiot by a village, town, or even, perhaps, a political movement. But that’s just weird Liberal grammar . . .