SecretAgentMan's Dossier

2009-12-24T16:08:00.002-05:00

Christmas Proclamation

The twenty-fifth day of December.

In the five thousand one hundred and ninety-ninth year of the creation of the world from the time when God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth;

the two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seventh year after the flood;

the two thousand and fifteenth year from the birth of Abraham;

the one thousand five hundred and tenth year from Moses and the going forth of the people of Israel from Egypt;

the one thousand and thirty-second year from David's being anointed king;

in the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel;

in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;

the seven hundred and fifty-second year from the foundation of the city of Rome;

the forty second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus;

the whole world being at peace,

in the sixth age of the world,

Jesus Christ

the eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,

desiring to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming,

being conceived by the Holy Spirit,

and nine months having passed since his conception,

was born in Bethlehem of Judea of the Virgin Mary, being made flesh.

The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.

2009-12-16T22:55:00.004-05:00

Hell, I Wouldn't Comment Either

Thanks to Christopher Blosser for updating my blog. Unfortunately, though, I have the new-style comment boxes that require fellow blowhards to enter a password and identifier from a menu of omnivorous corporate data hogs.

"This blog does not allow anonymous comments. Please enter the RFID number Google has implanted under your skin, your Google password, your Google social security number, Google date of birth, Google bank routing number and tell Google a little about yourself. That's a good minion."

When did Google get taken over by Nigerian scammers?

"Google is run by Cynthia Okore, wife of the late General Okore. Read General's tragic plane accident here. Google wishes to give you many moneys to distribute to needy causes in your country with commission for yourself. Google's attorneys require the RFID number Google has implanted under your skin, your Google password, your Google social security number, Google date of birth, Google bank routing number and tell Google a little about yourself. Yours in whatever new age fad we have displayed this week."

Soon there'll be a voice-recognition comment system run by GoogleSkype, or GoogleAT&T:

"Gracias por llamar Google, la localización del Internet para todas sus necesidades de la realidad. Para proceder en español, ahora presione 1."

"Mi dankas vin pro vokanta Google, Interreto loko malgrau via realajo bezonas. Se vi volas procedi En Esperanto, gazetaro 2 hodiau."

"Thank you for calling Google, the Internet location for all your reality needs. If you wish to proceed in English, press 3 now."

BEEEE!

"Thank you for calling Google, the Internet location for all your reality needs. Please enter the twenty-digit RFID number Google has implanted under your skin, followed by the pound sign.

Beeb-beep-boop-baaa-bee-baaa-buu-breee-haa-baa-hoo-beep-bee-rrrrr-boo-baa-baap-bee-baaa-buu-breee-baaaaa.

Thank you. You entered the following twenty-digit RFID number 13567235996831644821. If this is correct, press 1 now.

Beeee.

Thank you. Please enter your Google password, your Google social security number, Google date of birth, Google bank routing number and tell Google a little about yourself, followed by the pound sign."

&%&*%*&(#$&*^*&^*(^(*5$%*$*$*$&$$&$&$@@@@

Google did not understand your last entry. Please try again before we cancel all your credit cards. Enter your Google password, your Google social security number, Google date of birth, Google bank routing number and tell Google a little about yourself, followed by the pound sign."

[thirty minutes later]

Thank you. Would you like to enroll in GoogleAdvantage, the home appliance use monitoring system? Say yes or no at your own peril.

NO!

Thank you. One last question before we begin. Google is updating our RFID technology. Press 1 if the skin on your left wrist begins to itch. We appreciate your cooperation.

!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111111111111111111111

Google did not understand your last entry. Please try again before we show every burglar in the world where your house is vulnerable and when you're not at home. Press 1 if the skin on your left wrist begins to itch. We appreciate your cooperation.

1

Thank you. Select your comment from the following options. Please pay attention, as the menu may have changed:

To leave a recorded message about Google's outstanding customer service, press 1.

To leave a recorded message explaining why you love Google, press 2.

To call the blog's author a moron, press 3.

To inflate an aside or tangential vague statement in a blog post into the main point of the author's existence and then refute or confirm that existence at length, press 4.

To superimpose your own world view on a blog post and identify the author as a Republican or Democrat fascist, press 5.

To superimpose your own world view on a blog post and identify the author as a Republican or Democrat communist, press 6.

To superimpose your own world view on a blog post and identify the author as a Freemason, press 7.

To accuse Google of being a secret world front for Freemasonry because it assigned Freemasonry the number 7, press 8.

To call the blog's author a genius, press 9.

To complain that the author secretly approves of something terrible and unrelated to his post, press 10.

To praise the author for secretly approving of something wonderful and unrelated to his post, press 11.

To exploit an unrelated blog post as an opportunity to advertise your own goofy product or service, press 12.

To expose the author as one who exalts form over substance, press 13.

To expose the author as an indifferentist, press 14.

To spend time with a loved one or friend, hang up and dial your operator.

Sheesh.

2009-12-11T00:01:00.002-05:00

Avatar: Stunningly Bored?

Ohhh . . . it feels good to be a blowhard again.

From what I've read, the film is exactly like Titanic, a film of breath-taking garbage, fantastic drivel, beautiful twaddle. As something to get your mind around, Titanic fails on so many levels that you'd need more space than the end-credits to list them. The entire plot follows: Girl from a wealthy family finds love and human meaning by rejecting the ridiculous and barren social prejudices of her class with the help of a lower-class sort of fellow who truly knows about life and the ship sinks. James Cameron could have told the same story while filming the Great Chicago Fire, the Battle of the Bulge, or janitors at Wal-Mart (as to that last, check out Career Opportunities for something that's at least intermittently intelligent).

To find out just how bad Titanic is compare it with A Night to Remember, the 1958 classic that's available through the Criterion Collection. ANR is a bit dry and documentary by modern standards, but at least you know why all the action happens on the Titanic. Or compare the 1960 film The Last Voyage about a family trapped on a sinking ocean liner. (By the way, for all the hype about water tanks used to film Titanic, the director of The Last Voyage actually filmed the movie aboard a sinking ocean liner). Like Titanic, the story of The Last Voyage doesn't have to occur on any particular ship. In fact the same story could be set on one of those silly pontoon boats you see on the local man-made lake. But you care about the family, and the film asks a subtle, nagging question -- would you give up trying to save the life of your spouse?

Titanic's story isn't about anything to do with the Titanic, and not even $200 million can make the romance in Lady Chatterly's Lover (or Anna Karenina, The Wild One, Rebel Without a Cause, Breakfast Club, Twilight, every movie shown on the Lifetime Channel, or every book published by Harlequin) fresh or interesting again. It's all right to like the film because of the special effects. I personally loved the spectacle of the great ship. But the hackneyed romance and jejune social commentary eventually had me rooting for the iceberg.

From what I read, Avatar is no different. It's a blindingly insightful and surprising story about greedy men from a technologically-advanced society destroying beautiful habitats and native cultures. One of the soldiers who serves the greedy technologically-advanced society falls in love with one of the natives. He begins to appreciate the beauty and dignity of native culture and eventually takes the natives' side against the evil greedy men who are trying to destroy them. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz. Who could have imagined such a story? Everybody who saw The Return of a Man Called Horse, Superman, Dances With Wolves or The Last Samurai, that's who.

I'm sure the special effects are stunning. They'd have to be, wouldn't they. Chris Rock's career wouldn't last very long if all he did was tell chicken-crossing-the-road jokes. Nobody would watch the Superbowl if the teams agreed to use exactly the same plays in the same order as the last Superbowl. But $100 million in special effects can get us interested in a CGI-enhanced chicken or "wardrobe accident." There's just something weird about people eager to hail a barren exercise in story re-telling, like a kid being overjoyed to get the same present as last Christmas because the wrapping paper has more pizazz. Dark speculations about the future of our culture arise, but I won't make them. I'll just say that the Athenians had it better, and Athenian playwrites had it tougher, because there's just so much you can do with a hoist.

2009-12-10T17:38:00.002-05:00

Man, this is good!

Sausage Plate

Ingredients

Roasting pan (disposable aluminum will do fine).

As many garlic cloves as you like.

2 TB olive oil

2 cans cannellini or great northern beans, drained & rinsed.

8 Johnsonville sausages (any style), or 4 Johnsonville and some kielbasa. You can add beef franks if your kids prefer them.

Directions

(1) Preheat oven to 375. Denude garlic cloves. Be sure to cut the tips off -- they can break a tooth. Drizzle the oil in the roasting pan. Prick the sausages and place them and the garlic in the roasting pan. Ignore for 20 minutes.

(2) Remove the pan. If necessary, prick the sausages again (sometimes they swell up and close the original holes). Turn the sausages. Put back in the oven. Add the kielbasa and hot dogs, if any. Ignore for 15-20 minutes.

(2) Remove the pan. Throw in your beans. Drizzle some more olive oil and stir. Put back in the oven until the beans are hot. Serve.

2009-12-10T02:30:00.003-05:00

I Liked this Part

In this story about a giant iceberg floating toward Austraila:

Dr Young said an iceberg the size of B17B had not been seen so far north since the days when 19th century clipper ships plied the trade route between Britain and Australia.

Perhaps Dr. Young hasn't checked his emails. The era of clipper ships ended in the 1870s. Giant icebergs are supposed to be a sign of global warming. That's why John the Baptist (a/k/a) Al Gore used a special-effects clip from the adventure film The Day After to show us how global warming is causing the arctic and antarctic is shelves to melt.

Pardon me for being, uh, inconvenient, but why were giant icebergs like this crashing into the sea 150 years ago but not from then until now?

Maybe the good folks at the University of South-Southeast Cumbria's Climate Research Unit could explain this. I'm sure they know a "trick" proving that the greenhouse gas generated by flapping canvas sails during the 19th century is greater than the greenhouse gas produced from then until the 21st century.

That would probably be very satisfying to them. It would mean that alternative energy strategies are out. If flapping canvas causes as much global warming as 150 years of industrialization, wind turbines and all the rest of it won't do much good. It would mean that humanity would have to live like actual 19th-Century serfs, something far more pleasing to the new "Wings Over the World" crowd than lording it over virtual 21st-Century serfs.

It just amazes me how similar the global-warming crowd looks like the Bushies whipping us up for the invasion of Iraq.

2009-12-10T02:27:00.001-05:00

Why?

Because Americans can't do anything without their government.

2009-11-30T06:47:00.003-05:00

This just in . . .

Expensive Old Coot Whines About Federal Healthcare Program

2009-11-30T04:10:00.005-05:00

Climatologists Harassed by Hackers

SOUTH SOUTHEAST CUMBRIA (PEANUT) -- Hundreds of alleged private emails and alleged documents allegedly exchanged between some of the world's leading climate scientists during the past 13 years have been stolen by dastardly evil hackers and should be ignored, it emerged today.

The computer files were apparently accessed earlier this week from servers at the University of South-Southeast Cumbria’s Climate Research Unit, a world-renowned centre focused on the study of natural and anthropogenic climate change. Rest assured that this crime will not go unavenged.

Evil climate change sceptics who have studied the emails allege they provide "smoking gun" that some of the climatologists allegedly colluded in examining data to support the widely-held and incontrovertible view, based on all available evidence, that climate change is real and is being largely caused by Americans.

The veracity of the alleged emails has not been confirmed and the scientists allegedly involved have declined to comment on the story, which broke on a blog called The Air Vent.

The alleged files, which in total amount to 160MB of alleged data, were first uploaded on to a Russian server, and we all know about the Russians. The alleged emails were accompanied by the anonymous statement: "We feel that climate science is, in the current situation, too important to be kept under wraps. We hereby release a random selection of correspondence, code and documents. Hopefully it will give some insight into the science and the people behind it."

A spokesperson for the University of South-Southeast Cumbria said: "We are aware that alleged information from an alleged server used for research information in one area of the university has been made available on public websites. Because of the volume of this alleged information we cannot confirm that all this alleged material is allegedly genuine. This alleged information has been obtained and published in a gross violation of the rights of unknown persons and without our permission, not that we had anything to do with it in the first place, and we took immediate action to remove the server in question from operation, not that there was anything on it in the first place. We are undertaking a thorough internal investigation and have involved the police in this inquiry."

In one alleged email, dated November 1999, one alleged scientist wrote: "I've just completed Mike's Nature [the science journal] trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie, from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith's to hide the decline."

A second alleged email, dated January, 2001, says, "We should claim that the oceans will boil in the near future. That’ll scare the shit out of ‘em. Where’s my grant? Hee hee."

These stray sentences, in particular, have been unfairly quoted by sceptics as evidence of manipulating data, but the credibility of the alleged emails has not been verified. The scientists who allegedly sent them declined to say whether they wrote them.

"It does look incriminating on the surface, but there are lots of single sentences that taken out of context can appear incriminating," said P.T. Barnum, director of policy and communications at the Chatham Research Institute on Undisputable Climate Change and the Increasingly-Deadly Environment at the London School of Ergonomics. "You can't tell what they are talking about. Scientists frequently say 'trick' when they mean empirical research. It doesn’t mean deception. It’s just shorthand for rational discourse. I’m tricking you now, don’t you see?"

In another alleged email, one of the scientists apparently refers to the death of a prominent climate change sceptic by saying, "That’s the third hit team we’ve sent out. Third time’s the charm, eh? Where’s my grant? Hee hee."

Barnum explained, "Scientists often say ‘hit team’ when discussing climatological data, it doesn’t connote anything underhanded. Galileo was persecuted for saying the Earth was a round hit team. That ought to tell you something about the biases of people mis-using these alleged emails."

Barnum said that if the alleged emails are emails, they "might highlight behaviour that those individuals might not like to have made public." But he added, "Let's separate out climate scientists reacting badly to personal attacks from America to the idea that their work has been carried out in an inappropriate way."

"Many dedicated climate scientists are persecuted on a daily basis by America," Barnum explained. "They undergo harassment by Americans asking questions about their data and by other Americans who second-guess their methods and conclusions. It’s not uncommon for climatologists to adapt by pretending their research is fraudulent."

The revelations did not alter the vast, huge, undeniable body of uncontroverted evidence from every scientific field proving that modern climate change is caused largely by America, Barnum said. The emails refer largely to work on so-called paleoclimate data - reconstructing past climate scenarios using data such as ice cores, dice and tree rings. "Climate change is based on several lines of evidence, not just change in climate," he said. "At the heart of this is basic physics. Things get hot. That’s basic physics."

Barnum pointed out that the individuals named in the alleged emails had numerous publications in scientific journals that had been peer-reviewed by other individuals named in the alleged emails. "It would be very surprising if after all this time, suddenly they were found out doing something as wrong as that."

Barnum noted that the "Piltdown Man" hoax, perpetrated by archaeologists to boost their reputations by proving evolution, was fully exposed in 41 years. "We’re very quick to catch hoaxes," Barnum said, "That’s why it’s vital that our findings be enshrined in international law this very instant."

Professor Zoon Mundley, director of Caton-on-Hoy-Tilsworth University's Earth System Science Centre to Protect Mankind from America, and a regular contributor to the popular climate science blog "Undisputable Evidence So Don’t Bother Arguing You Corporate Tool Jackass," features in many of the email exchanges. He said: "I'm not going to comment on the alleged content of illegally obtained alleged emails. However, I will say this: both their theft and, I believe, any reading of the emails constitutes serious criminal activity. I'm hoping the perpetrators and anyone who’s read these emails will be tracked down and prosecuted to the fullest extent the law allows for stealing something that doesn’t exist or belong to anyone. Preferably they will encounter tricks by round hit teams."

When Peanut asked Professor Tee Wanker, at UEA, who features in the correspondence, to verify whether the emails were genuine, he refused to comment. "I will say this, however: These alleged emails were the personal private property of someone, and the people who stole them and anyone who reads them should be killed. And their little dogs, too. It’s despicable that emails which no one wrote are now publicly available on the internet."

The alleged emails illustrate the persistent harassment some climatologists have been under from Americans in recent years. There have been repeated calls, including Freedom of Information requests, for the Climate Research Unit to make public a top-secret, confidential dataset of land and sea temperature "tricks" that are "value added" before being released to the public and reported as absolute truth. The emails show the frustration some climatologists have had at having to operate under such intense American harassment.

Professor Loo Lee Watson, the chief scientific advisor at the Department for Protecting the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs from America said, "Evidence for climate change is irrefutable. It cannot be refuted. It must not be refuted. The world's leading scientists overwhelmingly agree what we're experiencing is caused by America."

"With this overwhelming scientific body of evidence, which cannot be questioned by anyone, failing to take action to beat down America and her evil corporate minions would be criminal – the impacts here in Britain and across the world will worsen and the economic consequences will be catastrophic. Pick anything you hold dear, and it will be destroyed. Puppies! Yes, that's it -- puppies will be destroyed!"

A spokesman for Leanpeace said: "If you looked through any organisation's emails from the last 10 years you'd find something that would raise a few eyebrows. You certainly would in our case. Contrary to what America claims, the Royal Society, the US National Academy of Sciences, NASA and the world's leading atmospheric scientists are not the agents of a clandestine global movement against the truth. Not that the emails suggest that they are, of course."

2009-11-21T10:36:00.001-05:00

2x2l calling CQ . . . . .

2x2l calling CQ . . . . .

2X2L calling CQ . . . . New York

Isn't there anyone on the air?

Isn't there anyone . . .

2006-06-05T23:34:00.000-04:00

Sorry I Haven't Been Around

Many projects and things are consuming more of my time than I anticipated. But when I saw this, I had to blog it: Miguel Caballero's Bullet-Proof Clothing. Check it out! Browse through the "classic" fashions, or take a walk on the wild side with their Gold and Platinum lines of bulletproof suits, overcoats, and jackets. They even have (I'm not kidding) a fashion show complete with catwalk (or is that "arcade gallery"?). I'm tellin' ya, it's Versace meets David Cronenberg!

It makes me wonder -- will Slabbinck come out with a "Turbulent Priest" line of vestments? How about an NIJ-certified Level III Gothic Chasuble, with removable trauma plate? Or a NATO-spec Kevlar miter?

2006-05-15T11:24:00.000-04:00

Why I'm Not Blogging Much &
Menu Review, and New Menu May 15 - May 20, 2006

I'm not blogging much because I had a trial set to begin tomorrow. My client was charged with two counts of felony intimidation, one count of felony possession of a handgun (it's not a felony to have a handgun, unless you have a prior criminal record), one count of serious violent felon in possession of a handgun, and an habitual-offender affidavit due to prior convictions. He was looking at 75 years. Now he's looking at doing 4 years, and I shall resist the temptation to crow and prance. It was good lawyering. Here's the reviews from last week's menu, and this week's menu. Hopefully I can get back to some more serious blogging, by finishing some of the 20+ half-finished blogs I have in my computer!

Monday

Pork Medallions in Dijon Cream Sauce
Apple Harvest Rice
Salad
Rolls
Review: The pork was very good. The sauce would be excellent on Eggs Benedict, or some kind of egg-and-cheese quiche. The Apple Harvest Rice was a bit too moist for my taste. I like my rice dishes crumbly and dry or, at most, sticky. This wasn't a rissotto, but you could see risotto on the map from where it was.

Tuesday

Grilled Sausages
Roasted Vegetables
Salad
Rolls
I don't know that I "roasted" these vegetables. I wanted to use a metal roasting pan, which we ended up not having. So I put them into 9x13 pyrex baking pans and decided to pretend that I roasted them. I found some good vegetables, so I ended up using celery, carrots, leeks, eggplant, fennel, zucchini and summer squash. The fennel was a surprise find, and it had all the fronds on it. So I spent a few minutes chasing Hannah around the kitchen with the monster fennel. I cut ‘em up (the vegetables), mixed ‘em in a bowl with some olive oil, oregano, salt and pepper. They came out really well and I ate my fill. I love vegetables. The sausage was hot Johnsonville Italian style, which we all like. I cooked that with my patented Midwestern-Electric-Stovetop-Wok method.

The vegetable thing is really useful to have learned. It's got endless possibilities. (See below). For example, adding some chopped tomatoes would be really good. So would new potatoes. Or when it's finished you could add some sun-dried tomatoes. It would go with any land meat -- pork, sausage, beef, or chicken.

Wednesday

Steak
Spinach Squares
Mashed Potatoes
Salad
Review: I didn't make this. Due to time constraints I went "off menu." I sliced the steak into strips and pan-cooked it with some butter, salt, and pepper. I boiled some penne while I was doing that. When I was finished, I stirred the beef into the leftover roasted vegetables with some mozzarella cheese and butter. It was really good. It would make a good salad-type dish too.

Thursday

Tortellini with Roasted Vegetables
Salad
Italian bread
Review: Everybody was sick of roasted vegetables by this time, so we just had the tortellini. Standard store-bought stuff. It's good the way pasta is always good.

Friday

Italian Beef Cutlets
Salad
Fettucini with Butter-Parsley-Parmesan Sauce
Italian Bread
Review: Bad recipe. You bread the beef cutlets and bake them in the oven. Of course (as I know now) when you do that, the juices leave the beef and wet the breading, and I ended up with baked sirloin couched in tomato sauce, each cutlet covered in its own little package of tan mush. Fettucini with butter and parsley and parmesan isn't susceptible to being screwed up. The tomato sauce was interesting and I might keep that recipe for my pasta sauce "book." But otherwise this was a waste of good steak.

Menu for 5/15 - 5/20

Monday

Club sandwiches
French fries
Salad

Tuesday

Sausage Alfredo Lasagna
Salad
Italian bread.

Wednesday

Cornflake Chicken
Mashed Potatoes
Green Beans
Rolls
Salad

Thursday

Steak
Roasted Asparagus
New Potatoes with Horseradish-Dijon sauce
Rolls
Salad

Friday

Deep Dish Pizza
Salad

2006-04-29T21:34:00.000-04:00

Menu, April 30 - May 5, 2006

Monday

Pork Medallions in Dijon Cream Sauce
Apple Harvest Rice
Salad
Rolls

Tuesday

Grilled Sausages
Roasted Vegetables
Salad
Rolls

Wednesday

Steak
Spinach Squares
Mashed Potatoes
Salad

Thursday

Tortellini with Roasted Vegetables
Salad
Italian bread

Friday

Italian Beef Cutlets
Salad
Fettucini with Butter-Parsley-Parmesan Sauce
Italian Bread

2006-04-26T23:30:00.000-04:00

Leadership Bowl: Post-Game Wrap

Thanks to everyone who commented on the Leadership Bowl post. Art Deco made some good comments, which I'll address here with some additional observations. That'll serve as the post-game wrap. Art's words in blue, mine in black.

1. Is there any evidence that Mr. Gore was aware that he was assigned a bodyguard?

There is no evidence that Mr. Gore thought the armed fellows who hovered around him were anything besides combat photographers who didn't use cameras.

2. Is it your contention that Mr. Gore should have been expected to be an enthusiast for patriotic sacrifice in combat given that at the time he entered the military the withdrawal of American troops for reasons-of-state ("getting out as a matter of policy and not as a matter of defeat" is how Henry Kissinger put it retrospectively) was the stated government policy?

No, that is not my contention.

3. Most of Mr. Kerry's compatriots in the Mekong Delta appear to have been unimpressed with him, there are indications that he was visibly upset at being told of this posting, the lily of his service may have been gilded, and he has likely lied about aspects of it in the telling, but he remains nevertheless one of a small minority (~3% perhaps) of those men born during the years running from 1939-54 who did spend time in a combat zone. Can we give him credit for that?

Yes, we can, because in my view he came out of the Vietnam era with far more moral credit than George Bush. At least John went to where the North Vietnamese army could shoot at him and where, in fact, they did shoot at him. The impression I got of John Kerry from the Swift Boat website is that he was a more timid, brass-plated version of Winston Churchill, who also used military exploits and connections to further his own career. But John Kerry didn't participate in one of the last cavalry charges in military history, and he didn't spend a year in or near the trenches commanding a regiment on the Western Front. And try as I might, I can't see John Kerry giving and understanding the "blood toil and tears" speech. So that's why I gave democracy the field goal, but not a touchdown.

4. If physical cowardice is one of Mr. Bush's faults, why would he volunteer for service in a National Guard unit where he would be learning to fly fighter planes (of a model with, by some accounts, a poor safety record) and of which some members were in fact posted to Indochina? (Please try to avoid stereotyped answers like, "because he was stupid").

To the contrary, Bush's choice (like all self-interested choices) was very shrewd. He had the lowest possible score on the aptitude test for pilot training. He rightly concluded that, as the son of a sitting Texas congressman, he would have a better chance of selection for pilot duty in the Texas Air National Guard ("TANG") than the U.S. Air Force. I note that TANG F-102 pilots could participate in a program that rotated them to fly in Vietnam. They needed 500 hours of flight experience. During his four years with the TANG, Bush accumulated over 600 hours of flight time -- but only 278 in the F-102. The 278-hour figure includes time spent in the F-102's training-seat variant. Bush joined the ANG because the alternatives were (a) a chance that he'd go straight to combat in Vietnam, or (b) having a record that shows strings were pulled to keep him from having a chance at going straight to combat in Vietnam.

The temptation at this point is to try changing the debate into whether Vietnam-era Guardsmen are cowards. It's a question I won't dignify with an answer (not that Art's asking it, but others might) because it's got nothing to do with the problem I have with George Bush. I know a few Vietnam-era guardsmen, and I'm related to one. Had I been 18 in 1966 I might have joined the Guard myself. I don't have problems with men who want to live in solidarity with a community which lets them remove, or greatly reduce, the chances of fighting in a terrible and witless war. But I would start having problems with them if they wanted to be War Chieftains, fighter-jock presidents doing a carrier landing under a banner that says "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" and doesn't say "BY OTHER GUYS AT SOME UNDETERMINED POINT IN THE FUTURE."

Yes, and Art's right to point it out, that the quotations from Bush, Kerry and Gore are my own inventions. They're like the last words famously attributed to the Old Guard at Waterloo. History records them as, "The Old Guard dies, but never surrenders!" In fact, the reply to Wellington's surrender offer was Merde!. But the reality and the invention convey the same meaning, and while I don't pretend to have a running transcript of Bush, Clinton, and Gore's speech during the years involved, I think there's enough accuracy in them to absolve me of slander. There is a common trait that binds these men, although it binds Kerry less than the others.

The common trait isn't what we usually mean by "physical cowardice." In my view, "physical cowardice" can refer to villainy, but it can also embrace the ordinary and healthy reaction of any human being to the prospect of fighting in a war. I should be very nervous and unhappy if, finding myself in a military unit, I realized that my commanding officer were incapable of experiencing any trepidation whatsoever at the prospect of injury or death, and wished only to cover himself and my corpse with glory. I should instead like my commanding officer to wish, with at least some sincerity, that he didn't have to issue orders requiring me or anyone else suffer or die before he goes ahead and issues those orders anyway because they are militarily necessary. In that regard, I would not expect to find that my officer was omniscient, or demand from him a guarantee of success, before obeying. War is fighting, fighting means killing, and killing means dying. Bush, Clinton and Gore aren't odious because they chose not to risk death on the battlefield.

The disturbing thing about their choices, the common trait, is not the existence of "physical cowardice." Each of them made the decision that their lives were too valuable, too full of prospect, to be submitted to the outrageous fortunes of combat. Fair enough, perhaps, for a private citizen in a modern state. But it would take a deliberately-enforced naivete to conclude that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and George Bush were merely private citizens who intended to live quiet lives. They were set on political success, on advancement to positions of leadership, from their early adulthood. While Bill Clinton's ambition was the most obvious, Bush and Gore ran for congress within five years of leaving their military posts. I don't mind the desire for private life or ambition for public office. I mind the idea that a man following the first path should incur no greater risk of harm or suffering than a man who follows the second.

I have no quarrel with men who absent themselves from war, or combat in war, due to reasons of conscience clearly stated so long as they take their lumps in the public arena. That is crucial, for an individual conscience is worthy of respect only to the extent it's honestly directed at the right ordering of society. The acid test of that direction is a man's willingness to suffer at the hands of the community whose right ordering he supposedly desires. Christ took that test, and passed it, not least because He wanted to show us how necessary and expensive a conscience can be. So we should judge Eugene Debs an honorable man, whether or not we think he was right to oppose World War I, because Debs went to jail for opposing it.

Clinton, Gore, Bush -- they didn't take that test. From what I know of their lives, it seems they were oblivious to the whole matter or, at best, regarded it as a nuisance to be negotiated by dodges that would make a tax lawyer blush. And it is not right, it is not fitting, for men in government to have shaped their characters on the idea that service depends on the absence of risk and one's individual preferences. Bush and Gore didn't join merely to avoid serving in a war. They, like Kerry, also joined for the political eclat that comes with having served in wartime. Bush, Clinton and Gore wanted high office, they wanted to lead, but they wanted it cheap. These men didn't serve. They postured. Clinton, Gore and Bush are worse than other men, not because their souls blinked, but because they wanted to be chieftains without suffering for the people.

There are signs that the British are perilously close to the Gore/Bush mark. One of them is that bit of Clarence House nattering about the Prince's presence in combat creating "an additional risk to those he commands or himself." I don't know how many British soldiers want to "hold their manhoods cheap" but apparently someone at Clarence House thinks there are more than a few. Assuming the British won't degrade Prince Harry by a "photo op" tour of duty, he will be going where his countrymen are fighting, and dying, because the royal family must suffer for the people. That is a deep truth of human community and a law of leadership. Three of our last five presidential candidates neither learned nor obeyed it, although they didn't mind other men doing so in the Delta, Sarajevo, the Mog, and Fallujah.

So Democracy gets a field goal for Kerry. Put Bob Dole on the field and the score's 10-7 against monarchy. But the season of Dole's glory has been long over. Perhaps it will begin again, when the country can value the obedience and service of more recent veterans.

2006-04-23T22:30:00.000-04:00

Leadership Bowl Results: Monarchy 7, Democracy 3

Prince Harry: "If I am not allowed to join my unit in a war zone, I will hand in my uniform."

Prince Andrew: "The funny part is, that if this works, the missle will hit me!

George Bush: "I ain't goin' to no war and git shot et."

John Kerry: "I wonder if I can hit the White House from here."

Al Gore: "Move a little to the right . . . no, don't look at my bodyguard . . . that's it, now say Cheese!"

Bill Clinton: "I am writing this too in the hope that . . . [it] will help you understand more clearly how so many fine people have come to find themselves . . . loathing the military . . .."

2006-04-16T16:19:00.000-04:00

Now the Green Blade Rises, Alleluia!

Now the green blade rises
from the buried gain,
wheat that in dark earth
many days has lain;
love lives again,
that with the dead has been:
Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

In the grave they laid Him,
Love whom hate had slain,
thinking that never
He would wake again,
laid in the earth
like grain that sleeps unseen:
Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

Forth He came in quiet,
like the risen grain,
He that for three days
in the grave had lain,
quick from the dead
the risen Christ is seen:
Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

When our hearts are wintry,
grieving, or in pain,
Christ's touch can call us
back to life again,
fields of our hearts
that dead and bare have been:
Love is come again like wheat that springs up green.

2006-04-07T13:12:00.000-04:00

Justice of the Petard Sort

From today's headlines: Multimillion-selling author Dan Brown has won his court case against two authors who claim he copied their ideas. Well, of course he did. And that's only just.

Everyone knows that Brown was sued by Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, authors of the hack work Holy Blood, Holy Grail, who claimed Brown borrowed their ideas for his hack novel, The Davinci Code. Both hack jobs claim that Jesus didn't die and rise from the dead, that He shacked up with Mary Magdalene somewhere in Gaul (now France), and that the whole thing is being covered up by ominously-portrayed Catholic organizations like the Vatican, the Knights Templar and Opus Dei. If that's not funny enough, here's another . . . .

The main reason I think Baigent and Leigh lost is that they claimed to be telling the truth. In their wacked-out universe, Holy Blood, Holy Grail isn't an airport-rack potboiler, it's a monument to accuracy and diligent investigation. It's history. That's why they lost.

If Holy Blood, Holy Grail is history, that means The DaVinci Code is historical fiction. Baigent and Leigh don't have any more reason to sue Brown for plagiarism than Shelby Foote, who wrote a history of the War Between the States, would have had to sue Michael Shaara for his novel about Gettysburg.

Too bad Baigent and Leigh didn't admit Holy Blood, Holy Grail is really just a comic book without the pictures, a bad practical joke they played on everyone without a brain or the education required to use one. They might have scored some bucks. While an author like Brown can't plagiarize history, he can plagiarize a silly little made-up story. Pride goeth before a fall, or a goose-egg verdict, as the case may be.

2006-04-06T17:20:00.000-04:00

Scientific Debunking of Biblical Truth: It's All About Eve

Courtesy of Amy Pawlak's blog, I read this story about scientists questioning the miracle of Jesus walking on water. It wasn't miraculous, just "a brief blast of frigid air" that freakishly "descended over the lake" and created a miniature ice floe for our Lord to walk upon.

First, there's the odd mental route by which scientific speculation on freak weather conditions instantly and logically leads to challenging the concept of divine intervention in human events. I have no quarrel with scientists studying "spring ice," as I have no quarrel with them studying ways to make Exxon another billion dollars. But is there a reason why the study of this natural phenomenon must suddenly, in what one must call a rather whimsical fashion, focus on the more sensational question of whether Jesus actually walked on water?

There are reasons, but I'm not sure they flow from the pure springs of scientific probity. If I were a scientist at a state university, I'd prefer the general (and tax-paying) public to think of my work in terms of startling blows against superstition rather than Nietzsche's proverbial scholar, who spends his entire life studying the brain structure of a leech. It's easy to understand why Dr. Nof wants to get his work next to Scripture. Like Eve Harrington and Margot Channing, proximity to a famous subject gets one a lot closer to the center of attention.

Sure enough, "this isn't the first time the FSU researcher has offered scientific explanations of watery miracles. As a recognized expert in the field of oceanography and limnology -- the study of freshwater, saline and brackish environments -- Nof made waves worldwide in 1992 with his oceanographic perspective on the parting of the Red Sea." Science loves patterns, and this is beginning to seem very scientific indeed. Would you like another martini, Miss Channing?

But showing off is a motive unworthy of scientists, whose stock in trade is the image of disinterested objectivity, not "ring and run" silliness. And so Dr. Nof finds himself dug into the last refuge of the academic, the notion of ideas without consequences:

"As natural scientists, we simply explain that unique freezing processes probably happened in that region only a handful of times during the last 12,000 years," Nof said. "We leave to others the question of whether or not our research explains the biblical account."

Let's not mention that the biblical account has Jesus walking on water "tossed with waves." (Matthew 14:24). That's got to be pretty thick ice, to form on a storm-tossed lake. But if Scripture is just a bunch of fairy tales, the detail need not delay us from fetching Miss Channing a cigarette.

"As scientists, we simply explain the unlikelihood of a child with blond hair being born into a family with dark hair. We leave to the child's father the question of whether his son is a bastard." Only people with a profound lack of respect for the subject of an opinion would consider such a trite explanation worthwhile. That this attitude would prevail on such an immense and varied phenomenon like Christianity suggests some unexamined and unworthy bias.

"As historians, we simply explain the evidence suggesting that what people call "the Holocaust" might have been an exaggerated outbreak of cholera. We leave to others the question of whether or not our research explains Anne Frank's Diary." Some subjects are simply beyond this type of flippancy.

When I wasn't a Christian, I knew lots of people who relegated Christianity to a light and flimsy place in human thought. Eventually it struck me that they behaved like people who live with a terrifying secret. They were ready, even eager, to accept any explanation so long as it kept them from opening that dreaded door. I found that "anti-witness" very intriguing.

In the large spectrum of American life, I noticed, one could be anything, anything at all, so long as one didn't subscribe to Christianity. If one did that, one was simultaneously cast as unethical and a mindless prude, a gullible nitwit and the instrument of malevolent genius, an oblivious fantasist and a scheming opportunist. There was no pejorative opinion that couldn't be applied to Christianity, and the fact that Christianity could get hippies and Nazis on the same side of an argument suggested more about their absurdity than the alleged foolishness of the Cross.

I also noticed the odd power of debunking exposes to persuade me in the opposite direction. "So when they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid." John 6:19 (KJV). Dr. Nof posits something that happened "only a handful of times in the last 12,000 years" at the exact time Jesus decided to go out on the lake and meet the disciples. Not only that, but the freak ice managed to form in the exact spot lying between the shore where Jesus embarked and the point to which the disciples eventually rowed their boat. Further, the disciples had no idea where this ice floe ended -- they rowed to the spot before they saw Jesus. "Hey, guys, it's really stormy -- why don't we row toward the ice floe?"

Even the FSU publicist is forced to admit, "Such a perfect combination of conditions . . . might well seem miraculous." Until, that is, the press release tells us that Dr. Nof's research indicates our Lord was something of a one-man ice age:

In the last 120 centuries, Nof calculates the odds [of freak ice happening] as roughly once in 1,000 years. However, during the life of Jesus the prevailing climate may have favored the more frequent formation of springs ice -- about once in 30 to 160 years."

Those odds may qualify as boring to FSU researches, but they strike me as every bit as amazing as the longer figure.

Besides, why are we doing this in years? Dr. Nof doesn't say it takes years for freak ice to form. In fact, given his description of the event, I think it's safe to assume a six-hour window. Thirty years is 10,950 days. 10,950 days is 43,800 six-hour slots. A chance of one in 43,800? Throw in the timing of the ice to match the human choices involved (the disciples choosing to row, Jesus choosing to go out on the water) and the odds become considerably more than even the "long shot" figure of once per millennium.

Perhaps I didn't (and still don't) have enough theology to appreciate the concern, but arguments like that never persuaded me to think that Christianity was in danger of contradiction. If anything, they persuaded me in the opposite direction. When I encountered this kind of "debunking," I thought it would be tremendous if Someone was actually managing all that, and doing it rather effortlessly to boot: The records available to us don't mention anything about a "History Do-Over" button (although in fairness it should be noted that FSU's history department has yet to be heard from). If naturalistic speculations like these are true, the events they describe seem like an amazingly intricate, incredibly elegant dance of God, man, and creation, one set within a larger dance of human continuity that makes the event meaningful and significant today.

What are the odds of that "freak occurrence"? Before I believed, it seemed people who accepted the "completely random" perspective on the universe, as against the "intelligent design" perspective, eventually swallowed such an incredible number of "chances," and employed such a vast fund of "just-so stories" to shore it all up, as to make believing in the Virgin Birth seem like a humble exercise in common sense.

Some "naturalistic" explanations of Biblical miracles are just plain ridiculous. Others aren't. Assuming this is the latter kind, I don't mind if the world wants to go "hee hee" and give Dr. Nof the Sarah Siddons Award for Tweaking Christian Noses. You can't believe in God without thinking hard about things, and Dr. Nof's research is as good a place to start as any.

2006-03-28T13:25:00.000-05:00

Stephen and the Hand Family: Catholic Witness

From Mr. Hand's website via Against the Grain:

We will be informing the hospital that while we approve the removing of all artificial life support sometime after Jeremy's pneumonia has cleared, we cannot ever approve any interruption or removal of a feeding tube which provides for the ordinary maintenance of life (the unity of body and soul). Thank you so very much for the caring of so many who wrote to help us work through these issues. Especially to my sometime sparring partners on the war and some other issues who rushed to help showing what beautiful men and women they are, sisters and brothers in Christ. And especially thank you for your prayers which Jeremy and we still need. I'll try to move on with TCR now as time permits.

God bless them all. Let's offer some prayers for Jeremy's miraculous recovery.

Our Father, who art in Heaven
Hallowed be Thy name,
Thy kindgom come,
Thy will be done
on Earth as it is in Heaven
Give us this day our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us
and lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil. Amen. . . .

2006-03-25T11:05:00.000-05:00

My Computer is Down

The home computer I use for blogging is down. Two nights ago the monitor made a loud popping sound and stopped working. I think that means the video tube's burned out. I know it means I can't see anything. Right now there are two possible solutions: (1) Buy a brand-new computer and get divorced, or (2) something else. I think I'll go with something else. When I find out what it is, I'll let you know. Until then, there will be light or no blogging since I can't access the fifteen half-written blogs in my computer.

2006-03-21T11:35:00.000-05:00

Belated Blogburst for Terri

I was asked, along with many others who blogged about the judicial murder of Terri Schaivo, to remember her death with a blog post. Herewith my "salient" posts on the matter, which explain what her case meant in my view:

March 31, 2005: The Mind Reels

March 25, 2005: Due-Processing Terri's Death

March 23, 2005: Disgusting.

March 22, 2005: Brickbats from the Leftist Nationalizers

March 21, 2005: Lies, Damn Lies, and Federalism

April 18, 2005: More Blogging; for Now, Some Drudgery

October 27, 2003: A Note to Jack Cade: The First Thing We Do, Is Keep Lawyers In Perspective

2006-03-20T21:04:00.000-05:00

Prayer Request

Received via email:

Monday. The next 24-36 hours will be critical if my son, 28, is to avoid being designated "brain dead," or impaired which God forbid. Should he awake, even partially, it will remain to be seen what if any long term damage was done. Thank you for your prayers. He apparently vomited in his sleep, deep into the night after St. Patrick's day dinner with us and other visits with other friends Friday; it went into his lungs, causing a heart attack and depriving his brain of oxygen, causing also pneumonia, kidney failure, etc. His state was not discovered until the next day at 1 PM by my daughter who had stayed over at his apartment for the night. Previously she thought he was just sleeping. When she finally tried to stir him his lips were blue. His kidneys have rebounded somewhat but no improvement yet in the "higher functions of the brain" affecting coma. The question is how long his brain was deprived of oxygen. Needless to say our hearts are broken. He had just returned most sincerely to the Church, and our hearts were warmed Friday when he was the one who asked us to make sure we prayed together before St. Patrick's day supper. Is it possible he had too much alcohol after he left here? Yes. With his other friends we do not know. He only had a Guinness when with us. Some prescription drugs were found in his system. He was not depressed, but had been treated for an anxiety disorder. Quite to the contrary of depression; he spoke in joy about his new girlfriend and his future at work (he is an engineer). ---Stephen Hand

2006-03-20T12:28:00.000-05:00

The French: C'est Stupide

Here's a story about French youths protesting new laws that would make it easier to hire and fire young workers. "Slave labour by the back door!" they cry, "If you take away our security, you'll pay!" On the Damoclean sword of at-will employment, one student adds, "You can't live with a knife at your throat."

And here's a story about the eevil United States, a country where at-will employment terrorism has run amok, resulting in almost full employment. "We are approaching full employment and some employers are already dreaming up perks to attract the best talent," say tyrants.

It's true I don't like a lot of things about American-style economics. But one of the good things that contribute to the greatness of American life is this iron rule -- if you don't invest yourself in what you're good at, your life and career quickly deteriorate into a series of short, sharp shocks.

So here's a note to the French: Stop being so frightened of the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. There was a time when you guys conquered Europe. There was a time (hell, more than one) when y'all were the intellectual leaders of the world. "If you take away our security, you'll pay," was not the motto of France in those days.

2006-03-19T01:16:00.000-05:00

Helpful Suggestions for Police Officers

With full recognition that there's another side to this story, I offer these tips to police about how to be obnoxious, pompous, and almost guaranteed to be taken to court on a ticket, treated to a screaming fit, or physically attacked by a stopped driver. These techniques were observed first-hand by me while serving as a police offier, and also gleaned from police reports as an attorney:

-- Use patronizing terms like, "Buddy" or "Hon" when speaking to the subject.

-- Deliver pompous and overblown lectures to the effect that anyone who does 53 in a 45 on a long stretch of speed-trap tarmac is a disgusting specimen of pseudo-parent who doesn't deserve to raise children.

-- Follow the subject's car for two to three miles and then hit him with the lights and sirens when he turns into his own driveway.

-- It's good officer safety to put your hand on or near the butt of your firearm when approaching a stopped car. It's ridiculous and offensive to keep it there through the whole stop without cause. If you can't tell whether you're in a threatening environment while you're going through all the motions of contacting the driver, returning to your cruiser to check license and registration with Dispatch, returning to the car, talking to the driver again, writing him a ticket, and then having him sign for the ticket, well, you probably ought'nt to have a gun in the first place.

-- Deal with a driver's raised or exasperated voice by ostentatiously calling for "backup" for the sole and express purpose, not of serving your legitimate concerns for safety, but of intimidating the driver into being "nice."

-- Make the driver get out of his car. Tell him you're giving him a warning, not a ticket. Then tell him you don't think he's being appreciative enough, and maybe he hasn't learned his lesson.

-- When there's no manhunt or amber alert, act like you're doing a scene from Hotel Rwanda. Shine your maglite right in the faces of everyone in the car. Ask for everyone's ID, including the kids.

-- Make the driver get out of his car. Notice the square object in his shirt pocket. Demand to see it "for officer safety." Then take a couple of cigarettes out of the pack of Marlboros and tell the driver you're checking for marijuana.

-- Do everything you can to prolong and distract your contact from its actual purpose. Respond to every frown, every rolling-of-the-eyes, and instance of pique with admonishments to respect law enforcement, pay attention, shut up ("backtalk" and "sass" are particularly good words to use), and/or calm down.

-- Be sure to invade the driver's personal space when speaking to him. Words delivered from a distance of eight inches in a low, menacing tone of voice will be sure to impress upon the driver not only the need to use his turn signal, but your own power and authority.

If you'll follow these tactics you'll be guaranteed to make more arrests, have more fights, and show up in court on your off-duty time than any other officer you serve with.

2006-03-11T10:08:00.000-05:00

Check It Out

I've posted more in the past three days than I have in the past three months.

The Dossier's been noticed by the National Catholic Register.

It's the new template (thanks Chris), including the Snarky Dog. I like the Snarky Dog. Looking at him, you just know he's the mastermind of the operation. (If you think I'm hallucinating, scroll down and look for yourself.)

2006-03-10T22:55:00.000-05:00

The Guardian Scratches Its Head and Sighs,
"God: Can't Live With Him, Can't Live Without Him!"

Courtesy of The Curt Jester I read a recent editorial in the Guardian that brought to mind an earlier post in this blog about the same newspaper, and the two articles coalesced into proof of Mark Shea's dictum that the history of secularism can be written in two volumes titled, "What Could It Hurt?" and "How Were We Supposed to Know!" Click on the links to the Guardian's two articles and you'll see what I mean.

Volume I, the Guardian, 2004: What Could It Hurt? Wherein our intrepid paper worries that backwards Italy might kowtow to "the Catholic church's stance that a woman's mission is to stay at home and breed."

Volume II, the Guardian 2006: How Were We Supposed to Know! In this installment, our incisive paper publishes an editorial bemoaning Britain's "falling birthrate," and praising women who "stumble towards their own private insights into the importance of mothering - to which they cling in the face of not just zero endorsement from wider society but active contempt."

This is what one might call an "irony-rich environment," folks.

Ms. Bunting's Guardian editorial is cogent, intelligent, timely, and just the thing the West needs to hear. It's also a mirror image of the Vatican "policies" denounced by the Guardian's report in 2004.

And yet, the Guardian's 2004 editorial claims that Catholicism demeans women by preaching their enslavement as stay-at-home "breeders."

So, if one follows the Vatican's "policies," and essays respect and awe of motherhood one is demeaning women as "breeders." On the other hand, if one follows Ms. Bunting's advice and essays respect and awe of motherhood, one is doing something very positive for women and society.

I think the key is found in the fact that Ms. Bunting didn't say a word about God, Christ, or Catholicism in her editorial. If she had done so, the Guardian's editors would have immediately realized that she was out to oppress women into being "stay-at-home breeders."

Ms. Bunting: "In other words, the self we are encouraged to develop through much of our education system and early adulthood is of no use whatsoever to a new parent. What use is that sassy, independent, self-assertive, knowing-what-you-want-and-how-to-get-it type when you fast forward five years to the emotional labour of helping a child develop self confidence? Once there's a baby in the cot, you need steadiness, loyalty, endurance, patience, sensitivity and even self-denial - all the characteristics that you've spent the previous decade trashing as dull or, even worse, for losers. Forget trying to work out your own feelings - you'll be too busy trying to work out those of your children; ditto self-confidence and self-expression."

The Vatican: "Among the fundamental values linked to women's actual lives is what has been called a ‘capacity for the other.' Although a certain type of feminist rhetoric makes demands ‘for ourselves,' women preserve the deep intuition of the goodness in their lives of those actions which elicit life, and contribute to the growth and protection of the other. . . . This intuition is linked to women's physical capacity to give life. Whether lived out or remaining potential, this capacity is a reality that structures the female personality in a profound way. It allows her to acquire maturity very quickly, and gives a sense of the seriousness of life and of its responsibilities. A sense and a respect for what is concrete develop in her, opposed to abstractions which are so often fatal for the existence of individuals and society. It is women, in the end, who even in very desperate situations, as attested by history past and present, possess a singular capacity to persevere in adversity, to keep life going even in extreme situations, to hold tenaciously to the future, and finally to remember with tears the value of every human life."

Can't you see the vast difference between these points? Ms. Bunting is talking about a certain and false feminist worldview that hinders or prohibits women from living their ‘capacity for the other.' She's talking about motherhood being the litmus test that separates economic and sociological abstractions and life-as-it-is-actually-lived. The Vatican, on the other hand, just hates women. It's there for anyone with eyes to see. Ms. Bunting is offering a respectable inquiry into the follies of Western secular materialism. The Vatican hates women.

In fact, just don't even bother with the comparison and memorize this: THE VATICAN HATES WOMEN. That's why anything the Vatican says about women mentions God -- referring to "God" is just a trick to make women into "breeders." It's why the same things said without reference to God are responsible, thoughtful critiques of how we live and worthy to publish in the Guardian.

If the Vatican would just leave God out of it, we could explore all these issues reasonably, free from the dogmatic blinkers (The Vatican Hates Women) that keep us from honestly and dispassionately (The Vatican Hates Women) examining (The Vatican Hates Women) modern (The Vatican Hates Women) problems (The Vatican Hates Women).

Heck, we might actually decide to respect motherhood, so long as we don't have to kowtow to a bunch of eunuchs and their weird God-talk. Of course, it would help if we kept a few of those women-hating eunuchs around to tell us how not to be women-hating eunuchs. But that's God for you. Can't live with Him. Can't live without Him.

Postscript: Nothing in the above should be read as a characterization of Ms. Bunting's opinions about religion in general, or Catholicism in particular. It's the juxtaposition of viewpoints that tells the tale here, not anything Ms. Bunting has said about faith, God, or Rome. Men who have abandoned or lost God will accept any good thing so long as they remain free to deny that it comes from His hands. What could it hurt? How were we supposed to know!

2006-03-10T17:01:00.000-05:00

Short Note on Tom Monaghan's "Theocracity"

I'm behind the curve on Tom Monaghan's plan to establish a Catholic city in Florida. Others have already said most of what there is to say about it, such as Mark Shea, Dom Bettinelli, Erik Keilholtz and the Curt Jester. The media's hateful bias against the project has also been commented on by the above, and by Newsbusters. I'm sorry that I've left some people out, but at this point it should be asked why, after all this exhaustive commentary, I'm going to blog about it.

Because, as I've had occasion to say before, I'm a blowhard with a blog. I get to blog about anything I want, even if it's a dead horse covered in strike marks from a thousand Louisville Sluggers.

Is it right for Catholics to segregate themselves in theologically-gated communities? Erik and Jeff think it's not. I'm not so sure. As Mark points out, the urge to found distinct communities of like-minded individuals is a deep part of American culture, and one that doesn't seem to have done America much harm. I wouldn't like to live there, primarily because only time will tell if this place can (or is permitted to) exist as something besides a function of Tom Monaghan's enthusiasm. I wouldn't like to live there, secondarily because I'd be wondering if my "virtue" was merely fear of ostracism, and because I like to operate "outside the green zone" so to speak, dealing with all the heretics, goofballs, nuts, and wicked people. What does that say about me? I think the only sure thing that can be said is that I'm not cut out for life in a religious community; the rest of the judgment only comes in the form of my conscience and my awareness of what God wants from me. Does He want Abraham leading his rag-tag band through Egypt, or does He want David ruling a godly community? Both options are possible; one man's retreat from responsibility is another man's Cluny.

That brings up something else interesting about some Catholics' reactions to the project. (Having mentioned their opposition, I hasten to say this does not apply to the Curt Jester or Erik). Some of it sounds a lot like Protestant criticism of monastic life -- that it's "sheltered," "decadent," and pretends to a purity that, in reality, is just the result of fear at the prospect of doing God's work in the world, etc.[1] I don't say any of the Catholics who make such arguments are "not really" Catholic, only that they might be failing to appreciate the Church's tacit dictum that one should pursue holiness "by all means necessary." If that means wandering through the Hittites and Egyptians of modern America, or the relative (and it is, after all, relative) seclusion of "theocracity," so be it. The real test of "theocracity" will be its residents' ability to appreciate that fact.

If Ave Maria residents regard themselves as a part, albeit a unique one, of the Church's vast tapestry of social life, and can authentically pursue and articulate that identity beyond the life of Tom Monaghan, then Ave Maria will be proved a Heaven-sent opportunity for sanctity and sanity. On the other hand, if residents come to regard their project as a superior example of Catholic life, perhaps even (God forbid it) as a Church within a Church, then Ave Maria will be a failure.

So it seems to me the people involved are undertaking an enormous, heart-wrenching, and difficult task. They are trying -- at least if they're doing it right -- to prove how abnormal Catholic life really is, when compared to the world's standards. If they begin cheering at having crossed the finish line now, as though they had said "goodbye to all that" ("that," of course, being secularism, sin, and their discontents) that will be a very bad sign indeed.

**************************************************
[1] This is not entirely the Protestant view. Anglicans, Episcopalians and Lutherans have traditions of celibate religious communities (primarily in Europe). But this is, in the main, the reaction most Protestants have to monastic religious life.

2006-03-09T22:55:00.000-05:00

Notes on Anti-Semitism

Reading the blogs recently, I came across a comment-box conversation that raised an old perspective on anti-Semitism, one which holds that the term is rightly used only as to "racial" characteristics and should not be confused with "proper" arguments against the Jewish religion, culture, or (by extension) the State of Israel. I say "by extension" because this perspective arose prior to the creation of modern Israel. I've never bought into that distinction, although I considered it rather closely when I was writing my review of Hitler's Pope. The review wasn't the place to go into that, but now that I have a blog, I can set out my opinions about this nice and false distinction.

An example of what I'm writing about can be found in the 1930s German Catholic publication, Lexikon fur Theologie und Kirche, discussed by Fr. Martin Rhonheimer in his useful (but deeply-flawed) article, "The Holocaust: What Was Not Said":

In the first volume of the same lexicon, published in 1930, the well-known article on "Anti-Semitism" by the German Jesuit Gustav Gundlach had drawn a distinction between a volkisch anti-Semitism promoted for strictly racist motives (which was to be rejected), and an anti-Semitism promoted for general political, economic, and cultural reasons that Christians might accept. As examples of the latter Gundlach cited two Austrian politicians, Karl Lueger and Georg von Schoenerer, prominent and outspoken anti-Semites who had strongly influenced Hitler during his years in Vienna. It is noteworthy that in the same article Gundlach rejected as unjust ‘laws which single out Jews simply because they are Jews,' while not hesitating to call ‘global plutocracy and Bolshevism' forces that manifest ‘dark aspects of the Jewish soul expelled from its homeland' and which are ‘destructive of human society.'[1]

The moral flaw in this supposedly "proper" definition of anti-Semitism should be apparent, but unfortunately it tends to escape notice because it immediately provokes historical and factual arguments (I use the terms only as adjectives indicating the subject, not nouns indicating the quality, of these arguments) about such topics as the number of Jews at the New York Stock Exchange or the Comintern, or whether Lenin's maternal grandfather was a Jew and what, if anything, all that is supposed to tell us about Jews, Capitalism, and Bolshevism.

The moral flaw in Father Gundlach's closely-parsed definition of anti-Semitism isn't revealed by arguing about specific pieces of information. It's revealed by comparing it to Nazism, Communism, and other false philosophies that rely on determinism. Fr. Gundlach uses determinism to deny the human dignity of Jews ab initio and, if his argument is followed through, the dignity of everyone else too. From the Catechism:

God created man a rational being, conferring on him the dignity of a person who can initiate and control his own actions. "God willed that man should be 'left in the hand of his own counsel,' so that he might of his own accord seek his Creator and freely attain his full and blessed perfection by cleaving to him." Man is rational and therefore like God; he is created with free will and is master over his acts. Freedom is the power, rooted in reason and will, to act or not to act, to do this or that, and so to perform deliberate actions on one's own responsibility. By free will one shapes one's own life. Human freedom is a force for growth and maturity in truth and goodness; it attains its perfection when directed toward God, our beatitude.[2]

Perspectives on ideas, culture, or politics which locate their evils (real or supposed) in something other than the Church's teaching on sin (grave matter, knowledge of God's law, and deliberate assent) deny the free will and hope of beatitude that are at the core of human existence. "Global plutocracy and Bolshevism" may indeed witness to "dark aspects of the soul," but, to the extent such things may be said, they should be said about our common heritage of a fallen nature, and not about some allegedly-unique character of Jews, Englishmen . . .

. . . or Germans. One wonders what Fr. Gundlach might reply to arguments that while laws and social conventions which single out Germans simply because of their blood are unjust, law and custom may still guard us all against the "dark aspects" of the German soul which are destructive of human society. He would probably point out that to speak of a "German soul" in any ontologically-distinct sense flirts with denying not only the Church's teaching that each man has his own soul which lives as grace and will allow, but also the Church's teaching that humanity is circumscribed by two Adams:

St. Paul tells us that the human race takes its origin from two men: Adam and Christ. . . The first man, Adam, he says, became a living soul, the last Adam a life-giving spirit. The first Adam was made by the last Adam, from whom he also received his soul, to give him life. . . The second Adam stamped his image on the first Adam when he created him. That is why he took on himself the role and the name of the first Adam, in order that he might not lose what he had made in his own image. The first Adam, the last Adam: the first had a beginning, the last knows no end. The last Adam is indeed the first; as he himself says: ‘I am the first and the last.'[3]

If the Germans have a special sort of defect in their souls, they do not descend from Adam as other men do. So with the Jews, and if that is true for the Jews, then what are we to make of our Lord's having a "Jewish nature" that does not descend from Adam as our own natures do? "For verily he took not on him the nature of angels; but he took on him the seed of Abraham." Hebrews 2:16 (KJV).

The distintion between "racial" anti-Semitism and "cultural/religious/political anti-Judaism" is false because they share a determinist view of Jewish nature (the "the Jewish race," the "Jewish soul") that compels both viewpoints to the same conclusion. What does it matter whether the malice of "the Jews" results from their genetics or their souls, so long as either cause compels "the Jews" to act against human society?

This is why Jew-hating Christians labor diligently to filter the Gospel, to remove from Jesus what would otherwise be the ‘stain' of His ‘Jewishness.' The "racial anti-Semites" try to remove Him from "the seed of Abraham" with crackpot theories about His lineage. The "cultural anti-Judaism" bunch tries it by portraying Jesus as a divine messenger who came to repudiate Judaism and the Jews, and not as the Lord of Moses who came to fulfill the Law. Both branches of this sick tree come from the same root, the idea that the Jews are not -- for whatever cause -- fully human.

I suspect that animus is behind Fr. Gundlach's prevaricating phrase about the "Jewish soul expelled from its homeland." What does he mean to suggest? He means, I think, to suggest that the true Jewish "homeland" is not the soil of Israel but the favor of God and that, having repudiated "its" homeland, the "Jewish soul" has been outraged into a "dark" hatred of human society. He is, therefore, firmly in the camp of "cultural anti-Judaism" and yet ends up making essentially the same arguments the Nazis made about Jews being a culture-destroying race.

Fr. Gundlach and Christians who think as he did would no doubt hasten to explain that the "darkness" in the "Jewish soul" can be healed by accepting Jesus as the Messiah. That doesn't make their views more amiable. If anything, it makes them more perverse. For they have tacitly defined Christianity as a faith that regards unconverted Jews as something less than human. If anything, the paradigm runs the other way: It was our Lord who called us gentiles "dogs." Mark 7:27 (KJV). For that we were, living without the divine favor represented by the Law of Moses. It was the fulfillment of the Law by the most holy "seed of Abraham," and not His mythical expulsion of Jews from the human family, that gained us a full place in the human story. It is ironic when the "dogs" bite their elder brothers, conditioning Jews' humanity on their acceptance of Jew-hating doctrines, and then express shock and anger when Jews equate evangelism with genocide.

But what else may we call a Christian witness that implicitly conditions humanity itself on adherence to credal distinctives? What should we call it? We should call it by its proper name -- the "teaching of contempt."

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[1] Fr. Martin Rhonheimer, "The Holocaust: What Was Not Said," First Things, November, 2003. The full text of Fr. Rhonheimer's article can be found here. My (unfinished) critique of the article can be found here.

[2] Catechism of the Catholic Church, Pp. 1730-31. The relevant text can be found here.

[3] Catechism of the Catholic Church, P. 360 (quoting St. Peter Chrysologus (d. 450 A.D.), Sermo 117: PL 52,520-521). The relevant text can be found here.

2006-03-09T16:59:00.000-05:00

Have a Nice Day, Peasant

Via Mark Shea we read about this Texas program to compliment good drivers. Texas police are pulling over drivers to praise their good driving habits:

Deputy Taylor says they're not trying to scare anyone. Deputies will simply wave to good drivers and politely ask them to pull over to the side.

"What I'm trying to focus on, and the only thing I'm trying to focus on, is rewarding someone for good driving. There are going to be some people who are not going to like it because the only experience they have with law enforcement is negative," Taylor said.

What a bunch of baloney. First off, the story itself talks about flashing lights and driver fear of being given a ticket. The police are "politely asking" good drivers to pull over just as they "politely ask" bank robbers and drunks to pull over. But that's not the real problem.

If the Travis County Sheriff wants to compliment good drivers, why not put up a website or publish a congratulatory advertisement in the local paper? Why not have officers take down license plate numbers and send the owners a complimentary letter enclosing free tickets? Because those things won't let the Travis County Sheriff's Department do what it's really out there to do -- shred the Constitution, if only just a little bit of it.

What this department is doing is conducting spot-searches of vehicles and their occupants under the guise of a "traffic safety program." Ordinarily, for the police to detain individuals for any length of time, police must have a "reasonable and articulable suspicion" that the individual is involved in a violation of the law. Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968). (There are exceptions -- wrong ones, I think -- for random roadblocks which sieze everyone's car in an announced and carefully-regulated manner, but that's not happening here). Under this "howdy good driver" program, the police get to pull people over for doing the right thing -- which means for no reason whatsoever.

While handing out free sports tickets, of course, the deputies get to scan the inside of the car. They get to observe the occupants and see if they're acting "nervous" or "furtively" putting things under the seat. (Just this morning I "furtively" put my cell phone under the drivers' seat because my door locks stopped working and I didn't want my phone snitched). Maybe they'll ask for drivers' licenses so they can record who they spoke to, and run a warrant check or two. And anything "suspicious" they find instantly expands their power to search and detain.

Upon finding something untoward, the officers can order (or "politely ask") the occupants to get out of the car and stand on the side of the road. They can pat down the occupants for "officer safety." They can look inside the passenger compartment to see if there are weapons or trussed-up bank presidents. And again, anything "suspicious" they find instantly expands their power to search and detain.

This is "have a nice day" tyranny, and it bothers me. The usual defense for conduct like this boils down to saying that the guilty have nothing to hide. It's not about whether the guilty have anything to hide. It's about whether our country is governed by laws that restrict power. If it is, then the guilty can hide anything they damn well want to hide until the law lets the police uncover it. If it's not, then look foward to the police entering your house without a warrant in order to compliment you on the fact that they didn't find any marijuana in your dresser drawers.

2006-03-09T13:21:00.000-05:00

Appropos of a Controversy

St. Blog's is buzzing with controversy about Catholics being ordered to leave the Diocese of Orange, California because they want to "kneel before Jesus."

It just so happens that, both of us being well ahead of the curve, Shawn McElhinney of Rerum Novarum and myself conducted an excruciatingly extremely detailed investigation of this very question back in 2003. The table of contents can be found here. From that conversation, a few facts can be drawn that bear on the appreciation of what Michael Liccione calls "the new schism.

Fact One: It is within the power of the local ordinary to require congregants to stand after the Agnus Dei: The Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani a/k/a the GIRM, which is the manual for Mass in the United States, says, "[t]he faithful kneel after the Agnus Dei unless the Diocesan Bishop determines otherwise." GIRM § 43. So, if the Diocesan Bishop determines otherwise, then nobody kneels. Period. My posts in the "Great Kneeling Debate" are largely dedicated to explaining why, in my simple opinion, the Diocesan Bishop ought not to require this silly liturgical innovation. (Secondarily they also contain my opinion that my own Bishop had not, by virtue of an op-ed piece in the Diocesan paper, actually made the determination required by GIRM § 43). But if the commanding general of your division can't order you to do something silly, one of you isn't in the army anymore. Catholics who insist on kneeling despite a Bishop's directive under GIRM § 43 are disoyebing a lawful directive from their Bishop.

Fact Two: There's a lot of talk about how Rome has "stepped in" and allowed Catholics to ignore their Bishops and kneel during the Agnus Dei. Now it may be that some directive has come down since 2003 which annuls the GIRM's grant of authority to the Bishop to determine this liturgical question, but if there is none of the people who are claiming willy-nilly that the Vatican says Catholics can ignore their Bishops are quoting or referring to it. I wish Rome had, in fact, done this, but I don't think Rome has.

What Rome has said is that Catholics are not forbidden to kneel while receiving communion or after receiving communion. Rome issued these decisions back in 2003/2004 because a number of interested authorities were trying what amounted to a "spirit of Vatican II end run" around the venerable practice of kneeling and claim that Catholics were no longer allowed to kneel at those times.

Now I can't tell from the stories which started this ruckus (which can be found here and here) exactly what offending practice these allegedly "traditional" Catholics are engaging in. Are they kneeling to receive communion, which is allowed? Are they kneeling in private prayer after receiving communion, which is also allowed? Or are they insisting on kneeling after the Agnus Dei in direct violation of a Bishop's decision on the matter, which is most definitely not allowed?

A letter from the parish bulletin quoted by one of the stories says: "But if you intentionally oppose these liturgical norms, particularly by not standing after the "Lamb of God" . . . ." So it seems it's the third issue that's hit the mark, and on this third issue -- standing or kneeling after the Agnus Dei -- the "traditional" Catholics are in the wrong.

In this connection it's interesting to examine the source one of these blogs uses to "prove" that the Vatican has overruled the Bishop about standing after the Agnus Dei. It is a column from EWTN that quotes a 2003 opinion of the Congregation for Divine Worship and the Discipline of the Sacraments. Such an exchange is called a "Dubium," which basically means that the Congregation is responding to a question, or an uncertainty, put to it about a matter within its purview. Here is the dubium and the response of the Roman Congregation:

In many places, the faithful are accustomed to kneeling or sitting in personal prayer upon returning to their places after having individually received Holy Communion during Mass. Is it the intention of the Missale Romanum, editio typica tertia, to forbid this practice?

Responsum: Negative, et ad mentem. The mens is that the prescription of the Institutio Generalis Missalis Romani, no. 43, is intended, on one hand, to ensure within broad limits a certain uniformity of posture within the congregation for the various parts of the celebration of the Holy Mass, and on the other, to not regulate posture rigidly in such a way that those who wish to kneel or sit would no longer be free.

Note that what is being asked is not whether the faithful may kneel or sit after the Agnus Dei. The question being ruled on is whether they may kneel or sit "upon returning to their places after having individually received Holy Communion." That has nothing to do with kneeling after the Agnus Dei; if it did, Catholics would be equally justified in sitting after the Agnus Dei and all the way through communion. That's not any "traditional" Catholicism with which I'm familiar, and the fact that this directive is being hastily and overzealously claimed as Rome's last word overruling the Bishop (and thereby writing § 43 out of the GIRM) gives me pause before concluding that anybody is being punished for fidelity to Holy Mother Church.

That having been said, I can partially agree with Mr. Liccione that this is a stupid issue altogether, and that Bishops who spend fifty or seventy seconds on it have lost their sense of priorities. But the Bishop's letter raises other issues which aren't trivial:

- Personal attack and false allegations against Bishop Brown
- False allegations against the American Bishops
- Personal attack and false allegations against Fr. Martin Tran
- False accusations/ condemnations against various ministries of the Diocese of Orange as heresy, supporting abortion and contraception.

Are these charges true? On the one hand, I'm tempted to say they're not, since the Bishop's unilateral and furtive letter-writing campaign seems anxious to avoid a public examination of them. On the other hand, some arguments on behalf of these "traditional" Catholics seem equally anxious to ignore specifics and rush into hysterical denunciations of a Bishop for supposedly decreeing that "kneeling before Jesus" is a "mortal sin." The only thing that's clear to me is that tempers and vanity are running so high that nobody's yet interested in authentic dialogue about what's happening.

And that, as somebody should remind our pastors, is how reformations happen. It's their job to avoid these things, or handle them sensibly when the arise. But many of our Bishops have a habit of "getting tough" and "laying down the law" only with those Catholics who are already most likely to do whatever the Bishops want. Had these traditional Catholics been wearing rainbow sashes, there would no doubt be "dialogue" and "pastoral outreach" about "concerns" rather than terse letters inviting them to be Catholics in somebody else's diocese. That's part of the picture here, too.

Faithful Catholics are becoming tired of getting treated like villains while their openly-heterodox, thrice-divorced-never-annulled, contracepting, same-sex-marriage-ing, and otherwise-indifferent brethren are treated to open arms, kid gloves and kind words. It almost seems, at times, that orthodoxy and pious affection for time-honored forms of devotion are the two things guaranteed to provoke suspicion and even enmity from our pastors. It almost seems that our pastors, like parents whose overindulgence eventually becomes an excuse for sloth and low standards, expect heterodoxy and promiscuous indifference to the spiritual life in the Church and become nervous and threatened whenever the laity tries, however bumblingly and stupidly, not only to live the way the Church tells them to live, but to expect others to do so as well.

More later, as time permits . . . . .

2006-03-08T12:28:00.000-05:00

Something Cool Has Happened

The Dossier has a new look, thanks to Christopher Blosser of Against the Grain / Ratzinger Fan Club fame. I think Chris has done a bang-up job designing his and other websites such as Musings of a Pertinacious Papist and Ad Limina Apostolorum to name only two.

So, having received a lot of complaints and gripes that my site won't be read in anything but Internet Explorer, and that it doesn't have a "feed," and getting really tired of telling people I don't know the difference between Mozilla and a sequel starring Matthew Broderick, I asked Christopher if he could do something.

I think he did great. What do y'all think? Sound off in the comments box and let me know.

2006-03-06T21:53:00.000-05:00

Something Cool is Coming

Something cool is about to happen to The Dossier.

2006-03-03T15:07:00.000-05:00

Good Question

Disputations has a good question to ask at the beginning of Lent: "Do you think of yourself primarily as a disciple of Christ, or as a Catholic? As a follower of a Person, or as a member of an institution?" Please go over there and read the whole thing. (Note to the Wary: It's not "We are Church" stuff nor a prescription for ecclesiastical anarchy. In fact, its the exact opposite of those things).

2006-03-02T22:02:00.000-05:00

This Just In

WASHINGTON, MAR 2, 2006 (not.Zenit.org) -- Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg falls asleep during oral arguments on the Texas redistricting case. When questioned later, Ginsburg expressed her consternation at having fallen asleep: "I don't understand it," she said, "I drank a nice cup of tea at lunch, and suddenly I felt this overpowering need to be one with the universe, to define my own concept of existence . . . . as a desk blotter."

Legal experts were astounded at the occurrence and pondered its implications for American law. "We're not sure whether Justice Ginsburg was a functional human being during those fifteen minutes," said Judge George Greer of Lebunswertes Lebens Law School. "She didn't move. She didn't talk. Sure, she looked like someone who might have a form of consciousness, but for all anyone could tell, she was in a persistent vegetative state."

Asked if he thought Associate Justices David Souter and Samuel Alito, who sit on either side of Ginsburg in the historic courtroom, should have nuged Ginsburg back into consciousness, Professor Greer demurred. "It depends," he said, "on whether she had ever expressed a desire not to be woken up. If she had, it would be cruel to have revived her."

More on this story as it develops . . .

2006-03-02T12:51:00.000-05:00

Miscellaneous Notes

***********

Memo to Nihil Obstat:

Hey, buddy -- you're the one who knows how to spell "Hooters."

***********

We took our daughter to tour a preschool-cum-speech-therapy program. She understands everything. In fact she was acing the intelligence tests for children 2 - 3 years older than she was. But she has problems speaking. Consonants are tough, especially the beginning ones. Part of that's from having been raised in a government orphanage, and the other part is from having been raised in a government orphanage where everyone spoke Chinese. Chinese isn't big on consonants. That makes it a mellifluous language, BuT oNe THaT DoeSN'T TRaNSiTioN To ENGLiSH, WHeRe eVeRY oTHeR SouND iS a CoNSoNaNT. Sometimes I think conversational Chinese could be achieved by singing the right combination of lines from "Louie Louie" and "The Name Game."

But the main reason our girl's having difficulty is probably the fact that her father is a dork. When she was two, I asked her if she favored scrambled or fried eggs. I'm not kidding, "Sweety, do you favor scrambled or fried eggs?"

"His assessments," the teacher who evaluated my student-teaching stint at a local High School wrote, "are a bit over the heads of the students." Yep. Or should I say, "How perspicacious of him?"

As my wife and I toured the preschool classroom, looking at the bright decorations and indestructible furniture, we came to the corner where the small class had a morning pow-wow. The teacher told us they sat in a circle and talked about letters, names, and lots of other things.

"And this is the purple egg," she said while handing me an eponymously-violet plastic easter egg. "Each child holds it in turn to talk, and when they're talking, no one can interrupt."

"Ah," I said, "I guess you use a plastic egg because a conch shell might break?"

Sure, guy. That's what the teacher needs -- to think your house looks like a boat-shaped island where kids named Piggy and Ralph chase each other with pointy sticks. Or to think that you think her classroom resembles said island. Or to think you're nuts. Or to think all three.

If I don't watch it, my daughter's biggest problem in life is going to be the consonants that spell GeeKY FaTHeR.

***********

Jesus refers to his followers as "little children." John 13:33 (KJV). "And said, Verily I say unto you, Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 18:3 (KJV). "Suffer little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven." Matthew 19:14 (KJV). John and Paul, speaking in persona Christi, say it too. "My little children, of whom I travail in birth again until Christ be formed in you, I desire to be present with you now . . . " Galatians 4:19-20 (KJV). "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." 1 John 2:1 (KJV). Little children. Little children of God the Father.

I think about my daughter eating spaghetti. She likes spaghetti. She doesn't like it to be cut up, she wants to twirl it around her fork like I do. But her hands are too small and the fork is too heavy. So usually she ends up eating it with her hands. She likes to do this while standing on the bench in our kitchen alcove. That makes it easier to grasp a strand of pericatelli, hold it above her head, and lower it into her mouth. At the end of dinner, our daughter has turned into a giant ball of pasta sauce with a big smile.

Little children of God the Father. We're created to live in a universe where things are too complicated, the fork is too heavy, but we still have to live and we're still delighted by good things even if we're not entirely read to enjoy them as they can be enjoyed. I wonder if God sees His children as balls of pasta sauce with big smiles and is pleased because He knows they're doing the best they can with what they have and that they'll soon grow and learn and get even better at living the life He's given them. I think so. Little children of God the Father.

Of course there are times when our girl's just bad. She has this awful habit of swiping at me or her mommy when she's angry, half-hitting, half-scratching us. And she's going to have anger to deal with when she gets to the age of reason. She can throw terrible, disproportionate fits when she doesn't get her way. She's the sort who gets angry, and then gets angry about having to be angry, and then gets angry about that, until there's a thunderhead at 25,000 feet and Katy, bar the door. We'll have a time out, which won't work because she won't stay in one place or stop yelling. She'll push and swipe when we try and stay with her. So we when the tantrums get really, really bad we have a super time out in her bedroom or the bathroom. I close the door behind us, and we sit together while I read The Wanderer until she's done yelling and screaming.[*****]

By then, she's usually crying, frightened the way strong emotions will frighten someone, especially a three year old to whom even dandelions are strange and unexpected things. She regrets the bad time, and wants to be held, for everything to be all right again. That's the moment of perfect joy, tainted only by my anxious desire that her sorrow and her fear vanish forever, for us to get on with the business of being happy. So she says "sowwy," and we hug and go out to play. Soon she's laughing again, and all's right with the world, not least because I have seen how God regards me when I'm sorry for disobeying Him. Little children. Little children of God the Father.

Let's all keep trying, and let's all go to confession. It's Lent. Lent's a season of trying, a time of confession. "And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." 1 John 2:1 (KJV). Little children. Little children of God the Father.

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[**] If anybody's got a better idea, I'm all ears.

2006-02-28T09:59:00.000-05:00

Roe Nation

From one day in America:

Nation Aborts Future Truck Drivers; Hopes Immigrants Will Fill the Gap.

Nation Enshrines "Choice" as Only Source of Sexual Morality, Hires Transgendered Schoolteachers

Nation Adopts Contraceptive Mentality that Makes Women Into Recreational Tools, Group Sex and Home-made Porn Become Hobbies for Disneyland Employees[*]

Nation Sets Itself Against Catholic Teaching; Gives Millions to Men who Slander Catholic Church

Nation Does All the Above; Desires Sex, Barbarity, and Stupidity in Entertainment

Nation Does All the Above, Produces Plague of Shattered Families While People Try to Staunch Spiritual Bleeding with Addictions

When John Paul called it a culture of death, he wasn't kidding. Roe is killing America.

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This item previously read, "Nation Adopts Contraceptive Mentality that Makes Women Into Recreational Tools, Rape at Disneyland Becomes College Prank." It has been changed in light of the information disclosed by the story in the new link. The song, one notes, remains the same.

2006-02-23T22:19:00.000-05:00

Dossier Pulls Off Stunning Upset!
Defeats Catholic and Enjoying It in 2006 Catholic Blog Awards!

BLOGOSPHERE, FEB. 23, 2006 (notZenit.org) - SecretAgentMan's Dossier outpaced Mark Shea's Catholic and Enjoying It blog for the first time in the history of the Catholic Blog Awards.

The Dossier received 152 votes to CAEI's 140 votes for third place in the Most Creative Blog category.

"I'm delighted to have come out ahead," said SecretAgentman, the Dossier's author, speaking at a press conference convened at the Dossier's offices in Boca Raton, Florida. SecretAgentMan spoke to the conference via telephone signals bounced off nine satellites to protect his anonymity. "Mark ran a good campaign, and we're looking forward to next year's awards."

Both the Dossier and Shea's blog were passed by Jimmy Akin.org, a blog maintained by noted Catholic apologist, author, and cowboy-hat model James Akin of Texas, and Jeff Miller's The Curt Jester, which offers "punditry, parody, polemics, politics, [and] puns from a papist perspective."

"Blogs," as they are called in America, are individually-maintained journals and websites expressing their authors' thoughts or otherwise on matters of interest. "In my case, it's definitely ‘otherwise,'" explained SecretAgentMan. "People get lots of good perspectives and information from other websites. I try and offer a break from all that." This is the third year for the awards, which are determined by popular vote.

When the official vote was tallied, Akin's blog outpaced the Dossier for second place in the "Most Creative" category by 22 votes. Asked about rumors that he'd demanded a recount, SecretAgentMan dismissed them. "Look," he said, "Miller kicked everybody's . . . [interference interrupted the transmission at this point] . . . 58.39133% percent of the total. No way I'm asking for a recount. You think I want to fall to fifth place?"

Shea's blog won the award for "Best Social Commentary," and came in a close second for awards for "Best Blog by a Man," and "Best Political Blog." Akin won awards for "Best Apologetics Blog," "Best Blog by a Man," and "Most Informative Blog." Miller's blog won awards for "Most Humorous," "Most Bizarre," "Most Bizarre Blog Post," and "Most Creative" The Dossier was not nominated in any other category.

Questioned as to whether computing other bloggers' vote tallies to the fifth decimal place, and holding the press conference when all the awards had been won by other bloggers, indicated he was a bit self-involved, SecretAgentMan declined to comment.

A full list of nominees and winners can be found on the contest's website, Cybercatholics.com.

**************************************************

Seriously, folks, congratulations to all the winners, nominees, and voters. I was honored to be nominated, but Jeff Miller really is the most creative blogger in the Catholic blogosphere.

2006-02-23T20:45:00.000-05:00

Chris Johnson Responds

As noted previously, Chris Johnson of the Midwest Conservative Journal responded to my post on "Conservative Confusion" below. I had promised to print his response in full and without comment, which I did. Unfortunately, Blogger then ate it. My apologies to the commenters whose insights were lost as a result. Here is Mr. Johnson's letter:

Very interesting, thought-provoking post. Thanks very much for the heads-up.

I agree that Ms. Coulter's comments were deplorable. The problem I had with the NCC statement was this: it seemed, at least to me, to automatically concede that the Muslims were right. The Muslims claimed to be offended, therefore the Muslims were right to be offended and that therefore we should all sit down and talk things over and agree to be civil to one another from here on.

Leaving aside the fact that I have little or nothing to say to people who make and display signs which read "Exterminate Those Who Insult Islam" and similar sentiments, it is not dialogue if I must accept your argument right away and agree to whatever you want me to agree to. And one important aspect of Western civilization is the right to say anything you want about anybody you want. If that's got to go so Muslims won't get mad, that is a conversation that I'd rather not start in the first place.

And I dispute the idea that any process can be deliberately set in motion to "civilize" anybody, Muslim or not. We can spread aspects and products of our culture(Coca-Cola, rock music, etc) but any deliberate effort to get "them" to see things "our" way will be fiercely resisted. Our values will spread when people see that they work and that they produce happier societies, not because we all sat down and hammered out a bunch of rules. Ultimately, people and societies have to "civilize" themselves.

You've given me a lot to think about. Thanks again,

Chris

Christopher S. Johnson
Midwest Conservative Journal
Webster Groves, Missouri
http://mcj.bloghorn.com/

2006-02-16T03:10:00.000-05:00

Conservative Confusion

Oh, but Ms. Coulter was simply exercising her Western rights to free speech. As such remarks go, hers was merely banal and boring -- not the kind of thing that's really offensive. Besides, once a couple of imams publish a pamphlet juxtaposing Coulter's remarks with manufactured quotes about ‘sand n*ggers' and ‘goat b*ggerers," the blame will be on them for any outrage among Muslims. The important thing is to resist the craven tide of dhimmitude that's washing over that font of moral cowardice, The American Spectator, and the dhimmis at CPAC -- all of whom are, at present, falling over themselves in their anti-American haste to placate the Jihadis and hasten the suicide of the West.

The point being that, to appropriate Goldwater, "barbaric vulgarity in the pursuit of virtue is a vice." Hat tip to Kathy Schaidle, whose blog also quotes Midwest Conservative Journal's opinion that people who want to inculcate "‘new rules of civic behavior respectful of other cultures and religions'" among Muslims are "‘Idiots.'"[**]

Which is it? Is Ann Coulter's "quip" to be despised, or is Western civilization wasted on rag-heads? The Left doesn't care. They're happy enough just hating the West and using whatever knife is handy. The conservatives don't know. On one side of their mouths they wax lyrical about the value of Western civilization and the moral necessity of its victory over Islam, and on the other side of their mouths they talk about "rag-heads" and write off the prospect of inculcating Western civilization among Muslims as something for "idiots." Sometimes it seems to me that the only conservative debate about the Islamic world is whether we're too good for them or they're too depraved for us.

Giving conservatives the benefit of the doubt, I think it's worthwhile to remind them that they're supposed to be championing a civilization and not merely defending the approved membership of an elite social club from hooligans and gate-crashers. Or, to quote someone who must have been a conservative, the best defense is a good offense.

Suppose, just for a minute, that you're a "rag-head." All your life you've heard nothing about God except what's been filtered through a man-made religion that combines some of the worst aspects of pharisaism with a moral code culled from crib notes about the Bible and some 7th-century folk wisdom. You've also been taught that Westerners are liars who hate you, and that the reason Westerners hate you is that they hate God. At about the same time, the biggest, baddest, most powerful Western nation starts kicking ass and taking names in your country (or next door) on behalf of a civilization whose literati call you a "rag-head" and are pretty frank about how stupid and barbaric you are. What do you do?

You do what any ordinarily-reasonable person would do -- change the channel to Al-Jazeera. This will, of course, be seized upon by said Westerners as "proof" that you're an ignorant "rag-head." But why should you care? You've caught them in a lie about their own civilization -- they say it's for everyone, but they mean only to vaunt themselves over the Prophet and his Dar al Islam. Just like the Imam said they would. And so the ignorant armies take another step toward their darkling plain.

Folks, a billion people aren't going to go away and leave us alone just because we call them names and drop bombs on some of their countries. And just as I admit that many of them are pretty scary folks, and that they have more than their fair share of ignorant, malevolent, and/or lying sons-of-bitches, I believe that we can do better than this. A good place to start would be to figure out whether they're "rag-heads" or victims of one of history's greatest tragedies, and whether doing anything about it is something that should only interest "idiots."

*****************************
[**] Which is not the same thing as saying that people who commend or attempt to conduct said dialogue can't actually be idiots. I can think of plenty of people (like the first ten patrons who show up for happy hour at Hooter's) who could do it better than the National Council of Churches, the "Parliament of the World's Religions," or the United Nations. But that wasn't MCJ's point, either; MCJ's sneering at the goal, not only the boobs who are, at present, the only ones interested in pursuing it. That's another problem with the confused conservatives; they're letting the Booberati steal a march on them in this area.

2006-02-13T17:37:00.000-05:00

Note to Joe

This is a continuation, of sorts, of the dialogue in connection with my previous post about the "cartoon incident." Joe D'Hippolito made a lot of comments. Here are my notes in response to two of them.

In the blog post, I had written, "Islam cannot be mocked, as it is now being mocked, without striking at the heart of the Christian message." Joe replied: "That would only be true if those messages are the same. But they're not."

I'd accept that point, Joe, if Christianity were "the ideology of Christians." In that case, since Christianity would be just one "position" or "lifestyle" among many, Christians could live in a credal/dogmatic world that isn't ineluctably connected to anything or anyone outside itself. But Christianity is truth revealed by God about all things and, as such, it applies to all things, not just things which visibly and distinguishably pertain to Christians. So, if Christianity teaches that man's need for holiness may not be made into an object of derision, then it is wrong for anyone to do so -- whether he's a Christian mocking Islam, a Muslim mocking Christianity, or a secular materialist who mocks the other two.

Did the Jyllands-Posten cartoons do that? Of course they did. They're no different than cartoons depicting the Apostles as collar-wearing, child-molesting priests. Oh, the people who would make such cartoons would talk a lot of fine talk about freedom of the press and about how they only intended to cunningly allude to some problem or issue about Christian life. We Christians have heard all that talk, and we know it's just a bunch of excuses made by people who like to see crucifixes plunged into urine, and the image of the blessed Virgin covered in dung. It satisfies their need to be rid of competition for the job of Supreme Being.

Not all critics of religion think that way or act from those motives. I don't have problems with Besancon or Ibn Warraq writing about Islam's falsehoods and their deleterious effect on mankind. I don't have problems with Hitchens or Gibbon trying to expose what they believe to be Christianity's flaws. I don't have problems with intelligent fiction like Elmer Gantry or The Satanic Verses trying to explore religion's involvement with the darker impulses in man, even if they do tend to suggest that religion is merely symptomatic of those impulses.

One can, without much charity, consider all those things part of a vast inter-generational, intercultural conversation about the human question and man's place in the universe. They, too, are part of the search for holiness which Dignitatis Humanae commends to our special respect:

The disciple is bound by a grave obligation toward Christ, his Master, ever more fully to understand the truth received from Him, faithfully to proclaim it, and vigorously to defend it, never-be it understood-having recourse to means that are incompatible with the spirit of the Gospel. At the same time, the charity of Christ urges him to love and have prudence and patience in his dealings with those who are in error or in ignorance with regard to the faith. All is to be taken into account-the Christian duty to Christ, the life-giving word which must be proclaimed, the rights of the human person, and the measure of grace granted by God through Christ to men who are invited freely to accept and profess the faith.
-- Dignitatis Humanae, # 14 (1965)

These cartoons weren't part of that dialogue. They said nothing intelligent about Islam's falsehoods or the shortcomings of religion as a whole; they simply mocked Islam with the same crude tactics mockers of Christianity use when they run out of (or have never acquired) intelligent comments to make about religion.

The cartoons weren't produced or published in the spirit of dialogue, but in the spirit which regards the idea of "holiness" as a joke played by charlatans upon the credulous. That strikes at the heart of the Christian worldview whether or not the immediate targets are Mormons, Buddhists, or Muslims.

Mormonism, Buddhism and Islam are false, but the desire for holiness which animates their adherents is real. It is real because God made it, and planted it in human nature: "Thou has formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee." The restless ages of man have wandered through the deserts of falsehood, finding Islam here, Daoism there and, men being men, finding refuge in the truly-sordid escapades men use to hide their emptiness from themselves.

If I saw a man wandering through the desert, crazed and dying from thirst, I would tell him not to drink kerosene because it would be kindness to remind him of what he truly seeks. But I would not mock his search, or tell him that only fools fail to realize that "water" is a lie. The necrotic arrangement which now passes itself off as "Western Civilization" has been doing that with increasing ferocity for the better part of two centuries. That is why the West is dying, and why the terrorists have come: Maggots attack corpses, not living beings. The West's secular disdain for religion has not protected us from Islam. Why should anyone want to trust that it will protect us in future?

I had also written, "It is not enough to scourge Islam from the minds and hearts of men." Joe replied, "Perhaps not. That was also true concerning the Nazis and Communists. But it must be so scourged, or Western Civilization (despite the secularist elements you abhor) will die. That was also true concering the Nazis and Communists."

I would not say "perhaps," unless I intended to imply that there really was nothing worth fighting for except another false idea. But I might have put my point more clearly by appealing to Sun Tzu, who wrote that the highest form of generalship is to win a battle without fighting. Instead, I only wrote, "[w]e don't want a world in which Islam has been scourged out of existence. We want a world in which a billion Muslims quietly walk away from what they realize has been a myth." There are people who are resigned, even eager, to forego that goal in favor of a military-political "clash of civilizations."

In some ways that's a natural response; it's difficult to imagine holding a productive dialogue with someone who wants to kill you. But it's interesting to note that a lot of Islamic anger at the United States comes from a sense (however wrongly, on occasion, held) that the United States is not living up to its moral responsibilities. Muslims who believe that Islam was created for one purpose, namely to destroy the Satan United States, are not yet typical:

As our surveys underscore, the U.S. continues to face enormous challenges regarding its public image in Arab and Muslim countries. Anti-Americanism in the region is driven largely by aversion to U.S. policies, such as the war in Iraq, the war on terrorism, and U.S. support for Israel, in addition to the general perception that the U.S. fails to consider the interests of countries in the region when it acts in the international arena. At the same time, however, our findings highlight areas of improvement. U.S. favorability ratings have increased in some countries, and there are signs that support for terrorism is waning. Moreover, there is strong evidence suggesting that Arab and Muslim publics overwhelmingly desire democracy for their countries.
-- Andrew Kohut, President, Pew Research Center, Testimony U.S. House International Relations Committee. You can find the testimony here.
* * *

Concerns over Islamic extremism, extensive in the West even before this month's terrorist attacks in London, are shared to a considerable degree by the publics in several predominantly Muslim nations surveyed. Nearly three-quarters of Moroccans and roughly half of those in Pakistan, Turkey and Indonesia see Islamic extremism as a threat to their countries. At the same time, most Muslim publics are expressing less support for terrorism than in the past. Confidence in Osama bin Laden has declined markedly in some countries and fewer believe suicide bombings that target civilians are justified in the defense of Islam. . . .

The polling also finds that in most majority-Muslim countries surveyed, support for suicide bombings and other acts of violence in defense of Islam has declined significantly. In Turkey, Morocco and Indonesia, 15% or fewer now say such actions are justifiable. In Pakistan, only one-in-four now take that view (25%), a sharp drop from 41% in March 2004. In Lebanon, 39% now regard acts of terrorism as often or sometimes justified, again a sharp drop from the 73% who shared that view in 2002. A notable exception to this trend is Jordan, where a majority (57%) now says suicide bombings and other violent actions are justifiable in defense of Islam. . . .

When it comes to suicide bombings in Iraq, however, Muslims in the surveyed countries are divided. Nearly half of Muslims in Lebanon and Jordan, and 56% in Morocco, say suicide bombings against Americans and other Westerners in Iraq are justifiable. However, substantial majorities in Turkey, Pakistan and Indonesia take the opposite view.
-- Pew Research Center, "Islamic Extremism: Common Concern for Muslim and Western Publics." You can find the entire report here.

One's first reaction to such studies is to wonder, if these results constitute "improvement" in Muslim thinking, whether it might not be better to conquer these countries now, while we can. Consider, however, the number of Muslims indicated who do not want a world whose only choice is between Osama Bin Laden or the Third Infantry Division. There's little point in hysterical reactions to those numbers; the only sane response is to recognize that they can increase, or decrease, and inquire how our actions can achieve one or the other result.

Besides, we can't "conquer" them all, or most of them, or even a few of them. We can defeat them militarily, so long as we can attack them in detail (one of my worst nightmares, thankfully fanciful, involved a simultaneous advance on U.S. units in Iraq by Iranian, Syrian, and Turkish forces). But we can't conquer them in any useful sense by force of arms. You see, ultimately the problem isn't that Muslim extremists are trying to kill us. Ultimately, the problem is why they're trying to kill us -- conquer that and we'll have made a bolder stroke for good than B-52s could ever make.

The Pew results indicate, at least to me, that there remains a window of dialogue between the West and Islam which, if properly exploited, can (I do not say "shall") produce two things. First, it can produce an Islamic self-story that accepts the existence of powerful, independent non-Muslim countries as a good (or at least benign) part of Allah's plan for humanity. Second, it can produce an increasing recognition among Muslims that Christianity and its civilizations are congruent with divine truth and, more gradually, a realization that Christianity is the true fulfillment of the hope which brings men to Islam in the first place.

That's the only solution which can protect the West. It can't occur in an atmosphere of warfare, coercion and revulsion, which is all the "clash of civilizations" perspective really has to offer. Is that kind of victory practicable over Islam? I think it's a certainty that too few among us are interested in the question.

2006-02-12T13:06:00.000-05:00

Self-Justifying Rationale #221

"OK, if I'm so selfish, then why am I so miserable?"

2006-02-03T12:50:00.000-05:00

What is it with the Cartoons?

In answer to some readers' questions, I'm writing a follow-up to my earlier post on the cartoons about Muhammad being published in Europe. I don't want to have any illusions about the motives of the Europeans who are publishing these cartoons. While I can, coincidentally, agree with the principles about freedom of the press being used, my congruence with their beliefs mostly ends at that point. I don't equate "religious fundamentalism" with the simple act of taking one's faith seriously and damn that simple act as subversive of the common good. That is the legacy of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and it has largely become the chosen patrimony of the West, particularly in Europe. These newspapers, and the people who enjoy what they're publishing, largely harbor same hatred of religion that banished Christianity from the European Constitution. They hate Islam for the same reasons they hate Christianity and my sympathy for their position is, for that reason, temporary and restrained.

There are other motives for enjoying or furthering this controversy. There are people who are lucky enough to have recognized Islam as a dangerous, man-made religion, and yet foolish enough to think that we can save ourselves from it by a process of violent extermination. Of these, some actually believe we should exterminate Islam through actual, physical, warfare. Others believe that this warfare should be conducted by intellectual/ideological means, by using the tools of Western secularism to "erase" Islam from society. For such people, these attacks on Muslim sensibilities are just what the doctor ordered: It's time to teach Muslims a lesson about how foolish and ridiculous their beliefs are, and to show pro-Western solidarity by publicly holding them in contempt. These folks, if they are Christians, are suicidally misguided. Islam cannot be mocked, as it is now being mocked, without striking at the heart of the Christian message

And, speaking solely for myself, but I suspect for many more Christians, there is some cathartic element of schadenfreude in all this. Western culture has been mocking and humiliating Christianity for over 200 years. If European Muslims are upset about the cartoons, wait until Western governments start extorting their taxes to pay for the production of "Piss Muhammad." If there isn't a newspaper in Europe that won't mock the Prophet, there isn't a film studio in the West that hasn't mocked Christ. We get told, over and over again, that we're responsible for this because, if we had the faith of Muslims, we would have stood up to all that. There's something that wants to say, "See? Do you now understand what we're living with?"

So much for unworthy motives to support the European press. As to worthy motives, I suggest that this controversy is happening because Jesus Christ gave the world a radical vision of human goodness. It is not enough to create a society in which such controversies are forbidden. It is not enough to scourge Islam from the minds and hearts of men:

When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest, and findeth none. Then he saith, I will return into my house from whence I came out; and when he is come, he findeth it empty, swept, and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh with himself seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter in and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first. Even so shall it be also unto this wicked generation.
-- Matthew 12:43-45 (KJV)

A negative definition of freedom is not enough. It is not enough to be free from an addiction. It is not enough to refrain from harm. A man, or a society, which limits itself to these goals will become a clean-swept house. Sub specie aeternitatis, making laws dictating what people must mock or revere isn't worth a penny.

I believe that Jesus Christ doesn't just want men to abandon falsehood; He wants men to abandon falsehood for the truth. He doesn't just want men to forsake addiction, lust, Communism, and Islam, He wants men to forsake them for something better. Here, St. Paul says, is the Unknown God to whom you should pay your allegiance, not because He is stronger among the gods, not because He has a more effective five-year plan, but because He is the summit and perfection of all that is truly good; He is what you have, when at your best, been trying to find all these years. We don't want a world in which Islam has been scourged out of existence. We want a world in which a billion Muslims quietly walk away from what they realize has been a myth. That is the lasting victory Christ wants, and it's why cultures who have been influenced by Christianity value -- however distortedly, however forgetfully -- the freedom of human thought.

The reason Islam succeeds is the same reason all other man-made faiths succeed: They resemble, in some way, Christianity. This is why you'll find Christians being so easily seduced by man-made faiths, blurring the lines between Nazism, Communism, and all the others until the worldly imposture becomes subjectively indistinguishable from the heavenly fact. Christians are doing it today with Islam, using all the old stupidities and heresies which have served in the past -- appeasement, syncretism, etc. [1] Nobody can help that, or put a stop to it. These Christians are also victims to a myth, and we also want them to walk away from it voluntarily.

It is one of the major tenets of Catholic doctrine that man's response to God in faith must be free: no one therefore is to be forced to embrace the Christian faith against his own will. This doctrine is contained in the word of God and it was constantly proclaimed by the Fathers of the Church. The act of faith is of its very nature a free act. Man, redeemed by Christ the Savior and through Christ Jesus called to be God's adopted son, cannot give his adherence to God revealing Himself unless, under the drawing of the Father, he offers to God the reasonable and free submission of faith. It is therefore completely in accord with the nature of faith that in matters religious every manner of coercion on the part of men should be excluded. In consequence, the principle of religious freedom makes no small contribution to the creation of an environment in which men can without hindrance be invited to the Christian faith, embrace it of their own free will, and profess it effectively in their whole manner of life.
-- Dignitatis Humanae, # 10 (1965)[2]

The screams uttering from Islam are not just protestations of pious hearts, although they are partly that. They are also screams of terror at the prospect of a world in which it's an open question whether Muhammad is the Prophet, and that Islam is a reiteration of the same story that produced Baal, Zeus, Communism, and American Messianism.

I detest the vulgarity of those cartoons, not least because I know that within the brave talk about freedom is a hidden loathing of truth that has eaten so deeply into the minds of Western men that they have come to detest the prospect of a world in which it is possible to think that any religion is good. I detest the vulgarity of Islamic responses that involve talk of laws, police, and gunfire, not least because I know that within the self-righteous demands for respect is a hidden loathing of human dignity that runs just as deep. The ignorant armies are taking one more step toward their darkling plain. The only hope of escape is a world where men may speak as they like, because that's a world where Christ is free to stand on the Temple's steps and talk with pharisees. We don't have to enjoy that world, but we should all want to live in it, for our own safety's sake.

Update: Mark Shea weighs in.

**************************************************
[1] See Bat Ye Or, "Dhimmitude and Marcionism." Commentary, No. 91. The PDF version of the article is available here.

[2]The entire document is available here.

2006-01-29T23:58:00.000-05:00

Lines from a Political Speech

I believe that the people are citizens who own a continuing and responsible role in their own government, not sheep who are asked to bleat from time to time in answer to the prospect of the shepherds and the wolves changing places once again.

How long will we go on with this relentless puttering, this engless timid niggling, changing everything just a little, so as to keep everything just the same?

2006-01-28T15:03:00.000-05:00

Adjusting Muslim Culture

Via Relapsed Catholic, we learn that Al-Jazeera is angry at a Danish newspaper's contest for offensive cartoons about Muhammad. At the end of the article -- after Al-Jazeera has documented the disgusting unwillingness of the Danish government to "take action" against the offenders, and worries that the contest will spark a new crop of anti-Islamic mobs slaughtering Muslims in the streets of the West -- we're treated to the standard Mark1Mod0 Moral Superiority Tag-Line: "The Islamic religion does not allow offensive remarks by both Muslims and Non-Muslims."

By both? That's an interesting turn of phrase. One wonders if it might be called a "Dhimmian slip." I wonder, since it appears that Islam allows offensive remarks to be made by Muslims, who take full advantage of the privilege:

Like this.

And this.

And this.

And this.

Or all of these.

There are other interesting Dhimmian slips in this article, such as the headline: "Has Defaming the Prophet become ‘Freedom of Speech?'" As though we must all agree that some universal law has already been passed requiring everyone to admit that Muhammad actually was a prophet.

Al-Jazeera says "the Qur'an, the Muslims' holy book orders them to conduct discussions in an orderly and respectable manner. It prohibits ridiculing the Jews/Christians or the Prophets." I have no doubt that the anti-Semitic authors and cartoonists who fill Muslim media with vile and hateful images of Jews believe they're not ridiculing anyone and that their behavior is orderly and respectable. After all, if Jews really are the moral equivalent of Nazis, the hooky-nosed secret dominators of the world, who make matzos from the blood of gentile children, then surely it's respectable and orderly to point that out. So, welcome to the world of secular liberty, kids, where opinions are like . . . er, uh . . . ubiquitous, and where smugly claiming to "tolerate respectable opinions" is as much of an answer to the problem of free speech as saying "we only shoot the bad people" is an answer to the problem of how best to enforce the law.

I don't like newspapers mocking Islam any more than I like them mocking Christianity. But if I used Al-Jazeera's yardstick to measure things, then every time a Muslim refers to "Isa" a/ka "Jesus," as a prophet I'd have to conclude that he's violating the "basic right" of my true faith to be recognized as the true faith. When Islamic scholars paint the crusades as nothing but a series of imperialist war crimes, they're "insulting" my culture. And apparently I must demand that they be punished; if the police should be used to "ensure respect" for Muslim immigrants, surely the police can be used to "ensure respect" for Christian non-immigrants.

The result of that perspective is civil war, as Christians and Muslims fight to control the state in order to "ensure respect" for our true faiths. It's the paradigm that drove the West into secularism to begin with, and I haven't seen anything suggesting that Islam has a better alternative. It's been claimed that Islam offers true tolerance, the dawn of a golden age when common values can shared without exclusion or oppression. Al-Jazeera's petulant editorial indicates that Islam has a lot of adjustment to do before it can prosper outside of a Muttawa-maintained hothouse of double standards and seething grievances.

2006-01-27T21:33:00.000-05:00

The Waiter . . . Again

The Waiter at Waiter Rant is a good guy. Chief clue: His first reaction to a holy inspiration is to curse. Now I know that the man who is not tempted to desist from charity enjoys a nobler character of soul than the man who is, but I have a lot of fellow-feeling for guys who have to grind the gears, so to speak, before making their guardian angels happy.

BTW, The Waiter has also been nominated for Best American Blog. Go vote for him.

As to the slim offerings here, it's been busy. A post on "robust questioning" will appear in a few days, hopefully.

2006-01-24T23:55:00.000-05:00

I'm Waiting . . . . .

Now that Google has agreed to become an arm of the Chinese police state, I'm wondering when that cute little tank-and-pedestrian graphic will appear as garnish on the Google logo. Tianmen Square Day, perhaps?

2006-01-20T16:56:00.000-05:00

Another Empty Suit

Sen. Hillary Clinton called for United Nations sanctions against Iran and faulted the Bush administration for "downplaying" the threat Tehran's nuclear program poses. In other words, Hillary Clinton has rebuked the President for ignoring a serious problem by proposing, herself, that we continue to ignore a serious problem. She was probably eligible a long time ago, but in my book she's officially down as an Empty Suit.

2006-01-15T03:00:00.000-05:00

Good Blog

It's not often that you stumble across a blog and spend hours reading the archives.

2006-01-08T21:22:00.000-05:00

Favorite Fight Scenes

Here are some of my favorite movie fight scenes in no particular order:

Giant . . . Bic Benedict vs. "Sarge" in Sarge's Diner.
They Live . . . "Nada" vs. "Frank" in the alleyway.
Bad Day at Black Rock . . . McCreedy vs. Coley in Sam's Bar & Grill.
Gardens of Stone St. Hazard vs. Angelica Huston's boyfriend at the cocktail party.
The Duellists, D'Hubert vs. Ferraud (Round II, fought in the Stables)
Aliens, Ripley vs. the Queen
The Princess Bride, Westley vs. Inigo Montoya
The Matrix Neo vs. Agent Smith
Fists of Fury Cheng-Chao An vs. Yin-Chieh Han
Rocky, Rocky Balboa vs. Apollo Creed
Brotherhood of the Wolfe, Mani vs. Gypsy Thugs
Blade Blade vs. Everybody in the Vampire Club
Predator, "Dutch" Schaeffer vs. the Predator
The Challenge, Rick Murphy vs. Hideo
The Godfather, Santino Corleone vs. Carlo Rizzi
Hard Times, Cheney vs. Jim Henry
A Bronx Tale, Mobsters vs. Bikers
From Russia With Love, James Bond vs. Grant
Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones vs. Giant Bald Nazi
The Adventures of Robin Hood, Robin Hood vs. Sir Guy of Guisborne
The Quiet Man, Sean Thornton vs. Squire Danaher
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, King Arthur vs. Black Knight
Rob Roy, Rob Roy v. Archibald Cunningham
Troy, Achilles v. Hector

One which isn't on the list is "Saving Private Ryan, Pvt. Mellish vs. German Infantryman." That's not a "fight scene." It's terrifying and the first piece of art I've seen that viscerally suggests to me the obscenity of war. But it's not an entertaining "fight scene" so it's not on the list.

2006-01-06T17:32:00.000-05:00

Discussion of Iraq

Rerum Novarum and I have agreed to argue about the war in Iraq. I have my own arguments and Shawn, in a pleasing mixture of good sportsmanship and supreme overconfidence, has offered to send me some thoughts of his own in that regard to see what use I might make of them in my own cause. It may be some time before this develops, but I'll be glad to finally put up a full account of why I don't think we should have attacked Iraq.

2006-01-06T17:05:00.000-05:00

Go Read This

It's good.

2005-12-29T13:57:00.000-05:00

Kenny Memes

In response to my sending him the Christmas meme, Kenny Ignatius Augustine gives us . . . Christmas in Singapore!

Oh the weather outside is tropical
And Bak-Kuah's so delightful
We don't have anything called snow
To the barbeque we'll go!

2005-12-28T18:06:00.000-05:00

I Meme Myself

Hot chocolate or apple cider? Apple cider, hard cider if available.

Turkey or Ham Oh these Mericans! It's seafood all the way, baby. Maybe Beef Wellington on Christmas day or thereafter.

Do you get a fake or real you-cut-it-yourself Christmas Tree Neither. We get a real tree somebody else cut.

Decorations outside of your house? No. Electric candles in the window is it.

Snowball fights or sledding? Both. Speed and mobility are the essence of warfare.

Favorite Christmas Song? "People Look East," "O Holy Night," "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen," & "Ihr Kinderlein, Kommet." I also like "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" because that's what Nick Fury, Agent of Shield would listen to while drinking scotch and feeling sorry for himself in a tough sort of way about his difficult life.

Do you enjoy going downtown or shopping? Sporadically, while I forget the whole "Christmas downtown" thing has as much authenticity as a Civil War re-enactment.

How do you feel about Christmas movies? I think it would be great if they made one. Until they do, I'll struggle along with Die Hard, It's a Wonderful Life, and The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, in that order.

When is it too early to start listening to Christmas music? Anytime before the middle of December.

Stockings: Before or after presents? We don't do stockings. We hang them, but I see them as a plot to increase commercialism hatched by a malign intellect who read Tolkien's description of Hobbit meal-times: "There's First Present Opening, then Stockings, then Second Stockings . . . . ." culminating, no doubt, in the Christmas Present Palette delivered by Roadway.

Carolers, do or do you not watch and listen to them? See Do you enjoy going downtown or shopping? above. Dickensian period dress is an infallible recommendation of street-crossing; Dickensian carolers are usually the ones singing "Jingle Bells," "Rudolph," and "Let it Snow."

Go to someone else's house or they come to you? Usually we go to visit my parents and my wife's widowed mother.

Do you read the Christmas story? No.

What do you do after presents and dinner? Long for collapse, play with the Irresistable Force that is my three-year-old daughter instead.

What is your favorite holiday smell? If there's lots of snow, and it's also snowing, and it's very very cold, then I love the smell of silence at midnight.

Ice skating or walking around the mall? Walking around the Mall makes me want to don sackcloth and start preaching the penitential part of Advent. I don't ice-skate. I could watch people ice-skating as long as there were a comfortable place to sit and drink while doing so.

Do you open a present or presents Christmas Eve, or wait until Christmas day? Christmas morning, of course.

Favorite Christmas memory? The first midnight mass I attended at St. Boniface, our church. I never knew Christmas could be celebrated with such joy, dignity, and reverence.

Favorite part about winter? See What is your favorite holiday smell?

Ever been kissed under the mistletoe? No.

I now meme Kenny Ignatius Augustine of The Sleepless Eye

2005-12-24T12:41:00.000-05:00

My Favorite Christmas Reading

The twenty-fifth day of December.
In the five thousand one hundred and ninety-ninth year of the creation of the world
from the time when God in the beginning created the heavens and the earth;
the two thousand nine hundred and fifty-seventh year after the flood;
the two thousand and fifteenth year from the birth of Abraham;
the one thousand five hundred and tenth year from Moses
and the going forth of the people of Israel from Egypt;
the one thousand and thirty-second year from David's being anointed king;
in the sixty-fifth week according to the prophecy of Daniel;
in the one hundred and ninety-fourth Olympiad;
the seven hundred and fifty-second year from the foundation of the city of Rome;
the forty second year of the reign of Octavian Augustus;
in the sixth age of the world,
the whole world being at peace,
Jesus Christ
the eternal God and Son of the eternal Father,
desiring to sanctify the world by his most merciful coming,
being conceived by the Holy Spirit,
and nine months having passed since his conception,
was born in Bethlehem of Judea of the Virgin Mary,
being made flesh.
The Nativity of our Lord Jesus Christ according to the flesh.

Merry Christmas, everyone!

2005-12-21T16:54:00.000-05:00

Prospect of a Dialogue

A few days ago a fellow with blog called Mystery Achievement ("MA") stopped by the Dossier. He didn't much like what he saw here, as you can tell from this review. After that, Mark Shea took off after him in a post called "When Jingoes Attack.

I appreciate Mark's unsolicited support. He and I have some similar, but by no means identical, views on a few issues, including some aspects of American foreign policy. Those views aren't always happily synchronized with the program of conservative American politics. That makes some people nervous, other people angry, and still other people roll their eyes at the spectacle of misapplied Catholic and conservative values. Sometimes Mark and I get disagreeing comments which are trenchant, important, and thoughtful. Other times we get called names, not infrequently by people who don't know what the hell they're talking about. I realize that comparing my writing to Mark's is like comparing an oil-drum-and-driftwood raft to the U.S.S. Missouri. But differences in quality and scale aside, it was good to have an old friend who's been through much worse stick up for me, and to see him do it on principles we both share. Thanks, Mark.

Mark's commentary sparked off some back-and-forth in the comments boxes between MA's author and some bright people who disagree with his approach to what I've written. Predictably, MA's author has invited me to stop by his blog and discuss the whole thing in the comment boxes there. I say "predictably" because one of the last things anybody in the blogosphere, including me, wants to do is appear to be unwilling to engage in a match of wits and words. We're all here because we fancy ourselves wits, we like writing, and because we believe strongly enough in some things to publicly employ them on behalf of our causes. For one of us to decline an invitation to "discuss" things always leaves a bitter taste.

MA's author has, from what I can tell, decided that I'm guilty of several greivous sins. I'm no friend of my country, he says, and I also have decadent views that pretend to courage, but which will ultimately appear as what they truly are -- excuses that allow me to accomodate evil while striking a self-righteous pose. MA's author has decided that I believe Saddam Hussein should be reinstalled as Iraq's leader, so that he can kill people by shoving them into plastic shredders (as he did). My view on the project to create an Iraqi democracy are, in his opinion, adequately summed up thus: "Better a psychotic dictator in a country full of ignorant brown-skinned folk who neither deserve nor are capable of better than a bunch of Smirky McBurtonchimp clones running around chattering about freedom and democracy." More than that, I appear to be an anti-Semite who believes that Jews, Rosicrucians, Freemasons, and other "usual suspect" groups are involved in a giant conspiracy to destroy civilization. My supposed hatred for Jews is so great that I've allegedly threatened them with pogroms.

Now these are important issues, and dire charges, and it would certainly edify me to have to defend myself against them in dialogue with someone who is vehemently opposed to my positions. Scripture tells us, "He who states his case first seems right, until the other comes and examines him." Proverbs 18:17 (RSV-CE). For my part, I'd like to demonstrate that none of this is true, and that MA's summaries of my beliefs have been produced by a pretty thick layering of presuppositional filters and un-necessary conclusions onto text that won't support them and (for want of a better term) a history which actually contradicts them. This is especially true when it comes to that business about my being an anti-Semite. Anti-Semitism is a rank sin that cries out to Heaven for vengeance, and that vengeance will come. I would hate to be a subject of it. I also believe it's possible for men to sin in guilty blindness; the dullness of mind that comes from wicked habit can achieve that blindness, as can vanity and arrogance (MA's author also accuses of of self-righteousness). Anyone, like myself, who would reject out of hand the possibility that he is himself blinded in that way, and refuse to submit his views to the scrutiny of a hostile witness, is surely on the fast lane (or at least the on-ramp) to Hell whether or not the immediate accusation is well founded. Even if I were so vain and stiff-necked that whatever real flaws MA might be able to find in my views went unacknowledged by me, the proof of his indictments would be there for anyone else to see and profit from.

The initial problem was that MA's author seemed the sort of fellow with whom rational discourse is impossible. The trigger there was his having declared his intention to be personally insulting:Warning: This post contains Bad Words deployed with the intent of Insulting Someone. No, seriously." I don't have a problem with someone who claims my opinions are pieces of excrement, although I would tell him that the splenetic vehemence of his words might well obscure the justice of his cause. I have to admit that, on occasion, I've been as bad when I lose my temper. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to have a moment of clarity before I hit "submit." Sometimes I'm not. And sometimes I think "poltroon" and "moron" are apt descriptions and won't change my mind. It happens. But whether I'm worse or better than MA's author (a subject which is fit for God alone), nobody has a lot of time to waste hashing things out with somebody who thinks name-calling is an argument. When someone, like MA's author or me, is in that mood it means our anger has crippled us and we can't do justice to the subject. If there are two subjects which demand justice, it's America and anti-Semitism.

I was therefore very glad to learn that MA's author has regretted his invective about me personally, although he stands by the objective accusations that accompanied it:

I was very angry when I first wrote this. (No, really.) I am sorry for insulting S.A.M. the way I did. But I stand by my assessment of his posts. And the next time I read a blog post that denegrates our efforts in the GWoT, or insinuates ideas about Jews that sound like someone channeling Pat Buchanan, I'll probably get mad again. But I hope that if that does happen, I'll be able to exercise more self-control.

This proves, of course, that MA's author is a far bigger man than I am. I'm pretty sure I have one or two unpaid debts of apology in my wake. But no matter. MA's author (who I think goes by the name of "someguy," as I also use a sobriquet) has shown himself to be a Christian gentleman whose love for his country and hatred of anti-Semitism -- if not his ability to recognize when either principle is being contradicted -- is unquestionable. That's good news.

It's good because it means that I have misjudged him. He's not a witless snipe. He's a doughty fellow with important things on his mind. (He also wields a serious pen). Still, the questions are complicated on a rhetorical level because if one accepts, as "someguy" appears to have done, that any opinion of the Iraq war and occupation which does not eagerly and entirely approve of everything the U.S. has done is anti-American, then I'd have to concede the "judgment" while protesting the unfairness of its criteria. The same thing goes with anti-Semitism; if we define anti-Semitism as the ability to hold adverse opinions about the fairness and wisdom of anything the ADL or the State of Israel might do, then I'd have to make the same reply. If that's the case, then perhaps "someguy" could tell me beforehand and we could part peaceful company -- he, confident that he's run across some wicked beliefs and I, equally-confident that I've found some foolish ones -- and let readers judge when and as we write in future. If not, I'd be interested in going further with the exchange. The only problem I'd still have is time. To me, these are both huge subjects that require a lot of writing and re-writing.

So if this conversation seems agreeable to us, I can only promise to do the best I can in the time I have. For the time being, I provide these links to prior posts so from which some sort of response might appear, in the hope that "someguy" (who seems only to have looked at the offerings for November, 2005) can peruse them and see if I'm the sort of person who he thinks would be a worthwhile interlocutor:

Posts About Christianity, Jews and Islam
The Passion, the Jews, and the Teaching of Contempt

Canadian Cowardice

Letter to Loretto Girl

Musings on an Islamic Apologia

Plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose

The Catholic Church and the Nazis
Posts about Church Matters
Commentary on the Burbling Church

Commentary on the Burbling Church (2)

Notes on Traditionalist Views of the Ordinary Magisterium

Army of One Interview

Butterflies, Traditionalists and Training Wheels

Miscellaneous Musings on Fr. Pater and ST. PIUS X
Political Miscellany and the War
Cry Havoc! And Let Slip the Dogs of War

The US Through Foreign Eyes?

I Support the Troops?

Notes for Catholics Who Can't Tell the Difference Between the Democratic Leadership Council or the Heritage Foundation and the Magisterium.

2005-12-20T10:43:00.000-05:00

And in the Darkness, Bind them . . .

At Harvard, they're convinced that "apocalyptic visions of armies of cloned soldiers are just fantasy . . . ." Why? I guess it's because nobody would ever be seriously interested in such a thing. Besides, Stalin's dead, and all the evil he represened went with him.

That evil isn't part of the human experience, it's not something to be guarded against in every generation. Its enduring presence is a fantasy, like this one: By foul craft, Saruman has crossed Orcs with goblin men. He's breeding an army in the caverns of Isengard. An army that can move in sunlight and cover a great distance at speed. Saruman is coming for the Ring. . . . .

Nobody's coming for the Ring. Nobody's going to cross Orcs or apes with men, goblin or otherwise. People just don't think like that. At least we don't think like that. Our motives are good. That makes all the difference. Doesn't it?

2005-12-18T15:50:00.000-05:00

Conspiracy

Conspiracy theories would fade a bit if we started thinking of bad ideas as the expected results of a common human fallibility that will attend mankind through the ages, and stopped thinking of bad ideas as though they were living beings that exist and influence conduct without regard to human will.

If one thinks of bad ideas as mental lapses, then one can accept that a man can have 2 mental lapses and 6 mental successes. In that world, von Balthazar can take something from Hegel and not necessarily become identical with anything that is objectionable in Hegel's thought. But if one thinks of bad ideas as plague bacilli, then they infect everything. Just as someone who stands next to a plague carrier is "contaminated," so is someone who read an "infected" book. The presence of malice and stupidity in the human race therefore eventually places everyone inside the Grand Infection.

Hence the ever-shrinking circle of illuminati who can detect and understand the Infection -- people inevitably have something to do with each other -- literally, figuratively, and intellectually. It only requires time until the "infections" that are "proved" by proximity and rough similarity are discovered, and discovered again, and over and over again, until finally one "proves" that one's cat is a Rosicrucian agent.

One of the things that keeps the delirium alive is the continual provender of "fresh" proof by what is really a sort of obsessive-compulsive repetition of the same cycle in which the mind discovers proximity and similarity. One discovers that some of the Founding Fathers were Masons. One discovers that they helped write the Constitution of the United States. One then realizes that Masons and the American project profess a belief in similar things. Since ideas are living beings with an irreducible nature, human beings are powerless to judge, modify, repudiate, or accept them. They are either present or absent, and once a similarity exists their damning presence is proved beyond any doubt. And so the United States Constitution is a Masonic manifesto for the perversion of the world and we have to stop paying our taxes and move to Idaho. At the very least, we can't abide the United States, its Constitution, or any of the satanic devices which are eo ipso contained therein.

The result is that the conspiracist almost always concludes that there are more of "them" than there are of the righteous. This naturally produces anxiety, which in turn encourages the conspiracist to redouble his efforts at "uncovering" members of the evil party -- proximity and similarity are easy to prove, and so the conspiracist arrives at the conclusion that the "heresy" under consideration has an incredible power to "infect" by the slightest form of contact. The result is a series of choices by which one accepts, as proof of "infection," "similarities" which are more and more general in nature, which further fuels the cycle of fear and despair as the generalizations widen and embrace more of humanity. The Vatican, for example, accepts money from the Knights of Columbus, who are American and believe in Americanism; Americanism has already been proved part of a Masonic conspiracy for world apostasy; therefore the Vatican is part of the plan for world apostasy.

At the same time, the conspiracist's efforts to remain "uninfected" become increasingly logical and Procrustean. Convinced that the slightest breath, the merest proximity to an ever-expanding list of contaminated generalities, proves the presence of evil, the conspiracist must logically decide to sever contact with anyone who has been infected. Remember, the bad idea is an infection that exists independently of human will. It is simply impossible to have a relationship with an infected person and remain uninfected oneself. This is the logic which drives the ever-widening view of the conspiracy, and when it is turned inward its own logic compels the cessation of virtually any intercourse which might provide contrary information.

Eventually, the very presence of contrary information is taken as proof of infection. If a conspiracist were given enough time, he would cut off one of his legs before uttering an anathema against bipeds.

2005-12-10T12:33:00.000-05:00

Anybody Good with Graphics?

Are any of my readers (yes, all six of you) good with graphics programs? Here's what I need to get done in 2006. I am working to make a super-deluxe version of Axis & Allies. I need to make a map of the world. It has to be a realistic color map, mercator projection only, with terrain features like mountains, coastlines and so forth. It has to have the board game's spaces ruled onto it, and then some graphics I've designed in WordPerfect put onto the different countries and sea zones. "Real life" borders and boundaries need to be eliminated from the map.

Once finished, the map needs to be printed on vinyl and applied either to wood or plastic. The map should be about 10 feet long and 4 feet wide. And, unfortunately, the map can't be to scale. Britain and Japan have to be 2-3 times larger than they are in real life, and Europe has to be larger too. South America and Africa can be shrunk.

Anybody interested? There may be a small amount of money involved. Email me. Thanks.

2005-11-29T00:19:00.000-05:00

Ken Follett Rant

I'm glad to know that a blogger I like, The Happy Catholic, has tossed Pillars of the Earth into the doorstop bin. I've wanted to say something about Ken Follet ever since I read Pillars when it first came out in hardback, a very long time ago. Now that I've become a blowhard with a blog, I can say it.

Ken Follet can't write historical fiction. One of the chief tasks of historical fiction is to allow the reader to see the past the way it was lived, not to reinforce his prejudices about the past. It's a tough job. None of us lived in older days. Our access to ancient worldviews can come from our culture, our religion, and a lot of quality time spent studying history. Sometimes people have a "sixth sense" about these things. They can just tell that "it wasn't that way." I don't know how well I score on that scale, but I do know that Pillars of the Earth is crap.

Pillars is crap because it leaves the reader with no real idea what it might have been like to have lived in medieval England. What the reader does have is a very good idea what it's like to be a modern, Starbucks-besotted yuppie who's thinking about life in medieval England. Each turn of Pillar's pages leads to a trite new confirmation of what the reader already believes about the past -- it was worse then, except for the parts that are like now. And so our Pillar(ied) "heroes" are put through their modern paces; righteous indignation at the arbitrary power-game called organized religion; unreasonable prohibitions on sex and birth control; feverish, Howard-Roark style work on a giant building project whose only significance is to provide a setting for individual talent and craftsmanship. One really has no idea why, particularly, the story had to be set in medieval England as opposed to, say, Bayonne, New Jersey in 1978.

That's part of the novel's charm, of course -- maybe all of it. Everyone likes to think their preoccupations and perceptions have been the common dream of mankind throughout the ages. Pillars of the Earth reassures us that everyone who's ever lived has the same aspirations and dreams we do. If you hadn't noticed yet, that warm cozy feeling comes from leading a life that's the envy of the ages. Everyone knows the third world wants our democracy and our capitalism, so why should we hestitate conclude that medieval Frenchmen and Sung Dynasty Chinese would want them just as badly? And why shouldn't we hold in contempt those wogs (historical or otherwise) who dare(d) to question the onward march of human progress that created and sustains the American middle class?

I don't have my copy of Pillars handy. But here's a sample of Follet's historical vision from his best-selling Eye of the Needle. Describing the temporary lair of Henry Faber, Needle's arch-villain, Follett gives us a thumbnail sketch of a whole century: "The building in which he lived . . . was a Victorian brick house at one end of a terrace of six. The houses were high, narrow, and dark, like the minds of the men for whom they had been built."

That's Follett's view in a nutshell. Thank goodness we're not like those nasty dead Victorians! We're not high, but lowbrow. We hate narrow-mindedness, and rightly prefer indifference to anything but out own pleasure. Our lives, illuminated by the gleaming brilliance of the television screen, are justly secured by the power of Olympus and happily lived with the morals of Bloomsbury. We are the pinnacle of history and the envy of former ages.

None of this is very noticeable when Follett confines himself to characters who are modern. Their narcissism melds easily with the brutal dictatorship of relativism in which they live and move and have their being. Thus each of them usually finds meaning and happiness in an utterly personal, one may even say selfish, vision of themselves and their times. In Lie Down with Lions our heroine is moved by sexual excitement and marital infidelity; Communism, democracy, and "high, narrow" thinking about the goods and evils thereof have nothing to do it. Ditto for Elene Fontana in Key to Rebecca. Ditto for Alex Wollf in Key to Rebecca. Ditto for Sonja in Key to Rebecca. Ditto for Charlotte Walden in The Man from St. Petersburg. Ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto, ditto.

In contrast, Follett portrays men like David Rose, who did his best to stop Henry Faber from thwarting the Allies' D-Day plans, as a bitchy, juvenile, useless fellow who knows nothing about women and -- therefore -- even less about orgasms. It takes Faber only one day to seduce Rose's wife, stranted on a North Sea island without sex due to her husband's paraplegia and his constant bitter rejection of her emotional advances. (One is left wondering, for the question holds no interest for Follett, whether a paralyzed man can have any marital feelings at all if he's incapable of full participation in the Great Quest for Meaning).

Because Rose discovers Faber's spying, and because Faber's having it off with his wife, Rose tries to stop Faber from taking his vital, clandestine photographs to Germany by U-Boat. But Faber overcomes the British paralytic and provides a suitably-Stracheyan epitaph: "David Rose had been something of a fool, also a braggart and a poor husband, and he had died screaming for mercy; but he had been a brave man, and he had died for his country . . .." Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori. Not in Follett's world, where it may be good to die for sex, revenge, or anything else -- as long as it isn't something "high, narrow, and dark" like stopping Hitler.

Ken Follett has written a lot of novels. I haven't read them all. But I think I've read enough. It's been said that the difference between a good novel and a bad one is that good novels tell you about their characters, and bad novels tell you about their authors. In like fashion, good historical fiction tells you about the mores of the past; bad historical fiction, like Follett's, tells you only about the mores of the present. I have nothing against what one of my friends called, "mind candy" -- bright, frothy novels that excite with sentiment rather than burdening the mind with drama. But I get irritated when they're passed off to a gullible public as "breathtaking" pieces of historical imagination. They're not. They're mind candy. And a diet of candy isn't good for anyone. Time for healthier fare -- Robert Graves, Marguerite Yourcenar,, Mary Renault, Michael Shaara, Sharon Kay Penman . . . . . .

2005-11-22T20:57:00.000-05:00

Thanksgiving

As the day nears, and preparations leave me little time to write, let me just say that I thank God for allowing me to be part of the United States of America. There are so many things to cherish in this country. I, like other patriots, spend more time and ascii being vexed at her flaws. But even those flaws are mostly the exesses of her virtues:

I love America's pragmatism, but not her amorality;

I love her undauntable courage, but not her fickle wrath;

I love America's enthusiasm for the individual, not her cawing maelstrom of egotism;

I love her speedy power, but not her heedless arrogance;

I love America's optimism, but not her vanity;

I love her free and easy ways, but not her licentious indifference . . . .

I love her.

And I thank God that my life is forever written into her story, however small my thread may be. I could not imagine my life as an English life, or a story from the subcontinent or the vast reaches of Asia. I am an American in my bones and in my blood. Uproot me, and I would die from pining.

God bless the United States of America. I would rather be a citizen of the United States of America than a king or noble in any other country. Good Russians or Thais will feel no slight, for they, too, are justly proud of their homelands, and will never be chagrined at the destiny of their births. But the cathedral of the nations spreads God's design across many colors and forms. And so I taste a light that Europe or Africa will never know, and shout with joy.

2005-11-20T13:10:00.000-05:00

If You Haven't Been To Mass Today (And for the Week

Please take a minute, read this, and add this to your prayers. Thanks. Mary Herboth's brother is dying of cancer. It seems nothing can be done except the best things like prayer and the sacraments.

2005-11-17T13:40:00.000-05:00

Looking for Something to Pray Over?

Here's one.

Here's another.

I'll pray that one group retain its courage, and that the other group finds it.

2005-11-16T15:47:00.000-05:00

My Golem's Name Is "McCarthy"

I remember an old story about the golem, a creature in Jewish folklore which could be made from inanimate materials only by the greatest sages, who used them to fight pogroms and anti-Semitism. The main problem was keeping the golem from turning on its creators. I recalled the legend when I read this story courtesy of the Drudge Report. The ADL is issuing a wake-up call to the Jewish community. It has a list of hundreds (perhaps millions) of card-carrying Evangelicals who have infiltrated our institutions and halls of government, and who are using their influence to destroy the country. As Abraham Foxman, the ADL's national director puts it:

"What we're seeing is a pervasive, intensive assault on the traditional balance between religion and state in this country" . . . "They're trying to bring Christianity to all aspects of American life. They're not just talking just about God and religious values but about Jesus and about Christian values."

I didn't know there was a difference, when it came to "the traditional balance between religion and state in this country." That "traditional balance" has always exiled and outlawed any talk about God and religious values -- Christian, Jewish, or otherwise -- from the public forum. Government at all levels has, for the past sixty years or so, built a "wall of separation," between "Church and state" that includes synagogues, ashrams, and mosques. It is stupid at best, and disingenuous at worst, to suggest that this anti-religious attitude welcomes "God and religious values," and is endangered only when people mention "Jesus and Christian values."

True to form, the ADL has produced its own questionable poll supporting its position. It is, of course, tailor made to elicit answers that can seem threatening to non-Christian religious minorities. For example, the ADL trumpets alarm over this result:

Sixty-nine percent of Evangelicals and 60 percent of weekly churchgoers said there should be "organized" prayer in public schools, according to the survey, and 89 percent of Evangelicals agreed that religious symbols "like the Ten Commandments" should be displayed in public buildings.

I wasn't aware that displaying the Ten Commandments is an act of anti-Semitic exclusion. More to the point, however, is that the ADL (among its many unclarities in the poll) apparently didn't want to ask the respondents whether they thought "organized prayer" meant prayers voluntarily organized and attended by student groups, or mandatory, "gun-at-your-head" recitations of the Nicene Creed. If I were worried about an impending Evangelical theocracy, I'd want to know that.

The rhetoric -- communicated, no doubt, faithfully by The Jewish Week -- is full of code-words that telegraph the ADL's intended course.

Warning that the evangelical right has made alarming gains . . . .

ADL policy [of] attacking several prominent religious right groups and challenging their motives . . . .

national Jewish summit to respond to the growing challenge . . . . .

But even more threatening . . . . .

More ominously . . . .

naming names, and judging the motives of leading conservative Christian groups . . . .

get-tough approach

Jewish groups have been ‘seduced' by the Evangelicals' support for Israel, even as those groups pursue the ‘Christianization' of the nation'

The Nazis are back (as though they'd ever been absent from the ADL's version of history). They're trying to "Christianize" the nation, "seducing" the Jewish leadership with equivocal gestures and words, all the while pursuing "threatening, ominous, alarming" aims with questionable (anti-Semitic) motives that call for all-out Jewish effort to "get tough."

I confess to a great lack of sympathy with this approach, as much as I admire it as a brilliant example of mass politics.

Rabbi Eugene Korn, director of Jewish affairs for the American Jewish Congress and a former ADL official, agreed that a collective re-evaluation of Jewish church-state strategies is in order . . .

He conceded that "Jews have always fared badly in systems where religion is allied with the government. But I just don't see that there is a serious move to do that in this country. I'm not frightened by the issue of whether the Ten Commandments should be in public buildings."

There's far more of Rabbi Korn's sage and excellent observations than I've quoted, but I quoted this small piece to point something out.

Jews have not "always fared badly" in systems where religion is allied with the government. The Lutheran Church, it's interesting to note, is the official, state-supported religion of Sweden and Denmark.

Denmark was the only occupied country that actively resisted the Nazi regime's attempts to deport its Jewish citizens. On September 28, 1943, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, a German diplomat, secretly informed the Danish resistance that the Nazis were planning to deport the Danish Jews. The Danes responded quickly, organizing a nationwide effort to smuggle the Jews by sea to neutral Sweden. Warned of the German plans, Jews began to leave Copenhagen, where most of the 8,000 Jews in Denmark lived, and other cities, by train, car, and on foot. With the help of the Danish people, they found hiding places in homes, hospitals, and [gasp! official state] churches. Within a two week period fishermen helped ferry 7,220 Danish Jews and 680 non-Jewish family members to safety across the narrow body of water separating Denmark from Sweden.

The Danish rescue effort was unique because it was nationwide. It was not completely successful, however. Almost 500 Danish Jews were deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto in Czechoslovakia. Yet even of these Jews, all but 51 survived the Holocaust, largely because Danish officials pressured the Germans with their concerns for the well-being of those who had been deported. The Danes proved that widespread support for Jews and resistance to Nazi policies could save lives.

Israel is another counter-example that comes to mind rather handily -- Israel is a good day's walk from the ultra-secular model of Church-State separation being touted by Mr. Foxman as the be-all and end-all of human civilization. It would be interesting -- and perhaps will be interesting -- to see the secularist ideals promoted by the ADL's campaign met by some pithy comparisons between Evangelical political influence in America and Jewish religious influence in Israeli politics, or between the supposedly-malign project of "Christianizing" America and the supposedly-benign project of "Zionizing" Palestine.

That sort of heated rhetoric is what Foxman and the ADL hope to provoke. They've already taken the first steps with their axe-handle rhetoric and vexing innuendos. If evangelicals reply in kind, it will only serve to fuel the ADL's paranoic framework and create cause to question the bona fides of any Jewish group which refuses to join the fray. In a world of bitter suspicion and antagonistic relationships, everyone turns to the men who can "name names" and "get tough." As I said, it's a brilliant piece of mass politics. So was McCarthyism. It's playing with fire, and I hope everyone declines the ADL's invitation to strike a match and that we follow instead the civilized approach of Rabbi Korn:

Instead of raising the level of confrontation, he said, "we should be thinking about how to develop a nuanced relationship with the religious right. We should be giving them support and praise for the wonderful things they are doing for Israel, and still manage to be strong where we disagree with them on our domestic agenda."

There have been times when Jewish attempts to build a liveable society through secularism goaded Christians into demonizing them as a culture-destroying race bent on undermining wholesome values. Let's not invite that old, vile rhetoric to emerge -- on either side -- again.

2005-11-14T22:35:00.000-05:00

My Ultimate 1950s Sci-Fi Movie Weekend

Destination Moon (1950)
The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951)
When Worlds Collide (1951)
War of the Worlds (1953)
Them! (1954)
This Island Earth(1955)
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
Earth vs. The Flying Saucers (1956)
The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957)
The Fly (1958)

and . . . . and . . . .

MONSTERS, JOHN, MONSTERS FROM THE ID!

Forbidden Planet (1956)!!!!!!!!!

If only I had the time to sit down in front of the Interocitor with a few cold ones. Ah well, Klaatu Barada Nikto, y'all!

2005-11-12T10:27:00.000-05:00

For Veterans' Day

I saw that the Curt Jester put up a hymn for Veterans' Day. I appreciated that sentiment and his apt choice. Inasmuch, however, as Veterans Day has been employed in my neck of the woods as an occasion to drape red-white-and-blue bunting around the Bush administration's decision to invade Iraq and some of its more dishonorable attempts to fight (the other guy's) terrorism, here's my selection:

God of our fathers, known of old--
Lord of our far-flung battle line
Beneath whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

The tumult and the shouting dies;
The captains and the kings depart:
Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice,
An humble and a contrite heart.
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

Far-called, our navies melt away;
On dune and headland sinks the fire:
Lo, all our pomp of yesterday
Is one with Nineveh and Tyre!
Judge of the Nations, spare us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

If, drunk with sight of power, we loose
Wild tongues that have not Thee in awe--
Such boasting as the Gentiles use
Or lesser breeds without the law--
Lord God of Hosts, be with us yet,
Lest we forget - lest we forget!

For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube and iron shard--
All valiant dust that builds on dust,
And guarding, calls not Thee to guard--
For frantic boast and foolish word,
Thy mercy on Thy people, Lord!
-- Rudyard Kipling, "Recessional."

2005-11-12T10:12:00.000-05:00

More Tooting

Since it's beginning on July 8, 2003, The Dossier passed the 150K mark for hits (151,435 as of today). We've had 111,687 visits (more than twenty minutes' spent on the site), 1,049 this week. That means about 74% of our visitors are serious readers of the material I generate (that's a compromise between the phrase "brilliance I radiate" and "bilge I bloviate"). Thanks, y'all, for your appreciation.

2005-11-08T10:04:00.000-05:00

School Days

Today's my first day of student teaching. (Your prayers would be appreciated!!)

For what it's worth, here's an journal entry I wrote on education:

Educating Children for the Malabar Front

One of the things I noticed about Professor Shulman's presentation to EDU 201 the other week was the virtually-complete absence of the learning methods we've been studying in EDU 302 & 404, and which we're experiencing in EDU 201. Aside from a few "microsocratics" and a couple of Q&As there wasn't any vigorous interaction between the students and Professor Shulman. There weren't any small groups, no role-playing exercises, no collaborative or cooperative efforts. Professor Shulman remain seated and motionless for the first 45 minutes of the class, and while I suspect he stood and "painted the room" as a (very) subtle energy shift, the muted technique didn't change the essential format -- the dicactive lecture we're taught to use almost as a last resort.[1]

And yet, to use Professor Frederick's phrase, the lecture was very lively, an "interior dialogue" between Professor Shulman and each of us.

So why, on this most auspicious day, one eagerly anticipated by all of us Constructivists, did we default to the didactic-lecture format? Shouldn't we have been treated to a brilliant expose of all those exciting strategies we've been studying? Shouldn't we have seen at least one power-point slide? I think the answer is, "No," perhaps even, "Hell no."

Like actors, or policemen, or trial lawyers, what we're studying is methods, the techniques of teaching. And like actors, or policemen on a traffic stop, or lawyers before juries, if we do it right people won't notice 90% of what's going on. Few people waiting on the roadside for a traffic ticket notice the cop's surreptitious hand pushing on the trunk to see if it will open because there's contraband or someone hiding inside. Nor will they notice the cautious approach from the driver's or passenger's blind-side, meant to allow the officer time to observe someone reaching for a weapon or hiding something under the seat. When we see George C. Scott deliver his speech before that huge American flag well, by God, we think it's George S. Patton himself growling at us; we don't notice the acting, the acting is invisible. That's true for teaching, too. The method should be invisible, or at least unobtrusive, because it's not the point of what's happening.

That brings me back to Professor Shulman's lecture. Mostly, I thought, it dealt with "meta-issues" such as the purposes and value of comparative / hierarchical grading. His indictment of law school pedagogy as "corrupt" was all too charitable.[2] The first semester our grades came out, not only friendships realigned, but some romantic relationships as well. That's not counting students who let their spouses put them through law school before "better dealing" themselves into new marriages with classmates. I remember one student at the law school telling us that he'd asked the lawyers who were interviewing him for a job what kind of wife would fit into the social life of the firm. He thought the question displayed complete loyalty and put him up over the others. Somewhere out there is a very lucky woman, because he didn't get the job. I wonder if he was beat out by another classmate who asked whether having children fit into the firm's social life.

Most people in my experience tend to think that "corruption" means exchanging something good, true, or beautiful for money. That definition's too limited. "Corruption," to my way of thinking, means exchanging something good, true or beautiful for something that's less true, good, or beautiful. Money just happens to be the most common medium of exchange. It's good to get high grades. It's good to have a well-paying job with a prestigious law firm. But it's corrupt to trade higher, finer things like home and family for them. I think law schools provide that acculturation for their students, playing off the James Bryan Conant / John F. Kennedy "best and brightest" acculturation that preceded it in the lives of their students.

Lawyers, like educators, have immense power. What future can come from legal men trained in the mold of Cromwell rather than Thomas More? I know a lawyer whose firm routinely takes cases that violate his religious principles; he's told to work on them or take a walk. He walked. If he'd stayed, he'd have been corrupt, trading his identity for a mess of 401(K) pottage. I know a Supreme Court Justice who takes pride in his conservative, Catholic credentials -- and then writes articles claiming that the teaching of the Catholic Church against the death penalty doesn't bind his conscience, because if it did, he'd have to resign from the Supreme Court.[3] I recall CS Lewis wondering, in Perelandra, how many college professors have lost their souls pursuing the high opinion of their colleagues. I remember the Sermon on the Mount: "Woe unto you, when all men shall speak well of you! For so did their fathers to the false prophets." (Luke 6:25). If professional schools were to teach anything valuable, they would teach that. It could be said that the greatest soul-killing myth in the American religion is the identity of virtue and worldly success. I'm glad Professor Shulman lifted a corner of that shroud last Tuesday.

Shulman's cross-cultural comparison of the dilemma of a teacher under the American and Soviet spheres of education was bold, and apt. History, for example, is supposed to be what Herodotus said it was, an investigation, not a memorized group of "just-so tales" cobbled together by mono-multi-stereo- cultural lobbying groups. I have no problem with his solution, either, so long as it's done without hypocrisy or dissembling. I'm not going to teach the spread of Buddhism in Ceylon just because somebody on the state standards committe wrote a doctoral thesis about it. Nor am I going to portray Western Civilization as being particularly shameful or worse than Asian civilization. My World Civilization book has a good deal on the Western slave trade, and nothing on the ancient and long-running Chinese custom of foot-binding (abolished, interestingly enough, by a fascist government). I'm not saying that every conscientious teacher ought to go stalking around the school, fiery-eyed with a chip on his shoulder, itching for the chance to duke it out over some principle or other. I'm saying that members of the learned professions have a constant obligation to exercise an inner moral vigilance, and to perpetually entertain the possibility that this vigilance will demand resistance, perhaps even a donnybrook or two, with corruption.

The rant having ended, I return to the reason I started writing this little thing to begin with. Why, if the topics were so important, didn't Professor Shulman dazzle us with constructivism? I venture the opinion that it's because all the tips and tricks, all the glittering methodology of collaborative classrooms, cooperative learning, "jigsawing" and the like exist because they are deliberately-inefficient ways of teaching. Professor Shulman's didactic lecture was delivered in ideal circumstances. He was a learned and experienced professional speaking to an audience on a theme in which we were already interested and highly-knowledgeable.[4] As liberally-educated men and women, we also shared a common fund of knowledge and experience with Professor Shulman. He did not have to explain what "communism" was in order to make his point about government censorship of education in Czechoslovakia, and had he quoted Shakespeare we would all at least have known he was quoting something, and we all had the verbal and intellectual skills to take his meaning even if we weren't personally familiar with the reference. In short, that classroom was an ideal instructional environment because we were linked, if you will, by superconducting lines of communication.

Our readings (in both EDU 201 and 302; I've given up trying to keep it all separate and entered a sort of syllabus-induced fugue state) undeniably suggest that the exclusive use of didactic lectures is a thing of the past. It is described often as a holdover from medieval times. But in the Middle Ages, the only people with access to higher education had already become literate in at least one second language (Latin) or more (Greek and Hebrew). They were thoroughly-versed in a base corpus of knowledge drawn from Scripture, the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, classical (mostly Roman) authors, etc., a corpus which is decidedly smaller than our own. On the other half of the educational spectrum, even local schooling tended to focus mostly on the children of wealthy (or at least comfortable) families, and usually ended with acquiring enough Latin to read legal documents and international correspondence. Martin Luther expressed the general view admirably, "A boy should pass one or two hours a day at school and let him have the rest of his time for learning a trade in his father's house. . . . So also girls should have an hour a day at school." Likewise, the law implementing compulsory attendance at school passed by the Scottish Parliament in 1496, applied only to children of the nobility and freeholders (families with their own land), and then only to the point where the children acquired "perfect Latin."

The United States seems, not a unique example of the project, but certainly the first and most prominent of a nation embracing an ideal of universal education as part of the national raison d'etre. From Jefferson through Dewey and beyond, our society has considered "education" (however variously conceived in terms of content or method) to be synonymous with the entire American project. I venture to suggest that because of this egalitarian passion the United States undertook to do for education what Napoleon did for military service, transforming a state function that had been sharply restricted along class lines into a national program of total participation involving all strata of society. One recalls in this connection the strong militaristic tinge that has accompanied American educational reform. Intelligence testing became popular as a result of its use by the American military in WWI, and gained new impetus when schools were enlisted in the national project of defeating Communism and vindicating the American Way.

Our final word, perhaps better characterized as a plea, is that all segments of our population give attention to the implementation of our recommendations. . . . Help should come from students themselves; from parents, teachers, and school boards; from colleges and universities; from local, State, and Federal officials; from teachers' and administrators' organizations; from industrial and labor councils; and from other groups with interest in and responsibility for educational reform.

It is their America, and the America of all of us, that is at risk; it is to each of us that this imperative is addressed. It is by our willingness to take up the challenge, and our resolve to see it through, that America's place in the world will be either secured or forfeited. Americans have succeeded before and so we shall again.
-- "A Final Word," excerpted from A Nation at Risk.

The quoted passage is, in a very Napoleonic sense, a "revolutionary" vision of education in which the state is general to a social army fighting to preserve the motherland against forces that would deprive her of her rightfully-glorious place in world history.

This observation, if true, leads to a number of questions about whether American education, as practiced and popularly conceived, is an example of civilization or merely systematic barbarism. With regard to the immediate point, however, the enlistment of the nation in an "education army" poses some of the same issues for learning and teaching that technology posed for the military establishments of the 19th and 20th centuries. It's an interesting fact, recorded in William Manchester's Dreadnaught, that in 1850 the British Army conducted a study proving conclusively that in the hands of properly-trained troops, the longbow was superior to the rifle in accuracy, rate of fire, and effectiveness at killing or incapacitating an opposing force. The obstacle, as the British realized, which prohibited re-equipping the army with longbows was that effective training in the weapon required literally years of exhaustive tutelage; in the days of Crecy and Agincourt skill in the longbow was often handed down from father to son, giving rise to English family names like Archer, Bowman, Fletcher, Butt, Buttson, and the like.[5] In contrast to competent military bowmanship, riflery can be practiced at an acceptably-effective level with only months, perhaps even weeks, of drill. The rifle, and not the longbow, was the eminently suitable weapon for modern military establishments, which must be capable of enlisting and training huge numbers of soldiers quickly drawn from all classes and conditions of society.

Although that old debate has long been settled by technological advances, the human dynamic it highlights remains a feature of mass politics and therefore mass education. The most efficient, most effective method of teaching -- the lecture, that "inner dialogue," the oral essay, perhaps joined with a truly Socratic dialogue -- can't be relied on to train the "conscript armies" of modern students. The gap in training and experience between student and instructor is too great. (And that, by the way, assumes a lot about instructors which is not, strictly speaking, true). As the infantry of the 1850s no longer came from backgrounds which provided training in the skills necessary to use the longbow, the modern student no longer comes from backgrounds which provide training in the skills necessary to listen to a good lecture or meaningfully participate in a socratic exchange. In the last century, it was realized that some basic training in riflery took less time to impart just enough skill to work on the battlefield, and now we're realizing that the eight-minute sound-bite (accompanied by appropriate audio-visual stimulus) takes less time to impart just enough skill to work in the modern factory. When the Founding Fathers spoke of standing armies as a threat to liberty, perhaps they spoke more truly than even they suspected.

I still wonder at the point of it all. The purpose of our own education as teachers has been forcefully stated as the development of the whole child, but I wonder . . . development into what? The question doesn't seem to require much by way of critical thinking skills in the educational establishment. That's not a judgment, however much it may sound like one; an alienated, culturally-bereft, materialistic society is justifiably intolerant of moral debates or moral didacticism. In that respect, the concentration of educational activity into a state system operating under secularist principles has been a subtle and brilliant method of driving "higher-order moral thinking" out of education altogether. Moreover, the resulting absence of teleological explanations of human existence which exceed materialist priorities carries its own powerful message, one which is all the more powerful because it's never expressly stated and thereby subjected to examination. The educated man's picture of human life becomes a closed circle in which he both eats to live and lives to eat. Leisure, and all the higher levels of human meaning it presupposes, is trivialized into a pleasant hobby at best, a dangerous eccentricity at worst. Thus we wonder, astonished, at the prevailing attitude among teenagers that knowledge and wisdom are not worth the candle, that accelerated and high-order intellectual performance is an example of uncouth bad taste, even an implied insult directed at everyone else.

Perhaps that's as it ought to be. The Revolutionary Army can hardly be expected to question the purpose of its own existence. Maybe it's better to turn all of America's schools into well-funded, cleaner, bowdlerized versions of Seward Park High[6] -- holding pens for thousands of unreflective, other-directed, morally-ignorant young people subjected to a frequent barrages of inducements to enlist in the army. Whichever army -- the one fighting the war on poverty, the one fighting the war on drugs, the war on terror, the war on Saddam, the war on intolerance (by which is usually meant moral objections raised to materialist / secularist priorities). Someday we might even wrap all those wars into a neat catch-phrase, something like "the Malabar Front." It's easier to run a society along those lines. It's certainly much easier to run a school.

**********************
[1] This bespeaks no inherent prejudice against the method, as I hope my observations explain. IMHO, the de-emphasis on didacticism and lecture is due in no small part to their familiarity and ease of use; under stress, any person will default to his or her training. Most of us have seen didactic lecturing for the better part of our entire academic careers. (That goes for law school, too; what passed as "Socratic method" at IU in my day was "Socratic" only in that it made one long for a draught of hemlock). Our course of instruction is, I think, intended to "skip over" the brilliant oral essay on the theory that any of us can speechify things fairly well already, and we ought to be conditioned so that the stress of a classroom causes a default to other methods.

[2] If I were reading this from the pen of another, I'd think, "sour grapes." Maybe. I wouldn't say my stint in law school even remotely resembled a star academic performance. But I did write on to the Law Review, was selected to represent the school on the ABA Moot Court Team, and I was elected to the Order of Barristers by the faculty. I also went on to clerk for two federal judges, one at the District Court level and another on the U.S. Court of Appeals. I do have biases that influence this appreciation of law school, but GPA-envy isn't among them.

[3] Antonin Scalia, "God's Justice and Ours," First Things, May, 2002.

[4] That's a comparative judgment, of course, but it's comparatively right.

[5] The first names require no elaboration. As to the others, fletchers were skilled artisans who "fletched," or manufactured, arrows; "Butt," "Butts" and "Buttson" are all derived from a term in archery for a place of practice or target.

[6] The high school featured in this book.

2005-11-05T14:19:00.000-05:00

Canadian Cowardice

Via Fr. Dowd, we learn that Canada's debating whether to create a programmatic, state-sanctioned approach to killing the sick and mentally ill. Fr. Dowd's blog has all the details, as well as good observations about what it all can mean for Canada. I'm not Canadian. But I thought I'd sit in the gallery for the Parliamentary debate via the links on Fr. Dowd's site. Here's what I think about it.

Ms. Francine Lalonde moved for the bill to go forward. It is time, she said, for Canada to join the progressive and forward-thinking nations who kill the incurably sick, the socially useless, among their populations:

Death is never a mercy. To characterize death as merciful is to invest it with nearly altruistic qualities, with tenderness, which is a kind of anthropomorphizing, as if death has a personality and we can alter its features, render it more kindly, make of it even a friend.

Merciful death — it was for the best ... at least he's not suffering any more — is but a shallow platitude, seized upon most eagerly by those who cannot otherwise admit their own relief in being released from the exhausting burden, emotional and otherwise but essentially vicarious, of illness and infirmities and frailty; of how awful life looks, wasting and desiccated and necrotic, when it's trickling away.

This is, I think, the unbearable heaviness of being.

Of growing old and feeble, or not even so old but terribly sick, losing one's faculties, one's mobility, one's mind — reverting, yes, to the helplessness of infancy. But it is inevitably the healthy who recoil from this, as if even death were a preferable alterative to such dependency and deterioration.

We project our revulsion — which is essentially rooted in fear of our own mortality — and convince ourselves that somebody else would be better off dead because look, just look, at how wretched their existence has become or will become. And that says a great deal about the value that we subtract from a life when it is no longer vigorous and productive; when it just lies there, maybe thinking, maybe dreaming, maybe remembering.

Little wonder that the sick and dying begin to see themselves as valueless, too, abhorrent, ashamed, unworthy because they can no longer walk or talk or feed themselves.

Oh, sorry, that's not Ms. Lalonde. It's Rosie Dimanno writing in the Toronto Star. I thought it might be interesting to look at Ms. Dimanno's editorial first, because so many of its themes are echoed by Ms. Lalonde's argument for the bill.

Take, for example, Ms. Lalonde's brilliant , languid praise for the artistic beauty of being murdered by your family physician:

"The experience of doctors who look after individuals who have been allowed to be helped to die in countries that have passed legislation in this regard is enlightening. One might infer that, knowing that they will be able to get help to die with dignity when they reach the point where their life has definitely become unbearable, it will be easier for people to live fully a painful end of life or a life of extreme limitations because they feel imprisoned in their bodies. As Félix Leclerc reminded us, death is full of life."

Now this really is good rhetoric. A lot of arguments against euthanasia legislation are focused on the dignity of life and its inextricable end in a (hopefully natural) death. What Ms. Lalonde's just done is plant her flag on the same moral high-ground by plausibly using the same line of thought to justify suicide. If, she says, the pro-life bunch are right and death really is part of life, then why not follow the idea where it leads us? If we use our freedom and our medical technology to help us live as we wish, why not continue using them in order to die as we wish?

I thought Ms. Lalonde's reference to Felix Leclerc was curious. The only Leclerc I know fought the Germans in WWII. So I read up on him as much as I could, which isn't much, because just about everything on him is in French. He's a famous artist, a prominent figure in Québécois culture, a folk-singer whose work apparently helped make it "okay" to be French in Canada. That last bit's no small achievement, from what I understand; there's a lot of Anglo-Gallic tension in Canada, and it's tough to find an American analogy. As near as I can gather, it's as though Americans lived in a society where the words "white trash," "trailer-court" and "redneck" applied to French-speaking people. I found this in the Canadian Encyclopedia:

The lyrics of the songs [in Leclerc's considerable repertoire] . . . speak to men of themselves. The naturalistic and mythical aspects of man's origins have been retained. He draws inspiration from the elements - water, earth, sun, fire, and wind - and his themes reflect a love of animals and nature. . . . His poetry, simple and direct, conveys a tragic vision of existence. To him the tragic character of humanity is rooted in nature. Human effort occasionally may lead to death under the yoke . . . but at the same time it provides a link with the beyond and adds a spiritual dimension to everyday actions and indeed to life in general. Nature is omnipresent in Leclerc's songs. The seasons provide the backdrop to the recurring themes of escape, death, God, woman, and country.

That doesn't sound very healthy to me. "[N]aturalistic and mythical aspects of man's origins . . . tragic vision of existence . . . . character of humanity rooted in nature . . . recurring themes of escape and death . . . " It all sounds like something Silverweed might sing in the Warren of Shining Wires.

Of course I may be greatly maligning Leclerc's work, and I apologize for it if I have. His view of the world may have no connection with Ms. Lalonde's -- "death is full of life" is the kind of brass-plated bromide that occupies the place ordinarily reserved for intelligence in the minds of legislators and sophomore English-lit majors. It may not be a distinct theme which Ms. Lalonde picked up from Leclerc's ouvre.

Still, I mention it because one thing Francis Schaeffer taught me is that culture and religious philosophy are inseparable and that secularism is a religious philosophy. I mention it because one thing John Paul II taught me is that all this has been wrapped up in a culture of death. Why shouldn't a culture of death have its own hymns, its own poetic insights? It should, and it does; while Leclerc's chansons may not be a part of all that, Ms. Lalonde's lyrical transmutation of death into a life-giving apotheosis certainly fits the bill. It goes beyond the prosaic, utilitarian arguments about socially-assisted killing, although Ms. Lalonde uses them too. It makes murder and self-murder into holy things, experiences of the transcendent available to anyone with enough personal religious excellence and will to use a syringe.

Ask Ms. Lalonde whether men and women should try to become the best people they can be, and you'll see the road she's paving. It runs straight into a great Canadian abattoir where the troublesome poor, the expensively sick, and the embarrassingly demented can redeem themselves by producing more "life" for Canada. A maple-leaf mockery of the Crucifixion, that, and how Satan must be chuckling over it. From Druid to Aztec, and now to Québécois -- encouraging human society to murderously sacrifice their own in the name of good harvests and life-giving plenty has always been one of his little tricks. What else can we expect to enter secularism's garnished house, swept clean of all religious dogma? Nothing, nothing at all, except for Ms. Lalonde and her own blasphemous chanson about the recurring themes of escape and death.

The isolated voices now singing through Ms. Lalonde and only a handful of others will swell to a vast chorus as more Canadians enter the melody. Canada, they will sing, why do you tarry? If self-inflicted death produces so much life, why should you restrict its gift to the least among you? Why should people have to wait until they are suffering before they give more life to our great country? Some may have to wait, one supposes, if society's needs demand their continued physical presence. Doctors and nurses who kill the weak and sick, and the grave-diggers who bury the mess, certainly fall in that category. But that just proves life is a burden to be carried for others, one which should be shed at the earliest opportunity. Far better to glorify oneself and one's country, to give oneself in the very flower of one's youth and strength . . . . . Oh, yes, Satan will get them to mock every stage on the Via Dolorosa, especially carrying of the cross.

He'll do it because he has to, and he has to because there's truth in Ms. Dimanno's words. It's not good to be sick and dying. It's not pleasant. It's not even tolerable most of the time. What kind of society would expect its members, and their families, to go through all that? To find out, one merely has to ask whether any of the things Ms. Lalonde herself might value -- womens' sufferage, the end of slavery, the survival of native peoples -- were gained without equal degrees of suffering. What will become of those great achievements, or of others yet to be attained, when we no longer value suffering? If the right and duty to live one's life to the bitter end can be an unnecessary and intolerable burden, why then all the rights which come with life can be unnecessary and intolerable too. How kind of the state to relieve us of all that stress, all that strain, all that suffering!

But, as the death-mongers will say, the sick and dying aren't suffering for any cause, they're suffering for no reason at all. It's one thing to praise dead soldiers, wounded civil-rights marchers, men and women who chose to suffer for something noble. The others kind of suffering, well, it's just humiliating. The real noble suffering is done by the family and the doctors who decide to kill grandmamma for the greater glory of Canada. It's quite understandable, once you make the same twisted assumptions that lie behind Ms. Lalonde's smiling face. Officers guarding Auschwitz used to routinely commiserate about how difficult the job was, how much it took out of one, and about the special kind of moral bravery required to keep the bath- houses and crematoria running at maximum capacity. But the killing had purpose you see -- it was for the greater glory of the German Volk and the Thousand-Year Reich. On the other hand, a Jewish life was a canker, the eruption of a disease. Everybody said so. Best to wipe out that pitiable species altogether.

To think that way, one must first deprive another human being of the non-negotiable, intrinsic value of his life -- all of his life, including everything that happens in it. Mr. Jason Kenney, another member of Parliament, saw this quite clearly:

[H]uman dignity, which is the basis of our civilizational belief in the sanctity of human life, is ontological, that is to say, an essential and inseparable characteristic of human personhood, of human existence. To legalize or seek to legitimize the deliberate taking of innocent human life as this bill seeks to do is to commit the gravest offence possible against the human person. In short, it would turn a society such as ours, grounded as it is in the objective existential understanding of human dignity, on its head.

The place of human dignity in social thought is either a fixed, non-negotiable element of the universe, like a spherical planet called Earth, or it isn't. If it is, then you can't kill people just because you've developed your own flat-earth theory of dignity that makes them into disposable snot-rags. It doesn't matter if we're killing them because we've got a new lyrical theory of dignity that makes their deaths into beautiful things; we've still made them into disposable people because we've made a world where the value of anyone's life is negotiable within the state, dictated by the state.

Whether or not they know it, the people who allow themselves to die naturally from incurable illness in Canadian hospitals or homes are soldiers fighting against that disgusting vision of life. They're soldiers whose sacrifices are every bit as noble as the ones who fell at Dieppe and Juno Beach. Nobody wants to do that. I don't want to do it. I don't want anyone in my family to do it. But what difference does that make? Some things in life you have to do even if you don't want to do them. You have to do them even if they're gruesome, terrible, beyond anything that can reasonably be expected to be borne. That may be a shock to Ms. Lalonde. They didn't like hearing it in the Warren of Shining Wires, either. Nobody likes hearing it. That's beside the point. Because if we run life on the basis of what we like or don't like to hear, we'll end up with a society very different from the one Ms. Lalonde thinks she's building. The Germans found that out, in no small measure because Canadians taught it to them. It's sad to see Canada going the same way now.

People who live or die amidst physical or mental circumstances that seem unendurably grotesque teach us real lessons about the glorious nature of human life. They do it because we have to pay attention to them, take care of them, listening to our consciences when their suffering asks us questions about the real meaning of human dignity. We have to do that because their lives, their voices, are "ontological," non-negotiable parts of our own lives. We can't turn them off like displeasing pop songs. Canadians are free to choose otherwise, of course. They can choose to be a nation of cowards who kill other cowards because some more cowards talked a lot of juvenile bosh about life-giving death and merciful murder. God knows, Americans couldn't judge them for it if they did. But we can mourn the loss of a good example as I, for one, will mourn it. I still hope the bill will be defeated. It depends, I guess, on whether Canadians have more guts than their politicians.

2005-11-04T02:31:00.000-05:00

This Week's Eureka Convergence Award

Only a worldview which believes in a visible, transmittable Christendom--an identifiable and complete social order marked by objective divinely-instituted and maintained signs (that is signs whose validity is not determined by merely subjective criteria) and possessing public authority which refuses to be just one more voice in a "marketplace of ideas"--can truly stand against Secularism.
-- Tim Enloe, Societas Christiana

Or, in other words:

CONDEMNED: "The Roman Pontiff can, and ought to, reconcile himself, and come to terms with progress, liberalism and modern civilization."
-- Pius IX, Syllabus of Errors

Great minds think alike, eh?

2005-10-26T02:29:00.000-05:00

Letter to Loretto Girl

Over at Catholic and Enjoying It I came across the story of a faithful Catholic girl and her faithful mother who've precipitated the firing of a Catholic-school teacher for encouraging mothers going inside abortion clinics. As Mark notes, there's some heat being directed at the ladies, a lot of it vile and silly. Here are some examples:

"I feel sorry for you girl, your mom is a whack job."

"[W]e don't need this bullshit coming from your family right now."

"I hope you transfer, not only to a different school, but into a different religion. Catholicism isn't a hate-based belief system, and we don't need your kind."

There are others that read as though the words were cut out of magazines and then glued onto the side of a paper bag.

Of course not all the comments are appallingly shallow and atavistic. There's a spectrum that runs from the above-quoted posts through the higher realms occupied, variously, by the School of Boldly-Outraged Libertarians ("how dare you enforce your morality on others"), the College of Faint Hearts ("abortion might be wrong except the girls are in trouble and it's a tough choice so there"), up to the Do-It-Yourself Senate of True Catholicism ("all the theologians I know say to leave this medieval divisiveness behind and march onward to the sunny uplands of something else!").[1] On they go until, finally, we get to Loretto Girl.

I take it that Loretto Girl is a student at the school. That must be a good school, because her calm dissection of the issues is a pretty rare sight. Most of her points are already addressed by others in the comments box, but I thought I'd offer my own perspective on things because, well, I'm a blowhard and I have a blog. Here it goes -- Loretto Girl's comments are in blue, mine in black.

I don't [think] it's right to go into a teacher's life like that.

Why not? Seriously, I mean just about every comment on the thread that disagrees with Loretto's decision appeals to pedophilia among Catholic priests as something the Church ought to "deal with" before it can even start thinking about firing Ms. Bain. Fair enough, but doesn't investigating pedophilia "go into a teacher's life like that" -- it can involve following the teacher, taking photos, listening to rumors and anonymous accusations, asking the teacher about his or her sex life, etc. If it's right for the Church to investigate pedophilia among priests this way, why shouldn't the Church investigate the morals of her other educators and leaders?

Usually, what I've heard is that there's a difference because the sex-abusing priests are actually hurting people, whereas those who have or support abortions aren't hurting anyone. That makes sense, as long as you believe unborn children don't deserve to be looked on as human beings, that they're just not "people" who can be hurt by abortion. Born people can believe that, if they like. But they can't claim to be Catholics, or to be even generally agreeable to Catholicism. And that leads us to the big issue here. I agree that Ms. Bain shouldn't be fired "just because" she approves of abortion. But can she be fired because Loretto has a duty to be what it claims to be -- a Catholic school modeling Catholic teaching? I think Loretto can't really perform that duty and have Ms. Bain on its staff; either Loretto has to change totally into something else or Ms. Bain would have to, if they were going to keep on together. I don't think Loretto ought to change into something else, and I don't think Ms. Bain ought to put on a "happy Catholic mask" either. So it's best they part ways.

Ms. Bain was not trying to force girls into her views. No one even knew she was pro choice!

I hate to keep bringing it up, but none of the pedophile priests went to the pulpit and told the parish it was right for them to have sex with children, either. And because of a lot of wicked or incompetent bishops, most people never knew who the pedophiles were, either. Why does unobtrusiveness make a difference to Ms. Bain's case? Is that a good analogy? It's not a good analogy at all -- if you think that pedophilia hurts children, but that abortion doesn't hurt anybody because unborn children aren't human beings. See above.

I just don't think it's right to fire a teacher over her beliefs.

I know you mean there's lots more behind what you've written, but still "just" thinking something doesn't make it right or true. Would you think it's fine to have a teacher who thought it was okay to use the word "nigger" to refer to her African-American students, a teacher who said things like "Kids, I believe in diversity. So I don't want all the nigger children on one team. Make sure each of your lab teams has got its own nigger"?

What if the teacher never used the word in class, or anywhere on school grounds, or around anyone connected with the school? What if she only called black people "niggers" among her own friends, and only attended Klan rallies on her own time? Do you think that teacher really ought to be teaching in school? People have the right to believe what they believe, up to a point. In our country people are free to join the Klan and hate African-Americans, or to join Planned Parenthood and help kill unborn children -- up to a point. Where is that point?

It depends on who's setting the point -- government or private society. As a government official, like a law-enforcement officer, I may have to tolerate a hundred people screaming racist hate at the top of their lungs for hours on the courthouse steps. I had to do that, once, because our police department was doing its duty by providing security at a Klan rally, making sure the Klansmen had the right to free speech. But the local merchants and shopkeepers did something that only private society can do. They organized a kind of boycott of the rally. All the stores closed, so there was no reason to go downtown on that Saturday. Nobody could so much as buy a cup of coffee that Saturday, and the local paper ran free ads telling everyone not to go downtown, that all the stores would be closed. Government can't do that, but private people can do it. And they should be able to do it, because otherwise they wouldn't be free either.

Loretto is a private school, which doesn't mean that it's posh, or filled with rich kids. Lots of private schools have nothing but poor students, students who have families which work just as hard, and have just as much trouble making ends meet, as the families whose kids go to public schools. The difference is that a "private" school isn't a government school. It's like the downtown merchants and the local paper I wrote about -- it can do what it wants to do to express its own values, its own beliefs. It should be able to do that, otherwise nobody at Loretto would be free, either. If that means firing Ms. Bain, just like the shopkeepers decided not to sell anything to anybody on that Saturday, then that's what it means.

(And yes, there's a difference, so long as you think that calling black people "niggers" actually hurts and demeans them, whereas aborting unborn babies doesn't "hurt anyone" because they aren't human beings like black people are. In that case, see above).

I disagree with the church on a lot of issues. Does that mean I should get expelled?

I can't speak for Loretto, but if I were running a Catholic school then I'd say, "It depends." If I thought your disagreements were the result of being young, insufficiently educated in life or the faith, the product of wrong-headed influences at home or among friends, and that your disagreements were the curious, open-minded sort that might be healed with patience and lots of clear answers, then I wouldn't expel you.

But if I thought that your disagreements were held on very serious matters, owned past all persuasion, proudly worn by you as a badge of "independence," indulged (on-campus or off) at every opportunity, and that you believed you ought to help other people have the same disagreements with Church teaching, then I'd do the best I knew how to give you one last chance to change -- even if all you did was change your disagreements into the tolerable kind --- and, if you didn't, I wouldn't expel you.

What I would do is have a meeting with you and your parents (they deserve to be told this too, and I deserve to have to look you all in the eye when it got said), and explain that you won't be enrolling at the school in the next term. I'd try and do that with enough time for you to find another school, and offer (if you and your parents wanted it) to make it very clear to the new school that the reason for your changing schools had nothing to do with bad academics, poor student discipline, etc., and that it had to do with a conscientious disagreement between you and my school about religious issues.

(I don't know if a similar thing happened with Ms. Bain. I think the decent thing to do would be to explain to her, with as much notice as practicable, that she would not be teaching at Loretto in the coming term and that she could remain employed until then, provided she made no more trips to an abortion clinic. Hopefully, the school would be in a position to offer her some sort of severance pay to partially tide her over in case she couldn't find a job right away. As in your case, I'd offer to make it very clear -- provided that Ms. Bain met my conditions for remaining until the end of the term -- to any new school that the reason for Ms. Bain changing employers had nothing to do with bad teaching skills, etc., that it had to do with a conscientious disagreement between her and my school about religious issues. My lawyers would tell me not to do any of that, because it would help Ms. Bain sue us, but I'd do it anyway).

I'd tell you (or Ms. Bain) that the reason for this is that a Catholic school should act like it has a specific mission and expect everyone to get on board with that mission for the same reason the Church should act like it has a specific mission and expect everyone to get on board with it -- the Church does have a specific mission handed to her by God Himself and if people don't get on board with it they're going to be very unhappy either in this life or (God forbid) in the next.

Neither I or anyone else can say for sure whether God is going to be personally angry at a particular person who disagrees with the Catholic Church. But I can say whether a particular person is hurting everyone else because, on an objective level, what they want isn't what God wants. I think it's absolutely true that everybody in the entire world is on a journey to the Catholic Church, and that Jesus Christ is constantly inviting and encouraging us to become Catholics and, once Catholic, become the best Catholics we can be. But that doesn't mean we can't take notice of where people are in their journeys, or that we can't make decisions about whether we can travel together at the present time.

So if you had intolerable disagreements like the ones I described, I wouldn't decline to teach you just because, at this particular place in your journey, you had those disagreements with the Church. No, I'd refuse to teach you because you'd be screwing around with everybody else's part of the journey, handing out false directions and telling them not to trust the map, and however much that might be tolerable in God's plan for your individual life, it's not acceptable in God's plan for what happens in a Catholic school.

When I did that, I wouldn't try to kid you that I'm not judging you. Of course I would be judging you, just as you might be making judgments about me for deciding as I did. It's interesting to me that Jesus never forbade us to make judgments -- He just said that if we do, we're going to be accountable by the same standard we used on others. ("Judge not, lest ye be judged"). But at the very least I'd try and show you that the one thing I'm not judging is your sincerity, your desire to be good even if you don't realize the right standards to use in finding and measuring goodness, and that the standards I was using aren't my own, that they're not my personal invention, but they're from what I believe is true for me as well as you and everybody else. I should hope that our parting would be sad, and not angry, but in the end I'd have a duty to keep my school on a certain path, and I think you'd understand that, however much you didn't agree with it or appreciate the result.

In the comments box, "Ken" wrote, "I think it's pretty funny that you [Katelyn Sills, the daughter of the pair] think it's OK to have non-Catholic teachers, so long as they don't contradict Church teachings. So, would you lobby to have a Jewish teacher fired? I mean, he wouldn't believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ, right? His moral identity would be in direct conflict! Ken's right. A Jewish teacher's moral identity would be in direct conflict -- on some things. The question is whether the particular Catholic / Jewish conflict can be tolerated without compromising a Catholic school's core identity.

Let me ask Ken's question a bit differently -- should I, as a Catholic, be hired to teach in a Jewish school? From his comments, I judge that Ken would say that's fine, and that a Jewish school should hire me, all other things being equal. But suppose I understood the Catholic faith as a lot of the commentaries on Katelyn's blog understand it -- as something that depends on my individual conscience, which isn't bound by things like the Catechism or Nostra Aetate. Suppose I thought Jesus cursed the Jews for their evil and wickedness in killing Him. Suppose I said that Jews no longer exist as a chosen people, that they've been replaced by Christians, and that anyone who claims to be a Jew after the Resurrection but who doesn't accept the New Testament is a liar. There are, by the way, plenty of people who answer "What Would Jesus Do" in just that fashion. Is it really proper to say that nobody in the Jewish school's administration should bat an eyelash about having me teach the children there? Would the rabbis who investigated my out-of-school internet writings and on-my-own-time appearances at White Pride rallies really be guilty of all the same nasty, evil, terrible things Katelyn, Lynette, and Loretto are being accused of? No, nor should they be. The conflict in moral identities is direct, irreconcilable, and intolerable. The Jews would have every right to fire me.

But not every conflict in beliefs is so apparent, so dire, or so serious. Suppose I thought that I really did have to believe what the Catholic Church says about the Jews in its official and hierarchical statements. Why then I'd believe that, as Pope Pius XI said, "spiritually, we are all Semites." I'd have to believe that, while Christianity is the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham, Jews who have not realized this fact are really no different (and usually, far better) than I was before I became a Catholic. I can say with John Paul II that Jews and Christians are waiting for the Messiah, and appreciate everything the Jews have done for my faith and mankind. Yes, my appreciation and perspective are not those of a Jew. But are they directly, irreconcilably, and intolerably contradictory to the purpose and mission of a Jewish school?

That depends, on what the Jewish school sees as its "core identity," its purpose and mission. It may see its identity as capable of tolerating my divergence from moral truth in these areas. It may not. Could I -- or should I -- complain if the school's administrators come to me and say, "Look, we hired you to teach here. We didn't realize you were a Catholic, and that you've written favorably about Pope Pius XII's role during the Holocaust. We can't have that here. Our job is to provide a seamless Jewish identity for our children and, we're sorry to say, thinking well of Pius XII is the same thing as hating Jews. Oh, we know you and a lot of other people don't see it that way. We're glad of that. We'd hate to think you were all intentionally anti-Semitic. But the fact remains that we know what the truth is, we know what our school's for, and it's not a place for anybody who thinks Pius XII was a good man or that the Church he represented is G-d's work."

I wonder if "Ken" would think I should sue the school for letting me go in either of these examples, force the school to admit someone whose beliefs are directly contradictory to the school's core identity in ways that are irreconcilable, direct, and intolerable. He probably would. But then, I should ask him, what's the point of being a Jew in America if you can't form and run a Jewish school the way you think it should be formed and run? The way I see it, I'm free to get myself fired and free to find another job where people value my identity, and the Jews who run my hypothetical school are free to fire me and have the kind of school they want. The way Ken sees it, I'm free to demand that the Jews who own and run the school act as though my beliefs are acceptable, and the Jews are free to obey me. Somehow I think Ken's tolerance produces less freedom, not more.

It doesn't matter that the teacher's should set an example for us. Outside of school a certain teacher has a nose piercing, and dresses completely differently. Should we fire that individual for not setting a good example for us by having a piercing that is not very professional?

Doesn't it depend at all on what extra-professional uses of freedom are involved? You talk about nose-piercing, but abortion is about life and death. Shouldn't it make a difference whether a teacher believes some human beings really aren't human beings, and that we can kill them, for any reason at all? Isn't that different from nose-piercing and wearing bell-bottomed pants?

I suppose you can say it isn't really different, that all these decisions are the same. Or you could say that Ms. Bain, because she thinks unborn children aren't human beings, shouldn't be judged by any other standard than that -- as long as she "feels" or "just thinks" she's right, nobody should react to her choices in ways that hurt her.

But that's not a very Catholic, or Christian, or even reasonable way to address these issues. There's no magic bubble called "individual freedom" that surrounds each of us and keeps our choices from affecting other people. If somebody decides to rob a liquor store and shoot the attendant, he's free to believe he ought to be able to do that and get away with it, but his "individual freedom" hasn't kept the store from being robbed or the attendant from bleeding to death behind the counter.

It's the same thing with people who believe in abortion rights. They're free to believe that unborn children aren't humans, that people ought to be able to kill them, but that belief won't keep unborn children from being killed.

I think Catholic schools can fire people who don't set a good example because they help unborn children die. You can disagree, but I'd ask you if it's okay for teachers who represent a Catholic school to tell the world, by their actions, that the Catholic Church is full of crap about something important. I don't like that kind of hypocrisy, whether it's intentional or by accident, and I wouldn't blame Loretto (or Ms. Bain) for not liking it either.

The answer is no! It's freedom of beliefs! That person has a right to dress like that, and Ms. Bain has a right to believe in whatever she wants as long as she doesn't try to force her students to agree with her.

Abortion is all about force. Ms. Bain and the mothers she encourages to have abortions are all about forcing their views on unborn children. Have you ever wondered why American society is so violent? Or why women and children seem to be the victims so often? Have you noticed that people are left to starve on the streets, or forced to kill themselves working three or four jobs just to stay alive? Have you wondered about the racism that causes so much unhappiness and misery? I'm sure you have, and the reason for all that is called the Culture of Death. Pope John Paul preached about it constantly, and its hardest, blackest, and worst manifestation is in abortion -- the killing and exploitation of weak and defenseless people just because they are weak and defenseless. Ms. Bain doesn't realize it, but her abortion-rights activism is feeding all of that, encouraging it to happen, because it tells people that they can decide which weak and defenseless people can be killed or used in medical research, etc.

We don't believe people should force other people to believe certain things. But we do believe that people should be allowed to stand up for what they think is right. There's an old saying, "My right to swing my fist ends at your nose." Finding that balance, finding out where the "nose" is, can be hard. It's especially hard when people like Mother Theresa, who knew all about how wicked abortion is, and Ms. Bain, who doesn't know that abortion is evil, disagree. We settle things, usually, by letting private people express their own points of view and make their own choices about who to associate with.

So that's where we are, really -- it's Ms. Bain's right to express her own point of view (that abortion is okay) and make her own choices about who to associate with (Planned Parenthood), against Loretto's right to express its own point of view (that abortion is wrong) and make its own choices about who to associate with (the Catholic Church). If some girl you really wanted to be friends with, and who wanted to be friends with you, had personality trait of XYZ, you shouldn't have the right to demand that she give up XYZ just so she could be your friend. And she shouldn't have the right to demand that you approve of XYZ just so she could be your friend. The best we can do is arrange things so that you and she can choose what's important to each of you and, if you decide that XYZ is such a big thing that it should stand in the way of your friendship, or influence the kind of friendship you should have, let you choose who to be friends with or not.

The same thing goes for groups. Loretto doesn't have the right to demand that Ms. Bain think differently just so it can have her teach there. Ms. Bain doesn't have the right to demand that Loretto change its beliefs or mission in the world just so she can teach there. Each of them have to decide what's really important, and then make choices based on that. If that means Ms. Bain can't teach at Loretto, then Ms. Bain has to accept that. If it means that Loretto loses someone who's an outstanding teacher in every way other than her personal beliefs on abortion, then Loretto has to accept that, too. The only other way is to make everybody act as though the disagreement didn't matter at all, whether they believed it did or not. That means people would have to be forbidden from living according to their beliefs. It means that by arguing for Ms. Bain to stay in the name of freedom, you're actually arguing that nobody ought to be so free as to live what they believe. I don't see that working very well.

Everyone has different morals and values.

But that's not really true, is it? I mean, people disagree on some things, and sometimes they disagree on many things, but usually there are morals and values everybody shares. Nobody thinks it's fine to steal from poor people. Nobody thinks it's good to lie. People couldn't live together if each of us had completely different morals and values on everything. Shared morals and values are the glue that holds relationships together; without them, relationships blow up.

Suppose you had a boyfriend who said he was only dating you, but actually he was dating a lot of other girls too. Suppose he thought it was good to lie about it, if it kept you from seeing anyone else and let him do what he wanted. The two of you certainly would have different morals and values, yes? But just noting that fact and saying that the two of you have the right to live your lives as you choose won't keep your relationship alive. It only describes the problem -- he values one way, and you value another, and neither of you value the other's choice.

I point that out because it's not enough to say that people are going to disagree on morals and values, throw up your hands, and pretend that "individual freedom" will keep those disagreements from making any difference. There are always going to be times when people disagree on which morals and values they ought to share so that they can live (or teach) together, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't insist on sharing values they think are important in order to continue living or working together.

Harrassing others with signs and hurtful remarks does not solve anything, and will not change them to believe differently.

Probably not, although if my wife were two-timing me and hitting me when I complained, I'd make a few remarks which she might find hurtful. Would that be wrong? Should I just accept what she does because "everybody's got different morals and values" and my wife's "individual freedom" to define what is, and what is not, the kind of marriage she wants means that I'm not suffering from it, that our marriage isn't breaking down, that our daughter might get hurt if we have a divorce? Of course I shouldn't, that won't solve the problem. The problem isn't that she's decided to use her individual freedom to define marriage in such-and-such a way. The problem is that her way is hurting me, and we can't keep going on like that, her hurting me all the time, and so something will have to be done about it.

If it's like any Catholic school I've ever known, Loretto gets a certain amount of "umph" and credibility because it's a Catholic school. Catholic schools are renowned for providing good educations. They're considered to be places where children are not going to be experimented on by goofballs eager to try out the latest educational fads. They're thought of as schools where you can send your kids and expect them to cherish the same morals and values you have and get them ready for college at the same time. Catholicism and the Catholic Church are part of those schools' core identities, the things that make them different and set them apart; Loretto chose that identity long ago, and lives with it, just as I chose my wife long ago, and live with her. They're identities, and if they're worth having, then they're going to cost us some pain and suffering.

What Ms. Bain was doing was hurting Loretto's core identity. Directly, because she tries to keep society organized around some things which God says are harmful and produce misery, and indirectly, because nobody can take a group seriously if they say one thing about themselves and let their members do the exact opposite. Something had to be done about it. And it was. I'm sorry it's hurting Ms. Bain. I'm sorry it's going to hurt Loretto. But it would be cheap and silly for both of them to have gone on as though nothing important was happening, just as it would be cheap and silly for me to go on as though my wife's two-timing and her beating me weren't a big deal.[2]

In the end, who was the better Catholic? The one who reached out to those who needed someone, or the one who protested against them and shunned them away?

I don't know if Ms. Bain's a Catholic, but assuming she is then it all depends. If a teacher is reaching out to pregnant mothers and helping them kill their children, then that teacher's not a better Catholic than other teachers who protest against that and decide not to let it go on in their school. That may or may not be your perception of the matter, I don't know. But it doesn't matter; whether it's Ms. Bain being "worse" by accepting abortion, or Loretto being "worse" by getting all judgmental about it , we're still back to the problem of what to do when peoples' different values require them to do things that make it impossible for them to stay together.

Besides, I think you'll find that Ms. Bain comes out of this with a certain popularity and cachet that will make it relatively easy for her to obtain a new teaching position. That won't change even if Ms. Bain sues the school and takes a money judgment against it to repay her for her trouble. Whether she does or doesn't sue, or win, there are still plenty of people who don't like the Catholic Church and what she teaches about the Culture of Death. They'll be happy to help Ms. Bain. A few years ago there was a Catholic priest named Charles Curran. He was fired from Catholic Univeristy for saying things that are a lot like what Ms. Bain and you are saying. He ended up at Southern Methodist University and the whole thing made him quite popular. According to SMU's press reports:

When The New York Times or the ABC News program "Nightline" needs an expert to discuss the latest news coming out of the Vatican in Rome, they often turn to SMU, home of America's best-known dissenting Catholic theologian, Charles Curran.[3]

I'm not saying that Ms. Bain's going to be on "Nightline" all the time and get a job at a prestigious university like SMU. She may just land another job, perhaps even one that's worse in terms of pay and benefits. If that's the case, all I can say is that you choose your identity and then you pay for it. That happens to everyone who has courage[4] sooner or later. It's happened to me, it's happening to Ms. Bain, and someday (I hope) it will happen to you, too, if you have principles and stick to them. It's not the willingness to stick to principles that's a problem, ever -- it's only what the principles are.

That's when you should ask yourself the question, "What Would Jesus Do", not "What does the church say about this".

I'm wondering what personal authority you have to tell me how to live my life, or to make judgments about Loretto or anyone else on how they decide to follow God. Even if you haven't made a judgment (and it's pretty clear you have), you've certainly suggested that a judgment is possible. How? Well, in order to make a judgment there have to be values and morals that apply, even if Loretto or Ms. Bain or me or anybody else think differently -- these values and morals have to trump our "individual choice," otherwise you wouldn't be saying that there are "better" or "worse" Catholics in this situation. So, you see, saying "individual freedom" and "right to believe" is never enough, it's only a description of the problem to be dealt with.

As to the question you ask, that's the problem, too. What would Jesus do? Would He protect Ms. Bain from being fired, as He protected the woman caught in adultery? Or would He make Himself a whip and lash at her until she ran out of the school, as He did with the moneylenders at the Temple? There are lots of people running around asking "What Would Jesus Do" when, in fact, all they're really saying is "I'm just as good as Jesus and here's what I want to do." There are lots of people running around saying "follow the Catholic Church" when, in fact, they're all really saying the same thing as the first bunch. How can we tell what they really mean? And even if they mean what they say in a good way, how do we know they're right anyhow?

It would be nice if God set up a place that can always show us how to find the true answer to these questions. Catholics think God did that when He made the Catholic Church. It doesn't mean that everybody who's Catholic is always right or always perfect. It does mean that we've got more than ourselves to rely on when it comes to finding out what Jesus wants us to do. I guess you don't think that. I hope you change your mind someday.

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[1] These aren't actual quotes, of course, but they convey the gist well enough.

[2] Just in case my wife pops in, I want to say that she is not two-timing me. She has never two-timed me. She does not beat me. She has never hit me. It was just a hypothetical, and my wife is too good for me and I should obey her every wish.

[3] http://www.smu.edu/newsinfo/research/2001/voicedissent.html

[4] "Courage," by the way, is what Catholicism calls a "natural" virtue. It's something kept in human nature even though sin cuts us off from the "supernatural" virtues, good qualities only grace can restore to us. So anybody, godly or not, can have and show courage. The SS had it, and showed it on a thousand battlefields. That doesn't make the SS a good thing. John Paul had it, and showed it throughout his pontificate. That didn't make John Paul's pontificate a good thing, either. Something else made the difference, and that something else was the loving grace of Jesus Christ.

2005-10-17T23:59:00.000-05:00

Miscellaneous Tooting

The Dossier is closing in on 150,000 hits (146,836 to date) since it's true inception in July '03. Of those, 108,206 were visits. What's the difference? A hit is when anybody clicks onto the site and immediately says "What a load of nonsense!" A visit is when someone clicks onto the site, goes away to make a sandwich, comes back 20+ minutes later and says "What a load of nonsense" before leaving. Sitemeter's also got a cool world-map feature that lets one see where one's visitors are coming from. So welcome and thanks, to the folks in . . . .

Foreign Lands (16%)
Canada (Alberta, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Quebec)
Denmark
India
Germany
Luxembourg
Malasyia
Phillipines
Singapore
Spain

Other Foreign Lands (84%)
Alabama
Arizona
California
Colorado
Illinois
Iowa
Georgia
Florida
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
New Jersey
North Carolina
Idaho
Texas
Washington
Wisconsin

BTW, 66% of these visitors come from individual ISPs; 14% get here from commercial venues; and, oh . . . no, it can't be . . . 9% from educational sites ("dot - edus!!!). That's the highest percentage the Dossier's ever gotten from the edu crowd. Something's wrong, very wrong, with this picture. Go ‘way, eggheads! Shoo! Yes, I know I don't like the war in Iraq! NO, that DOES NOT mean I'm one of you, go ‘way, shoo! No, I don't care much for Antonin Scalia, and yes, I do mention the National Catholic Reporter, but that DOES NOT mean I'm one of you -- git, scat! HSSSSSST!! Ok, you force me -- "Heather cannot have two mommies because homosexuality is objectively disordered." No, I'll keep saying it till you git! "Heather cannot have two mommies . . . . ."

2005-10-13T00:20:00.000-05:00

More on Miers

Now they're down to saying, "But nobody else wanted the job!"

Subtext: Start toeing the line, you knuckle-dragging conservatives, or we'll have no choice but to nominate someone like . . . Souter!!!

As if they already haven't.

Meanwhile, we learn that Arlen Specter, the Republican Party's liason officer to NARAL, wants to know what Karl Rove told Focus on the Family's James Dobson to make Dobson sing Miers' praises:

"If there are backroom assurances, and if there are backroom deals, and if there is something which bears upon a precondition as to how a nominee is going to vote, I think that's a matter that ought to be known by the Judiciary Committee and the American people."

In other words the Senator wants to know if the backroom assurances Rove gave Dobson vary from the backroom assurances Rove has given to the Senator.

Specter's concern that Miers' decisions on social issues might be congenial to conservative Americans, his present concern about Dobson's praises, and the support of Harry Reid . . .

"In my view, the Supreme Court would benefit from the addition of a justice who has real experience as a practicing lawyer. The current justices have all been chosen from the lower federal courts. A nominee with relevant non-judicial experience would bring a different and useful perspective to the Court."

. . . . are all you need to know to figure out Miers' jurisprudential bona fides -- they're as real as Saddam's ICBM fleet.

2005-10-12T12:25:00.000-05:00

Spong II: The Irrelevication.

They keep recycling this guy, who is now the subject of a play about his llifelong quest to wrest himself from what he has called his fundamentalist evangelical North Carolina upbringing to understanding God in a radically different way . . .. From the story:

Any God who can be killed ought to be killed. That's the message of the play and, I think, that is the message of Jack Spong," [playwrite Colin] Cox said."

Note the sly identification between a God "who can be killed" and a God who can be ignored - for the time being, anyhow. Now that's pride, essential, pristinely corrupting pride. So they keep recycling Spong, and so we keep recycling our commentary on Spong.

And since we're playin' the oldies, what would you bet that the Reverend Mark Stanger, Canon Precentor of Grac[ie] Cathedral, will be front-row center in the premier's audience?

Hat tip to Dyspeptic Mutterings

2005-10-09T00:17:00.000-05:00

Southern Appeal Launches a Flight of Fantasy

Via Southern Appeal and some astute commenters, my Oblomovesque personality launches itself on the following flight of fancy. Here I sit, in my best suit, before the Senate Judiciary Committee, trying to suppress the urge to throw peanuts to some of them as they put their questions . . . . . .

Mr. SecretAgentMan, what are your views on the incorporation doctrine?

Seeing as we're on CSPAN, Senator, and this is being potentially broadcast to schoolchildren, I'll refrain from the succinct group of of hand-gestures I use to express my views on the incorporation doctrine. I'll just say it's to jurisprudence what Hair Metal is to Rock and Roll.

Do you believe that the men who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment intended for most of the amendments comprising the federal Bill of Rights to be applied against the States?

Hell, Senator, they had no clear idea on what they were doing, you know that. Some of the more urgent Yankee nationalizers, particularly that fellow from Michigan, thought they were obliterating the federal system altogether in favor of a national uber-government. Others thought they were just giving the federal government power to thwart a revanchist sectionalism that might re-start the Civil War. Mostly, though, they wrote and ratified it for the same reason rock stars trash hotel suites -- it sounded like a really good idea at the time, and they knew somebody else would have to clean up the mess.

If so, do you think that the "liberty" component of the Due Process Clause of that amendment is the appropriate jurisprudential foundation for incorporation; or do you instead agree with those legal scholars who believe the Privileges and Immunities Clause is the constitutional provision upon which incorporation must/should rest?

Incorporationism, to the extent the word may be appropriate, can occur only with respect to the privileges and immunities clause. As to the rest, the state's legislative or judicial processes (provided they're conducted with due regard for the Constitution's guarantee of a republican form of government) is all the due process required before the state messes with anybody's life, liberty, or property. And if you'll take some unsolicited advice, repeal the seventeenth amendment.

On the other hand, if you believe the incorporation doctrine is a constitutional fiction, is it your view that the doctrine must be nevertheless be preserved on stare decisis grounds?

We all know that stare decisis means that we respect the laws we can't change.

And none of you bastards should even think about there being follow-up questions to that one.

I can't get over the sonorous inquiry y'all pretend to do about what a nominee will decide about abortion, gay marriage, cooking dog, or whatever hot-button issue has got your constituencies' goats. Take Joe over there. Last time he asked Roberts whether he'd vote to preserve Roe v. Wade. Now Joe, you got to know how damn foolish that is.

Suppose you asked me that in a few minutes. And suppose I said "Sure, Joe, I'll always vote to preserve Roe v. Wade from attack by those Christian fascists." What would you know? I mean, seriously, Joe, what would you know? All you'd really know is what you know now -- I want to be on the Supreme Court. So let's just skip the neo-platonic epicycles of Judiciary Committee cosmology, and leave it at that.

Bonus question I Do you agree with Justice Thomas that it is time to rethink whether the Establishment Clause should be incorporated against the States?

Not really. To re-think means to have thought in the first place. Nothing in the Constitution -- not even the privileges and immunities clause -- prohibits state-supported religion. It's a damn bad idea. But constitutional liberty is largely an exercise in damn bad ideas. You want brilliance and unending prosperity, then go rent a Fuhrer.

Bonus question II: Is the right to bear arms, as articulated in the Second Amendment, an individual right, and if so should it be incorporated against the States?

Steve, those folks who voted for you were damn smart, if you don't mind my saying so. That's a great question. And my answer is yes, the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right and, no, it shouldn't be incorporated because its exclusion from the candidate list of privileges and immunities is made pretty clear by the Amendment's appeal to the militia power, which if anything is a state power or a natural right and not a privilege or immunity conferred by citizenship in a national polity.

What, if any, weight should be given decisions from international courts when interpreting the United States Constitution?

HAW! Damn, boy, you're funny! I don't trust anyone who reads advance sheets, let alone somebody pointy-headed enough to read decisions from international courts. Spencer Tracy's speeches in Judgment at Nuremburg are as far as anybody ought to go in that direction.

In terms of interpreting the Constitution, should one look to the original meaning and intent of the drafters or to subsequent interpretations by the judiciary? If it is the former, what is your position on 14th amendment jurisprudence? If it is the latter, what recourse do the people have, short of constitutional amendment, to counter a judicial interpretation by the Supreme Court?

Well, Mr. Speaker, I'm not much on the kind of originalism that pretends we can all go chew on roots and have a mystical communion with the Founders via a ceremony that's half country-club locker room, half Native-American sweat lodge. I favor the Horton Hatches an Egg theory of constitutional jurisprudence: "I said what I meant and I meant what I said, and a Justice is faithful, one hundred percent!" The document says what the document says, and I don't like plumbing the Founders intentions for things they never thought about. If you have to go beyond the four corners of the Constitution, then I'd try leafing through Madison's Notes (one version has an index that's really helpful, by the way, and I'd have my law clerk go get that one). If that fails, then I'd do my best with the language, saying with Mencken that democracy is the theory of government that the people should get what they deserve, good and hard. Unless important and clear guarantees are involved, then it's not the Court's business to extricate Americans from the consequences of their own legislative folly.

Sort of a side comment on Steve's proposed questions (which would be great ones) -- but in which some of you might be interested: It seems to me that the whole Thomas-Amar argument over whether the Establishment Clause resists incorporation has particular value for defenders of the Second Amendment . . . .

Now that guy's talkin' like a Supreme Court justice. How come he didn't get nominated? How did all these people get in my hotel room?

If Train A left Sheboygan, WI at 5 a.m. moving southward at a speed of 50 miles per hour and Train B left Peducah, KY at 7:43 a.m. moving north at a rate of 5 kilometers per second, would a tree falling in the woods substantially affect interstate commerce?

Hey, bud, nobody can talk about my LSAT scores. I mean nobody.

What particular qualifications will you bring to the Supreme Court?

Good marksmanship skills. I can also pick good cigars, port, and Irish whiskey, and I promise to introduce a tradition of genteel cursing to judicial deliberations.

Why are you qualified to interpret the constitution as a Supreme Court Associate Justice?

I thought this was an affirmative-action program for legal medioctrities, not some pointy-headed, elitist witch-hunt. That's what George said, and I believe him. I'll may screw him the minute I'm on the bench, but I believe him. Go read the latest Supreme Court Christmas-Tree decision and if you can, after that, tell me with a straight face that qualifications are required in the first place, I'll answer that question.

Now I need smokes and coffee. Excuse me, y'all . . . . .

2005-10-08T23:16:00.000-05:00

My Daughter's First Blog Post
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2005-10-07T21:57:00.000-05:00

On Harriet Miers' Nomination to the Supreme Court

What would you call a party that brings up, every year, a pro-life amendment to the U.S. Constitution overruling Roe, and forces it to a roll-call vote, even it means disrupting business as usual and putting things like tort and banking reform on hold? What would you call the party of a President who boasts of having a "litmus test" for federal judges who'll respect the right to life under the federal Constitution? What would you call the party of Senators who compel the Senate to abandon the sham filibusters liberals have been using to stall action on those pro-life nominations? What would you call the party of elected Presidents who explain in every state of the union address that we can't tolerate the killing of millions of defenseless children and live up to the high ideals of our founding, and that the right to privacy cannot justify killing an innocent person? What would you call a party where someone who describes herself to the media as "moderately pro-choice" on abortion and who worries about intrusive federal laws that might impinge on a woman's right to choose doesn't stand a snowball's chance in Hell of serving in the cabinet?

You could call that party a lot of things. You could call it "fanatic." You might call it "extremist." You might, given the inroads evil has made into the American mind, call that party "dead on arrival." That can all be argued, depending on your point of view. But two things can't be argued. One: You' d have to call that party "pro-life." Two: You couldn't call it "Republican."

2005-09-26T21:47:00.000-05:00

Low-Brow? Yes, but It's Better than the Depths of High-Brow "Art"

Courtesy of the My View blog, by way of Cacciaguida, we find . . . . . .

SecretAgentMan's nomination for a very large and imposing bronze statue to stand outside the WTC 911 Memorial's Museum of Why We Deserve To Be Blown Apart By Terrorists.

2005-09-19T20:46:00.000-05:00

Changes to the Blog

Due to the sad retirement of St. Blog's Parish Hall's message board, I've re-enabled the haloscan comment feature on this blog. Also, some links to inactive blogs have been removed.

2005-09-17T21:49:00.000-05:00

It's Been Weeks . . .

But the Democratic Party has finally managed to eke out a sane response to Katrina.

2005-09-14T00:54:00.000-05:00

Southern Appeal

Provides this timely and interesting examination of Judge Roberts' testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Apparently, when Judge Roberts says that Roe v. Wade is "settled law," he meant that it's as settled as anything can ever be in the land of the Major Generals. Anyhow, I appreciated the excerpt, which has forestalled yet another "Let's Destroy the Republican Party" rant on this blog. The commentary's very interesting too.

2005-09-11T10:28:00.000-05:00

This Guy's Incredible

I mean Kanye West, whose silver-spoon style of outrage at whitey's indifference to Katrina victims has already been the subject of comment here. After performing at a half-time show at which Mr. West decided that whitey's oppression of Katrina victims wasn't so glaring an issue as to deserve mention (he was roundly booed by the fans anyhow), he's back with more:

Back in the days when it was time to clean the kitchen I would try to sweep the dust under the kitchen sink instead of really taking care of it, and if you spilled something on that floor all that dust came right up in front of your face. That's basically what the flood did.
"They have been trying to sweep us (African-Americans) under the kitchen sink and it was so in people's faces and so on TV... that they couldn't even hide it any more.

Ah yes, back in the days before Mr. West had domestic servants . . . .

There are few celebrities who parody themselves with an equal amount of unintended wit and sincerity. What could be next? Will Mr. West liken whitey's stranglehold to an over-snug cravat? Will he sing, "We Shall Overcome . . . And Get an 8:00 at Chez Nous"? Perhaps he'll drive a Hummer through the French Quarter and toss coins out the window, or give us an on-stage impression of Thurston Howell III delivering the "I Have a Dream" speech?

2005-09-10T00:30:00.000-05:00

The Great Glass Buffalo

I've already had occasion to criticize the ravings of Ted Nugent on this blog. And now, courtesy of Dyspeptic Mutterings, I find it must be done again. Herewith Mr. Nugent's latest, this time on the nature of my religion:

Anybody who makes a donation or congtribution to the catholic church is completely out of their minds. This dishonest, deceitful institution holds more wealth, well into the trillions of dollars in gold, silver, diamonds, art, real estate, mansions, castles, blingbling infested cathedrals & other unlimited wealth, yet they hav the audacity to pass the basket on sunday to pressure a farmer, a cop, a welder, a mechanic, a teacher to make a donation to their vulgar corrupt holdings. Logic & decency would dictate that it should be the other way around, that instead of the BILLIONS (documented) the church spends of attornys fees & settlements for their souless, demonic beast priests who hav preyed upon young children in the most evil & criminal manner, it should be the church sending aid to the needy. but the priests need thier chefs, butlers, maids, gardners, servants, mansions, caddilacs and obscene bank accounts more. Check it out. No one can deny one word here. Its insane. I suspect most churches are guilty of the same. so very sad.

I think it's worth noting that Mr. Nugent is, shall we say, sitting in a glass hunting stand. Full details can be found in the following story published in the February 24, 2004 edition of E! Online. The story's in black. Mr. Nugent's sauce for the gander is in blue.

*********

That dang sweet poontang has gotten Ted Nugent in trouble. . . . Nugent has reportedly confessed to fathering a child out of wedlock with a Dover, New Hampshire, woman who is suing the '70s rocker for child support and custody. . . . According to the local Foster's Daily Democrat newspaper, the plaintiff, 43-year-old Karen Gutowski, filed suit against the 55-year-old Nugent last August, claiming he has provided little in the way of financial aid for their unidentified 8-year-old child despite making millions from album sales, touring and other revenue streams.

My, would that be in any way similar to this case? "A French bishop has ordered a priest to admit to fathering three children after his affair became public." Well, no it isn't, if Gutowski is to be believed: The priest was already paying regular support.

Gutowski's attorney, Jeffrey Runge, told the newspaper that the musician, radio and TV host and noted outdoor enthusiast has acknowledged paternity of the young boy, but has never met the tyke and refused to provide proper financial support.

Well, if true, that would raise some issues about Mr. Nugent's moral superiority to this priest, who did not support his illegitimate child. But as Mr. Nugent pretends the moral authority to damn the 2,000 year old Church, it must be false.

"Given the fact he's worth millions and millions of dollars, he's paying the amount someone making about $20,000 per year would pay," Runge told the Daily Democrat in September. "I don't know what his assets are so I don't know the amount. She only wants what she's legally entitled to on behalf of the child."

In that case, it would seem that, er, how should I say it? "Logic & decency would dictate that it should be the other way around, that instead of the MILLIONS (documented) Mr. Nugent spends on attornys fees, hummers, guns, ranches, hunting parties, vacations, clothes, etc., it should be Mr. Nugent sending aid to his own child." Yes, I think that would about sum it up. In fact, later reportsshow that Ms. Gutowski's lawsuit obliged Mr. Nugent to cough up hefty child support -- to the tune of $3,500.00 per month. I wonder if that proves there's a lot of "obscene lucre" in Mr. Nugent's accounts?

But Nugent, who has two sons and two daughters with wife Shermane Nugent, isn't going to open his wallet without a fight.

This just goes to prove that Mr. Nugent's not like bishops who stonewalled true accusations of sexual misconduct -- his lawyers are just trying to make sure that his legal rights are protected. And we'll not see any of the tactics used by the Catholic Church, either . . . .

Nugent filed his own petition on Jan. 6 asking a family court "to make appropriate orders concerning the legal custody of the minor child and appropriate custodial and visitation rights" on his behalf.

No doubt this was the furthest thing from Mr. Nugent's mind, but I've worked a lot of paternity cases where angry fathers threaten to "get custody" if the woman fights for child support. I've always told the ladies, "If he was at all interested in getting custody, he would have at least visited by now, right?" . . . .

Runge has called Nugent's motivations "suspicious," especially since the Motor City Madman never met the child, who was born in April 1995 following his brief fling with Gutowski.

Shame on you, Mr. Runge, for even suggesting such a thing. When Mr. Nugent's lawyers requested that the court determine "appropriate custody" of the boy, they were obviously saying there was no need for the court to make a custody determination. As to the rest, only a cad would father an out-of-wedlock child and not spend any time with him, such as Fr. Arturo Uribe "who had never seen the child he fathered in 1993 while working with the Redemptorists as a pastoral assistant at a Portland, Ore., parish."

In a Jan. 13 petition, Runge said that Nugent is "refusing to comply" with attempts by his client to examine his personal fortune and has since "embarked upon a campaign to contact [Gutowski] in writing and via the telephone in a blatant attempt to intimidate her into withdrawing her interrogatories."

This must be a mistake. Only the Church uses intimidation against mothers of children fathered by priests: "It is awful dealing with them," she says. "They intimidate you to the nth degree, make you feel like you're the bad person."

Runge also said Nugent's attorneys are trying to hide the rocker's real net worth. . . . "Indeed Nugent is a famous musician and self-promoter that appears to have income and [assets] from a considerable number of sources," the lawyer wrote. . . . In court papers, Runge names 25 sources of income for Nugent. Aside from album sales and touring, Nugent has released a videogame, sells his own brand of beef jerky and has written books with titles like God, Guns & Rock 'n' Roll.

. . . Stephen Tinkler, the Albuquerque lawyer who represented many of the victims, recalls that Church officials "cried ‘poor boy'" to convince him and his colleagues to lower their settlement demands. To prove its point, the Santa Fe archdiocese disclosed its books — only to expose assets of more than $100 million in real estate. "When we called them on this," Tinkler remembers, "their response was, ‘We don't own all that real estate; the parishes do,'" even though the property titles were filed under the archdiocese's name. . . .

The Michigan native has also hosted his own radio and television shows, most recently headlining VH1's new reality series Surviving Nugent: The Ten Commandments, in which contestants vie for a $100,000 jackpot in a series of outdoor challenges (like getting shot at with paintballs, building an outhouse and skinning a boar) on Nugent's ranch near Waco, Texas.

And speaking of the Commandments: "Everyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart" (Mt 5:28). The ninth commandment warns against lust or carnal concupiscence. The struggle against carnal lust involves purifying the heart and practicing temperance. Purity of heart will enable us to see God: it enables us even now to see things according to God. Purification of the heart demands prayer, the practice of chastity, purity of intention and of vision. Purity of heart requires the modesty which is patience, decency, and discretion. Modesty protects the intimate center of the person." -- Catechism of the Catholic Church, #2528-33

It can be a hard commandment to keep, whether you're a rock star or a priest: "[S]ome voters would find [Nugent's] serial out-of-wedlock parenthood (published accounts list two from before his first marriage; last year, he admitted paternity of a 9-year-old boy born during his second [marriage]) off-putting.

I don't know why they would. It's not as though Mr. Nugent is a teenaged crack addict: "We're supposed to feel sorry for these people? I'd like to (expletive) spray 'em with bullets, goat-urine soaked bullets." It's not as though he's a bad guy: I want the bad guys dead. No court case. No parole. No early release. I want 'em dead." It's not as though he's a crack baby who might benefit from national health care: The government must stay out of my life. If there are weenies who are in the liability column of our nation, tough (expletive)." Mr. Nugent isn't one of them, you know . . . those people . . . the ones who have moral problems.

Meanwhile, as Nugent's paternity case winds its way through the course, he does have one thing in his favor: According to his Website, Nugent was recently named Father of the Year at his children's school.

Well, that's all right. What really gets me, however, are those priests who pretended to be good fathers while having children on the side, children they never saw and seldom supported, er . . . um . . . . WANGO TANGO BABY!!!!"

*********

Mr. Nugent's somewhat cockeyed moral outrage aside, his ignorance of Catholic Church finances and aid to the needy aside, and just about every nitwitted word he wrote aside, he still manages to raise a point worth remembering. God is hard to live with. As Mr. Nugent fails in charity, decency, and chastity, so do I. So do many of us. Some of us are rock stars. Some of us are anonymous nobodys. And some of us are priests and bishops in the Roman Catholic Church. We all find God hard to live with. He doesn't like what we like. He doesn't want us doing what we do. We'd so much like to love Him, if only He'd stop making all these unreasonable demands and doing all these unreasonable things, like giving everyone the right to go to Hell in his own way even if it means that children get hurt. Sometimes it's a lot more comprehensible to rule the whole concept of Catholicism, as Mr. Nugent has done, as Call to Action does, as some self-styled Traditionalists do, out of bounds.

The fact is that we're all, in our own ways, what Mr. Nugent says Catholicism is. We're dishonest, deceitful people who spend far more time haranguing others than upbraiding ourselves. We hold more wealth, more undeserved favor, than we're conceivably entitled to and yet have the gall to bitch and gripe about how lousy God has let our lives become. Logic and decency would dictate that, instead of spending our time and money on the fleeting pleasures of this life, we spend our lives for others recklessly in the outpouring witness of God's love. But we don't. We hoard our small pleasures, our secrets, against God's judgments in the hope that He won't notice. That creates a lot of pressure, and sometimes it comes out in screaming -- as Adam screamed about Eve, as the Pharisee screamed about the Tax Collector, as I scream -- against the evil other people do, as though purity were established by comparison.

It's not.

And the Great Glass Buffalo ought to know that.

2005-09-08T11:51:00.000-05:00

A(nother) Hypothetical Situation . . . .

. . . is here proposed with respect to the present discussion concerning the conformity (or lack thereof) between the American bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and just-war rules by way of the principle of double effect:

Blefuscu is at war with Lilliput. The Lilliputians are an island people who require imported shipments of Fertilizer X to grow food and feed themselves. They have arranged to acquire their entire year's supply of Fertilizer X by means of one shipment but, perhaps foolishly, also load the ship with dissassembled fighter planes. No other shipments of Fertilizer X can be arranged in this year.

Losing the fighter planes would be a significant reversal, but not a war-ending event, for the Lilliputians, who have other aircraft. The destruction of the Fertilizer X, however, would result in millions of civilian deaths by starvation. The fighters' presence arguably makes the ship a military target whose destruction would also have consequences for the civilian population of Lilliput. On the other hand, it's clear that the war-winning effect of an attack would come from the starvation of Lilliputians, who would have no choice but to surrender or die.

The Blefuscutian admiralty knows all this. May it order Blefuscu's submarine fleet to track the Lilliputian ship and sink it without violating Catholic moral principles?

2005-09-05T01:50:00.000-05:00

Katrina Mutterings

The blame-it-on-whitey drivel I've been hearing all week from various celebrities has found its representative echo in the ravings of a minor singer named Kanye West. Mr. West, asked to serve as one of the guest flunkies on one of those we-celebrate-our-selves telethons, took the opportunity to excoriate George Bush's racism:

"so now I'm calling my business manager right now to see what is the biggest amount I can give, and just to imagine if I was down there, and those are my people down there . . . George Bush doesn't care about black people!"

Sure. And imagine if George Bush went on television and said he was going to call his business manager to see how much hurricane relief he could afford without unbalancing his portfolio. Would that have helped Mr. West? Or would he remain mired in an oozing mass of double standards?

A more humorous note is struck by Sean Penn's three-hour tour. Trying to bring aid and succour to those abandoned by the Amerikan Diktatorship, Penn set sail for New Orleans in his own boat, which began leaking almost immediately, forcing him to abandon the attempt. The boat, of course, was "loaded with members of Penn's entourage, including a personal photographer." I wonder if Mr. Penn would re-evaluate his opinion of the President if George had left his personal photographer behind when he went to survey the damage in Louisiana. Would that have helped, Mr. Penn? Or would he too remain mired in an oozing mass of double standards?

Enter Condoleeza Rice, who recently said "I don't believe for a minute anybody allowed people to suffer because they are African-Americans." It's the kind of true-but-beside-the-point comment that fits a public world peopled by Kaye Wests, Sean Penns, and George Bushes. People in New Orleans weren't allowed to suffer because of their race. They were allowed to suffer because government is generally stupid, usually lazy, and almost always run by incompetents.

For proof I'd only point out that stupidity, laziness, and incompetence are absolutely required before one can take on, as Director of the Federal Emergency Management Administration, a former commissioner of judges and stewards of the International Arabian Horse Association. And not only that, but an asked-to-resign commissioner of judges and stewards of the International Arabian Horse Association. Only government can put that kind of cherry on top, and so we eagerly await the arrival of FEMA's first shipments of hay, distemper medicine, and Hidalgo DVDs to the victims of Katrina.

Hence Kanye West, Sean Penn, and their lunatic ravings. Hence Condoleeza Rice's true-and-irrelevant response. It's more comforting to believe that racism is the cause of this disaster. Racism is familiar, and people with small minds think it can be cured by purging the bad guys. Ascribing the catastrophe to its true cause -- the normal character of government -- is simply too frightening to contemplate, especially when one's entire strategy for social progress is to rely on the government, or if one's entire electoral stragety is to rely on true-and-irrelevant answers to lunatic ravings.

"When the buffalo fight, the grass is trampled." I'm told it's a Vietnamese proverb. If it is, perhaps the Vietnamese citizens of New Orleans and the Gulf -- who are pretty well familiar with the effects produced by American music stars, movie stars, and Washington politicians -- can explain all this to their neighbors. Mr. West's drivel is not fitting. The Bush Administration's attempts to blame the government of Louisiana and New Orleans are not fitting. The attempts by New Orleans civic officials to blame the Bush Administration are not fitting. Although I hate parental analogies for government, I'm forced to draw one here -- all those nabobs are acting like a divorced couple who'd rather argue about custody rights in the ER room than sign the damn form authorizing the child's operation. To them, it seems, The Game is all that matters now, then, and forever.

2005-08-29T12:09:00.000-05:00

Recent Doings

As readers of the effervescent Catholic and Enjoying It know, Mark Shea has finished writing a book on the Blessed Virgin. That's why he's been so scarce in the blogosphere this past year or so. It's also why I've been so scarce in the blogosphere for the last four months or so; I was helping out as a no-doubt-minor member of Mark's "trusty team of editors."

This is by far the most ambitious authorial project Mark's undertaken. The book has fourteen chapters which discuss and explain the Church's teaching and devotion to our Lady to wary Evangelicals and misguided Catholics alike. Without vanity I can say that "I know this stuff" about as well as an educated layman can possibly know it. Mark's book was still an eye-opener to me, and it will be to lots of other Catholics and to Evangelicals who've been snookered by the counter-Catholic polemics of their religious culture.

The book presents clear, concise, and highly-readable explanations of virtually all Marian things ranging from the earliest stirrings of Marian devotion to the proclamation of the Assumption in 1950. Relatively minor matters, such as our Lady's appearance at Knock, which are not covered in exhaustive detail are still generally discussed and placed in their proper theological, historical, and cultural context. As a kind of "intermediate-level primer" on Mariology, the book should be found in the library of any Catholic. But that isn't the book's most salutary aspect, in my opinion.

The most salutary aspect comes from Mark's broad experience as a pagan, then an Evangelical Christian, and his wide reading and deep appreciation of the progressive godlessness of Western civilization. In addition to explaining what Catholics believe about Mary, Mark has managed a brilliant portrait of why Mary matters. Catholics accustomed to thinking of Marian devotion in "honor thy mother" terms, as a "merely" fitting complement to the Incarnation without natural value or practical influence in our lives, will be astonished to read how Mary has served the Church of her Son as a weapon against heresy, despair, and their inevitable culmination in the culture of death.

English-speaking Catholics who are seriously interested in pursuing Marian reading have two choices. One is to purchase Carrol's massive three-volume work, Mariology, read and study it, then spend a couple of years or so "updating" their knowledge in light of John Paul II's pontificate. The other is to acquire Mark's book which, in a broad and sufficient way, gives you every salient benefit of Carrol's work and the enhanced appreciation of Mary which has come about through John Paul's papacy. The readability of Mark's work, and its division into Chapters which can be read separately, highly recommends it. When it's published, everyone I know who is interested in Catholicism is going to get a copy.

Mark's book is, as modern Catholic apologetics go, a long book. There's a reason for that. I've said before that while Mary isn't the sum and substance of the Catholic faith, she is a rubric for all of it. There simply is no way to write a book of this high value about Mary and not discuss just about everything else Catholicism is, has been, or may become. That Mark has managed the task in a single book is a prodigy of elegance. I think this work may well be a major part of Catholicism's apologetics for decades to come.

2005-08-21T17:13:00.000-05:00

More Drudgery

Random thoughts and knee-jerks on the recent headlines from the Drudge Report.

When the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth did this, it was an affront to everything decent in American politics. I guess the moral authority of a grieving mother with PAC affiliations and a PR-firm really is absolute.

Can anyone imagine a more frivolous life than this one?

It's really a very simple state of affairs. They've got their own faith, with its own calvary, its own saints, and its own Ascencion and we have ours.

The process of Iraqization gains momentum. "Quick, let's un-ass Iraq in a dignified way before anybody notices we wrecked the country and then ran like teenaged vandals!" Senator Hagel made his own Tonkin-Gulf vote giving Junior that blank check to de-build and re-build Iraq, and now it looks like he's gearing himself up to deny appropriations for the Iraqi army just as soon as the Holy Jihad of Allah (or whatever the hell it's going to be called) reaches Baghdad. Ah well, who better than he to teach us the lessons of Vietnam all over again.

Israel continues to make only token gestures towards peace to the Middle East. But a dire fate willed by Allah awaits them -- rumor has it that Senator Hagel is planning a major speech pledging to bear any burden, pay any price, to support Israel's democracy!

2005-08-18T23:34:00.000-05:00

How Stupid Is SBC / Yahoo?

When you lose your password and username for your email account, and so are unable to receive emails, SBC has a nifty service that will retrieve both of them. Just put in your password, and they email you your username! Once you put in your username, they email you your password! So, if you can give SBC a piece of information you don't know, SBC will send you the other piece of information you don't know -- so long as you don't have a problem to begin with.

2005-08-16T21:47:00.000-05:00

In Case Anyone Is Trying to Email Me

My computer has lost the email passwords. I can't send or retreive email. My ISP will not re-set my passwords until I give it the super-secret customer code printed on the bill. Of course, we throw the bills out after we pay them, so it may well be another month before my email is reconnected. If you need to get in touch with me, leave a message at St. Blog's Parish Hall. That's about the best I can do for now.

2005-08-16T17:48:00.000-05:00

A Neo-Cath by Any Other Name . . . .

What does ‘Neo-Catholic' Mean?

The term is pejorative. It is intended to describe a shallow faith that does not participate in or appreciate the Church's history, traditions, and spiritual life. In its religious sense, the term refers to Catholics whose religion is made up almost entirely of rote and unreflective memorization of the Catechism and an unquestioning enthusiasm for the papacy of John Paul II. In its political sense, it describes an orientation that employs Catholicism as a blanket authorization for any Republican policy rather than as a guiding set of political principles which exist above party affiliation. Overall, "Neos" are said to be insufficiently Catholic because their essential religious orientation comes from what are perceived to be the worst aspects of Evangelical Protestantism -- personal affection for individual leaders vs. true obedience to the visible Church; a narrow, Fundamentalist, sola scriptura-style understanding of Church teaching; a confusion that makes the United States government equal or superior to the hierarchy of Christ's Church, and which thinks of the American people as being identical to Biblical Israel; and, a pharisaical life-style that redefines the practice of Christianity as obedience to middle-class priorities and conventions.

Traditionalist Catholics apply the label because they are irritated at the inability of many "neo-Catholics" to appreciate what are claimed as serious errors of the post-Vatican II Church in the area of morals, culture, and Church discipline. "Neo-Catholics" are supposedly unable to take a broader view that understands Catholicity as the task of ensuring that no significant changes occur to the doctrine, practice, and teachings of Catholicism as they existed when Christ gave them to the Apostles in 1940. They claim that "Neo-Caths" accept the modern errors and mistakes because they don't know any better, having been "brainwashed" by an effective campaign of propaganda under John Paul II's reign that was dedicated to hiding these errors and punishing anyone who pointed them out. A "Neo-Cath," for example, is said to accept the Novus Ordo primarily because he thinks the Mass is what Evangelical Protestants say about the Eucharist -- a communal meal, with symbolic significance, but without the miracle of transubstantiation.

Liberal Catholics apply the label for the same reason, except the "serious error" they identify in the post-Vatican II era is the failure to rewrite the Church's moral teachings on sexuality and family. "Neo-Catholics" are supposedly unable to take a broader view that understands Catholicity as an evolutionary process by which the Church jettisons inauthentic cultural holdovers and embraces a brighter, more loving vision in which married women priests using contraception perform homosexual marriages. "Neo-Caths" have also been brainwashed, in this view, by an effective campaign of propaganda under John Paul II's reign that was dedicated to binding Catholic allegiance to the structures of power and oppression which existed before the Council. A "Neo-Cath," for example, is said to accept the Church's prohibition of women priests primarily because -- like any Evangelical Protestant who follows his beloved pastor from motives of personal affection rather than Christian obedience -- he thinks the priesthood is whatever John Paul II said it was.

As usually happens, Left and Right are better at mirroring than fighting each other. The essence of Traditionalist and Liberal dislike of Neo-Catholicism is that Neo-Catholics try very hard to believe what's in the Catechism and to follow the pope. Ask any Traditionalist or Liberal Catholic about the sins of the Neos and you'll find that the Neos are pretty much doing what the Traditionalists and Liberals are doing themselves. If a Neo-Catholic sins by giving George Bush's presidency greater moral authority than the Popes regarding, say, the invasion of Iraq, well, he's certainly not doing anything more than a Traditionalist who gives the Dead Hand of Marcel Lefebvre the same superiority when it comes to the form of the Mass. If a Neo-Cath sins by reading the Catechism's excoriations of homosexuality as a license to use words like "fag," "queen" and "pervert" to sum up his brother's life, that Neo-Cath is certainly no worse than people who think a papal press conference has given them the authority to use "baby-killer" and "murderer" to describe Catholics who serve in the Marine Corps.

Traditionalists and Liberals pretty much agree that Neo-Caths have failed, in some significant way, to conform their appreciation of life to the whole of Catholic teaching. As Robert Bolt might have had St. Thomas More say, "I thank God that only a third of the Church has gone off the rails."

2005-08-07T22:22:00.000-05:00

If the Leftist Fascists Keep This Up . . .

. . . . I might just support Roberts' nomination. Turns out the New York Times -- ever ready to demand that we keep the government out of our bedrooms -- has been caught trying to pry open the adoption records of Judge Roberts' children. Sounding like Sandy Berger with a wedgie, the Times' editor claims everything was on the up-and-up: "Our reporters made initial inquiries about the adoptions... They did so with great care, understanding the sensitivity of the issue."

Yeah, sure. Just like they would have published, with great care, the home-study report prepared for each adoption. I've been through this process, folks, and it involves a social worker coming to your house on several occasions and questioning you on some of the more intimate details of your life.

Like your religious beliefs.

Or why you don't have any children.

Or whether you had a drinking problem.

All of that would be good for a few yuks at the Times' editorial meetings, which would focus (after the laughter died down) in trying to spin Roberts either as a Torquemadan Psycopath or a hypocrite and moral degenerate.

And let's not forget the money.

Of course our society doesn't sell children. It just happens, completely by chance, that adoptive parents are going to pay between $30,000.00 and $150,000.00 to all sorts of agencies, homes, social workers (they get the least, and in fact a fair wage) before baby sleeps his first night in the nursery. (And yes, they pay to lawyers to. Unless they hire me. I don't charge for uncontested adoptions). If you get any adoption done for less than $20,000.00, then you've been on the receiving end of a minor miracle.

Now the Times wouldn't be so crude as to suggest that the Roberts "shopped" for children, spending more or less money depending on ethnicity, age, etc. No, the Times wouldn't be so crude. That's Molly Ivins' job.

The Times would have mused about latent racism in the adoption world, and wondered aloud about the "economics" of adoptions -- all in such a way as to portray the Roberts as adoptive counterparts to Cruella DeVille. It would have wanted to know where the money came from. Did Roberts get a loan, a loan from someone who can be third-hand connected to a fourth-hand acquaintance of a member of a "right-wing hate group" like the Federalist Society or the Republican Party? Wouldn't that make Roberts not only slave to the Pope, but to right-wing special interests as well?

I don't know anything about the Roberts' adoptions, except that people who adopt children are as brave and caring as any parent. We go through things most people don't have to think about for an instant. Why them and not us? Is this God's judgment? Why sure I'll bare my soul to a social worker so that she and some other people can decide if I and my wife are "fit" to raise a child in a society that ash-cans 1.5 million of them like used Chicklets every year. Thirty grand up front, no payment plans? No problem. That's why we bought the house, after all.

The editors and reporters at the Times who thought up this stunt are greasy, weevily little sleaze-balls. Sensitivity and care? Sure, like mosquitos and ticks. It would be interesting to know if conspiring to violate a court seal is a prosecutable offense. Maybe the human ticks who thought up this stunt could, with care and sensitivity, call up some more lawyers and ask about that.

2005-07-23T11:28:00.000-05:00

Still Looking for the Wargame

I'm still looking for good wargame rules. Here are some notes I've taken:

"Fast-playing, realistic rules," means "Stephen Hawking can calculate all the variables required for each turn's two-hundred and nineteen steps."

"Ease of play" means "the level of attention required runs the gamut from "air traffic controller" to "plotting mission trajectories for NASA."

"Beer and pretzels" means that "you're going to home-brew each beer served, hand-make each beer stein in your own kiln, and farm, harvest, and mill the wheat you'll use to individually bake each freaking pretzel."

"Can be played in an afternoon" means that the game originated on a planet with a ninety-six hour rotation.

Signs of a ridiculous wargame:

-- There are rules for wind effects on bullet trajectories.

-- An event card says, "Your quartermaster has run out of shoelaces."

-- It makes a difference if your soldiers are "charging," "advancing," "moving," or "torpid."

-- People are arguing about whether the game is "historically accurate."

-- The phrase "1d12" appears on the same page as "1d20," "3d6" and "2d85"

-- The word "fanatic" is associated with the game at any time in any place.

-- You have to know which units are carrying what kind of radios.

-- You roll a die to determine your' country's production of "light crude."

-- You put one marker on a tank to indicate if it's top hatch is open, another marker to show whether the driver's hatch is open . . . . .

-- If you'd had all these templates and measuring sticks 3,500 years ago, Pharaoh would have made you his chief builder.

-- The rule book is over 75 pages long and still has appendices.

2005-07-01T11:03:00.000-05:00

Dominicans Playing Brilliant Ping-Pong Love

I found this link on the ever-enlightening Disputations blog which points to a great quote from Fr. Walter Farrell, O.P. on the wonderful Moniales blog -- then, in the same quote, Moniales refers right back to Disputations for the post which began it all. It's like Dueling Banjos - dizzying and fun at the same time.

Anyhow, before I started getting dizzy, I read the quote from Fr. Farrell's writings. Fr. Farrell is a brilliant interpreter of the Summa, by which I mean to say he makes it fun, fascinating, and capable of being grasped pretty easily. I kid you not. I'd binked and bonked around the Summa for years, and then by reading Fr. Farrell's Companion realized . . . that God actually wants me to be happy.

Now why, exactly, God allows people like me, who go about living as though He doesn't want them to be happy, to exist is (somewhat) another subject. The point is that if you're one of us, if you admire the Summa -- either in an abstract "will-have-to-go-there-someday" maner as one might admire the Taj Mahal or Proust's Remembrance of Things Past, or in a confused "gee-I-know-the-Summa-but-don't-think-God-wants-me-to-be-happy" way -- you ought to read Fr. Farrell's Commentary. You can find it online here. Or, if you want an even shorter version, pick up My Way of Life, which is a kind of prose-poem Fr. Farrell helped write about the Thomist view of the universe. You can buy it from EWTN for eight bucks here. The Thomist view of the universe is stirring, awesome, and above all, truly passionate.

Anyhow -- that's my second anyhow, so I'm still dizzy from the ping-pong -- here's the quote from Fr. Farrell:

"Let God tend to the hopeless-looking things. You are a Dominican, a foreigner to worry and quite a close friend of gaiety...It seems to me quite entrancing to be able to pile into bed realizing there is someone as big as God to do all the worrying that has to be done. Worry, you know, is a kind of reverence given to a situation because of its magnitude; how small it must be through God's eyes...You can't get everything done in a day, nor can you get any part of it done as well as it could be, or even as well as you'd like it; so, like the rest of us, you putter at your job with a normal amount of energy, for a reasonable length of time, and go to bed with the humilating yet exhilarating knowlege that you are only a child of God and not God Himself."

What an astonishing depiction of God's mercy!

"Worry . . . is a kind of reverence given to a situation because of its magnitude." By commanding that we follow Jesus Christ and free ourselves from all idolatry God has set us free from worshiping our worries. "Thou shalt have no other gods before me." Worries are a kind of creature, inasmuch as creatures generate them about created things (even our relationship with God is a created thing, it seems to me, since God made us and thus made our relationship to Him). It's therefore possible to exalt a "worry creature" over the Creator, and give it the reverence due to God alone. I'm thinking about all the worries that plague us and how much disaster they have caused. They run the gamut, from smelly worries ("Is my car expensive enough to impress my friends" to nobler-sounding (but equally smelly) worries on much larger matters ("We'd better conquer them before they conquer us"). There comes a point when people stop trusting God, making their worries into new gods. Why do people do this?

Probably because they don't really believe, deep down, that God wants them to be happy and will make them happy.

Thanks, Fr. Farrell.

Thanks, all you holy Dominicans. Pray for us.

2005-06-26T22:52:00.000-05:00

Musings on an Islamic Apologia

Last night I was watching a program on CSPAN-2 (how's that for ultra-in-depth geekiness?) that featured Reza Aslan talking about his book No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam. Mr. Aslan has his own website, which you can find here. I thought his presentation was very disturbing, because it seemed a bit long on smug bafflegab and a bit short on blunt answers to hard questions.

On one level that's not surprising, nor cause for any condemnation. Mr. Aslan is a Muslim, and tends to make Islam sound like the superior answer to every social question -- just as any Christian might exaggerate the social and political benefits of his faith. In that sense, his "smugness" is largely in the eye of the beholder; no doubt Mr. Aslan would roll his eyes at my description of how wonderful the Middle East would be if the Byzantines, and not the Ottomans, had steered the region into the 20th century. Now I think religion does matter in these areas. I think it matters whether a society has Catholic roots or Protestant ones, and likewise for Islam, Buddhism or any other faith. So I don't mind it when a faithful person extends his witness into the realm of politics, economics, and so forth, urging us to accept all, most, or some of his beliefs as the basis for our social arrangements.

But I did mind something Mr. Aslan (like many Christians) managed to do, which is to suggest that disagreements with his views about the social and political consequences of his religion are instances of sheer bigotry which have no part in a serious and civilized discussion about democratic politics. He did this on several occasions, notably when he claimed that American impressions of Islam are harmfully influenced by an Evangelical Christian culture which he called "exclusionary" because it doesn't accept Islam's status as a divinely-inspired religion. Whether Christianity is more "exclusionary" than any other religion is a more debatable point than Mr. Aslan seemed to think, and I'll get to that in a moment. For now, I'll observe that I found it very strange for Mr. Aslan, who continually stressed the existence of "pluralism" in the Muslim world (at one point referring to its "infinite diversity") and regularly chided ignorant Westerners for assuming that Islam was a unified ideology that completely dictated the thoughts and viewpoints of Muslims everywhere, to suddenly claim there is a unified Evangelical ideology which completely dictates the thoughts and viewpoints of Americans -- conservative or not -- about Islam.

Tu quoque. I'm not sure how Mr. Aslan managed to attend Santa Clara University, Harvard, and the University of Iowa and come to that conclusion. Or maybe I am sure; Mr. Aslan probably accomplished it by confining his grand tour of American diversity to graduate-student hangouts and faculty get-togethers. In those venues, life in America is largely thought of in terms of being on Prospero's guest list:

"The abby was amply provisioned . . . The prince had provided all the appliances of pleasure . . . buffoons . . . improvisatori . . . ballet dancers, . . . musicians . . . Beauty . . . wine. All these and security were within. Without was the 'Red Death.'

Make that "Red State Death" and you've got the parochialism of the Harvard lifestyle pretty well nailed. Mr. Aslan didn't help matters when he kept prefacing his identification of Evangelical "exclusionism" with the word "conservative" -- by which he meant, of course, George Bush and the Republican Party. It would be interesting to hear Mr. Aslan's thoughts on the myopic haughtiness of conservative Evangelicals were he to spend a year stranded on a desert island with Billy Graham, Chuck Colson, and the Guerilla Girls.

Nor did Mr. Aslan's special pleading for Islam help his case very much. He seemed to be arguing that Islam respects Christianity in a way Christianity can't return because Islam recognizes a common divine source for the religions of Abraham's children, whereas Christianity is bound up in a singular myth which involves the fulfillment of human dignity with the repudiation of other faiths. I found that a bit tendentious in light of the Muslim belief that the Bible used by Christians is full of imaginative crap:

The Islamic request to Christians is just this: Please follow Jesus, don't follow Paul, who preaches a different gospel! The Islamic belief about the present Book, which the Christians use as "the word of God", called the New Testament is that it is not the Gospel of Jesus mentioned in the Qur'an. Still, Muslims believe that the Gospels in the bible contain some teachings of Jesus, as well as the interpretations of the writers of those books, whoever they might have been. Also Muslims believe that in the words quoted from Jesus in these gospels, you come across certain ideas, which he received from God too. So the New Testament (particularly the Gospels) is valuable to the Muslims. It is valuable in that there is the "word of God" in it, exactly as the Old Testament (particularly the Pentateuch) is valuable to Muslims in that it contains also the "word of God" in it. . . .

We have good evidence in the Gospels themselves that Jesus was using the original Bible for his preaching. He used to refer to it as The Gospel of the Kingdom: "And Jesus went about all Galilee, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing all manner of sickness and all manner of disease among the people." (Matthew 4: 23) . . . Here it is said that Jesus preached the Gospel of the Kingdom. Ask those Christian disputants whether Jesus was preaching one of the four Canonical gospels included in the Bible in 325 C.E, written not in Jesus' own Aramaic language, but in the western language of Greek, at least thirty years after his alleged crucifixion. It is so obvious that no Christian scholar, worth his salt, can deny the fact that the present gospels contain the words of God, the words of Jesus and the words of the writer. That means that they are not fully God's word. The Islamic belief is also the same.

Let me pause here for a minute to explain more fully why the juxtaposition of Mr. Aslan's comments with this ordinary Muslim belief bothers me. It doesn't bother me that faithful Muslims have concluded -- as they must, if Islam is to be what Islam claims to be -- that the Scriptures revered by Christians are full of imaginative crap that has nothing or very little to do with God. What bothers me is Mr. Aslan's implied claim that pejorative views are acceptable when they're held by Muslims about Christians, but inadmissible bigotry that reveals a damnable flaw in Western civilization whenever Christians -- as they must -- take a pejorative view of Islam.

Mr. Aslan's assumed superiority of position, and its concomittant sense of entitlement, bodes ill for his own project. Citizens in a western democratic society characterized by religious pluralism have to accept the fact that large numbers of their neighbors are going to think they're slaves to an unjustifiable and/or pernicious myth. With very few exceptions, just about any iteration of Christianity has found ways to accept this burden without apostasy. Mr. Aslan, however, insists that Islam is a different case because unlike Christians, Muslims can't separate their duties to the civic order from their duties to the divine order. Aside from the ignorance about Christianity which is required to make this statement, it's particularly worrisome to see Mr. Aslan's picture of Muslims demanding recognition of their religion's superiority of position and entitlement with respect to the promulgation of contrary religious opinions. Not all criticism of Islam is "anti-Islamic," and not all Christian attempts to witness for the truth of the Gospel over the inventions of Muhammad are condemnable acts of ethnic or cultural discrimination.

Mr. Aslan shouldn't allow himself to be seduced by the American Left's penchant for enshrining non-western (or anti-Western) beliefs into thinking that secular democracy means never having to hear anything unpleasant (or unpleasantly true) about one's religion. He should realize that when our Left tut-tuts itself about "anti-Islamic" discrimination, it has in mind only the chance to excoriate the Evangelical Christian bogey-man for his malignant intolerance. Should the day come -- as it, in all likelihood, will come -- when Muslims find themselves in a position to influence the making and interpretation of American laws, Mr. Aslan will find that the same wispy-bearded, latte-drinking, birkenstock-shod colleagues who used to commiserate with him about anti-Muslim bigotry screaming to the heavens about female circumcision in Mali, slavery in the Sudan, and Islam's dogmatic opposition to science, reason, and human freedom. It may, of course, be too late by then for the apostles of secularism to do anything more than scream. But maybe there will be enough "bigoted Evangelicals" to make common cause with the Starbucks secularists and, though fear and anger combined with Muslims' following Mr. Aslan's lead and treating Evangelicalism with their own brand of contempt, make being Muslim in America the kind of unpleasant experience which Muslims only now imagine it to be. Mr. Aslan should heed his Prophet, and realize that the People of the Book are, in the long run, easier to live with than the "People of The DaVinci Code."

The same contradiction arose later, when Mr. Aslan was explaining the perils of Americans trying to foist their conceptions of democracy onto Muslim cultures. As a Christian conservative, I found some of what Mr. Aslan said to be a refreshing and thoroughly-bracing gust of common sense in what is largely a fetid hothouse of secular self-adoration. I can't quote Mr. Aslan's speech, but I can quote something very similar from one of his interviews:

The great irony of all of this [the Iraqi war] is the President by his own admission, had such a simplistic view of the complexion of Middle East culture and politics that he really didn't know what he had gotten into, you know, this belief that all we had to do was drop some bombs on Baghdad and Iraqis would be throwing flowers at us and some kind of Jeffersonian democracy would bloom in Iraq. Anyone who knew anything about the region knew this was ludicrous.. . . But when I say that there is great irony here what I mean is that maybe we needed someone with such a simplistic view to allow the Muslims to take advantage of the opportunity presented to them to build an indigenous Islamic democracy.

Just so; the only people who can answer questions about Islam and modern political order are Muslims: Asking Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeldt and the Heritage Foundation just won't cut it. Laws are derived from culture, and culture from religion. It's really that simple, and it means that the American experience is a smorgasbord of savory and bitter alternatives, not a universal blueprint for achieving truth, justice and decency in every corner of the world.

But that's when Mr. Aslan began to lose me, because he kept insisting that the wonderful character of Islam demanded distinctively-Islamic laws and political institutions. He tried very hard to make this sound like a happy outcome by, for example, translating dhimmitude as "protection." Dhimmis -- Christians and Jews -- are "protected people" in Islam, he said, and then he said no more. Which isn't surprising, because I don't particularly admire the Islamic policy of taxing Dhimmis who want to practice their Christianity, or the myriad laws Islamic societies have always had to prevent the spread of other faiths. But me no buts about Christians forcing Jews to pay special taxes and wear yellow stars -- either that's wrong, which it is, or it's an acceptable way to "protect" Jews that really ought to be done by Muslims, who alone have the right to "protect" members of different religions by -- as the Koran says -- making them "feel themselves subdued." Either way, we return to Mr. Aslan's assertion that Muslims are incapable of separating their duties to God from their duties to the civic order.

Discussing the wrongness of imposing American conceptions of democratic society on Islamic countries, Mr. Aslan said it couldn't be done because of this unity of faith and politics which is part and parcel of Islam. Whenever Muslims are in the majority, he argued, they must transform the political and social order to reflect the truth of Islam. I have no doubt that Mr. Aslan is correct, for his assertions are borne out by every constitution of an Islamic state. Here is the Constitution of Iran:

In accordance with the sacred verse "God does not forbid you to deal kindly and justly with those who have not fought against you because of your religion and who have not expelled you from your homes" [Koran, 60:8], the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran and all Muslims are duty-bound to treat non-Muslims in conformity with ethical norms and the principles of Islamic justice and equity, and to respect their human rights.

But if the "norms and the principles of Islamic justice" involve oppressing non-Muslims, and if this oppression is thought to be consistent with human rights (rights, no doubt, which are to be derived from Islam), then one has to wonder if Mr. Aslan hasn't actually told us that Muslims can't participate in western democratic societies, that they can only bide their time until they are numerous or powerful enough to transform Germany or the United States into Islamic republics whose laws will "protect" us Dhimmis so long as we -- again in the words of Iran's Constitution -- "refrain from engaging in conspiracy or activity against Islam."

This can easily become a hypocritical concern. If one, for example, chooses to find the portrait of Western civilization in the glossy pages of People magazine, then Roman Catholics such as myself may be said to wish that civilization ground into dust. If one finds Roe v. Wade to be a sterling achievement of western democratic government, then every pro-life Evangelical is engaged in a conspiracy against the state. Howard Dean, Al Gore, Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Democratic Party routinely make those very suggestions and, depending on what one takes as "civilization," they are entirely right to do so:

I'd rather be a Klansman in robes of snowy white
Than be a Catholic priest, in robes black as night
For the Klansman is an American, America is his home
But the Catholic priest owes allegiance to a foreign prince in Rome

The Klansmen had their vision of "civilization" and the Roman Catholic Church has her vision of it. The DNC has its own vision of "democracy" and so does Iran's Islamic Consultative Assembly. So to a very significant extent, the "war" described by Mr. Aslan is a continuous and ordinary feature of pluralistic and democratic societies. Values will come into conflict. These conflicts will be fought to resolution. And these fights will produce winners who have superior positions and entitlements, and losers who must "feel themselves subdued." It's an inevitable process, and we shouldn't blame Muslims merely because they're going to remind us of it.

Except that Mr. Aslan was at pains not to remind us of it. He kept telling the audience that Islam has no fixed content when it comes to politics and law, that Islam could just as easily be another compromising and negotiating interest group like the AARP as the force which drove Suleiman's armies to the gates of Vienna. The Muslims who felt otherwise, he said, were "fundamentalists" who were out of touch with the fluid nature of Islamic theology and whose rigidity forced them into conflict with western values. But if Muslims are inevitably compelled to transform non-Muslim societies into Islamic societies, and if Islamic societies will have laws and social arrangements which are unique and non-Western, then how can Mr. Aslan simultaneously claim that Islam is so flexible and ever-changing that we need not worry about conflicts in values, about fighting, winning (or losing) a culture war? ‘There is no single Islam,' Mr. Aslan kept saying, ‘there is no true Islam.' Well then, where do Muslims get their duty to remake society into an Islamic form?

I think it might be more straightforward for Mr. Aslan to admit that, ultimately, the difference between his vision of Islamic conversion of the West and Osama bin Laden's vision is in the area of means. This is a far less-damning admission than one might think. The difference between William Wilberforce and John Brown can "ultimately" be put down to the issue of means, as can the difference between myself and men who murder abortionists. But if there's no true Islam, no single Islam, then how do Islamic societies find the moral and intellectual wherewithal to reject bin Laden's vision as Americans, for the most part, found the moral wherewithal to reject John Brown? Mr. Aslan's vision of an ever-changing Islam capable of compromise and even partnership with the western tradition proved too much, for it also proved that the hand of Islam can just as easily push a detonator as sign a treaty.

The overwhelming impression Mr. Aslan left was one of doublespeak, of a glib account which managed to portray Islam as tolerant without yielding anything of its cultural demands; claiming membership in society as an equal partner with Christianity or Judaism while owning a sense of entitlement over those rival faiths; eschewing the ravages of terrorism without committing itself to regard the terrorists as infidels, lawbreakers, and heretics. The standard western conservative reaction to this bafflegab is to recall the Islamic practice of al-Taqiyya:

The word "al-Taqiyya" literally means: "Concealing or disguising one's beliefs, convictions, ideas, feelings, opinions, and/or strategies at a time of eminent danger, whether now or later in time, to save oneself from physical and/or mental injury." A one-word translation would be "Dissimulation."

"It's all lies!," we hiss, "a dastardly plot to inflitrate and overthrow the west with ~~flouridation~~ pseudo-scholarly doubletalk!" I'm not too sure at this point.

A two-word translation for "al-Taqiyya" might be "discreet speech," the term used by the Catechism of the Catholic Church to refer to the licit practice of Catholics muting our religious identity in times of eminent danger. There's more from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

St. Augustine held that the naked truth must be told whatever the consequences may be. . . . he puts [a] case which became classical in the schools. If a man is hid in your house, and his life is sought by murderers, and they come and ask you whether he is in the house, you may say that you know where he is, but will not tell: you may not deny that he is there. The Scholastics, while accepting the teaching of St. Augustine on the absolute and intrinsic malice of a lie, modified his teaching on the point which we are discussing. It is interesting to read what St. Raymund of Pennafort wrote on the subject in his Summa, published before the middle of the thirteenth century. He says that most doctors agree with St. Augustine, but others say that one should tell a lie in such cases. Then he gives his own opinion, speaking with hesitation and under correction. The owner of the house where the man lies concealed, on being asked whether he is there, should as far as possible say nothing. If silence would be equivalent to betrayal of the secret, then he should turn the question aside by asking another -- How should I know? -- or something of that sort. Or, says St. Raymund, he may make use of an expression with a double meaning, an equivocation . . . An infinite number of examples induced him to permit such equivocations, he says. Jacob, Esau, Abraham, Jehu, and the Archangel Gabriel made use of them. Or, he adds, you may say simply that the owner of the house ought to deny that the man is there, and, if his conscience tells him that this is the proper answer to give, then he will not go against his conscience, and so he will not sin.

I have a manual of moral theology which says that if one finds oneself among non-Catholics, to whom observing Catholic customs would be greatly offensive, one may omit the observance provided that in doing so one avoids any appearance of defection from the faith itself. Is that al-Taqiyya? I think it probably is, and that the paranoia heaped on the Islamic word is just an echo of how Protestants liked to misuse the subtleties of Catholic theology to prove that we're all deceivers, biding our time until we can break out our guns and ammunition and turn the whole country over to the Pope . . . . .

Confusion, glib doubletalk, eating one's cake and having it -- they're all the marks of deceptive men who have secret agendas. They're also the marks of men grappling with awkward and unfamiliar questions before a hostile and volatile audience. I don't just mean Mr. Aslan's audience. They were Washington intellectualoids. Hell, they probably liked the idea of subverting our civilization and replacing it with some kind of totalitarian ideology. No, I mean Islam's audience in the West. Mr. Aslan rightly referenced the religious wars of sixteenth-century Europe as the crucible in which our slow-poison compromise with secularism was forged. That was our answer. I don't expect or demand that Muslims take it for their own. Given what's happened to Christendom, I'd be very surprised if they did. And if post-enlightenment secularism was forcibly introduced into the West by foreigners, if Rousseau had been the Chinese Minister of Colonial Affairs for France, I'd have expected Western Christians to react far more vehemently and violently to secularism than they did. No, I think Mr. Aslan can be cut some slack for having the unenviable task of writing an apologia for a culture which has not identified its authentic response to modernity, seems to be in no hurry to do so, and also seems at times to be Hell-bent on letting the dynamics of warfare provide the answer.

As I said, Islam has unanswered questions. I think Mr. Aslan sounded far too confident of Islam's ability to answer them in the long term, let alone the next few decades. ‘There is no single Islam,' Mr. Aslan kept saying, ‘there is no true Islam.' Western nihilism can't provide the answer to Islam's questions, not unless Islam wants to become the world's largest Unitarian denomination. There had better be a single, true Islam, for if there isn't nobody really needs to listen to Mr. Aslan explain the harmony which can exist between multiple, fake Islams and the West. Mr. Aslan has written a book on the subject. I think I shall read it. Hopefully there's more pith in it than his presentation to the World Affairs Council.