Crunchy Con

Mark Steyn connects some dots on Nidal Hasan. For example, did you know this?:

As a student, some who knew Nidal Malik Hasan said they saw clear signs the young Army psychiatrist -- who authorities say went on a shooting spree at Fort Hood that left 13 dead and 29 others wounded -- had no place in the military. After arriving at Fort Hood, he was conflicted about what to tell fellow Muslim soldiers about the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, alarming an Islamic community leader from whom he sought counsel.

"I told him, 'There's something wrong with you,' " Osman Danquah, co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, said on Saturday.

Danquah assumed the military's chain of command knew about Hasan's doubts, which had been known for more than a year to classmates in a graduate military medical program. His fellow students complained to the faculty about Hasan's "anti-American propaganda," but said a fear of appearing discriminatory against a Muslim student kept officers from filing a formal written complaint.

Well, sure. Here's what the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said today:

"Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse," Casey added on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Yes, it would indeed be even worse if the Army stopped being so afraid of being seen as discriminatory that it took seriously Muslim nuts among the ranks who spout anti-American propaganda. If we retreat even a millimeter from Holy Diversity because of this, the terrorists will have won.

You've got to read Steyn's post to see the august company Hasan kept recently, and where he was invited to share his expertise. As Steyn puts it, "That's quite the company for a deranged misfit loner whacko of no broader significance."

UPDATE: Just posted on the New York Times:

A former classmate in the master's degree program said Major Hasan gave a PowerPoint presentation about a year ago in an environmental health seminar titled "Why the War on Terror Is a War on Islam." He did not socialize with his classmates, other than to argue in the hallways on why the wars were wrong.

The former classmate, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of working for the military and not being authorized to speak publicly, said that some students complained to their professors about Major Hasan, but that no action had been taken. "It didn't cross my mind that he was dangerous," the former classmate said. "He's a chubby, bald guy. He wasn't threatening."

Dr. Aaron Haney, who was a year ahead of Major Hasan in the residency program, said there were many people at Walter Reed who expressed opposition to the wars.

How many of them expressed opposition to the wars in terms used by Islamist organizations, and terrorists? Never mind, nothing to see here, just chant the word "diversity" long enough and all will be well.

Bishop Robert Duncan, head of the TEC breakaway Anglican Church in North America, had a great line capping his Q&A in today's New York Times Magazine:

Q: I see a lawsuit was filed by the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh to take away both money and property in your control as the longtime bishop there.

A: There is an ongoing lawsuit. They may get the stuff, but we'll get the souls. They may get the past, but we've got the future.

God grant the good bishop many years! The only time I've heard Robert Duncan was in an interview he gave in 2004 to Terry Gross of the public radio show Fresh Air. I tuned in after he'd been introduced, and didn't know who he was. It was clear that he was against same-sex marriage, and that he was an Episcopalian cleric, but that's all I knew. I was really struck by how gentle and humble he was, especially given how tense and hostile the host's questioning was. I haven't been able this morning to find a transcript of the interview, but I did find this quote from Bp. Duncan's 2004 interview in a transcript of a more recent one Gross did with TEC Presiding Bishop Katharine Jefferts Schori:

Bishop ROBERT DUNCAN (Former Episcopalian Bishop, Pittsburgh): What I'm saying and what we are trying to say in the gentlest, most graceful, most Christ-like way is that we didn't make the rules here, that God did, and that we believe God knows what he's doing, even if at times we question it. Again, scripture describes the human race as fallen and all of us as sinners. And if, even if it were allowed, which, again, is much disputed that orientation has some genetic part of it, as well as what all would agree is an environmental part. Even if it has some genetic part, there are many genetic conditions that people have to live with, have to work with, have to work through and work around.

The Church loves us in whatever disorder, disease we may be afflicted with by the fall in this - in the creation. And that's all I can say about the affectional same sex that's sort of wiring, that it's an affectional disorder. That's - those are hard words, but I think they're true words. They're at least consistent with the scriptural description of who we are and how God's made the world.

I remember thinking as I listened to that interview how remarkably patient Duncan was with his interviewer, who was bristling with hostility (not in a talk radio way, but in that muted way that characterizes everything on NPR -- which, I must confess, is why I really like NPR).
That, by the way, is par for the course with Terry Gross. I generally like her program, and listen to it on podcast, but the two topics she returns to over and over again are homosexuality and television (especially anything related to Jon Stewart or Stephen Colbert). I'm a fairly regular listener, and have been for years. The host struggles audibly to conceal her lack of comfort with the occasional social or religious conservative she has on the program, as Doug LeBlanc has observed. No, she's not a lesbian; she's married to a jazz critic for the Village Voice. Anyway, I like her show, but I wish she were more fair to thoughtful social and religious conservatives, and had them on her program more often. I'm a big supporter of NPR, but I do wish its commitment to diversity included having more conservatives on the air. There are quite a few of us who don't listen to talk radio, and who like NPR precisely because it offers such reasonable, elevated discussion as a general rule. I support NPR for the same reason I subscribe to The New York Times: because the quality is there, and a pleasure to partake of, even as I believe they are often unfair or dismissive of people like me. They can do better.

Sorry, I didn't mean to go off on that NPR tangent. I just want to say that I thought Bp Duncan had a great line, and that based on what I know about him, Anglicans under his authority are indeed fortunate to have him as their spiritual father.

Alex e-mailed to me the remarkable story of Gaby Hinsliff, the political editor of The Observer newspaper in England -- or rather, the former political editor, inasmuch as she resigned because she concluded she couldn't have both a high-powered career and a satisfying family life. Excerpt:

Tucked away down a winding track on a remote Welsh peninsula, the farmhouse we rented for a family holiday last June was a much-needed haven from real life. My two-year-old son and his cousins ran wild on the empty beaches all day, chasing crabs through rock pools. When they all finally fell asleep in a sandy tangle of sheets, the adults cracked open another bottle and watched the sun sink slowly into the water. Months of tension melted away... until the night someone flicked on the television for the weather forecast, just in time to see James Purnell resign from the cabinet.

"That's the end, then," I said.

Of Gordon Brown, someone wondered? But I meant, of the holiday. The point of journalism is being there when things happen: the blessing, and the curse, of political journalism is that things happen so often. I rang the office, and started packing.

All the way back down the motorway, the car seethed with resentment. "Freddie NOT go home," said my son mutinously, kicking the back of the seat. "Yes, well, Daddy doesn't want to either," my husband muttered. Even the dog glowered.

And was that the tipping point? The moment I realised I couldn't do this any more, couldn't do it to my family any more, and would therefore have to resign from the job I loved? It would make for a convenient story if it was. But in all honesty, it was a slower, subtler thing than that.

Surrender steals up on the working mother like hypothermia takes a stranded climber: the chill deepens day by day, disorientation sets in, and before you know it you are gone. In the sleepless blur of the last three years, I can barely even remember now how it started.

More:

Every day became a battle against the clock. I never listened properly to phone conversations with friends, because I was always simultaneously doing something else. I was so on edge I raged at the tiniest delay - tourists blocking tube escalators, a computer slow to spark up in the morning. Running for the train in high heels, I sprained my ankle: the doctor prescribed some exercises, but who had time for that? I wore flat shoes, took painkillers.

My reward was that for two crazed but fantastic years, I did - in that loaded cliche - have it all: terrific job, plus small child. Thanks largely to a brilliant nanny and a hands-on partner, I don't honestly believe either suffered from the other.

But what got lost in the rush was a life, if a life means having time for the people you love, engaging with the world around you, making a home rather than just running a household.

So when my long-suffering husband was offered a new job in Oxford, involving the move to the countryside he has always wanted, there was strangely little to discuss. For years he had organised his own career to let me do what I loved, and now it felt like his turn. I closed my eyes and jumped.

But I never expected the emotional outpouring that followed. "Wish I had the guts to do the same," texted a junior minister, when I announced my resignation.

A seemingly unflappable PR confessed secretly agonising over "not being the kind of mother my son deserves": a colleague whose slick work-life balance I had always envied admitted she was "at the end of my tether", dying to quit.

Confessions tumbled compulsively from people I barely knew: tales of stricken marriages, miscarriages, only children who were meant to have siblings but then a career got in the way. "Too many of us once had relationships that we haven't got now because of this job," said a veteran male reporter, now divorced.

"I can't afford regrets," mused a cabinet minister, "because I've had this fantastic career, but..." Politics had, he said, dominated his children's lives.

I hope you'll read Hinsliff's whole essay.

Hinsliff is now writing a blog about her life as she tries to downshift from high-powered career woman to stay-at-home mom. Here's an excerpt of a recent entry:

I come from a family where good food and the rituals associated with eating together -- talking, arguing, laughing, getting drunk -- mattered.

When I worked fulltime, cooking supper marked the transition from office to home: here is something terribly soothing about chopping, stirring, spooning. But it was also one more thing to fit in, and sometimes by the time it was finished I was too tired to eat it.
So Henry has reminded me that now I have more time I want to spend more of it on food: cooking for friends, cooking with my son, maybe growing a bit more of our own stuff, and working out how to use cheaper cuts and leftovers.

After all, without a fulltime salary, there can't be expensive takeaways and convenience foods and nice stuff from the deli. But there might actually be time to eat without getting indigestion.

I don't mean to give the impression that Hinsliff believes she's stepped out of a stressful life into a garden of domestic bliss. She's struggling with a lot of anxiety over whether or not she's done the right thing, and getting used to life at home all day instead of being at the office. What Gaby Hinsliff did takes courage, and I bet she'll embolden many more couples to try it. Her blog is one to watch.

Alex Massie notes another small advance of totalitarianism in Obama's America. Seriously, you don't expect this petty and ridiculous example of nanny statism to exist in the American West.

UPDATE: When I first posted this, I thought, "Is there anybody who will read it who might think that I'm serious by referring to an anti-chicken ordinance in a small Montana town is a sign of creeping Obama communism?" I thought it ridiculous, but decided to put in the "Seriously" line, as a tip-off to the few literal-minded scolds who might be out there. Show's what I know. Of the four posts on the thread right now, two of them think I'm serious as a heart attack. Here's one:

I started reading this blog with the hopes of reading an honest conservative who wrote germane posts on current issues. Note - those I consider honest guys on the left are Krugman, Delong, Juan Cole and the sort. This sort of thread if typical of what I expected on wingnut conservative blogs, and not what I expected from Rod. Just yesterday I read that Pat Boone thinks the White House is filled with vermin, and should be fumigated. Wasn't that the sort of solution from 65 years ago?

ps. I don't intend to post or read this blog again. If this was meant in fun, my apologies, the author can email me and I will withdraw this post.

Andrew Sullivan suggests that gays should go hard-negative on their opponents in marriage campaigns. He cites this passage from a Rex Wockner post as creditable:

We are fools to have spent all this money and time and not have defined the opponents. It's not enough to answer their charges. We need to hit them back and not let up on it until voters don't buy their lies anymore. Malpractice in my opinion.

Sullivan adds:

A campaign that in future took on the Catholic hierarchy for its tolerance of child abuse while denying grown people marriage rights would be a promising start. Ads reminding people of the Mormon church's long, long history of racism would also be salient. We're new to this, and we're learning.

Dropping the "Bigot" Bunker-Buster doesn't seem like a promising strategy to me in a country in which 49 percent of the people think homosexuality is immoral, and in which a Mr. Nice Gay approach is slowly but steadily winning. But we'll see. If that's the way they go, the anti-SSM groups ought to make ads out of this footage of the way an enraged mob of No More Mr. Nice Gays chased peaceful Christians out of the Castro district; the Christians had to be accompanied by police officers for their own safety: