(Display Name not set)September 2006 Archives

From "The Gulag Archipelago":

If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committeing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

During the life of any heart this line keeps changing place; sometimes it is squeezed one way by exuberant evil and sometimes it shifts to allow enough space for good to flourish. One and the same human being is, at various ages, under various circumstances, a totally different human being. At times he is close to being a devil, at times to sainthood. But his name doesn't change, and to that name we ascribe the whole lot, good and evil.

Socrates taught us: "Know thyself."

Contronted by the pit into which we are about to toss those who have done us harm, we halt, stricken dumb: it is after all only because of the way things worked out that they were the executioners and we weren't.

From good to evil is one quaver, says the proverb.

And correspondingly, from evil to good.

Solzhenitsyn goes on to mention the case of some Soviet officials who used holy icons for target practice. We prefer to think people so given over to evil can't exist, he says. The problem, the author continues, is how literature depicts classic evildoers: they are conscious at some level of their evil. In reality, though, the real evildoer has to be convinced that he's doing good, "or else that it's a well-considered act in conformity with the natural law." Otherwise, the conscience will restrain the evildoer before his evil gets too out of hand. Shakespeare's evildoers, he cites as an example, stopped after a few corpses because they lacked ideology.

Ideology -- that is what gives evildoing its long-sought justification and gives the evildoer the necessary steadfastness and determination. That is the social theory wihich helps to make his acts seem good instead of bad in his own and others' eyes, so that he won't hear reproaches and curses but will receive praise and honors. That was how the agents of the Inquisition fortified their wills: by invoking Christianity; the conquererors of foreign lands, by extolling the grandeur of their Motherland; the colonizers, by civilization; the Nazis, by race, and the Jacobins (early and late), by equality, brotherhood, and the happiness of future generations.

Ideology, Solzhenitsyn writes, made the 20th century the century of mass murder on a previously inconceivable scale. He speaks of a rumor that during one period immediately after the Bolshevik Revolution, the secret police in Petrograd supposedly fed those condemned to death to the animals in the city zoos. Solzhenitsyn says he can't prove it was true, but how else would they have kept zoo animals alive during those famine years? "Those enemies were going to die anyway, so why couldn't their deaths support the zoo economy of the Republic and thereby assist our march into the future? Wasn't it expedient?"

That is the precise line that the Shakesperean evildoer could not cross. But the evildoer with ideology does cross it, and his eyes remain dry and clear.

...Evidently evildoing also has a threshold magnitude. Yes, a human being hesitates and bobs back and forth between good and evil all his life. He slips, falls back, clambers up, repents, things begin to darken again. But just so long as the threshold of evildoing is not crossed, the possibility of returning remains, and he himself is still within reach of our hope. But when, through the density of evil actions, the result either of their own extreme degree or of the absoluteness of his power, he suddenly crosses that threshold, he has left humanity behind, and without, perhaps, the possibility of return.

Would somebody please point me to a source where I can get a straight answer on two issues related to this "torture"/"habeas corpus" bill we've been arguing about? Here's what I want to know:

1. What interrogation techniques will be allowed under this bill? Will waterboarding be allowed? (I've been going on and on about how it will be permitted in some instances, but to be honest, I'm now confused, and doubting that that's the case.) How much latitude does the president have to define which techniques are okay to use? I ask because it's fine to say that it bans "torture," but not if President Bush gets to define the meaning of torture.

2. Who loses his habeas corpus rights under this bill? If, as I believe SCOTUS declared, enemy combatants have statutory (as distinct from constitutional) rights to challenge their detention, will they still have them if this bill is signed into law? Will it be possible that someone will be thrown in jail indefinitely, with no opportunity to have his case reviewed, or to challenge evidence against him? The NYTimes editorial board says: "All Mr. Bush would have to do to lock anyone up forever is to declare him an illegal combatant and not have a trial." Is that true?

There's a passage in Errol Morris's documentary "The Fog of War" juxtaposing Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's upbeat public speeches about the progress of the Vietnam War with the grim news he was privately delivering to the president at the time. I thought of that when I read this from Bob Woodward's front-page story in the Sunday WaPo:

On May 22, 2006, President Bush spoke in Chicago and gave a characteristically upbeat forecast: "Years from now, people will look back on the formation of a unity government in Iraq as a decisive moment in the story of liberty, a moment when freedom gained a firm foothold in the Middle East and the forces of terror began their long retreat."

Two days later, the intelligence division of the Joint Chiefs of Staff circulated a secret intelligence assessment to the White House that contradicted the president's forecast.

Instead of a "long retreat," the report forecast a more violent 2007: "Insurgents and terrorists retain the resources and capabilities to sustain and even increase current level of violence through the next year."

A graph included in the assessment measured attacks from May 2003 to May 2006. It showed some significant dips, but the current number of attacks against U.S.-led coalition forces and Iraqi authorities was as high as it had ever been -- exceeding 3,500 a month. [In July the number would be over 4,500.] The assessment also included a pessimistic report on crude oil production, the delivery of electricity and political progress.

On May 26, the Pentagon released an unclassified report to Congress, required by law, that contradicted the Joint Chiefs' secret assessment. The public report sent to Congress said the "appeal and motivation for continued violent action will begin to wane in early 2007."

There was a vast difference between what the White House and Pentagon knew about the situation in Iraq and what they were saying publicly. But the discrepancy was not surprising. In memos, reports and internal debates, high-level officials of the Bush administration have voiced their concern about the United States' ability to bring peace and stability to Iraq since early in the occupation.

I wonder when it will sink in with most of us that we cannot trust this government to tell the truth about the war, much less to wage it?

Do not fail to note this passage in the Woodward story, involving Gen. Abizaid, who is running the show in Iraq:

This March, Abizaid was in Washington to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee. He painted a careful but upbeat picture of the situation in Iraq.

Afterward, he went over to see Rep. John P. Murtha in the Rayburn House Office Building. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, had introduced a resolution in Congress calling for American troops in Iraq to be "redeployed" -- the military term for returning troops overseas to their home bases -- "at the earliest practicable date."

"The war in Iraq is not going as advertised," Murtha had said. "It is a flawed policy wrapped in illusion."

Now, sitting at the round dark-wood table in the congressman's office, Abizaid, the one uniformed military commander who had been intimately involved in Iraq from the beginning and who was still at it, indicated he wanted to speak frankly. According to Murtha, Abizaid raised his hand for emphasis, held his thumb and forefinger a quarter of an inch from each other and said, "We're that far apart."

Daniel Larison's thoughts on Wal-Mart's ability to bring down the price of prescription drugs by squeezing suppliers brings to mind what may be the only Gerald Ford quote worth remembering: "A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take away everything you have."

So it turns out that the Speaker of the House knew months ago about that pervy Rep. Mark Foley coming on to an underage Congressional page, and apparently did nothing about it. I don't understand either why Rep. Rodney Alexander, the Louisiana Republican for whom the 16-year-old boy worked, didn't raise hell until this Foley freak had his hash settled. Well, yes, I understand it all too well; it's how big organizations work, and besides, to have made a big deal of this might have helped the Democrats, and we can't have that; better to be quiet about it for the greater good of the Cause -- it's expedient, after all). I think Rahm Emanuel is probably right:

Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, questioned yesterday why Alexander had gone to the House Republicans' chief political operative, rather than to other party leaders. "That's to protect a member, not to protect a child," Emanuel said.

And this from the WaPo story:

Rich Galen, a Republican political strategist, worried that voters might lump Foley's name with former representatives Robert W. Ney (R-Ohio), Tom DeLay (R-Tex.) and Randy "Duke" Cunningham (R-Calif.), all of whom were forced to resign or were indicted amid various scandals this year.

"This sense of entitlement that members of Congress can do anything to anyone or for anyone has got to end," Galen said.

I am sick to death of these people.

I got this advice to Ross Douthat too late for him to take advantage of it on his recent trip to Paris, but now that we're getting into the autumn, and all discerning and enlightened people's thoughts turn to cassoulet,...

I have not blogged about the torture bill till now, in part because I found its constitutent elements to be somewhat confusing, and I didn't quite know what to say. This morning, I see that it has now passed the...

A Catholic friend who gave me a copy of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's "The Gulag Archipelago" some months back writes today to chide me for not yet having read it:It is, you see, the single-most important treatise on the evil of torture...

I was out all morning, and see that there has been a lot of activity in the comboxes on my previous entry. I can't even look at it -- I have way, way too much to do here in the...

Just got this from a friend with whom I can't recall ever having had a substantial disagreement, and who is a former military intelligence officer who was once married to a military interrogator:I have to say that I think your...

And now for something completely different: a wonderful essay by Eric Miller, who's quoted in the new chapter in the "Crunchy Cons" paperback (out next month), writing about the metaphysics of honeybees, and what the fate of the bees has...

I'm trying to find a down side to Wal-Mart's plan to offer cheap prescription drugs, making them affordable to people who don't have health insurance, but I can't. This sounds like a great deal, and the company is to be...

One reason I love podcasting is that it gives me an opportunity to hear talk shows that I miss during the day. This morning, I heard most of an interesting exchange from the Diane Rehm show (download the podcast here,...

A French philosopher is now living under police protection after having published a column in a mainstream newspaper protesting against Islamic bully-boy tactics. Here's my translation of a snippet of the Nouvel Observateur story linked in this item:In his column,...

There's good news on the German opera front -- a meeting of German Muslims and non-Muslim leaders came to agreement that whatever one thinks of that controversial opera, the show must go on. See, there is hope for agreement and...

Did Saddam make Iraq what it is, or did Iraq make Saddam what he is. This may shed some light Excerpt:The [senior U.S. military] official said political parties who were plundering ministries were squandering chances to make progress that could...

At the University of Texas in Austin, there's only university housing for 20 percent of students. The rental housing market is insane there. Some students are dealing with the problem by living in co-op housing. It's not simply a matter...

It's getting worse by the day. + Moqtada al-Sadr, who needs killing, is losing control over segments of his Mahdi Army, who have become freelance death squads accountable to no one.+ US military commanders are openly discussing the weakness, corruption...

Now here's an interesting situation. Remember the big controversy not long ago over the pro-life pharmacists who didn't want to sell the so-called morning-after pill because it's potentially abortifacient? Remember how they said it would violate their conscience to sell...

A German state opera company has cancelled a performance of a Mozart opera out of fear that Muslims will react violently to a scene in which the severed head of Mohammed is onstage. Funny, the scene also features the severed...

This morning Matthew had a stupid six-year-old blow-up over his stupid glass of stupid apple juice. It was -- what's the word? -- stupid. Irritated the fire out of his mother and me. I told him he couldn't play on...

John Derbyshire reviews a new book that examines the horrible practice of Europeans kidnapped and forced into African slavery by Muslim pirates. He concludes:This whole terrible episode in European history has been forgotten. Is there any chance we might persuade...

Some United Methodist leaders are demanding a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, and are delivering their protest to the Methodist family in residence at the White House. There is a lot less to this than meets the eye. The G.W....

In a welcome essay, Lee Harris notes that columnist Madeleine Bunting of The Guardian cited "papal stupidity" for provoking Muslims into acts of violence. Harris notes:"Papal stupidity" is strong language. But a few paragraphs before this harsh phrase, Madeleine Bunting...

"The Theocons" author Damon Linker now has a blog. He's got a couple of interesting posts up now. He puts up quotes from two opposing reviews:From The Washington Monthly: "[The Theocons is] exaggerated and alarmist . . . tendentious ....

Courage Man, who did some fierce blogging over the weekend on the Julie Lyons threads below, sorts it all out on his own blog....

Well, look, if you haven't read Joan Didion's essay on Dick Cheney, do so at your earliest convenience. It's a perfectly modulated collection of facts, quotes and analysis that at the end, makes you wonder what the hell is happening...

Iraq is in a civil war now that could embroil the entire Middle East in a general war. Afghanistan is going to hell. Iran is marching undeterred towards nuclear weaponry. The US Army is stuck in a quagmire that we...

Sorry for the light blogging today. I'm way, way behind on a million things. I'll be online in the early evening, opining like a drunken sailor. Or something....

With Iraq going to hell, Joe Klein takes a look at the Virginia Senate race and asks, "Who cares if George Allen's mother is Jewish?" Hear, hear. Apparently, from what I read over the weekend, Allen handled the Jewish issue...

That was Donald Rumsfeld's response -- you could look it up -- back in 2003, when reports emerged from newly-liberated Baghdad that looters were sacking the city's art museum. Now, as Frank Rich notes in his Times column today (behind...

In a thread below, we've gotten to talking about how it's not enough to shield your kids from the bad stuff in the culture, you also have to expose them to, and culture them in, the Good, the True and...

In a combox below, a reader quotes from Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings":"...without love of words or things … degraded and filthy … dreary and repetitive with hatred and contempt, too long removed from good to retain even verbal...

We often feel that we wait in vain for moderate Muslims to speak against the haters without equivocation. Well, Salim Mansur does, and God bless him for it....

How political correctness ruined British ballet....

Julie Lyons' piece is amazing not only because it appeared on the website of an alt-weekly, but because it breaks a taboo that needs breaking. The public discussion about homosexuality has become so stilted and false. On one side, you...

This will only matter to a tiny slice of the CC readership, but I'm thrilled to be able to report news from Baylor: Francis Beckwith has been granted tenure on appeal! Great news, just great news. (For background on the...

TMatt picks up on reports that the three Catholics executed in Indonesia were denied the Sacraments before being shot -- in violation of Indonesian law (which appears to be in the process of being redefined to "whatever Muslims say it...

I spent the lunch hour today with a friend whose husband is a fairly new teacher at a suburban public high school near Dallas. I asked her how "John," as I'll call him, was doing in the new school. The...

Here's a fantastic essay by Mick Hume, editor of the online British magazine Spiked and an atheist, about why the Benedict controversy matters to us all. Excerpt:I am not a Catholic, a Christian, or of any other religious persuasion. For...

The invaluable Diogenes at the Catholic World News blog, in assessing the US Catholic Bishops' corporate response to Pope Benedict coming under attack by Islamic nutters and their craven allies in the secular media, reminds us once again of the...

I was thinking about the lively thread below in which I called a geeky seminarian "Star Wars"-themed video "pathetic," and was joined by some, but a majority of posters thought the thing was good harmless fun. (N.B., I didn't think...

A Jewish reader -- I point that out only to indicate that this conservative sensibility I keep talking about is by no means limited to Christians -- who is the father of a small child writes:I share your sentiments 100...

Julie Lyons is the editor of the Dallas Observer, the local alt-weekly. She is also an Evangelical Christian. I had no idea. She writes this column for the Observer's blog Unfair Park (a local pun) called "Bible Girl." Last week,...

Today is Friday, the official Islamic "Day of Rage" called for by televangelist Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi to protest Pope Benedict's intimation that maybe Islam has a leeetle bit of trouble dealing with reason -- a suggestion that as we have...

Caught an interview on "Fresh Air" last night with Jim McGreevey, the former governor of New Jersey who resigned after it was revealed that he put his gay lover on the state payroll (as Homeland Security adviser, even though he...

A friend faxed me this morning the four letters published in the current issue of First Things that were critical of Gilbert Meilaender's review of "Crunchy Cons." There's no link to those letters yet, but I want to thank letter-writers...

In Genoa, the city is dying for want of children. The only people having kids there these days are immigrants. Young people have resolutely chosen to have either no children, or only one child. Some claim that it's too expensive...

I'm sorry, but this is pathetic. Is this what seminarians spend their time doing, making goobery "Star Wars" home movies? Is this how you prepare to be a spiritual father? Maturity? Hello, anybody home?...

In a small e-mail group I'm involved in, we started talking last night about the new Sony kids movie "Open Season." One of our number is a film critic, and got an advance preview. She said the thing was so...

The three Christian men have been shot by a firing squad. I don't think it would be right to describe them as martyrs in the strict sense. They were not tried for being Christians, but for allegedly leading Christians committing...

What a weird story this latest George Allen flap is. First he gets his back rared up when a reporter asks him if he has Jewish heritage in his background (which I agree is a weird question; why on earth...

For the first time ever, Forbes' magazine's list of the 400 Richest People in America is an all-billionaire club. And it's interesting to note that, as ABC just reported, self-made billionaires like Sergey Brin of Google dwarf in riches families...

You've got to have Times $elect to read the column, but David Brooks has some sobering thoughts on this past week. He says, for one, that the international system is plainly broken, that while the Americans screw up, the Europeans...

An internal investigation has found that HUD Secretary Alphonso Jackson urged his staff to consider the political loyalties of people they offered contracts to, but no firm evidence that they ever did so. Hmm. Sounds familiar. Government by cronyism. Is...

Here's a link to Tom Edsall's important New Republic essay adapted from his new book about Red America. Unfortunately, you can't read the Edsall piece unless you subscribe to TNR. But here's my take on it.Edsall begins by talking about...

The New York Times weighs in again with another ignorant and objectionable editorial about the Benedict controversy. Excerpts, with my comments in [bold brackets]:The pope and the Vatican can also do more. For the past two years, Benedict has been...

Lord Carey, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, minces no words:“Islam’s borders are bloody and so are its innards. The fundamental problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilisation whose people are convinced of the...

Ramesh Ponnuru, quoting Michael Barone:Political judgments are affected by temperament. Optimists tend to be confident that their side is winning and alert to signs that things are moving their way. Pessimists tend to be gloomily certain that their own side...

Daniel Larison has some good new stuff over at his blog, including a takedown of Christopher Hitchens, a curmudgeon whose polemics I often admire, but who apparently despises Christianity as much as he despises Islamism. I was most struck by...

The Indonesian government is preparing to execute three Christian farmers tomorrow for their supposed role in Muslim-Christian fighting that resulted in the deaths of scores of Muslims. There has been much concern voiced internationally over the fairness of the trial,...

Benedict had even more clarifications of his Islam statement today. He really needs to stop doing this. He's said what he's said, and at this point, it's not going to help, only make him look weak. The Muslims who haven't...

Anne Applebaum of the WaPo says it's time for the West to quit apologizing over slights to radical Islam and unite behind the defense of free speech:By this, I don't mean that we all need to rush to defend or...

Last night I finished my galley copy of Daveed Gartenstein-Ross's forthcoming (Feb. 2007) book "My Year Inside Radical Islam: A Memoir". I think it's safe to say that when this book comes out, there's going to be a great deal...

A military officer of my acquaintance complained that when he served on the frontlines in Iraq, he and his men never saw their designated CPA contact, who never left the Green Zone. This officer said that the Bush Administration sent...

The Muslim reaction to Benedict's speech has been the main story, given its extreme bellicosity. If Benedict had outright called Islam evil, it still wouldn't have merited the insane response we've seen. I do believe, though, that Benedict was needlessly...

Reader Russ draws our attention to Jacob T. Levy's sensible commentary from The New Republic's Open University blog. Excerpt:I confess to often having some sympathy for non-ecumenicists and those who draw distinctions [between religions and religious traditions]. I don't expect...

Robert Miller, a Catholic professor writing on the First Things blog, thinks Benedict screwed up by using the Emperor's startling quote:Still, Benedict went about this noble business in a very imprudent way. The statement he quoted—that everything new Mohammed brought...

Here's a riveting op-ed from the LA Times by Sam Harris, the atheist liberal whose book "Letter to a Christian Nation" will be published this week. Excerpt:But my correspondence with liberals has convinced me that liberalism has grown dangerously out...

In one of the comboxes below, Ken Myers -- whose latest edition of Audition, the free Mars Hill Audio podcast, is out and ready for download (I listened to it over the weekend, and it's great) -- asks a great...

Fascinating material from a 1997 interview then-Cardinal Ratzinger had with the journalist Peter Seewald. Read the whole passage here (scroll down). This is key,and the emphases are mine:An important point, however, is [...] that the interplay of society, politics, and...

Did you see her commentary on the CBS Evening News tonight? You can. Here's part of what she had to say:As a faithful Muslim, I do not believe the pope should have apologized. I've read what’s been described as his...

George F. Will knows. Excerpt from Will's review of a new liberal tome by Thomas Edsall:Edsall notes that one-third of American children -- and almost 70 percent of African American children -- are born to unmarried mothers. Then, in an...

Michelle Malkin has a photograph of an elderly missionary nun, murdered in Somalia after an ROP cleric there said, "Whoever offends our Prophet Mohammed should be killed on the spot by the nearest Muslim."At my parish today, there was lots...

Former GOP Congressman turned cable host Joe Scarborough has some blunt advice for woebegone Congressional confreres facing a tough re-election bid. Excerpt:I can't help but feel sorry for my old Republican friends in Congress who are fighting for their political...

The Aussies have read Muslim leaders there the riot act. Excerpt:The Howard Government's multicultural spokesman, Andrew Robb, yesterday told an audience of 100 imams who address Australia's mosques that these were tough times requiring great personal resolve. Mr Robb also...

Over at Get Religion, Terry Mattingly has some very pointed words about the Times' editorial. Excerpt:And thus it came to pass: The content of Pope Benedict XVI’s speech stopped being the story — including the fact that the speech was...

Iraqi jihadists vow to "destroy their cross in the heart of Rome ... and that their Vatican will be hit and wept over by the Pope."Church bombed in Gaza. It's an Orthodox parish.Two churches firebombed on the West Bank. One...

Pope Benedict has apologized to offended Muslims.It's unclear whether this was a real apology, or one of these "sorry if you were offended" halfhearted apologies. Either one is a surrender to the forces of hatred, violence, obscurantism and fanaticism in...

Michelle Malkin has a long, excellent post urging the West to stand behind Pope Benedict ... and ends it with an absolutely chilling fact: a novel on the Turkish bestseller list now foretells the assassination of Benedict in Istanbul. Where...

Via Amy comes these words from Magdi Allam, an Italian Muslim, writing in the Italian paper Corriere della Sera:It is desolating and preoccupying to see Muslims who have given life to a unified international front to attack the Pope and...

What's a monopsony? It's a situation in which a firm has the power to dictate price to its suppliers. Like Wal-Mart, which is so big and powerful that those who want to sell their products in its stores have to...

The other night a conservative friend asked me why I subscribe to the New York Times. I told him that I know it's a liberal paper, but it's also a very, very good paper, and I can read through and...

Andrew Sullivan and I rarely agree on Catholic matters, but he's spot-on here Well, I think he's wrong about Benedict suppressing reason within the Catholic Church, but still, Andrew draws our attention to an important point Benedict appears to have...

Here's Russell Arben Fox's meaty, complex take on Damon Linker's "The Theocons." Well worth a read -- and I'm sorry I've got so much going on this morning that I can't devote more time to parsing Prof. Fox's analysis. The...

Muslims burn an image of Pope Benedict in effigy to protest his intimation that Islam has a problem with violence.The more of this kind of thing I see, the happier I am that Benedict said what he said. Better to...

Keep at it, Mark!...

What do I have in common with Pope Benedict? Unfortunately for me, not as much as I wish we did. But there is this: We have both been compared to Nazis by Islamic leaders who believed we had insulted their...

Ross has been reading Damon Linker's much-anticipated "The Theocons: Secular America Under Siege," and while he's not out with his own thoughts yet, recommends this Washington Monthly review by Commonweal's Philip Baumann as "definitive." According to Baumann, who writes for...

Honestly, the thin-skinnedness of many Muslims is getting awfully tiresome. How on earth are we ever supposed to be able to have a dialogue if the non-Muslim side has to walk on eggshells to avoid offending the wounded sensibilities of...

Time's cover story on the "Prosperity Gospel" is not available online, except to subscribers, but I was able to read it last night in -- strange as it may sound -- the actual magazine. I was pleased to see so...

If you're a close reader of these comboxes, you will have noticed that we're making more of an effort to be vigilant about deleting personal attacks. It's our policy to be as accomodating as we can be to all points...

Do you want to know why so many Christians fear that the gay rights movement is a direct threat to their religious liberty? You might have read Maggie Gallagher's startling report in which she quotes legal scholars on both sides...

Uh-oh, Mario Loyola over at The Corner is demonstrating dangerous crunchy-con tendencies:Is economic progress necessarily preferable to cultural conservation? In the countryside of France, the last century has been dominated by a struggle between the impulse of modernity and a...

The German government has imprisoned a homeschooling mom for the crime of ... homeschooling. Her husband and their children have fled to Austria....

I'm not sure if you need a subscription to read it, but I'm hoping not. I'm talking about Richard Florida's piece in The Atlantic noting the huge demographic shift over the last 30 years, in which the most educated people...

The conservative writer and humorist Christopher Buckley has a very funny piece out about why it's time for his party, the Republicans, to get their blocks knocked off this November, for their own good. He's part of a group of...

The question of the difference between aggressive interrogation and torture is not a cut-and-dried one. Mark Bowden, writing in The Atlantic three years ago, explored the murky world of interrogation and torture, and makes a strong case for using at...

Finally, a transcript of Pope Benedict's so-called "Islam-bashing" speech! How very different the speech was from what you'd expect if you'd read an MSM account of the thing. There was the untoppably atrocious, biased and inaccurate headline atop the Agence...

Rosie O'Donnell says that "radical Christianity" is just as dangerous as "radical Islam." The amusing thing is she no doubt really believes that. I hope she'll test her thesis. I hope she'll go with her lesbian partner to the center...

Last night, the president said:We look to the day when moms and dads throughout the Middle East see a future of hope and opportunity for their children. And when that good day comes, the clouds of war will part, the...

My Dallas Morning News colleague Josh Benton, who covers education for our paper, has a good column out about how colleges make a pretense of meritocracy, but cut all kinds of slack for rich kids with mediocre minds:Is any of...

Watching it last night, I thought, you know, I believe Bush is a good man. I really do. I know a lot of you will say, "If he's such a good man, how do you explain [fill in the blank]."...

Jeremy Lott joins the growing chorus of caring persons who refuse to marry Angelina Jolie until gay marriage is legal. Hear, hear. While I am already married, there is something I can do to support Brad's bravely keeping his child...

Andrew Sullivan has a must-see YouTube video posted to his site: the Buckingham Palace band playing "The Star-Spangled Banner" in tribute on 9/11/01. Watch it. Then watch it again....

OK, one more thing about 9/11. In this column, John Podhoretz writes today about how he wasn't rattled by fear after 9/11, but that his form of resisting the evil unleashed on that day was to rededicate himself to loving...

Many Americans believe that terrorism and war are caused by poverty and political oppression, and that if we just make people more free and more prosperous, we'll have less terrorism and war. Niall Ferguson understands otherwise. In this long piece...

Finally on this 9/11, a word, maybe, of hope. I wrote this for Touchstone about something we saw at a Christmas concert near Ground Zero on a snowy night in 2002. It speaks in some way to something my friend...

James Lileks has a moving video montage of news footage from 9/11. It starts with images of his daughter, then a toddler, playing unawares in the living room as he's filming the initial news reports of the attacks. What a...

Whenever I think of the redemption that God can bring, and did bring, out of 9/11, I think of Frank Silecchia. I heard about his deed before I ever knew his name. A few days after the attacks, I was...

Last night I was rooting around for some bedtime reading, and pulled off the shelf a copy of Will Durant's history of the Reformation, which I'd bought at a used book store years ago for a couple of dollars. I...

I suspect I'll post less on 9/11 than I otherwise might have. I had to turn off ABC's excellent "Path to 9/11" miniseries tonight, because I was so filled with anger and emotion just watching it that I didn't know...

Sometimes you don't....

Unbelievable:FORT EUSTIS -- Months before the United States invaded Iraq in 2003, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld forbade military strategists from developing plans for securing a post-war Iraq, the retiring commander of the Army Transportation Corps said Thursday.In fact, said Brig....

That was the famous last line Johnny Rotten uttered before walking off stage at the Sex Pistols' final gig. Weirdly enough, it came to mind this morning as I was reading this story in the Times this morning. Here's the...

I'm sitting here at my desk in downtown Dallas, almost five years and half a country away from 9/11, but I can still remember exactly how it sounded when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed. I was...

Ross Douthat is about a decade younger than I, but his experience is similar to my own. Read this important post of his. In it, he describes how liberating it was, having been raised in an extremely p.c. environment, to...

Hold in your mind the thought of that heroic and holy Ugandan Anglican bishop. Now read this. It's about an Anglican priest from England who moved to India and converted to Hinduism, and began serving as a Hindu priest there....

You might remember my blogging not long ago about a sad and strange case in Dallas involving an elderly eccentric who was taken financial advantage of by a pair of alleged grifter types, who played to her kooky, Norma Desmond-y...

I'm sorry for the light blogging today -- we're crashing on deadline here at the paper, and I'm working late, and I have a sick kid at home, and I'm not at the Toronto Film Festival watching the Borat movie,...

The new issue of Touchstone came in, and draws our attention to a report from family scholars Barbara Dafoe Whitehead and David Popenoe that paints a bleak picture for the future of the family in the US. According to the...

Victor "Friend of this Blog" Morton is a lucky man. Not only is he at the Toronto Film Festival today, but he is almost certainly going to run into the comedian Sacha Baron Cohen masquerading as his ingenious character Borat,...

Good thing blogs are just daily diaries, on which bloggers are entitled to put their ever-changing deliberations. I say this because I'm all Waffle House on this Santorum race -- and in fact his candidacy distills the dilemma that socially...

Remember Secretary Rumsfeld chastising the news media the other day for reporting unhelpful things from Iraq, and helping the enemy war effort? Well, according to the Washington Post, the US military in Baghdad is taking bids on a $20 million...

College journalist Danny Kampf's so liberal his column is called The Bleeding Heart. But he makes sense here. Check out this bit:Liberals, such as me, have a tendency to go easier on Muslims who say ridiculous or intolerant things than...

Even Republican analysts are saying that the GOP could easily lose the House this fall. Daniel Larison responds to the idea that the GOP could pull out a win this fall because Iraq was an albatross around Bush's neck in...

Via Mark Shea comes the latest Bruce Bartlett column, which says the Reagan Coalition is breaking up. Bartlett endorses this conclusion from Ryan Sager's forthcoming bookSager argues that George W. Bush has effectively destroyed this extremely successful political partnership by...

Charles Bowden, writing in Mother Jones, speaks some truths about immigration that are bound to upset just about everybody. You've got to read the whole piece. Here's an excerpt:There are no honest players in this game. People cut the cards...

The Texas State Fair has topped itself in creating the ne plus ultra of cardiac-arrest cuisine. This year, fairgoers will be treated to something that surely qualifies as manna from Homer Simpson Heaven. Are you ready for this?Fried Coke.No, really....

I'm preparing a special cover story for my DMN commentary section this Sunday. I'm interviewing a number of Texans -- some famous, most not -- talking about where they were on 9/11, and how the events of that day most...

Caleb Stegall passes on this New Atlantis essay about the spiritual lessons inherent in manual labor. Specifically, author Matthew Crawford thinks that our cultural and technological sophistication is causing us to forget practical lessons -- put simply, how to build...

David Warren has no use for the two Fox News journalists who converted to Islam at gunpoint rather than accept martyrdom. Warren wrote that very many Christians over the centuries have gone willingly to their deaths rather than renounce Christ....

The current issue of Texas Monthly has a fascinating story -- not available online to non-subscribers -- about the nasty rift at the posh St. Andrew's Episcopal School in Austin (where tuition runs between $10,000 and $15,000 a year). The...

Now Eastern European countries are following their Western European confreres into barrenness. From the NYT today:After a long decline, birthrates in European countries have reached a historic low, as potential parents increasingly opt for few or no children. European women,...

According to the Telegraph, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the Shia leader upon which we have placed all our hopes for a stable Iraq, is now saying that he cannot prevent his followers from waging civil war. He's waning, while Moqtada...

While waiting to leave for church this morning, I caught a good portion of the "Meet the Press" debate between Pennsylvania senate candidates Rick Santorum and his challenger, Democrat Bob Casey (the son of the sainted pro-life Democratic governor Bob...

Very interesting post over at Catholic World News' Off the Record site, on the $16 million settlement the Archdiocese of Milwaukee has reached with plaintiffs in a couple of clerical sex abuse cases. It still, even now, boggles the mind...

Cardinal Roger Mahony of Los Angeles is in very hot water over the way he's handled sexually abusive priests. It's not surprising, perhaps, that his archdiocesan newspaper, The Tidings, has published a three-part series adapted from Crisis magazine and written...

Friday's Wall Street Journal op-ed page featured a lengthy essay by Gary Becker, the 1992 Nobel laureate in economics, entitled "Missing Children." It's not (yet) available for free online, but I'll post a link if and when it becomes available....

NYT story today reports that small towns in the West are ground zero for teenage binge drinking. Big cities have relatively small levels of same. Doesn't surprise me a bit. I grew up in a small town in the deep...

According to a grim new Pentagon report to Congress, Iraq is sliding closer to civil war. Things are not getting better in Iraq under this administration's leadership, and in fact are getting steadily worse. And the American people know it,...

TMatt says we have no mountains in Dallas. He's wrong, we do. In other places, they're called "traffic bumps."...

My friend John Podhoretz mentions my harsh verdict on the Rumsfeld speech the other day in his Friday column, as an example of conservative bad faith. John writes:The key emotion engendered by Rumsfeld's speech and presumably by Bush's speeches in...

In the thread below about childlessness by choice, a reader who says she and her husband don't feel called to have children says it really bothers her when people ask them when they are going to start a family. It's...

A Latino protest march to support illegal aliens is being sponsored by Miller Beer. The Chicago Tribune reports:[T]his march is no Cinco de Mayo parade. The politically charged event will promote a controversial plan to end deportations and offer legal...

A priest friend tipped me off to some eye-opening stuff published in The Wanderer concerning Judge Anne Burke, the Chicago Democrat and jurist who headed up the US Catholic bishops' National Review Board, which was created to examine the roots...

A reader wrote yesterday to say that he and his wife have a 7-month-old daughter, and are considering homeschooling her when the time comes. What should they start doing now? First, I should say to newcomers to this blog that...

Did you hear that Pinocchio, Heidi, D'Artagnan and other European fictional characters have been converted to Islam in a new set of Turkish editions? No, really. Well, hey, is this not a good pilot program to prepare the children of...