"If we really understood the threat at hand, we would not be fighting with one hand tied behind our backs."
I am not quite as exercised over the speech as Daniel Larison (see his impressive series of "Gathering Stupidity" posts here, here, here, here, and here), but my frustration with Santorum's tack is, a la Ross Douthat's, more in sorrow than in anger, over the depths to which an otherwise good senator will stoop to avoid responsibility for, or even the fact of, the colossal American failure in Iraq, and Republican responsibility for same. Here's Ross:
But it seems more likely that his "gathering storm" speeches will ensure that he's remembered not as a principled social conservative who lost his swing-state seat in a bad year for Republicans, but as exhibit A (well, okay, more like P or W) in the depressing tendency of conservatives, faced with the Bush Administration's manifest failure in Iraq, to duck that issue by pretending that the way to solve it is to start some variant on World War III, or IV, or whatever numeral the "faster, please" folks think we're on these days.
Anyway, why do I think that one line offers the key to why these Santorum speeches are so off the mark? Because it indicates that he thinks the only thing we're doing wrong is not fighting hard enough. If the past three years have made anything clear, it's that we're not fighting smart enough. We thought we could knock off Saddam with little problem, because we believed that the Iraqi people wanted "freedom," and would reveal themselves to be well-behaved small-d democrats. Here comes Santorum, having learned nothing, saying in his speech that we need to aid and abet the Iranian and Syrian people in overthrowing their government (if you get rid of Assad, loathsome as he is, look for a Sunni fundamentalist takeover -- what will Santorum say then?). That, ultimately, is what's so dispiriting about the Santorum speech: that the entire traumatic experience of Iraq has taught him nothing. That his idea of how to fight America's very real enemies is just to keep doing what we're doing now, only a lot more of it.
Because we are all going to see the US substantially withdraw from Iraq in the next two or three years, and the world will indeed be a much more dangerous place because of it (but we will have to go that route because there will be no choice left), we need to have at the summit of the American political leadership men and women who have good judgment about foreign affairs. That is paramount. I think Santorum is probably the best senator on social issues. But I don't believe we can afford this kind of fantasyland crusade any longer.
That's not because I don't believe we have enemies. To the contrary, it's because I think we have powerful enemies, but unconventional ones that cannot be defeated or contained by force of arms alone. What a tragedy -- really -- that one of the best US senators will have shipwrecked his career on Iraq.
A Texas reader who is a conservative Catholic writes:
I saw your post on Beliefnet about the border fence being a good reason to vote for Republicans. I wondered if you'd had a chance to read this article in which even the Republicans admit that the "fence bill" gives the administration the ability to spend the money on different projects (such as roads and technology) and that probably only 300-400 miles will ever be built (if that).
To me, the money quote was, "In this case, it also reflects political calculations by GOP strategists that voters do not mind the details, and that key players — including the administration, local leaders and the Mexican government — oppose a fence-only approach."
I'm planning to sit this election out, and I'm the sort who used to take my kids with me to vote so they'd learn about civic duty.
But wait, Reader! Don't you want to run out and vote Republican to protect traditional marriage? Oh wait, that's right, the GOP cynically punted on that one too. Phonies.
The reader raises an interesting question, though: is it ever the right thing to do to sit out an election? My DMN colleague Mike Hashimoto wrote a funny but serious column yesterday saying that contrary to the eat-your-spinach, good-government propaganda, the nation is not well-served when ill-informed idiots vote out of some sense of civic duty. On a more serious (and ideological) note, the Thomist philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre put forth an argument for sitting out the 2004 presidential race. Here's an excerpt:
Why should we reject both? Not primarily because they give us wrong answers, but because they answer the wrong questions. What then are the right political questions? One of them is: What do we owe our children? And the answer is that we owe them the best chance that we can give them of protection and fostering from the moment of conception onwards. And we can only achieve that if we give them the best chance that we can both of a flourishing family life, in which the work of their parents is fairly and adequately rewarded, and of an education which will enable them to flourish. These two sentences, if fully spelled out, amount to a politics. It is a politics that requires us to be pro-life, not only in doing whatever is most effective in reducing the number of abortions, but also in providing healthcare for expectant mothers, in facilitating adoptions, in providing aid for single-parent families and for grandparents who have taken parental responsibility for their grandchildren. And it is a politics that requires us to make as a minimal economic demand the provision of meaningful work that provides a fair and adequate wage for every working parent, a wage sufficient to keep a family well above the poverty line.
MacIntyre says the best way to vote against a system that produces what he considers false choices is not to vote.
Is he right? Is it morally justified to sit out this election, if you believe you are presented with two bad alternatives? I'm not sure, but I'm tempted to say yes. Let's talk this through.
Do you observe Halloween? I know I'm going to get grief for this, but we don't. We're not one of the hardcore anti-Halloween families, but we're just not comfortable with it. It makes me uneasy (I guess that's what Halloween is supposed to do), and the fact that my friend, the Louisiana exorcist, strongly warned against it (and told pretty scary personal stories to explain his point) was enough to put me off of it.
No, we're not anti-"Harry Potter" people, and we don't crusade against Halloween. We just don't participate.
Via Ross Douthat, I came upon yet another reason why I think John Derbyshire is one of the most interesting conservative writers working today: his long self-interview about why he lost his religious faith. An admirable quality of Derb's is his blunt honesty: as far as I can tell, he never shies away from saying what he thinks, even when it gets him into hot water. Good. It makes him unpredictable, and even when you don't agree with him, you at least have the impression that there is a real, thinking, contrarian human being behind those words (and as I used to work at NR, I can tell you that he is a gentleman, and I regret that he only came to the office every couple of weeks for the meeting, ergo I didn't get to spend a lot of time with him).
Anyway, I highly recommend his self-interview, because even though I cannot endorse his conclusions, he writes about them humanely and engagingly. I particularly liked his discussion of the social utility of religion, which is widely understood, but also the limits of same, which is uncomfortable for many of us religious people on the Right to admit or to discuss. Here's Derb:
I have now come to think that it really makes no difference, net-net. You can point to people who were improved by faith, but you can also see people made worse by it. Anyone want to argue that, say, Mohammed Atta was made a better person by his faith? All right, when Americans say “religion” they mean Christianity 99 percent of the time. So: Can Christianity make you a worse person? I’m sure it can. If you’re a person with, for example, a self-righteous conviction of your own moral superiority, well, getting religion is just going to inflame that conviction. Again, I know cases, and I’m sure you do too. The exhortations to humility that you find in all religions seem to be the most difficult teaching for people to take on board. Mostly, I think it makes no difference. Evelyn Waugh would have been no more obnoxious as an atheist.
And then there are some of those discomfiting facts about human groups. Taking the population of these United States, for example, the least religious major group, by ancestry, is Americans of East Asian stock. The most religious is African Americans. All the indices of dysfunction and misbehavior, however, go the other way, with Asian Americans getting into least trouble and African Americans most. What’s that all about?
In the end, I think I’ve now arrived at this position: An individual might be made better by faith, or worse. Overall, taking society at large, I think it averages out to zero.
But he goes on to say he believes that religion is a natural instinct in humans, that it's just there, like the sexual urge. As with sex, when a society can figure out how to corral the religious instinct into socially constructive forms, religion can be judged good -- and when not, not. I think that's true, though as a believer I would say there's the matter of truth -- but to be fair, he's discussing religion as a social phenomenon.
What this discussion does, though, is to violate the generic American taboo against criticizing religion per se. We are a religious country in the sense that many people have religious impulses, and they are more or less accomodated in the public square. But there's this whole civic religion thing, in which religion is generally understood to be a public good (Kinky Friedman, running now for Texas governor, likes to sign off by gently wisecracking, "May the God of your choice bless you."). It ain't necessarily so. You won't be surprised to find that I'm favorably inclined toward the religious as a general matter, but the older I've gotten, the more I've come to see how religion can serve to fix a bad person in his or
her patterns of behavior. I'm thinking of the people I've encountered, clerics and laymen, who have in various ways justified their wicked behavior by cloaking it in a mantle of religiosity ("Nobody'll screw you like a brother in Christ," a cynical Texas Baptist of my acquaintance remarked, from personal experience). This is kind of what I was getting at not long ago when I talked about how suspicious I get whenever someone starts a sentence with, "God told me...". And it is very interesting, Derb's point, about the inverse relationship between personal religiosity and moral self-discipline regarding the African-American and Chinese communities in America.
Finally, Derb is excellent here (emphasis mine):
Q. Can an irreligious person really be a conservative?
A. Of course he can. The essence of modern conservatism is the belief in limited government power, respect for traditional values, patriotism, and strong national defense. The only one of those that gets snagged on religion is the second. But while traditional Western society has had a religious background, it has usually made room, at all points of the political spectrum, for unbelievers. Plenty of great names in the Western cultural tradition have been irreligious. Mark Twain, America’s greatest writer, was a complete atheist; and one has one’s doubts about Shakespeare. In any case, as Bill Buckley has pointed out somewhere, the key word is respect. Respect for traditional values implies respect for religious belief, even if you don’t share it.
The word the Romans used is piety. It implies a sense of respect for that which is greater than ourselves. God (or at least the idea of God, which as Derb observes is so great and universal a part of the human experience that due respect must be paid). Nature. Ancestors. That's what I find so worrying about the modern spirit, which you can find among conservatives as well as liberals, the Godly as well as the godless: impiety, by which I mean the sense that we have the right to remake the world anew, according to our own designs, because we can (or think we can).
So, Iraqi PM Maliki is now ordering US troops to take their hands off Sadr City. Well, he may well be an example of Iraqis standing up and taking control of their own country (um, we're supposed to want that, right?), but if this doesn't settle once and for all how reliable Maliki is as a partner for combatting insurgent and death squad violence, I don't know what will. Makes you wonder about those weekend rumors that a US-backed coup is in the offing. Hey, that'd be one way to unite Iraqis...
If you've never read the "Healing Iraq" blog, get over there ASAP. It's where you can find "Zeyad," a young Iraqi dentist who's been blogging from Baghdad since 2003. He was initially a big supporter of the war, but has become bitterly disillusioned. I listened yesterday to a podcast of his interview last week on "Open Source," and it was pretty devastating -- especially when he said that he wished Saddam was back. I remember Zeyad from the early days, exulting over Saddam's overthrow. And now ... this. He explained that the anarchy and murder has gotten so bad that people are desperate for order. Even a secular liberal like himself. (BTW, he's now living in NYC and studying journalism, though his family all remains back in Baghdad).
On "Open Source," the other guest, British journalist Patrick Cockburn, explained that Zeyad's view is common in Iraq now.
Think about that. The anarchy we unleashed by our invasion and botched handling of the aftermath now appears to many Iraqis to be a worse oppressor than the dictator from whom we liberated them.
And take a look at this: a BBC report on conditions in an Iraqi hospital. Zeyad says on his blog that when he watched this, and saw an Iraqi woman yelling "Bring Saddam back!" out of desperation, he burst into tears. He says American television ought to be airing programs like this -- and explained in his radio interview that it's very hard to get here in America real news from Iraq.
Daniel McCarthy writes that to be a campus conservative used to mean you cared about ideas. Now, for the most part it means you've become a partisan of "mindless Republican boosterism." Ah yes, the Romanian Miners Brigades of the Right. Of course, left-wing campus politics has long been intolerant, but when I was on campus at least, back in the dark ages, it was the Right who (plausibly) made fun of the left for its political correctness.
Chances are that your friendly neighborhood Applebee's is not the kind of place you're likely to run into a crunchy con. But yesterday, I bought the book "Applebee's America" after sitting on a panel at the Texas Book Festival with one of its co-authors, GOP strategist Matthew J. Dowd. What interested me was how much Dowd, who was one of George W. Bush's top strategists in his presidential campaigns, and is now running Arnold Schwarzenegger's re-election campaign, said the political and social trends are all moving in ways that sound a lot like crunchy conservatism. That is, he said that people are hungry for a sense of higher purpose in their politics, for community, for connections, for civic engagement. It is disconcerting, but in a good way, to make a few basic points about what's lacking in American politics, and what people of my tribe would like to see happen, and have a high-powered Republican strategist say, "Yes, that's right, that's what we're seeing," etc.
When I finish the Polanyi book, I'm going to read the Dowd one (co-authored with Doub Sosnik and Ron Fournier).
Unfortunately, I didn't get to stay long in Austin at the festival, because I had a lot of work to do back in Dallas, so I left shortly after my talk. But I was there long enough to meet one of my favorite writers, Adam Gopnik of The New Yorker, and to buy his new book, "Through the Children's Gate," a collection of essays about raising children in New York. If these are anywhere near as good as his collection of essays about life, especially family life, in Paris, it'll be terrific.
Mickey Kaus picks up on what bothers so many people about the rush to embrace embryonic stem-cell research and gay marriage: that we're being rushed into making these enormously important decisions without being consulted (if the courts force them on us) and/or without having a full airing of the moral implications of either. Here's Kaus:
One of the things voters might be scared of is precisely that some sort of Faster principle will be applied to speed up social change, with disastrous unanticipated consequences (the same way, Amy Sullivan claims, voters are scared of letting scientific research proceed willy nilly with cloning, etc. "without ever having a conversation as a society about the moral issues involved." Given that concern, framing the gay marriage debate as "law" and "logic" against prejudice is analogous to framing the stem cell debate as "science" and "progress" against faith-based Luddism. The framing itself is what's most alarming. ...
About Amy Sullivan's claim -- it was made in her must-read USA Today piece about why Democrats are "losing" the culture war. I don't really agree that they are, in the broadest sense -- I mean, really, does the culture look like it's growing more conservative to you? -- but Amy's point is that Dems could be doing a lot better politically if they didn't come off as so unfeeling, or even hostile, toward the concerns that many Americans have about the rapid pace of cultural change. Excerpt:
Despite the uproar over Janet Jackson's wardrobe malfunction a couple of years ago, most parents don't fret that the accidental sighting of a breast or hearing of a swear word will scar their children. They're more concerned about the unrealistic ideas kids get from popular culture about consumption and body image and violence as a way of handling conflict.
Sadly, too many liberals react to complaints about popular culture as if they're teenagers. They either jut out their chins and growl, "If you don't like it, don't watch it," or they stay silent for fear of looking like prudes. Given the ridicule that Tipper Gore faced for promoting warning labels for explicit music lyrics and the derision that followed Hillary Clinton's effort to keep violent video games away from kids, perhaps it's no surprise that most keep their mouths shut. That silence, however, hands conservatives a victory. As David Callahan points out in his book The Moral Center, "When the right complains about the media's descent into tawdriness, it puts them on the side of most Americans."
Even an issue on which Democrats seem to have the winning position can turn out to be a loser for the party in the long run. Most Americans now believe that research on stem cells should be allowed. But as Noam Scheiber recently pointed out in The New Republic magazine, the polls also suggest that they have serious concerns about the morality of unrestricted scientific research. They don't want to wake up tomorrow and discover that we're cloning humans without ever having a conversation as a society about the moral issues involved. By framing the debate as a choice between theology or science, Democrats essentially argued that anyone who has qualms about scientific progress is a troglodyte. That puts them on the losing side of the moral question, even as they win the specific policy debate.
I like the first commenter on the USA Today site, remarking on Amy's essay:
This is an excellent article. In the last 30 years, the democrats have gone from the party of the working people to the party of deadbeats and wierdos and super-rich liberals who don't have to live with the fallout from their "good ideas". And our culture has gone from one where it was easy to raise a family to one that celebrates hedonism as the only realistic
goal of life.
I want an alternative to the republicans. Nancy Pelosi and the Hollywood entertainment complex isn't it. Try again. You can start be re-reading Ms. Sullivan's article.
Yes! Yes! Yes! We will know the Democratic Party is on its way to becoming a solid majority party again when they start doing what Amy Sullivan tells them to do.
National Review identifies what is to me the best reason for voting Republican this fall, despite everything: the border fence. Excerpt from NR's editorial:
On the issue of immigration, majorities of Republicans in both the Senate and House have sided with their conservative base against not just left-wing civil-rights groups and elite opinion, but also a business lobby accustomed to plenty of cheap labor, Republican-party poobahs, and President Bush. They have withstood withering press criticism and pressure from their deep-pocketed donors. It has been a dispiriting session of Congress, but on this crucial issue, congressional Republicans have acted with courage and commitment. If only on the basis of immigration, they deserve their own amnesty from conservative voters disenchanted by other GOP disappointments and failures.
Barbara Nicolosi picks up a rock, puts it in her sling, and lets fly at "Facing the Giants," the Christian movie that she believes is shlocky and sentimental, and is afraid will become the template for the kind of pandering, third-rate movie Hollywood will make for the Christian audience. A Christian audience that, alas, might well eat it up. You really need to read the whole thing if you're at all interested in religion, art and the relationship between Christ and culture. Here's an excerpt, in which Barb says that:
...the small success of Facing the Giants at the box office [has] all of us Able Christians (as in Cain and Able) in Hollywood scared to death that Facing the Giants will be the prototype of the movies that all the new divisions geared to "creating product for Christians" will be seeking out and producing.
I have taken to calling "Able Christians", those who are committed to giving God beautiful, first fruits kind of work. We talk about excellence alot and "the demands of beauty*"(JPII, Letter to Artists) and professionalism and the rigors of the craft. We talk about being missionaries to Planet Hollywood, and how God is much more interested in the people making movies than in the movies being made. We are always wrestling with making projects true AND commercial, beautiful and mainstream. Not because we want the money of studio success, but because we believe that the Gospel needs to be preached to those who haven't heard it, to those who might never wander into a church.
In contrast to this movement of Christian artists, are the ones who are yearning to replicate the Christian Contemporary Music model in Hollywood with a Christian Contemporary Cinema. The goal of these folks seems to be to create fantasy movies for Christians, made by Christians, and paid for by Christians.
Facing the Giants from any serious perspective is a fantasy film. Its message is very dangerous for Christians, and scandalous for pagans. Adult Evangelical Christians watching Facing the Giants is like sex addicts watching the Spice Channel. (Nope. Not going to take it back.)
We are going to leave alone the fact that the film is badly acted, terribly written, completely lacking in imagery, and directed and shot without any style or evident skill. Let's skip all that and just talkabout the content problem.
The film tells the story of a poverty-stricken, generally disdained, losing football coach who drives a broken down truck and goes home at night to a devastatedly infertile wife. Incited by no particular plot point, the coach reads the Bible one day and then kneels down in a field (Why the hell is it always a field? Is that like in Zecharaiah somewhere?) and gives his life to Jesus. In short order after he utters the Evangelical commitment formula aloud, he wins back the esteem of his fellow townspeople, he turns around his terrible team so that they win the championship, somebody gives him a brand new shiny red truck, AND his infertile wife becomes pregnant!
WOW! Give me some of THAT Jesus-stuff!
Absolute fantasy stuff. The kind of thing that makes Christians puff out their chests proud to be on the winning team! This film fumbles deep, deep in the prosperity Gospel end zone. It is icky to tell people that they should be Christian because of the career and health benefits. We have the problem on the team of that embarrassingly unsuccessful crucified coach of ours.
Happened to be in a Borders today, and saw that "Crunchy Cons" is now out in paperback. Let joy be unconfined. It's got a streamlined new subtitle, and a new chapter, too. And it costs about half as much as the hardback. Such a deal. And what's more, we've got that new beefcake pictorial featuring G.K. Chesterton, E.F. Schumacher and Wendell Berry. Makes a great stocking stuffer. Or something.
David M. Walker, head of the General Accounting Office and a man who doesn't have to run for anything, warns that the US economy is headed for a serious crisis. From the AP account of a recent speech he gave:
From the hustings and the airwaves this campaign season, America's political class can be heard debating Capitol Hill sex scandals, the wisdom of the war in Iraq and which party is tougher on terror. Democrats and Republicans talk of cutting taxes to make life easier for the American people. What they don't talk about is a dirty little secret everyone in Washington knows, or at least should. The vast majority of economists and budget analysts agree: The ship of state is on a disastrous course, and will founder on the reefs of economic disaster if nothing is done to correct it. There's a good reason politicians don't like to talk about the nation's long-term fiscal prospects. The subject is short on political theatrics and long on complicated economics, scary graphs and very big numbers. It reveals serious problems and offers no easy solutions. Anybody who wanted to deal with it seriously would have to talk about raising taxes and cutting benefits, nasty nostrums that might doom any candidate who prescribed them.
...Their basic message is this: If the United States government conducts business as usual over the next few decades, a national debt that is already $8.5 trillion could reach $46 trillion or more, adjusted for inflation. That's almost as much as the total net worth of every person in America - Bill Gates, Warren Buffett and those Google guys included. A hole that big could paralyze the U.S. economy; according to some projections, just the interest payments on a debt that big would be as much as all the taxes the government collects today. And every year that nothing is done about it, Walker says, the problem grows by $2 trillion to $3 trillion.
The Republicans under Bush have destroyed any reputation they might have had for fiscal responsibility. The Democrats -- have they done anything to show themselves to deserve the mantle that the GOP cast aside? I think not. But before we blame the politicians entirely, let's ask of ourselves: how many of us would vote for a politician who told us we had to pay more and get less, because the country had been living far beyond its means for far too long?
The only politician I've heard this year talking sense about the budget is GOP Rep. Jeb Hensarling, who represents a Dallas district. When he came in for his editorial board meeting at the Dallas Morning News, he said that next to Islamic terrorism, the growing fiscal crisis is the greatest threat to America. When the Republicans get clobbered in a couple of weeks, they're going to need to turn to Hensarling to show them the way out of the quagmire that their spendthrift ways have gotten themselves into.
Continuing with Mark T. Mitchell's introduction to the thought of Michael Polanyi, I read today something that puts the current argument over embryonic stem-cell research in a particular light. I hope I can give an adequate brief account of where Polanyi thought Western science and epistemology went wrong, and set the stage for totalitarianism.
Polanyi was first and foremost a scientist, but as a refugee from the Nazi madness, he became preoccupied with the question of how we know what we know, and what that had to do with the twin totalitarianisms that menaced the world in the 20th century. He was horrified by the Soviet idea that science had to be put in service of society (i.e., the State). Science had to be free. But to Polanyi, that freedom wasn't unlimited. Science that was free to pursue anything the scientists wanted would quickly become monstrously nihilistic. There had to be boundaries set somewhere. Both science and society required shared belief in "transcendent ideals" like truth, justice and charity if they are to be free. To deny transcendentals is to deny any defense against totalitarianism.
Science is a system that must work within itself by purely materialistic and empirical data. Those are the rules; to admit anything else into the world of science renders it ... less than science. It was only after science was freed of having to subject its own inquiries to dogmas laid down by religion that it was able to make such dramatic progress. In other words, a limited rejection of traditional authority freed science up in beneficial ways, as Galileo's successors could testify. However, modernity swung too far the other way, and took the empiricism and skepticism that undergirded science as a rule for interpreting all reality. Anything that wasn't empirically provable was rendered meaningless.
Here's the rub: Polanyi says that modern, post-Enlightenment man has lost faith in transcendentals, but he cannot escape the detritus of Christian culture -- meaning that he will still burn with the Christian passion for righteousness and justice, even though he has discarded the transcendental aspect that makes the ideal concrete. Mitchell quotes Polanyi describing the situation as follows:
In such men the traditional forms for holding moral ideals had been shattered and their moral passions diverted into the only channels which a strictly mechanistic conception of man and society left open to them. We may describe this as a process of moral inversion. The morally inverted person has not merely performed a philosophical substitution of material purposes for moral aims; he is acting with the whole force of his homeless moral passions within a purely materialistic framework of purposes.
We still believe in moral perfection, Polanyi says, but now lack the Christian concept of original sin and the stern warning that perfection can never be established this side of heaven. So we are susceptible to applying the methods of science to achieving perfection, even to the point of traducing boundaries that were previously considered immoral. This is how you get the Holocaust and the Soviet Great Famine as the scientifically engineered "final solutions" to the "problems" that stood in the way of totalitarian societies establishing the rule of (Nazi or communist) heaven on earth.
But how did British and American societies escape this fate? According to Polanyi, through what you might term unconscious hypocrisy. Though they'd accepted modernity's empiricism, they still felt obliged to honor the old morality, at least in spirit. This pull of the past, weak though it was, kept the UK and the US from yielding to the full implications of what modernist epistemology, and its attendant scientism, would allow.
What does this have to do with
ESCR? We are seeing quite a large number of Americans -- the majority, it would seem -- agree that it is permissible to create human life for the purpose of experimenting on it and exterminating it, all for the sake of the Greater Good of Mankind. Why should embryos small than the head of a pin be privileged if experimenting on them could ease suffering? The morality of ESCR is not simply a matter of whether or not you believe a human embryo has moral personhood. No, the ESCR proponents cannot evade that the procedure crosses a bright moral line: to carry it out, what everyone admits is biological human life (a genetically distinct and fully human creature) must be willfully created for the ultimate purpose of its destruction. Recognizing the biological humanity of the embryo requires no religious belief at all: it is what it is. And scientists created these beings, which most Americans believe have no moral value, for the sake of making the world more perfect.
It is a horror. But we turn away from the implications of what we are doing, and shriek -- just as the Progressives did during the eugenics era -- that the only people who could possibly object are religious fanatics who want to stop the march of Science. Satisfied that we aren't like those cretinous fundies, we refuse to ponder the deeper meaning of the power over life and death that we have reserved to ourselves, for the sake of achieving perfection. We don't want to consider what may come of it once the scientists tell us that if we could only grow fetuses in the laboratory for harvesting and experimentation, great cures and suffering may come of it. We would never agree to that, we tell ourselves. But 20 years ago, we would never have imagined that we would permit cloning -- but now we do, for "therapeutic" reasons.
This is the kind of thing that's going on in this country. But see, being enlightened people, we fight our elections over macaca and dirty books.
I mentioned Gandalf in a blog a day or so ago because this week, I began reading "The Fellowship of the Ring" to Matthew. He is, I'm pleased to say, transfixed, but then again, I knew he would be. What little boy isn't? We read for about an hour and a half today, and just finished up the "Strider" chapter. I must admit that I'm taken aback by the pleasure I'm having in reading the Tolkien story to my own son, and watching the thrill of his discovering these characters and this plot for the first time. The book is giving us so much to talk about. I told him tonight that even though it's a work of fiction, there is a lot there that tells us how life works, and what is required of us. We revisited again tonight Gandalf's refusal to take the ring into his custody, and talked about how part of being wise is knowing your own weakness, and having the strength to turn away from temptation. We talked about the people we know who are a lot like Gandalf, and also like the other characters. Matthew can't get enough of this stuff, which thrills me to no end.
I have to say too that it's strange, and maybe even wonderful, how that book plays with your own mind. It makes me want to pray more, and to step back and appreciate the heroic in the everyday. Knowing where Frodo is going, and what he faces, makes me appreciate the small, simple qualities of his character, and those of his fellowship, and how they prepared him to do great things when put to the test.
Have any of you read "The Lord of the Rings" to your children? How did they respond? What did you notice that they particularly appreciated? That they didn't like? Talk about it.
Martin Cothran lucidly explains why a Democratic triumph on Nov. 7 will not mean a victory for liberalism, nor a defeat for conservatism. It will instead be a rejection of Republican rule, which many who had heretofore cast their lot with the GOP will have judged to have been more or less incompetent and unprincipled.
I've had some requests in the past few days for a list of websites and a reading list that would be helpful to readers interested in the ideas in "Crunchy Cons." Please share in the comboxes below which books and sites you like, that are more or less faithful to the neotraditionalist sensibility explored in the book.
New York's Edward Cardinal Egan is in the middle of a nasty tiff with some of his priests. The cardinal has a reputation, fair or not, for being aloof, aristocratic and unpastoral. He had a hard act to follow in John Cardinal O'Connor, who was highly visible and active, and in public, quite personable. He was also a terrible money manager, and it was widely assumed that Rome sent in Egan to fix the woebegone assets of the archdiocese, which would require bringing a lot of pain to some people.
I lived in New York for Egan's beginning, and the early part of his reign. I can tell you from my personal contacts among the priests of the archdiocese, that he was not popular. Even those conservative priests who were ideologically predisposed to support him found themselves quickly alienated. He could be a great preacher -- I heard him preach a series of sermons at the long Good Friday liturgy at St. Patrick's, and they were probably the best homilies I ever heard from a Catholic pulpit (faint praise, possibly, but still, they were excellent, and I wrote him a letter urging him to publish them somewhere). But he really did lack the common touch, which was an acute deficiency as O'Connor's successor.
You really saw this in the aftermath of 9/11. One priest I knew shook his head sadly at Egan's low profile in the days immediately following, saying that O'Connor would have rushed to the pile at once. That wasn't Egan's way. Then, to the shock and dismay of many NY Catholics -- especially considering that many of the firefighters who perished on 9/11 were Catholics from the Irish, Italian and Latino communities -- Egan ran off to Rome to a long-planned synod, which he had been put in charge of. People couldn't believe he would leave his city still reeling, just weeks after the 9/11 attacks, to go off and run a meeting of bishops. But he did.
This passage from an October 11, 2001, story in the NY Times really captured the cardinal's pastoral blind spot:
When Pope John Paul II asked Cardinal Edward Egan of New York to spend October here, helping him run a monthlong gathering of bishops from around the world, the cardinal could hardly object.
But while the bishops are at the Vatican, rethinking their role in the world, isn't the cardinal perhaps rethinking his own role, and his decision to leave his grief-stricken flock?
No, he said in a recent interview here -- first, because he is returning to New York this week for some days to mark the month that has passed since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
His work at the Vatican conference, or synod, is important, too, he said. And Rome in many ways is home to the Chicago-bred cardinal.
''I lived here for almost 23 years and love the town,'' Cardinal Egan said, sinking back into a couch in the lounge of an American seminary and calling for an aide to bring him a ginger ale. ''I was ordained in this town, taught here for 17 years and in this building for 4. I'm an old hand.''
Asked again if it was not hard, nonetheless, to be away from New York at such a moment, he said, ''I would not be at all unhappy to be back in New York now."
Wow, Eminenza, that's the spirit. Not. You can perhaps see the character trait that's gotten him in such a bad spot with so many of his priests.
A year ago I wrote a column called "A Separate Peace," in which I said America's leaders in all areas--government, business, journalism--were in some deep way checking out. They saw bad things coming in the world and for our country, didn't think they could do anything about it, and were instead building a new pool or buying good memories for their kids. Soon after I was invited to address a group of Capitol Hill staffers to talk about the piece. When the meeting was over a woman walked up to me. She spoke of what was going wrong in Washington--the preoccupation with money, a lack of focus on the essentials, and the relentless dynamic of politics: first thing you do when you get power is move to keep power. And after a while you don't have any move but that move.
I said I thought the Republicans would take it on the chin in 2006, and that would force the beginning of wisdom. She surprised me. She was after all a significant staffer giving all her energy to helping advance conservative ideas within the Congress. "Yes," she said, in a quiet, deadly way. As in: I can't wait. As in: We'll get progress only through loss.
That's a year ago, from the Hill.
This is two weeks ago, from a Bush appointee: "I hope they lose the House." And one week ago, from a veteran of two GOP White Houses: "I hope they lose Congress." Republicans this year don't say "we" so much.
What is behind this? A lot of things, but here's a central one: They want to fire Congress because they can't fire President Bush.
I've thought this fall how incredible -- and incredibly stupid -- it was that with the US mired in a foreign war it's losing, to say nothing of the other huge challenges facing America, that voters in Virginia were being asked to decide on the fitness of Republican George Allen to continue to serve in the US Senate based on his use of the word "macaca," and whether or not he said the N-word 20 or 30 years ago.
Now comes Allen with what I guess counts as an "October Surprise": highlighting passages from one of opponent Jim Webb's novels in which child molestation is depicted. This despicable demagoguery from Allen is pure, uncut boob bait. I agree with Ross that Radley Balko has the definitive take on the matter, which is excerpted here:
Let's summarize: While George Allen was discovering his love for the Confederacy in Southern California and at the University of Virginia, Jim Webb was fighting the war in Vietnam, finding himself wholly immersed in a completely foreign culture. Webb was obviously rather profoundly affected by that experience. Because he chose to write about it, in a series of books that have won widespread praise from politicians, from fellow Vietnam vets, and from literary critics.
But war-loving, flag-waving George Allen has decided to hold all of that against Jim Webb. Tonight, Allen took what was clearly a scene-painting, cultural passage from one of those books, grotesquely took it out of context and sexualized it, then slapped it on a press release in an attempt to cheapen Webb's well-received books as cheap porn with hints of pedophelia.
This isn't just a political attack. It's an attack on art. On writing. On expression. Hell, it's an attack on knowledge and learning. It's cheap and tawdry and cynical.
Perhaps if George Allen hadn't himself procured a student deferment from the Vietnam War, he'd be more familiar with the country's culture, and wouldn't bastardize the work of a man who did fight, and who saw to share his experiences with the rest of us -- Allen and his campaign of course announcing and advertising their own willfull stupidity in the process.
I hope Jim Webb beats this clabberhead like a drum.
It began Tuesday afternoon with the visitation at the funeral home across town (Martin and Hightower). That lasted 8 hours. Everyone - from city officials to law enforcement chiefs to the president of our local university, most of the department heads and faculty, dozens of doctors and nurses from the local hospital, folks from many charitable service organizations in the community, a large group of Baptists and Presbyterians (their choirs offered serenades), and of course members of my church - it seemed everyone in town came to visit and pay their respects. I led the rosary.
The procession the next morning from the funeral home to my church was amazing. The sheriff, police, and fire department shut down EVERY sidestreet along the route, the main route through Carrollton (Hwy 27) and also the longest since the funeral home is on the opposite side of town from my church - 15 miles or so. Fire trucks and police cars blocked each street while the officers and deputies and firemen stood at attention as the procession passed.
Upon arrival at the church, I was principal celebrant and a classmate of mine Fr. Tim Gadziala, who was friends with the family, was the homilist. The church was packed, of course, and the music was beautiful. Pallbearers were 6 prominent doctors from the community, along with dozens of other honorary pallbearers representing many community organizations.
The Princess? Her name was Michelle Pollard, aged 36, died of complications from a recent surgery after 14 months of struggle.
She was a teacher, first and foremost, but also into sports, winning some gold medals for Georgia in national equestrian events. She was also a greeter at my parish, and active in many local community service organizations.
But she is best known as "Michelle from Publix". Everyone in town knew her, because she was a bagger there for the last 8 years of her life.
Michelle, if you haven't started to wonder by now, had Down Syndrome. And she changed an entire community.
Fr. Tim preached the most remarkable funeral sermon I've ever heard. He's a Scripture scholar and Canonist, so it was a tad intellectual, but warm and joyous and dead on the money and challenging to everyone present. He spoke of her incessant smile and huge hugs. He spoke of how she was not bound by the "impediment of reason" as we are, so that it was natural for her to love unconditionally, whereas it's difficult for us. He spoke of how she taught everyone she encountered the meaning of love and joy. He also spoke of how she "shamed" many of us - an indirect challenge to doctors and others over the years who perhaps didn't put their whole heart into helping her. He also went on for about a half-hour, but that's OK, that's Fr. Tim, and it was beautiful.
I began the Mass with the story from CS Lewis of the woman (in The Great Divorce) being honored by a procession in heaven by thousands of people, because everyone she met became a member of her family, and I told the people we should be honored that Michelle counted us as her family. (She was adopted by a former nun who teaches Special Ed at the University - Dr. Nancy Pollard is a remarkable woman.) I closed the Mass with the comment that I believe we're sent here to learn how to love, but a rare few of us are sent here to teach. And Michelle used to always say, "I be the teacher." And her life itself was a better sermon than any thousand sermons.
She was buried in her prom dress with a crown, which I pointed out as we prayed the Coronation of Mary in the rosary at the Vigil. Indeed, she has received her crown.
Rest in peace, Princess.
Fr. Pau
l Williams, pastor, OLPH, Carrollton, Georgia.
For the Won't Get Fooled Again file, here comes the desperate GOP, going to the gay-marriage well one more time, trying to gin up social and religious conservatives to turn out on the belief that voting Republican will keep the queers from getting hitched. Here's President Bush on the stump yesterday, commenting on the New Jersey Supreme Court's ruling:
“Yesterday in New Jersey, we had another activist court issue a ruling that raises doubts about the institution of marriage,” Mr. Bush said at a luncheon at the Iowa State Fairgrounds that raised $400,000 for Mr. Lamberti.
The president drew applause when he reiterated his long-held stance that marriage was “a union between a man and a woman,” adding, “I believe it’s a sacred institution that is critical to the health of our society and the well-being of families, and it must be defended.”
Oh, [expletive]. I too believe that traditional marriage is a sacred institution that is critical to the health of our society and the well-being of families, and that it must be defended. I believe that neither President Bush nor the Republican Party in Washington intends to do jack-squat about it, aside from trading on the gullibility of social and religious conservatives to believe them when they say they will. The only sure way to have defended marriage was to have pushed through a federal marriage amendment to the US Constitution. But after running on defending marriage in 2004, Bush and the GOP forgot all about it -- except for making a half-hearted feint toward passing the amendment, after it became obvious that the votes weren't there to get it through the Senate.
Bush might not have gotten it through the Senate after all -- but he didn't try. After winning a close re-election, arguably because the gay-marriage ballot initiatives in key states mobilized religious and social conservatives to turn out, Bush forgot about marriage. So now, coming back two weeks before an election the Republicans deserve to lose, it takes some gall to pretend to be a defender of traditional marriage. Fool us once, shame on you. Fool us twice, shame on us.
People may say: "OK, so the Republicans folded on gay marriage when it counted. But is the answer to allow a party that has no problem with gay marriage take power?" To that I say: The Republicans have proven that they cannot be counted on to take a political risk to protect traditional marriage, that to them, it is only a sop to get religious and social conservatives to vote Republican. If we are going to get gay marriage declared by the courts anyway, at least by not falling for the Republican lie, we preserve our self-respect. And next time a Republican makes a promise like this, perhaps he'll have the sense to keep it, or at least make a good-faith effort to do so.
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