Today is Good Friday, when Christians commemorate the Passion and Crucifixion of Jesus.  It should be of solace to the millions doing so in America that there are so many millions more sharing this commemoration with them all over the world.

It should be of solace to them all that Christianity has more adherents and is more widespread across the planet than any other religion on earth today or in history.  33% of all people on earth say they are Christians.  Islam is a distant second, accounting for 21%.

Further, Christianity, in terms of absolute numbers, is the fastest growing religion in the world. 

The World Christian Database, which compiles the most respected research on world religions, reports that from 2000-2005, Christianity experienced an annual world-wide growth in adherents of 1.38%, while Islam had a growth rate of 1.84%.  At that rate of 0.46% more a year, it would take over 200 years for there to be as many Moslems as Christians.

However... the WCD reports that from 1970 to 1985, the Moslem growth rate was 2.74%, and from 1990-2000 it was 2.13%.  The Moslem growth rate over the past 25 years is falling, while the Christian rate is rising (up from 1.36% 1990-2000).

And there's more.

Do you think pedophiles should be given Viagra at taxpayers' expense? Despite what appears to be an absurd question, that is exactly what occurred in Britain under their National Health Service (NHS).

Reports surfaced last week that a pedophile who had abused an 11-year-old girl had been spared jail, yet was continuing to receive Viagra, courtesy of the British taxpayer.

If the United States creates a government-run health system, it is a safe bet the same types of abuses and problems that plague Britain will occur. The reason is simple:

There will only be limited funds available for the government-run health care system, and thus individuals employed by the government will decide who gets what and when. Some of the decisions will be wise; others will be foolish, wasteful, or just plain daffy -- because humans who spend other people's money don't tend to be all that careful.

Since Operation Cast Lead two years ago, Iran has helped Hamas massively increase its missile and other military capabilities. Today the terror group that rules Gaza has missiles capable of reaching Tel Aviv. It has advanced antitank missiles. As Hamas spokesman Abu Obeida said Saturday (12/25), “We are now stronger than before and during the war, and our silence over the past two years was only for evaluating the situation.”

That evaluation has not tempered Hamas’s aim of annihilating the Jews of Israel. As Obeida’s colleague Ahmed Jaabari said Saturday, Israel’s Jews have two choices, “death or departing Palestinian lands.”

Last week the PA announced it will ask the UN Security Council to pass an anti-Semitic resolution defining Jewish building in Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem as illegal. This move dovetails nicely with PA leader Mahmoud Abbas’s statement over the weekend that “Palestine” will be Jew-free.

As Abbas put it, “If there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it. When a Palestinian state is established, it would have no Israeli presence.”

To date neither of these racist bids to deny Jews basic rights to their homes and land just because they are Jews has been opposed by any government or human rights group.  This includes, of course, the Obama Administration.

There is only one way for Israel to counter the Palestinians’ war plans for 2011:  commit to victory over them.

Marseille, France.  Why does it appear France is bouncing back more quickly from the recession than the United States?

France has long been known for having an economy that suffered from too much government interference, too-high taxes and destructive union activity. Yet it grew 1.4 percent in the second quarter of 2009, while the U.S. economy continued to decline.

The United States and Britain have had the largest "stimulus" programs of the major economies (as measured by increases in government spending and deficits relative to gross domestic product) and yet they are not moving toward recovery as rapidly as France and most other countries that had far smaller stimulus programs or none.

There's so much cool stuff to talk about this week - but first I've got to clear up a confusion.   We normally have two Rendezvous a year, winter and summer.  This year, we're adding a third, the San Diego Spring Rendezvous, May 14-16.

A number of folks are hesitating about this as they think there'll still be another in the summer.  Obviously, I should have explained this earlier:  There will not be a Summer Rendezvous this year.  I will be traveling - South America, Asia, and Europe - August through October.  The next Rendezvous after San Diego in May will be The Victory Celebration Rendezvous in Washington DC, November 5-7.

That's the weekend after the November 2 elections, and we should have a lot to celebrate.  But there's a long meantime between now and then - even longer if you consider the total gap between the San Antonio Rendezvous last January and next November. 

So - the only way to see your fellow TTPers, and get a deep grasp of what's happening to our country and in the world, without waiting all the way to late next fall, is to join us in sunny San Diego in May.  Capiche?

OK, here we go.  There's no doubt who the HFR Hero of the Week is:

Stockhom, Sweden.  Do you think America would be better off with a Swedish-type welfare state?

This question tends to evoke strong reactions from both the left and right, yet few understand Sweden's economic history and the revisions it has been making to its welfare-state model in recent years.

Those who wish to chase the Swedish model need first to decide which model they seek: The high-growth, pre-1960 model; the low-growth model of the 1970s and 1980s; or the reformist, welfare-state model of recent years.

The irony is that the current Democrat Congress and administration are rapidly emulating the parts of the Swedish model that proved disastrous and rejecting those parts that are proving to be successful.

Making the rounds on YouTube these days is a film of a group of manly looking women preparing for and conducting a "flash dance" in a Philadelphia food store.  [Warning - the video is 5 minutes and 44 seconds of boring, obnoxious, and unattractive women - JW]

The crew of ladies, dressed in tight black clothes and sequined accessories, arrives at The Fresh Grocer supermarket, breaks into a preplanned chant ordering shoppers not to buy Sabra and Tribe hummus, to oppose Israeli "apartheid" and support "Palestine."

From their attire and attitude, it is fairly clear that the participants in the video would congratulate themselves on their commitment to the downtrodden, the wretched of the earth suffering under the jackboot of the powerful. They would likely all also describe themselves as feminists.

But if being a human rights activist means attacking the only country in the Middle East that defends human rights, then that means that at the very basic level, the term "human rights activist" is at best an empty term.

And if being a feminist means attacking the only country in the Middle East where women enjoy freedom and equal rights, then feminism too, has become at best, a meaningless term. Indeed, if these anti-Israel female protesters are feminists, then feminism is dead.

Isn't it supposed to be just about springtime now?  In Florida last week, I heard no end to grousing about how it's been the coldest winter in memory.  Back in Washington where there are still piles of snow left over from last month's Snowmageddon, everyone is looking forward to three inches of cold rain and flooding this weekend.

Enough already.  Enough of crazy cold weather - and enough of crazy Democrat politics.  The political climate on Capitol Hill is so bad now that certain GOP Senators and Congressmen are privately (although not publicly) expressing a genuine worry about the sanity of the President of the United States.

Zero's obsession with "health care reform" is being likened to the deranged Captain Ahab's obsession with harpooning the White Whale in Herman Melville's Moby Dick.  That didn't turn out so well for Ahab.

To compound their concern, Zero began yet again this week (3/10) demanding "climate change legislation" that would "cap greenhouse gas emissions" - acting as if the unending exposure of ClimateGate frauds never happened.

The common image the Capitol Hill GOP invokes is to joke about the Democrats' "circular firing squad."  Yet there is real concern behind the jokes.  "Neither Obama nor Reid nor Pelosi is playing with a full deck anymore," one Senator tells me.

We are likely to have a double-dip recession, and this is why. Your Uncle Sam has been having a hard time because he spends more than he makes. He engages in much unproductive behavior and wastes a lot of money on things that he doesn't really need.

He is easily influenced by his irresponsible children, Nancy and Harry, whose mantra is: "Spend, Sam, spend." Sam is also sloppy with his finances. His record keeping is poor, and he is frequently ripped off by people who claim to be his friends.

Recently, Sam experienced a big drop in his income, because his employer (the American taxpayer) had been taking financial hits.  So Sam did what he's best at -- he borrowed and spent more, more than ever before.  Then things began to turn a bit sour.

It is a sad and potentially fatal fact that most Americans know virtually nothing about the U.S. military. That astounding reality is all the more incredible given that our survival ultimately depends on the men and women in uniform who defend this country.

Such ignorance is, ironically, a testament to the success of what is known as the all-volunteer force. It is also a national defect, one that soon may be the undoing of a system based on the willingness of a few to protect the rest of us at great risk to themselves.

President Obama is hoping to capitalize on our ignorance of these folks and the reality of their lives in uniform - notably, the phenomenon known as "forced intimacy" that is inherent in communal bunk rooms, showers, latrines, shipboard sleeping compartments and foxholes.

It is this ignorance that allows him to insist that the U.S. Senate accede during the post-Thanksgiving lame-duck session to his demand for the repeal of a 1993 law - widely referred to as DADT or Don't Ask Don't Tell - prohibiting homosexuals from openly serving in the armed forces.

Every American who finds himself or herself bridling at the invasion of privacy by TSA should think long and hard about forcing our all-too-often unsung and unrecognized heroes to submit to far worse.