From FrontPageMagazine.com:

Kwanzaa -- Racist Holiday from Hell
By Reverend Jesse Lee Peterson

While public officials, schools, and the ACLU worked overtime this year to ban every vestige of Christmas from the public square, the recently invented holiday known as Kwanzaa is gaining in popularity among black Americans. These occurrences are not unrelated.

In an earlier time, blacks held a strong faith in God. But over the past 40 years, the black community has largely let God slip away. Sure the community has maintained the outer trappings of religion, but the solid morality at its core is nearly gone.
 
Enter a God-hating black racist named Ron Karenga. Born Ron Everett on a poultry farm in Maryland, Everett invented Kwanzaa in 1966, based on an African harvest festival (though it takes place during the Winter Solstice!), and celebrating the first Kwanzaa with his family and friends. 
 
Calling himself “Maulana” (Swahili for “Master Teacher”), Karenga became a black nationalist at UCLA, and formed his group, the United Slaves (US) for the purpose of igniting a “cultural revolution” among American blacks. US members followed Karenga’s “Path of Blackness,” which is detailed in his Quotable Karenga: “The sevenfold path of blackness is think black, talk black, act black, create black, buy black, vote black, and live black.”
 
The United Slaves had violent confrontations with the Black Panthers on campus, and were actually considered more radical than the Panthers.
 
The biggest dispute between the United Slaves and the Panthers was for the leadership of the new African Studies Department at UCLA, with each group backing a different candidate. Panthers John Jerome Huggins and Alprentice “Bunchy” Carter verbally attacked Karenga at the meeting, which infuriated Karenga’s followers. After the meeting ended, two United Slaves members, George and Larry Stiner, reportedly confronted Huggins and Carter in a hallway, shooting and killing them.
 
Incidentally, on March 31, 1974, it was discovered that both Stiner brothers had escaped from the family visiting area in San Quentin State Prison. Larry Stiner turned himself into the FBI in Caracas, Venezuela, on December 13, 1994. He remains in custody at San Quentin. But George Stiner remains at large and his whereabouts remain unknown. He is currently on California’s 10 Most Wanted List.
 
The shooting at UCLA apparently caused Karenga to become extremely suspicious. On May 9, 1970, Karenga and two others tortured two women who Karenga believed had tried to poison him by placing “crystals” in his food and water.
 
The Los Angeles Times described the events: “Deborah Jones, who once was given the title of an African queen, said she and Gail Davis were whipped with an electric cord and beaten with a karate baton after being ordered to remove their clothes at gunpoint. She testified that a hot soldering iron was placed in Miss Davis’ mouth and placed against Miss Davis’ face and that one of her own big toes was tightened in a vice. Karenga, head of US, also put detergent and running hoses in their mouths, she said.”
 
Karenga was sentenced to one-to-ten years in prison on counts of felonious assault and false imprisonment. At his trial, the question arose as to Karenga’s sanity. The psychiatrist’s report stated: “This man now represents a picture which can be considered both paranoid and schizophrenic with hallucinations and illusions, inappropriate affect, disorganization, and impaired contact with the environment.” The psychiatrist reportedly observed that Karenga talked to his blanket and imaginary persons, and he believed he’d been attacked by dive-bombers.
 
Eight years later, California State University Long Beach named Karenga the head of its Black Studies Department. By this time, Karenga had “repented” of his black nationalism and had become just a harmless garden variety Marxist. This must be our esteemed university system’s idea of repentance!
 
Karenga’s Kwanzaa celebration consists of seven “principles.” They are Umoja (unity), Kujichagulia (self-determination – code for “buy black”), Ujima (collective work and responsibility – groupthink), Ujamaa (cooperative economics – socialism), Nia (purpose) Kuumba (creativity), and Imani (faith – in man, not God).
 
To provide a symbol of his seven “principles,” Karenga used the menorah from Judaism with Kwanzaa’s colors (red, black, and green), and re-named it the "kinara."
 
Karenga also created a Kwanzaa flag that consists of black, green, and red. The Kwanzaa Information Center states the color red represents blood: “We lost our land through blood; and we cannot gain it except through blood. We must redeem our lives through the blood. Without the shedding of blood there can be no redemption of this race.” The Kwanzaa Information Center also notes that this flag “has become a symbol of devotion for African people in America to establish an independent African nation on the North American Continent.” (Emphasis added.)
 
When once asked why he designed Kwanzaa to take place around Christmas, Karenga explained, “People think it’s African, but it’s not. I came up with Kwanzaa because black people wouldn’t celebrate it if they knew it was American. Also, I put it around Christmas because I knew that’s when a lot of bloods would be partying.”
 
Karenga has explained that his creation of Kwanzaa was motivated in part by hostility toward both Christianity and Judaism. Writing in his 1980 book Kawaida Theory, he claimed that Western religion “denies and diminishes human worth, capacity, potential and achievement. In Christian and Jewish mythology, humans are born in sin, cursed with mythical ancestors who’ve sinned and brought the wrath of an angry God on every generation’s head.” He clearly opposed belief in God and other “spooks who threaten us if we don’t worship them and demand we turn over our destiny and daily lives.”
 
Through ignorance or racism, growing numbers of black Christians are either celebrating Kwanzaa or incorporating it into their Christmas celebrations. Now many preachers are incorporating Kwanzaa into their messages. This is a horrible mistake.
 
First of all, as we’ve seen, the whole holiday is made up! You won’t find its roots in Africa or anywhere else. Second, Kwanzaa’s “principles” are straight from Hell. Third, and most importantly, Christians who celebrate or incorporate Kwanzaa are moving their attention away from Christmas, the birth of our Savior, and the simple message of salvation: love for God through his Son. To add or subtract from that message is evil.
 
In recent years Kwanzaa has become increasingly popular and mainstream. President Bill Clinton commemorated Kwanzaa, stating that Kwanzaa’s seven principles “ring true not only for African-Americans, but also for all Americans…bring[ing] new purpose to our daily lives.” In 2002, President Bush, though a devout Christian, also commemorated Kwanzaa. The U.S. Postal Service issued a Kwanzaa stamp in 1997; the Smithsonian Institution sponsors an annual celebration; and greeting card companies churn out Kwanzaa cards for profit.
 
It is now clear that Kwanzaa is a phony, wicked holiday created by an ex-con who hates God, Christians, Jews, and blacks – yes blacks. Why else would he try to pull them away from Christianity and indoctrinate them in racialism and socialism? Blacks, particularly black Christians, need to stand up for Christmas and reject Kwanzaa. If they refuse, they will be helping to stamp out the true meaning of Christmas, and allowing evil to have its way in America.
 
This is a future we cannot allow.

Clapton Whips Up Cream Reunion
by Josh Grossberg

Eric Clapton's ready for some fresh Cream.

Old Slow Hand revealed to BBC Radio 2 last week that he and his former mates in rock's first supergroup, singer-bassist Jack Bruce and drummer Ginger Baker, are planning to reunite for four shows next May at London's Royal Albert Hall, the legendary venue where the power trio played its final gig in 1968.

There has been no other official comment since Clapton's remarks--reps for the musicians were not immediately reachable as most labels are on holiday.

Since the group's disintegration 35 years ago, the only other time Clapton, Bruce and Baker appeared onstage together was when they performed a scorching three-song set at Cream's 1993 induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

After the jam, an emotional Clapton told audience members that he was "moved" by the band's performance, sparking a decade's worth of talk of a possible reunion.

"It's been so long since I've been around something from somebody else that's inspired me. For the last 20 years, it's been up to me to inspire me," Clapton said at the time.

"There isn't a drummer on this earth that has the dexterity that Ginger has," Clapton added. "And [Jack has] this powerful thing that happens when he starts to sing and you're off on the side."
With age apparently softening their egos, the guitar god told the BBC that the long-rumored reunion is finally in motion.

So far there are no Cream concerts on the Royal Albert Hall schedule for May, but Clapton said tickets would be going on sale very soon, and all four concerts would be recorded for eventual release on CD and/or DVD.

Cream was formed in 1966 when Clapton left another Hall of Fame band, the Yardbirds, and hooked up with Bruce, a Scotsman from blues outfit Manfred Mann, and Baker, who played toms for the Graham Bond Organization.

Known for its blues and psychedelic-infused jams, the threesome quickly established itself among the rock pantheon. They released just four albums in two years--Fresh Cream, Disraeli Gears, Wheels of Fire and Goodbye--but left an indelible mark on classic rock with such radio standards as "Sunshine of Your Love," "Strange Brew," "Spoonful," "White Room" and "Crossroads."

The band played its farewell show at the Royal Albert Hall in November 1968. Clapton then hooked up with another supergroup, Blind Faith, for an album and tour before launching Derek and the Dominoes and eventually his own solo career.

Bruce, who has recently toured with Ringo Starr and his All Starr band, has publicly indicated that he's up for a reunion.

"I'd like it to happen," Bruce told Forbes writer Jim Clash for his 2003 book To the Limits. "But I wouldn't be prepared to do it, really, unless it was a challenge. And the challenge would be to come up with new material somewhere close to as strong as the stuff from the old days."

New material notwithstanding, Bruce and Clapton haven't refrained from rehashing old memories. In 2001, the two teamed up to record new versions of "Sunshine of Your Love" for a Bruce solo project.

Johnny Oates loses battle to brain tumor

RICHMOND, Va. (AP)
Johnny Oates used his brain tumor as a daily reminder to live each day to its utmost, taking nothing for granted. The aggressive tumor was discovered in October 2001, and knowing his time was probably short helped Oates climb out of bed most days, even if just to see squirrels frolic or feel the sunshine warming his face.

An inspiration throughout his three-year battle, he was a man at peace when he died Friday at the Virginia Commonwealth University Medical Center at about 2 a.m. with his wife and brother at his side, his son said.

"He was very comfortable. He went very peacefully," Andrew Oates said before paying tribute to the grace with which his father fought.

"I have learned more from him in the last three years than I did in the first 25," Andrew Oates, 28, said. "I think he's accomplished more in the last three years and touched more people in the last three years."

For Oates, who was 58, glioblastoma multiforme became a gift because it put his focus on the loved ones that mattered most in his life.

"When you look at it, it's a blessing," he said of the disease in a March 2003 interview with The Associated Press at his home near Richmond.

"Really there's only one day of the week that has any importance, and that's today," he said then. "You can't do anything about yesterday and you can't do anything about tomorrow. It's just today."

Oates spent many of those days sitting on the deck behind his home, his face to the sun, eyes closed and a peaceful smile on his face.

"I love the feel of the sun on my face," he often said.

Oates was best known for managing the Texas Rangers to their first three postseason appearances, in 1996, '98 and '99. He resigned early in the 2001 season after the team lost 17 of its first 28 games despite the offseason addition of $252 million free agent shortstop Alex Rodriguez.

His mark with the Rangers, however, is indelible. When Oates was inducted into the Rangers Hall of Fame in August 2003, manager Buck Showalter dedicated the manager's office with a plaque honoring Oates.

"That will always be Johnny's office. We're just renting it and passing through," Showalter, who played for Oates, said Friday. "The definition of man and manager, Johnny's picture will be next to it."

Oates shared the American League Manager of the Year award with New York's Joe Torre in 1996, and managed the Baltimore Orioles from 1991-94.

He was considering a return to managing in 2001 when doctors diagnosed him with the aggressive brain tumor. They told him he'd likely die within months without surgery, as soon as in 14 months if he had the procedure.

Oates survived more than three years, achieving goals such as attending the wedding of his daughter and the birth of a grandchild.

Showalter was among the friends who called regularly.

His death was the answer to new prayers brought on by declining health, Showalter said, causing Oates to be hospitalized for the last two weeks of his life with complications his son didn't wish to detail.

"Gloria said one of their prayers was that he would be in heaven before Christmas," Showalter said. "I bet there will be a heck of a baseball game up there tomorrow ... no, the day after tomorrow. It will take John time to get organized."

Oates had a regular season record of 797-746 and got his only postseason victory in 10 tries when the Rangers made their playoff debut, winning 6-2 at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 1, 1996. Texas lost the next three games and was swept by the Yankees in 1998 and again the next year.

But along the way, Oates touched the lives of many, from young unproven relief pitcher Jeff Zimmerman to Showalter, who played for Oates at the Class AA level after Oates' 11-year playing career ended.

"He is a man of integrity, a man of belief," Zimmerman said in 2003, recalling how Oates gave him a chance to help the Rangers in the spring of 1999 and later welled up telling Zimmerman he made the all-star team.

"I just don't know how to put into words how much he did for me."

In a statement, Orioles owner Peter Angelos said, "Johnny Oates was a true gentleman. He faced his disease the way he lived his life, with class and dignity."

Oates and his wife began each morning studying the Bible in the sunroom of their home on Lake Chesdin, about 30 miles from Richmond, and were active in their church. Oates also attended local baseball games and enjoyed watching on televison, free to doze off when he grew weary.

"I don't miss baseball one single bit. I enjoy talking about it, but I know I can't do it anymore. I like to watch it on TV," he said.

"I miss the people. I don't miss the stress that went with it, all the decision-making. But now I enjoy being here. I enjoy being lazy."

Oates, a left-handed hitting catcher, played for five teams in his major league career, starting with the Orioles in 1970. He laughed years later recalling how his skills compared with those of current catchers.

For his career, Oates hit .250 with 14 homers and 126 runs batted in.

"I still don't know how I got to the big leagues because I wasn't that good," he said in 2003. "I was a slap hitter. I kept my mouth shut. I did. I kept my mouth shut. I couldn't throw. I couldn't throw a lick."

Visitation will be Monday from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Colonial Heights, with the funeral Tuesday at the church at 11 a.m. Burial will be at Sunset Memorial Park in Chester.

From timesonline:

Give me seasonal schmaltz
By Gerard Baker

Christmas captures the defining characteristic of Americans - their lack of cynicism and scepticism

AMERICANS ARE enjoying all the usual rituals of the Christmas season; the last-minute frenzy of present buying; the long wait in queues at airports and stations; and above all the inevitable controversy about the ever more absurd attempts to take Christ out of Christmas.

Every year some villain steps forward to take the Politically Correct Scrooge Award for sheer seasonal silliness. This year the traditionalists’ favourite target is, conveniently, a company called Target. A giant retailer in the continental hypermarket mould that sells everything from 86in television screens to bottles of tap water, Target has decreed that none of its products this year should carry the word “Christmas”. So instead of Christmas lights, Christmas trees and Christmas decorations, Target’s customers can spend their hard-earned dollars on holiday lights, seasonal trees and festive decorations.

I am not sure if this ruling applies to model Nativity scenes. But I suspect that as long as they are relabelled Historic Middle Eastern Family Creative Toys they might just get in under the wire.

It is always fun to watch the contortions that people will go through to find new ways to avoid offending people. At a school not far from me, the children will be celebrating the last day of school in the usual way — with a midwinter peace assembly. This is the same school, by the way, that banned children from wearing martial costumes for its Hallowe’en parade. The headmaster began the day by confiscating these instruments of hate and before long had a pile of plastic guns, swords, light sabres and helmets blocking the light inside his office, and a huddle of crying children and bewildered parents outside.

I have heard some people refer to this time of year, perhaps half in jest, as “Chriskwanukkah”, an unlovely portmanteau of Christmas, Chanukkah and Kwanzaa, the African-American winter festival. But aside from being unpronounceable, this is self-evidently offensive to Druids and other observers of the pagan solstice and will presumably be dropped next year.

These attempts to be inoffensive and inclusive have started to become quite offensive and exclusionary.

I have lived in America long enough to know that I should never grasp the hand of colleagues or friends and wish them the joy and peace of the newborn king in case they turn out to be practising Zoroastrians. But it has got to the point where I worry now about upsetting fellow Christians if I proffer them a limp handshake and that flaccid salute to mushy multiculturalism: “Happy Holidays”.

And yet the truth is I rather like this annual Christmas controversy. For one thing it helps to debunk one of the more absurd myths about America that the rest of the world clings to — that it is firmly in the grip of some theocracy in which schoolchildren learn creationism by rote and White House officials slaughter the fatted calf before drawing up their foreign policy plans.

In fact, separation of Church and State is much more rigid here than is ever imagined in the wildest dreams of European anticlericals. My own children were able, if I may say so, to execute quite brilliantly their annual Christmas pageant at their Catholic school this week only because not one secular penny of taxpayers’ money supports it. My guess would be that your average Englishman or German is much freer to indulge in public displays of openly religious sentiment at this time of year than anyone in California or Florida.

But, above all, the annual fuss about taking Christ out of Christmas misses the central point about the holiday season in America. This time of year captures, perhaps better than any other, the defining characteristic of Americans in the modern world — their lack of cynicism and scepticism, their enduring hope and faith in themselves, their country and even the world around them.

In Britain and most of Europe, Christmas has become that special occasion for wallowing in cynicism. We love to complain about the shopping, the train delays and the weather. Popular culture disdains the spirit of the season, and plays up instead the secularist, sceptical, mocking, lost innocence tone of British life.

With a few ghastly exceptions from Sir Cliff, popular music in Britain at this time of year is blunt and unsentimental, even when charitable. But Americans indulge their sentimentality, pander to their idealism, reaffirm their belief in the spiritual contingency of human nature and their popular culture reflects that.

Nothing is too schmaltzy or saccharine. Even Hollywood for a brief moment casts aside its usual predilections and expresses a wide-eyed child-like thrill at the coming of Christmas. Radio stations become an endless loop of Christmas songs — not the typical “So Here it is Merry Christmas” British classic — but shameless repeats of Bing Crosby, Dean Martin and Harry Belafonte.

It’s a Wonderful Life, Frank Capra’s hymn to sentimentalism, will doubtless get a look in somewhere in the British TV schedules, but in America it will own its usual spot, slap in the middle of NBC’s prime time on Christmas night and I guarantee that there will not be a dry eye in the country when once again George Bailey hears the bell ringing for Clarence, the angel who gets his wings.

At other times, I can’t quite take all this American idealism and sentimentality. It is just a bit too much at odds with a complex world. As the country’s critics never tire of observing, it can lead to a little too much certainty and self-belief and a deficit of doubt and acknowledgement of error.

But, at this time of year, a bit of simple faith, a bit of uncynical joy and a bit of human hope induced by that unfathomable miracle that happened a couple of thousand years ago, is right on the mark.

gerard.baker@thetimes.co.uk

From washingtonpost.com:

A Motown 'Silent Night' That Echoes Down the Years
By Neely Tucker

In the winter of 1989, I lost my mind and moved from the beach in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., to Detroit, an inexplicable adventure that led me to discover sub-zero temperatures, some of the best musicians in the Western Hemisphere and my nominee for the best Christmas songs ever recorded.

A bold claim, I know. But this is a Christmas story about a time and place largely gone now, and I remember them both with great affection, and if I am swayed by season and nostalgia, then I just don't care. Because the first time I heard the Temptations' once-in-a-lifetime take of "Silent Night" -- the most Detroit, Motownized, gospelized Christmas song that it is possible to squeeze into six minutes -- was late one night in a Motor City bar where old Motown session musicians could sometimes be found.

It was a freezing, gloomy winter, and I was living alone in a rough, unfinished loft in a rough, unfinished part of town. The loft was above a pizzeria and down the alley from the morgue. There were mornings I walked down the alley, my footprints the only ones in the crunching snow, and they would be loading or unloading a heavy black bag from a hearse. It put the day in a certain perspective.

I worked at a newspaper for my pay, and in the evenings I ran a tab at a jazz dive called BoMacs, about three blocks from the morgue. They had terrific live music, greasy fish sandwiches and a generous pour. They were scarce with the lights and heavy with the heat in the winter and I liked it. You could sit at the bar and if you didn't start none there wouldn't be none.

It had to be closing time just before Christmas when, perhaps after the last set, someone turned on the recording of a deep voice reciting the start of " 'Twas the Night Before Christmas" over some twiddly organ-sounding thing. I rolled my eyes and started to drain the last of my drink when someone cranked up the volume. The song took a sharp turn. The drums kicked in with a downbeat intro, a da dum da dum, and then an electrifying preacher's voice said:

In my mind . . .

The guy next to me, I recall, said: "There go Dennis."

The drums and bass and a male chorus swooped in: tenor, baritone, bass. Together they took an irresistible four-note walk up the scale, whoo-ooh-ooh-OOH, and then the gritty preacher's voice said:

I want you to be free . . .

And then they came back down the same doo-wop staircase, OOH-ooh-ooh-ooh.

For all of our friends, I want you to listen to me . . .

The bass was so deep and the music so loud the stool beneath me seemed to vibrate. I was transfixed, there in the dim light and cigarette haze.

We wish you a meeeeeerrrrrrryyy Christmas . . .

All the voices came together and then out of nowhere an unearthly falsetto voice appeared in the darkness of the bar. It was gliding, swooning, sailing over the rest of the voices. It was the first time I had any idea of what they were singing.

Siiiilllleeennntttt Niiiiiggghhhtttt. . . . HooOOOllly NiiIIIIggghtttttt . . .

The guy next to me said: "That's Eddie there."

Somebody else: "Nah, man, that ain't Eddie. That's the brother what replaced him, what's his name."

"You don't mean David."

"Hell no I don't mean David. David was original Temps. I mean, what's his name. That other brother."

I was half listening to this conversation -- it would turn out the name they were looking for was Glenn Leonard -- and half listening to the song fill the place. Some people were at the tables, talking, finishing their drinks, the lights coming up now. It was late and time to go home. And yet I sat there.

Go on and rest your mind . . . and slllllleeeeepppp . . .

Melvin Franklin, he of the basso profundo voice, took a turn on the second verse, and what was most striking about the song unfolding was that this group known for Motown romance and the dance step known as the Temps Walk was doing a song of the Christian faith seriously.

The original five members of the Temptations had grown up in the Deep South and in the church, by which I mean the Protestant black church -- Baptist, really, of the type where it is pronounced "Babdist" -- and it was always one of the group's hallmarks that the gospel influence of their youth had infused the voices of their adult years.

But this was something else entirely. This was gospel emotion over a Motown beat with the lyrics of a classic European hymn. "Silent Night" was written nearly 200 years ago by a Austrian priest and a composer. The first time it was played was on Christmas Eve, 1818, in Oberndorf. By 1900 it had become a sacred classic, narrating the birth of the Christ child, God's son on Earth.

Alllllllll issssss callllmmmm, allllLLLLllll iisss brrriiiIIIght.

I had grown up down south in the Babdist church, too -- my mother played piano and organ in the church for 40 years -- and I had heard and sung that song since I was a tot. It was church. You didn't play with it.

And yet, I was sitting on a bar stool in urban Detroit these many years later, the streets outside were deserted and some of the deadliest in America, and there was the gritty voice of Dennis Edwards, the guy who did the lead on "Papa Was a Rolling Stone," and he was straight out preaching over the song's sacred verses.

As I sit around by the fireplace

Watching the gleaming tree

If I had one wish in this world

It would be that all men would be free.

"It was like magic," recalls Gil Askey, the veteran Motown composer, in an e-mail from his home in Australia. "If you've ever been in the Holiness Church, and seen those sisters scream when they're filled with the Spirit, you will know how I felt, or shall I say how the Temptations felt. They didn't want to stop, just grooved on out."

I don't know if the folks at BoMacs played that song from the radio or from a tape in the back. But it ended soon enough and the end-of-the-night clatter resumed. I drank up, paid up and left. I walked home to my loft and I felt both exhilarated and empty. Thrilled at how the song seemed to still hum in my bones. Empty because it was over and the night was long and there was no one to talk to. When something reaches out and touches your soul in the dark, it's not something you turn on the TV and forget.

The Temps' version of "Silent Night" is now nearly 25 years old. You can hear it on any pop radio station this time of year. Their "Christmas Collection" CD, which features the song, is No. 1 on Billboard's chart for older R&B albums this week.

Mark Anthony Neal, professor of popular black culture at Duke University and the editor of "That's the Joint!," rated the song in a recent article as one of his Top 10 Soul Christmas songs. "It's maybe half the original Temptations members on that record, it's one of the last things Dennis Edwards did with them, and I think you just have to call it the last really great Temps song," he says.

Leonard Pitts Jr., a music critic for 18 years, author and Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, wrote the liner notes for the Temps compilation CD. There's no doubt, he says, that "Silent Night" is a transcendent moment.

"The arrangement is extraordinary. But spiritually, emotionally, it catches something above the hubbub, the lights, the shopping and Santa Claus, to what Christmas is actually all about," Pitts says. "It took the song back to its Christian origins and didn't do it in lip-service fashion. . . . If the hair on your arms isn't standing up by the second verse, you need to check your pulse."

So this is the part in the story when I tell you how the song was recorded at Motown in Detroit, at the tiny "Hitsville USA" studios on West Grand Boulevard on a snowy winter night back in the day, with the Rev. C.L. Franklin (Aretha's daddy) doing the arrangements, and I would love to, except for the fact that it isn't true.

The best Christmas song ever put to disc was recorded off Santa Monica Boulevard in Los Angeles in a couple of hours on a sunny day in the summer of 1980, according to Otis Williams, the only surviving original Temptations member.

"Gil Askey had the arrangements there when we went over to his house, so we sat down and worked out the melody line and vocals," says Williams, speaking from his home in Los Angeles. "Then we went to the studio. I think it took a couple of hours."

Dennis Edwards, who replaced the legendary David Ruffin as the group's lead vocalist (but who was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the others), earlier this week was shivering at his home in St. Louis, where the wind chill was 8 below. He bursts into a laugh when asked about his preachifying.

"It came from my background, being a preacher's son," he says. His father "had a little storefront church, the Macedonia Church of God in Christ, at 964 East Canfield in Detroit. Started out with about four members. I had grown up in that church, so sure, I knew 'Silent Night.' But this arrangement was so different. They played back the tape to us and there was an empty spot at the front. They said, 'Do something right in there.' So it just came out, like I was back at church. There was nothing written, nothing scripted. . . . Each year, I have to go back and listen to it again before we do Christmas concerts so I can remember what it was I said."

The passing of the years has lent the song, and the place where I first heard it, a bittersweet history.

The bar, BoMacs, is long gone, as are many of the older Motown session musicians I sometimes saw there.

Four of the five original Temptations are dead. Paul Williams, a suicide victim, has been dead for 31 years. David Ruffin died of an overdose in 1991. Eddie Kendricks died of lung cancer the next year.

Melvin Franklin, the sweet man whose deep voice is so prominent on "Silent Night," died after a series of seizures in 1995. In the wildly popular 1998 television miniseries about the group, it is his death that is the emotional coda to the film and the group's history. Sitting there, watching Smokey Robinson sing "Really Gonna Miss You" at Melvin's funeral, I confess I had a knot in my throat.

Perhaps that is why, as I walked home on a recent, frosty evening, when the radio on my headphones turned to "Silent Night," my step slowed and I paused, there in the cold. I closed my eyes waiting for the stoplight to change and remembered the winter in Detroit and the frost on the window glass and the first time I heard that song.

Lost among the footsteps and pinched faces of a million strangers headed home in the falling darkness, I wished that it wasn't all over. I wished that I could turn the corner and walk back into that bar in Detroit for one more round, one more song, before they closed the place and left us walking, streetlight to streetlight, through the long and empty night to come.

From FrontPageMagazine.com:

The Kinky Report
By Don Feder

Alfred C. Kinsey is the Left’s secular saint – a revered figure who, they are convinced, came into a benighted world and (armed with reams of scientific research) heroically banished ignorance and sexual repression, and ushered in a new age of liberation, enlightenment, and pleasure.

In reality, the zoologist turned sex researcher was a sick pervert – more at home in a trench coat than a lab smock – who doctored evidence, abetted child molestation, and helped to launch a revolution that has resulted in untold human suffering.

But try telling that to one who worships at the altar of good sex. It’s less hazardous to disparage the pope to an Opus Dei Catholic, or burn the flag at an American Legion convention, than to question the nobility of Kinsey with a doctrinaire liberal.

In his December 12th column ("The Plot Against Sex in America"), Frank Rich – commissar of culture at The New York Times -- practically drooled through the page.

Over 50 years ago, Saint Alfred drove the snakes of Victorian sexual morality out of America’s bedrooms. But now, thanks to the Religious Right, they’re slithering back, Rich frantically warns us. "As politicians and the media alike pander to that supposed 22 percent of ‘moral values’ voters, we’re back where we came in."

Among other forms of repression just too awful for words, the Times columnist cites the advance of abstinence education, commercial TV stations in Los Angeles refusing to air "a public service spot created by Los Angeles county’s own public health agency to counteract the rising tide of syphilis," and "right-wing groups that have targeted" the cinematic celebration of Rich’s idol – "Kinsey."

Neo-puritans have mounted a full-scale assault on the movie "Kinsey" (including "false accusations" that the good doctor was a pedophile) as part of their "larger goal of pushing sex of all non-biblical kinds back into the closet and undermining any scientific findings, whether circa 1948 or 2004, that might challenge fundamentalist sexual orthodoxy as successfully as Darwin challenged Genesis," Rich sputters.

By the way, that PSA whose rejection Rich finds so ominous featured a red cartoon character, called "Phil the Sore." Phil follows two men home and, after their exchange of bodily fluids, calls in his kin, carrying boxes labeled "brain damage," "rash" and "blindness," with the implication that these can result from what the prophylactic-brigade calls "unprotected sex." Even for TV stations in LA, this was just too dumb. Only public health officials – and Rich – believe a cartoon character will keep certain citizens from have high-risk sex.

"Kinsey" stars Liam Neeson, an actor who himself is venerated for his roles in films like "Schindler’s List." While it hints at Kinsey’s eccentricities (seducing his male assistants, urging his wife to have sex with his colleagues), the movie barely scratches the surface of the degeneracy of the father of the sexual revolution.

According to Kinsey biographer James H. Jones, whose book Alfred C. Kinsey: A Public/Private Life was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 1998, the celebrated sexologist was an exhibitionist and a masochist who enjoyed torturing himself by placing various objects in his urethra, among other deviant behavior.

He also filmed his wife masturbating and having sex with other men and himself having intercourse with various subordinates, some of whom were coerced into the relationships.

As for Kinsey’s much-vaunted research, to call it junk science would be generous. Kinsey presented his tomes Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (published in 1948 and weighing in at 804 pages) and Sexual Behavior In the Human Female (1953) as models of scientific method and based on rigorous research. They were anything but.

Among other findings, Kinsey concluded that 85 percent of American men had intercourse before marriage, 30-45 percent had extramarital relations, 70 percent had sex with prostitutes, as many as 37 percent had engaged in homosexual acts, and 10 percent were exclusively homosexual. From the latter comes the myth, endlessly repeated by the gay lobby, that one in 10 Americans is a homosexual. (The figure is actually closer to 1 to 2 percent.)

Incredibly, this was not a portrait of a mid-town Manhattan singles bar today, but of Middle America circa 1948!

Kinsey’s method was to science what rape is to romance. The University of Indiana academician set out to validate certain conclusions, and rigged the evidence to prove his case.

For instance, when he couldn’t get enough married women to talk about their sex lives, he redefined "married woman" as living with a man for more than a year. Prostitutes were also included in his study of female sexuality – a fact Kinsey failed to disclose in his book.

Similarly, Kinsey’s study of American males included disproportionate numbers of prisoners – especially sex offenders. Again, according to Jones, convicts constituted as much as 25 percent of Kinsey’s subjects.

Jones writes: "In fact, he had devoted much of his time to interviewing members of the underclass, including drug addicts, alcoholics, prostitutes, pimps, gamblers and the like." The sexual revolution was launched with research based on data drawn from the dregs of society.

Charges of pedophilia arise for Kinsey’s research into the sex lives of children. There were as many as 2,000 "subjects," some as young as six months old.

The doctor was convinced that children were "sexual beings," who could experience orgasms almost from birth by stimulating their sexual organs. "It is difficult to understand why a child, except for cultural conditioning, should be disturbed at having its genitalia touched [otherwise known as being molested-DF], or disturbed at seeing the genitalia of other persons, or disturbed at even more specific sexual contacts," Kinsey wrote in The Sexual Behavior of the Human Female.

Still, in his book on the human male, Kinsey noted that child subjects of these experiments would often "scream" and "will fight away from the [adult] partner and may make violent attempts to avoid climax, although they derive definite pleasure from the situation."

Much of Kinsey’s research here came from pedophiles. The scientist carried on voluminous correspondence with these dedicated researchers, and encouraged them to keep meticulous notes on their "experiments" with children.

Not to worry, Kinsey was sure the victims enjoyed it. Again, Jones discloses, "From Kinsey’s perspective, child molestation, like other sexual taboos, violated morals, but the actual harm it inflicted was all in people’s minds. If society did not make a big deal of it, the children would not be harmed." The North American Man Boy Love Association owes an enormous debt to Alfred C. Kinsey.

Jones notes that Kinsey was a man with a mission. "The man I came to know bore no resemblance to the canonical Kinsey. Anything but disinterested, he approached his work with a missionary fervor. Kinsey loathed Victorian morality…He was determined to use [or abuse - DF] science to strip human sexuality of guilt and repression. He wanted to undermine traditional morality, to soften the rules of restraint… Kinsey was a crypto-reformer who spent his every waking hour attempting to change the sexual mores and sex offender laws of the United States."

In other words, Dr. Kinsey wanted an America that resembled Dr. Kinsey. We’ve come a long way in that direction (thanks in part to his work – which provided the pseudo-scientific justification for the sexual revolution). In America, thanks to Kinsey's research:

* Some 65 million have contracted one or more sexually transmitted diseases, most incurable.

* More than half a million people have died from AIDS and an additional million have the HIV virus.

* When Kinsey published his first opus, there were two venereal diseases documented in the United States: syphilis and gonorrhea. Today, the Centers for Disease Control tracks more than 30.

* There are an estimated 4.2 million pornographic websites. They constitute 12 percent of all Internet sites. Every day, there are 68 million internet searches for pornography.

* It is conservatively estimated at each year 20,000 to 50,000 women are brought into the United States (mostly from Latin America, Asia, and the former USSR) to serve as indentured servants in the sex trade.

* Between 1960 and 1999, out-of-wedlock births to teenage mothers increased more than 430 percent. In some inner-cities, almost 80 percent of all births are to unmarried women.

* The age-old institution of marriage is crumbling before our eyes, with the high court of Massachusetts mandating homosexual marriage. In the face of this attempt to radically remake society’s fundamental institution, a majority of members of the United States Senate voted against bringing to the floor a constitutional amendment protecting traditional marriage.

Obviously, Kinsey – who died in 1956 – did not achieve all of this on his own. The work he started was carried on by the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, the Sex Information and Education Council of the US (SIECUS), the ACLU, the federal judiciary (especially activist members of the Supreme Court), Mary Calderone, Hugh Hefner, Howard Stern, Dr. Alex ("The Joy of Sex") Comfort, Larry Flynt, Jerry Springer, Dr. Ruth, Joycelyn Elders, Bill (its-only-sex) Clinton, and a cast of thousands.

But Kinsey was the catalyst, which is why the left gets hysterical whenever its icon is exposed.

Like their mentor, liberals want to frame the debate as the sexually repressed versus the sexually healthy, or puritanical versus open-and-honest.

In reality, on one side of the great divide stand those who believe that sex has a moral content. On the other, are those whose goal is to completely separate sex from morality – activists whose ideal is sex at its most primitive and animalistic. Kinsey’s admirers would reduce the most profound and value-laden of human activities to an irresistible urge. In the deepest sense, they are sexual determinists whose motto should be: I am, therefore I rut.

Speaking of the man he portrays in "Kinsey," Liam Neeson insists, "These [Kinsey and his team] are people who stand for something, something that is good to remind audiences of." The Nazis who conducted medical experiments in the death camps also stood for something.

The Liam-brained actor continues, "They had a code of ethics that you perhaps don’t find anymore." Except, of course, in a sex-offenders registry.

From timesonline.co.uk:

Rummy's last stand against the forces of military reason
By Andrew Sullivan

December 19, 2004

Defence secretaries in wartime get their fair share of criticism. And when you are as prominent and as outspoken as Donald Rumsfeld, you certainly know how to take it. But even he must have been reeling a little last week.

This was, after all, supposed to be a golden moment for the Bush administration’s most public wartime face. Rumsfeld is one of relatively few cabinet members held onto by the president. His colleagues in devising the war in Iraq — George Tenet, the former CIA director, Paul “Jerry” Bremer, the former head of the Iraq Coalition Provisional Authority, and General Tommy Franks — were rewarded last week with presidential Medals of Freedom, the highest civilian honour in America. The post-election offensive in Falluja went about as well as could be expected. Elections in Iraq are on schedule for late January.

But hubris has a long and deep relationship with the Bush administration — “Mission accomplished”, anyone? Rummy knows this better than most. When he was in Kuwait last week and was confronted by a peeved military grunt asking when he and his fellows would get the armour they need to protect them from roadside bombs, Rummy turned dismissive.

“You go to war with the army you have,” he harrumphed. In the fuller context he was more engaged. But his initial response to criticism was classic Rumsfeld: blame someone else.

It was the final harrumph for some. Senator John McCain told the press that he had “no confidence” in the defence secretary. Chuck Hagel, another powerful Republican senator who is also on the armed services committee, put the boot in: “That soldier, and those men and women there, deserved a far better answer from their secretary of defence than a flippant comment.”

General Norman Schwarzkopf, architect of the first Iraq war, was steaming: “I was very, very disappointed. No, let me put it stronger. I was angry by the words of the secretary of defence when he laid it all on the army, as if he . . . didn’t have anything to do with the army and the army was over there . . . screwing up.”

Then, on cue, Bill Kristol, another Rumsfeld critic and perhaps the leading neoconservative in Washington, wrote a piece in The Washington Post that had smoke rising from the newsprint. Since I could not put it better, let me quote Kristol:

“Perhaps Rumsfeld simply had a bad day. But then, what about his statement earlier last week when asked about troop levels? ‘The big debate about the number of troops is one of those things that’s really out of my control.’ Really? Well, ‘the number of troops we had for the invasion was the number of troops that General Franks and General (John) Abizaid wanted’. Leave aside the fact that the issue is not ‘the number of troops we had for the invasion’ but rather the number of troops we have had for post-war stabilisation. Leave aside the fact that General Tommy Franks had projected that he would need a quarter-million troops on the ground for that task — and that his civilian superiors had mistakenly promised him that tens of thousands of international troops would be available . . .

“In any case, decisions on troop levels in the American system of government are not made by any general or set of generals but by the civilian leadership of the war effort. Rumsfeld acknowledged this last week — after a fashion: ‘Everyone likes to assign responsibility to the top person and I guess that’s fine’. Except he fails to take responsibility.”

Ouch. But so true. I have long been a fan (and friendly acquaintance) of Rumsfeld. Any defence secretary who does not provoke friction with the military is not doing his job. Rumsfeld has faced enormous challenges these past four years. But when fresh from electoral victory a key administration official is all but lambasted from his own ideological ranks, something is awry.

The case against him is a relatively simple one. Rumsfeld came into the Pentagon with an admirable agenda of forcing the military to become leaner, to maximise the use of technology and to move away from the large numbers and heavy armaments of the past. But his wars showed that the old methods were still valid.

Yes, Rumsfeld proved that a small force with lightning speed and technological skill could topple a dictatorship in Iraq with unprecedented economy of manpower. But it became abundantly clear almost immediately thereafter that the force needed to keep the peace, to police a country of tens of millions, to seal borders, to gain intelligence and to suppress rioting, looting and disorder would have to be far larger. Bremer conceded this.

In retrospect it seems blindingly obvious. At the time it seemed blindingly obvious. But for the post-invasion strategy to work, Rumsfeld would have had to admit that he was wrong and needed to adjust. Getting Rumsfeld to admit that he is wrong is a little like expecting George Bush to become pregnant. So they hung on. Until their stubbornness led to chaos, insurgency and the unravelling of the liberating dream.

Worse than stubbornness has been Rummy’s refusal to take responsibility. When looting broke out, he said: “Stuff happens.” No it doesn’t. When you don’t have a plan to contain post-liberation chaos, looting breaks out.

Rumsfeld did not go to war with the army he had. He went to war with the army and the allies that he and his commander-in-chief chose. He had months to plan for the war and could have postponed it. He is responsible for the errors of foresight and the lack of equipment that have left soldiers vulnerable to injury.

One reason why last week saw a veritable outburst of anger is that he has never taken responsibility for any of this. And still he refuses to ask for more troops over all. He wants the war on the cheap.

Some actually want to win. What we saw last week was the final, long-pent-up frustration of those who have always been for liberating Afghanistan and Iraq, but who see a clear mismatch between America’s goals and its means. They are not lefties or softies. They largely kept their peace before the election, believing that John Kerry would be an even worse option. But they recognise in Rumsfeld an obstacle to victory rather than an asset.

Will Bush hear them? This would mean admitting that he has made mistakes himself. So far he has shown scant ability to do this. There is a reason, after all, why he and Rumsfeld get along. When you think you are perfect, all critics are enemies. Until, of course, they are proven horribly right.

From washingtonpost.com:

'We Back You'
Separating the Warriors From the War
By Rick Atkinson

One morning in 1966, when I was an eighth-grader at Gen. George S. Patton Jr. Junior High School at Fort Leavenworth, Kan., we were mustered onto the playground in a formation of huge block letters that spelled: WE BACK YOU. A helicopter appeared over- head, and a photographer leaned from the cockpit. The subsequent photograph, published in a newspaper, was meant to inspirit the troops in Vietnam.

As the sons and daughters of professional Army officers, our impulse was to close ranks and stand where we were told to stand. For us the affirmation was not political, it was personal. We tried not to confuse the warriors with the war.

Yet over the years as the war dragged on, the dead stacked up and the country splintered, that distinction became harder to sustain. The suspicion that our soldiers were risking their lives in a bad, lost cause soon became so searing that many of us insisted the war was righteous and winnable. To admit otherwise felt like a betrayal of those we loved; it also implied that we had been duped. We closed ranks with the policy as well as with the troops. We conflated the warriors and the war. So did the country, in ways that became toxic.

Today the equivalent of "We back you" slogans can be found on military posts across the country, expressed in yellow ribbons and lapel pins and yard signs supporting the troops in Iraq. In a relatively small, volunteer Army, the agony of 1,300 dead and 10,000 wounded sears some communities more than others, and none more than the extended family that is the professional military.

Many feel a profound disquiet: at the hard truth that the central provocations for invading Iraq proved spurious; at the stress fractures appearing within the Army and Marine Corps -- great armies are hard to build and easy to break; at the dearth of meaningful allied support in a robust coalition of the capable rather than a thin amalgam of the willing; and at the risk of another rift opening between the military and our larger republic.

Soldiers and their families also know, viscerally, that war is corrupting, even a justifiable or inevitable war. Eventually combat does bad things to good soldiers. Not that it makes them capable of atrocity -- the overwhelming majority today are too balanced, too professional, too well led for that, although the rash of soldiers and Marines court-martialed or under investigation for various depredations in Iraq is unnerving. But war is corrosive of decency and nobility; it tarnishes the spirit. Perhaps the best example is Wilfred Owen, the great English poet who commanded a platoon in World War I. Shortly before his death near the end of that war, Owen described sorting through incoming mail to his soldiers who had just been killed. "My senses are charred," he wrote. "I don't take the cigarette out of my mouth when I write Deceased over their letters."

Since before the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, military communities in both the active and reserve forces have closed ranks. For them, their core affirmation is again personal, not political, although they instinctively and legally follow the military hierarchy and the commander in chief. The senior officers among them, by tradition and training, offer their best advice on tactics and strategy, then hew to the decisions of their superiors.

But as this war grinds on, as these dead stack up, soldiers and their families are faced with the appalling suspicion that their troops are risking their lives in a cause that is uncertain at best and illegitimate at worst.

While some voice private doubts, others insist -- often with increasing stridency -- that the war is justified, that the insurgency can be crushed and that naysaying undermines both national will and troop morale. I admire their steadfast faith, even as I recognize the dilemma. To disbelieve seems too much like betrayal. Skepticism and dissent appear inimical to service and sacrifice.

Keeping the warriors and the war untangled is extraordinarily difficult, intellectually and emotionally. All that most of us can do is to mean precisely what we say: We back you.

Rick Atkinson, a former staff writer for The Post, is the author of "An Army at Dawn" and "In the Company of Soldiers."

From Vdare.com:

An Orwellian Christmas
By Tom Piatak

[Also by Tom Piatak: Take Back Christmas! and Happy Holidays? Bah! Humbug!]

Traditionally, the writer most associated with Christmas was Charles Dickens. But today, Christmas in America is far more likely to be Orwellian than Dickensian.

Long before the advent of political correctness, Orwell wrote, “Freedom is the freedom to say 2 + 2 = 4. If that is granted, all else follows.”

I was reminded of Orwell’s great insight by a recent skirmish in the War against Christmas at a private school east of my hometown, Cleveland.

A seventh grader there made the mistake of saying that two plus two equals four. He called the decorated tree in his homeroom a “Christmas tree.” 

When I was in seventh grade, such a statement would have been as controversial as saying the sky is blue. After all, Christmas is the holiday that causes tens of millions of Americans to celebrate by putting up decorated trees.

But, at this school, students are required to say that two plus two equals five: the decorated tree must be referred to as a “holiday tree.”

Because of his insistence on speaking the truth, this seventh grader was labeled an “anti-Semite” and a “Nazi” by classmates.

Far from reprimanding the students who absurdly equated Christmas with Nazism, his teacher threatened to discipline the seventh grader if he persisted in calling the decorated tree by its actual name. He was also warned that he must not wish anyone a “Merry Christmas.”

Needless to say, this bit of nastiness was justified on the Orwellian grounds of “diversity” and “tolerance.”

Interestingly, even though Jewish students are a minority, the school also displays menorahs and dreidels (but no nativity scenes) and puts up lights in blue and white, the Hanukkah colors. No one is threatened with discipline for mentioning that holiday.

I was also reminded of Orwell when I was preparing for a recent talk to the Cleveland chapter of the Federalist Society on the legal aspects of the War Against Christmas. At least some federal courts harbor a thinly-disguised hostility toward Christianity, justified in Orwellian terms.

Of course, as VDARE.COM has pointed out, the First Amendment is not the reason for the War against Christmas. The school where no student may say “Christmas” is a private school, not a public one. And the War Against Christmas rages in lands with no First Amendment. Last week, the New York Times reported that there was widespread outrage in Italy because a school near Como had decided to substitute the word “virtue” for “Jesus” in an Italian carol the students were performing—in the interests of “diversity,” of course.

But the First Amendment (and the “wall of separation” between church and state it supposedly embodies) has certainly proven a valuable weapon for those intent on obliterating any public mention of Christmas.

Needless to say, that is not what the First Amendment was intended to do. As Justice Joseph Story, the leading commentator on the Constitution in the first half of the nineteenth century, explained,

“The real object of the amendment was not to countenance, much less to advance, Mahometanism, or Judaism, or infidelity, by prostrating Christianity, but to exclude all rivalry among Christian sects, and to prevent any national ecclesiastical establishment which should give to a hierarchy the exclusive patronage of the national government.”

Indeed, several New England states had established churches well into the nineteenth century.

Often, however, current jurisprudence stands Story’s words on their head. In Skoros v. City of New York, a federal district judge upheld the New York City schools’ policy of displaying Islamic crescents and menorahs, but banning nativity scenes. In upholding this policy, the court lauded the schools’ “diversity policy,” writing that

“Without a diversity policy, a winter holiday display in New York City’s public schools would be dominated by images representative of Christmas.”

Citing Supreme Court precedent, the court concluded that

“an explicit Christian religious symbol such as a crèche need not be included in a Christmas time display to counterbalance the display of a menorah before the message is reasonably perceived as one of inclusion.”

This is the point: in today’s America, what “diversity” and “inclusion” actually mean is that symbols of America’s Christian heritage must be excluded—and expelled.

In Orwellian terms: “inclusion” is exclusion. “Diversity” is conformity.

And, of course, freedom is slavery.

In amazing contrast is the California district court decision in Eklund v. Byron Union School District, which upheld an eight-week long “study module” for seventh graders that required students to recite Islamic prayers and participate in activities intended to approximate the Five Pillars of Islam, and also encouraged students to create Islamic banners, take Arab names, and wear Arab garb.

The court ruled that “Role playing activities which are not in actuality the practice of a religion do not violate the Establishment Clause”—citing Ninth Circuit precedent upholding reading assignments that discussed witches and instructed students to pretend to cast magic spells.

One is tempted to resort to Orwell’s newspeak to explain these decisions: Islam and witches, good; nativity scenes, “ungood.”

Fortunately, other federal court decisions suggest a strategy for a successful counterattack: emphasizing the unmatched cultural significance of Christmas.

The Eighth Circuit has recognized, in Florey v. Sioux Falls School District, that “carols have a cultural significance that justifies their being sung in the public schools.”

And the Fifth Circuit has recognized, in Doe v. Duncanville Independent School District, that

“a position of neutrality towards religion must allow choir directors to recognize the fact that most choral music is religious. Limiting the number of times a religious piece of music can be sung is tantamount to censorship and does not send students a message of neutrality.”

At my talk to the Federalist Society, I illustrated this point by playing a recording of “Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen” (we know it as “Lo, How A Rose E’er Blooming”) from my favorite Christmas CD.

Aside from its amazing beauty, there were several notable aspects about this recording.

It was sung by children, showing that age is not an insuperable obstacle in introducing students to cultural excellence.

This particular version was recorded in East Germany, showing that even an atheist state, officially hostile to religion, was able to recognize value in Christmas.

The carol was sung in German, showing that teaching students about Christmas is an ideal vehicle for teaching them about true multiculturalism. Indeed, my own collection of Christmas music features carols sung in German, French, Italian, Latin, Spanish, Polish, Catalan, Welsh, and Ukrainian, in addition to English. No other holiday matches the cultural breadth of Christmas.

Also significant was the fact that the music was composed by one great composer, Michael Praetorius, and that the singers came from the choir of St. Thomas in Leipzig, among whose former choirmasters was Johann Sebastian Bach. This CD features Christmas music by both Bach and Praetorius as well as two other towering geniuses, Palestrina and Handel. It’s also one of 40 Christmas CDs I have, each featuring something unique and not found in the others.

No other festival has inspired even a tiny fraction of such great music. It is absurd that those whose profession is to teach now discipline students who even mention the name of the holiday that inspired this outpouring of beauty.

Perhaps the schools should follow this test instead: equal emphasis on all winter holidays that have music written for them by Johann Sebastian Bach.

Even crèches, regularly expelled from schools and other public places, could serve a secular educational purpose. In addition to helping explain the origin of Christmas, they could be used to introduce students to the Western artistic tradition.

The first crèche was created by Francis of Assisi, whose life was recorded in paint by Giotto, one of the founders of Western painting. The Metropolitan Museum of Art recently spent a record $45,000,000 to acquire a painting of the Madonna and Child by a contemporary of Giotto’s, Duccio. Even though the painting is no larger than a sheet of typing paper, the Met felt the purchase price was justified by Duccio’s great importance in the Western artistic tradition—a tradition inextricably bound up with Christianity in general and Christmas in particular.

Indeed, Duccio, like Giotto, painted many scenes inspired by Christmas—including the painting purchase by the Met. According to a Met spokesman quoted in the December 10, 2004 New York Times, the museum is going to display its prized acquisition starting on December 21:

“There was a strong desire to have the Duccio on display before Christmas because there’s such an interest in its history as a devotional picture.” [“The Met Unveils a Masterpiece, Its Most Expensive Work of Art,” by Carol Vogel]

If our schools can spend eight weeks teaching students about Islam, surely they should be able to teach students about the holiday that has been at the heart of our own civilization for centuries.

One need not accept the divinity of Christ to recognize—and even be awed by—the beauty His birth inspired. I doubt the Met decided to purchase Duccio’s painting for reasons of Christian piety.

A friend tells me that her Jewish mother-in-law observes Christmas each year by going to a performance of “Messiah” and to Midnight Mass, because of her love for the music. Some of the best Christmas music I know was recorded by Joel Cohen and his Boston Camerata. Great Jewish conductors such as Eugene Ormandy and Leonard Bernstein recorded albums filled with wonderful Christmas music. Recently, America’s greatest conductor of choral music, including Christmas choral music, was Robert Shaw, a Unitarian, not an orthodox Christian.

A greater appreciation for the unparalleled cultural significance of Christmas should lead to greater tolerance of the public celebration of Christmas in all its facets. After all, the beauty that inspires even many non-believers was the result of a tradition that valued Christmas and what it means.

A society that treats “Christmas” as a dirty word and assiduously tries to prevent school children from learning anything about it—especially the parts of Christmas that are beautiful or sublime —is unlikely to add to that beauty, or even pass along the beauty it received from earlier generations untouched by the War against Christmas.

Despite the continued onslaught against Christmas and the Orwellian arguments served up to justify it, I remain optimistic. Each year more and more people come to recognize that a War against Christmas is being waged, and they start fighting back.

I was also encouraged by the Federalists’ reaction to my talk. And one audience member, an Orthodox Jewish lawyer, offered a valuable piece of advice.

He said that Christians need to grow backbones.

He was right. We need to be able to stand up and say “two plus two equals four” again.

If we can do that, as Orwell wrote, “all else follows.”

Tom Piatak writes from Cleveland, Ohio.

From The Corner on National Review Online:

OUR FRIENDS
by Andrew Stuttaford

Here’s a delightful story from the Saudi dictatorship:

“Jeddah (AsiaNews) – A Saudi citizen converted to Christianity has been arrested and jailed. Emad Alaabadi was taken into custody last November 29, at Hofuf, a town in eastern Saudi Arabia, but the news was reported only a few days ago by the International Christian Concern (ICC), a Washington-based human rights group. AsiaNews local sources have confirmed the report, and also say that he “is not the only Saudi Christian in jail at the moment: there are also others”. According to news obtained by ICC, other Christians – at least 3 or 4 – appear to have been arrested along with Emad.”

Now, I understand perfectly well that – for now – the West still has to have dealings with the repulsive regime that runs 'Saudi' Arabia, but I am at a loss to understand how anyone – let alone anyone professing a strong Christian faith – is willing to treat its representatives as honored guests, sponsors or friends.

And if you think I’m referring to the Bush family, you are right.

From HollywoodJesus.com:

U2: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
Review by Michael Ray

How do you top the fame, fortune and popularity that are already equated with U2? Bono and The Edge are household names among music fans, and the band’s career has spanned 25 years. With the hype and anticipation surrounding the release of How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb, anything less than stellar reviews would be underachieving for the boys from Ireland.

Is the album a solid piece of work? Definitely—it will push U2’s already successful career forward. But it isn’t necessarily groundbreaking for them. It bears little resemblance to the experimental albums of Zooropa and Pop (both of which I love, for the record). It’s also a noticeably different vibe than the widely successful All That You Can’t Leave Behind, which reestablished the band’s fan base in 2000. All That You Can’t is a set of songs that brings back memories of the early U2 days, namely The Joshua Tree. Whereas, How to Dismantle, with its haunting melodies and sexy guitar layers, sounds much more like something from the Achtung Baby era. Indeed the classic pieces are all here: Edge’s trademark guitar sounds, Bono’s distinctive soaring vocals, and the spiritually charged lyrics.

The music is not purely loud rock n’ roll; in fact, the opening single “Vertigo,” with its catchy guitar riff, provides the biggest punch of the album. The rest of the disc settles into a steady cohesive groove, consisting of pop rock tunes and ballads with a definite acoustic emphasis. The band has always been able to write strong melodies, and this album is no exception. However, as a whole it fails to take the band in any new direction. While the creativity of past work (the aforementioned Pop album, for example) revealed an unusual and innovative side to the band, this album fails to create much excitement. It’s a comfortable fit for the fans, and a pleasure to listen to, but I’d hoped the band would have continued to push the bounds of today’s rock landscape instead of settling for a conservative U2 sound.

What isn’t static is the band’s spirituality, which permeates the entire production. Bono continues to deftly weave together romantic, spiritual, and political imagery in his lyrics. In fact, Bono’s lyrics may be the most explicitly “Christian” that they’ve ever been. He’s become more outspoken in recent years about his faith and doesn’t shy away from writing modern-day rock n’ roll hymns for an un-churched audience. They may not fit into a typical evangelical or mainline church, but Bono and the boys haven’t failed to serve and promote the Judeo-Christian God in a distinctive and powerful way.

The songs on this album indeed have much to say. The Christian message of compassion is represented in the song “Miracle Drug.” Bono empathetically writes to everyone suffering in the African AIDS crisis, telling them that “love makes nonsense of space and time” and beneath the cries of the victims is the voice of Jesus reminding us to help bring comfort and relief (“I was a stranger, you took me in”).

In “Love and Peace or Else” (a song that represents what “Bullet the Blue Sky” might have sounded like on Pop), the band cries out for a cease fire in the Middle East: "lay down your guns, all your daughters of Zion, all your Abraham sons.” Instead of the incessant fighting which has disrupted the region for years, the prayer is for the current generation to develop “a brand new heart.”

The grace of God is the theme of “All Because of You;” In a poetic play on words, Bono uses the name of God that was given to Moses in Exodus 3:14, “I Am.” The Lord is given credit for bringing life and meaning—“You heard me in my tune, when I just heard confusion” and “I’m alive, I’m being born . . . all because of you, I Am.”

“One Step Closer” is a modern sequel to “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For,” displaying the emotional intensity of a weary wanderer in the world. In the midst of doubt, pain, and sorrow, there is still the hope of moving forward (“one step closer to knowing”). Love and mercy are learned through the trials of life, for “the heart that hurts is the heart that beats.”

The album concludes with “Yahweh,” a beautiful contemporary song of worship. “Take this shirt,” writes Bono, “and make it clean,” and “take this soul . . . and make it sing.” The road of sanctification is long and difficult, because there is “always pain before the child is born.” Every believer has wondered why Yahweh allows “the dark before the dawn,” but God continually reassures us of his presence in the world, and this brings hope (“the sun is coming up on the ocean”).

U2 continues to deliver this hope to the shadowy places of the world through artful and inspiring music. Even in the seemingly frivolous world of pop music one can find God’s grace at work, for as Bono reminds us, “blessings are not just for the ones who kneel . . . luckily” (“City of Blinding Lights”). This album affirms that God’s love is available to all people, and that it is only by His grace that anyone can experience true life. This realization drives us to our knees in humility, where we can all join the band in singing the final lines of “Yahweh”: “Take this heart . . . and make it break.”

From HollywoodJesus.com:

The Scouring of the Shire
By Greg Wright

In The Fellowship of the Ring, Frodo witnesses a frightening vision, courtesy of the Mirror of Galadriel. The placid, agrarian Shire is being despoilt and burnt, and peace-loving Hobbits like Samwise Gamgee are being scourged with whips.
It is only a vision, of course. As Galadriel tells Frodo in Tolkien’s novel, the Mirror does not necessarily show what will happen, but what might yet happen—and each potential future rests on our actions in the here and now.

And in the here and now, we know that in Peter Jackson’s filmed adaptation of Tolkien’s novel a despoiled Shire is simply not in the cards. As long as the Extended Edition of the final film was in the offing, though, the Tolkien purists among us could cling to those Mirror images with desperate hope, thinking maybe—just maybe—they were clips of further footage related to the episode that Tolkien called “The Scouring of the Shire.”

But the slate of added scenes is now set in stone, and Jackson’s version of the story features no such scouring. Jackson’s languid, contemplative conclusion to his Return of the King will remain as symphonic—and as dissonant, to some viewers—as it was in the original theatrical release.

And as I have asked more than once over the last three-plus years, is such disappointment any great tragedy? After all, can I praise Jackson for his daring and artistic integrity one December, then rake him over the coals the following November because his Extended Edition doesn’t suit my fancy? The answer is, of course, yes, I can, whether it’s fair or not—disappointed critics can be as capricious as a disillusioned Denethor when they please.

Yet in spite of critical license, I will decline castigation of Jackson’s effort, judging that good stewardship of Tolkien’s art warrants another, better response: clarifying why The Scouring of the Shire was so important to Tolkien, and explaining, perhaps, why it is rather less important to Jackson.

Tolkien’s Scouring
In Tolkien’s original story, Frodo and his companions take more than six months to complete their return journey to the Shire following the downfall of the Barad-dûr. During this time, a diminished and spiteful Saruman leverages his prior trading connections with the Shire, wresting control of most of the Shire from the Hobbits. “Sharkey’s Men,” as Saruman’s lackeys are called, intimidate their shorter, furry-footed humanoid cousins with threats, clubs, imprisonment and economic thuggery. Rumor has it that Sharkey’s Men may even have killed some Hobbits. Trees are cut to fuel new engines and mills, crops are shipped off to distant points at obscene profits, cozy Hobbit-holes are razed to make room for ghastly houses, and additional scores of traitorous “Shirriffs” are recruited from among the Hobbits to help “keep the peace.” In short, Saruman turns the Shire into the kind of average post-rural, proto-industrial fascist Western nightmare that Marx would have loved to hate.

Oddly enough, it seems that Gandalf has some inkling of the trouble Saruman has been causing; but not only does he do nothing to prevent it, he sends the Hobbits back to clean up the mess on their own. “I am with you at present, but soon I shall not be,” Gandalf tells the homeward-bound Hobbits while in the Bree district. “I am not coming to the Shire. You must settle its affairs yourselves; that is what you have been trained for. Do you not yet understand? My time is over: it is no longer my task to set things to rights, nor to help folk do so. And as for you, my dear friends, you will need no help.”

Gandalf is correct, of course. The Hobbits prove quite capable of routing Saruman’s thugs, of sending the illegitimate Shirriffs scurrying, of freeing the captives, and, in the long term (with Galadriel’s far-sighted help), of healing the broken land. Merry and Pippin, in particular, use their knighthood and increased physical stature to good advantage. And even the final mercy that Frodo shows to Saruman proves to be the Wizard’s own undoing, as the ever-fawning Wormtongue ultimately deals the fatal blow to his thankless—and pointedly graceless and merciless—master. But the victory comes at a cost. Men die. Hobbits die. Lots of them. The Shire is scoured, but at great cost.

The Significance of the Scouring
And this gets at the heart of the importance of The Scouring of the Shire. For Tolkien, the end of the story was not, and could never be, merely the destruction of the Ring and the fall of the Barad-dûr. The last battle of the War of the Ring was fought in Bywater, not Cirith Gorgor. Tolkien believed that the great battles are not just fought “over there”—the battles that really matter are those closest to home.

The Scouring of the Shire is a call to social action. What good is it, Tolkien asks, if we send a few good men—the youth of an entire generation, in the case of World War I—to fight in a foreign land if we foster corruption and abuse at home? What we ask in that case is for the survivors to fight yet another war when they return. Much has been made about parallels between Tolkien’s narrative and the events of World War II, but perhaps it is no accident that The Lord of the Rings has soared to phenomenal popularity in America over nearly half a century overshadowed by the specter of a much smaller war in the jungles of Viet Nam. Even in 2004, that war raged on in our Presidential campaign. The scouring of our own shire continues.
And appropriately so, given the present war in Iraq: The Scouring of the Shire is also a reminder that evil, even in diminished form, is still pernicious and insidious, fully potent in any environment that harbors, excuses or nourishes it. What our own Shirriffs did in Abu Ghraib was no less scandalous than the beheadings that continue at the direction of the Sharkeys of the modern age. Thuggery is still thuggery. Complicity is still complicity, and evil is still evil.

But the Scouring is also an acknowledgement of injustice in the face of an unreasonable mercy. Sure, Gandalf was right that the pity of Bilbo—the pity that stayed the elder Hobbit’s hand and let Gollum live to see several thousand more days—did rule the fate of Men: that in the absence of mercy, Gollum would never have been present at Mount Doom to salvage Frodo’s failure. But back in the Shire, Tolkien raises an even more nagging question: why, when twice given the chance to do otherwise, did Gandalf show mercy to Saruman—the Wizard who should have known better, the Wizard to whom mercy was most definitely not deserved?

If only Gandalf had slain Saruman, the wretched wizard would never have gone on to ravage the Shire. The taking of one life would have spared nearly a hundred others.

We might as well ask (and perhaps Tolkien wishes us to): Why does God allow evil to persist? As Saving Private Ryan argued, the evil bastard you show mercy to today will still be an evil bastard tomorrow. The practical solution is: Show no mercy, for you will receive none.

But Tolkien’s answer is not so pragmatic. Rather, it’s Biblical. We show mercy not because it’s deserved, nor because it’s practical, but because it’s the godly thing to do. “While we yet sinners,” the Apostle Paul observed—while we still God’s enemies—“Christ died for us.” We show mercy because God has shown mercy to us, even while we are unrepentant.

And this leads to a troubling observation: that social justice may seemingly be subverted by impractical spirituality. And Tolkien has this to say: Yes, even diminished evil will prosper whereever it may find safe harbour; but Trouble in the Shire is not the end of the story: good will also prosper, even if it finds no safe harbor—and ultimately, good triumphs. The day will come, Tolkien says, when all our Shires will be scoured. There is a Redeemer, and as the prophet Malachi said, “Who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner's fire.” Tolkien’s Gandalf, as a servant of that Secret Fire, has as full confidence in that future as did Tolkien.

The Gaping Hole in Jackson’s Adaptation
And what about Peter Jackson? In the first place, presenting the story of The Scouring of the Shire would dictate a fourth film—one with its own exposition, its own story arc, climax and resolution. There is simply no way even a four-plus hour film could sustain such a self-contained narrative in its closing scenes.

But at the end of the day, the crux of the issue is more philosophical than cinematic: Tolkien has far less confidence in human potential and the power of purely human fellowship than does Jackson. And why not? Two World Wars taught Tolkien that only faith in an external, greater Good could sustain him. Yet astounding human potential, and the fellowship found in an amazing production team, did manage to bring Jackson through his war to bring Tolkien’s Rings to the screen.

So Jackson has little use for lessons about external evil and external good; he has even openly expressed doubts that such things exist. Dominic Monaghan, Viggo Mortensen, John Rhys-Davies, Sir Ian McKellan and others have far more interest in social action than Jackson. And at Helm’s Deep we already found out the extent to which Jackson’s vision of mercy differs from Tolkien’s.

Without interest in or sympathy with Tolkien’s themes, and in the face of narrative and commercial pressures, what’s a director to do? Punt, and leave the pricklier issues to the books. And that’s probably as it should be.

So as you pick up your Extended Edition DVD on December 14, think about The Scouring of the Shire, because you won’t find it on video. Think about picking up the book, too, and reminding or finding out for yourself what The Lord of the Rings is really about. And remember that, for Tolkien, the Return of the King wasn’t just about Aragorn.

From washingtonpost.com:

Just Leave Christmas Alone
By Charles Krauthammer

"Holiday celebrations where Christmas music is being sung make people feel different, and because it is such a majority, it makes the minority feel uncomfortable."
-- Mark Brownstein, parent, Maplewood, N.J., supporting the school board's ban on religious music in holiday concerts

"You want my advice? Go back to Bulgaria."
-- Humphrey Bogart, "Casablanca"

It is Christmastime, and what would Christmas be without the usual platoon of annoying pettifoggers rising annually to strip Christmas of any Christian content? With some success:

School districts in New Jersey and Florida ban Christmas carols. The mayor of Somerville, Mass., apologizes for "mistakenly" referring to the town's "holiday party" as a "Christmas party." The Broward and Fashion malls in South Florida put up a Hanukah menorah but no nativity scene. The manager of one of the malls explains: Hanukah commemorates a battle and not a religious event, though he hastens to add, "I really don't know a lot about it." He does not. Hanukah commemorates a miracle, and there is no event more "religious" than a miracle.

The attempts to de-Christianize Christmas are as absurd as they are relentless. The United States today is the most tolerant and diverse society in history. It celebrates all faiths with an open heart and open-mindedness that, compared to even the most advanced countries in Europe, are unique.

Yet more than 80 percent of Americans are Christian, and probably 95 percent of Americans celebrate Christmas. Christmas Day is an official federal holiday, the only day of the entire year when, for example, the Smithsonian museums are closed. Are we to pretend that Christmas is nothing but an orgy of commerce in celebration of . . . what? The winter solstice?

I personally like Christmas because, since it is a day that for me is otherwise ordinary, I get to do nice things, such as covering for as many gentile colleagues as I could when I was a doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital. I will admit that my generosity had its rewards: I collected enough chits on Christmas Day to get reciprocal coverage not just for Yom Kippur but for both days of Rosh Hashana and my other major holiday, Opening Day at Fenway.

Mind you, I've got nothing against Hanukah, although I am constantly amused -- and gratified -- by how American culture has gone out of its way to inflate the importance of Hanukah, easily the least important of Judaism's seven holidays, into a giant event replete with cards, presents and public commemorations as a creative way to give Jews their Christmas equivalent.

Some Americans get angry at parents who want to ban carols because they tremble that their kids might feel "different" and "uncomfortable" should they, God forbid, hear Christian music sung at their school. I feel pity. What kind of fragile religious identity have they bequeathed their children that it should be threatened by exposure to carols?

I'm struck by the fact that you almost never find Orthodox Jews complaining about a Christmas creche in the public square. That is because their children, steeped in the richness of their own religious tradition, know who they are and are not threatened by Christians celebrating their religion in public. They are enlarged by it.

It is the more deracinated members of religious minorities, brought up largely ignorant of their own traditions, whose religious identity is so tenuous that they feel the need to be constantly on guard against displays of other religions -- and who think the solution to their predicament is to prevent the other guy from displaying his religion, rather than learning a bit about their own.

To insist that the overwhelming majority of this country stifle its religious impulses in public so that minorities can feel "comfortable" not only understandably enrages the majority but commits two sins. The first is profound ungenerosity toward a majority of fellow citizens who have shown such generosity of spirit toward minority religions.

The second is the sin of incomprehension -- a failure to appreciate the uniqueness of the communal American religious experience. Unlike, for example, the famously tolerant Ottoman Empire or the generally tolerant Europe of today, the United States does not merely allow minority religions to exist at its sufferance. It celebrates and welcomes and honors them.

America transcended the idea of mere toleration in 1790 in Washington's letter to the Newport synagogue, one of the lesser known glories of the Founding: "It is now no more that toleration is spoken of, as if it was by the indulgence of one class of people, that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights."

More than two centuries later, it is time that members of religious (and anti-religious) minorities, as full citizens of this miraculous republic, transcend something too: petty defensiveness.

Merry Christmas. To all.

Battle for the future not over
By Patrick J. Buchanan

December 15, 2004

With Bush's 51 percent victory, Colin Powell's departure and the purge at CIA, many on the Old Right seem sunk in Bunyan's Slough of Despond. They assume the neoconservatives are now free to pursue war without end.

Yet, six weeks have now passed since Nov. 2, and there is as yet no conclusive evidence George Bush is looking to widen the war in Iraq or launch wars on other axis-of-evil nations. Consider:

With the recapture of Fallujah, U.S. generals have indicated a need for more troops to neutralize other strongholds and pacify the Sunni Triangle before January elections. John McCain told "Meet the Press" that we may need 40,000 to 50,000 more. In the Weekly Standard, Tom Donnelly of AEI has called for an enlargement of the U.S. Army of 480,000 and pumping up defense spending from 4 percent to the 5 percent or 6 percent of GDP Reagan spent in the decisive years of the Cold War.

Why do we need the ground troops? Because, writes Donnelly, our real war is "a contest between liberalism and radical Islam to supplant the crumbling autocracies that have dominated the region since the fall of the Ottoman Empire." Our war is about "preserving Pax Americana."

The neocons have in mind taking down Middle East regimes and occupying their nations with U.S. troops, who would train and fight with indigenous forces to crush insurgents who resist American "hegemony."

"[America] will continue to contribute the lion's share of the blood and treasure in the effort to transform the greater Middle East," writes Donnelly, but it's "impossible to have a Bush Doctrine world with Clinton-era defense budgets. The problem for the United States is not imperial overstretch, it's trying to run the planet on the cheap."

To which some of us might respond: The problem for the United States is trying to run the planet in the first place.

What is critical, however, is not what neocons say, but what Bush does. And while he still rhapsodizes about democratizing the world, he has yet to will the actions to attain the neocons' ends. There is no evidence of any large imminent increase in U.S. forces, or of 40,000 more troops embarking for the Sunni Triangle, or of a Bush plan to raise defense spending to Donnelly's "$500 or $600 billion for the foreseeable future."

Consider Iran. Relying on reports from an exile group we once labeled terrorist, Powell has warned that Iran may be at work on a nuclear warhead for its Shahab-3 missile, which can reach Israel. The neocons and Sharonites have been howling for Bush to effect the nuclear castration of Iran by bombing now.

Yet, there is no evidence Iran is working on a warhead, or has built a bomb, or has the fissile material for a bomb or the operational facilities to create the weapons-grade uranium or plutonium needed for a bomb.

The heavy water plant at Arak that would produce plutonium does not come on-stream until 2014. And while Iran has apparently converted "yellowcake" to uranium hexafluoride, the first step in producing highly enriched uranium, there is no evidence Iran has constructed a cascade of thousands of centrifuges needed to extract critical U-235 from U-238 and enrich it to 90 percent.

Thus, Iran has no nuclear arsenal. And as President Bush has yet to warn us to brace for the consequences of a U.S. strike, it would appear his near-term agenda does not include a Bush Doctrine preventive war on the mullahs' regime.

The same seems true for North Korea. In that Weekly Standard, AEI's Nick Eberstadt calls Bush's approach to Pyongyang "dangerously flawed." He urges the "readying [of] non-diplomatic instruments for North Korea threat reduction" – i.e., sanctions, blockade, air strikes or invasion.

But again, there is no evidence Bush is contemplating any such action, which could ignite a Korean war we are unprepared to fight.

What appears to be happening is this: While there is no shortage of neocon war plans for a Pax Americana, President Bush is bumping up against reality – a U.S. Army tied down and bleeding in Iraq, the rising costs of war, soaring deficits, a sinking dollar and an absence of allies willing to fight beside us or even help. He is facing the Vietnam dilemma.

Does he plunge deeper into Iraq in hope of victory, risking all, or cut his losses and revert to a more affordable, less ambitious foreign policy that secures the nation, but no longer seeks to convert the world to the American idea of democracy?

For 15 years, some of us have warned that if we fail to adopt a traditionalist foreign policy, the world will, to our humiliation, impose such a policy upon us.

Bush is at a crossroads. Conservatives, rather than wringing our hands, must re-engage the debate. All is not lost. All is never lost.

Christianophobia
By Patrick J. Buchanan

December 13, 2004

"'Tis the season to be jolly." But, as usual, not for all of us.

It is the Christmas season, that time in December when all good Christians celebrate the birth of the Savior of mankind, born in a stable in Bethlehem, 2,000 years ago.

It is a time of family gatherings and gift-giving, of joyous music and fond memories. For some, it is one of the few days of the year, Easter being the other, when they return to the old church for the feast day that yet retains its hold upon them from childhood.

Even many non-believers celebrate, for Christmas joy is contagious.

But not for all. For some, it is not too much to say that they hate the idea of Christmas with a deep abiding hate, not just the "Bah, humbug!" dismissal of old Scrooge. They want Christmas dead.

As usual, they are busy at work, going to court to get Nativity scenes expunged from public squares, demanding that statues of Mary, Joseph and the infant Jesus be removed from department stores and parades, checking vigilantly to see that any and all caroling at public schools is free of such outrages as "Silent Night." For people such as these, even Santa has become an intolerably divisive figure who must be purged from public life.

And this year, again, they are meeting with some success, especially with a business community for whom Christmas has always been about sales volume, not salvation.

Target stores have told the Salvation Army it may no longer station volunteers at store entrances, with their red kettles, and solicit charitable contributions for the poor. The 30-year tradition that reaped the Army $9 million a year has been terminated

The reason? Says Target, unconvincingly, it is so the company can have a consistent policy of no solicitations outside its stores. But in recent years, the gay lobby has pressured Target to ban the Army because it is Christian and rejects homosexuality as sinful.

Now Macy's has stopped using the phrase "Merry Christmas" in all store advertising, replacing it with what Macy's calls the more inclusive "Season's Greetings" and "Happy Holidays."

But how is it "inclusive" to exclude the Christians' greeting? Is that not anti-Christian? Why would the Macy's of the "Miracle on 34th Street" do such a thing? Why would Federated Department Stores, Macy's parent company, impose such a policy?

By Newton's laws of motion, an object moving in a given direction will continue to do so unless an outside force intervenes. What hidden force intervened to cause Macy's to reverse course and suddenly sever its ties to Christmas? Who insisted that Macy's cease to mention Christmas, the holiday around which its selling season is built?

It is hard to believe some Macy's executive took it upon himself to make so offensive a decision as to expunge "Merry Christmas" from the store, when so many of Macy's most loyal shoppers were certain to be disheartened and hurt. Who is trying to kill Christmas?

It needs to be said. What we are witnessing here are hate crimes against Christianity – the manifestations, the symptoms of a sickness of the soul, a disease a Vatican diplomat correctly calls "Christianophobia," the fear and loathing of all things Christian, coupled with a fanatic will to expunge from the public life of the West all reminders that ours was once a Christian civilization and America once a Christian country.

Americans are among the most tolerant of peoples. No one demands that any dissenting adult or child be made to say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, or join in Christmas caroling, or be forced to say a prayer before class, or go to church at Christmas. The Christian majority only asks that they be free to be themselves, to exercise their freedom to express their love of their Savior as the First Amendment has always guaranteed.

But what are we to make of Maplewood, N.J., where the Columbus High School brass ensemble was ordered not to play a single Christmas carol at their holiday concert, not even an instrumental version. Parents and students were outraged. "This is censorship at its most basic level," said student Ryan Dahn. Correct, Ryan.

In Denver, officials of the annual Parade of Lights refused to permit in the parade a float carrying the banner "Merry Christmas" with members of the Faith Bible Chapel congregation, who were to sing Christmas carols. Approved was a float sponsored by Two Souls, an American Indian group that considers homosexuality holy.

While Christmas often brings forth the best in some of us, because of who and what is being celebrated, that is not true for all of us. For some, it brings forth the purest malevolence. Why? Sadly, because they do not know Him. Nevertheless, Merry Christmas – to all.